The relief of what he felt as an almost comic turn in all of this made him laugh. “Newcastle? She doesn’t know anybody in Newcastle.”
“Really, sweetheart, you can be so arrogant. You think Chris had no life apart from you? Children, children.” It was an admonishment, her tone merely exasperated, as if they might have been chatting about the rearing of them. “They think they know everything about their parents. And their aunts.” Her smile was almost indulgent. “She has an old friend up there who needed someone right away to take care of her because her home help died suddenly. It was for two weeks, until this woman could go into one of those homes they advertise for ‘retired gentlefolk. ’ That always amuses me, that phrase; doesn’t it you? But you’re right. I did want to make it look as if Chris had run off and there wasn’t much time to improvise because Sadie May-the Viscountess, I should say-was in Lamorna.”
Johnny looked down at his empty hands. It didn’t come clearer; it just got deeper. Like a ladder to the sea you go down and down. Like the stone stairs in the rocks where the little Bletchley kids had wound up. Then he raised his head. “You killed Sada Colthorp.”
Brenda said nothing.
“Why?”
She still said nothing.
“And if Chris left right then, it would look like she did it. That was the idea, wasn’t it? But if you’re telling the truth, she’ll be back. What then?”
“Newcastle police will pick her up. When I finally tell them where she is. She could call at any time.” With her free hand, Brenda reached for the pack of cigarettes, found it empty, balled it up, and swore softly.
Got to get out of here, thought Johnny. Get out of this kitchen. Get back to where I’d have, if not a sporting chance, maybe a fighting one. Just knowing that Chris was alive had cleared his mind utterly, even of fear. He could think now. “If I worked it out about those meringues, I’m sure somebody else could too.”
“That was very clever of you, sweetheart. I knew you were smart, but not that smart. I honestly don’t see how anyone else would, but”-she moved in a sideways walk, over to a coat rack, and unhooked her coat-“I’ll just get rid of what’s left. Get up.” She struggled into the coat. “Come on. And remember something. I will shoot you if you try to run. So walk beside me when we get outside.”
The sporting chance was now on offer. At least, in his own living room, he might be able to find a way out of this. Johnny turned slowly, as if reluctantly, and waited while she turned out the lights. Then he moved toward the swinging door, wondering if he could slam it back in her face when she followed behind him, knowing he couldn’t. She would shoot him. The total folly of so doing did not occur to her; how would she ever explain that to police? It hadn’t occurred to her because her thoughts were pointed like an arrow to one thing and one thing only, and he still didn’t know what it was. He had no doubt of that at all. He walked through the tearoom where the moonlight still flooded the window embrasure as if nothing had happened. It was almost consoling to think that rooms you walk through still hold fast to their identity.
“If you did anything to Chris, I’ll kill you Brenda. I will. She’s all I have.” He opened the door. The bell sounded its tiny discordant chorus of welcome.
“Like Ramona,” said Brenda, “was all I had.”
51
It was after midnight by now, and Macalvie decided there wasn’t a hell of a lot they could do until they had some hard evidence. “What,” asked Macalvie, “did she have against the Bletchleys?” No matter what their theories, they had nothing to link her to the murder of Sada Colthorp or to Simon Bolt’s film.
As Macalvie and Wiggins were leaving, Melrose beat a little tattoo on Wiggins’s shoulder, saying, “Well done, Sergeant. Well done. We none of us saw it except for you.”
Wiggins tried to be casual about it; he held up his notebook and said, “It’s just good note-taking, Mr. Plant. The Bletchley kids’ death-well, that was so dramatic it’s easy enough to forget poor Ramona Friel.” He added generously, thereby deprecating his own role in any solution, “And we don’t really know, do we? We’ve still got Tom Letts’s murder to deal with. Assuming, of course, that Mr. Macalvie is right and it’s not Morris Bletchley we should be thinking about. That’s just theory, too.”
Jury stood there, listening to Wiggins. He smiled. It was probably the most the sergeant had ever said about a case without a meditation on his or someone’s illness. It was certainly the first time Wiggins had ever called into question a theory of Macalvie’s.
They said good night.
Back in the library with whisky in hand, Melrose said, “Noah and Esme, poor benighted kiddies. You wouldn’t think a mother, any mother, could be part of such an arrangement.”
Jury raised his glass and watched the dying fire through a half inch of whisky that turned the hearth into a liquid amber sea. “Daniel Bletchley. What if it wasn’t Chris Wells but Ramona Friel he was having an affair with?”
“It was Chris Wells. Anyway, the night his children died-that couldn’t have been Ramona Friel. Poor girl was dead.”
Jury lowered his glass. “What I meant was earlier. If he’d had an affair with Ramona Friel and the child was his and she died of complications in childbirth, I would imagine a mother would lust for revenge.”
Melrose frowned. “What complications?”
Jury looked at him.
“Leukemia isn’t a complication of childbirth. I have no idea how pregnancy could affect such a disease.”
“It wouldn’t, as far as I know. But it might have made no difference to her mother. She died, and so did the baby. Brenda Friel would make that add up to murder,” said Jury.
“Then why in hell not grab a gun and kill Dan Bletchley if she thought he was the father? No, you’re wrong. Bletchley isn’t, I think, a profligate man. It would take a most unusual woman-woman, not a twenty-odd-year-old child-to move Daniel Bletchley.”
“Perhaps. You’ve met him, I haven’t. I feel sorry for that boy, Johnny. How old is he? Sixteen? Seventeen?”
“Seventeen. He’s a magician. Amateur, but pretty good, I think.”
“No kidding?”
Plant nodded. “He loves gambling. Not that he can get into it much in Bletchley. But you know what he wants to do? Go to Las Vegas. That’s what he wants. I guess for somebody like that, Las Vegas is the Promised Land. He wants to go to the Mirage and see Siegfried and Roy.”
“Don’t think I know the lads.”
“No. Well, you don’t know much about the States.”
“Does not knowing Siegfried and Roy constitute not knowing much about the States?”
“Everybody knows them. They’re the magicians with the white tigers. They can make an elephant disappear. They can make anything disappear.” Melrose looked up at the ceiling. “Except Agatha.”
“An elephant? Jesus. How do they do that?”
“Well, they don’t, do they? Charlie told me you obviously begin with the premise that they don’t do it. If you accept that premise-and it’s amazing how often people really don’t-you go on with that in mind. It’s mirrors, or something. I didn’t really understand-” Melrose stopped abruptly, thinking.
“What’s wrong?”
“Why didn’t we do that with Johnny?”
“What?”
“Accept the premise that his aunt wouldn’t go off without word to him? And if we accept it-well, it means she did leave word-a note-or she told somebody else.”
Jury sat up. “The disappearance was all staging.” He shut his eyes and leaned his head back. “Siegfried and Roy.” He sighed. “We could use a little magic.”