The little eulogy was so heartfelt that Melrose could say nothing; he simply nodded.
There was another silence, shared. Then Melrose said, “You see that boy over there?” He nodded in Johnny’s direction.
“Yes. He looks really sad.”
“He is. His aunt was murdered last night.” Melrose would have thought it impossible for Honey’s face to grow even paler, but it did.
“What?”
“Police think the same person’s responsible.” But that’s hardly a consolation to Honey.
“Poor boy. How awful for him. Do you think I should go talk to him?”
Melrose smiled. If anyone could infer human need well enough to answer that question, it was Honey herself.
“I think that’s a good idea.”
And she did. Melrose watched. He saw Johnny turn to face her and watched as Johnny listened. Honey talked for a little while, leaving her hand on his arm as she looked up at him.
Melrose watched as Johnny’s expression changed. It was as if the lid of a coffin had opened and the person who lay there, mistaken for dead, at last could breathe again.
Honey had the touch.
60
Murder or no murder, funeral or no funeral, Agatha could not be avoided forever. Melrose was to have tea with her that afternoon and he talked Richard Jury into coming along.
It surprised him that the Woodbine Tearoom was open and full, as it usually was, at four o’clock. That it was open for business at all was in part owing to the efforts of Mrs. Hayter, whom Melrose recalled saying that she often baked her popular berry pies for Woodbine, and that when Brenda was called away she would come in and help out.
Brenda had certainly been “called away.” And, Mrs. Hayter declared, “Enough said on that subject, I’m sure.”
Melrose could see tears forming on her lower lids, but her mouth was pinched with barely contained rage. But it wasn’t “enough said,” judging from the whispers flying from behind hands at the other tables.
And God know it would never be “enough said” for Agatha. She was so eager to get down to it she could barely spare a hello for Richard Jury, whom she was usually all over like a fishnet. “I knew the first time I had dealings with that woman Brenda that something was wrong.”
“What dealings, Lady Ardry?” asked Jury, as he sipped his tea. There were still things that didn’t add up, that made no sense-most important, the murder of Tom Letts.
“No dealings,” said Melrose. “Unless you count your vain attempt to pry her recipe for Sweet Ladies out of her.” Melrose watched as Johnny came through the swinging door, a boy who shouldered his responsibilities as if they were the heavy tray he carried. It was piled high with cups, pastries, and buns.
“Don’t be absurd,” said Agatha. That being the brunt of her rebuttal, she changed the subject. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she said, “With his aunt shot just last night, I’m surprised to see that boy working.”
Melrose watched him. His movements were heavy and his smile a mere remnant of yesterday’s. “I’m not surprised. Do you think he’d be better off lying about in bed, thinking of her and how she died?”
“Work,” said Jury, “is the best antidote for what ails you, at least according to my boss, who has little experience to back him up. I’m sure Sergeant Wiggins would disagree about the best antidote, he having a great deal of experience to back him up.”
Johnny came over to their table. He was introduced to Jury, who stood up to shake his hand. “Johnny, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
He looked at Jury and seemed in danger of crumpling. Jury often had that effect on people; he could project an empathy that breached their defenses and frequently had them turning away, weeping. This was one thing that made him so good with witnesses.
“Thanks,” said Johnny. Then, as if this response might be too perfunctory, he said it again: “Thank you.” He blinked several time. “Chris was great, wasn’t she?” he asked Melrose.
Melrose had told Johnny about Chris’s visit to Bletchley House. “The greatest, Johnny.” He had only been with her for a very short time, but he felt that he spoke the truth. “The greatest,” he repeated.
Even Agatha managed to mumble a few words meant to console. “Sorry… great pity… awful for you.”
Melrose asked, “Where’s Honey? Did she go back to Dartmouth?”
Johnny looked over his shoulder. “No, actually. She’s in the kitchen.”
And to Melrose’s surprise and as if she were waiting for her cue, Honey came through the door, butting it with her hip; she was carrying both a pot of tea and a tiered cake plate. Both of these she set on Melrose’s table.
