Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (49 page)

"I mellowed out, all right. I
passed
out. Slept through
the next day and when I woke up, Dobby and Miles were jamming on their
guitars. Still stoned. Only the girls were beginning to take me
seriously, but just as seriously they told me to stay away from the
cops. I didn't see a newspaper for six days and didn't know about the
ransom demand. And I don't mind saying I was terrified. I was a
witness
and I suppose I'd seen too much telly."

Jury said, "Whose idea was it to identify somebody else's body?"

"Mine and Uncle Owen's. I couldn't stand him thinking I was dead,
like Billy, so I rang up, finally."

"You mean he knew Irene Citrine had done this and didn't go to the
police?" Somehow that didn't sound like Owen Holt.

"He didn't know. I didn't tell him. I was afraid for him and Aunt
Alice. I told him ... I didn't know who they were."

"But your aunt didn't know. Your uncle didn't tell her. Why?"

There was a silence. "He was going to, but then he thought, in the
long run, it might be easier for her just to think I was dead than that
she'd never see me again, probably." He looked at his guitar. "And
you've met Aunt Alice.

Do you think she'd really have been able to keep it to herself?
Uncle Owen was afraid she'd go to the police. She'd hardly have been
able to talk to you without telling you. Maybe it was cold-blooded, I
don't know."

"None of you strike me as that. Go on."

"Uncle Owen said not to worry. To leave things to him, to lie
low—he'd find some way of getting money to me. He did. A lot."

Jury smiled. "Your uncle never did strike me as a gambler."

"What?" The boy frowned.

"Nothing. You went to Ireland?"

"I did. From Stranraer to Larne. And I met Wes." He smiled. "Wes had
more than talent. He had contacts—like someone in the U.D.C. who knew
someone who knew
someone
who could forge passports."

Back at the rear of the auditorium, light fanned briefly across the
wall as one of the doors swung open and shut. Whoever it was was
standing back there or had sat down.

Mary Lee, Jury bet, and smiled. Then the memory of Charlie writing
on the clear surface of the shoe came back to him.

"The longer I kept quiet about it, the more guilty I felt," Charlie
was saying. "And the more guilty I felt, the harder it was to do
anything, to come back, to tell the story. The old vicious circle of
guilt. Why didn't I do something to save him?"

The question was rhetorical, but Jury answered it anyway. "Because
you knew damned well they'd kill you."

Charlie rested his forehead against the guitar frets, eyes closed.
"But not to do anything about it later—"

"You did. You thought if he'd lived, Billy Healey would have gone on
to have a highly successful career as a concert pianist—"

"He would have." Charlie brought the guitar back up to his lap.

"I doubt it."

Charlie looked round, sharply. "That was the whole idea."

"His father's idea. Not Billy's. And not necessarily Nell Healey's.
Wasn't it hard to get him to practice?"

"Yes. But he was a natural."

"Come on, Toby. You, of all people, would know that even a 'natural'
has to practice like hell to get where Roger Healey wanted his son to
go. Billy was lazy. Irene Citrine said that. On the other hand
you
were just the opposite. Determined. Or as your aunt put it, pigheaded."

He had to smile. "I expect I was."

"You 'expect' you were? You
weren't
a 'natural'; you
couldn't play anything. That is, you couldn't play anything until you
were so driven by guilt to pick up on a career that Nell's son had
lost; there roust have been times when you wished you could have died
in his place."

"There were."

"And you did. In a sense you became Billy. It must have been hell.
No musical inclination, no background, presumably no talent. I
thought
you were Billy."

"You thought / was—why?"

Jury told him about the poetry, the picture, and the impression
Charlie himself had given him about the Healey case. "Let's say I
thought you were Billy because you couldn't possibly have been Toby
Holt. And Toby would have been the only other one who knew all of that."

"If you practice twelve, thirteen hours a day, you don't need
background. Sometimes the fingers of my left hand would bleed and I'd
just wrap gauze round them and put on a surgical glove and keep going.
Some martyrdom, right?"

"Which you apparently plan to complete by quitting at the top. You
told me you'd got as far as you needed to and I wondered what that
could possibly mean. So now you're quitting. And to do what? Live in
West Yorkshire and become a shepherd? A groundsman?"

