Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (18 page)

A very large and beautiful poster in a baroque frame that Melrose
was certain was one of the Magritte "empires of light" hung above the
book crate. To see it in a barn—but then Abby Cable appeared to make
her home in this place— was strange indeed. Strange as the picture
itself. It showed a house with a lit window and a streetlamp glowing in
darkness; yet above this was a clear blue sky with clouds. He had seen
it before reproduced on cards.

Having been admitted, apparently, to this sanctuary, Melrose was
not quite sure what to say, and so said words he would gladly have
chewed up and swallowed once they were out of his mouth: "Well! This is
certainly a pleasant barn!"

Abby Cable turned upon him a look that might have been fashioned by
the toilers at Stonehenge, a look that had come down through the ages
by way of Antigone and Lady Macbeth, a look that had worn itself into
the fabric of the world. A look that barely suffered fools to live. As
if that weren't enough to stop a train, it had to be that deep blue
that is often falsely, if poetically, attributed to Aegean seas and
island skies.

"If you like barns," she said. Then remembering apparently he had
saved her cat, she said, "That's Ethel."

Ethel was much more forthcoming, probably because it allowed her to
drop the odious paddle and come to have him look her over—her ruffled
shirtwaist, her fancy ribbon. She smiled up at him and showed two
missing teeth. "We're having tea. You can have tea with us, can't he,
Abby?" There was no response from Abby, who was busy trying to adjust
the straps of the oat bag to the pony's head. Ethel adjusted the bow in
her hair and seemed to provide the answer to her own question by
announcing: "I'm older than Abby."

When no congratulations were forthcoming from Mel-rose, and no sign
from Abby that she had heard, Ethel flounced over to the
oil-cloth-covered table where the loaf of granary bread sat and
continued cutting. "That's my dog, over there." Ethel pointed with the
breadknife toward the big dog. "It's not a plain sheepdog; it's a
Kuvasz." She emphasized the word carefully, looking at Melrose to see
if mention of this marvelous breed would stir him. When it didn't
appear to, she went on (by rote, he thought, as if the child had
memorized a book): "They were owned by the King of Babylon who made
laws for them. That they couldn't be killed or bothered. Long, long
before that the King of Summertime breeded them. My dog's Hungarian and
his name is King."

Abby Cable squinted in pain at this account of the dog's pedigree.
"I told you before there's no King of Summertime. There never was. And
his name's
Tim
, not King.
Tim's
what it was when
you got him."

Melrose's smile reached from one to the other. "It's rather
delightful, though, you must admit. The King of Summertime." When the
Fury looked at him he realized he'd made a tactical error. "But I do
agree. I mean practi-cally speaking I doubt there's such a person." He
wondered what it was, though, or who, that Ethel had confused with
"summertime." A king of Sumeria? That must be it.

"I told you he wasn't that stupid," said Abby, dragging the feed
bucket over to the donkey.

Melrose didn't know whether to be flattered she'd apparently been
telling Ethel about him or wonder just how stupid, if not that stupid,
he seemed.

Ethel, mouth clamped in a narrow, angry little line, cut away at the
cheese.

"It's just rough sandwiches," said Abby. The tone was neutral. She
came out of the stall and latched the door. When it shut Melrose saw
that here was another poster. Each animal had its own favorite,
apparently. He couldn't see the cow's, but the donkey's was an old
Dylan poster and the pony's was that American singer who, he thought,
had died. Ricky Nelson.

"Thank you very much, but as it's only a bit after ten, I don't
think I could handle a sandwich. Certainly not after that huge
breakfast your aunt gave me." Since she had said nothing by way of
encouragement here, Melrose added, as the kettle screeched, "But a cup
of tea would be very pleasant."

While the pony made mushy noises, content with his bag of oats, Abby
stood back from the stall, hands on hips, regarding either Ricky
Nelson or the horse. Since her back was turned, Melrose couldn't tell
which. Ricky, apparently, for she said, "We have to take your poster
down, Ethel."

Knife in hand, Ethel whirled. "It's
my
poster."

"It's my barn."

Ethel wailed, "I love him."

