Martha Grimes: The Lamorna Wink

“In Ireland.”

“North? South? Where?”

“Northern Ireland.”

“God, why?”

“He was sent there on a case.”

“Oh, how shabby.”

Melrose frowned, thinking. “What were we talking about? I mean before… Oh, yes. Cornwall.” Melrose took out a small notebook, black and spiral-bound at the top, the kind Jury carried. He leafed up some pages. “Bletchley. It’s near Mousehole. Ever hear of it?”

“No. And can’t imagine why I’d want to. Nor can I call up a picture of you there, either. You are not at all Cornwallian.”

“How would you know? You’ve never set foot in that county in your life. How do you know what is and what isn’t Cornwallian?”

“Well, for one thing, they’re completely unimpulsive. You wouldn’t last a week- Ow! ”

Back in the Woodbine Tearoom, Agatha asked, “What’s wrong with you, Melrose? You look a sight.”

Whatever that meant. He smiled and stirred his tea, dropping another lump of sugar into it, and thought of the dreadful train ride he’d just taken from London. He had been looking forward to it; he enjoyed the anonymity of a train-no one knowing who you are, where you’re going, anything.

Well, he could stuff the anonymity back in his sock drawer. No chance of that.

Melrose had not climbed aboard a train in some time. The first thing he asked of the conductor was the location of the dining car. The conductor had said, Oh, no, sir, no dining cars anymore. But someone’ll be round in a tic with sandwiches and tea. Thank you, sir.

One illusion shattered. No lolling about over your brandy and coffee and a cigar at a white-clothed table anymore. And the old compartments, where if one was lucky he might be the only passenger or, luckier, would meet a mysterious assortment of others. The outer aisle, where one could lean against the railing and watch the green countryside flash by. Sometimes he thought the only reason trains had been invented was for films. Murder on the Orient Express. It would be fabulous to be here in this insular, sinister, almost claustrophobic atmosphere when a murder was committed.

Or just observe those two youngish gentlemen, leaning toward one another, quietly talking. Scheming. Strangers on a Train. They could be exchanging murders.

Or that old gray-ringleted lady he had passed, knitting, he would soon see on a stretcher being borne from the train at a stop up the track-

The Lady Vanishes!

These days he was always waxing nostalgic-old films, old songs, old photographs. In this Hitchcockian reverie he did not see her coming, did not register her presence until he heard, “What on earth are you looking so squinty-eyed for, Melrose?”

He was yanked thus from his reverie with such a vengeance, he dropped his paper and his mouth fell open and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. “Agatha!”

Throw Momma From the Train!

If ever there was an antidote to nostalgia, it had just burst through the door of the Woodbine Tearoom.

It put him in mind of another old film he had seen on late-night TV called The Uninvited, the “uninvited” being a ghost who hurled back doors, laughed and sang, and presented its unseeable self to the horrified young heroine.

Unfortunately, his ghost was seeable.

For the last thirty-six hours she had accompanied him in his hired car round the bottom of the Cornwall coast. He had kept putting off the estate agent who was to show him the rental property, waiting for Agatha to find some entertainment other than himself that would keep her busy for half a day. He certainly did not want her around when he viewed the house, casting her accursed shadow over it. To say nothing of her endless carping. You won’t want this, Melrose. Look at that thatch; you’ll be needing a whole new roof. Whatever would you do with all of this rocky land? No, Melrose, it won’t suit. Et cetera, et cetera.

Fortunately, the young lad’s arrival with the tea broke into these morbid reflections. The boy held up one pot, asking “Regular tea?” and Melrose smiled as he tapped his own place mat. The waiter set the other by Agatha’s hand. Then he brought the tiered cake plate from the window embrasure and set that on their table also.

Melrose watched him stop at a neighboring table, say something, move to another table and another. The Woodbine was small, but it was crowded. He worked the room slick as any politician.

In a few moments, leaving Agatha to the scones and double cream, he rose and walked over to the cash register where the lad was ringing up bills. (He appeared to be both the serving end and the business end of this place.)

“I beg your pardon.”

The lad smiled broadly. “Tea okay?”

“Fine. I just wondered: Do you have any free time during the day? I’m asking because I need someone to do a bit of work for me. Wouldn’t take more than, say, three hours.” He held up a fifty-pound note he’d pulled from his billfold.

“For that I’d take a dive off Beachy Head.”

“It will be neither that heady an experience nor that dangerous. The lady I’m with, and don’t look at the table for I fear she reads minds, is also my aunt and sticks to me like Crazy Glue. I need to be rid of her for a few hours, and as you seem extremely resourceful, I thought you-”

“I could take her off your hands.” The boy shrugged, smiled. “I could do. When?”

Melrose handed him the fifty. “Well, say in an hour or so?”

“Done.” Holding up the note, he added, “You trust me with this?”

“Why not? You brought the poison.”

The car was a newly minted silver Jaguar with ox-blood-red leather seats. These people probably had to impress their clients with proof of the agency’s solvency. Esther Laburnum was the agent for this particular property, named Seabourne.

Melrose had seen the picture in Country Life as he was flipping past articles on gardening and on the country’s “Living National Treasures,” artisans who continued in outlandishly arcane avocations such as thimble-chasing or making rock gardens for doll houses. Then there was an article on the hunt and its grave importance to the country. The print practically bled entitlement.

The properties shown usually took up a page apiece and as often as not failed to give the asking price; instead, the copy indicated the property’s price would be given “upon request.” This bit of showmanship Melrose imagined was from the “if-you-have-to-ask” school. Melrose didn’t. He’d torn the page from the magazine and gone to the telephone.

That had been several days ago, and he was pleased with himself for undertaking to see the real thing. He discovered now, as he stood looking at it, that the picture of Seabourne hadn’t done it justice.

But, then, it would be quite impossible to capture the atmosphere, the slight menace, the rather edgy romanticism that the place stirred in him. He told himself he was being overimaginative. It did no good.

Architecturally, the house wasn’t especially imposing. It was Georgian, built of gray stone that worked as a kind of camouflage, making it fade into the land and woods around it. It sat on a cliff, a craggy rock-strewn promontory above the sea. It had been this setting that particularly appealed to him, as it surely would to anyone with an ounce of romance in him. The whole prospect-house, woods, rocks, sea-looked drained of color, which added to the romance. If a grim-faced chatelaine in black to her ankles had opened the heavy oak door, it would have added even more. Melrose was fully prepared to be swept away.

But it was Esther Laburnum of Aspry and Aspry who swept back the double doors to the largest of the reception rooms (there were three) with a flourish, saying, “There!” in a pleased-as-punch tone suggesting she had just worked some sleight of hand and had called up a fully furnished room, right down to the pictures on the wall.