The Old Silent

'Roger was hardly here anyhow, and he certainly wouldn't divorce the Citrine millions.'

'But she-?'

'I expect because of Billy.'

Jury frowned. 'Billy's gone.'

'Perhaps she thinks he might come back.'

Jury looked away. 'I hope not.'

9

It was supposed to have been only a drop-off.

Something in the manner of an agent like Smiley casually leaving his rolled-up newspaper containing the coded message from Control that would forestall the blowing up of the Kew Gardens Flower Show.

Or, thought Melrose, metaphors escalating in violence as the car made the turnoff to Harrogate, like an Israeli or an IRA henchman tossing an attache case of gelignite out the passenger door without even slowing down.

Unfortunately, Agatha's position in the passenger seat was far more like a steamer trunk than an attache case, and his carefully planned and simple drop-off ('Good-bye, dear aunt… ah, here's a lad to help you with your bags…' Thunk! Cases on sidewalk, car picks up speed...) had been completely dished as he'd loaded up the Bentley with her stuff. Why hadn't she just tied a strap round the cottage in Plague Alley and dragged it to the car? Trunk, portmanteau, valise, four hatboxes, makeup case, overnight case (why? when she must be planning on spending a decade), and picnic basket more befitted Lord Kitchener's arrival in Pretoria than a two-week holiday in Harrogate. A few servants in mufti, a whole sweating band of Boers might not have been sufficient to assist Agatha with her 'things.'

Would she never stop talking?

He was determined not to answer.

All the way from Northampton, it had been Vivian-this and Vivian-that; Franco-this and Franco-that; the frock she was having fashioned for her by the Northampton dressmaker, though clearly she shouldhave gone to London and would have done had Melrose not so stubbornly refused to visit his bespoke tailor in Jermyn Street…

(Where Melrose hadn't been in years, the place dark as a vault and the tailor withered to the size of his own thimble.)… and what ragsdid he intend to wear to the wedding, then? And whether the Giopinnos would be snobs, the canals fouled, the hotel touristy, the church drafty, the pigeons dirty…

(The Pope Polish…)

… the pasta endless, the Italian men pinching her relentlessly…

He was afraid he'd bloodied the inside of his lip when his mouth clamped tighter on that one.

But largely Agatha's was a running commentary on the Events of Last Night, as she had managed to extrapolate one little practical joke into a Roman orgy:

'… the utter childishness of it all! I'd think the two of you might as well have joined the kiddies invading Scroggs's place… oh, ho, Trueblood! Oh, I can understand that person doing such a thing… always has been a sneak…'

Thus could Agatha rewrite Trueblood's personal history to fit a single act…

'But you, Plant! And Earl of Caverness, fifth Viscount Ardry…'

He refused to speak. She'd have the titles whizzing by the Bentley like an eerie flank of motorcyclists. Was that, please God, the Harrogate turnoff? Yes. I'll start attending services.

'… your dear mother, Lady Marjorie. I simply can't imagine what got into you, I truly can't. Creeping about the poor girl's property, hiding in the shrubberies, knocking at her door. It leaves me speechless.'

It would take Jack Nicholson with an axe knocking on her door to do that, he thought, lip buttoned, eyes on the wide, tree-lined street that led toward the center of Harrogate.

'One of these days I'll find the two of you up in a tree, hammering boards together. Grown men. Grown men. And poor, dear Vivian with so much to do-'

Vivian had become poor and dear and wonderful only since she'd actually set a wedding date, thought Melrose blackly, taking his eye from the road for just that second that caused him to swerve to avoid hitting an old lady in one of those electrified wheelchairs that she obviously thought gave her the right to cross against the light, any light- probably have whizzed past the burning bush-look at her go!

'My heavens! You very nearly hit that poor old cripple in the wheelchair.'

In the rearview mirror, he saw the poor cripple was giving him the finger as she bumped herself up on the curb. He said nothing.

'… thoughtless. What if the Oilings woman puts an item in the Bald Eagle? Have you ever thought of that?'

The only way Mrs. Oilings, Long Pidd's gossip-cum-char, would know is if Agatha had told her this morning. Mrs. Oilings had refused to help with the luggage as she'd been busy leaning on her mop and catching up on last- minute items. They were driving near the Stray, that wonderful two-hundred-acre common replete with gardens, walks, and streams.

'I can see it now-' Here Agatha drew with thumb and forefinger an imaginary banner-space in air: 'Earl of Caverness and Local Antiques Dealer Take Part in New Year Festivities. 'Said Miss Vivian Rivington, long-time resident of Long Piddleton who is about to wed the Count Franco Giopinno, 'It was tacked to my door. Of course, I thought it must be the children…'''

He pretended the Jermyn Street tailor had stitched his lips together, fighting his desire to yell shut up! Imagine, two blissful weeks without one of the Talking Heads.

As he spotted the sign that pointed them toward the Old Swan Hotel, she said, 'You've done it this time, Melrose.' Agatha smacked her lips in satisfaction. 'She'll never speak to you again.'

If only he could get the same result by doing something to herdoor.

They had turned up the wet gravel drive, the trees sodden with the weight of old rain, the air raw, threatening snow. The Old Swan was a Harrogate landmark, located near the famous Baths, and large enough for the Kitchener troops, its floors going up and up. It was at this hotel that Agatha Christie had reputedly stayed during her remarkable disappearance. Agatha disappearing. Lightning, unfortunately, didn't strike twice, he thought, as he braked and spat up gravel.

'This is it, Plant. We're here!'

She said it as if Melrose had suddenly had a fit of hysterical blindness and would zip straight past the entrance at eighty per. Agatha left the disposal of her luggage to her nephew and the hotel staff and marched up the steps.

Mentally, he gave himself a pat on the back. He'd won!

Two hundred miles and he hadn't uttered a word. Such grim determination would have earned him a knighthood had he not already thrown away an earldom! Four hours, and she'd elicited no response from him no matter how much needling, how much baiting. Melrose imagined what the poor bears must have suffered before bear-baiting was made illegal, chained to stumps and set upon by dogs. As he followed in the wake of Agatha's 'things'-the trunks, the cases, the reticules, portmanteaus-Melrose noticed the bellhop carrying the hatboxes wore the insolent and sinister expression of Robert Montgomery in Night Must Fall.

Really, old man, he thought. Was there a secret spring of violence in him waiting to be tapped? Axes, snarling dogs, heads in boxes?

As Agatha took to reeducating the desk clerks as to the running of the hotel, and attending to the matter of her room's location ('overlooking the gardens, of course…'), Melrose plucked a little pamphlet from those set out for visitors. The Harrogate hydros were, of course, famous. He was fascinated by the item on the Countess of Buckingham pitching a tent near one of the wells apparently to get the chalybeate waters before anyone else could. People flowed in, like the waters themselves, in carts and gigs to take these malodorous waters…

Good heavens, Melrose thought, Harrogate was the perfect milieu for Wiggins. Jury's sergeant would be the