It was a wonderful fact of human behavior and the mainstay of magic: distraction. Make them look at what is completely irrelevant and they"ll miss what"s right under their noses. It worked every time. Brenda thought she was being so careful-the cigarettes, the ashtray, the drawer, the "don"t-moves"-but she was missing the whole thing.
Johnny lit a cigarette, pulled the astray closer. It was quite heavy, he knew. "While you"re here, pick a card." He held out the cards, the slick card as usual in the middle. He didn"t think she"d reach for one, not that it mattered, but she did. Then withdrew her hand before she"d taken one.
"I don"t think so." She backed away and found the chair she"d been sitting in.
He squared the deck, tapped it a couple of times, and fanned out the cards again. His movements were so smooth you could have skated on them. That, of course, was what did it. The card, except to be turned over, had never really moved. It was dexterity, all dexterity.
Brenda had lighted one cigarette from another and stubbed out the first. "I"ve seen you do that a dozen times and still don"t see how."
With the cards he took a few steps toward her. She s.n.a.t.c.hed up the gun. "Uh-uh. Stay back. I told you. I don"t trust you."
Back was where he wanted to be, which is why he"d moved forward. "Okay, something more elaborate. But I"ll have to get the props out of a drawer in that sideboard." He started toward it.
"Johnny. I"m not stupid." The gun gestured him back.
He stepped back into the alcove, this time a bit farther to the right. "Another card trick then. But I don"t know if you can see this from that distance."
"I"ve got good eyes."
"Watch."
53.
Sleep, he knew, would elude him, so he sat in the library and read one of Polly Praed"s thrillers. He didn"t like it at all but felt compelled to read a book written by a friend. The trouble was, Polly had published so many of them he could spend all his reading life trying to beat the detective to the denouement, which he never did, because he couldn"t sort out the puzzle, much less the solution. The one now in his hands had a plot that had lost him somewhere in a Wales wilderness, the mise-en-sce"ne (one of Polly"s favorite phrases) having shifted from Aruba to Wales. Melrose imagined the only thing that could move one from Aruba to Swansea would be a gun at one"s back, as was the case here. He hoped the hero would be riddled, he was so boring. The hero should have sent him straightaway into the arms of Morpheus. But the hero didn"t, nor did the chase scene. Melrose set it aside and picked up his drink, hoping brandy and soda would have a more salubrious effect. It didn"t either.
So Melrose left the little library and climbed the stairs to the music room, where he could plunge himself into sadness, the sadness that had overcome him last night and whose source seemed to be the history of this house.
It was not difficult to plunge, given the black sky beyond the long windows and the implacable, repet.i.tious drone of the waves. He thought of Daniel Bletchley"s wonderful, unself-conscious playing and how it had filled the room. His mind on this music, he was looking down, expecting, surely, Nature would indulge him and let the wind whip up a storm of water. . . .
Something moved down there.
Because of the angle of the windows, part of the path was cut from his view. But someone, he was certain, was standing or walking down below.
When the figure came into partial view, he a.s.sumed it must be Karen Bletchley. It was a woman, but the hair was not light, not Karen"s; it was dark, the color of mahogany. And suddenly, she looked straight up and straight at him. It was the middle of the night, but the moon glowed like white fire.
The gla.s.s dropped from his hand, splashing brandy down the leg of the immaculate flannel and drowning the top of his shoe.
He would have known her anywhere.
Stella.
PART IV.
Stella by Starlight.
54.
Dan.
Standing down here and looking up at the dimly lit window, seeing a tall man with light hair in the room that held Daniel"s piano and where he wrote his music, of course she thought it was Dan.
It was easy enough to make the mistake, wasn"t it? No, not really, if there was no music. That alone should have told her. She would have heard the piano. G.o.d, if only she had heard it!
It had seduced her before she"d ever seen him, that music, even though she"d never thought of herself as an ingrained music lover. She listened to it, of course, and liked it. (She was afraid her taste might be somewhat ba.n.a.l.) But music had never affected her like that, never.
That day she had brought boxes of pastries for a children"s party-the little boy"s birthday-and while she"d been standing in that huge marble and granite foyer, the piano, from somewhere at the top of that magnificent staircase, had started. Thundered, really thundered, making her sway where she stood. The rolls, the flourishes, the arpeggiated chords were so beautiful she had to keep her eyes on the marble floor to keep from doing something really stupid-weeping or something.
