The Lamorna Wink

by Martha Grimes

“Including visitors?”

  Moe shrugged. “What visitors had you in mind?”

  With a thin smile, Macalvie answered. “What visitors have you in mind?”

  “No one. Few people come here, Superintendent; terminal illness isn’t very tempting.”

  “Nursing homes aren’t popular with family and friends either, even if the illness isn’t terminal.”

  “No,” said Moe Bletchley, looking sad.

  No sadder than Melrose felt. What they were talking about, the failure of people to come to cheer you just when you were really sinking, made him think of Tom and Tom’s parents. On the other hand, there was his sister, Honey, a young lady Melrose would like to meet. Probably would, too, at the funeral.

  “Late at night, though, Mr. Bletchley, would someone expect to see you sitting up?”

  “Why not? I never go to bed before midnight anyway. I’ve been known to sit in just about any room at night, reading or just thinking. So, yes, there’s a high probability of finding me sitting alone at night.”

  Macalvie nodded. “Okay. Anyone in particular you can think of who’d want you dead?”

  Bletchley was silent for a few moments, then shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “What?”

  “Why can’t you think of anyone, since you’re convinced the bullet was meant for you?”

  Morris Bletchley looked straight at Macalvie but offered nothing.

  Macalvie’s gaze was blue and unblinking. His hands, stuffed in the pockets of his coat, seemed to be pulling him forward on the settee. “Come on, Mr. Bletchley, you’re a billionaire. Are you telling me you can’t think of anyone in your will who might be eager for a hunk of your money?”

  Bleakly, Moe smiled. “A number of them. But I don’t see the Sailors’ Home killing me for it.”

  “Who has the most to gain?”

  “My son, Dan, naturally. Now that the grandchildren are gone.”

  “And your daughter-in-law.”

  Moe Bletchley said nothing.

  “As I recall, you’re no big fan of Karen Bletchley.”

  “That’s right. Nor is she fond of me. I don’t think that means we’d shoot one another.”

  “Oh, you might not shoot her. Why don’t you like her?”

  Moe shrugged, as if it should be obvious. “I think I told you that night. She married Dan for his money. I know it.”

  “How?”

  “Commander Macalvie, if there’s one thing I can sniff out at a thousand feet it’s someone who’s in love with money. She was here, incidentally.”

  “When was that?”

  “Three days ago. She stopped by to see me.”

  “Is this something she often does?”

  “No, never. It’s the first time I’ve seen her in over a year, but that was in London. She doesn’t come back to Bletchley. I’ve seen Dan a number of times, but without Karen. That’s why I was surprised.”

  “What was her reason?”

  Moe looked over to the window through which the shot had come, but Melrose thought he was merely looking at blankness-the black sky, the blacker trees. “She said she wanted to see Seabourne again. She said she was trying”-he rubbed his eyes as if to bring something into inner focus-“to come to terms with Noah’s and Esme’s deaths. Well, I don’t have to remind you-”

  “No, you don’t. But why now? Especially since the house is leased to a stranger. Didn’t she know it was taken by Mr. Plant, here?”

  “Yes. She’d been to see the agent, Esther Laburnum, who handles the property for me.”

  Macalvie leaned forward. “Mr. Bletchley, doesn’t it seem strange to you that she’d show up, first time in four years, just when all these other things are happening?”

  Moe looked off toward the black glass of the high windows again. “Yes, I guess it does.”

  After a few seconds of silence, during which nothing could be heard but the ticking of the longcase clock, Macalvie asked, “Who else might wish you harm? Given the way you’ve built up a business empire, there must be some toes you’ve stepped on; you must have made some enemies.”

  “Sure. But not the shoot-’em-up kind.”

  “Then what have you got that I don’t know about that someone either wants or wants to get rid of?”

  Moe frowned. “What’s that conundrum mean, exactly?”

  “That you have something you don’t know you have or, more likely, know something that you don’t know might be lethal. To someone else. A secret shared with you that you might even have forgotten. That’s merely an example. In other words, someone who thinks you’re a danger to him.”

  “That’s just-too unlikely, Commander Macalvie.”

