Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (22 page)

"No one could have known Mrs. Healey wasn't
in
the house;
that she was
outside
was mere chance," said Wiggins.

"Of course. So if it was someone known to her, and she
had
been there, say, in the kitchen, whoever it was could simply have said
they didn't want to drive the car any farther down that road. But they
wouldn't deliberately announce themselves by coming down that road. So
Billy wouldn't have heard anything. Anyone could have walked right in,
but it was someone he knew, I'm sure."

Jury leaned back against a Welsh cupboard of wormy chestnut and
folded his arms, looking at the kitchen hearth, the chairs pulled up to
it. It was the sort of spot that could have seduced anyone into having
a cup of tea. "If you could only remember, Macalvie, that you weren't
here; that you weren't in this kitchen." He looked out at darkness.

"Then what's
your
theory?"

"I don't have one."

Wiggins came in from the front room, saying, "They've a piano, a
baby grand—Good Lord, sir, shut that door!" His look at Macalvie was
severe as he pulled the lapels of his overcoat tightly round his throat.

Macalvie shut the kitchen door.

As he would have recognized the outfitting of the kitchen, Jury
would have known this room from Macalvie's descrip-tion. In the center
was the writing table where Charles Citrine must have been sitting,
talking with the police superintendent. Over there was the window seat
where Nell Healey had sat staring out to sea. There were no sheets, no
covering, over the furniture. In spite of the rising damp and the
passing years, the room still had the look of its occupants having
left just minutes before: an open book lay facedown on a coffee table;
the pale cushions of an armchair still bore the impression of an
occupant; the logs were laid and ready for lighting; sheets of music
were stacked on the piano. Until one noticed the spine of the book was
cracked, the pages stiff with age; the sheet music yellowed; the piano
layered with dust.

Said Wiggins: "They must have taken music pretty seriously to have
a grand piano in a house they used only a short time out of the year."

"Billy was supposed to be some kind of musical prodigy. The
piano"—Macalvie nodded toward it—"was the father's idea. Healey was a
frustrated concert pianist who was probably living out his fantasies
of being Rachmaninoff through his kid. My bet is he was a real slave
driver. Anyway, the kid didn't use it."

"How do you know?" asked Jury, not terribly surprised by this time
at Macalvie's clairvoyance.

"There was no music on the stand; the cover was down; I ran my
finger over it. Dusty as hell." Macalvie smiled. "He didn't practice
here; she didn't dust. Says something about them, doesn't it, the way
they were."

The smile was in place, but it didn't reach his eyes, Jury noticed.
Then the smile vanished and he walked over to the french window giving
out on a view of waves they could hear but couldn't see.

"She likes you, too, Macalvie." Jury smiled at his friend's back.
"You should go and see her. I'm sure you wouldn't have any trouble
getting round Sanderson."

There was no answer.

"I'm having a look upstairs. Brian?"

Without turning, Macalvie said, "Billy's room is at the top, the
guest room next to it. Toby used that."

While Wiggins visited the guest room, Jury went into Billy Healey's.
As had the living room, this one still looked lived in, as if all of
his boy's things had been left in just the way he had placed them.
Cricket bat lying across a carved walnut chair and a cap hanging on its
finial; stacks of magazines and paperback books slipping and sliding
along the far wall in a drunken wave; fossils and chipped seashells on
the bureau, one especially good specimen lying on a bit of torn paper
with the penciled inscription,
Chessil Beach
, the paper
browning round the edges, beginning to look more like parchment. But
the focal point of the room was outspread on the faded oriental rug at
the foot of the bed—a complicated intertwining of metal tracks,
miniature buildings—or pieces of a Monopoly set used for that
purpose—and an electric train. He stood looking at it for a few moments
chewing his lip. Then he knelt down, unable to resist its lure, and
punched the starting button. The slightly rusted engine slowly and
laboriously started chugging along the track, entering a mossy tunnel
of a papier-mache hillside.