"My husband," said Karen Bletchley in uninflected tones, by way of explanation, as she tore off the check she"d been writing for the pastry.
Chris"s mouth went dry as she took it. She knew that Karen Bletchley was looking at her as if she was used to women swooning on her doorstep.
And was she, Karen, so used to that music, to hearing it, she could define it simply with "my husband"?
Chris could think of no excuse to linger; she wasn"t much good at the kind of conversation that would allow her to do so, especially with this woman who was so smooth and so cool. Ash-blond hair architecturally cut, as if the face had been born with this hair framing it. But the gray eyes were as opaque as the pottery itself. They had no depth.
So Chris had left quickly and got in her car, parked thankfully out of range of the front door but not out of range of hearing. With the window rolled down, the music came as vividly as the sound of the waves. How could a person do that? How could a mere man split you open, rearrange everything, heart lungs flesh bone?
She had rested her forehead on her hands, crossed over the steering wheel. So she was (and it amused her to think this) a goner even before she"d met him. If he"d been the Red Dwarf she"d have followed him to h.e.l.l. And Dan Bletchley was anything but the Red Dwarf. Was it because she"d romanticized him so completely that she was bound to find him physically beautiful? No. He simply was.
When she finally met him-by accident, thank G.o.d, and alone, thank G.o.d again-the same feeling came over her as when she"d heard him playing. She"d come apart again, everything got rearranged again.
A goner. Then, a double-goner.
Heart lungs flesh bone.
The face disappeared from the window-had he seen her?-and Chris looked down at the ground, crunching some gravel around with the toe of her shoe, one of the several habits she had that had made Dan smile and put his arms around her. Chrissie. No one had ever called her that but Charlie. Chrissie.
"Hey, Chris," Johnny had said, "hey, Chris, you look weird, you look enthralled you look like you"re in the kingdom of thralldom."
Johnny. She should have gone directly to the village, but she had felt compelled to stop here at this house that no one had lived in since the Decorators, an appellation that always made her smile. The house had been standing vacant, but Morris Bletchley didn"t have to sell it and, she suspected, really he couldn"t. He couldn"t turn over the place where his grandchildren had died. Keeping it might mean to him keeping hold of some part of them. It was the worst thing that had ever happened to Morris Bletchley.
It was what had ended them, of course, ended Chris and Dan. He"d been with her that night and she knew-though he"d never said it because it might seem he was blaming her for being there-that he believed, somehow, it had been his fault.
Up to then, they had been so buoyant; for that year they had known one another she had felt untethered, not bound to earth. They had been weightless and guiltless. Until the children.
A door opened and slammed shut in the wind.
Well, he had seen her.
Trespa.s.ser, she tried on a smile. After midnight; no wonder this man thought it odd somebody was out here, on his property (even if rented), staring at the sea, staring up at the music room.
Who was he? He, too, was handsome, another reason she might have confused him with Dan. But he was slightly taller, slightly thinner, and looked mad as a hatter.
55.
He was downstairs and out the back door in a shot.
She was still standing there; the face that had been turned toward the sea (as if it had comforts to offer beyond the scope of what humans had to offer) was now turned toward him.
The wind blew her black hair across her pale skin, and he saw how much she looked like her nephew, the coloring a genetic trait, like the straight nose and narrow, squared chin.
He wondered as he came through the door why that look of happiness had flashed across her face as if light had struck warmth into marble; he wondered now, walking up to her, why the look was just as suddenly withdrawn and she stopped and took root where she stood.
His feelings were a total muddle. He was genuinely-even rapturously-glad that she was alive, but at the same time was only too aware that he had been, all along, daydreaming about this woman, or about some woman, from the moment he"d set foot in this house. And now it was as if a dream had thickened to flesh and blood, only to mock him.
His mounting anger surprised him, but he let it mount. Melrose was not a rash person, nor did he make rash judgments, but he was growing angrier by the second over this woman"s nonchalant reappearance and her failure to see she wreaked havoc in people"s lives. How could she simply turn up like this and stand gazing seaward?
