Melrose sn.i.g.g.e.red.
"What in the b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l is going on?"
As if ch.o.r.eographed, both torches swung toward the living room door and caught Brian Macalvie in twin circles of light.
"This is how you carry out an a.s.signment?"
"You didn"t give me one," said Jury.
"How"d you know we were here?"
"I was in the Wink at closing time. Old dame in there told me you"d come up here. She didn"t want to tell me how to find you."
"So you broke her jaw."
"Obviously, I got the information, but you don"t need to know my methods. And I sure as h.e.l.l don"t want to know yours. Get that d.a.m.ned light out of my face. Come on, let"s get our cars."
The night deepened around them as they stood between Macalvie"s Ford and Jury"s Honda, dark green, dark blue, both cars looking black in the un-lighted clearing.
They were talking about Simon Bolt.
"Simon Bolt? We tried to nail him for possessing and distributing p.o.r.nography. When I say we I mean Vice. I wasn"t on the case myself. He took photos, films too, I heard. But snuff flicks of kids? Christ, no, I heard nothing of that; they must not have found anything like that or I"d"ve heard." Macalvie turned in a half circle, mouthing epithets.
It did not sound at all like a wounded ego; the self-abrading tone sounded more like dereliction of duty.
"You weren"t on that case years ago. How could you possibly have connected it with this one?"
"You got it out of a witness, Jury. I should"ve too."
"Macalvie, it was dumb luck. I happened to ask a question that provoked Peg Trott to give up the information."
Melrose said, "Let"s go back to Seabourne. We can at least have a fire and a drink. I can even do us an early breakfast."
Climbing behind the Honda"s wheel, Jury said, "Just not soft-boiled eggs and soldiers. I refuse to eat toast cut into soldiers."
Melrose eased into the pa.s.senger seat. "It was the bright spot in a ruined childhood. Soldiers."
"How heartrending." Jury gunned the engine and they sped away, as much as one could speed down such a narrow and rutted road, eating Macalvie"s dust.
48.
Johnny parked the cab in front of his house and wondered if he was letting his imagination, overworked in the best of circ.u.mstances, run away with him. There might be another explanation.
Might be, but he doubted it, because what he believed had happened explained too much for him to be wrong. But it didn"t explain everything. It didn"t explain why.
He got out of the car, didn"t bother locking it-which was part of the point, wasn"t it? Who bothered locking up cars and houses around here-and walked the short distance to the Woodbine. Brenda was always up, usually baking till all hours, which had been a real comfort to him these days, in case he couldn"t sleep and wanted to talk.
The bell made its discordant little clatter when he opened the door to the tearoom, a room that always gave the impression of warmth, even in the dead of night with the heat turned down.
From the kitchen came the sounds and smells of baking. The rattle and click of pans, the swish of the big beater, the whir of the blender-it always sounded as if Brenda had an army of undercooks and sous chefs back there. He smelled ginger.
He could understand why customers came here, morning and afternoon, to be lulled into a sense of well-being, an illusion of ease, even if that was far away. He could see by moonlight or memory the heather design on the polished cotton curtains, the faded roses on the chair cushions, the burned wood and the bay windows" mullioned panes through which the moonlight spilled silver. Everything in the place-the faded roses, the smell of ginger-blended like spices and milk and honey into a satiny dough of contentment. It was all overwhelmingly sensuous.
Like s.e.x, Johnny thought.
He stood in the open door to the kitchen.
Brenda was pulling a cookie sheet full of gingerbread men from the oven and when she stood and turned, she smiled. "Sweetheart! Couldn"t you sleep?"
"No. Where is she, Brenda?"
49.
Wiggins"s bleary-eyed greeting at the door of his room in the Drowned Man was only marginally more welcoming than Mr. Pfinn"s had been. At least Wiggins was aware that a police investigation knew neither time nor tide. Mr. Pfinn, on the other hand, didn"t care if the three of them were pod people come to borrow his body. He needed his sleep, he said.
But Wiggins"s mood improved immensely when he saw Richard Jury was one of the three. He was all ready to have a long talk about Jury"s travels, while standing at the door in his pajamas.
"Ireland, nil; Scotland Yard, one," said Macalvie, cutting into this reunion. "Get dressed."
They were now in Seabourne. Melrose and Wiggins repaired to the kitchen to prepare some sort of meal; Jury and Macalvie stayed in the library.
"What are these stones? Avebury? Stonehenge? The Merry Maidens?" Macalvie inspected Jury"s little stone circle, or semicircle.
