The Lamorna Wink (30 page)

“Oh! Sorry.” Melrose threw the door wide.

Jury shrugged out of his coat and looked for an available coat rack or surface. Melrose took it and tossed it over the staircase banister. “Come on into the library. There's a fire.”

Jury settled into the chair Daniel Bletchley had occupied earlier. With a strong sense of déjà vu, Melrose handed him a drink. It was true; Dan Bletchley did have something in him that reminded Melrose of Richard Jury. No wonder he and Daniel had hit it off.

“This fellow who was murdered last night, Tom Letts, over at the nursing home in Bletchley.”

Melrose felt Jury hadn't dropped a beat since the last time they'd seen each other. It was as if they'd been discussing this case all along. “But how do you know about him?”

“Because I've been three hours in Exeter talking to Brian Macalvie. Why was I in Exeter? Because the ferry from Cork goes into Wales. Why was I in Cork instead of Belfast? Because I had to go to Dublin at the last moment. Why was I in—”

“Look, I'll leave, if you think the conversation would go better without me.”

Jury laughed. “Sorry. I was just saving you the trouble of asking a lot of inane questions.”

“Inane? Thanks. So Brian Macalvie filled you in.”

“At length. He seems to have taken this case pretty much to heart. But I don't know why that should surprise me. He usually does take cases to heart.”

“Remember Dartmoor? That pub named Help the Poor Struggler? He put his foot through the jukebox when someone played a song—what was that song?”

“Molly something.” And Jury started to sing: “
Oh, mahn dear, did'ja niver hear, o' pretty Molly da da da.
”

“Brannigan! That's it, that's it!” Then Melrose sang: “
She's gone away and
—and—what?”

“
And left, me, and
—”

Then they sang together or, rather, apart:

“
And left me, and I'll niver be a mahn again!
”

They laughed, but then Jury said, “Christ, why does love have to be so sad?” He rolled the cool glass across his forehead. “I'm lightheaded; I haven't had any sleep in a couple of days.”

“You can sleep here, of course.”

“Thanks. That pub in the village didn't much tempt me.”

“The Drowned Man. Sergeant Wiggins is staying there.”

Jury smiled. “When this case is closed, or even if it's not, may I have him back?”

“Don't blame
me.
It's foot-through-the-jukebox Macalvie who insisted on getting him down from London.”

“He's always liked having Wiggins about. Funny.” Jury looked around the softly lighted room. “Nice room, this. Nice house.”

“I've got it for three months. Look, since you're here, give some thought to this business, will you? The only thing I have in common with Hamlet is that I've been thinking ‘too much on the event.' ”

“I don't believe it's thinking too much; that's just a symptom. What's causing it? I know what's causing it for Macalvie: the murder of those two kids. For four years, he's been a little obsessed. Really, it reminds me of the whole Molly Brannigan thing. Molly Singer, I mean.”

But Melrose remembered that it hadn't been Macalvie alone who'd been interested in Molly.

Jury had been looking over the silver-framed snapshots and now picked one up. “These are the children? What a tragedy. And what a puzzle. If Macalvie hasn't solved it, who could? He can cut away everything extraneous to a situation. He's like a laser.” Jury drank the last of his whisky. “I can't do that. I get too muddied up by stuff. Anyway, he's sent you a message.”

Melrose did not tell him that Macalvie could get muddied up and overinvolved himself.

Jury reached into the pocket of his shirt, under a heavy Aran sweater, and pulled out a folded paper. He spread this on the coffee table between them and smoothed it out. “It's about Morris Bletchley and Tom Letts.” It was a diagram of the red drawing room. “Does this look accurate to you?”

Melrose put on his glasses. “Yes, absolutely.”

“What Macalvie says is that if he wanted a cleaner view of the target, he'd have picked windows two or three”—Jury pointed—“and not window number one.” Jury tapped the representation of the window through which the bullet had been fired. “There's a lot of thick shrubbery around windows two and three; besides that, the ground is lower on that side. It's possible for nearly anyone to
see
through one of those windows, but you'd have to be taller than we are to
shoot
through them.”

Melrose frowned. “So the shooter picked that window.” Melrose indicated the same window Jury had. “Window number one.”

“Right. But Macalvie's point is this: How would you know this unless you reconnoitered? You can't tell the ground's lower unless you actually stand there, and if you do look through the other windows on this side, either one of them—”

Melrose finished the sentence for him. “You'd see who was in the wheelchair.” He stared at the diagram. “Tom Letts really was the target.”

“Looks that way,” said Jury.

O
n a heavy Empire table between the two chairs sat a Murano ashtray of deep blue and green, colors that shifted with the shifting firelight. In the bowl were small polished stones that Jury had used to mark the tragic events that had taken place in Bletchley and Lamorna. At the moment there were four stones forming the beginnings of a circle: the deaths of the two Bletchley children, the death of Ramona Friel, the murders of Sada Colthorp and Tom Letts.

“Sada Colthorp.” Jury started to say something, then paused, searching his pocket for some item.

Melrose said, “Ah, Sadie May, right. Both the ex-Mrs. Rodney Colthorp and Vicountess Mead. Vicountess Mead, redoutable star of blue movies. Funny old world. This Bolt fellow, producer of said films, turned up at the manor when she was still married to Colthorp. Dennis, the viscount's son, threw him out. Not until after he'd valued Bolt's Jaguar.”

“Macalvie told me about Simon Bolt.”

