25.

The usual frisson of apprehension ran like a ripple through the crowd when Macalvie walked in the bar of the Lamorna Wink, time stopping for a second so the scene looked like a frieze rather than a room with flesh-and-blood people.

Melrose got the drinks. Some of Macalvie's fame had rubbed off on him, for the regulars watched him walk up to the bar and signal the barmaid. They had taken a table in the corner near the fireplace, though even the corner offered little escape from the inquisitive eyes of the customers. Macalvie, however, didn't appear to notice his celebrity as he went up to the jukebox, slotted in some coins, and punched up a tune. He was still wearing his coat even though the fire poured out heat as if it came from a pitcher.

One might suppose the man was always cold, as some people are. But Melrose felt as if Macalvie were instead always leaving. He was surprised by the deep anxiety this provoked in him, as if a support kept threatening to give way. In this respect, Macalvie was different from Richard Jury; Jury seemed cloaked in a sort of melancholy, yet always seemed to leave some of his comfort behind; when Macalvie left, consolation left with him. And it seemed to have something to do with that coat which he never took off.

Macalvie said, "There was so much lying going on in that house, I didn't know who not to believe." Arms crossed on the table and looking at his drink, he went on. "We got there a few minutes after midnight, the ambulance before us. I told them not to take the bodies up before the ME and I looked at them. It was raining this time and the steps were like gla.s.s, b.l.o.o.d.y slippery. The little kids were lying on their stomachs. The bodies didn't sink or get carried away because they got tangled up in the rope that anch.o.r.ed the boat. They were side by side, their faces turned toward each other as if they'd been talking; probably they had, before-well, whatever happened, happened. They were wearing cotton pajamas, hers white, his blue, and flannel robes that would have been some protection against the cold but not much. Slippers, too. Two of them-the slippers-had been washed away by the choppy water. Their feet weren't any bigger than the palm of my hand." His elbow propped on the table, he held up a hand for Melrose to judge. "They were holding hands."

He stopped at this image, which was clearly disconcerting, as if he had no choice but to reenter the scene.

"So what had happened? Did they go down the stairs because they wanted to get into the boat? I didn't believe that. Why did they, then? They must've been told to go down the stairs. Or been told-something. A trick? A treasure? No one in that house had any idea of what they were up to.

"Karen Bletchley got back to the house a half hour after I got there. There'd been trouble getting hold of her, the housekeeper told me, because the people she was having dinner with in St. Ives weren't on the telephone. Hard to believe, in this day and age, with that kind of money. But maybe that's what the well-heeled call roughing it. Daniel, the father, was purportedly in Penzance on business. He didn't get home until an hour later."

"Purportedly?"

"When a man goes out at nine o'clock at night, it might be for a beer or smokes, but I have trouble thinking it's business. I also doubted it was business when he stalled on producing the name of this business a.s.sociate. I a.s.sumed it was a woman but didn't want to make a point of it then. He was too cut up, remorseful, and-as the Irish say-destroyed. The sort of man who blames himself because he lacks hindsight."

"But later?"

"Did I pursue this line of inquiry?" Macalvie smiled and took another swallow. "Of course. Finally, he admitted it but refused to give the name of the woman. Bletchley's stubborn, believe me. Even when I threatened him with obstruction, he refused. Anyway, Dan Bletchley was away when he was needed and the man probably never will get over it. To be gone when you know you were desperately needed: I know what that's like. I felt sorry for him. All of his life he's going to hold himself responsible."

They sat, whiskies in hand, the main source of light and heat coming from the fireplace. They had drawn as close as they could to it.

"Karen Bletchley was hysterical at first. It took two WPCs to hold her back from the clifftop, to keep her from going down those stone steps. I told the ME to sedate her, just enough so I could talk to her." He looked up when Melrose made a sound of disapproval. "You think cops are heartless? Give somebody twenty-four hours to think things over, and you won't get a proper statement. Too much will be suppressed, not necessarily intentionally."

Melrose said he was going to get refills. While he stood at the bar, waiting for the fresh drinks, he wondered if Karen Bletchley had told Macalvie the same things she'd told him.

"What did she tell you?" he asked when he'd returned to the table.

