Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (11 page)

The girl raised her own voice. "No—" Something seemed to catch at
her throat.

"Well? What's your name?"

"Abby." The word exploded. "It's my cat."

"And Doctor told you to collect it? Well? What's its name?"

"Buster!" said the girl in a voice raised several notches as she
whirled from the counter and marched over to sit on the bench by
Melrose, making sure she kept her distance. She sat with her arms hard
across her chest, hands fisted, staring straight ahead.

The receptionist just shook and shook her head at this intractable
girl and called across the room, "Is he in the hospital, then?" Here
she jabbed her pencil toward the ceiling.

"
She
is
dead
!"

The receptionist quickly changed her tune, realizing that Buster had
died at True Friends. The reaction of the customers was predictable:
we
didn't hear that; she didn't say that
. Heads swiveled away from
the Fury sitting amongst them. The couple with the now-obscenely-alive
calico cleared their throats in unison, eyes ranging round the ceiling.
Mrs. Malby and Mrs. Livlis had the grace to look truly mournful. The
Jaguar owner smoothed her way to the end of her bench, leaned over the
arm toward the furious child, put on a mushy look, and tried to engage
the little girl's eyes.

Well, thought Melrose, sliding down in his seat, there were always
people who liked to check out electrical sockets with their fingers or
pull parrots from mangles. He knew what was coming.

Although the little girl refused to look at the well-dressed lady or
her beastly poodle, the woman still said, "Never mind, dear; you can
always get another kitty."

The Furies, Medea, Pandora could not have unleashed anything into
that room more violent than the little girl's expression when she
looked at this person. The woman backed physically away from what could
have been a fist in the face when the child's dark eyes snapped up and
locked with the woman's pale blue ones. And the thunderclap that shook
the room just then certainly sounded to Melrose as if God had a few
ideas about the fate of the poodle.

It was perhaps fortunate that as the little girl rose in something
like a trance to face this woman, the receptionist hurried in with the
box, obviously heavier now.

The child took it without a word, turned in her yellow slicker, and
walked through the door that Melrose had risen to open for her.

The rain poured from a sky gray-dark as the little girl walked down
the road, splashing through puddles.

Melrose had, of course, wanted to transport her to wherever she was
going, and wondered what had sent this child on such an awful errand by
herself.

But he didn't offer; he felt, for some reason, she knew how she
wanted to go, and where; that she must go the way she came, carrying
her dreadful burden. Two burdens, he thought, standing there in the
door getting wet: her fury and her dead female cat named Buster.

As Jury was walking down the Citrine driveway to his car, hoping for
a hot bath, a good meal, and a pretty waitress at the Old Silent, he
saw her.

At least, he thought it must be Nell Healey. It was at a distance,
and down a torturously winding path screened by trees; but he was sure
he had seen a woman moving beyond him.

Jury stepped from the drive to the footpath that wound erratically
between pines and spiny-branched elms. No wind stirred. It was as if
there had been no storm. The wood at dusk was drearier even than it had
seemed earlier that afternoon, as desolate and unhappy a scene as
could be.

Wretched
was the word that came to mind. Oak-galls clung to
barks and branches; the skeletal remains of birches lined the gray sky.
Jury looked back at the dark slab of the gatehouse, its squints for
windows through which no light would show. Drab and eyeless, it looked
almost pernicious. Along the path were the stiff remains of wagwort and
flea-bane; sodden leaved and congealed between the roots of tree
trunks; moss climbed around lichen-slippery stones.

He wondered if there were places that could infect the mind, abrade
the heart, corrode the spirit. Why would anyone choose, as she
certainly had, to live in such cold chambers, such a severe landscape,
which he doubted was much improved by the coming of spring.

She was standing beside an elm. Standing, not leaning, apparently
looking down to the end of the path where a useless gate listed.
Useless, because the tiers of stone on either side had nearly
disappeared. In this wall that no longer defined any boundary, the gate
was redundant.

"Mrs. Healey?"

Although her back was to him, she would have heard his approach over
stone shards and fallen twigs. There was no response. But he thought in
the moments that followed that her gaze was turned inward, that the
wood, path, gate—the entire landscape—was lost on her.

Before he could repeat the name, she swerved a little, looked round
at him. "Oh. Hello." She did not pretend that she couldn't remember
him, or imagine why she'd be meeting him on this path.

She was holding, incongruously, a handful of leaves rescued from
autumn like a small bouquet, as if, having set out to pick some winter
flower, this was all she could find. Her skin had a gauzy sheen to it,
like her hair. He thought at first the face was made paler by a lack of
rouge and eyeshadow; then he knew that what he had taken in the Old
Silent for the pallor of illness was not that at all. Her skin had the
pellucid look of a child's; her hair was not ash-blond, but streaked
here and there with lighter glints and reddish strands; it was
variegated, like her eyes. Though the look she gave him was glancing,
like cold light on cold water, frozen in the prismatic irises were
bits of color like the leaves she held: mottled gold and green and
brown with a silvery bloom. Even her clothes were the same colors—dark
green sweater hooked round her shoulders, gold silk blouse, brown
trousers. It was an autumnal look. In some sort of alchemy, she had
absorbed what colors remained. Or, chameleon-wise, was trying to blend
in and hide there.

