The Lamorna Wink

by Martha Grimes

  “He is? But-I’m fine, Shirley. There’s just some kind of misunderstanding. Try and find the cab, will you?” She hung up and said to Melrose, “I’ll call the Woodbine. Brenda-”

  “No. Leave that.”

  Melrose had been sincere in his apologies for his abrupt treatment of her when she had no idea who he was or why he was here. And why he was surprised that she was here.

  They were sitting down in the library, still the only really warm room downstairs, when he finally asked her, “Look, why did you disappear like that? Your nephew has been worried sick.”

  She frowned. “Disappear? Well, I didn’t exactly do that. Didn’t he get the note?” She sat back. “Obviously he didn’t. I should have called from Newcastle.”

  “Newcastle? You’ve been in Newcastle all this time? We thought you might be dead. Same thing, I imagine.” He did not add or guilty as hell.

  She was still frowning, and deeply. “I have a friend there who’s very ill-but that’s hardly important. What’s happened?”

  “Haven’t you been reading the papers? There was a murder in Lamorna Cove. A woman you apparently knew: Sada Colthorp.”

  Her face went even paler. “Sadie? Murdered?”

  “Her body was found on the path between Lamorna and Mousehole.”

  Chris seemed to be having a hard time taking this in. “Well… but she came back four or five years ago…”

  “Does this suggest anything to you?”

  “What? No. What should it suggest? Please stop talking in riddles.”

  “I’m sorry. But it is one. Someone murdered her, and police have you down as a suspect.”

  She knocked over the telephone in rising from the chair. She was open-mouthed with astonishment.

  “The point is, what happened to that note? Who did you give it to?”

  Chris shook her head. “To nobody. I left it on top of the card table where I knew he’d be sure to see it.” She made a dismissive gesture. “Anyway, Johnny knows I’d never go off without telling him where I’d gone. How could he doubt?”

  “Ah, but he didn’t. He kept insisting you wouldn’t. And we should have paid attention. If we’d paid more attention to his insisting you would have left word, rather than coming to the conclusion you didn’t and he must be wrong, God knows how much would have been saved. So, who took it?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t imagine. Brenda was supposed to make sure he knew why I’d left-”

  Her face went white. Then she was suddenly out of her chair and the white was replaced by heat. She was angry. “In thirty seconds or less. Tell me. Because I’m leaving. In thirty seconds.”

  Melrose stood up too. He managed it in under that.

  But it didn’t keep her from leaving. She ran. She ran through the huge foyer, out the door, and to her car.

  Melrose followed, running too. By the time he’d got his own engine going, she was down the drive and out of sight.

  56

  It was called “the card under glass trick”; Charlie had taught it to him. He still hadn’t got it quite right, but that made no difference to his purpose. Instead of a glass, he would extemporize with the gun, as she’d just set it down again. All he needed was to get her eyes off him in such a way they’d stay off for that bit of time, long enough for him to unwind the cord, which he hoped wasn’t wrapped around the fixture more than once.

  He fanned the cards out across the top of the trunk and asked, “You want to pick a card?”

  “Do you think I’m getting that close to you?”

  “Probably not. I’ll have to do it for you again, then.” With his index finger he flipped the entire half-moon of cards face up. “Full deck, just wanted you to see.” Then he shuffled, cut the deck twice, fanned the cards again, and, in spite of the fix he was in, enjoyed the irony of doing all of this on top of the trunk. It was like that Hitchcock movie, Rope. But this was the saving grace of knowing what you wanted to do in life and being able to do it. It blotted out everything else when you were doing it.

  He picked the Ace of Spades from the half-moon, held it up, flicked it with his finger before returning it to the fanned-out cards. He swept the cards together, shuffled, cut several times quickly, fanned the cards out again.

  “Ace of Spades? Gone.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, sweetheart. Where is it?”

  “Look under the gun, Brenda.”

  That made her flinch and focus.