"Very funny. I was trying to get the sequence of what"s happened to whom in the last four years. In most cases, death has happened. I was trying to get straight in my mind the events of four years ago. Then the events of today-that is, recently."
Jury picked up another stone. "We can now add Simon Bolt to the four-year-old section of the circle, setting him beside Sada Calthorp, who came back four years ago and who"d kept in touch with Bolt-well, she must"ve done, since she was in his films."
Macalvie said, "And, according to Rodney Colthorp, Bolt visited the manor. Yes, they kept in touch."
Jury set the two stones side by side.
"So what have you got here?"
"Beginning with the Bletchley children, with Simon Bolt and most likely Sada Colthorp involved in that, then the death of Brenda Friel"s girl, Ramona; that"s the four-year-old part. More recently, the disappearance of Chris Wells, the death of Sada Colthorp, and the death of Tom Letts."
Macalvie slid a stick of chewing gum into his mouth and was silent, looking at the stone diagram. He hadn"t sat down, and he hadn"t taken off his coat.
"Why don"t you take your coat off?" Jury didn"t expect him to; he just couldn"t resist mentioning the coat.
Instead of taking it off, Macalvie shoved the sides back and put his hands in his trouser pockets. He chewed the gum, thinking. "b.a.s.t.a.r.d was making snuff films."
"That tape"s somewhere in or around that house."
Macalvie was still gazing at the stone circle. "It"s with whoever murdered Sada Colthorp. I found part of it."
Jury gave him an inquiring look. "Where?"
"Just a fragment of the black casing. It was lying near her body. At least, I expect it"s a safe a.s.sumption. The piece was definitely part of a videotape casing. Of course, that"s not the only copy. Four years ago, whoever got Bolt to do this, that person would have the original. Then of course Bolt would"ve kept a copy, at the same time claiming there wasn"t one. I"d say there are at least three copies. We went over his house with tweezers. Sada Colthorp had another copy. Or the same one Bolt had stashed; maybe she knew where it was. How else was she going to blackmail the person who wanted those little kids dead if she couldn"t produce a copy?"
"The film wouldn"t prove who this person was."
"No," said Macalvie. "But it certainly shows how it was done." Macalvie walked over to the fireplace and leaned his forearm across its green marble mantel. "Bad enough the little kids died, but that way?"
Macalvie was always intense, thought Jury, but he didn"t think he"d ever seen him this emotionally involved. Not since the serial killings of children on Dartmoor and in Lyme Regis. Jury waited for him to go on.
He did. "I"d say Colthorp knew the motive, but even if she didn"t, whoever wanted that film made would not want a fresh investigation into the Bletchley business. Anyway, the film is the best theory we have; it"s a working hypothesis that explains a h.e.l.l of a lot."
Plant and Wiggins came through the door, bearing coffee, fresh bread, and cheese and cold ham. "Couldn"t find any eggs, so I didn"t make toast," said Melrose, setting down the tray. Wiggins put down the coffeepot.
Jury set about making a sandwich. "Wouldn"t have any pickled onions around, would you?"
No.
Wiggins was turning over the coat he"d draped across the back of a chair and drawing something from an inside pocket that looked much like a soft leather jewelry case, the sort that folds and ties. He untied it, revealing several zippered compartments. From one of these he took a dung-colored pill and from another a couple of large white tablets. The tablets he dropped into a gla.s.s of water and watched it fizz with almost religious application.
So did the other three, chewing and watching the fizz until a fine sc.u.m of white powder showed on top.
Apparently waiting to catch it at the height of the fizz, Wiggins drank it down, leaving a little in the bottom to swallow with the brown pill. Jury wondered about the pill; it seemed new to the Wiggins pharmacopoeia. But he refused to ask what it was. He did not want to know about any new ailment or allergy.
"Chris Wells," said Macalvie, holding his mug of coffee between both hands to warm them. "Look in your notes and tell me what you"ve got about Chris Wells," he said to Wiggins.
Wiggins thumbed through the notebook; it looked as if he"d written absolute reams of notes (which was why Macalvie had wanted to stop at the Drowned Man and drag him out of bed). He mouthed a few words to himself, then read: "According to young Johnny, his Aunt Chris took over the care of him when he was seven. He thinks his mother was going to the States, but he doesn"t know. The maiden name was Wells, the father"s name Esterhazey, but Johnny changed his to Wells, same name as his aunt. The mother just took off and that"s the last he heard of her."
Macalvie uttered a low imprecation, and Wiggins looked up. "Sir?"
"Nothing. Go on."
