“Okay,” said Macalvie. “Exactly what did you see?”
The Hoopers leaned even closer to Macalvie, looking puzzled. “And you might be-?”
“Macalvie, Devon and Cornwall Constabulary.”
They all had, of course, been introduced, or at least the Hoopers had introduced each other. But that was all of fifteen seconds ago.
“A policeman?” said one of them, his squiggly eyebrows dancing.
Melrose expected Macalvie might be about to reach across the seductively reachable distance and knock their heads together. On the Hoopers’ part-well, they appeared to be waiting for Macalvie to go on.
So he did. “You told Sergeant Wiggins, there, you saw someone or something at the time we judge the shot was fired.”
The Hoopers sat; the clock ticked.
Then one said, of a sudden, “It was…”
The other snapped his fingers. “Yes, it was a…”
They looked at one another, urging one another forward. “It was a…”
Macalvie shut his eyes, tightly. When he opened them he turned to Wiggins. “Is it hoping for too much that you-?”
Wiggins, whose brow was furrowed as if in sympathy with the Hoopers’ brows, blinked. “Oh. Oh, of course. Sorry, sir.” And he started thumbing through his notebook, turning page after page after page.
Melrose wondered what in hell he could have in it. How many people up there in their bedrooms had he interviewed and for how long?
“Here it is.” Wiggins read. “Hoopers: ‘We were just in the middle of our game, I mean, nobody knows just what the middle is, anyway it was just on midnight, for a moment later the clock chimed. We looked out-we saw this person, well, more a shape it was, going past the window.’ ”
“And?” asked Macalvie.
“I’m afraid that’s all I’ve written down, sir.”
Macalvie looked at the Hoopers. “You saw this shape. Can you be a bit more precise there?”
“It was a…”
“He could’ve been-kind of small.”
“Or she, she could’ve been-well, small.”
Just at that moment one of the uniformed police outside raised the window around the corner from the one the shot had been fired through and called to Macalvie, asking if this was what he meant.
“Yeah. That’s what.”
“Just when the conversation was getting interesting.” Melrose walked over to the window.
Finally, the Hoopers were excused. The little woman who’d been sent to get the coffee came in with a tray of cups and saucers and biscuits. Matron followed her with an enormous coffeepot. Having observed the party atmosphere, Mr. Bleaney, Mr. Clancy, and Miss Livingston crowded in after them.
What Melrose liked about these people was their sporting nature, their smiling in the face of such adversity, and it set him to wondering about the chemistry among people for whom death was right around the corner. To use Tom’s metaphor, it must have been like this in war, at least it always was in war’s representations. As if at the front, he and Wiggins were passing amid battle-ravaged troops taking strength from one another. You depended, he thought, upon another man’s spirit to pull you through. And it was all overseen-the battle plan, the deployment of troops, and, at the end, the demobbing, the mustering-out, all of the cliché-ridden, unashamed, canting patriotism-by Morris Bletchley.
39
I heard what happened; I guess everyone has. It’s terrible. It’s worse than terrible if Tom got shot-by mistake. He was going to die anyway, and soon; that’s what people are saying. As if that made it all right. As far as I’m concerned, it makes it worse. It makes it ten times worse. Even the little he had to live, that’s gone now.”
Johnny stood in the open doorway of Seabourne and said this to Melrose before he’d even stepped inside. He stood turning his cabby’s cap in his hands and his eyes glazed with tears that didn’t spill.
“Come on in, Johnny. You’re right. It does make it worse. Come on back to the kitchen; I just made some coffee.” It was late morning and Melrose had just arisen, having had no sleep to speak of the night before.
Johnny followed him, talking about Tom all the while, talking nervously as if his license to talk might be revoked at any moment, so he’d better get it out fast. “I always talked to him when we went to the Hall. He was so-calming, somehow. You probably never noticed but I’m kind of tight-wound-”
Melrose smiled and nodded.
“-and it was actually relaxing to be around Tom.
It seems strange it should be, with his problems. You’d think he’d be bitter, getting AIDS when he wasn’t even gay, but he wasn’t bitter, not at all-”
“Tom wasn’t gay? But-”
Johnny was shaking his head. “He told me when we were talking about the chances of getting Alzheimer’s or esophageal cancer, you know, the various things the people at the Hall have. We started discussing AIDS and he said the chance of getting it with only one-uh-you know, contact-ranged anywhere from one in a thousand to three in a hundred. This relationship he had happened a long time ago and was very short-lived. Anyway-” Johnny shrugged. “But maybe a crisis is what shows you what you’re made of.” He finished this looking at the cup of coffee Melrose had placed before him, looking as if what he himself was made of must not be much.
“Tom’s crisis was in the past, Johnny; it was horribly painful but he’d lived with it for a long time. It was old. Yours is new.”
Johnny was quiet for a moment and then said, “Police think Chris shot this Sada Colthorp and then took off, don’t they?”
“No, that certainly hasn’t been my impression. Commander Macalvie hasn’t come to any conclusions about that murder.”
“Chris didn’t like her, though. I think they had a couple of fights.”
“A long way from fighting to murder, Johnny.”
Johnny shook the hair fallen across his forehead out of his face. “What in bloody hell is going on around here? Why would anyone want to kill Mr. Bletchley? He’s done nothing but good for this village.”
“That’s what I understand.”
He shoved his cup aside, slapped on his cap, adjusted it, and said, “I’m on call. I’ve got a ride to pick up and take to Mousehole. Thanks for the coffee.”
“Is your uncle still stopping with you?”
“Charlie? He went back to Penzance yesterday morning.”
“I had dinner with him night before last under Mr. Pfinn’s watchful eye. I thought him quite a good fellow.”
“He told me. He thought you were, too. ’Bye.”
The bell rang again and Melrose started to rise from the comfort of the fireplace and the book he was reading. He hesitated, thinking it might be Agatha already or, worse (since Agatha might have needed a ride), Agatha and her bosom buddy, Esther Laburnum.
He tiptoed. How ridiculous, he told himself, and straightened up as he walked the last twenty feet. Still, once there, he did not open the door immediately. Instead he took a furtive glance through one of the leaded-glass panels on both sides of the door to see a man standing there, a stranger in a lightweight wool suit. Good wool, too. At least the back was a stranger’s. He was quite tall and seemed to stand at ease, not with the stiff uncertainty some backs can muster if they’re on unfamiliar ground.
Then, disgusted with himself for keeping the poor fellow waiting, he yanked the door open.
The man turned. “Mr. Plant? Or Lord Ardry? Mrs. Laburnum didn’t seem sure what to call you.” He smiled. “I’m Daniel Bletchley.”
The serviceable stereotypes of composers Melrose had trusted and trotted through his mind-effete, absent-eyed, cloud-ridden-would have to go. The man’s sheer physical presence erased the stereotype. He was tall, though no taller than Melrose; yet he was more densely packed. He was not conventionally handsome, but then he didn’t need to be. His sexuality was something like Richard Jury’s only more so. (A lot of women would have been surprised that there was a “more so.”) Nothing in the expression of his unconventionally handsome face seemed held back, restrained, or secret.