The Lamorna Wink

by Martha Grimes

  “Simon Bolt and Sadie May-those two just had t’git together. Simon liked ’em young, is what people said, the younger the better. Sadie’d say t’me, ‘I’m goin’ t’be in the pictures, me. I’m goin’ to be a star.’ ”

  “He was shooting pornographic films, is that it?” Peg Trott nodded. “Worse’n that. T’was bairns. T’was Sadie helped ’em find the poor tikes.” Peg shook her head. “Why’d anyone want t’see kiddies die?”

  Melrose frowned. “Die?”

  “Well, that’s what I heard.”

  In the awful silence that befell them, they all stared at Peg Trott.

  “Snuff films,” said the man in the black turtleneck.

  47

  The idea was so repugnant that several of them turned away just on hearing it. Yet the subject was too seductive to make them leave the little circle at the bar, and they turned back again.

  “How is it that the Devon and Cornwall police didn’t know this?” asked Jury.

  Peg shrugged. “Prob’ly did and couldna catch him at it, like.” She accepted a light from Melrose. “He was in London lots when he warn’t livin’ up atop ’ere.”

  Jury frowned. “Atop where, Peg?”

  With her glass, she pointed off in some northerly direction and upwards toward the moon. “There’s a road I kin show ya.”

  “We’d appreciate it.” Jury tossed money on the bar and rose.

  They did as Peg Trott directed-parked the car on the paved area and walked the rest of the way, about an eighth of a mile-on the public footpath.

  The house had a beautiful prospect, finer than the view from Seabourne. It was a stark building unrelieved by any sort of architectural embellishment that might have softened its facade. There was at least none that Plant and Jury could see by the light of their torches. Jury kept a spare in the car, which he had given to Melrose.

  He also kept a small box of lock-picking equipment. “Remind me to get a warrant next time I’m in Exeter.” The lock was old and easy. “I could’ve done it with my finger,” Jury said, as he pushed the door open.

  The inside was bleaker than the outside. In the room facing seaward, there were a sofa and two overstuffed and ugly chairs. There was a small fireplace with a tiled surround and ugly Art Deco wall sconces.

  They roamed from room to room, upstairs and down, then farther down into a basement that seemed to be doing service as a wine cellar.

  “Good stuff,” said Melrose, blowing dust from a bottle of Meursault, a Premier Cru (straight from the abbé, doubtless. Or was he mixing it up with Lindisfarne?) “God, what a waste. Isn’t anyone going to collect this wine?”

  Jury was adding a skin of light to the walls as he shone his torch carefully round. But he saw nothing that might have served as a hiding place for the videos he was sure must be here and said so.

  “Why do you think they’d be here instead of in London? According to Peg Trott he spent most of his time in London.”

  “I don’t think ‘instead’; rather, I think ‘in addition to’; he would have at least a small collection here.”

  Melrose was studying a simple appellation of Puligny when Jury started up the cellar stairs and asked, “You going to have a wine tasting or are you coming along?”

  Regretfully, Melrose returned the bottle to its shelf.

  Upstairs, Jury made another torch circuit of the room. Melrose said, “We’ve already done that. What do you expect to find?” He switched off his torch and sat down on one of the chairs and lit a cigarette.

  “I don’t know. I’m working on the assumption that this house might have been the meeting place chosen.”

  “Meeting place?”

  “She obviously had a meeting arranged; I doubt she just ran into her killer on the public footpath.”

  “They could have arranged to meet at the point where her body was found.”

  “Yes, they could’ve. It’s just that it’s difficult to know a point in advance, unless there’s a very clear marker. Sada Colthorp might have chosen to meet here because she was familiar with the house and because the house was out of the way; no one would see them.” Jury switched the light off and sat down too, on a sofa across from the chair.

  It was the darkest dark Melrose had ever experienced. He could barely distinguish Jury’s outline.

  “I imagine they left the house to walk along the public footpath. Whose idea was that? The killer’s, most likely. He-or she-wouldn’t have wanted the body found too close to the house, so he put some distance between the house and the spot where he killed her.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why not have the body found in the house?”

