Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (16 page)

Then he turned his head toward the black, ivy-latticed window,
wondering, in a momentary surge of anxiety, if he'd imagined the fuzzy
gold-lit interior, the patches of color, the underwater movements. But
no, of course not: it was lit, though the silver and turquoise were
gone and the only movement came from the maid. He could see the black
patch of her dress moving from pane to pane, as lights went out, one
after another and it, too, grew darker. And then the moon, like the
interior lights, suddenly went out, behind a cloud, as if Ruby had
thrown a switch.

Melrose lit a cigarette, more he thought to see the flame spurt up
than because he needed a smoke.

As he got in the car and quickly flicked on the headlamps, he heard
the voice again—
Stranger
—and the crisp bark of that dog.

The Old Silent sat just off the Stanbury road, surrounded by
moorland. Across the blackened heath dry-stone walls ran off to remote
hills marked by low witch-shaped and wind-blasted trees. Melrose had
never seen a gaunter landscape by day or by night. Coming upon the inn
over a dip in the road, he thought it wore the truncated, free-floating
look of the courtyard he had just left.

When he pulled into the car park, he saw the Old Silent in a more
normal light: a well-tended, whitewashed and black-timbered building
with a courtyard for tables in better weather. Closed for the
twenty-four hours following its unlikely venue as a crime scene, it
had now, he imagined, gained in celebrity for that same reason. The car
park was choked at nearly ten o'clock. He saw through the amber-lit
windows the customers crowding the public bar.

Inside was warmth and a quick return to normality after the scene he
had left. Melrose took his drink through to a lounge with a fine stone
fireplace over which hung a painting of the inn and in front of which
sat one of those high-backed sedan chairs. A porter's chair. He had
always wanted to hold court in one and waited for the black cat, the
chair's present occupant, to move. The cat had other ideas.

While he waited for Jury, he moved about the lounge and looked above
flickering lights and little shaded lamps at pictures and brass
ornaments and an account of the origin of the Old Silent's name.
Melrose sighed. It was one of those

Bonnie Prince Charlie tales. The inn was yet another of those
historic places that had offered Charlie refuge and (in this case) the
"silence" of the locals. Given all the stopovers the Young Pretender
had made, Melrose wondered how he ever got to his destination. He'd
certainly clocked up a lot of traveling time. Melrose closed his eyes
and imagined the prince traveling with Agatha. The Old Silent would
have gone nameless. . . .

"You always sleep on your feet?"

He knew it was Jury, but he didn't open his eyes. "I was thinking of
Agatha." He felt the hand clasp on his shoulder.

"No wonder."

They had studied the menu and decided upon Pike in a Blanket.

"Because I am enamored of the name," said Melrose Plant to Richard
Jury. "I picture the pike," continued Melrose, "tucked in a little
woolly square with a safety pin."

Over a plate of oxtail soup Melrose finished telling Jury the events
of the day, and was surprised that in the telling of it, all of those
events had indeed taken place in one day. "To think that only this
morning I was having coffee in Harro-gate with Agatha and friend. Of
course, Agatha does have a certain lunar quality. Distant howlings in
the woods behind Ardry End . . ."

"This soup is great," said Jury, smacking the pepper shaker all
around it.

" 'This soup is great,'" repeated Melrose with a sigh. "The only
person I know who has a more poetical turn of mind than you is
Divisional Commander Macalvie. I expect while you were hanging round
the Citrine place and I was being vastly entertained at Weavers Hall,
Macalvie solved at least three cases."

"Four," said Jury, holding up his fingers. "One battery, one murder,
two break-ins. I'm going to Cornwall; I want to have a look round the
Citrine property."

"You think the answer is there?"

"I think the question is there."

"You sound like Gertrude Stein. Policework is surely more
straightforward than that."

"Straightforward?" Jury shook his head. "I only mean I have the
feeling the wrong questions are being asked. But that's nothing new.
You said this George Porges—"

"Poges."

"If Major Poges likes to walk, why don't you walk with him? Might
learn something." Jury looked up from his bread roll.