"Chris is Johnny"s only family, except for the uncle who lives in Penzance, Charlie Esterhazey. Unmarried, keeps a magic shop. You know," Wiggins said to Jury, "sort of place that sells trick decks of cards and magic metal rings that look like they couldn"t fit together but do." Wiggins stopped reading, seemed to be pondering.
"Don"t worry, Wiggins. We"re coppers. We"ll make him tell us."
Wiggins shot Jury a grazing look and went on. "Getting down to the night in question, when young Johnny got in touch with police. Chris Wells disappeared sometime between eleven A.M., which is when she left the Woodbine and is the last time anyone saw her in Bletchley, and nine P.M., when John Wells actively started looking for her."
"It could have been later," said Jury. "I mean, she could have been in Bletchley, only Johnny didn"t see her."
"Just wait a minute," said Wiggins. "The cookies she was baking could have been done some time earlier. But meringues-well, that"s a different story. They were still in the oven. That"s what you do with them, you know. You leave them in to cool. Very slow cooling period. The oven was still slightly warm. Since it takes an hour to bake them at four hundred degrees, that would mean they went into the oven about seven-thirty. There are two different kinds of meringues served in the Woodbine, quite tasty too."
"Thank you, Wiggins," said Jury. "We"d like the recipes when we finish this case. If we do."
Macalvie said, "Sada Colthorp, Wiggins."
Wiggins read: "Murdered the night of September twelfth, ME says between seven P.M. and eleven P.M."
"In other words, murdered during the time Chris Wells did her vanishing act," said Melrose.
Macalvie had moved away from the fireplace and sat down on a narrow, uncomfortable-looking side chair. "The connection between Chris Wells and Sada Colthorp?"
Wiggins moved forward a few pages. "The person who knew about that was Brenda Friel. She said Sada was trying to get her hands on young Johnny, who"d have been no more than thirteen at the time. Apparently, Sada and Chris really had it out."
Melrose said, "Johnny Wells looks older than he is, probably did when he was thirteen, too."
Macalvie asked, "How did Brenda know this?"
"Chris Wells told her," said Wiggins.
"Still, trying to seduce a kid is hardly a motive for murder, is it?" said Jury.
Wiggins said, "People don"t often behave as you"d expect them to, sir," said Wiggins sententiously. Looking at his notes, he added, "And Brenda Friel told me Chris Wells threatened Sada Colthorp, said if she ever showed her face in the village again, she"d wish she hadn"t."
"Chris Wells," said Jury, "appears to be the chief suspect, doesn"t she, by virtue of her sudden disappearance just at the time the Colthorp woman was murdered?"
"Hold on a minute, Richard. She doesn"t sound at all like a person who runs away. She"s too responsible." Melrose cited her work at the Hall, her care for her nephew. "Not only that, you"d surely have to be looking for two killers, not just one. I see no reason on earth you could say she was the one who planned the Bletchley children"s deaths or murdered Tom Letts."
"But you don"t know her," said Jury. "You"ve never met her."
"No, you"re right. I"ve never met her."
Macalvie broke the silence. "There"s another way to look at this woman"s suddenly taking off." He turned from the window. "Maybe it was made to look that way. Maybe it was staged."
Wiggins raised his head from the little stone circle and gave Macalvie a questioning look.
"To make it look like Chris Wells murdered Sada Colthorp."
"Then where-" Melrose began. He didn"t finish the question. He thought it was almost too much to bear. And made worse because he hadn"t been given it to bear: the children, Tom Letts, the sadness of Daniel Bletchley and his father, and Chris Wells. He was a stranger to it all; he had no business feeling desolate; the actors in this tragedy, they were none of his business. And it wasn"t his tragedy. "You think she"s dead, don"t you?"
Wiggins had put his small notebook back in his pocket and was bending over Jury"s improvised calendar of events, his small circle of stones. "Sir, go over this again, for me."
Jury rose and walked over to stand beside him, pointing clockwise around the stones. "These first two here: the Bletchley children died on the rocks; next, we"ve got Sada Colthorp and Simon Bolt, most probably arranging the death of the children. But to keep the sequence right, Bolt and Colthorp should be up here." Jury moved the two stones to first place. "Next, Brenda Friel"s daughter, Ramona, dies. Moving four years ahead, Sada Colthorp is murdered; Chris Wells disappears; Tom Letts is murdered." He looked at Wiggins, who had retrieved his notebook from an inside pocket. "Okay?" Jury turned away.
Wiggins shook his head. "No, that"s not right."
Jury turned back.
Wiggins was reading from his notes and putting another stone down.
"What"s that for?"