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

Thus for thirty-one minutes, two cups of tea, one finger of anchovy
toast, Melrose grinned, grimaced, touched, sat back and forth, laughed
soundlessly, leaned close, leaned back, slapped his leg, crooked his
elbow, looked intent.

He had become, in half an hour, a brilliant conversationalist.

As they gibbered like gibbons in the bush, he rose, looked pained
that he must leave, once again brought Teddy's hand to his lips, and
actually squeezed Agatha's shoulder in farewell.

As he walked off, smiling all round at waiters and stone-faced
guests, he thought again, /
won
!

He'd make a mockery of speech, a burlesque of words, a travesty of
talk.

"Melrose!"

Agatha was bellowing at his back. He stopped, turned. She was waving
him back.

Very well.

She was actually being gracious as she said, "But Melrose, you
didn't
notice
!"

He raised his eyebrows in question, a thin smile playing on his lips.

"It's
Teddy
! Don't you remember how she looked in York?"

A confidential whisper now from Teddy: "Dear, I've been completely
done over!" Here she spread her arms, then touched her neck, her hair,
turned her head this way and that. "There's this marvelous little
clinic in Zurich. . . . Well? What do you think?"

He knew he didn't need to do it. He knew he was clever enough to get
out of this. After the whole day's efforts, he could have ordered
Wellington's troops with a few flicks of his fingers; beaten Connors at
Wimbledon with a teabag; left Lester Piggott a length behind with a
hobbyhorse.

"Well, Melrose? Well?"

He splayed his arms on the table, looked deeply into Teddy's eyes
and said, "Why waste words?"

The gasps and giggles trailed behind him as he left the Old Swan Hotel.

Gnawing on a chicken leg that Agatha had missed in her rummage
through the picnic basket, Melrose drove through Ilkley.

Trying to circumvent the moors was like trying to get round London
on the Circle Line. Every gritty little town seemed to have its moor.
Ilkley Moor, Stanbury Moor, Ha-worth Moor, Keighley Moor, Black Moor,
Howden Moor: they were fixed about like railway station stops. Nothing
like the North York moors he had crossed several years ago in the snow,
a vast expanse of Arctic waste; nor like Dartmoor, a lunar landscape of
fogs and slanting rains. Here in Yorkshire's West Riding there was a
plethora of moors. Nature, abhorring yet another vacuum, must have
said,
There's a space, drop a moor in it
.

And this narrow ribbon of road he'd taken to connect up with Haworth
was meant for sheep, not for man—certainly not man in a Bentley. He
looked up at the sky, now turgid like brackish water, looked out at the
sad-faced sheep and slid down in the driver's seat, his earlier
euphoria dissipating.

Face it, you are no lover of Nature
. He sighed. The only
Nature he seemed able to appreciate was the picture-book change of
seasons in his own parkland at Ardry End. Golden autumn, lilac-scented
spring . . .

Oh, for heaven's sake; it wasn't like that at all. There wasn't a
lilac bush within ten miles.

Was this the right road? It didn't even look finished. Ma-cadamed on
one side for a distance, rutted earth on the other, going nowhere, he
imagined, but to Eternal Moorland. He pulled over, braked, opened the
accordion map. Two moorland sheep raised their heads from the bracken,
moved forward slightly, stared and chewed.

Yes, this appeared to be the road. But where was this pub so clearly
marked? Any pub marked on a map must be worth a stop.

Good Lord, how self-indulgent. One would think he'd never set foot
out of London, so citified did he feel at the moment. He looked over at
the two sheep. They looked so clumsy with all that wool, he disliked
them. Nor did they seem dying of curiosity to know him.

He tried to refold the map, which remained intransigent to his
handling; why was it maps, such neat accordions when you purchased
them, would spring apart and seem to grow larger, filling your car,
rampant as wild things. Oh, the hell with it. He squared it off and
stuffed it, resisting, into the glove box and sat there glooming away.

What was the matter with him? He must get out, stretch his legs,
have a brief walk on the moor (very brief), and, warming to this mild
burst of enthusiasm, decided to take the picnic basket with him. There
might be another piece of chicken or a tart and he was hungry. Agatha
had been so busy throwing the debacle in his face, she had actually
missed out on some tasty morsels in the basket. He thought he spied a
thin slice of salmon rolled around capers and caviar. He set off on his
tramp through bracken and rocks, feeling like a true West Yorkshireman.

After cleaning his shoe of sheep dung, wrapping his handkerchief
round the rash of bloody pricks on his hand, moving his ankle gingerly
where he'd caught it amongst this clump of deceptive, moss-covered
rocks, Melrose found a wide, flat stone and sat down to look at the
running stream. Or beck, he supposed it was called.