  “Because it would raise the possibility of a connection between Bolt and the Bletchley children’s deaths.”

  “You think that’s what happened?”

  “I do. Lured by God only knows what reward or reason, they stumbled down those stone steps while Simon Bolt recorded it on film. He watched them drown.”

  “How could a man do that?”

  “Because there’s a market for it. A big one.”

  Melrose switched his torch on and off, on and off. “One thing I fail to understand is why a man would trust a young girl with knowing what he was up to, the way he did with young Sadie.”

  “Ever read Lolita?”

  “Yes, both Peg Trott and I are familiar with Lolita.”

  “It’s not a question of trust, anyway. People in Bolt’s line of work probably don’t trust anybody.” Jury flicked his own flashlight on, then off, and asked, “Did you ever take food and stuff up to a tree house at night and a torch to read by?”

  Melrose’s cigarette glowed in the pitch blackness. “No, I can’t remember ever having a tree house. Did you?”

  “No. I guess some kids must have. You hear about that sort of childhood. Idyllic.” He swept the torch in Melrose’s direction.

  Melrose ducked, but not soon enough. “I suppose no one ever did. An idyllic childhood is probably illusion.” He aimed his torchlight at the sofa and Jury moved quickly out of its way.

  “Maybe,” said Melrose. Then, “It’s hard being an only child. You were one. It’s as if there’s something missing, like a hole in the world that someone fell through. Of course, my childhood wasn’t as obviously bad as yours was. A person can empathize with yours, but probably not with mine.”

  “You mean yours was only superficially better? Yet you had your mother, your father.”

  Melrose was quiet, flicking the torch on and off, aimed at the floor. “My mother, yes; my father…” He changed the subject. “You know there’s something I’ve always wondered about.” Lights out, cigarette snuffed, they were plunged into darkness again. “You and Vivian.”

  There was an engulfing stillness. No one moved. Until Melrose flashed the light on Jury.

  “Cheat! You knew that question would distract me!”

  “Oh, come on, sport.” Melrose laughed. “So, there’s something in it, eh? You and Vivian?”

  “That Christmas dinner years ago. Remember?”

  “Yes.” Melrose wanted another cigarette, but it would give his position away.

  “I walked Vivian home and we had a drink and a talk. You see, what I couldn’t understand was this business of her marrying Simon Matchett. He wasn’t at all her type. It was pretty clear that she wasn’t in love with Matchett from the passionless way she talked about him. You know Vivian. Though at times she can be very straightforward, when it comes to her feelings she’s-well, indirect. So in the course of our talking about various people, I inferred that Vivian loved somebody, but who was the somebody?” Jury flashed his torch and caught Melrose full in the face.

  “Hey! Not in the middle of something important.”

  “That’s what you just did to me, isn’t it?”

  They sat in darkness again.

  “You want a cigarette?” asked Melrose.

  “No. You know I haven’t smoked for over a year.”


  “Okay, then we’ve got to have a time-out while I light one. Because obviously you’d see the match flare.”

  “I can also see the coal end as you smoke it, so what’s the big deal? I could get you anytime you inhale.” Jury leaned his head against the back of the sofa. “Simon Bolt,” he said, exploring the name.

  “Yes. Simon Bolt was taking a hell of a chance,” Melrose said, “appearing at Seabourne, even if it was at night. He could so easily have been seen.”

  “If the Bletchleys had been there, but they were out. The only possible witness would be the aging housekeeper. Didn’t you say her room was on the other side of the house?”

  “How would Bolt have known that?” asked Melrose.

  “From the person who put Simon Bolt onto the kids in the first place.”

  “You mean Sada Colthorp.”

  “No. Sada was probably the middleman, is my guess. Whoever wanted these kids killed and thought of this way of doing it knows the habits of people in Bletchley. Possibly Bolt and Colthorp were the people in the woods. At any rate, the kids saw somebody.”

