The Lamorna Wink (8 page)

“And what?” asked Macalvie.

Her eyes widened. They were a pale, swimming blue. “I'm sorry?”

“None of you liked her that much. I feel an
and
or a
but
hanging on the end of that comment.”

She shook her head. “Nothing, except Chris really disliked her.” Then, possibly to turn Macalvie's attention to the photo and away from the person in it, she asked to see the picture a third time. She appeared to have no qualms about looking at a corpse, as long as it wasn't her business partner. She stood with the biscuits in one hand and the picture in the other. “Nothing ever happens around here, and Lamorna's only five miles away, and nothing ever happens there either. But now a woman is missing from here and another found murdered there. I was sure when you handed me that photo it would be Chris I'd see.”

“Thank the lord it isn't,” Melrose, who'd said nothing thus far, put in.

“Your daughter, she'd be in her twenties now? Maybe she could tell us—”

It was, Melrose thought, like peeling a layer of light from her face. The words seemed to have stunned her. “Ramona's dead.”

“I'm sorry,” said Macalvie. “She must have been young.”

“Twenty-two. It was leukemia. She'd been sick a long time before we even knew what was wrong with her.” Brenda stopped and took a deep breath. “She was seven months pregnant, too.” Here, Brenda cast Macalvie a reproachful look, as if to say, Police might not be able to stop women from getting murdered and disappearing, but couldn't they have done something about a dying young mother-to-be?

“I'm sorry,” Macalvie said again and clearly felt it wasn't adequate. “Really sorry.”

Brenda shook her head, then she handed each of them one of the little plastic bags. “Ginger. They're the favorite.”

They were still warm. Melrose right away took a bite out of his. He saw Macalvie looking at his bag, curiously, as if anything given him must be a bribe. Then he shot Brenda a smile straight through the heart. “Thanks. And if you think of anything . . .” He handed her a card. “You'll let me know.”

“I will, yes. But what about Chrissie, sweetheart? This Lamorna business doesn't tell us a thing about where she is.”

“No, but it damned sure tells us where she isn't.”

N
OW YOU SEE IT. The white sign lettered in marine blue was nailed above the door to Charlie's magic shop in Penzance. Johnny really liked Charlie, which Chris said was to his credit, given that they were so different. But he wondered if they really were, the way they both loved magic and illusion. The place always fascinated Johnny, even now, when his feelings were at such a low ebb.

The place had been advertised as containing a “flat with sea views,” but the sea view was there only if you craned your neck and got smack up against the window, turned your head sideways, and looked through trees; that way you could see a small slice of the sea.

Charlie had much of Chris's manner, even if he didn't have much of her character. Lean on her and she would never let you down. Try leaning on Charlie and you'd hit the ground. He wasn't very dependable; he was a raging alcoholic and because of this Chris “cut him some slack.” (“Poor Charlie. He can't help it; we've got to cut him some slack, love.”) Yet most people would feel exactly the opposite, heaping on Charlie's head recriminations and reckonings.

They just didn't understand addiction, Chris would say. Neither did Johnny, really. He wondered how it would
feel
to be an addict, hung up on booze or crack or heroin. The closest Johnny had ever got to heroin was Lou Reed's song.

Charlie had shown Johnny a few new tricks—lord, but he was fast with his hands. After he'd put the cards up, he reached under the counter and pulled out a gun. Johnny staggered back.

“Oh, hell, John-o, it's not real. Just part of an act a friend of mine's putting together. Looks authentic, doesn't it?” He slapped it down on the counter and said, “You know what Chekhov said, ‘If you put a gun on a table in Act One, it better go off in Act Three.' ”

Johnny picked it up. “I'm glad this one won't.”

“Lousy play, then. Come on.”

They'd closed the shop and gone along to the Lamb, where they were now sitting, Johnny drinking ginger ale, Charlie a club soda. Johnny wondered how difficult it was for Charlie to be so close to booze and yet not drink it. Charlie never drank around Johnny, anyway. It shows his regard for you, Chris had always said. Charlie did not know any more about Chris now than he had earlier. But he could understand Johnny's need to talk to him; he and Chris were the only family left. He asked Johnny if he'd notified the police.

