Harrow wasn’t the first time, either. Before that, when he was eight, there’d been a boarding school in France. Why in God’s name had they packed him off to the south of France? It still made him blush to remember how he held on to his mother that day in Paris-her hand, her skirt, cool skin, warm wool. And his father’s embarrassment: “For heaven’s sakes, lad, be a man! Get a grip on yourself! Soldier on, lad!” And despite the fact his father would say it, Melrose was trying to do just that: get a grip. So hard was he trying that the voice at his elbow gave him such a start he nearly fell off the stool.
“Plant!”
“Commander Macalvie! My lord, how are you?”
“Me? I’m fine. You don’t look so hot, though. Where’s your sidekick?”
He meant Richard Jury. “In Northern Ireland. Sidekicking.”
“Christ, how’d he wind up there?”
“I don’t know. CID matter, some kind of inquiry connected with something in London.”
“Wiggins go with him? If he didn’t, I could use him here.”
Macalvie’s partiality for Wiggins had always mystified Melrose, as it mystified Richard Jury.
Pfinn came down the bar, drawn perhaps by Macalvie’s static electricity, the copper hair, the cobalt-blue eyes. Pfinn asked him what he’d have. If anything.
Pfinn always managed to make it sound like an imposition.
Macalvie asked for lager. “So what’s this emergency?”
“A woman’s missing from here, from Bletchley.” Melrose told him the details. “It hasn’t been your requisite twenty-four hours.”
As he’d been talking, the expression on Macalvie’s face changed.
“What’s she look like?”
“I don’t-” It was only then that Melrose realized her looks had never come up, not around him at any rate. Brown hair? Possibly. No, he did recall Johnny saying she was around his age.
“I can never tell what your age is, Plant. You still won’t eat your peas.”
“Very funny. I honestly don’t remember Johnny’s describing what she looked like, except to say she’s pretty.” Melrose paused. “Why does that look on your face bother me? Why, incidentally, are you in Cornwall? I don’t expect you’re sightseeing.”
Macalvie cleared his throat. “Where is this boy?”
“Working one of his several jobs.” Melrose consulted his watch. “It’s probably the cab at this hour… or else he’ll be getting the dining room ready here.” Melrose called to Pfinn, asked him if Johnny had come yet. No, he hadn’t. Not for another hour, most likely.
Melrose asked again. “So what are you doing in Cornwall?”
“Having a dekko at a body found not far from here. You know Lamorna Cove? It’s about five miles away.”
“A body. Male or female?”
“Female. We haven’t ID’d her yet.”
There was a silence before Melrose asked, “How long had she been dead?”
Macalvie took his lager, handed over some money, drank off a third, and said, “Not that long. No more than twelve, sixteen hours. Pathologist has to do a postmortem, of course.”
“Well.” Melrose’s stomach turned over. That really was the sensation.
“The nephew must have a picture of her.”
“I’m sure he does.”
“Well, I’d rather see that before I show him mine.”
“Yours?” Melrose said, his tone anxious.
“Can you get hold of him?”
“I’ll try his house, and if he’s not there I’ll call the cab dispatcher. There’re all of three cars to dispatch.” He turned to Mr. Pfinn and asked for the telephone and Johnny’s telephone number.
Giving out employees’ telephone numbers was not something he did. The same telephone ceremony was repeated as had been that morning. It would cost him a pound.
“No, it won’t,” said Macalvie, riveting the man with his eyes, then producing his identification. “And we’ll have that number, thanks.”
9
Johnny heard the telephone as he was coming up the path to the cottage. He fairly flew through the door and snatched it up as the last ring echoed in air.
Hell! He slammed the receiver down. The phone had become Janus-faced; on the one hand it might be Chris; on the other hand, bad news about Chris.
He did not know, for all of his worry, how he’d been able to go about his daily routine of the caff, the cab, the pub in such a humor as to be-or at least make things appear to be-perfectly normal. To keep it down, the anxiety, the fear. “Deny” as Uncle Charlie was always saying. Deny, deny, deny. But this wasn’t denial; if it had been he wouldn’t be anxious or fearful.
He sank down into a chair at the gaming table and let his gaze wander around from the fireplace mantel, to the bookshelves, to Chris’s favorite armchair covered in blue cotton with a design of white phlox. Rather, the background had once been blue. It had gone through so many washings and been exposed to sunlight long enough that it was hard to make out the flower pattern. He supposed you could drain the color from anything over time-the aquamarine from the ocean, the blue from the sky-
Shut it! Johnny ordered himself. This was self-pity and it kept a person from thinking. He yanked one of the small drawers in the table open and got out his cards. He riffled them several times, liking the feel of the rush of the edges against his thumb. He cut the deck twice, pulled out a nine of diamonds, made it look as if he were putting it atop one of the thirds, when he wasn’t. He stacked the three parts together, shuffled, shuffled again. Voilà! He pulled out the nine of diamonds.
A basic little trick anybody should be able to see. Surprising how little people did see.
He left the cards on the table and started an aimless circuit of the living room. Looked at the fire screen, the books, the basket full of magazines and another of embroidery which Chris scarcely touched, so busy was she. He stopped at a glass-fronted étagère full of cups and saucers (“A Present from Lyme,” “A Memory of Bexhill-on-Sea”) and bisque figurines and tiny animals and was taken by the number of places they’d been. Nothing elaborate-no Paris or Venice or anyplace-just little seaside resorts here in England. He stopped at the trunk in the window alcove and ran his hand across the top. Opened it, looked inside. He had to do a lot of work to perfect this illusion.
The rain still came down and made the day dark and the room darker. He had been in here in half shadow and hadn’t turned on any lights. He stood looking out the window of this cottage that now seemed sorrowful, the objects in it wasted, as if Chris’s absence had deprived them of purpose or usefulness.
He turned on a silk-fringed lamp, which cast its buttery glow on part of the room. He stopped at the fireplace mantel and looked at the snapshots and three larger photos framed there. One of Chris and Charlie, one of Chris and him, one of her and his mother. She looked like his mother and his mother had been beautiful. This was a photographer’s posed shot, which was not as alive as the others; these formal posed shots never were. He studied the picture of the two of them, the two sisters. He knew he thought of Chris as a mother; he couldn’t help it. So this was like losing his mother all over again.
Johnny rested his head on his arms for a moment, then marshaled what energy he had left and plucked up his beaked cap. He liked to wear it in the cab. Shirley had asked him to take an extra shift this evening because Sheldon was sick. “Read: Hangover,” she’d said.
“Read: I can’t, Shirley. Sorry. But I’m going to Penzance.”
Shirley was all right about it; she knew something had happened to Chris.
He put the cap on, looked in the mirror over the mantel, softly sang:
“My name is John Wellington Wells,
I’m a dealer in magic and spells-”