The Lamorna Wink

by Martha Grimes

  “Oh, he did. Said it was for proof. Well, I didn’t need proof, did I? They were drowned. Proof enough there. The Bletchleys left Seabourne. End of that marriage for all intents and purposes.”

  “Yet Morris Bletchley didn’t leave. He stayed. He would have stayed through hell rather than desert his grandchildren. He must have looked at it that way.”

  She didn’t comment.

  “Sada Colthorp put you in touch with Bolt.”

  “She told me about him. I’d never have used her as a go-between. She couldn’t be trusted. Obviously.”

  “Sada came back a couple of weeks ago and tried to blackmail you. She had a copy of that tape, or maybe it was Bolt’s copy that she found in the house. Only there was nothing on that tape to link you to the children. You’d been very careful. It was only her word against yours. You thought she’d be believed instead of you?”

  “Her word was what she intended to whisper in Morris Bletchley’s ear. Along with giving him that tape. Him seeing that tape? Why, he’d have turned heaven and earth upside down to discover who was responsible, and if she told him it was my idea, he’d concentrate on me. He’d have had me investigated in a way police don’t have time for-they’ve got a hundred other people, a hundred other murders to deal with. Morris Bletchley would only have me. Even if he couldn’t prove it, even if he couldn’t satisfy himself, Moe Bletchley would’ve hounded me the rest of my life.”

  “But Chris Wells?” Macalvie didn’t have to frame a question or a conclusion. She had reached that point where it was in for a penny, in for a pound. She was even more tired than he was; she figured she might as well tell the rest of it. Finally, suspects wanted to. They wanted someone else to know either how clever they’d been or how much they’d suffered. Finally, Brenda Friel wanted him to know.

  She said, “If Chris were all of a sudden to leave the village at the same time there was a murder in Lamorna Cove, and if it was someone Chris had been known to hate-well, how else could police look at it except the way you did? The minute she set foot back in Bletchley, you’d have arrested her. My word against hers. Right?”

  Her smile was like something engraved in acid. He wanted to slap it off her face. He asked, “But why? Why did you want Chris Wells out of the way?

  “She knew, didn’t she? About the AIDS? She was the only one I told. She was no danger to me until I killed Tom Letts. I had to get her out of the way because she would have sorted it. It wouldn’t have taken long for Chris to do that, not her; she’s as clever as her nephew.”

  “Why did you wait so long to kill Tom Letts? Four years.”

  “Why? Because I didn’t know it was him. I only just discovered it a few weeks ago. Ramona never told me who the da was.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments.

  Then Macalvie said, “The Bletchleys had children, Chris had Johnny. Not only did she have Johnny, he was always there, in your face, the kind of kid every parent hopes his kid will be like.”

  She didn’t reply to this, only looked off at the wall as if she could see through it.

  For a couple of minutes they sat that way, Macalvie staring at her, she staring off into nothing.

  “Where’s the fucking tape, Brenda?”

  PART V. The Uninvited

  63

  Jury and Plant were standing on the pavement in front of the Drowned Man when a white Rolls hove into view and continued its glide down Bletchley’s main street. The late sun lapped about its bonnet and boot, dazzling pedestrians who, like Plant and Jury, stopped to watch.

  “What in hell’s that?” asked Jury.

  “Moby Dick. What are they doing here?”

  Jury squinted as the car got closer. “Doesn’t look like a whale. I think it’s Marshall Trueblood driving.”

  “Same thing. Ye gods.”

  The car drew abreast of them and the passenger window whispered down. A white silk-sleeved arm was thrust out and a hand waved. The car glided to a stop. “Richard Jury! Oh, what a treat!” called out Diane Demorney. Melrose, the non-treat, got only a perfunctory “Hello.”

  Like a cork from a champagne bottle, Marshall Trueblood popped from behind the wheel. Champagne was the color of his Armani suit; his shirt, pocket handkerchief, and tie were all done in watery Monet-garden pastels-pinks, blues, lemons-bringing to mind more a box of saltwater taffy than the gardens at Giverny. Still, he was, as usual, sartorial perfection.

  Trueblood could barely contain himself. After opening the passenger-side door he extended a hand toward Diane, who took about the same amount of time as Cleopatra did getting off her barge.