"I have to go back; I have to tell them what really happened; I
want to see her."

"Yes, I know. But for God's sakes, don't think of staying there.
It's not meant for you, Charlie. This time, it could really kill you."

"That's pretty dramatic. I was thinking about Abby. With her aunt
dead, well, she could use some help."

Abby. Yes, she could have used it a long time ago. "Nell Healey will
see to that." Jury turned from trying to see into the shadows of the
back to look at Charlie. "You've paid up, Charlie. And, anyway, you
haven't done what you'd sworn you'd do."

Charlie cut a bleak smile in Jury's direction. "I haven't?"

"No. You haven't quite peaked. Sirocco hasn't played Wembley
Stadium." Jury called to the rear of the auditorium, "Isn't that the
order, Mary Lee? The Marquise, Town and Country, Odeon, Arena, Stadium?"

A shadow moved and she started down the aisle. "What about the Ritz?"

Jury shaded his eyes and looked back.

"Remember me?" asked Vivian.

Vivian had Marshall Trueblood's Armani coat slung about her
shoulders. Underneath was a gown Jury could see as she moved closer to
the stage that the Princess would have approved. It was burgundy,
fluid, semitransparent and fit her body like a second skin to just
below the hips where it flared out. It had a languid, pre-Raphaelite
look. Her hair was done up partly on top of her head, partly down, as
if the hair had escaped its entrapment on top. She wore long emerald
earrings.

The combination of her appearance (which was gorgeous) and the
surprise of seeing her here made Jury's mind go blank. "Why in hell are
you wearing Trueblood's Armani coat?"
That
was a sporty
question, he thought, cursing himself.

But she took it in stride. "Because I had the coat-check ticket for
it in my bag. I'm supposed to have gone to powder my nose during the
entree; we started dinner without you, but no one will have finished,
not if Agatha had her way about the seven-course meal and Melrose
orders one more bottle of wine. He told me you were here." Vivian
beamed up at Charlie Raine, whose own smile would have lit up the
Embankment. "I was cheated. They got to hear you; I didn't."

"I can always fix that."

"You wouldn't!"

"I would." Charlie strapped the Fender round his neck. "What do you
want to hear?"

Vivian thought for a moment. " 'Yesterdays'—not the Beatles' one,
the one by Jerome Kern. Do you know it?"

Charlie thought for a moment, shook his head, "I know the Beatles'.
Will that do?"

"It'll do," said Jury, sitting down in the front row with Vivian
beside him. He wrapped his arm over the back of her seat.

As Charlie, twenty-three years old, sang about a day when his
troubles had been far away, here in the building where the last
briefing for D-Day had taken place, Jury was drawn back to the flat on
the Fulham Road, Elicia Deau-ville, and the rubble that once had been
his and his mother's parlor.

He was just as glad he hadn't been there on the moor to see the
black-clad arm of Ann Denholme lying against the white backdrop of snow.

He feared, as the song said, that all his troubles might be here to
stay.

"Toby Holt?" said Melrose. "My God, that shows determination equal
only to Agatha's trying to knock off every eligible female in sight."

Sitting at a table as far from the small stage as he could, Jury
smiled. "Thanks for not beginning with 'So Commander Macalvie was
right.'" His head was throbbing from a combination of no sleep,
Wiggins's report from the hospital, and the slashing licks of Dickie's
rendition of "Deja Vu" (determined, according to Stan, to prove he was
as fast as Yngwie).

Melrose squinted through the smoke-filled room. "How did
Vivian
get here?"

Jury put his hand to his head as Dickie let go with another
ravaging chord progression and wished for once he had access to
Wiggins's pocket pharmacy. "It was her idea." He waved his hand toward
the blue-lit stage of the Nine-One-Nine, where Vivian, pumps off, was
churning and applauding. "Have any of those cigars?"

"This was
Vivian's
idea?" Melrose fumbled inside his
jacket pocket for his cigar case.

"One of London's best-kept secrets. One of those underground places
you hear about through word-of-mouth, and not much of that. The
regulars want to keep it to themselves. Vivian wanted to see the
'real' London."

