But for once it didn’t cheer him. He grabbed up his jacket and was out the door.
He was getting into the cab when the telephone rang again, but this time he didn’t hear it.
10
Who else could ID her, then?” asked Macalvie, gulping at his beer as if it were the last one he expected to see for a long time.
“If it’s Chris Wells, a number of people. Almost anyone in the village.” Seeing Macalvie about to move to question Pfinn, Melrose shook his head. “I shouldn’t start with him. He’ll set your feet on the wrong path if he can help it. If there’s such a thing in your police lexicon as an antiwitness, it’s him. Let’s go across to the Woodbine. Chris Wells owns it, along with another woman, Brenda something. She could identify her partner.” Melrose looked again at the photo. Whoever she was, she was good-looking. He wished he’d listened more closely to Johnny’s description of his aunt. No, he didn’t; he didn’t want to be the person who said, Yes, that’s Chris Wells. He didn’t want to be the despised messenger.
Macalvie drained the rest of his beer, set down the empty pint, and regarded it as intensely as he might’ve regarded a fresh clue. He did everything intensely. He had those blue eyes that turned their surroundings dull and drab and burned away any extraneous matter in Macalvie’s line of vision. Melrose wouldn’t relish being the suspect he interviewed. In the half minute since Melrose had spoken, Macalvie had leaned straight-armed against the bar, staring at whatever scene was unfolding in his mind. If Melrose had ever wondered what aspect of his job-if any-Brian Macalvie disliked, showing a police photo to the victim’s friends or relations was clearly it. Melrose was relieved this particular relation was not around.
“Let’s go,” said Macalvie, moving away from the bar and digging a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket. He still smoked an unfashionable pack and a half a day. Melrose took out his own case, glad he could share the sin.
Brenda Friel was such a sweet-tempered woman that not even the presence of the Devon and Cornwall police in her kitchen disturbed her. The two men took up whatever room was left over from an island of butcher-block table and her big Aga cooker. She was not concerned about the scones and cookies she’d just removed from the oven, only about Johnny Wells. Thinking that Chris was the reason police were here in the Woodbine, she said she was glad they had come straightaway.
Brenda pushed a lock of brown hair from her forehead with the back of her hand as Macalvie told her about the dead woman in Lamorna Cove. Her face grew very still, that petrified stillness one adopts when terrible news threatens to topple your world and any movement will bring it on.
As Macalvie produced the picture, she closed her eyes, then opened them and expelled a long breath. “No.” She all but whispered it. “No, that’s not Chris.” Relief nearly overwhelmed her, and she staggered back and leaned against the table, upon which rested the scones and cookies, giving off a gingery aroma that, in its suggestion of the homey and ordinary, seemed to mock them, faced with possible tragedy.
Melrose let out his own breath, surprised he’d been holding it. Chris and Johnny Wells must call up powerful emotions in people. “That’s another thing,” said Melrose, speaking his thoughts. “Where’s her nephew? We’ve been trying to get in touch with him. He doesn’t answer his phone. I know he works at various jobs, but-”
“I think he’s gone to Penzance. A relation there just might know something. This is the first time Johnny’s ever asked for time off. He’s so dependable. Like a rock.” She tore a couple of small plastic bags off a roll; then, holding them, she said, “That woman, she doesn’t look much like Lamorna Cove-” Brenda stopped, then, frowning, said, “Let me see that photo, will you, sweetheart?”
Macalvie assumed he was the sweetheart here and again produced the picture.
“I can tell you who it looks like: a woman that lived in Lamorna Cove as a girl. Her name was Sadie May. She worked here awhile. But she married since, anyway. Name’s Sada Colthorp, her married name. Believe it or not, that girl married into the aristocracy. I think she married an earl or viscount or one of those.”
The smile she gave Melrose acknowledged him as “one of those.” Though the smile, he noted, was a trifle ambiguous.
“Did you ask round at the Wink? The pub there?
It’s probably their one topic of conversation now.” When Macalvie nodded, she went on. “I expect they didn’t recognize her grown up. Of course, that doesn’t mean they’d talk to police about it. People can be so close-mouthed, can’t they?”
“They can, yes,” said Macalvie. “How is it you yourself recognized her?”
“Because she came back.” She looked slightly surprised, as if police should have known this. “It was about four or five years ago she came to Bletchley. For old time’s sake, perhaps. She worked for us once. Fifteen, twenty years, it must be. Ramona, my daughter, was just a little thing then.” Brenda smiled at the memory. “I never knew Sadie that well, but Chris did. None of us ever liked her that much.” Brenda shrugged.
“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.”
11
NOW 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.