  Diane was dressed to match the Rolls: white, slick, and moneyed. But she made tracks from car to curb when it looked as if Trueblood was about to steal all the storytelling thunder. He said, “Wait until you hear about Viv!”

  “Marshall!” Diane could really crack the whip when she wanted to. Indeed, this was Diane at her energetic best, talking without a martini to hand, but that lack was about to be filled.

  Jury said, “There’s a nice little tearoom right behind you on the other side of the street.”

  If a look could shrug, hers did. “There’s a nice little bar right in front of me on this side.” When it came to bars, Diane was a radar gun; she could pick them out faster than cops could target speeding cars.

  As they filed into the Drowned Man, Jury asked, “But what about Vivian? What’s going on?”

  “Viv-Viv’s going to-” Trueblood’s answer was cut short by the heel of Diane’s shoe grinding down on the instep of his Hugo Boss one.

  “Can we get a room here?” asked Diane “Or is there a boardinghouse?”

  “You can join Agatha in Lemming Cottage. It’s a B and B.”

  Diane shuddered.

  “Listen,” said Melrose, annoyed. “Is this related to all of that stuff you were gibbering about a couple of nights ago when you woke me up at two A.M.?”

  “Never mind,” said Diane, homing to the bar.

  When they were seated round a table and had been served by the unenthusiastic and underemployed Pfinn, Melrose said, “You should have taken the train from Paddington station instead of doing all that driving.”

  Diane actually stopped the first martini on its way to her blood-red lips. “Taken what?” She had never been one to explore alternative modes of travel.

  “You made good time if you left Long Pidd this morning.”

  “We didn’t. We left on Tuesday.”

  “Tuesday? But that’s three days ago!”

  Trueblood smiled stingily at Diane. “Despite the need for haste, Diane insisted on stopping at Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons. You know, that restaurant where Raymond Blanc is the chef.”

  Jury frowned. “But isn’t that place near Oxford? I was on a case once very near it.”

  Trueblood pounded his drink on the table. “Here, here! A Scotland Yard man who’s a bon vivant. Yes, it is near Oxford.”

  “Oxford’s north, Diane. Cornwall’s south,” said Melrose.

  “Don’t I know it,” said Trueblood. “We stayed there two nights. Food’s a rave, I’ll give it that.”

  This time it was Jury who pounded his pint on the table, uncharacteristically for him. “So, give. What’s this prodigious news you haven’t been telling us?”

  Plugging a cigarette into her long ebony holder, Diane said, “Our Vivian’s going to marry the count.”

  “Count Dracula,” offered Trueblood, in case Jury had forgotten.

  Which he hadn’t. “Oh, for God’s sake. That’s news? She’s been going to marry him for-what? Eight years? Nine?” Complacent now, he drank his beer.

  “No, old sweat, you don’t understand: Dracula’s here. The ship’s landed, the coffin’s ashore, and all over Northants there’s a shortage of crosses and garlic.”

  “Oh, do bloody shut it,” said Diane, who occasionally reverted to her Manchester upbringing. She turned to Jury and Melrose. “He’s in Long Pidd. The wedding’s in two weeks’ time, and s
he’s in the process of sending out invitations. So we’ve come to collect you,” she said to Melrose. To Jury, she added, “You too, except you’re not so easily collected.” She sighed. “You work for a living.” She said this as if it had a strange and alien ring to it. “Naturally, I’ve been doing what I can, writing warnings into her horoscope. Things like ‘Beware any venture requiring new clothes.’ ”

  “Oscar Wilde said that,” Melrose informed her.

  “Oh, hell, I thought I did. Then ‘You are about to embark on the darkest journey of your life’ and ‘You will escalate fatuousness into a fatal fall.’ ”

  “Sounds good,” said Melrose. “What does it mean?”

  “Who cares as long as it sounds good? Anyway, none of this has had any effect, as far as I can tell.” Diane crooked a finger at Pfinn, who paid the table even less attention than Dick Scroggs would have done. Melrose got up and went to the bar, first en-joining Diane to say nothing more until he got back. He didn’t want to miss a word.

