The Lamorna Wink

by Martha Grimes

  Friend? What friend? Oh, God-Agatha. Having been Agatha-free for the last twenty-four hours, he had managed to forget her. “You mean my aunt? Yes, I expect so, unless she’s joined the staff of Aspry and Aspry.”

  Johnny laughed-not loud, not long-but a laugh nonetheless, before he left to get Melrose’s wine.

  Melrose sighed. He did not fancy another BritRail experience with her. But then he brightened at the thought that he would be free of Agatha for three months!

  16

  Except he wouldn’t be.

  Melrose could not absorb what she was saying. It was such freakish bad luck that he went blank. This was in the Woodbine the following day where morning coffee was the excuse for collective gossip. The talk was, of course, about Chris Wells’s sudden leave-taking. They avoided words such as “disappear” and “vanish,” feeling them too weighted with dread. “Up and gone” or “left without a word”-these were the phrases used, and they were bad enough.

  The news had spread quickly; Chris Wells’s leaving was the most dramatic thing that had ever happened in Bletchley. Combine that with the murder in Lamorna Cove, and they had enough to talk about for months. The village was aghast-pleasurably so, as Melrose inferred from the buzz going on around him, talk as rich and spicy as the gingerbread and tea cakes.

  Not, however, at the table where Melrose sat with Agatha, since death and disappearance took a back seat to anything befalling his aunt. She was saying, “The flat is quite a nice one and being let on a month-to-month lease, so it should suit me quite well.”

  Melrose made no comment. His mouth felt as if it had just gotten a shot of morphine. But his lack of commentary didn’t bother Agatha.

  “Anyway, it’s only a month, as I’m not sure how I’d take to the sea air, and besides I have much too much business to take care of in Long Pidd to permit me to stay away longer. I’m not like you; you’ve nothing whatever to keep you from stopping here. And I think it would be good for me to learn a trade. Esther is an excellent agent and will teach me the ropes.”

  That what he had said jokingly to Johnny last night about Agatha and estate agents was coming even partly true made him want to laugh himself sick. Agatha, who couldn’t sell cod to a cat-Agatha, selling property?

  “Since Mr. Jenks closed his Long Piddleton branch of the agency in Sidbury, there’s been a real gap in the Long Pidd offerings.” Jenks was the estate agent who had once had an office in Long Piddleton. “That building has been up for letting for ages.”

  “That building, if you remember, is next door to Marshall Trueblood.”

  As much as she loathed Marshall Trueblood, this announcement didn’t appear to dent her enthusiasm. “I needn’t see him; I’ll be working. And he spends half his day in the Jack and Hammer, so I shan’t be troubled with him.”

  Melrose swallowed the taste of hemlock and tried to reason. “Agatha, nothing ever comes on the market in Long Piddleton. Why in God’s name do you imagine Mr. Jenks left?”

  “Obviously, the man wasn’t very good at his job. There’s the Man with a Load of Mischief, for one example.”

  “That’s been up for sale for donkey’s years. You’ll never sell that pub.”

  Agatha ignored this. “There’s one of the almshouses. You know how popular listed properties are with Londoners. Long Pidd could do with some gentrification.”

  “I also know Londoners would be living next to the Withersby lot. There’s gentrification for you!” Mrs. Withersby was the Jack and Hammer char and chief moocher.

  “There’s Vivian’s place. She’s getting married, or have you forgotten?”

  Melrose heaved a sigh deep enough to bring him out of a coma. “No, I haven’t forgotten. But you have, apparently. Vivian’s been about to get married for years. She’s not going to marry the count; surely that’s obvious. She had the cottage listed once several years ago when she must have been a little closer to marriage than she is now. Maybe she just likes an excuse to keep going to Venice.”

  “This is just like you, Melrose. The glass is always half empty to you!”

  For once, she was right. If he wanted to look at Agatha’s being in Bletchley for a month, he should remember it was only a month. And in Long Piddleton, instead of her turning up at Ardry End, she would be turning up at her workplace. That would certainly be a boon. Even if she tried to get him to buy the Man with a Load of Mischief, and she probably would.

  So the glass-praise be-was half full!