  He could have told her anywhere, to look at the floor, or the chair itself, or the door. But, he reasoned, only the gun would do it, would distract her long enough. She would have (as did most people) the primitive fear, some half-formed belief-it was this that magic played on-that he could make the gun disappear. And in the split second she looked away to the gun on the table beside her, he unhooked the cord that held the curtain taut and jerked the heavy material across the embrasure.

  The first shot went through the curtain just as he threw the ashtray through the glass and kicked open the French door. To confuse her was what he wanted. The second shot followed as he raised the lid of the trunk, and the third as he jumped in, closed the lid, and pulled down the false bottom. He knew she’d look in the trunk, but not before she’d got to the open French door, through which she’d think he’d left the house.

  Her bafflement was almost palpable. The lid of the trunk opened upon a second of silence when she saw nothing. There was no explanation for her except to assume he’d gone by way of the French door.

  But she’d be back; she’d have had time to realize that he was, after all, a magician and this trunk was big enough to hold a body.

  Lying in the dark, he smiled and listened to the rain blowing in the door. He’d been too focused before to realize it was raining. But he heard it now as if it were riveting the lid of the trunk closed. Much as he would have liked to stay in it (for it created even for him the illusion of invisibility), he would have to move before she came back, and he knew that would be soon.

  Yet might it work, staying here? He finally scotched that idea; it was too uncertain. Much better to be able to move about the house. He was afraid to leave until she came back inside; she could be making a circle of it, and this time he might not be lucky and run right into her. Better to wait and see which way she came in-probably the front-and he could slip out the back.

  He was out of the trunk now and had never realized before how bright ordinary lamplight could be. To avoid being seen through the windows, he crouched and, in this position, made his way as quickly as he could across the living room. He went to the kitchen. He opened the little gray metal door of the panel box, pulled the main circuit breaker, and plunged the house in darkness.

  He stood listening. The hard rain was letting up. Somewhere, a car door slammed.

  57

  First, she walked swiftly from her car down the street, wondering what instinct told her that it would be dangerous to park in her usual space, that she should park some distance from the house. She walked quickly by the Woodbine, momentarily tempted to go in and shout for Brenda to explain, to fix things. But Chris knew it was inexplicable. The note she’d left on the card table for Johnny, the word she’d left with Brenda… It was incomprehensible.

  Why Brenda would have failed to tell him was beyond her, utterly beyond her. What her, Chris’s, supposed running away was meant to accomplish was just as mysterious. She didn’t care about the mystery at this moment; she cared only about letting Johnny know she was back and she was all right.

  Lights shone through the windows of their house and then, suddenly, they didn’t. Suddenly, and all at once, both downstairs and upstairs went dark. That the lights were not being turned off one at a time, that the house was abruptly thrust into darkness really frightened her. She stopped. In the diminished light along the street she heard a car in the distance, getting closer, perhaps his-Plant’s-for she knew he had made for his car when she was leaving. Perhaps she should wait… oh, but this was ridiculous, holding ba
ck this way.

  She shoved her fisted hands down into her pockets. Fear fueled her anger. How dare Brenda do this? Chris walked, but slowly, toward her house, which had grown unfamiliar to her without even the fixture on the porch lighting the way.

  Chris saw that someone was standing in front of the Drowned Man, hands cupping a cigarette, sheltering the match against the wind and what was left of the rain-mist mostly. Someone. Was she seeing him everywhere now, having seen him nowhere for so long?

  Dan. She shrank back into a doorway. How could he possibly be here now? Then she remembered what Melrose Plant had said about Tom Letts and his funeral. Dan would of course come to help his dad. No matter how painful or what memories the place stirred, Dan would do that. He really loved Morris Bletchley.

  Another figure, stocky and wearing a dark robe, had come out to join Dan. It must be Mr. Pfinn. She heard their voices, drowsy through the mist, floating toward her. She could make out nothing they said as they looked off down the street, in the direction of her house.