"/
don't want to go back to the Ritz and a lot of rich, boring
tourists. You must know some nice, sleazy club
." To which Jury had
said he didn't do much club-hopping. "
Well, you must raid them
sometimes
." She seemed sure he knew every club in London's
underbelly.

"She kept reminding me it's her last night in London. Exact words,
'my last night on English soil.' " He smiled at Melrose.

"How dramatic." Melrose draped his black dinner jacket with its
ribbed satin facing over the wooden chairback. "If we keep her drinking
she'll forget and go all the way to Istanbul."

"I think the Orient Express stops in Venice. They'll chuck her out."

"Is Wiggins still at hospital?" Jury nodded. Melrose asked, "What's
her condition?"

"As bad as can be expected. Slips in and out of a coma. Wiggins said
she was talking like someone in a dream. About Healey, Ann Denholme.
Some things we'd deduced."

"Extortion, blackmail, that sort of thing?"

Jury swallowed some of the club soda. The headache was lessening.
"Unfortunately, she chose Rena instead of Charles. 'Pay up or I'll tell
his wife about Abby.' My God, she might as well have put a gun to her
head as let Rena Citrine know Abby was Roger's daughter."

"And if Nell Healey had found out about Abby, the Fury would have
got the lot, wouldn't she?"

"The entire inheritance, is my guess."

"My Lord, but Healey took chances. Involved with two women up there
right under his wife's nose? Not to mention Mavis Crewes."

"I think his involvement with Rena might have been pure greed. And
she certainly tried to steer me away from revenge as a motive—wanted
me to think it was adultery." Jury shrugged. "But then again, who was
she actually with on Bimini? I'm having Wiggins check to see if there's
a record of a marriage between Citrine and Littlejohn. Roger might have
decided to run through what money Rena had. We'll probably never know.
But Rena certainly had expecta-tions insofar as Nell was concerned;
Rena was careful to champion her cause, to stick by her." Jury looked
through a film of smoke toward the right-hand wall. "I see Trueblood's
found a friend."

Marshall Trueblood had been in the place for all of fifteen minutes
and he was already having an animated discussion with Karla. At least,
Trueblood's part was animated. Karla was standing in the same spot, in
the same position, holding up the wall against which Marshall Trueblood
was leaning his elbow, his head against one hand and his other
gesticulating wildly. In answer, Karla merely smoked and gave
Trueblood the best of her profile. Her lips, otherwise, did not move.
Trueblood was wearing a paisley dinner jacket, black cummerbund, and a
cerise bow-tie, butterfly fashion, beneath a wing collar.

"But to try and kill
Abby
? The very night after Ann
Denholme? She had plenty of time for that—" Melrose paused. "No, she
wouldn't. Because Nell Healey was to be taken into custody the very
next morning. And all three of those killings were to look like her
revenge on her husband having not just an affair but a child by that
affair."

"Try to imagine Irene Citrine's state of mind when she walked into
Abby's barn and saw that Sirocco poster," Jury said.

"Why did she recognize him when no one else did? Had he changed that
much since he was fifteen?"

"She was the only one who
knew
Toby Holt was alive; not
even his uncle could be certain. Three years ago the band was playing
clubs in the Florida Keys. Remember, she spent several months on
Bimini. But it's not only that. It's
context
Rena saw that
poster in a context she could hardly have forgotten. A young man
against a tree right beside a view of the Cornwall coast. The only
person who could identify her, and he's right here in London."

"Look at that, would you?" Melrose nodded toward the tiny dance
floor. Trueblood and Karla were dancing to a bluesy, jazzy version of
"Limehouse Blues." Arms shot straight out to the side and holding each
other at arm's length, Karla's hand on Trueblood's shoulder. They were
staring into each other's eyes. The other couples on the floor didn't
seem to notice and were hanging on to one another for dear life, moving
in a hag's dream.

"Oh, to be young," said Melrose. Then he half-rose from his seat.
"Who's Vivian dancing with? If you call it dancing. She's got her arms
round his neck."

"Incidentally, where's your beloved aunt?" He looked round at the
door of the Nine-One-Nine, as if Agatha might march through it.

"In Wanstead somewhere." Melrose was half out of his seat, watching
the dance floor.