The Lamorna Wink Read Free

sinister, almost claustrophobic atmosphere when a murder was committed.
    Or just observe those two youngish gentlemen, leaning toward one another, quietly talking. Scheming. Strangers on a Train. They could be exchanging murders.
    Or that old gray-ringleted lady he had passed, knitting, he would soon see on a stretcher being borne from the train at a stop up the track—
    The Lady Vanishes!
    These days he was always waxing nostalgic—old films, old songs, old photographs. In this Hitchcockian reverie he did not see her coming, did not register her presence until he heard, “What on earth are you looking so squinty-eyed for, Melrose?”
    He was yanked thus from his reverie with such a vengeance, he dropped his paper and his mouth fell open and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up. “Agatha!”
    Throw Momma From the Train!
    Â 
    If ever there was an antidote to nostalgia, it had just burst through the door of the Woodbine Tearoom.
    It put him in mind of another old film he had seen on late-night TV called The Uninvited, the “uninvited” being a ghost who hurled back doors, laughed and sang, and presented its unseeable self to the horrified young heroine.
    Unfortunately, his ghost was seeable.
    For the last thirty-six hours she had accompanied him in his hired car round the bottom of the Cornwall coast. He had kept putting off the estate agent who was to show him the rental property, waiting for Agatha to find some entertainment other than himself that would keep her busy for half a day. He certainly did not want her around when he viewed the house, casting her accursed shadow over it. To say nothing of her endless carping. You won’t want this, Melrose. Look at that thatch; you’ll be needing a whole new roof. Whatever would you do with all of this rocky land? No, Melrose, it won’t suit. Et cetera, et cetera.
    Fortunately, the young lad’s arrival with the tea broke into these morbid reflections. The boy held up one pot, asking “Regular tea?” and Melrose smiled as he tapped his own place mat. The waiter set the other by Agatha’s hand. Then he brought the tiered cake plate from the window embrasure and set that on their table also.
    Melrose watched him stop at a neighboring table, say something, move to another table and another. The Woodbine was small, but it was crowded. He worked the room slick as any politician.
    In a few moments, leaving Agatha to the scones and double cream, he rose and walked over to the cash register where the lad was ringing up bills. (He appeared to be both the serving end and the business end of this place.)
    â€œI beg your pardon.”
    The lad smiled broadly. “Tea okay?”
    â€œFine. I just wondered: Do you have any free time during the day? I’m asking because I need someone to do a bit of work for me. Wouldn’t take more than, say, three hours.” He held up a fifty-pound note he’d pulled from his billfold.
    â€œFor that I’d take a dive off Beachy Head.”
    â€œIt will be neither that heady an experience nor that dangerous. The lady I’m with, and don’t look at the table for I fear she reads minds, is also my aunt and sticks to me like Crazy Glue. I need to be rid of her for a few hours, and as you seem extremely resourceful, I thought you—”
    â€œI could take her off your hands.” The boy shrugged, smiled. “I could do. When?”
    Melrose handed him the fifty. “Well, say in an hour or so?”
    â€œDone.” Holding up the note, he added, “You trust me with this?”
    â€œWhy not? You brought the poison.”

3
    T he car was a newly minted silver Jaguar with ox-blood-red leather seats. These people probably had to impress their clients with proof of the agency’s solvency. Esther Laburnum was the agent for this particular property, named Seabourne.
    Melrose had seen the picture in Country Life as he was flipping past articles on