  Chris stared at the fragment of Dan’s face the cigarette coal illuminated when he inhaled. She needed help; she was sure she needed help. She should not have come by herself; she should have brought Mr. Plant with her.

  But she turned away from help and started walking again toward the house, now little more than fifty feet away. Only a few doors down the street. What had they been looking at, Dan and Pfinn? Why had they come out to the pavement? She had left her own sheltering doorway only when the two of them had turned to go back into the pub.

  Not sure why she wanted to avoid the front door of this house that lay in a total, unnatural darkness and silence, she made for the French door around the right-hand side and soon found her feet crunching gravel, but something else. Glass. The cloudy moon showed her the door was broken. She moved through the French door and found an even darker darkness than outside. When she reached out she felt the heavy curtain, loosened from the fixture that usually held it back.

  She heard a noise, at once far away and shatteringly close, felt something like a heavy and violent hand shoved against her chest, jerking her back, and then tripped over the heavy curtain that was dropped before her. No, she hadn’t tripped. Pain only flickered at first and then gathered a hideous strength.

  “Johnny!” Chris thought she screamed it, but heard little more than a whisper, less than the hiss of the sea against rocks which she could almost hear, even at this distance, less even than the lovely voice of Dan over across the road. Johnny! She knew she hadn’t said it aloud, not this time. He was in her mind with the blinding, searing light, as if the whole house had suddenly and completely been lit with the sun.

  That was all.

  58

  Melrose saw Wiggins coming out the door of the Drowned Man just after what sounded like a shot was fired. He ran toward him.

  “Sergeant! Was that-?”

  Wiggins stopped. “It came from the Wells house.”

  Light flooded the house before they reached the end of the path to the Wellses’ front door, which was open.

  “I’m going round back,” said Wiggins. “You’d best stay out of sight.”

  He didn’t. Melrose waited for a moment, then moved toward the door.

  Brenda Friel was backed up against the doorjamb between kitchen and living room, her rigid arms extended, hands holding a gun as steady as a cross beam. It was aimed at Johnny.

  Melrose urged himself on: Do something, do something, damn it! But what? He was paralyzed when he saw Chris Wells lying in the little alcove at the back of the room.

  “I’ll kill you, I swear to God.”

  Johnny hadn’t shouted this, but the intensity with which he’d uttered the words left no doubt that he would.

  Brenda said nothing. Her face was wiped clean of expression.

  Then Melrose saw Wiggins approaching silently, coming through the kitchen and up behind her. He brought the side of his hand down on her arm. The gun discharged, and simultaneously a knife flew across the room and lodged in the wood of the doorway at exactly the spot where Brenda’s heart had been.

  Johnny moved to his aunt’s body and did not so much kneel as drop down. He put an arm beneath her shoulders and lifted her. Then he wept.

  Wiggins held on to Brenda Friel, who struggled to get out of his grasp.

  And, frozen in the doorway, stood Daniel Bletchley, staring at Johnny and his awful burden. He was cradling his aunt’s body, rocking it back and forth. Dan was wide-eyed, unable to move.

  Hoping she’s only fainted, Melrose thought.

  For one could see no damage to Chris. The blood that had seeped into the dark carpet had now collected beneath the dark curtain at her back. Her equally dark clothes showed no wound. It was as if Johnny, in passing his hand above Chris’s body, had rendered the damage invisible.

  The blood was on Johnny. When he sat back Melrose could see his T-shirt was covered, from where he had pulled her close.

  Daniel Bletchley walked over to Johnny and knelt down, putting an arm around the boy and saying nothing.

  For anything said, any word of comfort or false cheer, would have been a lie.

  59

  The service was held in the little Bletchley church, conducted by a rector of about the same age Tom had been. All youth, to Melrose, now looked sad, this age that old people so much envied but through which, he thought now, it would have been better not to pass. Standing with this little group of mourners, he watched the casket being lowered into the ground and bowed his head, thinking he had seen enough of death in the past twenty-four hours to last his lifetime.