  As if taking Melrose literally, there wasn’t a word spoken until Trueblood nodded toward the dimly lit doorway and asked, “Whose dogs?”

  They were out in full force, all five of them lined up and solidly together, staring at the newcomers’ table. “Pfinn’s,” said Jury. “They line up like that.”

  “Okay, go on,” said Melrose, depositing the round of drinks and salt-and-vinegar crisps in the middle of the table.

  “As I was saying, our Vivian didn’t appear to be paying much attention to the horoscopes.”

  “The only thing we could think of was sabotaging something or other,” said Trueblood, as he tore open one of the crisp packets.

  “Sabotage?” Melrose forgot his fresh pint of Old Peculiar and leaned forward, all ears.

  Trueblood was searching his pockets and found what he wanted in an inside coat pocket. He unfolded a small square of white cardboard and laid it in front of Jury and Plant. “Of course, all she has to do is hand in fresh copy. Still, I see it as delaying things for a while. One has to give the person ample time to respond.”

  They both looked at it, Jury and Plant. It said:

  The pleasure of your company

  is requested at

  the marriage of Miss Vivian Rivington

  and Count Dracula on

  the fifteenth of October at two o’clock

  at the church of St. Rules

  Melrose sniggered. “Did she get them?”

  “Of course. The shop delivered.”

  Melrose sniggered again.

  Jury looked from one to the other of them. “Of course, she would have absolutely no idea who did this, you simpletons.”

  Trueblood raised his Campari and lime. “Oh, I expect she’ll sort that out. I’ve been avoiding her lately.”

  “I don’t wonder,” said Jury.

  Diane said, languidly, “As Marshall says, it only delays things for a while, for her to get fresh invitations printed up. I’ve been wracking my brain-”

  Which didn’t put up much of a fight, thought Melrose.

  “-for some solution, but I can’t come up with anything short of killing him. That is of course a possibility for us, but it would be much better were Vivian to call a halt to this thing of her own accord, which I’m sure she wants to do anyway.”

  “What makes you so sure?” asked Melrose.

  “Mel-rose, try to engage your mind, will you? Because she’s having the wedding here, of course, I mean in Long Pidd instead of Venice. She’s counting on us stopping it.”

  Jury said, “Come on, Diane, Vivian’s not that spineless.”

  “Yes, she is,” said Trueblood, though not unkindly. “Spineless is too harsh a word, perhaps, but by now the poor girl’s totally intimidated by the fact she’s let this engagement go on for donkey’s years.”

  “What’s he like, then: Dracula?” Melrose asked. But when Trueblood opened his mouth to speak, Melrose said, “I mean, really. I saw him once, so don’t try telling me he looks like a toad.” To Jury, he said, “You remember him, don’t you? We were in Stratford-upon-Avon, in the Dirty Duck.”

  “Vaguely,” Jury said.

  “In addition to being fairly tall, fairly dark, and fairly handsome, he’s politeness on a platter and usually seems to be lost in contemplation of a world beyond the Jack and Hammer.”

  “Is there one?” asked Diane, tapping ash from her cigarette. “And am I in it?” She looked vaguely, dreamily around the room.

  Trueblood went on. “I think he’s intelligent, but since he doesn’t talk much, it’s hard to say. It’s all so-irregular.”

  “What does that mean?” asked Jury.

  “Vivian shouldn’t marry a foreigner. She shouldn’t even marry a person we don’t know. He won’t fit, you know, our little routines.”

  Said Diane, “He won’t be around for our little routines, Marshall. I expect they’ll want to live in Venice instead of Long Pidd.”

  “Good lord!” said Jury. “Prefer Venice to Long Piddleton? What philistines!”

  Trueblood took him seriously. “It’s the truth, though. We don’t like it at all.”

  “Tell me, who’s we?”

  “Who? Why the Long Piddletonians. Ada Crisp is dead against it, as is Miss Twinney. Jurvis the Butcher is all out of sorts. Dick Scroggs doesn’t think this foreigner has any business just marching in here and carrying off Vivian. Trevor Sly’s beside himself-”

  “No,” said Jury. “Richard Jury’s beside himself listening to this twaddle. Trevor Sly? Since when did any of you ever give a bloody damn what he thinks? And how did you collect these opinions anyway? Do a door-to-door canvass?”

