The Lamorna Wink

by Martha Grimes

  “The film wouldn’t prove who this person was.”

  “No,” said Macalvie. “But it certainly shows how it was done.” Macalvie walked over to the fireplace and leaned his forearm across its green marble mantel. “Bad enough the little kids died, but that way?”

  Macalvie was always intense, thought Jury, but he didn’t think he’d ever seen him this emotionally involved. Not since the serial killings of children on Dartmoor and in Lyme Regis. Jury waited for him to go on.

  He did. “I’d say Colthorp knew the motive, but even if she didn’t, whoever wanted that film made would not want a fresh investigation into the Bletchley business. Anyway, the film is the best theory we have; it’s a working hypothesis that explains a hell of a lot.”

  Plant and Wiggins came through the door, bearing coffee, fresh bread, and cheese and cold ham. “Couldn’t find any eggs, so I didn’t make toast,” said Melrose, setting down the tray. Wiggins put down the coffeepot.

  Jury set about making a sandwich. “Wouldn’t have any pickled onions around, would you?”

  No.

  Wiggins was turning over the coat he’d draped across the back of a chair and drawing something from an inside pocket that looked much like a soft leather jewelry case, the sort that folds and ties. He untied it, revealing several zippered compartments. From one of these he took a dung-colored pill and from another a couple of large white tablets. The tablets he dropped into a glass of water and watched it fizz with almost religious application.

  So did the other three, chewing and watching the fizz until a fine scum of white powder showed on top.

  Apparently waiting to catch it at the height of the fizz, Wiggins drank it down, leaving a little in the bottom to swallow with the brown pill. Jury wondered about the pill; it seemed new to the Wiggins pharmacopoeia. But he refused to ask what it was. He did not want to know about any new ailment or allergy.

  “Chris Wells,” said Macalvie, holding his mug of coffee between both hands to warm them. “Look in your notes and tell me what you’ve got about Chris Wells,” he said to Wiggins.

  Wiggins thumbed through the notebook; it looked as if he’d written absolute reams of notes (which was why Macalvie had wanted to stop at the Drowned Man and drag him out of bed). He mouthed a few words to himself, then read: “According to young Johnny, his Aunt Chris took over the care of him when he was seven. He thinks his mother was going to the States, but he doesn’t know. The maiden name was Wells, the father’s name Esterhazey, but Johnny changed his to Wells, same name as his aunt. The mother just took off and that’s the last he heard of her.”

  Macalvie uttered a low imprecation, and Wiggins looked up. “Sir?”

  “Nothing. Go on.”

  “Chris is Johnny’s only family, except for the uncle who lives in Penzance, Charlie Esterhazey. Unmarried, keeps a magic shop. You know,” Wiggins said to Jury, “sort of place that sells trick decks of cards and magic metal rings that look like they couldn’t fit together but do.” Wiggins stopped reading, seemed to be pondering.

  “Don’t worry, Wiggins. We’re coppers. We’ll make him tell us.”

  Wiggins shot Jury a grazing look and went on. “Getting down to the night in question, when young Johnny got in touch with police. Chris Wells disappeared sometime between eleven A.M., which is when she left the Woodbine and is the last time anyone saw her in Bletchley, and nine P.M., when John Wells actively started looking for her.”

  “It could have been later,” said Jury. “I mean, she could have been in Bletchley, only Johnny didn’t see her.”

  “Just wait a minute,” said Wiggins. “The cookies she was baking could have been done some time earlier. But meringues-well, that’s a different story. They were still in the oven. That’s what you do with them, you know. You leave them in to cool. Very slow cooling period. The oven was still slightly warm. Since it takes an hour to bake them at four hundred degrees, that would mean they went into the oven about seven-thirty. There are two different kinds of meringues served in the Woodbine, quite tasty too.”

  “Thank you, Wiggins,” said Jury. “We’d like the recipes when we finish this case. If we do.”

  Macalvie said, “Sada Colthorp, Wiggins.”

  Wiggins read: “Murdered the night of September twelfth, ME says between seven P.M. and eleven P.M.”

  “In other words, murdered during the time Chris Wells did her vanishing act,” said Melrose.