  “All I need to do now is return to Long Pidd and gather together a few things. Then we can motor back to Cornwall together.” She jammed up a tea cake and added a dollop of clotted cream.

  The glass was half empty once more.

  17

  Property? An estate agent? Ouch!” Marshall Trueblood was so enthralled by Melrose’s Cornwall story he hadn’t noticed his pink Sobranie burning down to his fingers. He dropped the stub in an ashtray. He pulled the dark green handkerchief from its pocket and rubbed at his finger. Trueblood’s colors changed with the seasons. Today, he looked molten: dusky gold French-cuffed shirt, russet-hued silk wool jacket, pine-green tie speckled with fiery little leaves. He looked like autumn in flames.

  “She probably just caught a London train,” said Diane Demorney. Then, as if this comment were too much exertion, she yawned. If a yawn could be called “elegant,” Diane’s was.

  Melrose’s look was puzzled. “Who, Agatha?” Agatha-as-agent had been the last thing under discussion.

  “No, this boy’s beloved auntie. Haven’t you been following your own story?”

  “To London? What makes you think that?”

  Diane looked at Melrose wide-eyed. “To shop, of course. To buy clothes. You can’t buy clothes in Cornwall, for heaven’s sakes.” This reminded Diane of her own, apparently, for she looked down at her white suit. Her clothes were the antithesis of Trueblood’s.

  She always dressed in some combination of white and black. This further set off the contrast between her pearly skin and jet-black hair, which looked carved more than cut. The clothes were extremely expensive. So was the skin. So was the hair.

  Diane’s gestures were elegance personified, thought Melrose. If only her brain would follow suit.

  She said, “You’re making a mountain out of a mole-hole, Melrose.”

  “Molehill,” said Melrose.

  “Anyway, I’ll bet there are a hundred perfectly easy explanations for all this.”

  “None of your hundred reasons will work because she didn’t tell her nephew she was leaving.”

  Diane took a leisurely sip of her martini. “Good lord, can you imagine me alerting a nephew?”

  “No, but I can imagine me alerting the vice squad,” said Trueblood.

  Diane rinsed the olive in her martini and studied it as if checking its marinade status. “How frightfully unfunny, Marshall. My point is that the aunt would be sure to tell him-well, that’s his story.”

  Frowning, Melrose asked, “Meaning?”

  She cocked her head and raised a satiny eyebrow. “Well, for heaven’s sakes. Meaning it’s the nephew who’s telling you this. It’s he who says she’d never leave without letting him know. How can he be so sure?”

  Melrose sat back, a mite surprised. There were times when Diane demonstrated a sort of nuanced thinking. Anyway, it was hard to look at her in the same light after her heroics in saving his life. For her, bored heroics, but heroics nonetheless.

  “Perhaps she went to London to shop; perhaps she went to Paris with a lover.” Diane tended to measure others’ intentions or actions against her own.

  “This lad, John, is very responsible, very reliable, and-”

  “Very intense.” Diane finished for him. “Too much so for his own good, it sounds like.”

  The door to the Jack and Hammer was blown open by wind and the entrance of Vivian Rivington. Without saying hello, without removing her coat or sitting down, she said, “Melrose. I just met Agatha in the street and she says you’re going back to
Cornwall.” As she said this she sat down, still with her coat on.

  “For a few months, yes, that’s right.”

  “Months?” Vivian stared at him as if the body snatchers had come and carted off the real Melrose Plant and put this thing of caprice in his place. “You can’t be serious!”

  Diane said, “Ridiculous, isn’t it? There’s no reasoning with him when he gets like this.”

  “Like what? I don’t ‘get like’ anything.”

  Diane went on. “I’ve told him his stars are not up to it.”

  “You make it sound as if they’re too decrepit to go with me to Cornwall.”

  Diane was still entertaining readers of the Sidbury paper with her astrology column, largely because she knew nothing about astrology and was therefore free to invent. “You know what I mean.” Diane ate her olive.

  “No, I don’t, Diane. Nobody understands what you mean in that column. ‘Get a life’ is hardly using the stars to predict-”

  Vivian fairly shouted, “But you can’t go to Cornwall!”

  They all looked at her and her deeply blushing face.

  Surprised by this outburst, Melrose said, “I can’t?”