  “Correction: Their mother said they saw somebody.”

  Jury said, “You think her story was fabricated.”

  “I think Henry James wrote it.”

  There was a long silence.

  “You sure you don’t want a cigarette?”

  “What? Jesus, some friend you are, encouraging me to go back to that foul habit.”

  “Oh, don’t sound so much like a missionary selling Christianity to the natives. I just thought if we both had one we’d be at the same disadvantage.”

  “Ye gods! I’m supposed to smoke just so you can shine that bloody light in my face?”

  “Go on with what you were saying about Vivian, about her being-Good lord!” Melrose dropped his torch but quickly recovered it. “Vivian! I forgot to tell you. Vivian claims she’s going to marry Giopinno in a few weeks.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You’re just trying to catch me off guard.”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous. I’ve completely forgotten about the torch.”

  Jury moved on the sofa, sitting forward. “Are you telling me she’s really going to marry this creep?”

  Melrose shook his head. “Who knows? With that weird relationship, anything could happen. Maybe Viv’s going to ditch him.”

  “Ditch him? How can you ditch anyone after all these years? Kill him, maybe, but ditch him, no.”

  “Well, anyway.” Melrose’s torch went on suddenly.

  Jury switched his own on. “Oh, for God’s sake, you can’t put the torch somewhere else on the sofa. How childish!”

  Melrose sniggered.

  “What in the bloody hell is going on?”

  As if choreographed, both torches swung toward the living room door and caught Brian Macalvie in twin circles of light.

  “This is how you carry out an assignment?”

  “You didn’t give me one,” said Jury.

  “How’d you know we were here?”

  “I was in the Wink at closing time. Old dame in there told me you’d come up here. She didn’t want to tell me how to find you.”

  “So you broke her jaw.”

  “Obviously, I got the information, but you don’t need to know my methods. And I sure as hell don’t want to know yours. Get that damned light out of my face. Come on, let’s get our cars.”

  The night deepened around them as they stood between Macalvie’s Ford and Jury’s Honda, dark green, dark blue, both cars looking black in the un-lighted clearing.

  They were talking about Simon Bolt.

  “Simon Bolt? We tried to nail him for possessing and distributing pornography. When I say we I mean Vice. I wasn’t on the case myself. He took photos, films too, I heard. But snuff flicks of kids? Christ, no, I heard nothing of that; they must not have found anything like that or I’d’ve heard.” Macalvie turned in a half circle, mouthing epithets.

  It did not sound at all like a wounded ego; the self-abrading tone sounded more like dereliction of duty.

  “You weren’t on that case years ago. How could you possibly have connected it with this one?”

  “You got it out of a witness, Jury. I should’ve too.”

  “Macalvie, it was dumb luck. I happened to ask a question that provoked Peg Trott to give up the information.”

  Melrose said, “Let’s go back to Seabourne. We can at least have a fire and a drink. I can even do us an early breakfast.”

  Climbing behind the Honda’s wheel, Jury said, “Just not soft-boiled eggs and soldiers. I refuse to eat toast cut into soldiers.”

  Melrose eased into the passenger seat. “It was the bright spot in a ruined childhood. Soldiers.”

  “How heartrending.” Jury gunned the engine and they sped away, as much as one could speed down such a narrow and rutted road, eating Macalvie’s dust.

  48

  Johnny parked the cab in front of his house and wondered if he was letting his imagination, overworked in the best of circumstances, run away with him. There might be another explanation.

  Might be, but he doubted it, because what he believed had happened explained too much for him to be wrong. But it didn’t explain everything. It didn’t explain why.

  He got out of the car, didn’t bother locking it-which was part of the point, wasn’t it? Who bothered locking up cars and houses around here-and walked the short distance to the Woodbine. Brenda was always up, usually baking till all hours, which had been a real comfort to him these days, in case he couldn’t sleep and wanted to talk.

  The bell made its discordant little clatter when he opened the door to the tearoom, a room that always gave the impression of warmth, even in the dead of night with the heat turned down.