"It's too bad," said Abby, firmly. Melrose thought he discerned an
echo of the words that had been hurled at the vet's receptionist when
she added, "He's dead."

Stranger sat up, sensing a confrontation.

"He's in
heaven
, then," whined Ethel. "He's singing up in
heaven. And I can marry him when I get there." Her high little voice
trumpeted forth with the triumph of a Gabriel.

Matter-of-factly, Abby answered, "Who says there's a heaven?" She
squelched a bucket of feed over to the door and sat it down in
readiness for the chicken yard.

So appalled Ethel must have been at this heretical statement that
she could think of no response. She slapped two plates down on the
cloth-covered sawhorse table, bouncing the bread and cheese, furious.
Then she dragged over the wobbly stool, apparently meant for Melrose,
and thumped it down at one end of the table.

Abby gave Ethel a pained look. "That's too little for him. He can
have my chair. I'll get the other one."

Before she collected the chair, she stood upon it, reached in her
pocket, and brought out some chewing gum. Holding back the top corner
of the poster as she chewed, she then stuck the doughy stuff to the
stone and pressed the corner of the poster in place.

Ethel, red-faced, stuck her tongue out at Abby's back and, when she
heard the voices at the door, quickly tried to regain her princessy
demeanor. He could see, though, that she was searching for a killing
last word. "Well, then you'll
never
find my hiding place. I
was going to tell you—"

A lie. Even Melrose knew that.

Abby kept herself rigid. "You can't have a hiding place in my barn."

This was a longstanding argument, clearly, cut off by the voices
outside. An elongated shadow that fell across the threshing floor
doubled as the man and woman separated at the door. Abby thumped at the
corner of the poster one last time and clambered down from the chair.

"Hullo, Abby."

"Hello."

The gentleman and lady standing there spoke simultaneously, the
woman with a little more authority than the man, who seemed, although
smiling, less certain of his welcome.

Abby merely turned from the poster-fixing, returned the greeting
glumly, and went back to resticking the chewing gum.

"Having tea, are you?" the lady said, looking from Mel-rose to
Ethel, to the makeshift table and back at Melrose at the same time she
dropped the hood of her coat from bronze-colored hair vaguely streaked
with white, whether from age or highlighting he couldn't say; she
appeared to be in her forties, and was dressed in some long, loose,
patchwork-bright garment that the Princess probably would have
approved for sheer flamboyance.

When Abby didn't turn from her work, the woman walked over to the
wall, turning to say "Rena," when Charles Citrine had introduced her as
"Irene." She held out a small package to Abby that was (Melrose heard
her say) ". . . from Nell."

Abby looked at the brown wrapping and slipped it in one of the big
pockets of her skirt.

Melrose caught snatches of their—or
her
—conversation as
the brother spoke casually to Melrose about the weather, the country in
January, and Weavers Hall. Citrine (with a nod of his head in some
direction back there) said he lived in an old house "across the moor."

Irene Citrine stood there conversing with Abby. Although
converse
was hardly the word, since Abby's end of this conversation was
uncompromisingly monosyllabic. Melrose made out that the box was from
"Nell, who specially wanted you to have it ... had she tried rubber
cement to hold up the poster? ... a handsome poster. . . . Who are
they? . . . Nell's sorry she couldn't . . . Nelligan's flock is ...
need anything . . . ?"

They were wandering in decidedly unlabyrinthine avenues of
conversation, given Abby's answers:

"Thanks."

"No."

"Yes."

"Rock band."

"Well."

"Yes."

"No."

In other words, a typical Abbyesque exchange with someone she was
indifferent to, although she appeared to prize the gift if not the
giver. Melrose thought the giver was surely trying her best.

Charles Citrine was trying his, too. Citrine was a man who would be
tagged "affable" straightaway. In these circumstances, however, the
manner was strained. The man's thoughts were elsewhere; the pale blue
eyes fixed on his sister and Abby, at the same time he exhausted the
conversational possibilities with Melrose about the weather, the
countryside, the Hall.

It was, perhaps, simply a more mannered version of Ab-by's own
responses to Nell Healey's aunt.