  Macalvie had moved away from the fireplace and sat down on a narrow, uncomfortable-looking side chair. “The connection between Chris Wells and Sada Colthorp?”

  Wiggins moved forward a few pages. “The person who knew about that was Brenda Friel. She said Sada was trying to get her hands on young Johnny, who’d have been no more than thirteen at the time. Apparently, Sada and Chris really had it out.”

  Melrose said, “Johnny Wells looks older than he is, probably did when he was thirteen, too.”

  Macalvie asked, “How did Brenda know this?”

  “Chris Wells told her,” said Wiggins.

  “Still, trying to seduce a kid is hardly a motive for murder, is it?” said Jury.

  Wiggins said, “People don’t often behave as you’d expect them to, sir,” said Wiggins sententiously. Looking at his notes, he added, “And Brenda Friel told me Chris Wells threatened Sada Colthorp, said if she ever showed her face in the village again, she’d wish she hadn’t.”

  “Chris Wells,” said Jury, “appears to be the chief suspect, doesn’t she, by virtue of her sudden disappearance just at the time the Colthorp woman was murdered?”

  “Hold on a minute, Richard. She doesn’t sound at all like a person who runs away. She’s too responsible.” Melrose cited her work at the Hall, her care for her nephew. “Not only that, you’d surely have to be looking for two killers, not just one. I see no reason on earth you could say she was the one who planned the Bletchley children’s deaths or murdered Tom Letts.”

  “But you don’t know her,” said Jury. “You’ve never met her.”

  “No, you’re right. I’ve never met her.”

  Macalvie broke the silence. “There’s another way to look at this woman’s suddenly taking off.” He turned from the window. “Maybe it was made to look that way. Maybe it was staged.”

  Wiggins raised his head from the little stone circle and gave Macalvie a questioning look.

  “To make it look like Chris Wells murdered Sada Colthorp.”

  “Then where-” Melrose began. He didn’t finish the question. He thought it was almost too much to bear. And made worse because he hadn’t been given it to bear: the children, Tom Letts, the sadness of Daniel Bletchley and his father, and Chris Wells. He was a stranger to it all; he had no business feeling desolate; the actors in this tragedy, they were none of his business. And it wasn’t his tragedy. “You think she’s dead, don’t you?”

  Wiggins had put his small notebook back in his pocket and was bending over Jury’s improvised calendar of events, his small circle of stones. “Sir, go over this again, for me.”

  Jury rose and walked over to stand beside him, pointing clockwise around the stones. “These first two here: the Bletchley children died on the rocks; next, we’ve got Sada Colthorp and Simon Bolt, most probably arranging the death of the children. But to keep the sequence right, Bolt and Colthorp should be up here.” Jury moved the two stones to first place. “Next, Brenda Friel’s daughter, Ramona, dies. Moving four years ahead, Sada Colthorp is murdered; Chris Wells disappears; Tom Letts is murdered.” He looked at Wiggins, who had retrieved his notebook from an inside pocket. “Okay?” Jury turned away.

  Wiggins shook his head. “No, that’s not right.”

  Jury turned back.

  Wiggins was reading from his notes and putting another stone down.

  “What’s that for?”

  “You’re forgetting the baby, the unborn baby.” He had put the second stone beside Ramona’s. “It’s actually two people who died here. And you’ve got the order wrong.�
� Wiggins moved the Friel stones up to first place. “The Bletchley kids died after these two, not before.”

  Both Macalvie and Melrose had joined Jury at the table, and all three were looking at Wiggins’s new arrangement of the stones.

  Macalvie turned to stare through the window, looking out through the black glass as if he should be able to see through the dark. “Jesus,” he said, and turned back again. “Jesus, how could I have missed-”

  “How could we have missed it, Macalvie?”

  Wiggins hadn’t, and he was wreathed in smiles. “It’s easy to overlook, sir. They all died in the same year, but Ramona Friel and her baby, they died early, in January. The Bletchley children’s deaths, that came months later, round about now, in September.”