  Now Vivian was momentarily tongue-tied. Finally she said, “Because Franco is coming here and we’re getting married!” Having apparently frightened herself with her own outburst, she looked round the table to see if their various expressions confirmed the fact she’d said it.

  No one spoke. Even the normally unflappable Diane looked at Vivian open-mouthed.

  When they did speak, it was all at once.

  “Count Dracula-”

  “Good God! When did this-?”

  “If you’re going to London for your gown-”

  Trueblood lit a jade green Sobranie and said, “Tell me, Viv-Viv, when was all this decided?”

  “Ah… not long ago.”

  Melrose said, “How soon is this to be? When is Count Drac-” Vivian’s look at him was as blood-curdling as anything Count Dracula could scare up. “I mean, when is Giopinno arriving? Dear God, this is something!” exclaimed Melrose.

  “He’s coming in… a few days. Maybe a week…” She studied her hands.

  “Ah,” said Trueblood. “And exactly when does this wedding take place?” He smiled, wolfishly.

  Vivian looked at him with suspicion and reflected. Her blushes were replaced by a kind of death’s-head gray. “The exact date hasn’t been set yet. But it’ll be either this month or next. September or October,” she added, in case they hadn’t got their months in order.

  Do you remember another September…? Whatever the words, the song played sadly in Melrose’s head, all humor fleeing him in an instant. He said, “But of course I’ll return for the wedding. Cornwall isn’t halfway round the world.”

  “Return?” She said it dejectedly, as if it were as rueful a word as “remember.” “Return? I would think you wouldn’t even go.” Vivian regarded Melrose sadly. “It’s the last you may see of me single.”

  “Yes, well…” Melrose hardly knew how to respond to this.

  Vivian rose. She had still not removed her camel-hair coat, the caramel color blending beautifully with the browns and deep reds of her autumnal hair.

  “I’m certainly thunderstruck,” said Diane, in a thoroughly unthunderstruck tone. Still, it must be so, for she’d forgotten her glass, which sat empty before her; even the olive had gone. Thunderstruck, indeed.

  “Well, I’ve got to go and… do things.” Vivian turned and walked out of the pub. Her expression was not a happy one.

  “Well. Well,” said Melrose. “I’d say this calls for another round.”

  “It has done for the last ten minutes,” said Diane, blowing thin columns of smoke through her nostrils.

  Melrose called to Dick Scroggs, still reading the Sidbury paper-his favorite was the astrology column-and made a circular gesture with his hand indicating drinks for all.

  Scroggs looked at him as if Melrose were calling on him to work out a message in semaphore.

  “It never occurred to me Vivian would actually do it,” said Melrose, morosely.

  Trueblood said, “Uh-huh.”

  “Marry that smarmy Italian? After all this time? Not only that, but to do it here! That’s a turnup for the books!”

  Diane said, “I expect she’ll have to live in Venice where she won’t understand a word. They speak Italian there.”

  “It’s their second language,” said Trueblood. “Do you mean you actually believe that story?”

  Melrose and Diane stared at him.

  “She was making it up.”

  “She wouldn’t do that,” Melrose said uncertainly.

  Trueblood shook his head at his friends’ gullibility. “Listen, old bean, if she were really going to marry Dracula, we’d have heard long before this. She would have wanted plenty of time to think up excuses not to do it. She’d also want to allow us plenty of time to work out a plan to prevent her.”

  “Excuses?” Diane looked at Trueblood in disbelief. “Why would she need excuses? Good lord, it’s easier just to divorce someone than to think up reasons for doing it. I should know; I’ve done it often enough. Dick!” She called over to Scroggs. “Are we ever going to get our drinks here?”

  Melrose said, “I still don’t get it. Why would Vivian make it all up?”

  Impatient with Melrose’s obtuseness, Trueblood said, “It’s obvious. She wants to keep you here.”

  “A wedding in a few weeks would hardly keep me here for three months.”

  “Oh, don’t be such a twit, Melrose,” said Diane. “There’s nothing rational in all of this-thank you,” she said to Dick Scroggs, who was setting fresh drinks before them.

  When Dick left, Trueblood said, “Go on. Tell us more about this Cornwall murder.”