“Yes. But it'll be twenty-four hours before they'll do anything.”

“That's to eliminate all the unhappy husbands or wives who've left out of choice.” Charlie was helping sort through the various options and the only alternatives. “Okay, she either left under her own steam or was taken.”

“It could be a combination, couldn't it? I mean, she could have thought she was leaving on her own when really she was tricked into leaving. Like maybe somebody called up and said I was in hospital, something like that. And on her way she's abducted.”

“Uh-huh.”

Johnny sighed. “That's pretty melodramatic, I guess.”

“Melodrama happens. She didn't leave you a note, you said, but remember Tess.” Charlie read a lot of books and spoke of the characters in them if he and they were on intimate terms. When the name didn't register with Johnny, he said, “Hardy's Tess, Tess of the D'Urbervilles. The whole tragedy could have been averted if the note to her boyfriend that she'd shoved under the door hadn't gone under the rug. He never saw it. Are you sure she
didn't
leave you a message? Did you check under the rug?”

“No.” Johnny smiled. “There aren't any rugs near the doors.”

“I meant that metaphorically. Could she have left a message
anywhere
you might not have come across it? Could she have told someone to make sure they told you? That sort of thing.”

Johnny nodded. “But if she had, they'd have told me.”

“Okay, let's take it from another angle. Forget about the note.” When Johnny opened his mouth to object—Chris would
never
have done such a thing, left without letting him know—Charlie held up his hand. “I'm just thinking out loud, running down possibilities. Say someone out of the past comes to the door, convinces her that she has to go with him immediately. Now, I can't think of anything in her past that might warrant such an extreme action, but you—”

Johnny shook his head.

“Don't be so quick to dismiss it. Chrissie's had a tough life, tougher than she probably ever told you about.” Charlie had shifted his position; he sat sideways facing the bar, one leg crossed over the other at the ankle.

Johnny watched him. “If you want a drink, Charlie, go ahead; don't mind me.”

Charlie smiled. “Thanks, but I'm testing my will.”

“Chris says it's nothing to do with willpower. That's a mistake most people make about—” He shrugged.

Charlie was looking at the bar, shaking his head in a wondering way. “That's Chrissie.”

And in a way it did sum her up; that really
was
Chrissie, who never rushed to judgment, never condemned out of hand, had an open mind and a great sense of fair play.

But she wasn't soft, hadn't that sticky sweet manner that one might expect to find in such a person. Chris could be sardonic and ironic, so that some people thought her too edgy. What a mistaken impression! What she had in abundance was patience. Like the way she treated Charlie. No, you could tell Chris anything and not be misunderstood or judged or told not to feel that way.

“What do you mean Chris had a tough life? Tough, how?”

“She had to put up with a lot. After her mother died, it pretty much fell to Chris to take charge, she being the oldest. I guess, though, there's some good that comes of that kind of responsibility. Once you undertake it, you don't forget it.” Charlie stared glumly into his glass.

There was a silence as Johnny thought Charlie must have been mourning the loss of a pint. After all, he depended on it, as alcoholics say, “like a friend, a best friend.” It was perfectly possible Charlie missed beer and whisky as much as Johnny missed Chris. He said, “She hadn't been gone long; I mean, she'd only just taken things out of the oven.”

Johnny's tone was so dejected that Charlie reached across the table and put a hand on the boy's arm. “This sounds like hollow comfort, but I bet when we know what happened, after she comes back, we'll be amazed we didn't see it.”

“It's like she just—vanished. As if there'd been some sleight of hand, a huge trick played,” Johnny said.

Charlie smiled. “Sleight of hand's our stock-in-trade. Given what's going on, you'd better have this.” He pulled the fake gun from his pocket and put it down on the table.