  Macalvie sat back then and studied Morris Bletchley.

  Macalvie, thought Melrose, didn’t want to remind him that leading two little children down a stone stairway to frigid water was even more unlikely.

  38

  I can’t eat strawberries, can’t touch ’em, me,” Sergeant Wiggins was saying, by way of sympathizing with Mrs. Crudup. “Minute I get a taste of one, like in some pud or trifle, I’m off.” Wiggins was sluicing the palm of one hand off the other to show how quickly “off” a strawberry could send him.

  Old Mrs. Crudup looked tissue thin, someone whose every breath seemed proof that the air was unbreatheable, as if she might have been living at an extraordinarily high altitude and been brought down from it in a bubble. She was gossamer, as sheer as the gauze-like curtains at the window.

  But she was not, apparently, so ephemeral that she couldn’t dip into the public complaint bucket and give as good as she got. “I know, I know, don’t tell me.” Her reedy voice wavered. “Strawberries is what’s caused all this, and that’s a fact. Sick as a dog, I am, sick as a dog. Could die before the night’s out.”

  “Don’t say that, Mrs. Crudup. I can sympathize, I can sympathize.”

  Apparently, thought Melrose, Wiggins had quickly picked up Mrs. Crudup’s habit of saying things twice. Melrose also noted that Mrs. Crudup was one of those patients whom Wiggins had been told he need not question. She was hooked up to enough IVs and machinery to furnish Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory.

  At Macalvie’s request, Melrose had gone to find out if Wiggins had discovered anything. Yes, he had apparently discovered that he, Wiggins, and the ghostly Mrs. Crudup both had a strawberry allergy.

  But Mrs. Crudup, as Melrose learned from lounging in the doorway, suffered not from just an allergy but from a whole strawberry conspiracy.

  “They disguise ’em in chocolate. They think I don’t know! Take ’em away, Mr. Wiggins! Take ’em away!”

  Wiggins had the plate in hand. “Certainly I will. And I’ll just see Mr. Bletchley about stopping people bringing them round.”

  Melrose interrupted. “Sergeant Wiggins?” Wiggins turned. “Commander Macalvie needs you.”

  Wiggins bade adieu to Mrs. Crudup, who exacted a promise from him that he’d come back as soon as he’d dealt with the ones who were trying to kill her.

  There had been three or four of the ambulatory old people standing in their own doorways when Melrose passed by. It was Mr. Clancy who had directed Melrose to Mrs. Crudup’s room.

  Now, on the way back, there were several more. There was the piano teacher, Miss Timons-Browne, Mr. Bleaney, and Miss Livingston, who caught Wiggins’s sleeve in her small talons and rattled on about the murder of poor Tom.

  Wiggins managed to disengage himself, but all down the hall voices called to him and seemed to want to haul him this way and that. Mr. Bleaney and Mrs. Noonan (also on the not-to-question list) were two of the most vocal. How in God’s name had he managed to visit, must less question, all of these people? Yet he waved to them or said hello, hello, as if he’d known them forever.

  As he walked he was thumbing back the pages of his small notebook. “You remember the Hoopers?”

  “Who could forget them? Oh, excuse me, they could forget them.”

  “They saw somethin
g.”

  Melrose stopped, turned. “What?”

  “Someone or something, right round the corner.”

  “Corner?”

  “They were in the conservatory, playing chess.”

  “At midnight? Good grief, are people permitted to wander around here at all hours?”

  “Well, knowing how much Mr. Bletchley believes in his patients’ freedom, that doesn’t surprise me, sir.”

  Melrose supposed not. He started walking again. “Someone or something. That just about suits them, given their memories.”

  Macalvie sat on the same dark red settee, but across from him this time were the Hoopers. All three of them sat leaning forward, as if they were about to try out one-armed wrestling.

  “Okay,” said Macalvie. “Exactly what did you see?”

  The Hoopers leaned even closer to Macalvie, looking puzzled. “And you might be-?”

  “Macalvie, Devon and Cornwall Constabulary.”

  They all had, of course, been introduced, or at least the Hoopers had introduced each other. But that was all of fifteen seconds ago.

