The Lamorna Wink

by Martha Grimes

  Another big difference between Moe’s eateries and most others was the food. This had been brought about several years back. One of the Chick’nKings had run out of potato chips (tasteless but familiarly tasteless, which made the difference), and an employee named Patsy Rankin had just sliced some potatoes thinly, tossed them in the hot oil, and served up homemade potato chips the like of which had never been seen in any fast-food place. The customers loved them so much, sales of everything had leaped by over ten percent. No one appreciated inventiveness more than Moe Bletchley. Patsy Rankin was immediately transferred to the Birmingham headquarters in charge of food innovation, a position created for her talents alone.

  Chick’nKing had cost a fortune to get started but had already tripled that fortune for Moe Bletchley. The difference between his and others’ fast-food emporiums was that the food was better and the buildings so whimsical they simply sucked people in.

  Linus Vetch had been admitted six weeks before and was clearly rallying. The unusual thing about Bletchley Hall was that the people who came here, all diagnosed with a terminal illness, did not all leave in a box. Actually, it was part hospice, part nursing home, and not a small part resort. Of course, no one could enjoy this last element if he wasn’t deemed sick-to-dying. But some diagnosed as terminal got considerably better and left under their own head of steam-or perhaps to the disappointed expectations of their relatives, who were then forced to return the elderly family member to his or her own hearth. This made Bletchley Hall a sort of miracle home and, consequently, a highly desirable last stop on the road to wherever. This rallying of seemingly hopeless cases mystified the doctors.

  “What the hell’s the big mystery?” said Moe. “It was you fellas misdiagnosed these cases in the first place.”

  “Mr. Bletchley,” Dr. Innes had said, “Linus Vetch came in with esophageal cancer. Hardly ever does a patient recover from that particular cancer. Linus Vetch has had radiation, chemo, a bone marrow transplant-”

  “So? Maybe the voodoo finally kicked in. It happens.” Moe started humming.

  This, of course, infuriated Dr. Innes and no wonder: If a patient had terminal something, he should terminate.

  “It makes me wonder,” Moe went on, “why you fellas hate to see somebody get better.”

  “That’s absolute nonsense. I-”

  Moe waved a thick-veined hand, meaning Shut up, man. “Thing’s this: A fellow is diagnosed with a terminal disease. Then he doesn’t die. Well, one of those premises is wrong. So it must be the first one. Unless of course you think we’ve got another Lourdes here and I’m the Virgin Mary.”

  “Funny,” said Dr. Innes. “I never really suspected that.” He flounced off down the hallway in a manner that Moe was surprised hadn’t raised Matron’s suspicions.

  Linus Vetch was propped up in his bed, looking wasted-true-but otherwise like a man on the mend. The poor fellow, in his seventies, had been through the hell of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant and still lived to talk about it. That he could talk was surprising, the radiation and chemo probably doing his vocal cords little more good than the cancer that had invaded his esophagus a year ago.

  Moe bumped into the lavishly appointed room and up to the bed, where Linus shot his hand up for a high five. They had taken to greeting this way ever since the once-dying man had been able to raise his arm. Moe had to admit it was amazing. He himself had never been sick (with anything other than contrariness) and he knew he had no conception of the physical pain Linus Vetch had been cursed with.

  “So what’s up, buddy?” Moe treated all patients-he preferred to call them “guests”-as if they’d just stopped in for a pleasant weekend.

  “Better today. Must be your cooking.”

  “Brought you tonight’s menu.” Moe believed looking forward to a fine meal could keep you going at least until you got it. Food was surprisingly soporific and comforting, and the meals here were cooked by two first-rate chefs Moe had lured away from two four-star restaurants.

  Linus drew himself into more of a sitting posture and fumbled for his glasses. “Where did I put the damned things? Always losing them.”

  “Maybe they’re in the drawer.” Moe nodded toward the bedside table. Linus always kept them there and always forgot that he did.

  Linus found them and hooked them over his ears, as if for a better view of Morris Bletchley. Then he removed them and looked around the room.

  He had the most searching look Moe had ever seen. Eyes that scanned the entire room, floor to ceiling, as if some sort of answer could be found in the William Morris-designed wallpaper, the Art Deco wall sconces, the beautiful wood floors, Kirman carpet, and high windows that looked out over the flower-bound stream.

  Still, Moe wished he had the answer, or at least some answer to give Linus.

  Linus said, “What put you in that wheelchair?” He was always asking this. It was clear he was glad that Moe, although not dying, hadn’t got off scot free.

  But Moe had. He could walk as well as the next man (as long as the next man wasn’t Linus, who couldn’t make it to the toilet without a steadying hand).

  Moe slapped the wheelchair’s arm. “Life, Linus. Life put me here.”

  27

  When Emily Hayter answered her doorbell the following morning, she looked up at Melrose as if she’d been expecting to see someone else. As she opened the door, her small mouth seemed to form a word or words called back when she saw him. Her figure was hefty with age and too much of her own good baking. Melrose could smell some of it now, the spicy warmth of cloves and nutmeg that hung in the air.