“I thought you said a friend needed it for his act.”

“I've got another.” Charlie flashed a smile. “Forget Chekhov.”

H
e had crossed the
t's
and dotted the
i's
on the lease. He had handed over a wad of money (in the form of a draft on his bank) and received the keys in return.

Melrose was again at the house he was free to inhabit for the next three months, happily without the estate agent following him about or Agatha erupting on his horizon. Tomorrow he would take back the hired car, jump aboard the train to London, from there to Northants, collect his Bentley and some clothes, and return and live here for three months, or longer, or less.

How fortunate he was to be rich. He only partly agreed with that glib saying that money can't buy happiness. It certainly made misery a lot more bearable. Money was at the moment freedom to live here, or to live there, or to take a lease for three months and leave after only one.

But that did not answer the question, Why was he using his freedom in this way? He had wandered into the large living room and was standing now before one of the long windows looking out over the weedy garden. He wondered if he was coming up against a midlife crisis and this move was the first sign of it. No, he decided, midlife crises were not an option with him; he was too sanguine. He was simply overpowered by the melodramatic quality of this house and its situation. He certainly was given to regard himself in more melodramatic terms. It was quite fun, really, to picture himself standing on a shelf of rock, looking out over the swell of the waves folding over the rocks:
Ever stood she, prospect impressed.
He couldn't get those lines out of his head.

He turned from the window in this smaller reception room and looked at the sheeted furniture, at its ghostly glimmer in what was fast becoming dusk. He moved over to an armchair, took hold of a corner of the sheet, flicked it off like a matador provoking a bull. He then went about removing the sheets from sofas and chairs, wondering where people put the laundry. At home, Ruthven and Martha took care of such things, made them disappear from sight (Melrose's, at least) as if a party of elves had been at work while the house slept. Could he make it on his own? Perhaps he should advertise for a housekeeper. Yes, it would be good to have a housekeeper, not so much to keep house as to bring him up to speed on gossip. Although he would not have wanted anyone like Agatha's char, Mrs. Oilings, he thought he could strike a happy medium between capable housekeeper and capable gossip.

He wondered where he should dump the sheets. He considered putting the kettle on (so nice to have all of this equipment furnished) but decided to take a long, long walk round the house before tea. It rather delighted him, too, that he could do his own tea and drink it in the living room or library with no other company than portraits and pictures of those absent.

He found himself trying to absorb what traces there were here of the lives of the Bletchleys. Maybe it was because the family depicted in those snapshots had been so beautiful—before the double tragedy—that he wished in some way he could join them.

Melrose's memory of his own father was fitful, fluid and vague. He had not been terribly fond of him, nor had he greatly respected him. His feelings were all for his mother. The seventh Earl of Caverness had spent most of his time riding to hounds and only occasionally taking his seat in the House of Lords—with, as far as Melrose knew, no particular effect on the country or himself. He remembered a distant man, if not an absolutely cold one; Melrose had wondered, when he was old enough to wonder such things, how his mother, a very warm and loving woman, a woman who had these qualities in abundance, could be happy with him.

She had not been; she had been happy, but not with her husband. And knowing this had weighed Melrose down. He didn't really know why.

Nicholas Grey. Melrose had deliberately distorted the image of Nicholas Grey, again without understanding exactly why. Even knowing who and what he was, Melrose still at times hated the man, saw him as an interloper in the Belgravia house. Would it have been easier to accept his mother's affair if Grey had been a seducer, a rotter, and a layabout? And his mother a woman caught in his spell? Or was it simply that the real Nicholas Grey was none of these things but was instead the sort of man it would be difficult to live up to?

He had seen Grey several times in the Belgravia house, which Melrose had since sold. He had sold the house for that reason—it was where Nicholas Grey had come. The sale had taken place a few years after the solicitor had handed over a letter that his mother had directed be given to Melrose long enough after her death to give him time to get over the worst of it. His mother had been dead for five years when the lawyer had given him the letter. And he hadn't gotten over it.