"After the initial questions had been answered about where she was"-Macalvie accepted his refilled gla.s.s from Melrose-"she asked did I believe in evil spirits? In hauntings? In premonitory occurrences? 'It's not what I believe, it's what you do,' I said. She said there was something wrong at Seabourne-which I was only too willing to believe, given what happened, but not that ghosts were responsible." Macalvie paused for a drink of beer.

"She went on. 'I thought at first I was simply too imaginative. Or reading into behavior things that didn't exist. Furniture moved around in their school-room, for instance. When I asked them why'd they done it, they said, "We didn't," and t.i.ttered. Noah and Esme, are-were-very close.' Then she said, 'Every once in a while I'd see some new bit of clothing, like a handkerchief or a bracelet they claimed to have found in the woods. One day I was watching them and saw them talking to a strange man. At least I thought it was; I couldn't see very well into the trees. I was rather frightened. It all seemed so-menacing. And one day I saw a figure in dark clothes and dark hair across the pond farther along. A woman was standing there. Were these people putting them up to their tricks? The children did silly little things, like putting a tiny tree frog in Mrs. Hayter's ap.r.o.n pocket. The poor woman had a fit! But when I asked them, they just denied it and looked . . . sly. That's the only way I can describe it-sly. It was almost like a campaign to make us uncomfortable.' "

Melrose studied his gla.s.s and thought about Karen Bletchley, there in the library, but did not interrupt.

"I asked what her husband's response was to all of this. She didn't answer for a moment, but finally said that Daniel brushed it aside as a series of childish pranks. 'Good lord, Karen, a tree frog in someone's pocket and you think we're in the grip of evil spirits!'

"It's Daniel Bletchley's father, Morris Bletchley, who actually owns Seabourne. He went to live at the Hall-a kind of nursing home, which he also owns-not long after the death of the kids. They were his grandchildren. At the time it happened he was living with them. He's used to controlling things. He's apparently a h.e.l.l of a good businessman, given the success he has with that chicken franchise.

"I'm mentioning this only because now he was confronted with an action-and its horrible consequences-that was out of his control. He said the least of any of them and seemed to be affected most. At least more than his daughter-in-law-despite the hysterics. Anyway, that was my impression."

The proprietress was calling time.

Macalvie said, "You hardly ever hear that anymore, do you, what with the new licensing laws."

Melrose gathered up their empty gla.s.ses. "Is it too late?"

"No, but I'm in the chair this round."

Melrose made a face and took the gla.s.ses. The woman behind the bar pursed her lips but got the drinks. As he stood there, Melrose looked back at Macalvie and thought he look stranded in the room now emptying.

He went back and set the drinks down. "This case never closed for you, did it?"

Macalvie was lighting another cigarette. "They don't, my cases." He stared at the fire, smoked his cigarette.

"But this one, especially. You've been reporting conversations verbatim. How could you do that after four years?"

"My notes. I've read through them so often, trying to work out what I missed, you could see light through the seams of the pages they're written on. That's why."

Melrose thought of the letter his mother had written. "Why do you think you missed something?"

Macalvie cut him a look. "Because it hasn't been solved, so I must've." Ash fell from the cigarette he wasn't attending to. He said then, "Let me tell you something: I was a policeman in Glasgow for several years, started out as a PC but wanted to be a detective. That was my great dream, to be a detective." He looked over at Melrose. "I bet you never thought I'd have a great dream, right?"

"You don't strike me as a dreamer."

Macalvie smiled and went on. "I got to be a DI pretty quickly, mostly because of a particular case I worked. Pretty big case, it was. In a shootout, the suspect's daughter got caught in the crossfire. She was eleven or twelve. It wasn't my gun that did it but he thought it was, and held me responsible because I was the one who'd been plaguing him all along.

"Anyway, I was transferred to Kirkcudbright. I guess to get the heat off. It was bad, the pressure. You can imagine there weren't a h.e.l.l of a lot of homicides in Kirkcudbright, which is a kind of artists' haven; I guess artistic jealousy is about the top rung on their crime ladder.

"But I met someone. She was a painter and a beautiful woman. I moved in with her. She had a daughter, Ca.s.sie, who was six years old. Maggie, my girl, always used to tell me how much safer she felt with a copper in the house, how she could sleep easier. Then one night Ca.s.sie was taken right out of her bed and out of the house."