“This is for you, compliments of the house,” said Honey, as if she’d worked here for years. Her smile was brilliant.
Agatha’s was hardly less so when she saw the selection of cakes and meringues. “My goodness, thank you.”
Johnny said, “It’s for all your help.”
“We do what we can,” said Agatha, taking credit.
“What help?” asked Melrose, quite sincerely. “I don’t feel I was much help.”
“You certainly were, Mr. Plant,” said Johnny. “For starters, it was you got police here by knowing Mr. Macalvie.”
“I don’t think he’d claim to have been much help, either.”
“Okay,” said Jury. “I’ll make the claim for Sergeant Wiggins and give you his recipe for herbal tea so it’ll be ready for him when he comes in.”
Seeing that Johnny was distinctly brighter when Honey was around, Melrose asked her how long she was staying.
Honey sighed. “I’d like to stay longer, but I’ve got to go back to school. I got excused for three days and tomorrow’s the third day, so that’s when I have to leave.”
“I want her to come and work here during the summer.” As if he needed a reason for this, Johnny said, “There’s only Mrs. Hayter and me to run this place, and I’d like to keep it going. It was Chris’s life, after all.”
Honey said, “I’d really like to but I promised this family that’s going to the south of France I’d go along to watch the kiddies. You know, as an au pair. But I might be able to get out of it if I can find someone to take my place. I hope so, at least. I always did like Bletchley, and maybe I can take Mr. Bletchley’s mind off things by being around.”
Melrose had stopped listening. He was staring off across the room, his mind elsewhere; he was trying to remember. Something Tom had said. Or Moe Bletchley. Had they been talking about the south of France? He frowned. No, that wasn’t it. His look at Honey must have been so probing, she asked if something was wrong.
And then he had it.
The au pair!
He stood up, setting the teacups to rattling. “Come on,” he said to Jury.
“Come on where? I’m not finished.”
“Now! Agatha can take care of the bill.”
Jury rose. There’s a first time for everything, he thought.
61
Mr. Bletchley,” Jury said, “I’m Richard Jury, New Scotland Yard.”
Morris Bletchley shook the proffered hand. “You’re a little late, aren’t you, sir?” He could not keep his face from clouding over. “A little late.”
“I’m sorry,” Jury said, with all the earnestness of one who felt he really should have appeared earlier.
“He’s been in Northern Ireland,” said Melrose, as if he had to justify Jury’s dereliction of duty, and that a stint in Northern Ireland would justify anything.
“Of course,” said Moe Bletchley. “Just a little black humor and not very funny at that. Let’s sit down.”
They’d been standing in the wide hall between the blue and red rooms. Moe led them into the blue room and asked if they’d like something: tea? whisky? Both declined.
“There’s something I want to ask you,” said Melrose. “Tom described your house in Putney, said it wasn’t very big, three bedrooms, one of them for the au pair. You had one for when the childr
en came to visit.”
Moe’s gaze was puzzled. “That’s right.”
“Who was she?”
Morris Bletchley looked very unhappy. “Mona Freeman was the name she gave me. She was actually Ramona Friel.” Moe looked at them and gave a helpless little shrug. “I wouldn’t have known if she hadn’t told me, much later, just before she came back to Bletchley.” His frown deepened. “I was completely surprised. I didn’t know Ramona by sight because she’d been away at school for years, and hardly ever went into the village the times I was at the house. Wouldn’t’ve seen her anyway because she’d been away, like I said. She never told her mother she was working for me-well obviously, since she’d changed her name to hide the fact. Brenda didn’t want her in London, working.
“All Ramona wanted from me was to help her-not an abortion, mind you, but just to sustain her until the baby was born. I told her she really should tell her mother, but she didn’t want to. Finally, though, she did. I guess Mona just had to have her mother’s support. And that’s the last I ever saw of her until I heard the poor girl had died. I could certainly feel for Brenda, I’ll tell you.”
“Did she tell you who the father was?”