After a moment or two in which she looked from the path to him and
back toward the falling-down gate, she said, "I

wasn't meaning to be avoiding—" She stopped and expelled a long sigh.

"Avoiding me?" Jury laughed a little. "I'd hate to try to find you
if you
meant
to be elusive."

Her gaze went back to the path and gate.

Jury looked down it. "Were you waiting for someone?"

That earned him a flicker of honest interest. "Waiting?" She smiled
slightly. "No."

Either she gave the impression of one always just on the point of
speaking, or he was so used to people rattling on about their lives
that he was uneasy, waiting himself upon her silence. "You seem so
intent," he added limply, "upon that prospect." He looked down the path.

Her smile was very slight. "I have none of those," she said,
ambiguously and almost irrelevantly. "A useless gate, isn't it? I
expect this place was surrounded by a medieval wall. Perhaps that was
what was called a
clair-voyee
. ..."

He moved closer, to a position that would have commanded more
attention, if that were possible. She continued in her odd way both to
note his presence and to ignore it.

"Mrs. Healey—"

"Nell." Her smile was almost convincing. "We were in close enough
contact I think you can call me by my first name." Now, she looked away
again, this time at the surrounding elms and birches. "I wonder why
you're back."

It was a statement only; she did not seem interested in Jury's
reasons. He had the feeling that things were done with, finished, for
her. There was no trace of hostility in her tone, and none of hope,
either. She looked down at the path, as if studying the groupings of
pebbles, leaves, and roots. She seemed deep in thought, but it was not
her surroundings that engaged her attention, and not him. She appeared
not to care how he answered.

"The reason I'm 'back,' as you put it, is that I hoped you might
tell me why you killed your husband."

She opened her mouth as if to reply. He waited for something; there
was nothing. Somewhere, he heard the soft thunk of a pinecone. Her
profile was to him; her arms folded across her breast, hands resting in
the crooks of her elbows.

This fixated pose and refusal to talk did not strike Jury as
obduracy. She was not being stubborn. Indeed, she once again opened her
mouth as if she meant to answer, then closed it as before.

"Your father says it must have been revenge."

After a few moments, she said only, "Does he?" and pulled her
sweater closer. Her voice broke between the two syllables.

Did she sense that she was not smooth enough, not plausible enough
to go along with that lie?

"But that doesn't surprise you; that must be the line your
solicitors are taking—that and temporary insanity."

A feverish color rose from her neck to her face, mottling the cool
skin. But her reaction seemed to stem from something other than
embarrassment. The corners of her mouth twitched.

Jury wanted to shake her out of this nunlike placidity and calm
acceptance of her fate. And he wondered that she didn't appear angry,
or, at least, unnerved, by his appearance. She did not seem even to
question it. He went on: "After eight years, that'd be a hell of a
difficult case to make —even for someone as clever as Sir Michael."

After a few moments, all she said was, "I expect so."

It was such a flat-out statement and carried such a note of
conviction that she mightn't have cared at all what happened to her.
Her hands were locked behind her; her eyes fixed fast on the end of the
path. Jury looked toward the gate, the
clair-voyee
, and
beyond it. There was a bitter little orchard of pollarded trees with
shrunken trunks, pencil-thin branches, bony limbs jutting out. In
summer, though, it would be different, the trees inviting a child to
climb them for the fruit.

"Did your son play there?""

"Yes." It took her some time to add: "With Toby."

It was odd, how she gave only the first name, as if she had an
implicit knowledge he'd know Toby.

"Toby Holt."

Nell drew the sweater more closely together and nodded. "They were
good friends, which is strange given Billy was twelve and Toby was
nearly sixteen. At fifteen, well . . ." She didn't finish. "I actually
think he admired Billy. Of course, Billy seemed older, probably because
of his music. He was a wizard, he could play anything, really. Poor
Toby. No matter how he tried he could hardly make music with a comb.
And Abby, they both actually put up with Abby. She was only three. How
is she? And the Holts. Have you talked with the Holts? I wonder how
they're getting on without him."

Shaking her head, she looked at the ground. Looked and kept shaking
her head as if all of this were a puzzle, a mystery beyond her poor
powers to comprehend. And strange her wondering how the Holts "were
taking it," as if his death had occurred only last week.

There was no question, apparently, that he would see Abby, would see
the Holts. He was sure that at that moment she did not even register
his presence as a policeman, or perhaps not at all. She was talking, he
thought, to herself. At least, she was talking.

