Getting that old bugger Pfinn out of bed by pounding on the front door of the pub had been a bonus. Making him trudge up the dark steps to yell awake that detective from New Scotland Yard had been bonus number two. Yes, this was when he felt like a copper.
Feeling he was in charge of the mills of the gods, PC Evans sucked on a root beer barrel as he brought his palm down on the bell just to let everybody know he was down here waiting as the body grew colder by the minute. Evans had passed through his initial fright at the notion of having to take responsibility himself for the body at Bletchley Hall and was delighted he could pound on doors and ring bells and hurry people along who themselves would have to be the responsible parties.
Therefore it came as a sharp disappointment to him to discover, when he finally got up to the Hall, six police cars already there, blue lights turning. Also to find that scattered around the grounds, electric torches beaming light up and down, were at least a dozen policeman from Camborne headquarters. PC Evans recognized none of them. How had they got there so quickly?
The bullet had torn through the back of the wheelchair with enough momentum to make an entrance wound the size of a lemon and an exit wound in the front just below the rib cage the size of one of Evans’s root beer barrels before embedding itself in a panel of dark red textured wallpaper on the far wall, next to the door in which Matron stood, swaying a little.
Brian Macalvie, for once, was speechless, not because of focusing all of his attention on the crime scene, but speechless with disbelief. He was not shocked that someone had murdered a man, only that someone had murdered this man.
Detective Sergeant Wiggins was white-faced, his mouth agape. He was the first to speak, however. “Why? The poor devil-I just saw him this afternoon. So did Mr. Plant. Should I call him?”
Macalvie nodded. He turned to the stout woman in a flannel bathrobe who had called PC Evans. A long braid hung over her shoulder and she was hugging herself.
Constable Evans watched the police photographer set off flash after flash, making it look like a film shoot. Now, happy to take up his policeman’s duties if it meant merely telling Divisional Commander Macalvie who’s who and what’s what, he motioned toward the elderly man whose face looked hot and tight as a blister and said, “This is the man you want to talk to, sir. Mr. Morris Bletchley.”
Macalvie nodded. “We’ve met. In a minute.” In this minute, he was hunkered down before the wheelchair.
His diminished duties having been even more diminished, PC Evans thought, Arrogant bastard, and dropped his hand.
Macalvie peered up into the downturned face, the head that had dropped forward as if the dead man were sleeping. He then rose and walked around behind the wheelchair and looked at the splintered band of wood, one of several across the back of the chair.
Wiggins was back from making the call to Seabourne and said Mr. Plant would be right over. Ten minutes, tops.
Macalvie asked, then, “Who was he, Mr. Bletchley?”
“Tom Letts.”
Macalvie nodded. “Sergeant Wiggins, come here.”
Not “Constable Evans, come ’ere,” oh, no, just that emaciated boyo from Scotland Yard, come ’ere. Even though I’m the police presence in the village. No, no deference shown. Bastards! Evans stood straighter, just to let everyone know he wasn’t affected at all by being ignored.
A car pulled up outside, a door slammed shut, and the medical examiner from Penzance came in. “What’ve we got?” He looked neither to right nor left but headed toward the dead man and set about his preliminary examination.
Again, there was the sound of tires on gravel, a car coming to a halt, and running feet, and Melrose Plant stood in the doorway of the red drawing room, his coat over his bathrobe, feet still in leather bedroom slippers.
“Ah, no.” Plant turned away.
Thus far she had said nothing, but for some reason, perhaps because it was such a sad little understatement, Matron began to sob. Another woman, smaller and older, patted her shoulder and started crying herself. Morris Bletchley said something to the small old woman about bringing in coffee for everybody.
Melrose Plant looked around this room where he and Tom had been talking seven or eight hours ago. This poor boy, he thought, was talking about the miracles that had occurred at Bletchley Hall. Melrose had been astonished that Tom had actually looked happy. Maybe that was enough of a miracle right there.
Melrose looked across at Macalvie, who looked back. Melrose shook his head.
Macalvie asked how many cases they had here at the Hall at present and was told there were a dozen. “That’s all we can accommodate,” said Matron.
“Are they bedridden? That is, could any of them have been out of bed, moving about?”
Morris Bletchley said, “Several could have. I mean, we have some that are ambulatory, of course.”
“Then I want Detective Sergeant Wiggins to go room to room; I certainly imagine everyone’s awake at this point with a dozen police tearing up the flower beds. You don’t have to worry about his upsetting anyone unnecessarily. If you’d just show him where, Mr. Bletchley?”
Moe Bletchley nodded and left with Wiggins and Matron. Macalvie dispatched PC Evans to the grounds.
“What’s hard to understand,” said Dr. Hoskins, putting away his instruments of life and death and getting up so the ambulance attendants could move the body to a stretcher, “is why anyone would shoot to kill a man who was in the final stages of AIDS. Poor chap was going to die soon anyway; why would anyone try to kill him?”
Melrose said, his voice thick, “I don’t think anyone did.”
Both Hoskins and Macalvie turned to look at Melrose.
“It wasn’t supposed to be Tom. He wasn’t the intended victim. It was Morris Bletchley.”
Dr. Hoskins shut his bag briskly. He was a man who dealt with the body in situ, not the body out of it.
Macalvie nodded. “When can you-”
“Tomorrow morning. Early. I’ll talk to you then.” Dr. Hoskins bowed slightly to Melrose and left.
Macalvie looked at Melrose, waiting.
“It’s the wheelchair. It’s Morris Bletchley’s.”
“Bletchley? He doesn’t need a wheelchair.”
“No. But he uses it, he says, so as not to present a picture of too-perfect health to these terminally ill patients.”
A voice behind them said, “He’s right.” Morris Bletchley took a step forward, as if they all stood for inspection. “The bullet was meant for me. No end of suspects for that. Probably keep you busy for years, Commander Macalvie.”
Macalvie stared at him. “Not this time, Mr. Bletchley.”
37
They were sitting now, but not comfortably. Macalvie and Melrose were on one of the dark red velvet settees, Moe Bletchley on the other. PC Evans was still on the grounds, helping with the search for forensic evidence.
“Everybody’s seen me in that wheelchair; they know it’s mine.”
“Including visitors?”
Moe shrugged. “What visitors had you in mind?”
With a thin smile, Macalvie answered. “What visitors have you in mind?”
“No one. Few people come here, Superintendent; terminal illness isn’t very tempting.”
“Nursing homes aren’t popular with family and friends either, even if the illness isn’t terminal.”
“No,” said Moe Bletchley, looking sad.
No sadder than Melrose felt. What they were talking about, the failure of people to come to cheer you just when you were really sinking, made him think of Tom and Tom’s parents. On the other hand, there was his sister, Honey, a young lady Melrose would like to meet. Probably would, too, at the funeral.