“Where in the hell have you been?”
Her astonishment robbed her, for a moment, of speech. Then she laughed uncertainly and said, “Who are you?”
Melrose dropped her arm and felt the spread of a furious, adolescent blush. He smiled and answered, “The Uninvited.”
The first thing he did was lead her to a telephone so she could call her house. No one answered.
“Could he be out in his cab? There’s a dispatcher, isn’t there? Try calling there.”
“Shirley. Yes. But it’s after midnight.”
“Try anyway.” He stood over her as she placed the call, as if fearing she might disappear again.
Chris still did not know what was going on, but she took him at his word and made the call to Cornwall Cabs. Shirley was speechless for a few moments, so that Chris had to keep saying Hello, hello.
Finally, Shirley found her voice and told Chris, Yes, she would make every effort to get hold of Johnny. He’d borrowed one of the cars to go to Seabourne, but that was nearly three hours ago. “But where’ve you been, love? Are you all right? Johnny’s frantic.”
“He is? But-I’m fine, Shirley. There’s just some kind of misunderstanding. Try and find the cab, will you?” She hung up and said to Melrose, “I’ll call the Woodbine. Brenda-”
“No. Leave that.”
Melrose had been sincere in his apologies for his abrupt treatment of her when she had no idea who he was or why he was here. And why he was surprised that she was here.
They were sitting down in the library, still the only really warm room downstairs, when he finally asked her, “Look, why did you disappear like that? Your nephew has been worried sick.”
She frowned. “Disappear? Well, I didn’t exactly do that. Didn’t he get the note?” She sat back. “Obviously he didn’t. I should have called from Newcastle.”
“Newcastle? You’ve been in Newcastle all this time? We thought you might be dead. Same thing, I imagine.” He did not add or guilty as hell.
She was still frowning, and deeply. “I have a friend there who’s very ill-but that’s hardly important. What’s happened?”
“Haven’t you been reading the papers? There was a murder in Lamorna Cove. A woman you apparently knew: Sada Colthorp.”
Her face went even paler. “Sadie? Murdered?”
“Her body was found on the path between Lamorna and Mousehole.”
Chris seemed to be having a hard time taking this in. “Well… but she came back four or five years ago…”
“Does this suggest anything to you?”
“What? No. What should it suggest? Please stop talking in riddles.”
“I’m sorry. But it is one. Someone murdered her, and police have you down as a suspect.”
She knocked over the telephone in rising from the chair. She was open-mouthed with astonishment.
“The point is, what happened to that note? Who did you give it to?”
Chris shook her head. “To nobody. I left it on top of the card table where I knew he’d be sure to see it.” She made a dismissive gesture. “Anyway, Johnny knows I’d never go off without telling him where I’d gone. How could he doubt?”
“Ah, but he didn’t. He kept insisting you wouldn’t. And we should have paid attention. If we’d paid more attention to his insisting you would have left word, rather than coming to the conclusion you didn’t and he must be wrong, God knows how much would have been saved. So, who took it?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine. Brenda was supposed to make sure he knew why I’d left-”
Her face went white. Then she was suddenly out of her chair and the white was replaced by heat. She was angry. “In thirty seconds or less. Tell me. Because I’m leaving. In thirty seconds.”
Melrose stood up too. He managed it in under that.
But it didn’t keep her from leaving. She ran. She ran through the huge foyer, out the door, and to her car.
Melrose followed, running too. By the time he’d got his own engine going, she was down the drive and out of sight.
56
It was called “the card under glass trick”; Charlie had taught it to him. He still hadn’t got it quite right, but that made no difference to his purpose. Instead of a glass, he would extemporize with the gun, as she’d just set it down again. All he needed was to get her eyes off him in such a way they’d stay off for that bit of time, long enough for him to unwind the cord, which he hoped wasn’t wrapped around the fixture more than once.
He fanned the cards out across the top of the trunk and asked, “You want to pick a card?”
“Do you think I’m getting that close to you?”
“Probably not. I’ll have to do it for you again, then.” With his index finger he flipped the entire half-moon of cards face up. “Full deck, just wanted you to see.” Then he shuffled, cut the deck twice, fanned the cards again, and, in spite of the fix he was in, enjoyed the irony of doing all of this on top of the trunk. It was like that Hitchcock movie, Rope. But this was the saving grace of knowing what you wanted to do in life and being able to do it. It blotted out everything else when you were doing it.
He picked the Ace of Spades from the half-moon, held it up, flicked it with his finger before returning it to the fanned-out cards. He swept the cards together, shuffled, cut several times quickly, fanned the cards out again.
“Ace of Spades? Gone.”
“I’ll take your word for it, sweetheart. Where is it?”
“Look under the gun, Brenda.”
That made her flinch and focus.
He could have told her anywhere, to look at the floor, or the chair itself, or the door. But, he reasoned, only the gun would do it, would distract her long enough. She would have (as did most people) the primitive fear, some half-formed belief-it was this that magic played on-that he could make the gun disappear. And in the split second she looked away to the gun on the table beside her, he unhooked the cord that held the curtain taut and jerked the heavy material across the embrasure.
The first shot went through the curtain just as he threw the ashtray through the glass and kicked open the French door. To confuse her was what he wanted. The second shot followed as he raised the lid of the trunk, and the third as he jumped in, closed the lid, and pulled down the false bottom. He knew she’d look in the trunk, but not before she’d got to the open French door, through which she’d think he’d left the house.
Her bafflement was almost palpable. The lid of the trunk opened upon a second of silence when she saw nothing. There was no explanation for her except to assume he’d gone by way of the French door.
But she’d be back; she’d have had time to realize that he was, after all, a magician and this trunk was big enough to hold a body.
Lying in the dark, he smiled and listened to the rain blowing in the door. He’d been too focused before to realize it was raining. But he heard it now as if it were riveting the lid of the trunk closed. Much as he would have liked to stay in it (for it created even for him the illusion of invisibility), he would have to move before she came back, and he knew that would be soon.
Yet might it work, staying here? He finally scotched that idea; it was too uncertain. Much better to be able to move about the house. He was afraid to leave until she came back inside; she could be making a circle of it, and this time he might not be lucky and run right into her. Better to wait and see which way she came in-probably the front-and he could slip out the back.
He was out of the trunk now and had never realized before how bright ordinary lamplight could be. To avoid being seen through the windows, he crouched and, in this position, made his way as quickly as he could across the living room. He went to the kitchen. He opened the little gray metal door of the panel box, pulled the main circuit breaker, and plunged the house in darkness.