"G.o.d, how awful!"

"We kept expecting a phone call, a ransom demand, some word. But there was no word. Nada. Nil. Nothing for two weeks. Maggie was nearly crazy, forced into this limbo of not knowing. So was I.

"Then I got a message slipped into the paper we had delivered. I was to go to an old cottage in the Fleet Valley. There was a map, a route I was to follow. Eventually I found the place. It was a derelict cottage, birds nesting in the thatch, windowpanes broken. The most intense silence; I've never known such silence. It smelled of death. I moved very slowly, had my gun ready. I thought it was a trap. Why it might have been a trap, I had no idea. I found Ca.s.sie in the kitchen. She was propped up in a chair, shot in the chest. On the table was a piece of paper, and on it was written, How does it feel? And then I knew. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d had plenty of friends on the outside; this was payback for collaring him.

"There was a bowl of Wheetabix in front of her, half eaten." Macalvie paused, looked at Melrose. "The body was warm, the milk still cold fresh." Out of electric-blue eyes, he stared at Melrose. "See, they'd added that little detail, that coup-de-grce, in case I hadn't suffered enough, making me think, If I'd only got there fifteen minutes earlier. . . . But I couldn't have. They'd obviously monitored my trip. One of them probably called ahead to give my position."

A flicker of pain brushed Macalvie's face. "Fifteen minutes earlier I could have heard her voice, heard her cry. That was how I was supposed to think. The only consolation was she appeared not to have been mistreated.

"I called it in. Police, ambulance, they were there in under twenty minutes. While I waited I kept thinking, If I'd been smart I wouldn't have taken the route they gave me-"

"No. Then they wouldn't have gone through with it. They'd have stepped up the anxiety even more and then put you through it again. I don't think there's a way to outwit a person whose only motive is to make you suffer."

Macalvie sat back. "That's why I never dropped this case. Those two kids-"

"I know." Melrose thought how Brian Macalvie never talked about himself. And yet you always knew exactly where you were with him. You might not know where he came from, where he lived, who his mates and girlfriends were, but you knew his mental geography. You knew his territory.

Macalvie shook his head, drank the rest of his whisky as if preparing to go, but still sat looking at the floor, or his shoes or shadows. "She felt so much safer with me in the house. Christ! Having me in the house was like having a ticking bomb there; I brought all that grief down on the poor girl's head."

"What happened to her? Maggie?"

"I don't know. We broke up, of course, soon after the kidnapping. I begged her to stay. I thought I could help her, which was arrogant, I guess, but she wouldn't; of course she wouldn't. There was no way she could ever think it wasn't my fault."

The proprietress, toweling gla.s.ses behind the bar, had been giving them hurtful looks for half an hour now. The rest of the place is empty; there's just you lot that's keeping me up.

Macalvie looked her way, palmed his cigarettes back into his pocket, and said, "Let's go."

Outside they stood for a moment looking up at the stars and out over the water. Melrose said that not even the most vivid imagination would see such a bizarre murder here in Lamorna Cove.

"Not in Kirkcudbright, either."

26.

Setting his electric wheelchair on a collision course with Matron, down at the end of the long gallery, Morris Bletchley released the brake and sped down a highway of oriental carpet.

Here she came, stomping toward him, looking less and less confident that she would win this game of chicken. She had a great ski slope of a bosom flying downhill from some stiff lace thingamabob at her throat. Her hair was in its usual punishing bun, stuck sharply with several silver-headed pins, pulling her scalp back to within an inch of its life.

Just pray your maker has gone to prepare one of those rooms always on offer, thought Morris Bletchley, arrowed straight at her. Why had he ever hired her? Probably for the same reason he kept her on: With the name MATRON pinned to her chest, she looked like she'd come from central casting. You just knew that's what a matron looked like. He'd had to put up with so many of those creatures when he was growing up, it satisfied his sense of the rightness of things that he should now be able to call the shots. There! she'd chickened out and was pressing her bosomy self flat against the wall. Moe stopped just short of her feet and asked innocently, "You wanted to see me, Matron?"

"Mr. Bletchley! I cannot put up with these ridiculous games you play."

He loved the way she talked-such pomposity. "But that's part of your job, to keep us old fools in line."