  “Well, no, not exactly…”

  “Not exactly. What you did was buttonhole anybody you could and talk about Franco Giopinno in most unflattering terms. The point being,” Jury went on, just as testily, “how do you know she isn’t in love with him?”

  Three pairs of eyes looked at him as if he’d taken leave of his senses.

  Love?

  Love was quickly jettisoned. “I hope you’re intending to come back with us, old sweat,” said Trueblood to Plant. “We’ve got to fix up-you know-something, some way to get Viv-Viv out of this.”

  Jury’s tone was sarcastic, something he rarely reverted to. “I hope it’s as successful as your trip to Venice to announce my impending wedding.”

  They had done this but preferred not to be reminded.

  Trueblood said, “It did work, Superintendent, remember? It got her back to Northants, didn’t it? C’mon, Melrose, think, will you?” He tented his hand over his brow as if his brain wattage was about to blow.

  Melrose sighed. “Why bother? Look who’s here to do it for us.” He nodded in the direction of the doorway.

  Lady Ardry, accompanied by her doppelganger, Esther Laburnum, filled the spot recently vacated by the five dogs. It wasn’t, Melrose decided, much of a trade-off. They stood, arm in arm, then moved forward toward the table, still arm in arm, as smoothly as a couple in a ballroom dancing contest.

  Said Agatha, “Well! Here’s half of Long Piddleton come like the mountain to Muhammad. I’d like to introduce my good friend Esther Laburnum.” She did so, coming round to Jury. “And this is my great friend Superintendent Richard Jury, who’s solved more cases than you could shake a stick at, but like your typical policeman is never around when you need him.” Agatha laughed at her little joke. “Thank you,” she said to Jury, who had politely risen to pull two chairs up to the table.

  Esther Laburnum, who could talk a blue streak selling real estate, was silent; but, then, Agatha would make up for it, as she was always worth two people talking. They sat down and she ordered large sherries for both of them.

  “Superintendent, this is a bad thing, isn’t it? I was astounded when I heard it was that Friel woman-”

  Melrose interrupted. “I thought you said you suspected her right along, Agatha.”

  “More or less. Yes, my heart does go out to that boy, having his aunt k
illed in that way.”

  Was she, Melrose wondered, delivering a message to this boy, Melrose?

  “What will happen to him?”

  Esther Laburnum drank off her sherry in one go and, thus lubricated, found her faculty of speech had not deserted her. “The Woodbine is heavily in debt. Of course, it belongs to young John now, or the controlling interest does. Brenda Friel’s interest in it-well, who knows who that’ll go to.” She looked round the table as if she expected someone there to cough up an answer. “She’s no family I know of, except some distant relations in London; her life revolved around that girl of hers, Ramona. Oh, such a tragedy, such a tragedy. I expect John’ll have to sell up to pay off the debts, but property such as that tearoom is not in demand.”

  While Esther handed down this litany of woe, Agatha sat there smiling approval as if Esther were a wind-up doll set to present the opinions of its mistress.

  “The dear boy,” Esther continued, “seemed not to want to heed my advice, but then I expect he’s too upset to think of practical matters. I told him that perhaps he could induce Mrs. Hayter to help run the place as long as her sympathy was involved-”

  Even Marshall Trueblood was taken aback, listening to such blatant cynicism.

  “-to do the baking and so forth, but I couldn’t imagine her doing all of it, and advised him again, quite firmly, to sell up.”

  “Who’s the buyer?” asked Diane Demorney, narrowly regarding Esther through a scrim of cigarette smoke.

  Esther sat up straight, her hands fluttering about her throat-her pearls, her neckline. “What? What are you suggesting?”

  Diane shrugged. “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m merely saying you must have a buyer. You seem to be so anxiously advising this boy to sell his property. Sounds like there’s scarcely a moment to lose, I, mean, seeing how you intrude upon his grief this way.”

  There was dead silence, as there so often is if one speaks a hugely embarrassing truth. Diane looked at Melrose and then away again with a tart little smile. A speech like this from Diane came around as often as a chorus of caroling goldfish at Christmas.