He looked across the snowy patches beside the stream, past bracken
and burnt-looking heather, to a distance where he caught sight of a
woman who, probably because of the illusory quality of the moors
themselves, had sprung from nowhere. She had simply appeared on the
crest of a treeless hill, snow-covered, walking along it in a cape that
billowed behind her, and nothing in hand that might identify her as a
tourist, a walker along the Pennine or Bronte ways, empty-handed, going
from nowhere to nowhere. The image fascinated him and he watched her
walk, a silhouette against the white horizon, until his attention was
called away by a sound. It was an odd grizzling sound, as if someone
were trying to clear his throat, followed by a sort of cat-cry. He
looked up, saw two birds circling. Curlews sounded like cats, didn't
they? Well, if they were circling over
him
, they were
probably buzzards.

Quickly he returned his gaze to the skyline. The woman was gone. He
lit a cigarette, looked at the coal end, shook his head. Here he'd come
with his picnic basket to commune with Nature in a Chesterfield coat
and with a gold cigarette case. He shook his head again. Hopeless.

He must take decisions.

What decisions? They'd all been taken for him. Polly Praed was no
doubt right now sitting with her amethyst eyes glued to the page in her
typewriter on which poured forth the fates of dogs or doges, and Vivian
Rivington—

Oh! But wasn't he disgusted with himself? Blame it on Trueblood; it
was all Trueblood's idea. Liar. Trueblood got the cut-out book, but he
himself had gone right along with it. Well, what fun could you get out
of life if you couldn't devil Vivian, after all?

What he couldn't stand was change. He thought, sitting here, perhaps
he could become a Zen Buddhist. If he watched the water, if he flowed
with the beck . . . Wasn't that the idea? Weren't they always saying
that one must
flow
? One must forgo attachments? That life
must be considered a running stream and to try to hold water in one's
hand was total illusion? The trouble was, though, that all of this
transience only seemed to apply to friendship, love, and beauty. Not
wars and plagues and people one loathed. You didn't see
them
go floating down the beck . . .

So what kind of comfort
did flow
offer? He wanted things
to stay absolutely the same, the same little group at the same table in
the Jack and Hammer; the same rat terrier outside of Miss Crisp's
secondhand furniture shop)—

Melrose looked round, for he heard the sound again.

Well, what about the Everlasting Now? Wasn't that a Zen notion too?

He rummaged through the basket and yanked out a chicken wing covered
in crumbs of broken roll and knew one of his problems was his total
lack of vocation, except for those zombie lectures he inflicted on
students of French Romantic poetry. He studied the chicken wing and
thought of Rimbaud.

Did he have to choose a genius who'd died at nineteen? At nineteen
all Melrose was doing was falling oif horses. He was going cross-eyed
trying to find bits of meat on the wing and gave it up, tossing it in
the basket. Naturally, Agatha had drunk the half bottle of Pouilly-Fume
that his cook had put in specially for him.

He allowed himself a huge, self-pitying sigh. He'd simply got to
take stock of himself. . . . Gevrey-Chambertin, Chateau Margaux, the
incomparable finesse of the Montrachets; Chevalier, Batard, Chassagne.
The ones Dumas had said should be drunk kneeling; the Chablis Grands
Crus; the Cote de Girarmes Napoleon loved. And then the port . . . it
was more interesting taking stock of his wine cellar.

The noise this time was nearer and more distinct. Melrose left the
cobwebbed environs of his wine cellar to squint through the mossy
rocks. That mewling noise he had taken as the curlew's was, after all,
a cat: it sat there, blinking its yellow eyes, looking starved.

Start thinking of your private stock of port and something comes
along to shame you, he supposed. Melrose put the cat in the
basket—clearing out the chicken bones first—and lugged it back to the
road.

A woman standing at a crossroad apparently waiting for a local
directed him to a hamlet the other side of which was an animal
hospital. Since she had nothing better to do but stand there and gape
at his car, she took a long time about it.

The True Friend Animal Hospital lay at the end of an infernal,
potholed track of road that ended at a square, gray-stoned building
with a cleared-off patch of equally rutted earth meant as a car park.
Occupying it were a Ford truck of '40s vintage, a Mini Clubman Estate,
a Jag, and a couple of bicycles with wire baskets. A drenching rain had
started up right after he'd left the woman still staring after the
Bentley. He turned up the velvet collar of his coat and jogged to the
unfriendly-looking door of True Friend.

The waiting room was furnished with three wooden benches, one
against each wall, and the counter behind which a tired-looking woman
in steel-rimmed glasses and hair like a Brillo pad sat with a pile of
filing folders.

Melrose's acquaintance with veterinarians was minimal; he wondered,
though, why these places always had names like Animal Haven and Loving
Kindness when they generally resembled jails and had receptionists
like wardens. This one told him that as he had no appointment, he'd
have to wait until the
regular customers
were taken care of.
Her tone registered her disapproval of his casual and his damp and his
rather noisy cat as she nodded toward the benches for him to be seated.

