The Lamorna Wink

by Martha Grimes

  “That’s a new one.”

  “Yeah.” Charlie smiled.

  For the first time Melrose realized he had the same ingenuous manner as Johnny Wells. “What is it you do in Penzance, Charlie?”

  “Magic.” He smiled at Melrose’s questioning look. “I guess that’s where Johnny gets it. I have a little shop, called Now You See It.” He pulled a fresh deck of cards from his pocket. “Here’s a simple one: I shuffle the cards-” which he did. “You pick one-” which Melrose did. “Put it back in the deck.” Melrose did so. Charlie reshuffled. Then he fanned the cards out on the table, picked one, and held it up.

  Melrose shook his head. He was sorry it hadn’t worked. “Not that, no.”

  Charlie smiled. “I know it isn’t. It’s under your glass. King of Clubs.”

  That’s where it was, too. “How in hell did you do that?”

  “Sorry.” Charlie shook his head, gathered up the cards, and shoved them back in his pocket. His eyes crinkled at Melrose over the top of his glass.

  “Bloody amazing,” said Melrose.

  “Uh-huh. The magic shop’s the main job. I also take out boats. You know, tourists who want to see Penzance from away. The climate’s great here and we get a million tourists. I take them out. I’m better with boats than I am with people.”

  “Really?” Melrose gave him a long look.

  32

  A meeting ordained by the gods was how Melrose pictured the meeting between Sergeant Wiggins and Bletchley Hall. Imbued with the aura of death, death still missed being an actual fact.

  Wiggins was talking about these “homes for retired gentlefolk” as they drove toward Bletchley Hall in pale afternoon sunlight. “There’s of course your typical nursing home; it’s small and gloomy and cramped, furnished with iron beds and the yellow light cast by forty-watt bulbs and old magazines. So old you can’t even hold out for the May issue, no, sir, May’s been and gone and if May didn’t revive you, well, June’s gone too.”

  The rental car was a cheap model and ground its way up the shallow incline as if it were making for Everest’s peak. It rattled, but no more than did Sergeant Wiggins, who could obviously speak at great length when a topic inspired him. (He must often have been muffled by Jury when they were on a case together.)

  “-metal tray with scrambled eggs from a dry mix and weak coffee, a thimble of juice, thin toast-”

  “Sounds like the B-and-B circuit, Sergeant Wiggins.”

  Wiggins carried on. “Would you even have your own room? Or have to share. Well, I’d hate that, I would. I’d think you could at least expect a little privacy when you’re dying; it’s a safe bet you won’t get any after.”

  Melrose wondered what sort of talkathon Wiggins thought he was bound for in the afterlife. If an imaginary nursing home could furnish him with this banquet of topics, what would imagining heaven do for him?

  “Sergeant, you’re a master of detail.”

  Said Wiggins, “They say the devil’s in them.”

  He certainly was in these, thought Melrose.

  In the next five minutes, blessedly silent, they rounded the curve that gave them the first glimpse of Bletchley Hall. It was indeed an imposing facade, and Wiggins’s surprise said he appreciated it. It left him-thank God-speechless.

  They paused at the stone pillars that flanked the entrance. Ground into stone as if it had grown there was a brass plaque: BLETCHLEY HALL. The long drive-way passed between low honey-colored stone walls over which dripped lush vegetation. Behind the walls were gardens of orchids and beds of bright marigolds. In this temperate climate, even the occasional palm tree seemed at home.

  Wiggins pointed one out. Surprised, he said, “Palm trees, Mr. Plant?”

  “Well, you know what they call this part of Cornwall: Little Miami.”

  “Surely not.”

  “Just watch your back and your wallet.”

  They stopped on the gravel between the marble steps and the fountain, in which bronze fish, weathered into green, spewed up streams of water and cherubs frolicked, strangling the dolphins they rode. Even the gravel at their feet glittered like crushed diamonds. In the distance was the stream, the orchids, the tall grasses.

  “My lord,” said Wiggins in a wondering way, as he shut his car door. “This must cause the earth to keep up.”

  “I’m sure. Morris Bletchley has the earth. The unfortunate viscount and his lady didn’t.”

