Moe Bletchley turned the chair and started toward the door with a “follow me” wave. As Melrose followed, Bletchley said over his shoulder, “Smoking room’s this way. Got to be careful here. Emphysema, emphysema. Wouldn’t want anyone with lung cancer watching me enjoying myself while I’m on the way to it.” Bletchley laughed, mostly through his nose. “You too.”
Melrose thanked him for that emphysemiac blessing as the two made their way down a long gallery, Melrose walking as fast as he could to keep pace with the wheelchair, which might have run down more of the Bletchley Hall patients than emphysema ever would. The walls of this gallery once were hung with Sheepshank family portraits no doubt carted off by the viscount; Melrose deduced this because the paintings now hanging there, romantic ones of cottages and shepherds, drovers with sheep and sheep-dogs, still lifes of pears and apples, did not fill up the vacated spaces and showed borders of fresher paint. Moe Bletchley whizzed through a shadowed dining room full of tapestry and velvet and a Waterford chandelier glowing as softly as stars on a summer’s night. He snatched a menu from one of the tables. Menus, even! The food here must be as good as the colored brochure pictured it.
On the farther end of the dining room was a set of French doors curtained on the other side with something filmy, which Melrose’s guide flung open, and they entered a room with glass on three sides, which had probably been added to the original structure. It appeared to be an orangery or sunroom. South-facing, the room was still lapping up remnants of the fractured light of the sun.
Morris Bletchley stopped his wheelchair, got out of it, stretched, and took one of the green wicker chairs. Motioning Melrose to sit down in another, he said, “I don’t need that thing”-he nodded toward the wheelchair-“I just think it must be pretty discouraging if you’re chained to a bed to have some old geezer waltz into your room on a pair of good working legs.”
From the sly glance Bletchley slid in his direction, Melrose decided this was only one reason for wheel-chairing it around Bletchley Hall, and that the chair was also there for fun. Melrose smiled. This was not to say that Morris Bletchley was short on compassion or charitable thoughts; after all, he’d started this place, hadn’t he?
And Bletchley was indeed a healthy-looking specimen, remarkably so if he was in his eighties. He was trim, with arms and legs that had not suffered too much bone and muscle loss; the only thing that hinted at old age were the cheeks, which turned cadaverous when he sucked in on the cigarette Melrose had given him and was now lighting. It was damned certain Morris Bletchley’s mind hadn’t suffered any ill effects of aging.
Orangery, solarium, sunroom, whichever it was called, the long glass-enclosed room was filled with green plants-ivy, aspidistra, potted palms-and as the sunlight touched the leaves and vines with a high gloss, waves of green seemed to shimmer on the tiled floor and turn the green-painted wicker furniture greener. At one end of the room sat two old men playing chess. At the other end, Melrose was surprised to see a bank of slot machines.
“So! What can I do for you?”
“I’ve taken Seabourne for a few months. I wanted to meet you.”
“That’d make a change. Ordinarily the last person a tenant wants to meet is his landlord. Although I’m not really running the place anymore. So, is there something wrong? Not enough heat or the pipes clanging? Get in touch with that real estate person if you’ve got problems.”
“No, no. Nothing. The house is wonderful.”
“Good. So what’s the real reason?”
“You mean-”
“That you came here.” Through pursed lips, Moe Bletchley exhaled a thread of smoke.
Melrose smiled. “I met your daughter-in-law. She came to the house.”
A guttural sound, an uh, escaped Moe Bletchley’s throat. “What did she want? Karen?” His expression didn’t change.
“I don’t know, really, unless to revisit her old home.”
Moe uttered another noncommittal sound. “She came without Danny.” It wasn’t a question but a conclusion.
Melrose nodded. “Your son? Yes. She was alone. She told me about the children.” He wanted to add some appropriate word of empathy but couldn’t for the life of him think of one.
Here, Moe looked away and was silent for some moments. It was the stillness of his face in the green silence of the room that suggested to Melrose emotional upheaval.
Finally, the old man-who seemed to have grown visibly older in that silence-asked, “So what did she tell you?”
Melrose gave him as exacting an account as he could. Here was a case where the smallest of details could be important.
But Moe Bletchley looked at him as if Melrose were a news anchor, reporting yet another fatality. “That’s what she told you?”
Melrose frowned. “Yes.”
Again, that guttural uh.
Somehow, the sound was more disturbing-dismissive, perhaps-than words. Melrose took out his cigarette case once again and passed it to Bletchley, whose own cigarette had burnt down to ash in his fingers. Moe looked finally from the length of ash into Melrose’s eyes as if Melrose had worked some trick. Absently, he took another cigarette from the case but didn’t put it in his mouth. He said, “That detective fellow?”
“Commander Macalvie. He would have been a DCI then, probably.”
“Uh-huh. Sharp guy. He didn’t believe her, you know. About the strangers in the wood and the pond. Neither did I.”
Neither, thought Melrose, do I.
Moe Bletchley put the cigarette in his mouth then and took the lighter Melrose still had in hand. The lighter clicked open and snapped shut. “Why are we talking about this? Oh, yes. It apparently is the reason you came. Still, I ask why? Why are you so confounded interested?”
Sitting forward, Melrose said, “Who in God’s name wouldn’t be, Mr. Bletchley? It’s one hell of a story. It’s dreadful. But there’s another reason: there’s been a murder-”
“Over in Lamorna Cove. I know. News gets to me quick, son.” He kept clicking the Zippo’s case. “I know just about everything goes on in this place.”
“Then-”
Moe looked back through narrowed eyes. “No, I don’t know the victim. A woman with a title, they said. So I can’t help out. What I meant was, I know the people in Bletchley pretty well. Been living here for fifteen years. I’m an American, you know. I made a fortune over there with Chick’nKing; then I came over here and made another fortune. People love fast food. With good fast food-well, I figure you’re doing everybody a favor.”
“That’s very interesting, but I don’t see the relevance.”
“I’m just making a point to you: I’m not stupid.”
Raising his eyebrows, Melrose said, “I don’t doubt it for a minute. Did I give you the impression I thought you were?”
Moe looked off toward the elderly pensioners still bent over their chess pieces. “No. But it’s generally the way the world views us.” He nodded toward the old men. “Dithery, forgetful, besides not being good for anything in the world.”
“Mr. Bletchley, I doubt very much anyone in his right mind could look at you that way.”
Moe answered, “Oh, not here, maybe.”
“Not anywhere.” Melrose felt the old man had strong opinions about what had happened that he wasn’t sharing. “You don’t get on with your daughter-in-law, do you?”
Moe raised his arm, hand clasped on the arm of the wicker chair as if he meant to lever himself out of it. But he didn’t. After a moment, he asked, “You married? No, I don’t suppose so, or you’d be down here with the wife and kid. Not many men have the balls to go off on junkets by themselves.”
“No, I’m not married.”
“You’re probably fortunate, then.”
“I take it you don’t think your son is.”
He lowered his hand and picked up his cigarette, another gone to ash. “No, he isn’t.”