The Lamorna Wink (5 page)

He yawned. Time for the Drowned Man's dining room. He hoped there was a decent bottle of wine. Lord knows there would have to be a decent piece of fish. He polished off the excellent malt and hove himself up from the wing chair. The dogs did not mark his exit except for the quarrelsome sheepdog, who bared her teeth and growled halfheartedly and put her head down again.

“I don't believe it!” exclaimed Melrose.

“Mr. Plant,” said Johnny Wells, filling up his water glass, setting the jug down, and whisking both menu and tasseled wine list from under his arm.

“Do you ever stop in this job-crazed life you lead?”

“Not much custom this time of year.” Johnny extended his arm out over the dining room. “As you can see.”

“Yes. Still.” Melrose studied the menu. Not bad, really.

“The special tonight's the cod with cucumber sauce or apricot
confite.
That's kind of emulsified apricots.”

“I prefer the word
confite,
thanks.” He was going over the wine list with some care. “This is extensive, I must say. Here's a Côtes-du-Rhône '85, here's a Côtes-du-Lubéron '86, here's a Bourgeuil from Domaine des Raquie‘res.” Melrose looked at Johnny over the top of his gold-rimmed glasses. “Tell me another.”

“What about the Puligny-Montrachet?” Johnny dusted the table a bit, whisking imaginary crumbs.

“Yes, well, that's certainly another!” He closed the list. “Do you have a nice little Bordeaux? In a bottle, I mean?”

“That's doable. But depends on what you're having, doesn't it?”

“What would you recommend?”

“The cod, hands down.”

“Since that's the only thing you've mentioned, I believe I'll have it.”

“Righto. And a white Bordeaux?”

“Whatever.”

Johnny left for the kitchen. He was back within five minutes with bread and the bottle of wine. And an elaborate corkscrew which he seemed to enjoy working. He got the cork out, poured a bit into Melrose's glass.

Melrose pronounced it excellent—of its kind—and asked, “Listen, in addition to the chicken king, what do you know about the Bletchley family? Incidentally, is this village named after them?”

“Could be. Way back in time immemorial, there was a Bletchley gave the place its name. Maybe they're descendants, I don't know.” Slapping the napkin over his arm, Johnny said, “I heard it's a bit of a strange family.”

“All families are strange until they're something else. I was thinking of the children.”

“Oh, aye. That was awful. I wasn't here when it happened; I was away at school. The house has been empty since that. I mean, the parents moved back to London or Penzance or somewhere. There was a spell when a couple of men moved in, always spoken of as ‘the Decorators,' wink wink nod nod, you know. Gay, I guess. They were quite nice. They did things to the house—decorating, I mean. Moved out suddenly.” Johnny frowned.

He did not ask why. It's written in the script. Somebody always moves out suddenly.

Johnny shook his head. “That's all I know. I'll get your starter.”

“Did I order one?”

“You'll want it. It's avocado baked with Roquefort. Outstanding.”

“I'll take your word. As in all things.”

Melrose sat looking out over the empty room at the dozen white-clothed tables, each with its small vase of blue cyclamen. He turned his spoon over absently, thinking about that house. He would be insane to buy it. If not structurally unsound, it must still have a lot of problems—with the heat or the water supply or the electricity. And there was that eerie atmosphere . . .

. . . which he himself was fabricating, as he'd been doing ever since walking into the place. No, it was not sinister, not macabre. His trouble was that he was bored at Ardry End, and this was Cornwall, this was Daphne du Maurier territory, Manderley-inflames country.

Johnny brought his starter and then whizzed off again as Melrose was entertaining thoughts of hauntings. Could any serious spirit choose to haunt the house of Chick'nKing? He wondered how chickens were dispatched around here. Tell them they were going for a weekend to Brixton-on-Sea and slam the door of the crate down?

He was beginning to feel sorry for the chickens. Were it not for this divine avocado and Roquefort dish, he'd be unable to eat. If he started identifying with doomed fowl he would be setting his feet straight on the road to vegetarianism. He would have to send back his cod! He hit his head with the heel of his palm, trying to dislodge these morbid thoughts. A little compassion is fine; too much and you wind up calling a dish of peas or potatoes “veggies.” He could end up carrying a sign in front of poor Jurvis the Butcher's shop. Nobody would boycott Jurvis (“What? Give up my Sunday joint? You must be mad!”).

“Something wrong, sir?”

Johnny stood with his dinner, steam rising from the fish and from the divided dish of cabbage, roast potatoes, peas.

“No, no. Just trying to get water out of my ear.” He took another swipe at his head as Johnny set down his plate. It looked delicious, the pearl-white flesh just done enough to make it segment. The sauce was in a cup on the side.

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.

Johnny finished off with a flourish of the white napkin draped over his arm.

“It's showmanship, magic. It's all showmanship.”

H
e 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.”

He would like it, actually. But saying that made him feel impossibly childish. What he liked about Brenda was that she didn't dismiss other people's sadness, anxiety, or fear with banal sentiments like, “You'll see; it's nothing to worry about.” So he told Brenda no, he'd be all right by himself. Which he wouldn't.

“Well, you needn't come in in the morning if you don't want to, sweetheart.”

“It's okay, Brenda. I'll be okay. Thanks.”

 

In the way of the suddenly awakened, he thought, Things must have changed; they can't be the way they were when I went to sleep. But the conviction that they were, were exactly the same, stole over him as he lay stiffly in bed, still in last night's clothes. He lay there not so much seeing as feeling the morning light, feeling the sea fret pressing against his window.