Sadly, Moe shook his head. “No. I knew it was Tom. But that, I’m sure, Ramona didn’t tell her mother; she swore me to secrecy on that score. I’d have known anyway, wouldn’t I? She refused to tell him, adamantly refused. If she had, Tom would have done something; he’d have married her. But she didn’t want to marry anyone. Very stubborn girl.” He smiled slightly but then looked from Plant to Jury, as if he feared what was coming. “I was told she died of that non-Hodgkins leukemia.”
“That’s what Brenda Friel told people. But I’ll bet you any amount of money that Ramona Friel died from some complication of AIDS. If not AIDS directly, then indirectly. Whatever was wrong with Ramona was exacerbated by this virus. Didn’t Brenda know Tom Letts? Didn’t he drive you here from London?”
Moe shook his head. “Maybe once or twice. It’s a hell of a drive from London. No, Brenda didn’t know Tom; she certainly didn’t know he’d worked for me in London.”
“Brenda Friel didn’t know who the father was and found out only recently about this Putney arrangement. Then she knew the father must have been Tom Letts.”
Morris Bletchley looked away then sharply back again. “Brenda Friel’s the one who shot him? Jesus.” Moe leaned over, his head in his hands.
“She had a motive, certainly.” said Jury. “She found out somehow.”
His head still in his hands, Moe shook it back and forth, back and forth. “A couple of weeks ago-feels like years-Tom was talking to her about Putney. She said she had family-some cousins, whatever-in Fulham. You know, right next door. Brenda’s not stupid. Ramona’d worked in Putney and Ramona’d died of AIDS.”
Melrose and Jury were silent, watching him.
Finally Moe asked, “And Chris Wells? What did she have to do with all this?”
“I’m guessing again, but I’d say Chris Wells presented a danger after Tom was murdered. Chris would have been the only person who knew Ramona had the virus. So it was not what Chris knew then, it’s what she would know if Tom Letts were suddenly murdered.”
Morris Bletchley set his head in his hands again, shaking it. “Poor Ramona, that poor girl. Ramona was so good with Noah and Esmé.” He stood up. “It’s too much. You know whom I suspected: my daughter-in-law. I’ve never really liked Karen. She’s just so plausible.”
Melrose knew exactly what he meant. Plausible. He remembered that enjoyable evening at Seabourne, marred by a moment of discomfort, when she’d shown her resentment of Morris Bletchley and a certain banal turn of mind. Small things, and perhaps he’d been small-minded, but he supposed a person should attend to his intuitive responses to small things.
“And I’ve always known she married Danny for his money. Danny”-he looked at them sadly-“never wanted to leave here. Karen was the one who was always agitating to go back to London.”
“She told me,” said Melrose, “just the opposite. She told me a story that was half fact and half fantasy. I think she wanted to make sure police understood there were other people on the scene because she was afraid your son would come under suspicion.”
“You mean that she would.” Moe sighed. “She’d want to convince the world she’s the inconsolable mother. It’s Danny who’s inconsolable.” He looked around the beautiful room as if the blue had fled from it, as if it were drained of color. “Will we ever know what really happened?”
Plant had gone to call the Penzance police station, where Jury now imagined Macalvie questioning Brenda Friel. He said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Bletchley. We’ll know.”
62
He’d been here in one of the interrogation rooms of the Penzance police station for half an hour, waiting for her to say something.
Brenda Friel hadn’t gotten beyond hello and asking for a cigarette.
“Where are the video tapes, Brenda?”
Macalvie assumed she wasn’t going to answer that question, either. She surprised him, even though the answer was a question.
“What tapes?”
“The film Simon Bolt took for you and for himself, presumably to peddle over the Internet. A good crossover between snuff film and kiddy porn. The one Sada Colthorp had when you shot her.”
Her smile was all for herself. Hemmed in, parsimonious, nothing left over, not even bad humor, for anyone else. God knows not for him.
