Martha Grimes - The Lamorna Wink

“All Ramona wanted from me was to help her-not an abortion, mind you, but just to sustain her until the baby was born. I told her she really should tell her mother, but she didn’t want to. Finally, though, she did. I guess Mona just had to have her mother’s support. And that’s the last I ever saw of her until I heard the poor girl had died. I could certainly feel for Brenda, I’ll tell you.”

“Did she tell you who the father was?”

Sadly, Moe shook his head. “No. I knew it was Tom. But that, I’m sure, Ramona didn’t tell her mother; she swore me to secrecy on that score. I’d have known anyway, wouldn’t I? She refused to tell him, adamantly refused. If she had, Tom would have done something; he’d have married her. But she didn’t want to marry anyone. Very stubborn girl.” He smiled slightly but then looked from Plant to Jury, as if he feared what was coming. “I was told she died of that non-Hodgkins leukemia.”

“That’s what Brenda Friel told people. But I’ll bet you any amount of money that Ramona Friel died from some complication of AIDS. If not AIDS directly, then indirectly. Whatever was wrong with Ramona was exacerbated by this virus. Didn’t Brenda know Tom Letts? Didn’t he drive you here from London?”

Moe shook his head. “Maybe once or twice. It’s a hell of a drive from London. No, Brenda didn’t know Tom; she certainly didn’t know he’d worked for me in London.”

“Brenda Friel didn’t know who the father was and found out only recently about this Putney arrangement. Then she knew the father must have been Tom Letts.”

Morris Bletchley looked away then sharply back again. “Brenda Friel’s the one who shot him? Jesus.” Moe leaned over, his head in his hands.

“She had a motive, certainly.” said Jury. “She found out somehow.”

His head still in his hands, Moe shook it back and forth, back and forth. “A couple of weeks ago-feels like years-Tom was talking to her about Putney. She said she had family-some cousins, whatever-in Fulham. You know, right next door. Brenda’s not stupid. Ramona’d worked in Putney and Ramona’d died of AIDS.”

Melrose and Jury were silent, watching him.

Finally Moe asked, “And Chris Wells? What did she have to do with all this?”

“I’m guessing again, but I’d say Chris Wells presented a danger after Tom was murdered. Chris would have been the only person who knew Ramona had the virus. So it was not what Chris knew then, it’s what she would know if Tom Letts were suddenly murdered.”

Morris Bletchley set his head in his hands again, shaking it. “Poor Ramona, that poor girl. Ramona was so good with Noah and Esmé.” He stood up. “It’s too much. You know whom I suspected: my daughter-in-law. I’ve never really liked Karen. She’s just so plausible. ”

Melrose knew exactly what he meant. Plausible. He remembered that enjoyable evening at Seabourne, marred by a moment of discomfort, when she’d shown her resentment of Morris Bletchley and a certain banal turn of mind. Small things, and perhaps he’d been small-minded, but he supposed a person should attend to his intuitive responses to small things.

“And I’ve always known she married Danny for his money. Danny”-he looked at them sadly-“never wanted to leave here. Karen was the one who was always agitating to go back to London.”

“She told me,” said Melrose, “just the opposite. She told me a story that was half fact and half fantasy. I think she wanted to make sure police understood there were other people on the scene because she was afraid your son would come under suspicion.”

“You mean that she would.” Moe sighed. “She’d want to convince the world she’s the inconsolable mother. It’s Danny who’s inconsolable.” He looked around the beautiful room as if the blue had fled from it, as if it were drained of color. “Will we ever know what really happened?”

Plant had gone to call the Penzance police station, where Jury now imagined Macalvie questioning Brenda Friel. He said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Bletchley. We’ll know.”

He’d been here in one of the interrogation rooms of the Penzance police station for half an hour, waiting for her to say something.

Brenda Friel hadn’t gotten beyond hello and asking for a cigarette.

“Where are the video tapes, Brenda?”

Macalvie assumed she wasn’t going to answer that question, either. She surprised him, even though the answer was a question.

“What tapes?”

“The film Simon Bolt took for you and for himself, presumably to peddle over the Internet. A good crossover between snuff film and kiddy porn. The one Sada Colthorp had when you shot her.”

Her smile was all for herself. Hemmed in, parsimonious, nothing left over, not even bad humor, for anyone else. God knows not for him.

Despite her relentless silence, Macalvie was getting to her; he could feel it. It was an odd chemistry; he’d felt it before with suspects. It wasn’t his experience as a policeman or his cleverness that was getting through. It was something else, some quality in himself that the person under question seemed to think they shared. Macalvie hated the feeling. Not that he empathized, not that he understood. Some killers he did come to understand. Brenda wasn’t one of them. It made him uncomfortable to sense she didn’t believe this. That’s your problem, boyo.

“Yeah, a real classic,” he went on, “that film. I can see the pedophiles slobbering all the way from Bournemouth to John o’Groat’s.”

Her eyes were sparking now, live wires touched to some electrical source. Anger? Good.

“But it didn’t start out that way, Brenda.” He got up and walked over to a little window, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets, holding back his raincoat. “Before Ramona died you wouldn’t in a million years have thought of having a sociopath like Bolt follow those kids to their deaths. I can see it, I can just see it. Noah and Esmé-” He looked round at her, sitting there, not looking at him. The children’s names touched off nothing in her-no sympathy, no remorse. At least, these emotions weren’t present on her face.

He went on. “You know what I’ve been wondering? How it is you didn’t send the tape to Morris Bletchley. Wasn’t that the idea? Make him suffer as much as you had?”

“No.”

Macalvie kept himself from turning round, from registering surprise. He was surprised the film hadn’t served the double purpose as instrument of death and sadistic revenge.

“Not knowing is worse. Now, though, I would. I’d like to rub his face in it,” said Brenda. “By taking Ramona into that house, he killed her as surely as if he’d held a gun to her head.”

Fucking melodrama, thought Macalvie. “Seems to me Mr. Bletchley provided your daughter with safe harbor. Would you rather have had her wandering all over London? You never wanted her to go, and she didn’t communicate with you.” That Bletchley could be seen as a savior, Macalvie knew, would fuel her rage.

“Safe harbor? Throwing Ramona into bed with a bloody gay chauffeur who’d got AIDS?” She made a noise in her throat of disgust, dismissal.

Macalvie did turn around then. “Morris Bletchley-” No. Don’t defend him anymore, even though God knows the man deserves someone’s defending him. “I guess that wasn’t very smart of him.”

Her sour laugh was more a snarl.

“He paid a heavy price, Brenda. His grandchildren.”

“No price could have been too heavy.”

She was not crying, but tears were clotting her throat. It was thick with them. Wait. Wait for a moment. Macalvie leaned wearily against the cold wall, as if sick of death. The weariness was not an act. He was drowning in it.