"I wanted to see you about the Atkins woman. She's come, she's here, but she hasn't-or her family hasn't-her part of the fee. Which is small enough," she added disapprovingly.

Moe Bletchley used a sliding scale; it was pretty much pay-what-you-can. Sometimes they couldn't. He subsidized the rest. The scale in Mrs. Atkins's case had stopped sliding at ten percent, which amounted to thirty pounds per day. Given it cost more like three hundred to provide rooms, medical care, full-time nurses, and gourmet food, thirty pounds was a drop in the bucket.

Well, it was Moe's bucket and he could have whatever he liked dropped in it. He c.o.c.ked his head and said, "So?"

She seemed astonished he should ask why. "How can we admit her when she hasn't fulfilled the terms of her contract?"

"Why didn't you tell her to sell her first-born grandchild?"

Matron drew herself up, tilting her breastplate even more. "Mr. Bletchley! If you insist on bending the rules and relaxing standards, our job will become impossible."

"I've been bending and relaxing for four years and you're still here, ain't you?"

She pressed the bridge of her nose, one of several mannerisms denoting victimization. She said, "If you feel my services are no longer necessary-"

"Oh, but they are, they are! You are a formidable presence; you set an example!"

Still higher went the bosom, but this time with pride. "I certainly hope to keep the younger and less seasoned staff on their toes." She ventured a wintry smile. "Now, if you care to come and speak with Mrs. Atkins?"

Moe flapped his hand. "I'll talk to her later. You show her where her room is. I'm off to visit Linus Vetch." Moe removed his baseball cap, rubbed the top of his head, and slapped the cap back on. He gave a little wave and snapped the wheelchair into a ninety-degree turn.

Rules. Matron lived for them; they were her sound and substance. But it was pretty hard to apply "rules" to the dying, much less enforce them. Heavy with anger and corsets, Matron turned on her heel and marched down the galleried hall.

d.a.m.n it all, thought Moe, wish we'd had her at Okinawa. Moe had served three years in the Second World War. In no hurry now, he rolled along on the deep blue and green oriental runner that not too long ago had been trod by Lord b.u.g.g.e.r-all and his lady wife. They had sold up because they couldn't afford their stately home, then called Sheepshanks Hall, any longer. No wonder, when these British aristocrats (whom he disliked without exception) tossed money around like confetti paying for big cars and horses and keeping a staff of fifty. They had been raised not to work but to lounge.

Moe was an American who'd spent the last part of his life in Britain. He'd peeled off all he wanted to in the States (millions) and come to see what was on offer in England (billions).

Moe had built up a fast-food chicken empire "from scratch" (as he was fond of telling people, most of whom didn't get it, but then most people were pretty witless). He called this popular chain of eateries Chick'nKing. Franchises had sprouted all over England. He had even wanted to plant a few on the North York moors and Dartmoor, but the idea had met with little enthusiasm by the building-permit people and the National Heritage. Moe wasn't long on aesthetics, except for the design and decor of his Chick'nKings. There he went to town; they were the brightest, boldest things on the horizon, painted in astonishingly brilliant colors. And he had broken the everyone-the-same commandment by having three different designs. It was his building planner-not quite an architect and a kid at heart-who loved to come up with fresh ideas for the shape of a new Chick'nKing. Some were egg-shaped, an enormous marine-blue egg, painted around with bands of Easter-egg designs and standing on its fatter end. There were two dozen of these. Another group was designed to resemble a hen laying, or rather sitting on a nest. Then there was the newest line Moe had christened Chick'nTots, designed expressly for the kiddies. (As if the others weren't?) These were a huge hit with both children and parents. They were shaped like chicks and painted a b.u.t.tercup yellow so bright you could see them half a mile away down the A30 to Truro. The Chick'nTots were popular with parents because there were small tables and chairs in a section set apart so the children could eat out from under the parental eye and even order from their own menus; it made no difference whether or not they could read since there were pictures of every dish. The kiddies' area was tended by a pretty Disney World-ish princess with a pink neon wand. She was there in case the kiddies started throwing food at each other. Peace would be restored immediately; it's amazing what a princess with a wand can do that mums and dads can't.

