“Where’d they go? Do you know where they went?”
Mr. Pfinn’s white eyelashes blinked several times. “No cain tell that. Listen, boy, I’d ought t’fire ya, I ought.”
“Stuff it, Mr. Pfinn, and you can stuff your job too.”
He was fast on the point of tears; then he was at the doorway, jumping over the dogs, and out the front door, where he ran straight into Megs, who served along with him at the Woodbine.
Not that it mattered, but now Brenda would know his reason for not coming in was bogus. He decided to make it three out of three and walked as quickly as he could to the Cornwall Cabs office.
“Feeling better, love?” asked Shirley, who, not waiting for an answer, continued with, “Look kinda peaked to me. You sure you should be out of bed?”
For the first time that evening, Johnny smiled. “I’m better. But I want to ask a big favor. Can I have a car for a couple of hours?”
“You certainly could, love, except one’s in the shop and the other two’re both out on calls. Is something wrong?”
“No, no. I just have a little business that I need a ride for.”
“Sorry. One of them’s gone to Mousehole and one to St. Buryan. Bit of a distance. But you can wait if you like.”
Johnny was biting a thumbnail. He shook his head. “Listen, could I just make a phone call?”
“Sure, love.” Shirley shoved the black telephone toward him.
He punched in the number and listened to the bleak brr-brrs sounding in Seabourne. He let it ring a dozen times before he turned off the transmit and handed the phone back to Shirley.
“No joy there either?”
“No joy, right.”
“Shouldn’t be long before one of them gets back-speak of the devil, here comes Trev. You can take that one.”
Johnny tossed her a “thanks” over his shoulder as he ran out the door.
44
Melrose was sitting in his favorite chair, looking at the fire and entertaining himself with thoughts of a séance. Surely, there had been a seance in The Unin vited; in films like that there was always a seance. He wondered if real séances (or was that an oxymoron?) were like those portrayed in films: the medium’s voice turning deep and guttural, uttering the oracular words of one centuries dead; the candle flame flickering and dying; that clammy hand holding yours later discovered to be wearing a glove…
Melrose shuddered slightly. He was wracking his brain, or, rather un-wracking it, downloading his thoughts about the murder of Tom Letts and Daniel Bletchley’s visit into his glass of whisky.
The doorbell rang.
Again? Who the devil-?
He sighed, got up from his chair, and carried his drink with him. He got to the door, glad that at least it wouldn’t be Agatha, since it already had been, and, yanking it open, hoping it would be Stella making a magical appearance.
It was Richard Jury. Just standing there.
Melrose gaped. His mouth opened and closed, opened and closed. He’d like to appear to be just standing there too, with a drink in his hand and Jury’s cool. Instead, he knew he must look like a fish. Mouth open, closed, open, closed.
He found his voice, finally. “Is Ireland over?”
“It’s still there. It didn’t much want me around. I don’t take it personally. But I do take it personally that I’m standing out here on your stoop when I’d much rather be inside, sitting down, with one of whatever you’re drinking.” Jury smiled.
It was one of those smiles that didn’t end with the mouth. It seemed to radiate everywhere, as if his whole person were pitching in to help that smile along.
“Oh! Sorry.” Melrose threw the door wide.
Jury shrugged out of his coat and looked for an available coat rack or surface. Melrose took it and tossed it over the staircase banister. “Come on into the library. There’s a fire.”
Jury settled into the chair Daniel Bletchley had occupied earlier. With a strong sense of déjà vu, Melrose handed him a drink. It was true; Dan Bletchley did have something in him that reminded Melrose of Richard Jury. No wonder he and Daniel had hit it off.
“This fellow who was murdered last night, Tom Letts, over at the nursing home in Bletchley.”
Melrose felt Jury hadn’t dropped a beat since the last time they’d seen each other. It was as if they’d been discussing this case all along. “But how do you know about him?”
“Because I’ve been three hours in Exeter talking to Brian Macalvie. Why was I in Exeter? Because the ferry from Cork goes into Wales. Why was I in Cork instead of Belfast? Because I had to go to Dublin at the last moment. Why was I in-”
“Look, I’ll leave, if you think the conversation would go better without me.”
Jury laughed. “Sorry. I was just saving you the trouble of asking a lot of inane questions.”
“Inane? Thanks. So Brian Macalvie filled you in.”
“At length. He seems to have taken this case pretty much to heart. But I don’t know why that should surprise me. He usually does take cases to heart.”
“Remember Dartmoor? That pub named Help the Poor Struggler? He put his foot through the jukebox when someone played a song-what was that song?”
“Molly something.” And Jury started to sing: “Oh, mahn dear, did’ja niver hear, o’ pretty Molly da da da.”
“Brannigan! That’s it, that’s it!” Then Melrose sang: “She’s gone away and-and-what?”
“And left, me, and-”
Then they sang together or, rather, apart:
“And left me, and I’ll niver be a mahn again!”
They laughed, but then Jury said, “Christ, why does love have to be so sad?” He rolled the cool glass across his forehead. “I’m lightheaded; I haven’t had any sleep in a couple of days.”
“You can sleep here, of course.”
“Thanks. That pub in the village didn’t much tempt me.”
“The Drowned Man. Sergeant Wiggins is staying there.”
Jury smiled. “When this case is closed, or even if it’s not, may I have him back?”
“Don’t blame me. It’s foot-through-the-jukebox Macalvie who insisted on getting him down from London.”
“He’s always liked having Wiggins about. Funny.” Jury looked around the softly lighted room. “Nice room, this. Nice house.”
“I’ve got it for three months. Look, since you’re here, give some thought to this business, will you? The only thing I have in common with Hamlet is that I’ve been thinking ‘too much on the event.’ ”
“I don’t believe it’s thinking too much; that’s just a symptom. What’s causing it? I know what’s causing it for Macalvie: the murder of those two kids. For four years, he’s been a little obsessed. Really, it reminds me of the whole Molly Brannigan thing. Molly Singer, I mean.”
But Melrose remembered that it hadn’t been Macalvie alone who’d been interested in Molly.
Jury had been looking over the silver-framed snapshots and now picked one up. “These are the children? What a tragedy. And what a puzzle. If Macalvie hasn’t solved it, who could? He can cut away everything extraneous to a situation. He’s like a laser.” Jury drank the last of his whisky. “I can’t do that. I get too muddied up by stuff. Anyway, he’s sent you a message.”
Melrose did not tell him that Macalvie could get muddied up and overinvolved himself.
Jury reached into the pocket of his shirt, under a heavy Aran sweater, and pulled out a folded paper. He spread this on the coffee table between them and smoothed it out. “It’s about Morris Bletchley and Tom Letts.” It was a diagram of the red drawing room. “Does this look accurate to you?”
Melrose put on his glasses. “Yes, absolutely.”