The Lamorna Wink (23 page)

“True. But I can afford it. If they were rich, why in hell wouldn't they just buy what they needed? Someplace in Arizona or the south of France, nurses round the clock, fancy equipment?” He grunted as he lighted his cigarette, then remembered that Melrose smoked. “Sorry. You?” He offered the crumpled pack around.

Melrose shook his head, turning away the cigarettes, not wanting to smoke under Wiggins's steely stare. As soon as they could get back onto the topics of murder and disappearance instead of emphysema and other illnesses, he would light up himself. It shouldn't take long. He said, “But the south of France, that's not really what's wanted, or not all of what's wanted, is it?”

Both Moe and Wiggins raised a puzzled eyebrow. Wiggins said, “I'm not sure I follow, sir.”

“If you're dying, you don't want to do it alone. If you have no family, or even an indifferent family, and few friends, you'd likely be shuttled off to hospital, cheerless and antiseptic. That's not a cheering picture, is it?”

“No, it isn't,” said Moe Bletchley.

As hospitals were high on Wiggins's list of places where he'd most like to settle down, he ignored the question and took from his inside pocket one of the pictures Macalvie had given him of the dead woman. “Her name is Sada Colthorp. Did you know her?”

Moe frowned as he brought the picture close to his face and then held it arm's length away. He tried several different positions, as if moving it about would make it speak more tellingly of the woman shown. He shook his head. “Got any other shots of this woman?”

Wiggins pulled out a morgue picture, a full-face shot.

Bletchley put them side by side. “She looks vaguely familiar. What did you say her name was?”

“Sada Colthorp. You might have known her as Sadie May. Her maiden name.”

Frowning, he shook his head. “Nope. Neither name rings a bell with me.”

“She lived in Lamorna Cove as a girl.”

Moe shook his head again. “Still doesn't ring a bell.”

At just that moment, from the dining room beyond and out onto the sunroom's tiled floor jolted Morris Bletchley's wheelchair, occupied by a young man with dark hair, probably in his early thirties. He was holding a big white box on his knees. “Woodbine delivery!” He opened the big box to reveal iced doughnuts and several different kinds of pastry. Melrose's quick tally showed that there were at least twenty pieces of pastry and a dozen doughnuts.

“What the hell are you doing in my wheelchair, Tom? I keep telling you.” Moe peered into the box, more interested in the éclair he removed from it than the occupancy of his wheelchair. “
Damn,
these are good!”

“Brenda brought 'em. Did you know she used to live in Fulham? Right next door to Putney.”

“You told me. This is Tom—”

A clatter of coins interrupted Moe Bletchley's introduction. It came from the direction of the slot machines. The old lady was jumping up and down, at least as well as her stick legs could manage.

Moe Bletchley looked her way. “That damned machine pay off again? Have to fix it.” He grinned and finished his introduction. “This is Tom Letts.”

Tom Letts's good looks seemed fragile. His skin was pale, like Johnny's. Unlike Johnny's it bore the terrible stamp of Kaposi's sarcoma.

AIDS. Melrose hadn't even thought of this as one of the several terminal illnesses that would be likely to turn up at Bletchley Hall.

Tom said he was pleased to meet them and looked around, as if one of them, but he wasn't sure which, had something to say he had waited a long time to hear. He had one of the most ingenuous smiles Melrose had ever seen, and again he was reminded of Johnny Wells. They could have been brothers.

To Wiggins he said, “You here about the murder in Lamorna?”

When Wiggins nodded and smiled, Melrose marveled that the detective sergeant's response to Tom's disease was not to cut and run but one of kind regard. Wiggins, who claimed to be sought out by every springtime blade and blossom to test their pollen on, this same Wiggins could sit here and not turn a hair confronted by the ravaged body of a victim of AIDS.

“This woman.” He handed Tom the pictures, though Melrose was pretty sure Wiggins didn't expect him to recognize her. He really just wanted to include Tom in.

The two old chess players had come in and were seated in their same chairs, chessboard between them. The white box from the Woodbine now caught their attention and they began making their way toward it.