“In her younger days, Sada worked at the Woodbine, that's the local tearoom owned by Chris Wells and Brenda Friel. They're partners. Sada Colthorp reappeared four years ago in Bletchley for a visit.”

Jury had found the item, a brown envelope, and sat tapping it against his thumb, thinking.

Melrose wished he'd stop thinking and let him see whatever it was.

“There it is again.” Jury leaned forward to look at the table, at the little semicircle of stones he'd made.

“There what is again? And what's in that envelope, the winning lottery ticket?”

“Four years ago. When, four years ago?”

“I'm not sure. Brenda Friel could tell you. She was the one who identified her. The people in Lamorna didn't recognize the police photo.”

“Perhaps her appearance had altered, having lived the life of a viscountess for all those years.” Jury put another little stone near the one representing the deaths of the children.

“Some of those years, you mean. She was Viscountess Mead for less than two. Rodney Colthorp was clearly embarrassed about having married her. I put it down to the usual midlife crisis.”

Jury had opened the packet and drawn a photo out—two photos, one being the familiar scene-of-crime picture of Sada Colthorp. He handed them to Melrose.

“I see what you mean.” One photo was of Sada, or Sadie back then, during her years in Lamorna and Bletchley. The young woman in this earlier photo had quite pale hair, as opposed to the hard yellow of the more recent photo, the crime scene photo of her dead on the public footpath. The eyes were quite different too, but that would be owing to the generous application of cosmetics: eyeliner, shadow, mascara. But the most telling difference was that the rather plump face of the earlier photo had changed to one gaunt and angular, though not unattractive. The changes seemed to have been caused by something other than time.

“They look different, don't they? If you know it's the same person, you can see the resemblance even with the change of hairstyle and color, even with the meltdown from drugs. Clubs and Vice picked her up a couple of times in Shepherd Market for soliciting. Then again she was picked up in Soho for dealing drugs, charge later dropped.”

Melrose was shocked, not by Sada's habits but by Jury's knowing them. He'd been on this case for less than eight hours and he seemed to know more than Melrose himself. And now he was reading Melrose's mind.

“Macalvie only just got this report, which is why you haven't heard about it.”

Melrose decided to carp at police reporting. “It took all of this time? It took a week for police to send this?”

Jury nodded. “Sometimes it happens. Bureaucratic slowdown or maybe it was hard to get stuff on her. Who knows? Anyway, Sada had a big drug habit she couldn't support on her negligible salary as hostess in a club in Shepherd's Bush, so she had to supplement it, and prostitution and dealing were the most profitable means. Her habit meant big money. My guess is that was what she was here for. Just a guess, mind.”

“Blackmail?”

“That, or to sell something.”

“Same thing, isn't it?” Melrose got up and took their glasses to the dry sink. “The only person I know of around here with what you call ‘big money' is Morris Bletchley.”

“What about Daniel Bletchley, his son? Or his daughter-in-law—who would have access to it, even if she didn't have a fortune of her own?”

Karen. Melrose thought about this. “She was here in the area at the time of the shooting. She came to see me. Or see the house.”

“Did she come back to Bletchley often? It must be painful.”

“Often? Oh, no. This was the first time in—”

Jury smiled. “Four years.”

“True.” Melrose took another look at the stone circle. There was something he was overlooking.

“Why Lamorna?”

“What?” asked Melrose absently.

“Why was she found in Lamorna?”

Melrose shrugged. “You've got me.” He said this a trifle testily, since it probably
hadn't
got Jury.

“There's a pub there?”

“The Lamorna Wink is what it's called.”

“Come on.” Jury got up quickly.

“Damn it! People are always going somewhere and wanting me to go with 'em.” But he was not displeased. “To Lamorna? At
this
hour?”

“ ‘This hour' is only nine-fifty. Come on.”

“Can't we solve the damned puzzle sitting here? Must we take
steps?
”

“Well, I don't have your little gray cells; all I can do is plod plod plod plod plod.” Jury reached down and pulled Melrose from the sofa.

“You sound like Lear. I wonder how it would have sat with the audience if Cordelia's death had him saying, ‘And she will come again, plod plod plod plod plod' instead of ‘Never never never never never'?”

J
ohnny brought the cab to a stop, saw several lights in the downstairs windows, and Melrose Plant's car. He ran up the steps and banged the brass knocker as hard as he could and waited. In another thirty seconds, he banged it again. And waited again.
If his car is here . . . ?

Johnny found a pack of Trevor's cigarettes in the glove compartment and sat in the cab and smoked, something he very rarely did. Smoking helped to calm him, made his head clearer. He could understand why it was such a hard habit to kick.

By a little after ten o'clock he'd stubbed out three cigarettes. He slid down in the front seat and tried to think, tried to work it out. But it was like hitting a brick wall.

The trouble was, he was afraid. He was afraid to try anything alone. Backup, that's what police called it. He needed backup. He thought about Charlie, but Charlie was in Penzance.

For a few more minutes he sat in the cab before he gave up on Plant's coming home. He was probably somewhere with that policeman, Commander Macalvie.

One more cigarette and then he started the car, let out the clutch, backed up, and, venting some of his frustration and fear, jammed his foot on the gas and nearly ricocheted down the drive.

Why were the cops always somewhere else when you needed them?

Y
ou'll find them a close-mouthed crew,” said Melrose, crawling out of Jury's hired Honda. “If you're thinking of questioning them, that is.”

There was a sea fret covering the path, encasing their lower legs in mist so that they appeared to be walking footless to the door of the Lamorna Wink.