Not that there was any shortage of noise in the room already. A
bullterrier and an Alsatian were having an awful row, each straining at
his lead to see which could grab a portion of Melrose's ankle first.
Some ineffectual snorting sounds came from their master, a middle-aged
man with a basin-cut hairdo and a face like a cliffside, who apparently
thought he was controlling his charges when finally one lay and the
other sat tensely, both with snarls locked in their throats, the
bullterrier with teeth bared at a calico cat a youngish couple had
wedged between them.

On the other end of that bench sat the owner of the Jaguar
(clearly), who appeared to think her foothold on a rung way up the
social ladder from the other benchwarmers got her feet far enough off
the ground to avoid the drooling bullterrier. Everything about her was
glossily groomed: her Chanel suit, her wings of frosted hair, her
whining poodle whose snout was pressed to the wire insert of the sort
of carrier required by airlines. She did give Melrose a quick,
appraising glance, fingered her pearls, and craned her neck to get a
better view of the hood of the Bentley.

The two women on the other bench both wore thick woolen coats and
paisley scarves over their heads and tied under their chins. In their
laps were almost identical flat, black bags. Leaving off what had been
a gossipy exchange about some "owld sluther-guts," they turned their
wide, pleasant faces, bland as Yorkshire puddings, on Melrose and
acknowledged both him and the weather by commenting on the rain lashing
the windows. "Fearful poggy the rooads be," said one, giving him a
rubber-band smile.

Melrose returned the smile and the nod as he sat himself and the
basket on the single unoccupied bench.

The two returned to their exchange, apparently unconcerned that the
Skye terrier at their feet was lying with glassy eyes and front legs
splayed out and possibly already dead; or that the cardboard box beside
the one who had spoken seemed to be moving toward the edge of the bench—

". . . to get 'em to stir theirsen, an' then ah cooms
doan't'see't'bairns w'Mickey 'ere . . ."

She nodded at the terrier. ". . .'t'lectric an' ... in t'Persil. Ah
was ommast fit to bust, Missus Malby . . . wi''t'bairns yammerin' an' .
. . roun' 'n roun'."

"Ooh, aye. Pore ting loaks deead i''t' middle, 'e do. Perky, 'ere .
. ." And she tapped the box with the airholes. ". . . clackin' away,
ahr Tom was . . . caught i''t'mangle, and ahr Alice yammerin' abaht . .
."

She opened the box and Melrose thought he saw the beak and top of
some colorful-looking bird pop out before the one called Malby shoved
it back in.

The other one clucked her tongue. "Aye, Missus Livlis, lookin'
yonderly 'e is," and gave the room in general a gummy smile. Melrose
interpreted this to mean the parrot was near death, for these two were
certainly into it.

Melrose was fascinated by all of this, for what he made out was that
Mrs. Malby's bairns had stuffed the terrier into the washing machine
(which was apparently an appliance the Malbys had just acquired) and
dashed in some washing powder. (Sometimes Melrose was just as glad he
was bairn-less.) Whether the terrier had actually gone round at all
before its rescue by Mrs. Malby, he couldn't discover from their
clotted talk, but from the look of it, he'd say the terrier had been
spin-dried. The parrot's fate was uncertain. Caught in a mangle? It
could be Mrs. Livlis (Lovelace, perhaps?) was not as fortunate as Mrs.
Malby and had to do her wash in an old-fashioned tub and the parrot
might have enjoyed perching on the mangle—

The outside door burst open upon this scene of riot, carnage, and
washday blues, admitting wind, rain, and a small girl covered more or
less top to bottom in a hooded yellow oilskin and black Wellingtons.
Melrose was hoping the box she held harbored something ordinary, like a
litter of kittens. She entirely ignored the yowlings for her blood her
entrance had effected in the Alsatian and the bullterrier as she
marched up to the desk.

Fortunately, the receptionist was finally telling the man with the
dogs to go back and the Alsatian and the bullterrier more or less
chewed and clawed their way across the room, making passes at the
child's boots, though she didn't seem to notice or to care as she set
her box on the floor. The flaps were up; it appeared to be empty, so he
supposed she was coming to collect her pet. That encouraged him, for he
wasn't certain about anything leaving True Friends alive, given the
intermittent screeches and yelps he heard coming from the bowels of the
building.

Wearily, the receptionist put a question to her—Melrose was too far
away to hear precisely, but he picked up on "appointment."

The girl's chin just grazed the counter. She sounded a little
thunderstruck when she had to answer, No, and tried to add something
about a doctor there.

With that sort of impatience some adults reserve for all children,
the grizzle-haired receptionist asked her, "Have you brought in your
pet?"