"Because it's exercise. I don't mind the sort of exercise that's a
means to an end, such as cycling along to the Jack and Hammer; I just
dislike the sort that appears to be an end in itself. I saw today,
running along the Pennine way, a jogger. This one was in flaming red,
neon
red. Now, I ask you: three of the gloomiest minds in literature, bless
them, set their accounts of despair, desolation, broken hearts, on
these moors. Bleak as mines, barren, rocky. How dare someone in
flaming
red jog
across them? She was probably carrying a
piece of natural grain bread and a bottle of Perrier for weights. So
what do
you
do, Richard? Running? Rac-quetball? Ten laps
round Nelson's column?"

"Nothing. Of course, I think about it—"

Melrose pointed a finger at him. "Ah! You see, we both follow in the
true tradition. We are men
who think about
exercise. That,
Jury, is a lost way of life. Even Trueblood has a rowing machine in his
den."

"That's just to get a rise out of you; Trueblood's not so stupid
he'd use the damned thing." Jury looked round. "Where's that fish in
blankets? I can hardly wait."

"But I can see," continued Melrose, his thoughts on Long Piddleton,
"that it's moving in. Oh, we have no joggers yet; but I had a look-in
at the post office stores. Where I used to see Weetabix I now see
fruit-almond-coconut-pasha-wheat-germ cereal. It's the hound at our
heels—all of this jogging and eating goat's milk cheese—when one could
have a succulent piece of Stilton and a glass of Cockburn's port—it's
all part of upward mobility. If I have to be mobile, I want it to be
lateral."

"So do I," said Jury. "Here comes our waitress."

She set their plates before them. The "blanket" turned out to be
parchment. Steam had ballooned its glazed surface and the waitress held
her sharp shears over Melrose's portion. The waitress Sally slit the
crisp steam-filled parchment and released an aromatic mix of wine and
herbs and garlic and (Sally whispered) a bit of brandy. It would have
cleared the nostrils of even the most intractable sinus sufferer.

"This would keep your sergeant out of doctors' offices for the next
ten years," said Melrose.

"It smells absolutely wonderful, Sally," said Jury, with an equally
wonderful smile.

She turned quickly and rushed off, the kitchen door swinging shut
behind her.

"Nell Healey was a friend of this Ann Denholme?" asked Jury, after a
few moments of solemn eating.

"I'm only telling you what Major Poges and the Princess said.
Perhaps they got it from the moribund Ruby, I don't know. Or perhaps
Ann Denholme mentioned it; I would imagine all of the publicity would
have had the whole of Weavers Hall talking." Melrose raised a spoonful
of the fish liquor to his mouth. "The only thing this lacks is a
soupcpn of Old Peculier. It's rather good; it's rather pleasant to have
your before-dinner sherry, your dinner, your after-dinner brandy all
wrapped up in parchment. Saves a great deal of time."

Jury had nearly finished his meal. "Go on about the Hall."

"It's like a minstrel show. 'Tamara,' pardon me, Tamaw-a,' what a
pseudonym. From New Yawk." He put down his spoon. "Except . . ."

"Except what?"

Melrose shrugged. "The place is eerie. . . ." He started to say
something else, didn't know what he wanted to say, and shrugged again.
"I don't know. 'Eerie' is the wrong word. I don't know the right one.
Uncanny? No." There was a return of the anxiety Melrose had felt when
he had stood in the courtyard lighting a cigarette for the sake of the
flame.

"Don't worry about the right word. What was the feeling?" Jury
pushed his plate away.

"Must you look so intense? I've given you a running account of the
last three fun-filled hours at Weavers Hall." Melrose described the
scene.

"The details might not be as important as their effect on you."

"You, a superintendent of police saying
details
might not
be important? You want feelings?"

"Why don't you just say the first thing that comes to mind?"

"Tristesse," said Melrose. "Obscure," he added. "A gulf, a sadness,
an obsessive sadness."

Jury pushed back his plate, folded his arms, and thought of Nell
Healey.

"You know Nell Healey actually shot her husband," said Melrose.
"It's not a question of innocence or guilt."

"It's a question of motive."

"But do you honestly think knowing that will save her?" Melrose
frowned.

"Yes."

Melrose took out his cigar case. "Sounds to me as if she doesn't
want to be saved. What if she feels so guilty about not paying the
ransom for this boy that she no longer cares what happens to her?"