  The front door was open; during the day it might always have stood so to suggest either freedom of passage or a four-star hotel. Matron immediately came walking toward them. In her gray dress sprigged with tiny roses she looked like a tea cozy. Plant still didn’t know her name, but as she seemed to enjoy being called “Matron,” that’s how he introduced her.

  Wiggins handed her one of his cards and the name seemed to freeze on her lips as she mouthed “New Scotland Yard.” Nervously she ushered them in. Fumbling with her belt, she asked, “What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to have a word with Mr. Bletchley, if you could just fetch him?”

  Matron nodded and weaved off as if struggling through deep water, dolphins, perhaps, and cherubs impeding her progress.

  Melrose had detected a whiff of something mixed with her toilet water. A bit of gin in the l’heure bleu, perhaps? He wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find Moe Bletchley had designated a cocktail hour in between dominoes and dinner. And why not, for God’s sake? If you’re at death’s door what difference does it make if you go through it half potted? Melrose watched her walk the length of gorgeous Kirman carpet that led down the long gallery, off which were the dining and other communal rooms.

  Wiggins was admiring the drawing room in which they waited, with its blue brocades and velvets, dark blue curtains and carpeting, and overhead a chandelier that, touched by the sun, showered confetti light across the rug.

  They shared the room with two old women sitting in wing chairs who looked as if they’d just been caught in a spell and commanded neither to speak nor to move. They seemed-well, stuck there.

  “Begging your pardon, gentlemen.”

  The voice crept up behind them, and they turned to see a tidy-looking, dark-suited man of indeterminate years, who made one think of a funeral director.

  “I’m Dr. Jaynes. What is it you wanted?”

  “To see Morris Bletchley.”

  Wiggins handed Dr. Jaynes another of his cards.

  “You’re from Scotland Yard?”

  “He is.” Melrose nodded toward Wiggins. “I’m from Northants.”

  Dr. Jaynes seemed puzzled by this strange coupling of places. He said to Wiggins, “You’re here in an official capacity?”

  My God, thought Melrose, if it was this hard to convince them of what a calling card clearly stated, how would you ever convince them you weren’t dead yet?

  “No, sir,” said Wiggins, “I’d merely like to talk to Mr. Bletchley, as we told your matron.”

  He still didn’t seem convinced. Life at Bletchley Hall must really ride the rails of ritual if two strangers turning up created such a stir.

  Dr. Jaynes seemed at a loss. “Of course, Mr. Bletchley hasn’t the time to see people unless they’ve an appointment.”

  Melrose sighed. How was it he had missed the pleasure of Jaynes’s company when he was here before? He told Jaynes he’d already talked to Morris Bletchley.

  “I see, I see.” Jaynes was as tentative as one can get and still remain on the scene. “Then I’ll just have a word with Mr.-”

  But he could have saved his breath to cool his porridge, for here came Morris Bletchley at full tilt across the doorsill of the blue drawing room. He pulled up and braked. Melrose thought he saw sparks.

  “Dr. Jaynes, I’ll see to these gentlemen. Hadn’t you better get back to your patients?”

  Dr. Jaynes smiled grimly at Moe Bletchley and departed.

  “What’s going on?” Moe Bletchley fiddled with a lever on his wheelchair. “I don’t mean with you two, what’s goin
g on with my brakes? I nearly ran down Mrs. Fry back there.” He chuckled. “Could someone be trying to bump me off?”

  Wiggins said, stepping into I’m-on-the-job mode, “I don’t think it would be efficient to use a wheelchair for that, sir.”

  Morris Bletchley apparently got a real kick out of this pointing out of the obvious. “And you’re”-he looked at the card Matron must have turned over to him-“Mr. Wiggins, Scotland Yard, that right?”

  “Yes, sir. Detective Sergeant Wiggins.”

  Melrose knew this slight condescension would end smartly when Wiggins got a deeper whiff of this hospice-nursing-home outfit.

  “Well, Sergeant, I reckon I don’t know any more about the Wells woman than I did when I talked to your cohort here.” He leaned his head in Plant’s direction. “Chris Wells helps us out, and she’s damned good at it, too. Drove one or two of the guests to see their families, took ’em to hospital, that sort of thing. So I did have contact with her, but I didn’t know anything about her family or friends. Come on, let’s go in the drawing room-they won’t mind,” he added, with a look at the old ladies.