He let it run as he went over to the books against the wall, sat
down on the floor, and looked them over. Jury could almost see the
years of Billy's life changing with the books. Picture books, the
William books, comics. He must have named his dog Gnasher after the one
in these old "Beano" strips. Then came
Oliver Twist, Treasure
Island
, nothing by the Brontes—perhaps he got too much of that in
Yorkshire —and some poetry. Jury recognized the small paperback of
American poetry as the same one that Nell Healey had been holding. He
pulled it out, thumbed through it to Robert Frost, noticed as he did so
there were a lot of underlinings, marginal notes that surprised him.
Apparently, his stepmother had had a decided effect on his reading. He
found the one called "Good-bye and Keep Cold," and read it through
twice.

But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm. How often already
you've had to be told, "Keep cold, young orchard. Good-bye and keep cold
..."

Jury put his head in his hand. He went on looking through the book
and stopped at a poem of Emily Dickinson, also heavily underscored.
His eye was immediately drawn to the line, "
It was not frost, for
on my skin I felt siroccos crawl
..." The word
sirocco
was underlined twice and in the margin written in a loopy scrawl,
"desert wind, hot."

"I used to have one, but not this good of a one."

Wiggins's voice brought Jury round. "What?"

"Train, sir." Wiggins was kneeling by the track. The engine was
going through the tunnel, probably for the dozenth time. Jury had
forgotten the train. "It was a contest, it was, to see who could
collect the most pieces. I was the only one had a British Rail Pullman
car. What sort did you have, sir?"

Jury had risen, still with the book in his hand. "None. What's a
'sirocco,' Wiggins?"

The sergeant looked up from the miniature metal station, frowning.
"The band, you mean?"

"No. I mean what is it? What's it mean?"

Wiggins shook his head. "No idea. Funny name, come to think of it.
They're usually called things like Kiss of Death, or plays on words
like Dire Straits. Good name, that." Wiggins got up. "The guest room's
all tidied up. Nothing there that seemed helpful."

"I'll have a look." Jury frowned. "Do you still have that issue—"

Wiggins looked back, standing in the doorway. "Of what, sir?"

"Nothing," said Jury. "Nothing."

It had started to rain steadily during the short drive to Macalvie's
cemetery.
Macalvie's cemetery
: the graveyard that surrounded
the disused church appeared to Jury to have little purpose anymore than
that which Macalvie had brought to it. It surrounded the church
unevenly on three sides.

They squelched through mud and high grass, stepping, Jury imagined,
on graves whose stones had slowly slipped so far beneath the ground
that one could barely see them. When they'd nearly reached the wall,
Macalvie beamed his torch downward, kneeled, and removed the canvas
staked across the grave.

It had been carefully staked out by Dennis Dench. Markers showing
the position of the body were still there. The site was clear of
vegetation for a foot round the site. There was little else to show
that a body had been exhumed from the opening, that it had not been dug
for a burial yet to come.

Except (thought Jury) that nobody came here anymore. He squinted
through the dark at headstones- leaning at odd angles, nearly hidden by
tall grass and weeds. The rain fell steadily.

Wiggins stood at the bottom of the grave staring down, the package
that was'Dench's book between his gloved hands like a Bible. He made no
move to rewrap the muffler that a sudden wind had disturbed; he said
nothing about the weather.

Jury looked up from the gravesite to the old wall, crumbling like
the wall round the Citrine house in West Yorkshire. What in heaven's
name must have been going through that poor woman's mind in her
interminable watching at the gate that listed like these gravestones in
that deteriorating wall? What scenarios had she devised for the death
of her stepson?

That she was hopeless of ever seeing him again was clear. She was
not watching that small frozen orchard waiting for a miraculous
reappearance, waiting for the boy to climb down from the tree in which
he'd been hiding. It enveloped her like fog, the sense of hopelessness.

In her darkest imaginings of the way he died, could Nell Healey
possibly have imagined this?

An owl screeched. They all stood looking down into the excavated
grave, filling with rain.

Wiggins did not complain about the weather.