Another big difference between Moe's eateries and most others was the food. This had been brought about several years back. One of the Chick'nKings had run out of potato chips (tasteless but familiarly tasteless, which made the difference), and an employee named Patsy Rankin had just sliced some potatoes thinly, tossed them in the hot oil, and served up homemade potato chips the like of which had never been seen in any fast-food place. The customers loved them so much, sales of everything had leaped by over ten percent. No one appreciated inventiveness more than Moe Bletchley. Patsy Rankin was immediately transferred to the Birmingham headquarters in charge of food innovation, a position created for her talents alone.

Chick'nKing had cost a fortune to get started but had already tripled that fortune for Moe Bletchley. The difference between his and others' fast-food emporiums was that the food was better and the buildings so whimsical they simply sucked people in.

Linus Vetch had been admitted six weeks before and was clearly rallying. The unusual thing about Bletchley Hall was that the people who came here, all diagnosed with a terminal illness, did not all leave in a box. Actually, it was part hospice, part nursing home, and not a small part resort. Of course, no one could enjoy this last element if he wasn't deemed sick-to-dying. But some diagnosed as terminal got considerably better and left under their own head of steam-or perhaps to the disappointed expectations of their relatives, who were then forced to return the elderly family member to his or her own hearth. This made Bletchley Hall a sort of miracle home and, consequently, a highly desirable last stop on the road to wherever. This rallying of seemingly hopeless cases mystified the doctors.

"What the h.e.l.l's the big mystery?" said Moe. "It was you fellas misdiagnosed these cases in the first place."

"Mr. Bletchley," Dr. Innes had said, "Linus Vetch came in with esophageal cancer. Hardly ever does a patient recover from that particular cancer. Linus Vetch has had radiation, chemo, a bone marrow transplant-"

"So? Maybe the voodoo finally kicked in. It happens." Moe started humming.

This, of course, infuriated Dr. Innes and no wonder: If a patient had terminal something, he should terminate.

"It makes me wonder," Moe went on, "why you fellas hate to see somebody get better."

"That's absolute nonsense. I-"

Moe waved a thick-veined hand, meaning Shut up, man. "Thing's this: A fellow is diagnosed with a terminal disease. Then he doesn't die. Well, one of those premises is wrong. So it must be the first one. Unless of course you think we've got another Lourdes here and I'm the Virgin Mary."

"Funny," said Dr. Innes. "I never really suspected that." He flounced off down the hallway in a manner that Moe was surprised hadn't raised Matron's suspicions.

Linus Vetch was propped up in his bed, looking wasted-true-but otherwise like a man on the mend. The poor fellow, in his seventies, had been through the h.e.l.l of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant and still lived to talk about it. That he could talk was surprising, the radiation and chemo probably doing his vocal cords little more good than the cancer that had invaded his esophagus a year ago.

Moe b.u.mped into the lavishly appointed room and up to the bed, where Linus shot his hand up for a high five. They had taken to greeting this way ever since the once-dying man had been able to raise his arm. Moe had to admit it was amazing. He himself had never been sick (with anything other than contrariness) and he knew he had no conception of the physical pain Linus Vetch had been cursed with.

"So what's up, buddy?" Moe treated all patients-he preferred to call them "guests"-as if they'd just stopped in for a pleasant weekend.

"Better today. Must be your cooking."

"Brought you tonight's menu." Moe believed looking forward to a fine meal could keep you going at least until you got it. Food was surprisingly soporific and comforting, and the meals here were cooked by two first-rate chefs Moe had lured away from two four-star restaurants.

Linus drew himself into more of a sitting posture and fumbled for his gla.s.ses. "Where did I put the d.a.m.ned things? Always losing them."

"Maybe they're in the drawer." Moe nodded toward the bedside table. Linus always kept them there and always forgot that he did.

Linus found them and hooked them over his ears, as if for a better view of Morris Bletchley. Then he removed them and looked around the room.

He had the most searching look Moe had ever seen. Eyes that scanned the entire room, floor to ceiling, as if some sort of answer could be found in the William Morris-designed wallpaper, the Art Deco wall sconces, the beautiful wood floors, Kirman carpet, and high windows that looked out over the flower-bound stream.

Still, Moe wished he had the answer, or at least some answer to give Linus.