  Who hadn’t, Melrose decided, moved an inch in any direction. Light wavered, shadows shifted in these blue environs, creating an underwater effect much lovelier than that of the Drowned Man. Melrose found it as good as a sedative and wasn’t surprised that the old ladies had fallen asleep. He was having a hard time keeping his eyes open himself.

  “Let’s go out to the sunroom; I need a smoke and you can’t do it in here. It would be hard on our emphysema patients.”

  “And yourself,” Wiggins said sententiously.

  Moe rose from his wheelchair and shoved it out into the hall. “I need to stretch my legs. Come on.”

  They sat around the same table. The two old chess players were absent, but an old woman at the other end of the sunroom was feeding coins into a slot machine with her face so close to the display she could have licked it.

  “Are your patients here all wealthy?” asked Wiggins.

  “No. Why? Are you supposed to be if you’re dying?”

  “Oh, no, it’s just that this is clearly an expensive operation.”

  “True. But I can afford it. If they were rich, why in hell wouldn’t they just buy what they needed? Someplace in Arizona or the south of France, nurses round the clock, fancy equipment?” He grunted as he lighted his cigarette, then remembered that Melrose smoked. “Sorry. You?” He offered the crumpled pack around.

  Melrose shook his head, turning away the cigarettes, not wanting to smoke under Wiggins’s steely stare. As soon as they could get back onto the topics of murder and disappearance instead of emphysema and other illnesses, he would light up himself. It shouldn’t take long. He said, “But the south of France, that’s not really what’s wanted, or not all of what’s wanted, is it?”

  Both Moe and Wiggins raised a puzzled eyebrow. Wiggins said, “I’m not sure I follow, sir.”

  “If you’re dying, you don’t want to do it alone. If you have no family, or even an indifferent family, and few friends, you’d likely be shuttled off to hospital, cheerless and antiseptic. That’s not a cheering picture, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Moe Bletchley.

  As hospitals were high on Wiggins’s list of places where he’d most like to settle down, he ignored the question and took from his inside pocket one of the pictures Macalvie had given him of the dead woman. “Her name is Sada Colthorp. Did you know her?”

  Moe frowned as he brought the picture close to his face and then held it arm’s length away. He tried several different positions, as if moving it about would make it speak more tellingly of the woman shown. He shook his head. “Got any other shots of this woman?”

  Wiggins pulled out a morgue picture, a full-face shot.

  Bletchley put them side by side. “She looks vaguely familiar. What did you say her name was?”

  “Sada Colthorp. You might have known her as Sadie May. Her maiden name.”

  Frowning, he shook his head. “Nope. Neither name rings a bell with me.”

  “She lived in Lamorna Cove as a girl.”

  Moe shook his head again. “Still doesn’t ring a bell.”

  At just that moment, from the dining room beyond and out onto the sunroom’s tiled floor jolted Morris Bletchley’s wheelchair, occupied by a young man with dark hair, probably in his early thirties. He was holding a big white box on his knees. “Woodbine delivery!” He opened the big box to reveal iced doughnuts and several different kinds of pastry. Melrose’s quick tally showed that there were at least twenty pieces of pastry and a dozen doughnuts.

  “What the hell are you doing in my wheelchair, Tom? I keep telling you.” Moe peered into the box, more interested in the éclair he removed from it than the occupancy of his wheelchair. “Damn, these are good!”

  “Brenda brought ’em. Did you know she used to live in Fulham? Right next door to Putney.”

  “You told me. This is Tom-”

  A clatter of coins interrupted Moe Bletchley’s introduction. It came from the direction of the slot machines. The old lady was jumping up and down, at least as well as her stick legs could manage.

  Moe Bletchley looked her way. “That damned machine pay off again? Have to fix it.” He grinned and finished his introduction. “This is Tom Letts.”

  Tom Letts’s good looks seemed fragile. His skin was pale, like Johnny’s. Unlike Johnny’s it bore the terrible stamp of Kaposi’s sarcoma.

