Martha Grimes - The Lamorna Wink

Moonlight augmented the artificial, making the latter almost superfluous. The camera followed a pretty girl-how old? teens, most likely-wearing a dress made diaphanous by the moon, and Macalvie wondered what uses beauty could be put to. The whole scheme needed a woman, any woman, to go down the steps with them, to make them feel at all safe. Macalvie could only speculate on the little kids’ feelings; he imagined daring was outweighed by the adventure of it all.

The stone steps, after all, were utterly familiar. It certainly wasn’t the first time they’d gone down them. Of course, they’d been told never to go down them without an adult. Well, here was an adult to make it safe.

They stood either side of the older girl. She was holding their hands as they stood, posing for the camera, at the top of the stairs. The little girl Esmé’s sharp giggle startled Macalvie. He had expected the sound of the sea, but not of the children.

The three of them started down the steps in a sort of awkward single file, the girl in between, holding both of the children’s hands. Esmé, the older, was in front; Noah was behind.

The camera followed close behind. There was only a bit of wind and Mounts Bay was almost calm, water insinuating itself under the boat and gently washing over the steps at the bottom. The Bletchleys’ boat rocked peacefully in the slurred waves, tethered by a long rope anchored by a ring in the cliffside.

Even as Macalvie watched, he could swear another step, farther up, was now sluiced by water. It was as if the tide were obliging Bolt’s camera work, a fake sea against fake rocks. But there was no denying the power of this terrible film as Macalvie watched the children get farther and farther down the steps and the camera move farther and farther back, as if it did not want to chance going down to those bottom steps.

But the camera could make out what was happening at the bottom. The children were now into water that covered their feet but still delighting in this game, one part of which seemed to be something the young girl had taken from her sling bag, but whatever it was, was hidden by her back.

Macalvie leaned closer, squinting as she turned and the viewer could see what she was doing. A bracelet winked in the light. No. A choke chain, something a dog owner would put on an unruly pet. His mouth went completely dry. How could he have missed it, for God’s sake? Looking at what she was doing: two chains, one for Noah, one for Esmé, gone around their wrists and then hooked to the ring that kept the boat moored. Esme’s right wrist, Noah’s left, their other two hands free.

The water was up their legs now. They had stopped laughing. Bolt now dared the slippery steps (fucking coward, afraid he’d get wet?) and the camera honed in on their faces. The faces were beginning to crumple. Both of them wanted to stop the game, to go back up the cliff.

But it was the young woman who went back up, and then of course they knew. They were trapped at the bottom in water now waist high and they couldn’t move more than a few feet. They wept; they began to howl with fear. The girl kept walking upward.

And then Esmé became aware of the boat, shoved a little closer to the cliff by the waves. She grabbed Noah’s hand and lunged for it. If they could reach the boat, it would buoy them up.

Macalvie was standing now. He was watching the kids maneuvering toward the boat (and the boat, as if in silent assent, rocking toward them); he was watching as if this were a story whose ending was as yet unknown. As if the little kids really were actors and the scene was counterfeit.

She made it. Esmé was close enough to haul herself into the boat and then to drag Noah in after her, once she-

But the girl went back down the steps as quickly as the slippery surface permitted. She went into the waist-deep water and pulled Esmé and Noah out and shoved at the boat, which then turned and floated out of reach.

The children screamed. Macalvie shook his head at this visceral image. They’d been so close to saving themselves. He looked, then, to see their faces, the last view he’d get of their faces before the waves washed over them, and then their two free hands, holding onto each other, raised above the water-

And that was all.

That was the end.

Macalvie crossed his arms on the table, lowered his head to them, and wept.

Melrose might have said that Count Franco Giopinno pretty much lived up to expectations, except for his ability to cast a reflection in a mirror and appear without apparent difficulty during the daylight hours and in public at the Jack and Hammer.

That was where Melrose had first seen him, entering with bright daylight at his back, dramatically silhouetted in the doorway through which Vivian Rivington had just preceded him.

Franco Giopinno paused there to light a cigarette he’d extracted from a gold case. If he was posing, it was effective. The contours of his face looked sculpted, chiseled, hardly flesh.

“At least,” said Diane, seated at their favorite table in the window, “he smokes.”

“But what,” asked Joanna Lewes, their local writer of romance stories, “does he drink?”

Trueblood immediately whisked out his money clip, clapped down a note, and said, “Fiver says Campari and lime.”

Melrose pulled out a ten-pound note and slapped that down, saying, “Dry dry dry dry dry sherry. A glass of dust.”

Joanna put down a twenty. “Gin and tonic.”

Diane covered those two bills with a ten-pound note of her own. “Definitely dry dry dry dry, but a martini”-she pondered-“olive, rocks. Though God only knows why anyone would want to water down vodka.”

Even Theo Wrenn Browne, not ordinarily at their table and certainly not ordinarily a betting man (as it cost money), carefully extracted two pound coins from his change purse and put them down. “Red wine, probably burgundy.”

“Theo,” said Diane, “that’s only two pounds.”

“It’s only red wine, too.”

“We’re not buying, we’re betting, ” said Joanna.

Diane said, voice low, “He knows how to dress, that’s certain.”

The count had now met two of the Demorney criteria for “amusing.” It was true; he did know how to dress. His suit was of such a fine material that it aroused one’s tactile sense, as if one simply had to touch it. It was a fine soft gray, the color of the ash hanging from the end of Diane’s cigarette.

“Um- um, um-um, um- um, ” murmured Diane.

“Armani, Armani, Ar- man -i,” murmured Trueblood.

“He’s coming,” whispered Browne. “Don’t stare!”

Theo then looked everywhere else, as if not seeing this Armani-in-the-flesh bearing down on them, an ashen angel whose presence Vivian didn’t seem to register, for she walked straightaway to the table.

She did remember to introduce him, and quite graciously. One could hardly blame poor Vivian’s nervousness and reticence; she’d taken so much over the years on this man’s account.

The table needed one more chair, so the count wheeled one around and placed it beside Vivian’s.

Small talk about Italy, about Venice, occupied them for the few moments it took Dick Scroggs to make his way over to the table for orders.

“Just a sherry,” said Vivian.

And the count? “Pellegrino.”

Scroggs asked, “You mean the fizzy stuff? That mineral water, like?”

Giopinno nodded.

Scroggs started to move away when Diane said, “And what?”

“Pardon?” The count’s smile was a trifle supercilious.

“Pellegrino and what? ”

“Nothing. I always drink water minerale. Good for you.”

Looking at Diane Demorney’s expression, one might challenge that last statement. Melrose hoped she had not gone into a coma, and that hers was merely like that look of wild surmise that Keats attributed to Cortez, or perhaps that seaward look on the face of Hardy’s heroine, “prospect impressed.”