Melrose refused to open his eyes when he heard what must have been a
mug of tea placed on his bedside table. He shut them more tightly still
when the curtains on wooden rungs were slowly pressed back and the
window raised. Why on earth did people seem to think one could not move
without the morning tea, and that one's private bedroom was Liberty
Hall? Nor did he hear the footsteps of the Person recede. The Person
must have been standing in the room—the slow breathing seemed to come
from the direction of the foot of the bed—staring like a ghoul as he
slept. Nothing could be more unnerving except perhaps lying in a trench
with the enemy standing over you wondering if you were, indeed, dead.

Finally, he heard skulking steps, the door gently close.

After a few seconds, he opened one eye to sunlight and a fine day
and a cow staring at him, ruminatively, through the window.

Melrose threw back the covers and didn't give the cow the
satisfaction of knowing he had spotted it.

Major Poges and the Princess were the only ones at the table when he
entered the dining room. Ruby had just served Major Poges his boiled
egg. The Princess was drinking coffee and sitting several chairs away
down the other side of the table. She fluted a good-morning to Melrose.

Ruby, her hair pulled back from sallow skin and a face like a
lozenge—mildly palliative—recited a rather extensive menu to Melrose,
including mutton chops. Melrose ordered tea, toast, and porridge.
Solemnly, Ruby took the order, collected some of the used crockery,
and took herself off.

"And bring some more hot water, Ruby," the Major called after her.

One could tell a great deal (Melrose had always liked to think)
about the way a person approached his boiled egg. Major Poges did not
behead his (as did Agatha), but tapped and tapped the top gently all
round with the back of his egg spoon and peeled it.

From her end of the table, the Princess called down, "We're the
last. Or you are. It's nearly ten."

"Miss Denholme appears to be very liberal with her mealtimes."

"
And
her food," said the Princess, whose plate, from what
Melrose could see, did not attest to this. It was empty. "She caters to
one's tastes." The Princess raised her finely chiseled face to the
ceiling and exhaled a stream of smoke. This morning she was dressed in
rose wool with one of the Weavers Hall shawls (this one of magenta)
gathered about her arms and fastened with something pricey that winked
in the sunlight.

"She's also quite a decent person, if a bit on the broody side. When
I came here the first time, she was off nursing her sister—Iris, I
think her name is. I understand the doctors feared the poor woman
would have a miscarriage. I have never had children, myself." Her tone
suggested she couldn't understand why anyone would.

"They'd have turned out to be Malcolms, every one." The Major
scooped up his egg. "Doesn't come on as the motherly type, not to me.
Why'd she take over the child? Doesn't seem to care much about her. As
for catering to your tastes," the Major went on as he jammed up a toast
round. "What taste? You scarcely eat anything." He turned to Melrose.
"She will only eat what is quiet and needn't be cut."

He called down to her: "For God's sakes, come to your usual place
and sit down."

Her expression declared that this was the opening for a rejoinder
she'd been dying to make. "I am sitting down here, Mr. Plant, because I
do like my morning cigarette. And it is
beastly
manners to
smoke whilst others are eating. So I've been told."

Sotto voce, the Major said, "Oh, shut up." Then to the Princess, he
called again, "We refuse to sit here and yell. I complained once,
once
when you were smoking that cheroot. Come back to your usual chair."

"Ah!" she exclaimed, rising. "Thank you
so
much."

Melrose smiled as she made her languid (and supposedly underfed) way
down the table to the chair at the Major's left, which he had risen to
hold out for her. The Major's sigh was huge and resigned; he reeked of
martyrdom. Her
thank you
simply breathed of feigned
deference, as did her paralytic smile at him as she slid into the
magisterial chair.

"Now the one who fascinates me is the Braine woman. She's quite
loopy, that one. Did you know she was on her way to Hadrian's Wall? She
claims to be in touch with the Emperor Hadrian, which must be difficult
as he's been dead for several centuries." The Princess leaned closer to
Melrose. "Second sight is what she claims to have. Knew there'd be a
murder near here, that's what turned up in her 'magnetic field.' She
was 'drawn here' by some irresistible force."