He knew the anger showed in his clumsy attempt to grab her arm. That she was genuinely shocked and bewildered by his movement was plain. That she had not carelessly mislaid herself was equally plain. He knew that and knew at the same time that when she had seen him so briefly before he turned from the window above, the moonlight on his light hair, she had thought he was Daniel Bletchley. And this was intolerable, but why? It had been clear three days ago when Bletchley spoke of her where his sympathies lay-his heart, his music, his past, but not (the music said) his future. Chris Wells had been the woman Daniel had been with but had never named (despite the fact she would have provided him an alibi).
If she was anywhere, anywhere as charming as her young nephew-and she was certainly as handsome-Melrose could easily understand why Bletchley had wanted her, and just as easily understood why she had wanted him. All of this went through his mind in the seconds it took him to walk up to her and grab her arm.
"Where in the h.e.l.l have you been?"
Her astonishment robbed her, for a moment, of speech. Then she laughed uncertainly and said, "Who are you?"
Melrose dropped her arm and felt the spread of a furious, adolescent blush. He smiled and answered, "The Uninvited."
The first thing he did was lead her to a telephone so she could call her house. No one answered.
"Could he be out in his cab? There"s a dispatcher, isn"t there? Try calling there."
"Shirley. Yes. But it"s after midnight."
"Try anyway." He stood over her as she placed the call, as if fearing she might disappear again.
Chris still did not know what was going on, but she took him at his word and made the call to Cornwall Cabs. Shirley was speechless for a few moments, so that Chris had to keep saying h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo.
Finally, Shirley found her voice and told Chris, Yes, she would make every effort to get hold of Johnny. He"d borrowed one of the cars to go to Seabourne, but that was nearly three hours ago. "But where"ve you been, love? Are you all right? Johnny"s frantic."
"He is? But-I"m fine, Shirley. There"s just some kind of misunderstanding. Try and find the cab, will you?" She hung up and said to Melrose, "I"ll call the Woodbine. Brenda-"
"No. Leave that."
Melrose had been sincere in his apologies for his abrupt treatment of her when she had no idea who he was or why he was here. And why he was surprised that she was here.
They were sitting down in the library, still the only really warm room downstairs, when he finally asked her, "Look, why did you disappear like that? Your nephew has been worried sick."
She frowned. "Disappear? Well, I didn"t exactly do that. Didn"t he get the note?" She sat back. "Obviously he didn"t. I should have called from Newcastle."
"Newcastle? You"ve been in Newcastle all this time? We thought you might be dead. Same thing, I imagine." He did not add or guilty as h.e.l.l.
She was still frowning, and deeply. "I have a friend there who"s very ill-but that"s hardly important. What"s happened?"
"Haven"t you been reading the papers? There was a murder in Lamorna Cove. A woman you apparently knew: Sada Colthorp."
Her face went even paler. "Sadie? Murdered?"
"Her body was found on the path between Lamorna and Mousehole."
Chris seemed to be having a hard time taking this in. "Well . . . but she came back four or five years ago. . . ."
"Does this suggest anything to you?"
"What? No. What should it suggest? Please stop talking in riddles."
"I"m sorry. But it is one. Someone murdered her, and police have you down as a suspect."
She knocked over the telephone in rising from the chair. She was open-mouthed with astonishment.
"The point is, what happened to that note? Who did you give it to?"
Chris shook her head. "To n.o.body. I left it on top of the card table where I knew he"d be sure to see it." She made a dismissive gesture. "Anyway, Johnny knows I"d never go off without telling him where I"d gone. How could he doubt?"
"Ah, but he didn"t. He kept insisting you wouldn"t. And we should have paid attention. If we"d paid more attention to his insisting you would have left word, rather than coming to the conclusion you didn"t and he must be wrong, G.o.d knows how much would have been saved. So, who took it?"
"I don"t know. I can"t imagine. Brenda was supposed to make sure he knew why I"d left-"
Her face went white. Then she was suddenly out of her chair and the white was replaced by heat. She was angry. "In thirty seconds or less. Tell me. Because I"m leaving. In thirty seconds."
Melrose stood up too. He managed it in under that.
But it didn"t keep her from leaving. She ran. She ran through the huge foyer, out the door, and to her car.
Melrose followed, running too. By the time he"d got his own engine going, she was down the drive and out of sight.