Wiggins went on, reporting in staggering detail the status of each guest at Bletchley Hall. He had met them all, talked to them all, listened to them all; this was Wiggins’s great talent, even if he did not know what he was listening for (which was Jury’s job, Macalvie’s job).
There was Mr. Clancy with inoperable pancreatic cancer; Mrs. Noonan, who had come to Bletchley after a bone marrow transplant had failed (“Imagine going through all of that! You know how painful a transplant is”); Miss Timons-Browne, who had been a piano teacher before rheumatoid arthritis had taken away her livelihood; Mr. Bleaney-
“That’s a poem by Philip Larkin,” put in Melrose, to show he was interested in the fates of these poor people. He recited:
“This was Mr. Bleaney’s room; he stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.”
“Ah, that’s as may be, Mr. Plant, but I doubt your Mr. Bleaney suffered from pancreatic cancer.”
“He’s Philip Larkin’s Mr. Bleaney, and he suffered as much as anyone-well, go on.” He tried to concentrate on the waves (out there) crashing against the shoreline (in here), and it would have been a pleasant-enough drive had the road not been potholed and had he not had the incarnation of Hippocrates or Sir Richard Burton sitting beside him. Every detail of every illness and, thrown in for good measure, a complete picture of every thankless, graceless relation.
“Poor Mrs. Atkins, she’s the one suffered three strokes and no one can see how she’s holding on, and you’d think her daughter-in-law could do more by way of bringing the grandchildren-”
Et cetera, thought Melrose. Was Wiggins through? Had he run down the entire roster of twelve patients? Take away the three met in the sunroom-no, four, including Tom-that left eight; take away Bleaney, Timons-Browne, Clancy, Noonan, Atkins, Fry. Still two to go.
The Hoopers’ long battle with Alzheimer’s brought them into Lamorna and Melrose pulled up, spitting dirt and gravel, in front of the Wink.
“Bit tired-looking, in’it?” said Wiggins, slamming shut the car door. His tone hinted at the superciliousness one might expect from a Londoner-in this case Wiggins, who ordinarily hadn’t a shred of the city snob about him. But then he was ordinarily with Richard Jury, who was the least supercilious human being Melrose had ever known. Oh, that he were here!
Although the layout and the shape of the Wink were completely different from his pub in Long Piddleton, it reminded Melrose nonetheless of the Jack and Hammer. Perhaps it was the nucleus of regulars seated at a round table, three men and two women, the same as had been there three nights before, and he toyed with the notion that they were the actual models for several Dorian Gray-like portraits of the habitués (Melrose being habitué number one) of the Jack and Hammer. That old one with the pinched cigarette and the pocked face, surely that would be no other than the true soul of Marshall Trueblood; the woman with the long sad face wearing a dusty brown jumper, Vivian Rivington to a T; the other woman, stout and squat with shreds of gray hair boiling about her forehead-well, actually, she wasn’t the inward self of Agatha, she was the outward incarnation.
Yes, as he and Wiggins stood at the bar waiting for their drinks, he thoroughly enjoyed his little scifi fantasy, his little ghostly dimension, and was also quite sure that everyone in here was delighted that he had something wonderful to chew over, something to get his teeth in. Murder! No longer would they have to pretend Lamorna was a village to excite the admiration of tourists. Now, it really was! The clay pipe, the black patch, the wooden leg, the rheumy eye, the oil lantern-these were now things to be reckoned with.
“I don’t know what I want,” said Wiggins, in a pedestrian way that jerked Melrose back from pirates’ gold and Jamaica Inn.
“What do you mean? It’s just another pub. Get what you usually do: horn of toad, eye of frog, whatever. Have a beer.”
Wiggins just gave him a look. Have a beer was not one of the Wiggins fallbacks in emergencies. He sighed. “A lemonade, maybe.” He was already getting out a small tubular glass bottle.
Bromo Seltzer. It was by now one of Wiggins’s staples. Melrose wondered how much of the damned stuff he’d consumed since that trip to Baltimore. Wiggins only remembered the city as the home of Bromo Seltzer. He’d taken a snapshot of the tall building with the logo.
“Finally got here,” said a voice at their backs. It was, of course, Brian Macalvie, for whom one can never arrive too early. He was always in a hurry, another reason for the coat’s staying on. He gave Wiggins’s shoulder an enthusiastic thump; he’d already seen him at police headquarters in Camborne.
The finally-got-here part of the greeting had been directed, apparently, at Melrose Plant, who-Melrose would like to remind him-was not on the payroll of either the Devon and Cornwall Constabulary or New Scotland Yard.
Macalvie looked at the options and said, “I don’t know what to have.”
“Is this the biggest decision you two have had to make today?” said Melrose. “Have what I’m having.” Melrose put down some coins that clinked together. “Or what he’s having. Whatever, with Bromo Seltzer.”
Macalvie ordered a Guinness, got it, and the three went to the same table that Melrose and Macalvie had shared before.
“Between me and my men and the local police, we’ve talked to everyone in this place”-he waved an arm to take in the Wink-“and found out sod-all, except a few who remembered Sadie May but don’t remember anything more about her.” Macalvie shook his head. “Can’t be coincidence. Two little kids die in peculiar circumstances; a woman disappears; another woman is murdered; the mother of the little kids turns up now after not having been back here for four years-” He shook his head again, lighted another cigarette, and said, “Daniel Bletchley…” His voice trailed off with the smoke from his cigarette.
“He’s still not given you the name of the woman?” said Wiggins.
“Zip,” said Macalvie.
Wiggins said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “Bletchley could have left and then come back, but what about this housekeeper? Wouldn’t he have been concerned that she would see him?”
“No reason to be. It is his house, after all,” Melrose said. “Maybe it’s simply because the idea is so repugnant. I just can’t believe it: a parent doing this to his own children.”
“Tell that to Medea,” said Macalvie.
Melrose looked around the pub, at the smoke that lifted up to the ceiling like cirrus clouds. “Morris Bletchley says you didn’t believe Karen’s story, the one she told about people in the woods.”
Macalvie brought out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. “He’s right, I didn’t.”
“Neither do I. Seabourne is well stocked with wine and Henry James. Karen Bletchley’s story sounds suspiciously like The Turn of the Screw: two children, Miles and Flora; the woman across the pond as the governess; the strange man who talked to them, Peter Quint; there’s even the unimaginative and literal housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. I’d say Mrs. Hayter is the embodiment of that character.”
Macalvie was thoughtful. “That’s interesting.” He was silent, drinking his beer. “Anyway, she could’ve concocted the story to get herself out of the frame.”
“Or to direct your attention away from her husband?” suggested Melrose.
“If she thought there was any possibility that Daniel Bletchley had something to do with her kiddies’ death?” Wiggins suggested.
Melrose shook his head. “She wants the money. If the children predecease Daniel, he gets the whole Click’nKing fortune. But if he’s convicted of their murder, all that money goes elsewhere, not to the wife. Karen certainly couldn’t look forward to Morris Bletchley’s handing it over to her. He doesn’t like her; he doesn’t trust her. It’s the reason he made the fortune over to the children-with, I’m sure, adequate provision for a trust-to keep Karen from getting her fair white hands on it.”