Despite her relentless silence, Macalvie was getting to her; he could feel it. It was an odd chemistry; he’d felt it before with suspects. It wasn’t his experience as a policeman or his cleverness that was getting through. It was something else, some quality in himself that the person under question seemed to think they shared. Macalvie hated the feeling. Not that he empathized, not that he understood. Some killers he did come to understand. Brenda wasn’t one of them. It made him uncomfortable to sense she didn’t believe this. That’s your problem, boyo.
“Yeah, a real classic,” he went on, “that film. I can see the pedophiles slobbering all the way from Bournemouth to John o’Groat’s.”
Her eyes were sparking now, live wires touched to some electrical source. Anger? Good.
“But it didn’t start out that way, Brenda.” He got up and walked over to a little window, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, holding back his raincoat. “Before Ramona died you wouldn’t in a million years have thought of having a sociopath like Bolt follow those kids to their deaths. I can see it, I can just see it. Noah and Esmé-” He looked round at her, sitting there, not looking at him. The children’s names touched off nothing in her-no sympathy, no remorse. At least, these emotions weren’t present on her face.
He went on. “You know what I’ve been wondering? How it is you didn’t send the tape to Morris Bletchley. Wasn’t that the idea? Make him suffer as much as you had?”
“No.”
Macalvie kept himself from turning round, from registering surprise. He was surprised the film hadn’t served the double purpose as instrument of death and sadistic revenge.
“Not knowing is worse. Now, though, I would. I’d like to rub his face in it,” said Brenda. “By taking Ramona into that house, he killed her as surely as if he’d held a gun to her head.”
Fucking melodrama, thought Macalvie. “Seems to me Mr. Bletchley provided your daughter with safe harbor. Would you rather have had her wandering all over London? You never wanted her to go, and she didn’t communicate with you.” That Bletchley could be seen as a savior, Macalvie knew, would fuel her rage.
“Safe harbor? Throwing Ramona into bed with a bloody gay chauffeur who’d got AIDS?” She made a noise in her throat of disgust, dismissal.
Macalvie did turn around then. “Morris Bletchley-” No. Don’t defend him anymore, even though God knows the man deserves someone’s defending him. “I guess that wasn’t very smart of him.”
Her sour laugh was more a snarl.
“H
e paid a heavy price, Brenda. His grandchildren.”
“No price could have been too heavy.”
She was not crying, but tears were clotting her throat. It was thick with them. Wait. Wait for a moment. Macalvie leaned wearily against the cold wall, as if sick of death. The weariness was not an act. He was drowning in it.
Her only child. He could sympathize with that part of it, certainly. Then it occurred to him, and he was surprised by the conviction. “You didn’t see it. The film. You didn’t watch it.” Now he was leaning on the table, arms rod-straight. She looked up at him, disclosing nothing. He said, “You weren’t there when Simon Bolt shot that film. You didn’t see it.” He could have hit her. You bitch!
And then he realized she’d finally admitted her tie to Simon Bolt. She’d forgotten herself enough to do this, just as he’d forgotten himself enough to want to kill her. “Tell me how he did it.”
She actually shrugged, as if it were really no affair of hers, since she hadn’t been there. “He had what I guess you’d say was an assistant. I imagine Simon Bolt had a string of assistants, including Sadie May. They met up with the Bletchley children in the woods just beyond their house, several times. He took pictures, Polaroid shots, which he showed me. Nothing nasty, of course. They might have reported that to the grown-ups back at the house. He merely took pictures of them playing. Told them he was a filmmaker and showed them one. He had this little telly, you know, screen hardly as big as your hand. Anyway, he told them he could do one of them, if they fancied it. He found out a lot about the Bletchleys, about the boat down at the bottom of the stone steps. I expect he just made up a story to get them to go down there, or the girl did. Or the girl led them down there just when the tide was coming in. I don’t know. I didn’t ask for details.” Her voice took on a colorless, hollow quality, as if she were forever removed from what she was describing.
She was, thought Macalvie. She had arranged this but hadn’t had the courage to look at it. That way, perhaps in her own mind, it had happened without her. “He would have given you a tape. A copy. He’d keep a couple for himself.”
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