Melrose picked up his fork and the conversation they’d been having. “What about this, John, if they’re heirs to the Chick’nKing fortune, why even bother with selling or renting? They’d hardly need the money.”
Johnny thought about this as he filled Melrose’s glass again. “Maybe that’s why the fortune got to be one in the first place.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Mr. Bletchley might have been a man who understood money. Might be, I mean. How’s the cod?”
The cod was silky-smooth and so fresh-tasting it might have leapt from the water and into the pan. “Excellent. My compliments to your chef.” He saw the smile begin on Johnny’s lips, one that lent itself to only one interpretation. “Don’t tell me, please. You’ve already shamed the entire working world into silence.”
“Only when we’ve just one or two. Mr. Pfinn, he doesn’t want to call in the real chef unless there’s several customers, which there isn’t very often in the fall and winter. I don’t do any cooking in the summer, only when it slacks off like this. I learned from years of watching Chris cook. She’s sublime. Really.”
“Chris?”
“You know, my aunt who I told you about.”
“Oh, yes. She owns the tearoom.”
“Along with Brenda Friel. Chris’ll be doing the baking right now for tomorrow. About three times a week she makes meringues and scones and things. When I finish here I’ll go home, give her a hand.”
“I hope I’m not holding you up!” Though Melrose doubted there would be very many things or people that could hold up Johnny Wells. He would find his way out of or around them.
“No, not at all.” Johnny checked his watch. “There’ll be a bit of a floor show in just a few minutes.”
“Need I ask who-”
“I’m a magician, remember?” He sighed. “I don’t have enough time to practice, though. You know where I’ve always wanted to go? Las Vegas, Nevada. There’s a place for magic! Siegfried and Roy, ever heard of them?”
“Does sound familiar.”
“I figure with a name like John Wells, I can’t miss.”
Melrose frowned. “I don’t follow.”
“Here you are, such an educated gent, and you’re saying you never heard of John Wellington Wells?” Johnny started in singing.
“My name is John Wellington Wells,
I’m a dealer in magic and spells,
In blessings and curses,
And ever-filled purses,
In prophecies, witches, and knells.
If anyone anything lacks,
He’ll find it all ready in stacks,
If he’ll only look in
On the resident Djinn,
Number seventy, Simmery Axe!”
Johnny finished off with a flourish of the white napkin draped over his arm.
“It’s showmanship, magic. It’s all showmanship.”
5
He called out “Chris!” as he always did when he got in. There was no “In here!” called back from the kitchen.
Johnny walked across the small front parlor. The cluttered Tudor cottage was still warm from a fire that had recently gone out. The kitchen was warmer yet. On the long white porcelain table and the top of the cooker were pans of freshly baked cookies and scones. The oven door was open, and another cookie sheet of meringues sat inside the oven. Lightweight and sweet, they vanished quickly and magically on the tongue. A bit too sweet for him.
Johnny looked around for some sign of his aunt and found an apron tossed across the back of a chair. He studied the pastries and recalled that meringues took an hour to bake and then another hour to cool down. Chris did this by turning the oven off and leaving the meringues inside. The oven was cool but not cold.
Right now it was a quarter to ten. That meant she had probably been here until nine o’clock, maybe even later. That meant she’d just left.
But for where? Nothing was open now except the pubs, and she didn’t often go to them, and never as far as he knew on a bake night. What she did was to go upstairs, get in bed, and read. She loved to read. She loved routine. It’s just another word for “ritual” and ritual’s always a comfort. She was right; it was a comfort knowing you were expected at certain places at certain times. That people depended upon you. He could have guessed at Chris’s movements on any given day and more than likely been right. It was a comfort, he thought, that she was like that, always right where you expected her to be, a person you could hang on to.
Johnny tried to emulate her in this way. If he didn’t appear at the Woodbine exactly at 10 A.M. or at 3 P.M., the old ladies would complain. The girls who served there were a bit scatterbrained and couldn’t seem to get in the spirit of afternoon tea at the Woodbine.
It was another ritual that Johnny understood. Chris had once said, “See, it isn’t just food and drink; it’s more like regeneration. I’m not sure how it works, but I’ve seen these customers come in out of sorts and grumpy and leave renewed in some way.”
Although he was sure she wasn’t upstairs (he would have heard her), still, he had to check. He went up the narrow, dark, piecrust staircase to the bedrooms above. There were three. His bedroom and her bedroom had a view of Mounts Bay. Although the door was open a crack, he still knocked. Perhaps she was in bed, sick. But he knew she wasn’t. The mind tossed up all sorts of flotsam for one to cling to before it started to sink.
He looked at her dressing table with its three-sided mirror, hoping something-spilled powder, open lipstick tube, uncapped cologne-would give him a clue as to where she’d gone, what she was doing. But it was as neat as always.
He sat down in a rocker that faced the window that faced the square. Beneath the moon, the grass was silvery, the square luminous. He tried to think of emergencies. Maybe she’d cut herself and had to go looking for a doctor. Up to Bletchley Hall, maybe. There was always a doctor on the premises there, or so he thought. Or maybe something had happened to one of her “ladies,” as she called them, one of the old people she volunteered to help at Bletchley Hall. An emergency, that must be it. Or maybe his alcoholic Uncle Charlie had called her from Penzance for help. He’d done it before.
Ridiculous. Chris hadn’t gone on a trip, for God’s sakes. Not without leaving him a note.
“Ah, dear, I hope she’s not sick, sweetheart,” said Brenda, over the phone. “Shall I call the Hall? Could she have-?”
Johnny had already done it. And the pubs; he’d called them too.
“How about the newsagent’s?” said Brenda.
“Compton’s? It’s half-ten, Brenda. Anyway, why would she go there at this hour?”
“For cigarettes?”
“No. She stopped smoking.”
Brenda sighed. “Sweetheart, I know for a fact she’s sneaked round there a couple of times.”
Johnny had to laugh. Chris’s vanishing had not settled on him fully yet. It hadn’t reached the point of hardening into fact. It was still fiction, a vaguely alarming story that would of course resolve itself into just that: a story. “Come on, Brenda. Can you really see Chris sneaking round?”
“Well… no, I expect not. But I know you think she’s always fine. I mean that she’s got no problems. But she does. Same as us.” She said this without a trace of sarcasm, said it with a kind of sadness.
“You’re not helping, Brenda.”
“I’m not, am I? What about your Uncle Charlie? Maybe he got tossed in the nick again and she went to rescue him.”
“Without telling me? She wouldn’t do that.”
Brenda sighed. “I just can’t think of anything. Would you like me to come round, sweetheart? Keep you company? We could worry together that way.”