  From the kitchen came the sounds and smells of baking. The rattle and click of pans, the swish of the big beater, the whir of the blender-it always sounded as if Brenda had an army of undercooks and sous chefs back there. He smelled ginger.

  He could understand why customers came here, morning and afternoon, to be lulled into a sense of well-being, an illusion of ease, even if that was far away. He could see by moonlight or memory the heather design on the polished cotton curtains, the faded roses on the chair cushions, the burned wood and the bay windows’ mullioned panes through which the moonlight spilled silver. Everything in the place-the faded roses, the smell of ginger-blended like spices and milk and honey into a satiny dough of contentment. It was all overwhelmingly sensuous.

  Like sex, Johnny thought.

  He stood in the open door to the kitchen.

  Brenda was pulling a cookie sheet full of gingerbread men from the oven and when she stood and turned, she smiled. “Sweetheart! Couldn’t you sleep?”

  “No. Where is she, Brenda?”

  49

  Wiggins’s bleary-eyed greeting at the door of his room in the Drowned Man was only marginally more welcoming than Mr. Pfinn’s had been. At least Wiggins was aware that a police investigation knew neither time nor tide. Mr. Pfinn, on the other hand, didn’t care if the three of them were pod people come to borrow his body. He needed his sleep, he said.

  But Wiggins’s mood improved immensely when he saw Richard Jury was one of the three. He was all ready to have a long talk about Jury’s travels, while standing at the door in his pajamas.

  “Ireland, nil; Scotland Yard, one,” said Macalvie, cutting into this reunion. “Get dressed.”

  They were now in Seabourne. Melrose and Wiggins repaired to the kitchen to prepare some sort of meal; Jury and Macalvie stayed in the library.

  “What are these stones? Avebury? Stonehenge? The Merry Maidens?” Macalvie inspected Jury’s little stone circle, or semicircle.

  “Very funny. I was trying to get the sequence of what’s happened to whom in the last four years. In most cases, death has happened. I was trying to get straight in my mind the events of four years ago. Then the events of today-that is, recently.”r />
  Jury picked up another stone. “We can now add Simon Bolt to the four-year-old section of the circle, setting him beside Sada Calthorp, who came back four years ago and who’d kept in touch with Bolt-well, she must’ve done, since she was in his films.”

  Macalvie said, “And, according to Rodney Colthorp, Bolt visited the manor. Yes, they kept in touch.”

  Jury set the two stones side by side.

  “So what have you got here?”

  “Beginning with the Bletchley children, with Simon Bolt and most likely Sada Colthorp involved in that, then the death of Brenda Friel’s girl, Ramona; that’s the four-year-old part. More recently, the disappearance of Chris Wells, the death of Sada Colthorp, and the death of Tom Letts.”

  Macalvie slid a stick of chewing gum into his mouth and was silent, looking at the stone diagram. He hadn’t sat down, and he hadn’t taken off his coat.

  “Why don’t you take your coat off?” Jury didn’t expect him to; he just couldn’t resist mentioning the coat.

  Instead of taking it off, Macalvie shoved the sides back and put his hands in his trouser pockets. He chewed the gum, thinking. “Bastard was making snuff films.”

  “That tape’s somewhere in or around that house.”

  Macalvie was still gazing at the stone circle. “It’s with whoever murdered Sada Colthorp. I found part of it.”

  Jury gave him an inquiring look. “Where?”

  “Just a fragment of the black casing. It was lying near her body. At least, I expect it’s a safe assumption. The piece was definitely part of a videotape casing. Of course, that’s not the only copy. Four years ago, whoever got Bolt to do this, that person would have the original. Then of course Bolt would’ve kept a copy, at the same time claiming there wasn’t one. I’d say there are at least three copies. We went over his house with tweezers. Sada Colthorp had another copy. Or the same one Bolt had stashed; maybe she knew where it was. How else was she going to blackmail the person who wanted those little kids dead if she couldn’t produce a copy?”