  “A policeman?” said one of them, his squiggly eyebrows dancing.

  Melrose expected Macalvie might be about to reach across the seductively reachable distance and knock their heads together. On the Hoopers’ part-well, they appeared to be waiting for Macalvie to go on.

  So he did. “You told Sergeant Wiggins, there, you saw someone or something at the time we judge the shot was fired.”

  The Hoopers sat; the clock ticked.

  Then one said, of a sudden, “It was…”

  The other snapped his fingers. “Yes, it was a…”

  They looked at one another, urging one another forward. “It was a…”

  Macalvie shut his eyes, tightly. When he opened them he turned to Wiggins. “Is it hoping for too much that you-?”

  Wiggins, whose brow was furrowed as if in sympathy with the Hoopers’ brows, blinked. “Oh. Oh, of course. Sorry, sir.” And he started thumbing through his notebook, turning page after page after page.

  Melrose wondered what in hell he could have in it. How many people up there in their bedrooms had he interviewed and for how long?

  “Here it is.” Wiggins read. “Hoopers: ‘We were just in the middle of our game, I mean, nobody knows just what the middle is, anyway it was just on midnight, for a moment later the clock chimed. We looked out-we saw this person, well, more a shape it was, going past the window.’ ”

  “And?” asked Macalvie.

  “I’m afraid that’s all I’ve written down, sir.”

  Macalvie looked at the Hoopers. “You saw this shape. Can you be a bit more precise there?”

  “It was a…”

  “He could’ve been-kind of small.”

  “Or she, she could’ve been-well, small.”

  Just at that moment one of the uniformed police outside raised the window around the corner from the one the shot had been fired through and called to Macalvie, asking if this was what he meant.

  “Yeah. That’s what.”

  “Just when the conversation was getting interesting.” Melrose walked over to the window.

  Finally, the Hoopers were excused. The little woman who’d been sent to get the coffee came in with a tray of cups and saucers and biscuits. Matron followed her with an enormous coffeepot. Having observed the party atmosphere, Mr. Bleaney, Mr. Clancy, and Miss Livingston crowded in after them.

  What Melrose liked about these people was their sporting nature, their smiling in the face of such adversity, and it set him to wondering about the chemistry among people for whom death was right around the corner. To use Tom’s metaphor, it must have been like this in war, at least it always was in war’s representations. As if at the front, he and Wiggins were passing amid battle-ravaged troops taking strength from one another. You depended, he thought, upon another man’s spirit to pull you through. And it was all overseen-the battle plan, the deployment of troops, and, at the end, the demobbing, the mustering-out, all of the cliché-ridden, unashamed, canting patriotism-by Morris Bletchley.

  39

  I heard what happened; I guess everyone has. It’s terrible. It’s worse than terrible if Tom got shot-by mistake. He was going to die anyway, and soon; that’s what people are saying. As if that made it all right. As far as I’m concerned, it makes it worse. It makes it ten times worse. Even the little he had to live, that’s gone now.”

  Johnny stood in the open doorway of Seabourne and said this to Melrose before he’d even stepped inside. He stood turning his cabby’s cap in his hands and his eyes glazed with tears that didn’t spill.

  “Come on in, Johnny. You’re right. It does make it worse. Come on back to the kitchen; I just made some coffee.” It was late morning and Melrose had just arisen, having had no sleep to speak of the night before.

  Johnny followed him, talking about Tom all the while, talking nervously as if his license to talk might be revoked at any moment, so he’d better get it out fast. “I always talked to him when we went to the Hall. He was so-calming, somehow. You probably never noticed but I’m kind of tight-wound-”

  Melrose smiled and nodded.

  “-and it was actually relaxing to be around Tom.

  It seems strange it should be, with his problems. You’d think he’d be bitter, getting AIDS when he wasn’t even gay, but he wasn’t bitter, not at all-”

  “Tom wasn’t gay? But-”

  Johnny was shaking his head. “He told me when we were talking about the chances of getting Alzheimer’s or esophageal cancer, you know, the various things the people at the Hall have. We started discussing AIDS and he said the chance of getting it with only one-uh-you know, contact-ranged anywhere from one in a thousand to three in a hundred. This relationship he had happened a long time ago and was very short-lived. Anyway-” Johnny shrugged. “But maybe a crisis is what shows you what you’re made of.” He finished this looking at the cup of coffee Melrose had placed before him, looking as if what he himself was made of must not be much.

