The Lamorna Wink

57

First, she walked swiftly from her car down the street, wondering what instinct told her that it would be dangerous to park in her usual space, that she should park some distance from the house. She walked quickly by the Woodbine, momentarily tempted to go in and shout for Brenda to explain, to fix things. But Chris knew it was inexplicable. The note she’d left on the card table for Johnny, the word she’d left with Brenda… It was incomprehensible.

Why Brenda would have failed to tell him was beyond her, utterly beyond her. What her, Chris’s, supposed running away was meant to accomplish was just as mysterious. She didn’t care about the mystery at this moment; she cared only about letting Johnny know she was back and she was all right.

Lights shone through the windows of their house and then, suddenly, they didn’t. Suddenly, and all at once, both downstairs and upstairs went dark. That the lights were not being turned off one at a time, that the house was abruptly thrust into darkness really frightened her. She stopped. In the diminished light along the street she heard a car in the distance, getting closer, perhaps his-Plant’s-for she knew he had made for his car when she was leaving. Perhaps she should wait… oh, but this was ridiculous, holding back this way.

She shoved her fisted hands down into her pockets. Fear fueled her anger. How dare Brenda do this? Chris walked, but slowly, toward her house, which had grown unfamiliar to her without even the fixture on the porch lighting the way.

Chris saw that someone was standing in front of the Drowned Man, hands cupping a cigarette, sheltering the match against the wind and what was left of the rain-mist mostly. Someone. Was she seeing him everywhere now, having seen him nowhere for so long?

Dan. She shrank back into a doorway. How could he possibly be here now? Then she remembered what Melrose Plant had said about Tom Letts and his funeral. Dan would of course come to help his dad. No matter how painful or what memories the place stirred, Dan would do that. He really loved Morris Bletchley.

Another figure, stocky and wearing a dark robe, had come out to join Dan. It must be Mr. Pfinn. She heard their voices, drowsy through the mist, floating toward her. She could make out nothing they said as they looked off down the street, in the direction of her house.

Chris stared at the fragment of Dan’s face the cigarette coal illuminated when he inhaled. She needed help; she was sure she needed help. She should not have come by herself; she should have brought Mr. Plant with her.

But she turned away from help and started walking again toward the house, now little more than fifty feet away. Only a few doors down the street. What had they been looking at, Dan and Pfinn? Why had they come out to the pavement? She had left her own sheltering doorway only when the two of them had turned to go back into the pub.

Not sure why she wanted to avoid the front door of this house that lay in a total, unnatural darkness and silence, she made for the French door around the right-hand side and soon found her feet crunching gravel, but something else. Glass. The cloudy moon showed her the door was broken. She moved through the French door and found an even darker darkness than outside. When she reached out she felt the heavy curtain, loosened from the fixture that usually held it back.

She heard a noise, at once far away and shatteringly close, felt something like a heavy and violent hand shoved against her chest, jerking her back, and then tripped over the heavy curtain that was dropped before her. No, she hadn’t tripped. Pain only flickered at first and then gathered a hideous strength.

“Johnny!” Chris thought she screamed it, but heard little more than a whisper, less than the hiss of the sea against rocks which she could almost hear, even at this distance, less even than the lovely voice of Dan over across the road. Johnny! She knew she hadn’t said it aloud, not this time. He was in her mind with the blinding, searing light, as if the whole house had suddenly and completely been lit with the sun.

That was all.

58

Melrose saw Wiggins coming out the door of the Drowned Man just after what sounded like a shot was fired. He ran toward him.

“Sergeant! Was that-?”

Wiggins stopped. “It came from the Wells house.”

Light flooded the house before they reached the end of the path to the Wellses’ front door, which was open.

“I’m going round back,” said Wiggins. “You’d best stay out of sight.”

He didn’t. Melrose waited for a moment, then moved toward the door.

Brenda Friel was backed up against the doorjamb between kitchen and living room, her rigid arms extended, hands holding a gun as steady as a cross beam. It was aimed at Johnny.

Melrose urged himself on: Do something, do something, damn it! But what? He was paralyzed when he saw Chris Wells lying in the little alcove at the back of the room.

“I’ll kill you, I swear to God.”

Johnny hadn’t shouted this, but the intensity with which he’d uttered the words left no doubt that he would.

Brenda said nothing. Her face was wiped clean of expression.

Then Melrose saw Wiggins approaching silently, coming through the kitchen and up behind her. He brought the side of his hand down on her arm. The gun discharged, and simultaneously a knife flew across the room and lodged in the wood of the doorway at exactly the spot where Brenda’s heart had been.

Johnny moved to his aunt’s body and did not so much kneel as drop down. He put an arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her. Then he wept.

Wiggins held on to Brenda Friel, who struggled to get out of his grasp.

And, frozen in the doorway, stood Daniel Bletchley, staring at Johnny and his awful burden. He was cradling his aunt’s body, rocking it back and forth. Dan was wide-eyed, unable to move.

Hoping she’s only fainted, Melrose thought.

For one could see no damage to Chris. The blood that had seeped into the dark carpet had now collected beneath the dark curtain at her back. Her equally dark clothes showed no wound. It was as if Johnny, in passing his hand above Chris’s body, had rendered the damage invisible.

The blood was on Johnny. When he sat back Melrose could see his T-shirt was covered, from where he had pulled her close.

Daniel Bletchley walked over to Johnny and knelt down, putting an arm around the boy and saying nothing.

For anything said, any word of comfort or false cheer, would have been a lie.

59

The service was held in the little Bletchley church, conducted by a rector of about the same age Tom had been. All youth, to Melrose, now looked sad, this age that old people so much envied but through which, he thought now, it would have been better not to pass. Standing with this little group of mourners, he watched the casket being lowered into the ground and bowed his head, thinking he had seen enough of death in the past twenty-four hours to last his lifetime.