  AIDS. Melrose hadn’t even thought of this as one of the several terminal illnesses that would be likely to turn up at Bletchley Hall.

  Tom said he was pleased to meet them and looked around, as if one of them, but he wasn’t sure which, had something to say he had waited a long time to hear. He had one of the most ingenuous smiles Melrose had ever seen, and again he was reminded of Johnny Wells. They could have been brothers.

  To Wiggins he said, “You here about the murder in Lamorna?”

  When Wiggins nodded and smiled, Melrose marveled that the detective sergeant’s response to Tom’s disease was not to cut and run but one of kind regard. Wiggins, who claimed to be sought out by every springtime blade and blossom to test their pollen on, this same Wiggins could sit here and not turn a hair confronted by the ravaged body of a victim of AIDS.

  “This woman.” He handed Tom the pictures, though Melrose was pretty sure Wiggins didn’t expect him to recognize her. He really just wanted to include Tom in.

  The two old chess players had come in and were seated in their same chairs, chessboard between them. The white box from the Woodbine now caught their attention and they began making their way toward it.

  Moe leaned toward Melrose and Wiggins and whispered, “Got to make allowances for these two. Their memories are shot to hell.”

  Memories shot to hell proved no obstacle to Sergeant Wiggins.

  “These are the Hooper brothers,” said Moe Bletchley. “And that’s Miss Livingston coming along. She’ll make it eventually.”

  Leaning on her cane and holding an antique mesh purse, heavy with coins, Miss Livingston made her slow way toward them, a look of grim determination stamped on her acorn face.

  The two old gentlemen wasted no time on the strangers; they went immediately for the pastry. Hands started and hovered indecisively over the box.

  Said one of the Hoopers, “I’m having my usual, a… a…”

  “Doughnut,” said Moe, almost absently, as if he was used to supplying the Hooper brother with information.

  “Right!” Hooper’s hand snapped down and plucked up one with chocolate icing.

  “So am I!” exclaimed his brother. “I’m having a”-he looked at what his brother had taken-“I’m having one of those… one of those…”

  Miss Livingston had reached them by now. “Doughnut, you goddamned fool!” she yelled. “Here get your paws off.” And she parted them like Moses did the Red Sea. “I want one o’ them puffy things.” She reached nimbly into the box for a cream puff. �
�Hello, cutie!” she said to Melrose.

  He lavished a smile upon her, rose, and pulled a chair around. Gray-haired Miss Livingston put Melrose in mind of a small bird of prey, with her little beaky nose, darting eyes, and fingers tough as pincers.

  One of the Hoopers watched the chair being pulled around and then followed suit, dragging over a bentwood chair from against the wall. His brother did the same, and now all seven of them were gathered around the table, the new people turning owlish eyes on the four who had been there.

  The other Hooper asked gruffly, “Why’d you want to see us, Colonel?”

  “I think the cryptogram’s been broken,” said Moe, eyeing a cream cake.

  The Hoopers looked at one another. “It has?”

  “Both of you. You’d best go to Plan A before they come.”

  The Hoopers stood up abruptly, one upsetting his chair. He picked it up, set it down with a thundering crack, and the two went back to their chess game, but not before Melrose heard one of them ask the other what Plan A was and saw the other shake his head, he didn’t remember.

  “Cryptogram?” asked Melrose.

  Moe shrugged. “Hell if I know. They’re always rattling on about secret codes and being spies. Of course, they’ll forget it before they’re through the dining room, so it does no harm.”

  Tom said, “Still, it’s like one thing they half remember with any consistency.” He laughed.

  “It’s retrograde amnesia, something like that,” said Moe. “It’s not being able to remember something you heard not more than two minutes ago. They’ve both got Alzheimer’s, but whether that’s causing it, the doc doesn’t know. Not surprising.”

  Not caring a fig for the Hoopers’ condition, little Miss Livingston’s strong fingers clamped Melrose’s forearm. “Let’s you and me go for a walk out there around the grounds. There’s some spots only I know about, dearie. They’d never find us. Besides”-here she shook her beaded bag and set the coins jingling-“I’m rich”

  Not at all tempted by this invitation, nevertheless Melrose gave her a darling smile and made a quick movement to free himself from her grip.