  Macalvie appeared to be looking around the room for something to throw. He picked up the blue Murano ashtray holding the other stones and stared down at them. Then, almost delicately, he returned the bowl to the table.

  “Am I just slow here?” said Melrose, irritated that he hadn’t thought of whatever they’d thought of.

  50

  Where is who, sweetheart? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Brenda wiped her forearm across her temple, shoving back strands of hair.

  “Chris didn’t leave suddenly. And I was right. She would never have left that way.”

  Brenda looked up from the cookie sheets, annoyed with this nonsense. She stubbed out the cigarette she’d smoked down to the butt end. “Of course she did. What are you saying?”

  He shook his head. “You went to the house and made it look not only as if she’d gone but as if she’d run. A few hours ago I ate a couple of those meringues she supposedly left in the middle of baking. They weren’t hers; they were yours.” He pulled over the stool at the end of the pastry table. “Meringues, yours and hers. That’s always been a kind of good-natured competition. It doesn’t look good-natured now, though.”

  Brenda stood looking at him as he sat down on the high stool. She didn’t answer.

  “I asked myself: Why would Brenda want to make it look as if Chris had run out?”

  “This is so silly, darling.” Brenda sighed. “And what did you answer yourself?”

  “I couldn’t. Not until I remembered the police were asking about Sada Colthorp. According to you, she and Chris had some kind of falling out four years ago. And you, you made it look worse by bringing it up with that detective and then refusing to talk about it. So what police are supposed to think is Chris kills her in a rage. Chris goes to Lamorna and shoots her. With this?” Johnny had pulled Charlie’s small gun from his pocket. It lay cold on his palm.

  Brenda looked at the gun for a long moment, then up at Johnny for yet a longer one. Then she pulled open the knife drawer behind her. “No.” The gun came out of the drawer as if she were the one used to pulling silk scarves from sleeves and doves out of the air. “With this.”

  The gun was twice as big, twice as black, twice as evil looking as the one Johnny held. He had never shot a gun in his life; he had never even handled a gun until tonight. But he was as deft with his fingers as a sharpshooter was, and he had the gun from the palm of his hand and between his thumb and forefinger in less than the blink of an eye.

  “If you shoot that,” she said, “you’d probably hit me, but you would miss any vital spot. You’re not used to guns.”

  “But you are.”

  “If I fire this, Johnny, it would kill you.”

  Looking at the barrel of that gun seemed to wake him out of a trance, as if up to that point this had all been a fantasy. His hand felt numb; he laid the small gun on the butcher block.

  “She’s dead, isn’t she?” That she must be was a fact that outweighed even the danger of the gun pointed at him.

  “Chris?” Brenda snorted. “Of course not. She did go away. To Newcastle.”

  The relief of what he felt as an almost comic turn in all of this made him laugh. “Newcastle? She doesn’t know anybody in Newcastle.”

  “Really, sweetheart, you can be so arrogant. You think Chris had no life apart from you? Children, children.” It was an admonishment, her tone merely exasperated, as if they might have been chatting about the rearing of them. “They think they know everything about their parents. And their aunts.” Her smile was almost indulgent. “She has an old friend up there who needed someone right away to take care of her because her home help died suddenly. It was for two weeks, until this woman could go into one of those homes they advertise for ‘retired gentlefolk. ’ That always amuses me, that phrase; doesn’t it you? But you’re right. I did want to make it look as if Chris had run off and there wasn’t much time to improvise because Sadie May-the Viscountess, I should say-was in Lamorna.”

  Johnny looked down at his empty hands. It didn’t come clearer; it just got deeper. Like a ladder to the sea you go down and down. Like the stone stairs in the rocks where the little Bletchley kids had wound up. Then he raised his head. “You killed Sada Colthorp.”

  Brenda said nothing.

  “Why?”

  She still said nothing.

  “And if Chris left right then, it would look like she did it. That was the idea, wasn’t it? But if you’re telling the truth, she’ll be back. What then?”

  “Newcastle police will pick her up. When I finally tell them where she is. She could call at any time.” With her free hand, Brenda reached for the pack of cigarettes, found it empty, balled it up, and swore softly.

