“You mean that man was the afternoon-tea-hour pianist at Betty’s?”
Betty’s was a Harrogate landmark. Agatha was impressed; she always was by the wrong things.
“Yes. I was trying to talk him into playing in the Woodbine. Well, excuse me while I put the kettle on.” Melrose turned to go.
“You mean the tea’s not ready?” Her sigh was pained. “Oh, honestly, men!”
She seemed to have forgotten that oh-honestly-men had been producing her tea daily at Ardry End without fail or error. He put the kettle on the hob and was back in the library quick as one of young Johnny’s card tricks.
“I was telling you about my own little investigation. We cannot leave it to doltish police such as that Constable Evans!”
“There are some distinctly un-doltish police on the job. Mr. Macalvie, mainly.”
She straightened the ruffle of her fussy flowered blouse. “Of course, they’re all barking up the wrong tree.”
“Which tree is that?”
Ignoring the tree, she leaned forward and whispered-who ever she thought might be overhearing, Melrose didn’t know-“What we need to search for is your local homophobic, and I think I’ve got him!”
The kettle screamed.
No wonder.
Melrose was out and back barely in time for the tea to steep. This announcement of his aunt’s might prove to be entertaining. He told her that her homophobia was misplaced, since the killer hadn’t even intended to kill Tom Letts. “It was Morris Bletchley he or she was after.”
“That’s patently absurd. That’s the trouble with you so-called intellectuals, you can’t see what’s right under your noses. What I heard was”-again she leaned toward him and said in a whispery hiss-“he has AIDS-full blown AIDS! Can’t have that in a village. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all if that Pfinn person shot him. If ever there was a homophobic, it’s that man!”
Melrose had a hard time of it not to pour scalding tea down her neck. He was never a proselytizer of gay rights or anything else; he didn’t care much one way or the other. But for Tom, yes, he would proselytize. “Your bigoted nature-”
“What?” Sheer amazement sat on her features at the realization that Melrose was overtly criticizing her.
“-precludes any possibility of your seeing a person’s true worth. All you’re doing is projecting your own fears on another person or situation. That’s what homophobia is, isn’t it? Projecting one’s own fear of partaking of other men’s needs and desires? That’s what phobia in general is, a fear of being the Other. Anyway, you didn’t know Tom Letts. I did, and I liked him very much.”
Agatha looked all around, as if the dread virus might have infiltrated Seabourne. The look made Melrose laugh; it was so much the look that would be called forth by the doors crashing open upon them. The Uninvited!
“I don’t see it’s anything to laugh about.”
Too bad. “As for your chosen homophobic-Mr. Pfinn, is it?-I don’t know how you come to that remarkable conclusion, since Mr. Pfinn engages in conversation only to be contradictory. He stays away from words.”
“Well, he didn’t with Esther and me. Of course, people do tend to confide in me, you’ve noticed.”
Melrose felt his eyes open as wide as any cartoon character. As did Mr. Pfinn, Melrose stayed away from words.
Agatha leaned forward, balancing a biscuit on her knee. “The man absolutely loathes homosexuals!”
“Mr. Pfinn loathes everyone. Loathing is not a criterion by which to judge Mr. Pfinn.”
42
Pfinn was living up to Melrose’s assessment of him (splenetic, peevish, and unaccommodating) that night in the Drowned Man by refusing to allow Brian Macalvie another drink in the saloon bar.
“Just you order another at dinner,” commanded Pfinn. “But get your skates on. Can’t keep the cook around all night, can I?”
Dinnertime thus determined, they had gone into the dining room, where Melrose was now picking another bone out of his turbot. This had been served by a humorless middle-aged lady he had never seen before. Johnny was not around. “You say the same gun killed both of them?”
“Yeah, but we already knew that. Smith and Wesson twenty-two.” Macalvie had stopped eating five minutes before and was smoking a cigarette, having considerately asked Melrose’s permission.
“We didn’t know anything. You apparently did.”
“Did you really think there were two shooters involved?”
“I-”
“There are too many similarities between the shootings to believe that.” Macalvie pierced a piece of aubergine and held it on the tine of his fork as if it were a little green world he needed to decipher. He gave his fish a poke, put his fork down again, and looked around for the waitress. “We’re the only ones in here, for God’s sakes, so why can’t we get service? I want another beer. Has it occurred to you, Plant, that everything significant in the background of these two cases-three if we count the little kids-happened four years ago, give a month, take a month? Listen: Sada Colthorp turns up here four years ago; the kids died September four years ago; Ramona Friel died in January four years ago.”
Melrose drank his wine, a Meursault at some outlandish price, but he felt he deserved it. Why, he wasn’t sure. “That bothers you?”
Macalvie’s head turned from the dining room search and cut Melrose a glance. “Doesn’t it disturb you? You don’t think it’s coincidence, do you?”
Actually, Melrose hadn’t worked out that there was a list of events to consider. He watched the waitress trudge grimly toward their table, thinking not about Macalvie’s list but about where Johnny was.
Macalvie told the woman what he wanted and she trudged grimly off again. “The night the little kids died, the housekeeper thought she heard a car, woke up, but went back to sleep again. Why did she do that?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“You’re an elderly woman of a nervous disposition, alone with two little kids in an isolated house-”
“Turn of the Screw, as I said.”
“Uh-huh. A car drives up or drives off. Wouldn’t this keep you from going back to sleep? It would me, and I’ve got a gun. I’d be pumping adrenaline-unless, of course, the sound was familiar.”
“You mean one of the family cars?”
“There were three: Daniel’s sporty Jaguar, Karen’s BMW, Morris Bletchley’s Volvo.”
Melrose recalled his visit to Rodney Colthorp. “Or Simon Bolt’s. If she heard a familiar car, it didn’t have to be Dan Bletchley’s. Bolt had the same make; Dennis Colthorp tried to buy it, remember? The car would have to have been leaving, not arriving, because Mrs. Hayter went to investigate.”
“Right. That’s possible. Too bad Bolt’s not around to question. He died three years ago.” Macalvie paused. “So Daniel and Karen were out on the razz. Don’t give me that alibi look. Daniel’s fell apart pretty quickly. Karen’s lacks the essential watertightness we cops hate; her dinner companions said they actually hadn’t seen her every minute as they went on to a concert after dinner. Tickets were hard to get, so they had to sit apart. I only got this from them, mind you, when I questioned them again.”
“So they didn’t really know where she was for some time.”
“An hour and twenty minutes. They were vague. I went back and checked up on that particular event.”
“What you’re saying is that one of the Bletchleys came back?” Melrose’s scalp prickled.