The Lamorna Wink (39 page)

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:

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 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 killed 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.

Esther Laburnum looked to Agatha for something— support, Melrose imagined. And pigs might fly. Esther then took the only course open to her: she changed the subject. In a simpering manner, she said to Melrose, “Lord Ardry, I don't imagine you had any idea what you were in for when you took Seabourne House.”

This innocuous observation called forth nothing from Melrose but “No, I didn't.”

“It was so dreadful, what happened to those poor Bletchley children. Unimaginable.”

“Not, unfortunately, unimaginable. Someone was very able to imagine it.”

“But it's still a mystery. Had she—you know—anything to do with it?”

She-you-know
meaning Brenda Friel. Hers was now a name one best not speak, as if it carried in it some black enchantment that might lead other innocents down to the sea.

Melrose answered, “Not that I know of.”

Esther kept going. “And that poor young man at Bletchley Hall. I heard she was the one who shot him. Good heavens! Her mind was obviously disturbed, wasn't it?”

Jury said, “There was a great deal of disturbance.” He rose. “I'm going to collect my things. Got to head back to London.”

“Now? Oh, surely not!” said Esther Laburnum, as if she were fully conversant with Jury's job.

“I'm afraid so. As soon as I can find Sergeant Wiggins.”

“But—” Diane paused. “You can at least stop in Long Piddleton. It's right on your way.”

“For anyone who thinks Oxford is on the way to Cornwall, yes, I guess it is.” Jury smiled.

“But we've been absolutely
counting
on you.”

Jury laughed. “Not too much, Miss Demorney. You only saw me an hour ago.”

Diane wasn't giving up. “But that's the effect you have on people, don't you know? The minute one
sees
you, one begins to count on you. One begins to undertake all sorts of supposedly
impossible
schemes because you can pull one
through.
”

Jury laughed harder. “You can certainly take a compliment and run with it.”

Melrose said, “I'll be cutting my visit short, Miss Laburnum; I'll be returning to Northamptonshire with my friends.”

“I, myself,” said Agatha, “will be staying on in Bletchley a bit longer.”

Was that a collective sigh of relief Melrose heard? “Esther here is giving me a crash course in selling real estate. She seems to think I've a natural aptitude for it.”

Melrose felt like resting his head in the peanut bowl. Agatha couldn't sell anyone a winning lottery ticket. Imagine her trying to sell a house. He felt weak with held-back laughter.

“Well, I don't see what's so amusing about that! I've nothing more to say to you, Melrose, nothing at all.”

“Oh, I don't know. You could say you've been to Bletchley, but you've never been to you.” Melrose tossed a handful of peanuts into his mouth and smiled.

 

Jury was upstairs packing (“my meager belongings”); Trueblood was valuing the furniture (“A George First bureau, by God; do you think this Bletchley fellow would let it go?”); and Diane and Melrose were standing in the foyer as she gazed round and round and finally landed on the staircase.

“Melrose, did you ever see an old film . . . what was its name? It was before my time of course—most things are—but it's on video. It's about this old house. . . .”

Diane recounted the entire story of
The Uninvited
as Melrose stood rooted, mouth agape, absolutely bamboozled by the idea that he and Diane shared a common memory.

“It always made me feel—”

Diane
feeling
?

“—rather queer, rather off.”

Even if the feelings hardly reached beyond the murky depths of “queer” and “off.”

“As a matter of fact, Diane, yes, I do know it.
The Uninvited,
it's called. I thought of it the first time I saw this house.” He was prepared to explore this strange coincidence of his and Diane's being, possibly, the only two people in the world besides Dan Bletchley who had seen and remembered
The Uninvited.
“Now, the music, if you recall—”

“But the
girl,
Melrose. That dreadful white dress!”

So much for exploration; they were back safely in Demorney territory of paper tigers and cardboard alligators and designer wardrobes. She was plugging a cigarette into her foot-long holder, which he then lighted.