  “There’s no more to tell. Someone in Bletchley thought she recognized her. I don’t think the victim will be hard to trace.”

  “What was she wearing?” Trust Diane to sweep away extraneous matter and go directly to the heart of the matter.

  “I don’t know. Macalvie didn’t tell me. But in the police photos it looked like a suit, amber or ecru, maybe-God help me! I’m getting as bad as you, Diane.”

  “Who is he, anyway? Macalvie, I mean,” asked Trueblood. “I think he called here, to the pub once, looking for Jury.”

  “He’s very high up in the Devon and Cornwall police. Jury’s known him for years. They worked cases together. Or as much together as one can ever get with Mr. Macalvie. He’s brilliant, though.”

  “Speaking of Richard Jury-” said Trueblood.

  “He’s in Northern Ireland.”

  Diane looked absolutely scandalized, as if they were watching the Pope kiss a pig. “God, Melrose! What is he doing there?”

  “I don’t know the particulars. New Scotland Yard hasn’t ever put me on a need-to-know footing.”

  “Did Sergeant Wiggins go with him?”

  “No. Macalvie’s trying to get in touch with him, though.”

  “I knew it,” said Diane. “I warned him.”

  Melrose frowned. “Wiggins?”

  “No, no. Richard Jury.”

  “His horoscope playing up again, is it?”

  “His Venus is in a peculiar position in relation to Mars.” She tapped the ash from her cigarette into the metal tray.

  “Whose side is he on?” asked Trueblood. “The IRA? The Provs? Catholics? Protestants? Irish? English?”

  “The side of the dead, I imagine. He’s not helping the RUC, it’s just that something happened there that’s connected with something in London. At least, I think.”

  Diane was still worrying over the fashion sense of the dead-and-gone in Cornwall. “You don’t know if it was a designer suit she wore, then?”

  “What? You mean the unfortunate victim in Lamorna?”

  “Yes. If it was, you know, a Lacroix, it would certainly narrow the field.”

  “Narrow it to where? London? Paris? Rome?”


  Diane’s patience was being tried. “Not only there. There are some quite fashionable shops in Edinburgh. And the Home Counties. One would have to broaden the base a bit.”

  Melrose shook his head. “Whatever the base is, you’re way off it, love.”

  “Actually, old sweat, she isn’t,” said Trueblood.

  “Are we breaking now for an Armani commercial?”

  “If the woman was wearing Ferre or perhaps Sonia Rykiel, the garment could almost certainly be traced. You know, through the place where she bought it; or, if someone else bought it, then through that person.”

  Melrose hated it when Diane made a sensible suggestion.

  “I wouldn’t mind knowing someone who’d buy me Ferre,” she said, and returned to the matter of Chris Wells. “Now, she sounds Cornwall through and through; what’s in her closet is probably cardigans and plaid things and Barbour knockoffs from Marks and Sparks. Anyway, the question of her outfit doesn’t really apply, does it? Are you sure she didn’t just go off on her own?”

  “No,” said Melrose. “I’m fairly sure she didn’t. From what I’ve heard about her, she isn’t a capricious person.”

  “Then you think she was abducted? Or lured away somehow?”

  Melrose nodded.

  Diane sipped her martini, tapped her cigarette into the ashtray, and said, “I expect one has to make some sort of arrangement.”

  Surrey,” said Macalvie. He had called Ardry End to tell him that they’d ID’d the dead woman. She was Sada Colthorp, former wife of Rodney Colthorp, Lord Mead. He lived in Surrey. “For God’s sakes, that’s only a hop, skip, and jump from Northants.”

  “I don’t know how you hopped, skipped, and jumped as a lad-if you ever were; you were probably just a little policeman-but my hopping and skipping did not cover a hundred miles. That’s how far Surrey is from here.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s hardly fifty.”

  Melrose knew he’d do whatever Macalvie asked him to, but it was more fun arguing about it first. Besides, he felt he deserved to let Macalvie know how much he was being put out. “Anyway, you said you’d already talked to Colthorp when he came to identify the body. So what good would it do for me to talk to him?” He knew the answer to that, too. For the same reason Jury was always asking him to step into the role of eighth earl.