Moe leaned toward Melrose and Wiggins and whispered, “Got to make allowances for these two. Their memories are shot to hell.”

Memories shot to hell proved no obstacle to Sergeant Wiggins.

“These are the Hooper brothers,” said Moe Bletchley. “And that's Miss Livingston coming along. She'll make it eventually.”

Leaning on her cane and holding an antique mesh purse, heavy with coins, Miss Livingston made her slow way toward them, a look of grim determination stamped on her acorn face.

The two old gentlemen wasted no time on the strangers; they went immediately for the pastry. Hands started and hovered indecisively over the box.

Said one of the Hoopers, “I'm having my usual, a . . . a . . .”

“Doughnut,” said Moe, almost absently, as if he was used to supplying the Hooper brother with information.

“Right!” Hooper's hand snapped down and plucked up one with chocolate icing.

“So am I!” exclaimed his brother. “I'm having a”—he looked at what his brother had taken—“I'm having one of those . . . one of those . . .”

Miss Livingston had reached them by now. “Doughnut, you goddamned fool!” she yelled. “Here get your paws off.” And she parted them like Moses did the Red Sea. “I want one o' them puffy things.” She reached nimbly into the box for a cream puff. “Hel
lo,
cutie!” she said to Melrose.

He lavished a smile upon her, rose, and pulled a chair around. Gray-haired Miss Livingston put Melrose in mind of a small bird of prey, with her little beaky nose, darting eyes, and fingers tough as pincers.

One of the Hoopers watched the chair being pulled around and then followed suit, dragging over a bentwood chair from against the wall. His brother did the same, and now all seven of them were gathered around the table, the new people turning owlish eyes on the four who had been there.

The other Hooper asked gruffly, “Why'd you want to see us, Colonel?”

“I think the cryptogram's been broken,” said Moe, eyeing a cream cake.

The Hoopers looked at one another. “It
has
?”

“Both of you. You'd best go to Plan A before they come.”

The Hoopers stood up abruptly, one upsetting his chair. He picked it up, set it down with a thundering crack, and the two went back to their chess game, but not before Melrose heard one of them ask the other what Plan A was and saw the other shake his head, he didn't remember.

“Cryptogram?” asked Melrose.

Moe shrugged. “Hell if I know. They're always rattling on about secret codes and being spies. Of course, they'll forget it before they're through the dining room, so it does no harm.”

Tom said, “Still, it's like one thing they half remember with any consistency.” He laughed.

“It's retrograde amnesia, something like that,” said Moe. “It's not being able to remember something you heard not more than two minutes ago. They've both got Alzheimer's, but whether that's causing it, the doc doesn't know. Not surprising.”

Not caring a fig for the Hoopers' condition, little Miss Livingston's strong fingers clamped Melrose's forearm. “Let's you and me go for a walk out there around the grounds. There's some spots only I know about, dearie. They'd never find us. Besides”—here she shook her beaded bag and set the coins jingling—“I'm rich”

Not at all tempted by this invitation, nevertheless Melrose gave her a darling smile and made a quick movement to free himself from her grip.

Probably used to Miss Livingston's little ways, Moe Bletchley ignored her and said, “Tom here's been my chauffeur for years in London. He's such a good wheel man, there've been times I wished I could stick up a bank or a jeweler's, just so's I could zip out to the car with the swag, have Tom gun 'er up, and tear off on a chase.”

Moe said this with such obvious affection that Melrose could guess how an AIDS case had come to Bletchley Hall.

“How long have you been here, sir?” Wiggins asked Tom without (Melrose noted) shrinking back at all.

“Six months. But this is only since I got really bad.” He gestured toward his face and yet managed a smile. After all, he'd been lucky to get into Bletchley Hall; so few were able to.

“How many patients do you have staying here?” asked Wiggins.

“Twelve. Twelve's the capacity; there're twelve bedrooms besides the four for Matron, a nurse who's here full time, Jaynes, and me. The rest of the staff's not live-in. We have doctors, of course. One lives in St. Buryan. Another lives near Penzance.” Moe Bletchley suggested Wiggins might like a tour of the place and Wiggins accepted with alacrity. Tom wheeled out with them.