  He introduced himself, unnecessarily, for she clearly knew about him; had the disappearance of Chris Wells not superseded him, Melrose would be the most interesting thing in the village. Seabourne had stood untenanted for a number of years (except for the Decorators, who hadn’t lasted long). Curiosity overcame inconvenience. She waved him in with the wooden paddle she was holding-he wondered what it was for-invited him to have a seat and a cup of coffee, and said the apricot bread was just cooling. Had it been timed for someone else’s arrival?

  Emily Hayter lived in a little street not much wider than an alleyway behind the village’s main street where the Drowned Man and the Woodbine Tearoom sat. Her cottage was similar to her neighbors’: a mansard roof sloping down to peephole windows and whitewashed clay. It stood in an overgrown garden. Indeed, the garden seemed to have trailed into the front room, for here where Melrose took a seat were weedy potted plants, ivy-bound, and papery, stricken buds and blossoms.

  Yet Mrs. Hayter struck Melrose as a woman of industry, so perhaps a lack of time was her problem. Coming in with a tray of coffee, she confirmed this. “There just never seems to be time for things,” she said, as she jammed the plunger down in her French press pot, which seemed to sigh in its downward descent in tune with Mrs. Hayter’s own huge sigh. “You saw the state o’ my garden, and in here too. You can see-” She waved the white napkins she’d brought in around the room as if they were flags of surrender, and poured the coffee. She did this with a grace that spoke of many years of pouring. The bread she now passed to Melrose looked delicious and was undoubtedly the source of the spiced air.

  Once they’d settled back, she asked him how he was liking Seabourne. “Very much. It’s a beautiful place. A wonderful setting, too, up there overlooking the sea.” He added this, hoping it would cue her to speak of the children.

  “Cold, though. Costs a fortune to heat those rooms.” Her glance swept over him, no doubt estimating the extent of his.

  “I don’t mind a nip in the air.” (Oh, yes, he did.) “I’m used to it.” (Oh, no, he wasn’t.)

  Emily Hayter struck Melrose as a pump that would require some priming; she hadn’t risen to the prospect overlooking the sea, so perhaps he should lead with more suggestions. “The estate agent tells me the owner lives in the village. In a kind of nursing home and hospice?” He was sure she would be only too ready to talk about the eccentric Morris Ble
tchley.

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Morris started that. Used to be a stately home, and he took it over and calls it Bletchley Hall. I expect it’s quite nice for these unfortunates so near-” She could not summon a cliché to make death more acceptable. “Mr. Morris, yes, he’s a queer duck, that one.”

  Melrose waited patiently to be told about Mr. Bletchley’s queer duck-ness while Mrs. Hayter fed herself a morsel of apricot bread and washed it down with coffee.

  “See, he owns the Hall so he can do as he wants. I expect it’s generous of him to provide care like that, but as for me, I think you’d have to be a little batty to go live there, don’t you? I mean, does a person want to be reminded of-you know-all the time? Yes, definitely a queer duck is Mr. Morris.”

  She did not go on, leaving Melrose to cast about for an opening to the tragedy of the Bletchley children. His eye fell on the rather bad examples of art hanging on her walls and then fixed on a print of a stormy J.M.W. Turner. He smiled, thinking of Bea. Turner was her favorite.

  He said, “That’s a very nice Turner, there behind you.”

  She looked around, as if it were someone else’s Turner, and said, “Morbid, I’d say. It was Mr. Hayter liked that one. He died not two years ago.” It was as if death came to Mr. Hayter because of the painting.

  But Death and Turner did give Melrose an opening. “Wasn’t there an awful tragedy at Seabourne several years ago? Two children drowned, I believe.”

  She was only too pleased to discuss it, which she did at length, as it gave her one more opportunity to exonerate herself. Her own account was exactly the same as Macalvie’s. Winding it up, finally, she said, “You see, sometimes they’d go down there to get on Mr. Daniel’s boat. You know, their father’s. That’s what police thought, that they wanted to get to the boat.”

  Not bothering to correct her on that score, Melrose said, “But how could Bletchley get a boat in among those rocks?”

  Emily Hayter was not at all interested in boatmanship and waved the question away. “Well, he could, is all I know.” She had been interrupted by nonsensical questions and now would get back to her own report. “Something woke me, something like a yell or a cry. I’m up on the top floor, so it’s a distance. And I thought if some noise would reach up there, it must be pretty loud. So I put on my robe and slippers and went downstairs. It was dark and I couldn’t see down to the first floor; anyway, you can imagine I was alarmed. Then I stiffed myself up”-here she sat straighter, stiffing herself-“got a torch, and-” She paused to select another slice of apricot bread.

  “You went-”

  “Straightaway to the children’s rooms. When I saw they were out of bed, I got a worse fright than I’d got from the noise. I looked all through the house, calling them. Nothing. No one. Did I tell you the Bletchleys went off? Did I mention that?” She clearly disapproved.

  “Then, you-”

  “Well, I went outside, of course. There wasn’t no one, nor did I hear anything. Only the sound of the sea. I must’ve been out there for a good twenty minutes, looking through the woods, and there was nothing. I didn’t want to stay out, it being the middle of the night. I’ll tell you something, sir.” Her voice dropped to a sibilant whisper. “There’s legends round these parts about that house-”

  A legend. Oh, great. He must rush to inform Brian Macalvie. He pasted a smile on his face and hoped she’d get back to reality if he was patient.

