Martha Grimes - The Lamorna Wink

“Melrose, did you ever see an old film… what was its name? It was before my time of course-most things are-but it’s on video. It’s about this old house…”

Diane recounted the entire story of The Uninvited as Melrose stood rooted, mouth agape, absolutely bamboozled by the idea that he and Diane shared a common memory.

“It always made me feel-”

Diane feeling ?

“-rather queer, rather off.”

Even if the feelings hardly reached beyond the murky depths of “queer” and “off.”

“As a matter of fact, Diane, yes, I do know it. The Uninvited, it’s called. I thought of it the first time I saw this house.” He was prepared to explore this strange coincidence of his and Diane’s being, possibly, the only two people in the world besides Dan Bletchley who had seen and remembered The Uninvited. “Now, the music, if you recall-”

“But the girl, Melrose. That dreadful white dress!”

So much for exploration; they were back safely in Demorney territory of paper tigers and cardboard alligators and designer wardrobes. She was plugging a cigarette into her foot-long holder, which he then lighted.

“What are you going to do about Vivian, Melrose?”

“Do?”

“Yes, do.”

“Oh… Trueblood and I will think of something.”

Diane heaved a great sigh. “I’m not talking about one of your daffy schemes. Good God, I still remember that black notebook business.”

Melrose preferred to forget it. To pay her back, he smirked and said, “You wouldn’t be interested in Count Dracula yourself, would you?”

Diane looked pained. “Don’t be absurd. And I don’t want to live in Venice. All that wine and water.”

“You make it sound like quite a religious experience.”

Looking round, as if she expected the doors of a drinks cabinet to fly open on seeing her, Diane asked, “You wouldn’t have any vodka about, would you?”

“Oh, I’m sure we can find some.”

Martini in hand-or, rather, vodka in hand, vermouth having eluded their search, “as if it mattered”-Diane trailed after Trueblood, making unschooled comments about the carpets and sideboards and silver and never shutting up, no matter how many times he told her to.

Jury had come down with his duffelbag.

“Three weeks in Ireland and that’s all you took?”

“Since one might not survive three days, I didn’t see the sense in packing for a long and happy life, right?”

“Did you call Macalvie? You said you were going to.”

“No. I thought we’d stop in Exeter. Unlike Oxford, it is on the way.”

Melrose pulled him aside (as from an unseen audience) and said, “Listen, you really should stop off in Long Piddleton.”

“And like Oxford, that is not on the way.”

“Come on. Vivian would listen to you.”

Jury laughed. “No, she wouldn’t. And who the hell are we to tell her what to do? It’s her life.”

“Oh, please. You’re not going to resort to that old cliché, made up for people who want to abnegate responsibility?”

“She’s my responsibility? Moi? ” Jury clapped his hands to his chest.

“Certainly. It’s not ‘her’ life.”

“It isn’t? Then whose?”

“All of ours. You’ve got to do something, Richard. She’d listen to you. ”

Jury just gazed at him.

“Don’t give me that look. It’s your what a chump look.”

“It is indeed.”

Brian Macalvie did the search himself.

He’d been permitted a “limited” warrant to search only for this tape, and for this tape only. Anything else found in the course of the search could be appropriated. Her rights, thought Macalvie. He was only glad there wasn’t anything else he wanted, at least not at the moment.

The tape was in a kitchen cupboard that Brenda reserved for over three dozen prettily wrapped packages of ginger biscuits waiting to be apportioned half to Bletchley Hall and half to a home for abused wives and children in Truro.

How fucking thoughtful, Macalvie thought.

The two packages were the same size as all the others and wrapped in identical colorful paper, the only difference being that these two did not wear one of the WOODBINE TEAROOM silver stickers. That was to tell Brenda which packages held the tapes. Damned funny if someone was expecting biscuits and found that film instead.

Damned funny, thought Macalvie.

Brenda had sat three hours longer in that scarred and straight-backed wooden chair. She was not going to give up the tapes. She looked at him and exhaled smoke from the last cigarette in her pack into the already smoke-filled room.

“What’s the difference?” she said. “Why would you want to know anything more than the fact Simon Bolt did film it. It’s what I already told you. I shouldn’t think the details of their deaths would be very pleasant to watch.”

“I’m sure.” Macalvie had risen and was pacing in the room’s semi-darkness. The only available light was that coming from the shaded bulb hanging above the table, casting a pool of bleached light over her hands. Shadows played tricks with her face.

Macalvie stopped pacing. “The thing is, Brenda, it’s not past. It’ll never be past for the Bletchleys. It will never be past for Morris Bletchley.”

“May I have a cup of tea?”

Macalvie ignored this as he had every request she’d made, except going to the loo. A WPC had escorted her. She had also been given water. The police code no doubt dictated a certain amount of consideration should be given the witness, but Macalvie didn’t give a damn.

He continued. “Morris Bletchley has been living in a sort of limbo-you yourself predicted that-not knowing exactly what happened: how they got down there, what made them stay. Not knowing is a kind of hell. You must have experienced something like though hardly to the extent Bletchley did.” He stopped and waited.

“You’re not going to show that tape to Morris Bletchley, for God’s sake!”

It was the only time in this interrogation she had actually shown some emotion. And what she apparently felt was shock and gratification. And hunger, a hunger to enlarge upon the old man’s suffering. It showed in her face, which appeared to lose some of its pliant smoothness and take on a bony, chiseled gauntness, as if a death’s head were showing through. The tricks of shadows.

Macalvie said, “Don’t you think Bletchley deserves to know what happened? Now, you’ve got nothing to lose if he knows.”

She actually tilted that skeletal face back and laughed, the laughter like some residue of a saner time, even a carefree time, when her daughter was alive. But it was just that: a residue, quickly used up. Nothing to laugh about now, except-

“Morris Bletchley.” She sighed. “How I wanted to send it to him! But that wasn’t the purpose of the film; that would have been icing on the cake.”

Icing on the cake. Macalvie turned away.

“I knew I wasn’t clever enough to outwit the army of investigators he’d hire.”

Macalvie interrupted. “You told me all that.” He splayed his arms on the table and leaned close to her. “So you can make this your dying wish, can’t you? Poor old Bletchley watching that tape.”

Brenda smiled that thin death’s-head smile.

She told him.

Macalvie sat in Brenda Friel’s little sitting room watching a hand-held camera panning the dark cliff and the shiny-wet stair down to the water behind Seabourne. That little oblong that fit the top of the plastic casing was missing, but it still fit in the VCR.

Some sort of light arrangement had been set up near the stone steps, which would have revealed this little drama had anyone else been there to see it. But there was only Mrs. Hayter, whose room was on the other side of the house.