Melrose excused himself from the tour, spent some five minutes disengaging himself from Miss Livingston and her pincerlike fingers and walked back inside.

H
e walked through the voluptuous green dining room: That crystal! That silver! He liked the idea that all this finery was laid on in case there was even one guest who could make it downstairs for dinner. Perhaps there was more hope of recovery in setting a good table than in administering a newly discovered drug.

He stopped before one table to look at the delicate arrangement of mauve orchids and cyclamen; touched the thin crystal of a wineglass, so delicate that a glassblower's breath might have sighed it into existence; lifted a knife as heavy as a vault or as weighty as memory.

For that's how he felt; memory really could weigh one down. Perhaps that's what had happened to the Hooper brothers. They'd had to remember, at last, too much, and decided nothing was preferable. Melrose walked on.

There was another drawing room across from the blue room, still occupied by the two old ladies, who seemed not to have moved a muscle. Should he call for help? No, the breath of one lifted the frill of the lace collar on her jabot. She at least was still breathing, which meant the other probably was also.

The drawing room across from the blue room that he now entered was somewhat narrower, longer, and done in the burgundy red of an old Bordeaux. This room was darker and—if it could be so described—deeper, as if it had been steeped in wine. The colors at Bletchley Hall, Melrose noticed, were exceptionally strong—none of your weak-kneed off-whites, ecrus, or pastels but colors that seemed to demand that one just hold on.

The red room didn't get much natural light, facing north as it did; it depended on lamps being lit and the logs burning in the fireplace, as a fire burned now. Because of this play of light and dark, Melrose hadn't immediately seen Tom, who sat by the hearth. His eyes were closed or almost closed, and he hadn't noticed Melrose come in either.

Melrose hung back, not wanting to disturb his doze.

He turned and was about to leave when Tom said, “Hello. Come on in.” He was still in Moe Bletchley's wheelchair. Melrose walked to a wing chair in front of the fire.

Tom was holding a small sherry glass in his hand, which he raised. “Want some?”

“I do, yes. Just point me to it.”

“Over there.” Tom indicated a table beside a window hung in a sea of dark-red curtains. Melrose found the sherry decanter in among other decanters—cut glass, probably Waterford, that shade called “Waterford blue,” a unique assimilation of blue and gray. This table was stocked with the best and most expensive whiskies, gins, and vodkas. “I'm amazed,” he said, coming back with his sherry glass, Lalique, he thought, remembering Marshall Trueblood's lessons. The glass was shaped like a tulip just beginning to open.

“What's more amazing is how seldom we use it—the drink. It must be the idea that what's so readily available loses a lot of its power to tempt you. You'd think all of us would be driven to drink, wouldn't you?”

Melrose smiled. “Maybe. Listen: Why do you like that wheelchair so much?”

Tom smiled too. “Because it's fancy, it's fun, and it gets his goat. You're living in Seabourne, aren't you.”

“I am, yes. At least for a little while.”

“It's haunted.”

Melrose laughed. “You're not the first person to tell me that.”

“It is.”

“Come on, Tom. To tell the truth, the place does give me the feeling of—um, a movie set. It really does. One expects to see spectral shapes forming at the top of the stairs. Anyway, I take it you've been in it?”

“I've stayed there.”

“You've known Morris Bletchley for some time?”

“Like he said, I was his chauffeur for years. Mostly in London. He had a terraced house in Putney, maybe still does, though he never leaves here much, now.” He turned his head to look out of the tall window and smiled as if the memory made him happy. “That was just like him, living in Putney instead of Belgravia or some swank house in W-One. It was a small house, too, the Putney house. There was just me, a cook who came in daily, and an au pair for the kids, who used to come and see him a lot. They really loved him.”

“His grandchildren?”

Tom nodded. “Noah and Esmé. Nice kids. I used to drive them places: the zoo, films, Chick'nKings.” He flashed Melrose a smile. “Of course.”