Once the Citrines had gone, Abby walked to the byre and then back to
her "bedroom" and then over to the table, where she exchanged the thick
chipped mug Ethel had set out for Melrose for a fluted cup and a
mismatched saucer with tiny blue flowers.

"
Well
? What u it?" demanded Ethel. "What's the
present
?'

"I didn't open it," said Abby calmly.

Ethel fluttered her hands excitedly. "Open it, open it."

"It's in my hiding place. Get the kettle." Abby sat with her hands
folded.

Grimly Ethel swung the kettle from the rod with a thick cloth and
poured it into the pot while Abby settled herself on the low wooden
chair. Since Ethel's seat was the stool with a cast-off cushion, their
relative heights round the table were wholly disproportionate. Melrose
felt as if he might be looking down from that heaven that Abby
disclaimed any knowledge of.

Abby poured the tea, Melrose's cup first, plunked down the pot, and
picked up her sandwich. These were indeed "rough" sandwiches, ill-cut
portions of cheese between hunks of bread.

"Well, this is a welcome relief from the morning's events."

When Abby looked at him, apparently doubting great things had come
of a morning at Weavers Hall, he wished he could stop being so hearty.

There was a ritual silence as they drank their tea. The two dogs had
each been given their meal and Stranger took this as a signal to relax
his vigil and lie by the fireplace. Tim had left in search of something
more inviting than this inactive person.

Abby divided her attention between her plate and the empty air round
Melrose's shoulder.

Ethel, despite her prim neatness, turned out to be a noisy eater,
chomping her cheese, slurping her tea, and beating a tattoo with her
heels against the stool. Having hit upon one more thing to madden her
friend, she said to Melrose, "I've got things hid in this barn and Abby
don't know where."

Given Abby's stony look, she apparently believed it. "You can't have
a hiding place in somebody
else's
barn. I told you."

Ethel simpered. "Well, I do. You don't know, I could keep a gun
there." She then started in, nonstop, on the murder at the inn.

"Blood all over—"

"No, there wasn't." Abby's voice was a flat-out contradiction.
"Stop talking about it."

But given the sacrilege earlier paid to the dead singer, Ethel was
clearly going to get hers back. Crumbs gathered in the corners of
Ethel's mouth as she went on: "She
shot
him. Splat!"

"Ethel!"

Melrose himself would have hesitated to continue, faced down by that
pair of eyes, but Ethel was going to turn the knife. Anyway, it wasn't
every day such juicy gossip came along in this isolated region.

"We wasn't to talk about it." Abby's voice was level but her look
would have stunned the animals in the stall.

"That Missus Healey, she's
your
friend."

Ethel, Melrose saw, for all her milky-whiteness, her ribbons and
ruffles and dimples, was a small fiend, sitting there with that hair of
fiery licks, the upright kitchen fork like a trident.

"And she can't come here,
can
she? Because your auntie
won't let her."

This was delivered in a snide, singsongy voice meant to engage and
enrage her hostess. Ethel was bringing out the big guns. "And anyway,
you
got the pictures of dead people"—she motioned with a nod of her head
toward the crate that held the books—"right over there. I saw them
all
.
There's pictures of that little boy, Billy, and his friend." When there
was no response to this, she said, "They're terrible, my mam says.
Says they just let that little Billy
die
. I saw all the
pictures of you and him and the other one, that Tony."

"Toby." The correction was automatic, issuing forth from some brain
and mouth not Abby's own.

Melrose interrupted. "I suggest you stop talking about things you
know nothing about." He shoved his chair back, looked at Abby, wondered
if she were some sort of magnet for negative planetary waves. Ever
since he had first seen her, she seemed always to be bedeviled.

Although she said nothing, the vibrations issuing from her stony
posture made the table appear to quiver, the dirt floor beneath them
vibrate; on her face was the expression Medea might have worn on
Jason's return.

"Go home," said Abby.

"We're having the funeral. You said we were."

It was then that Melrose noticed the small black-draped box by the
bed. A votive candle, unlit, stood at one end. Buster. Melrose looked
away.

And Abby merely repeated, "Go home."