Jury was certain that she could see the ghost of Billy Healey beyond
the broken walls, climbing a tree. And when he looked round at her
again, she seemed to have taken on the aspects of the orchard; she
seemed to have shrunken, grown thinner, turned in upon herself. Her
clear complexion, even, had developed tiny lines, like crazed
porcelain. She had brought a small book of poetry out from her pocket,
and her fingers, skeletal-looking to his eye now, turned it round and
round.

"It looks"—here she nodded toward the rows of smallish trees—"as if
it were freezing to death. But it's only resting. What would be
dangerous and deadly is a rush of unseasonable warmth." She paused. "I
only know that because of a poem about someone's looking at his orchard
and saying to it, 'Good-bye and keep cold.' "

- "You seem to find that comforting." A chilly wind sprang up,
making a few leaves skitter about with a tinny sound, blowing her hair
loose from the mooring of its tortoiseshell comb and whipping a few
strands across her face. She pulled them back, like a veil, from her
mouth and chin and re-pinned the hair.

"Do you like poetry?" asked Jury.

"Yes." His eyes were on the hands combing back the hair, repinning
it. She looked extremely young. "I do because you can trust the
language of it. I hate talking."

Jury smiled. "That's abundantly clear. It's the only clear thing
about you." If he was expecting this to draw her out, he was wrong. She
took her own line.

"Words are like gauze. Semitransparent, easily torn, always
frayed." It was a delicate smile, as if it had to be tested. She seemed
pleased that she'd said what she meant.

"You're probably right, but it's all we've got, and not many of us
are poets. I guarantee Queen's Counsel won't be at all poetic when he
gets you in the dock." He moved round in front of her to force her to
look at him. "Look, don't you think this silence of yours, this not
liking to talk, is a conceit you have that there's some buried truth
you might dig up if you could find the perfect words to do it? That the
world is deaf and dumb, so there's no sense trying to get through to
it?"

He knew the minute the words were out of his mouth he'd said exactly
the wrong thing, yet he couldn't help himself. She made him angry. When
she turned her face to the path again, he said, "I'm sorry. I have no
business talking to you at all, much less . . . chastising you." He
smiled a little; he must have fallen into the trap of trying to find
the right word and he'd picked one that sounded strange and tasted
strange, like sea water. "I'm just sure that there's more to it.
Perhaps you've told your solicitors; perhaps the last thing you'd do is
talk to me. But I don't think you told them any more than you're
telling me. I know there's some other reason you shot your husband."

The silence lengthened like the shadows across the walk. It had
grown nearly dark while they were standing here. The purple sky was
bisected by a dim band of gold. Drawing her arms up against her
breasts, she made a little bridge of her interlaced fingers and rested
her chin on them. She had only a small repertoire of movements; they
were close and parsimonious, like her words. Since Jury had been
talking to her she had moved no farther than the length of his arm.
"Why?" was all she said.

He hesitated. He said something else: "You appeared too
self-contained for a woman bent on revenge."

She brought her arms down, the hands still interlaced before her.
She frowned. "You must be able to see a lot in a few seconds."

"It wasn't just those few seconds. In the dining room, remember, we
were both there at the same time."

Slowly, she shook her head. "I was reading a book, that's all."

"Some book. I always leaf through Camus when I want cheering up." ?

She did not reply to that, but looked up at the purple-black sky and
watched two curlews wheeling and making their odd, mulish noise.

"And earlier, in the Bronte museum."

Frowning, she said, "I didn't see you."

"I know. You were much too absorbed, and not in the old manuscripts
and ledgers. I also saw you in the toy museum."

The frown deepened as she looked away and then back. "You
were
following
me." Jury nodded. "
Why
?"

"I don't know."

She seemed more amused by this than annoyed as she shook her head
again, very slowly. "But you said nothing."

And he said nothing now, partly because he was breaking his own code
and ashamed of that; partly because the more she talked, the less he
did. It was as though there was a small allotment of words, not enough
for two people at once. It was his turn to look away, toward the gate
and the trees beyond.

"I don't understand." It was as if she didn't much care whether she
did or not.

Finally, he said what he hadn't said before, what he knew he
shouldn't say, unless he said it to Queen's Counsel. It would then
remove any hope—remote as hope was—of Nell Healey's acquittal. "I know
you're lying. You and your father. So was your husband."

This brought her head round sharply, a look of honest wonder on her
face, eyes wide. In the faded light, the glimmer of different colors
could not be seen. The irises seemed to have melded into a
goldish-green. "Lying about what?"

"About your motive. Even if you haven't said it, you haven't
unsaid
it. Revenge because Roger Healey, or both of them, took the advice of
the Cornwall constabulary and refused to pay the ransom for Billy. And
what about your father? Do you intend to kill him, too, out of
revenge?" Jury said it mildly.