"Then she'd have killed herself, not her husband, who was, according
to Macalvie, absolutely beside himself when she refused to pay. Roger
Healey was far from being a pauper; he was well off, but he didn't
have
that
kind of money. Not big money. Neither does Charles
Citrine. And the money wasn't the only question, either; it was the
rotten dilemma of what would be in Billy Healey's best interests." Jury
took a cigar from Plant's case. "Then, of course, Billy was Roger's
son; he was only Nell's stepson."

Melrose paused in the act of lighting their cigars. " 'Only'? Good
grief, you're one of those espousers of the theory that blood is
thicker than water?"

"Of course not. But nearly everyone pays Up service to that old
shibboleth. The media would have had a high old time had it ever come
out that it was Mrs. and not Mr. Healey who'd made the decision not to
pay. Here's a woman rich as Croesus who wouldn't ransom her stepson.
What does that look like? The evil stepmother looks in the mirror and
sees the face of someone more beautiful. The competition, in this
case, isn't Snow White, but her husband's son."

"I can think up an even chillier scenario."

Jury nodded. "Only I saw her standing in that wood like someone in a
trance; she was looking at an old gate between stones that no longer
served a purpose, where Billy Healey and Toby Holt used to play. The
look was so intense that I swear I wouldn't have been surprised to see
that boy materialize right before my eyes. Perhaps he had, before
hers."

They both turned when a heavy, slightly stooped man with a checkered
cap and an old brown cardigan, a trowel in his hands, came shuffling up
to their table. His look was one of perpetual discontent, the narrow,
tobacco-blackened line of his mouth downturned like a bulldog's.
Glaring from the silver dish of vegetables to Jury and then Plant he
asked, " 'Ow's them runner beans, then?"

Apparently, since the Old Silent's dining room was catering only
for them that evening, all of the help had the run of the hall. This
person before them would stand his ground and chew his tobacco until
he'd got a report on the state of the vegetables. "Excellent. And
you're Mr.—?"

"Oakes. Jimmy Oakes." He was picking up the dish and ruminating,
apparently, upon the state of the runner beans. "Bad crop, it be."

"But these were very tasty, Mr. Oakes."

The man shrugged and let out a whistle of breath. "Sum-mat grundgy
they be. Got 'em in Ha'erth."

"I don't understand, Mr. Oakes. You're speaking of your
own
crop having failed?" asked Melrose brightly.

"Thass it. Bad. F'got ta plant 'em."

He shuffled off with his trowel.

"Roger Healey," said Melrose, looking after Mr. Oakes, "what sort of
person was he?"

"Straight as an arrow, according to everyone I've talked to. People
who worked with him loved him. Charles Citrine thinks Roger Healey was
one of the finest men he'd ever known and blessed the day he married
his daughter. Nell Citrine, you see, was thirtyish, unmarried, and—to
use his word—'unstable.'"

"Does that mean Miss Citrine was in and out of madhouses or had a
difficult time choosing the correct sauce for the veal? When a man
calls a woman 'unstable' it generally means she doesn't agree with him."

Jury mopped up the last bit of liquid with a piece of his bread
roll. " 'Slightly eccentric' he said."

"She didn't share his political views, in other words."

"I appreciate that you defend her without meeting her. Do you have
any of those cigars?"

Melrose took a leather case from his breast pocket. "I haven't met
her, but you
have;
you said nothing about 'unstable' or
'eccentric'"

"The strange thing is, even with her killing her husband in the
lounge of an inn . . ."He lit the cigar and shook out the match. ". . .
she didn't strike me as anything but normal."

Except
, he didn't add,
for the silence
. Jury
crossed his arms on the table and turned the cigar in his mouth.
"Citrine is an extremely low-key, affable man. Hands in pockets, walks
and talks with a sort of self-deprecating air."

"So does our Mr. Oakes, but that doesn't make me want to trust him
with my bean planting."

"Why is Nell Healey the blight in this crop of perfect people? Daddy
sits down over drinks and tells the very su-perintendent who's witness
against her she's unstable; Roger is a white knight and beloved of all.
Except for the aunt."