Charles Citrine shambled into the room-that was the only way Jury could describe it, the sort of careless, shuffling walk the man affected, hands in pockets of baggy corduroy trousers, and wearing a checked woolen shirt beneath a mud-stained denim jacket. From a distance, he had the look of a man who'd been busy in the barn or mucking out a stable; up closer, Jury could see the lines of worry.
He did not extend his hand and looked at Jury with some suspicion. 'Why are you here, Superintendent?'
'I thought I could help.'
'I can't see how.' This was said flatly, without hostility. 'None of this makes any sense. Not Roger's death, not Nell's-oh, hell. You might as well sit down… Would you care for coffee?' Citrine sat back in the dark wood chair that had the look of some mythological beast or bird, the feet taloned, the slanted panels ribbed like wings.
Jury thanked him but shook his head. He would have expected more reserve from Charles Citrine, if not outright hostility toward himself, the person who had actually witnessed his daughter's crime. Nor did he seem to care anymore that Jury had, after all, no business being here. Given that Nell Citrine had made no move to get away, her own resolute silence regarding the circumstances, and her apparent acceptance of what she had done would have made an actual eyewitness to the crime hardly necessary. Her own refusal to deny anything would even have rendered circumstantial evidence unnecessary.
Thus Jury's own role was far less vital than it might have been. Perhaps Citrine realized this and that explained his attitude.
Citrine would have been, in any woman's book, a 'catch.' In his sixties he projected a vitality, a lustiness, even, missing in men half his age. The earthiness born of the land and the casual air he affected born of his work there (though Jury imagined it was more a gentlemanly meddling into the duties of his laborers) were only enhanced by a veneer of sophistication that had come from handling many types of people. In spite of the tensions of the last few days, he had the manner of one almost untouched by the larger world beyond his doorstep. This blend of sophistication, ease, and innocence could be a potent mixture for any woman. Jury wondered if Mavis Crewes had imbibed it. He couldn't imagine the two of them together; Citrine was far more refined and a great deal cleverer.
This room did not encourage ease of manner. Yet Citrine seemed at ease in it-how could a man look comfortable in that Jacobean monstrosity of a chair?-and yet at odds with it, too. The room, the feudal, armorial look of the house, seemed less Citrine's proper milieu than would some South Sea island. His face was weather- burned from whatever farming life he led, and the sunburnt look lent a further crispness to the gray hair shot through with gold and a further depth to the eyes, which had the clear tint of unruffled water in some island cove. Roll up his trouser legs and shuck his shoes, and he could be a beachcomber, a Crusoe happily marooned.
His whole placid presence rubbed Jury's nerves raw.
'Isn't this somewhat irregular, Superintendent? I mean, given you must be the Crown's witness?' The question was more curious than critical, as he regarded Jury with those calm, aquamarine eyes.
'I wouldn't serve as witness, since there's no question of the right person's being arrested.'
He looked surprised. 'I find that odd. You were the one who saw Nell-who saw it happen.' Citrine looked down at the burnt logs, little more than embers.
'Everything I know I told to the West Yorkshire police. Superintendent Sanderson.' Not everything. There was really no way to tell it. She went to the parsonage, a tearoom, a child's museum. But how to explain the nuances: the abstracted air, the hand against the glass case of the toy train. And what, precisely, could he say Roger Healey had said or done to provoke such a tragic outcome? Jury had his impressions, that was all. Attitude, aura, evanescence. Sanderson would tell him, with his dry look, that perhaps the Old Silent's black cat was a familiar? To put away his crystal ball.
'There was the appearance,' Jury went on, 'of an argument. Of a rather serious disagreement.'
Citrine had removed a pipe from his jacket pocket, knocked out the old tobacco into an ashtray, and tamped down fresh. He lit up. A fruity-scenting smoke blossomed, uncurled, and dissipated into the cold air. 'Given the outcome, I'd say that was probably true,' Citrine said dryly and jammed the pipe back in his mouth.
Jury knew he was being deliberately misunderstood. He said nothing.
'I have no idea why this happened. Roger was a devoted husband, a fine man. Spent a lot of time in London, of course, because of his work. And I imagine nothing was quite the same since-' He stopped abruptly.
'If you're talking about your grandson, I know about that. I'm very sorry, Mr. Citrine. I truly am. I'd simply like to know the reason this happened.' He tried to smile. 'Throw me out any time you feel like it.'
Charles Citrine smiled slightly too. 'Look, we'd
'Where would I find her?'
'In the tower. My sister is not so much eccentric as the sum of a number of affects. One is that I have relegated her to the tower, with the bats.' Citrine smiled sourly.
Jury's own answering smile was half finished, hanging in air like chill in the room. 'And your daughter?'
'I don't know.' He studied Jury. 'And I don't think it would be a good idea for you to talk to her. I probably shouldn't be talking to you myself; I doubt her solicitors would like it. Who are, as you can imagine, going round the twist on this one. Nell doesn't-' He stopped to get the dead pipe going again. '-care.'
Jury watched him coax the pipe back into life and saw nothing in the man's expression that would suggest that Citrine believed otherwise. Yet, it couldn't be true, this assessment of his daughter's state of mind. Yes, it was possible that one might give up on one's own life, might despair of one's own future. But that could only come about through caring very deeply about things having gone wrong that were once in some sense right.
But he was not about to challenge Charles Citrine's statement. 'There's no remorse?'
Reaching over to stab at a log with the poker, Citrine looked up. 'Not a flicker.' He might have been talking about the blackened log. He shook his head slightly, bewildered. 'Roger was a very good man, one of the best. I had great hopes when he married Nell…'
One would have thought the father would have put it the other way round: when Nell married Roger, or, at least, 'when
Absently, he held onto the poker, like a walking stick or cane. Two or three small blue flames licked their way round the logs. 'That he would steady her.'
Steady her? Jury had to smile. 'She seems the last person in need of 'steadying.' I've never seen anyone so self-contained.'
Citrine leaned the poker against the stone and sat back. 'Impassivity can often seem like containment, can't it?'
The picture of Nell Citrine Healey that was emerging, stroke by stroke-or was it hint by hint?-was not a pleasant one. Remorseless. Impassive. Unsteady. 'You're making her sound like a sociopath.'
He gave a short bark of laughter. 'Good Lord, I hope not. No. Do you know anything about melancholia, Superintendent?'
Jury thought about his own mental state these last months. 'Not much. Except as chronic depression. Is that what you're saying is causing this apparent lack of empathy with things outside of her?'
'I don't know. I don't think depression would explain it.'
'And her mother?'
'Helen was quite-sanguine, really. A lovely woman.' He looked away, dispiritedly.
'This must be very difficult for you.' But from the way Charles Citrine talked with as much equanimity as he did about a situation that struck Jury as horrific, Jury wondered how difficult it really was. The man seemed to fit the chair in which he sat admirably, for all that his casual dress and manner were at odds with it. In the meager firelight, Jury saw that in the angle between the horned foot and the seat a web was in the making, a small spider dangled there by its invisible thread.
Citrine nodded, knocked out his pipe on the fireplace fender. 'I'm very fond of Nell; but I must admit she's beyond me. I can't fathom her feelings, her reasons for this destructive silence.' He sat back again, started fussing with the pipe. Jury wondered why men bothered with pipes; he wondered if all of the attention pipe-smoking demanded served as a safety valve, a distraction from human demands. Citrine said then, with a rather disarming