  Whatever occupants of Bletchley Hall were able to leave their beds were there, along with staff. The Hoopers, black-suited, stood next to Morris Bletchley, on whose other side stood Daniel and Karen. Little Miss Livingston, her acorn face obscured by a small black veil, seemed more bent than even before. Beside her stood Mrs. Atkins; Mr. Bleaney and Mr. Clancy were on the other side of the grave.

  Melrose stood beside Johnny, who had insisted on coming, despite his having to endure, in the following days, his aunt’s own funeral. Her body now lay in the police morgue in Penzance. It would be released to “the family” (the medical examiner speaking here) when the autopsy was complete.

  The first person to step forward and let fall a handful of earth onto the coffin must have been Tom’s sister, Honey; she was a slight, very blond, and pretty girl. She stood back, and Morris Bletchley stepped forward, repeating the sad ritual. Then the rector of Bletchley’s single church finished the ceremony.

  It would probably have been no compliment to tell Honey Letts that black became her, as if she’d been designed for sad occasions such as this. It made her fragile blondness more intense, deepened the blue of her eyes to black.

  She was only sixteen, but she had the composure of a woman decades older. He wondered how it had been bred in her, certainly not by her mother and father, given what Tom had told him.

  The mother and father were not even with her today. Melrose found it difficult to believe that parents could be so hard and unforgiving.

  “Honey,” said Melrose, looking down at her, “I didn’t know Tom for long, but I still felt I knew him.”

  She nodded and looked up at him out of those bottomless dark blue eyes.

  “You have no idea how much you did for him,” Melrose said.

  “No, people don’t, usually. But it certainly wasn’t any sacrifice on my part. I don’t know many people and certainly no one as interesting as Tommy.” She looked off toward the bottom of the garden and Tom’s grave. For some moments she held that silent pose, a young person who could bear silence.

  “Your parents didn’t come.” It was as close to accusation as he could get; that they hadn’t come made him furious.

  With her eyes still on the grave, she shook her head. “They couldn’t get over that Tommy had AIDS. They couldn’t get past it. It’s the way some people are; they get stuck and can’t go on. The really tragic th
ing is that Tommy wasn’t gay.” Honey turned to look up at Melrose. “He didn’t bother telling people because they wouldn’t believe it; besides that, he didn’t think it should make a difference. He told Mum and Dad, finally, but they didn’t believe him either. After all, he had the mark, so what difference did it make if he was or wasn’t gay?”

  Melrose remembered what Johnny had told him. He said, “I’d have believed him, Honey. I think I’d have believed anything he told me. He was that kind of person; you believed him, that’s all.”

  A tear ran straight down Honey’s cheek. “Thanks. Thanks. It was only this one fellow-would you like to hear about this?”

  She asked this as a real question, not a rhetorical one. Honey, apparently, took things seriously.

  “Of course I would, Honey. Of course.”

  “It was just one time, a long time ago-it must’ve been fifteen or sixteen years. It was with a friend of his who’d got really sick; he died just after Tom was diagnosed. This was his best friend since childhood. They’d been through school together, dated together; he’s always been popular with girls-they’d been through just about everything together. After Bobby got the virus it was hardly any time, less than two years, before he had full-blown AIDS. He was dying and Tom went to visit him. He stayed for less than two weeks. He told me about it when he got sick himself; he’d wanted to comfort Bobby, Tom said. That’s all, just comfort. It was only a few times. He told me he’d gotten tested afterwards, more than once after Bobby died, but there wasn’t any sign Tom had it. Not until three years ago.” Honey had to look away. “It’s awful this should happen to Tom because of that, and yet I wonder if Tom’s being that sort of person, if it didn’t make all of us better somehow. If you know what I mean.”