  “-that it’s built on the graves of a family that was murdered in their sleep.” She leaned across the table, close enough for him to smell her nutmeggy breath. “The place they say is haunted by the ghost of a governess named Marianna.”

  There’s always a governess, often named Marianna or some version of the name. Well, he needn’t feel so superior. Who had been mooning about, hoping the imaginary Stella would turn up? He frowned, thinking again of Karen Bletchley’s story: a woman on the other side of the pond.

  “The poor girl fell in love with some pirate. He only wanted to rob the place blind, of course. He did and he left and she never saw him again.”

  “Ah.” He was not sure what he was ah-ing about. “And where did whoever saw it see this ghost?”

  “On the cliff above those rocks.” Ever closer, she leaned toward Melrose, pulling her skirts more tightly down over her knees. “They say she stands there always looking out to sea.”

  Ever stood she, prospect impressed. There it was again, the line from Hardy. He felt the same unutterable loneliness wash over him, despite the warm cottage, the pleasant homely woman, the apricot bread…

  He roused himself from the cloud that settled over him to hear her say, “… and one of the Decorators-”

  There they were again, those marvelous boys, the Decorators! They’d certainly left their imprint on Bletchley.

  “He claimed he saw this ghost in the kitchen. But those two were-well, I can’t imagine they were very dependable.”

  It was clear what she thought of “those two.” Melrose turned to another subject. “Bletchley certainly has its share of bizarre and unhappy occurrences. This unfortunate woman who seems to have vanished-her nephew waited on me at the Drowned Man.”

  She was nodding her head before he’d half finished. “That’ll be Chris Wells you’re talking about. As you say, a strange thing to happen.”

  “She owns the Woodbine Tearoom, doesn’t she?”

  “Her and Brenda Friel. Good workers, those two, and make no mistake; operating a business like that, that’s hard work for not much return. I help out sometimes with my berry pies. They’re real popular, my pies. If they go away, I go in and help out young John, Chris’s nephew. I’d say a lot of kids could take a page from his book.”

  Work was clearly the yardstick Emily Hayter used to take the measure of man. Melrose would rate perhaps half an inch. “The lad is awfully upset.”

  “And why not? Chris Wells is like a mother to him. His da died, and his own mother just went off when he was a little thing. Chris was her sister. I was thinking she might have gone to help that good-for-nothing relation of hers lives in Penzance.” She leaned nearer Melrose. “It’s the drink taken over with him. I’ve no patience with that kind of thing.”

  “Good lord, Mrs. Hayter, here I’ve been sitting over an hour and forgot why I came! I was wondering if you could spare me just a few hours every week to do some cooking. You’ve the reputation of being an excellent cook.” A little flattery never hurt.

  He was right. If she hadn’t before thought of herself as excellent, she did so now. “Well, I did do a bit of everything. How much time were you thinking of?”

  “Oh, just once a week.” He’d decided he really didn’t want anyone at all, for he was enjoying knocking about on his own. But he needed some reason to call on her. “I thought perhaps you could cook up a batch of food and freeze it and I could shove it in the oven or whatever when I needed it. You needn’t bother with this week, as I’ll be dining out a lot.”

  They agreed on a time, and she took a notebook from behind a pillow on the couch (Melrose marveled at this secreting of the notebook; were a number of villagers after her cooking and charring schedule?) and wrote something down with the pencil attached by a string to the notebook.

  “There. I’ve put in seven A.M. the Thursday after next. So that’s sorted!”

  Not for Melrose, it wasn’t. “Could you make it a bit later, say, ten?”

  “Yes, I expect so.” She gave him a look that suggested she couldn’t imagine what he’d be doing at seven A.M. that her presence would interrupt. Out collecting fossils, perhaps? “If you don’t mind me saying it, sir, it wouldn’t come amiss to have something done with the grounds. They’re looking poorly.”

  “Ah. Yes, you’re right. Have you someone in mind?”

  “It’s Jason Slatterly used to be gardener, and very good he is.”

  “Perhaps it was he who laid a fire for me the first day.”

  “I’m sure it was. He does nice little things like that for people.” Here
she blushed furiously and tried to cover it up by raising her teacup to hide her face.

  Had Mrs. Hayter romantic notions about Mr. Slatterly? This appealed to Melrose, this never-say-die attitude toward romance. And in one who, though not precisely stout, had the solidly packed form of a fireplug, little dimension to waist, hips, and breasts. “Tell me about him.”

  “He was gardener for years when the Bletchleys lived there. The Decorators hired him back. But they wanted topiary designs. Mr. Slatterly couldn’t see his way to doing that and argued against it. But those decorators would have their swans, wouldn’t they? That’s why the shrubbery on either side the front door has that ragged look to it. The Decorators messed the place about for nearly a year and then went back to London, where they should have stayed if I’m judge of things. This being Cornwall, we don’t much care for the fancy ways of London.”