  “Tom’s crisis was in the past, Johnny; it was horribly painful but he’d lived with it for a long time. It was old. Yours is new.”

  Johnny was quiet for a moment and then said, “Police think Chris shot this Sada Colthorp and then took off, don’t they?”

  “No, that certainly hasn’t been my impression. Commander Macalvie hasn’t come to any conclusions about that murder.”

  “Chris didn’t like her, though. I think they had a couple of fights.”

  “A long way from fighting to murder, Johnny.”

  Johnny shook the hair fallen across his forehead out of his face. “What in bloody hell is going on around here? Why would anyone want to kill Mr. Bletchley? He’s done nothing but good for this village.”

  “That’s what I understand.”

  He shoved his cup aside, slapped on his cap, adjusted it, and said, “I’m on call. I’ve got a ride to pick up and take to Mousehole. Thanks for the coffee.”

  “Is your uncle still stopping with you?”

  “Charlie? He went back to Penzance yesterday morning.”

  “I had dinner with him night before last under Mr. Pfinn’s watchful eye. I thought him quite a good fellow.”

  “He told me. He thought you were, too. ’Bye.”

  The bell rang again and Melrose started to rise from the comfort of the fireplace and the book he was reading. He hesitated, thinking it might be Agatha already or, worse (since Agatha might have needed a ride), Agatha and her bosom buddy, Esther Laburnum.

  He tiptoed. How ridiculous, he told himself, and straightened up as he walked the last twenty feet. Still, once there, he did not open the door immediately. Instead he took a furtive glance through one of the leaded-glass panels on both sides of the door to see a man standing there, a stranger in a lightweight wool suit. Good wool, too. At least the back was a stranger’s. He was quite tall and seemed to stand at ease, not with the stiff uncertainty some backs can muster if they’re on un
familiar ground.

  Then, disgusted with himself for keeping the poor fellow waiting, he yanked the door open.

  The man turned. “Mr. Plant? Or Lord Ardry? Mrs. Laburnum didn’t seem sure what to call you.” He smiled. “I’m Daniel Bletchley.”

  The serviceable stereotypes of composers Melrose had trusted and trotted through his mind-effete, absent-eyed, cloud-ridden-would have to go. The man’s sheer physical presence erased the stereotype. He was tall, though no taller than Melrose; yet he was more densely packed. He was not conventionally handsome, but then he didn’t need to be. His sexuality was something like Richard Jury’s only more so. (A lot of women would have been surprised that there was a “more so.”) Nothing in the expression of his unconventionally handsome face seemed held back, restrained, or secret.

  This went through Melrose’s mind in the moment it took him to say, “Come in.”

  40

  Daniel Bletchley was happy to come in and stood in the foyer, shaking hands. His eyes, though, Melrose noticed, seemed to be following the sweep of the graceful staircase that he had once climbed so often to the upstairs rooms with which he was so familiar.

  “You’re the musician,” said Melrose.

  Dan turned his eyes from the staircase and laughed. “I don’t know if I’m the musician, but, yes, I’m one of them.” His expression and his tone grew more sober. “When I heard about what happened, I thought Dad could use some help. Tom.” Dan shook his head. “He was with Dad for a long time. A long time.” He brought this out on an expiration of breath, as if Time had been profligate with Tom Letts’s life, as if Tom should have been able to count on it for more. Then he added, “I hope I’m not bothering you.”

  “You’re not bothering me in the least. My aunt is coming for tea at five, and you’ll want to be gone before that event horizon. But as for now, join me in the library. I’ve got a fire and whisky going.”

  “Sounds great.” As Melrose led the way, a way with which Dan Bletchley was thoroughly-and sadly-familiar, Dan said, “ ‘Event horizon’? Sounds ominous.”