  Got to get out of here, thought Johnny. Get out of this kitchen. Get back to where I’d have, if not a sporting chance, maybe a fighting one. Just knowing that Chris was alive had cleared his mind utterly, even of fear. He could think now. “If I worked it out about those meringues, I’m sure somebody else could too.”

  “That was very clever of you, sweetheart. I knew you were smart, but not that smart. I honestly don’t see how anyone else would, but”-she moved in a sideways walk, over to a coat rack, and unhooked her coat-“I’ll just get rid of what’s left. Get up.” She struggled into the coat. “Come on. And remember something. I will shoot you if you try to run. So walk beside me when we get outside.”

  The sporting chance was now on offer. At least, in his own living room, he might be able to find a way out of this. Johnny turned slowly, as if reluctantly, and waited while she turned out the lights. Then he moved toward the swinging door, wondering if he could slam it back in her face when she followed behind him, knowing he couldn’t. She would shoot him. The total folly of so doing did not occur to her; how would she ever explain that to police? It hadn’t occurred to her because her thoughts were pointed like an arrow to one thing and one thing only, and he still didn’t know what it was. He had no doubt of that at all. He walked through the tearoom where the moonlight still flooded the window embrasure as if nothing had happened. It was almost consoling to think that rooms you walk through still hold fast to their identity.

  “If you did anything to Chris, I’ll kill you Brenda. I will. She’s all I have.” He opened the door. The bell sounded its tiny discordant chorus of welcome.

  “Like Ramona,” said Brenda, “was all I had.”

  51

  It was after midnight by now, and Macalvie decided there wasn’t a hell of a lot they could do until they had some hard evidence. “What,” asked Macalvie, “did she have against the Bletchleys?” No matter what their theories, they had nothing to link her to the murder of Sada Colthorp or to Simon Bolt’s film.

  As Macalvie and Wiggins were leaving, Melrose beat a little tattoo on Wiggins’s shoulder, saying, “Well done, Sergeant. Well done. We none of us saw it except for you.”

  Wiggins tried to be casual about it; he held up his notebook and said, “It’s just good note-taking, Mr. Plant. The Bletchley kids’ death-well, that was so dramatic it’s easy enough to forget poor Ramona Friel.” He added generously, thereby deprecating his own role in any solution, “And we don’t really know, do we? We’ve still got Tom Letts’s murder to deal with. Assuming, of c
ourse, that Mr. Macalvie is right and it’s not Morris Bletchley we should be thinking about. That’s just theory, too.”

  Jury stood there, listening to Wiggins. He smiled. It was probably the most the sergeant had ever said about a case without a meditation on his or someone’s illness. It was certainly the first time Wiggins had ever called into question a theory of Macalvie’s.

  They said good night.

  Back in the library with whisky in hand, Melrose said, “Noah and Esme, poor benighted kiddies. You wouldn’t think a mother, any mother, could be part of such an arrangement.”

  Jury raised his glass and watched the dying fire through a half inch of whisky that turned the hearth into a liquid amber sea. “Daniel Bletchley. What if it wasn’t Chris Wells but Ramona Friel he was having an affair with?”

  “It was Chris Wells. Anyway, the night his children died-that couldn’t have been Ramona Friel. Poor girl was dead.”

  Jury lowered his glass. “What I meant was earlier. If he’d had an affair with Ramona Friel and the child was his and she died of complications in childbirth, I would imagine a mother would lust for revenge.”

  Melrose frowned. “What complications?”

  Jury looked at him.

  “Leukemia isn’t a complication of childbirth. I have no idea how pregnancy could affect such a disease.”

  “It wouldn’t, as far as I know. But it might have made no difference to her mother. She died, and so did the baby. Brenda Friel would make that add up to murder,” said Jury.

  “Then why in hell not grab a gun and kill Dan Bletchley if she thought he was the father? No, you’re wrong. Bletchley isn’t, I think, a profligate man. It would take a most unusual woman-woman, not a twenty-odd-year-old child-to move Daniel Bletchley.”

  “Perhaps. You’ve met him, I haven’t. I feel sorry for that boy, Johnny. How old is he? Sixteen? Seventeen?”