The Old Silent

Trueblood, 'countrified, under all that tangled nap, true gentrification.')

From behind the fence, in the chicken-duck enclave came an occasional warm cluck. It had been an eventful day for the wildlife, thought Melrose. Tomorrow they'd probably want to visit the Tower of London. Closer now, the dog barked again.

'I believe we're witness to the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.'

But Ellen was still immersed in disturbed dreams of her own success as she lit a cigarette with a Zippo and clicked it shut. 'I'm a millionaire.' She cast a sidewise glance at Melrose to see if he was properly impressed. 'In pounds,' she added. 'On one book,' she added, taking no chances.

'That is astonishing. What's the book? Was it your first?'

'My second.' Ellen appeared to want to bury the first. She leaned back against the bike, ankles crossed, a model's pose. 'It's about New York City: Sauvage Savant it's called. It's very hot in L.A., too, incidentally. But, naturally, if you're a hot writer, it's always going to be New York, isn't it?'

'Sauvage Savant,' Melrose repeated. What a pretentious title. That must be the price one pays for being a hot, young New York writer. With what he thought was a with-it little grin, he said, 'I expect there are a lot of 'literary savages' in your city?'

'Say again?'

'I'm referring to the title.'

'It's a deli in Queens.'

The collie, who had stationed himself a few feet away, cocked his head, in a wondering way. Melrose was trying to sort out the various New York boroughs. He could not position Queens on his mental map. 'I see.'

He was quite sure the dog knew he was lying, given its expression. It was absolutely still but fully alert. Its silence was impressive; its stare, rather harrowing. If it couldn't read minds, it could probably read lips.

'What happened was, the owner's French, and the sign painter is his cousin, French, too. Don't ask me what they're doing in Queens. Francois-I call him Frankie-wanted a clever Frenchy sign. It was supposed to be 'sausage' but his cousin just couldn't make the connection. Who could? A knowledgeable sausage on your rye with mayo? Frankie's a real horse's ass, which is why I like him. He knows I'm really the rage in New York, and he's expecting me to turn his deli into one of those clubby places, you know, like the Algonquin, where Dorothy Parker hung out. It was really when I hit it big that he worked up this 'savant' business. He parts his hair in the middle and wears an apron up to his armpits and has a straight mustache I think he just inks in with a ballpoint. Well, there's not much going in Queens by way of published writers; and I'm not Dorothy Parker.'

He was a little taken aback by this modest assessment of her own writing skill. 'Who is?'

As she pulled the strap of her helmet tight, she said, 'See, I wanted to do something different; I couldn't stand one more book about Manhattan. I will personally vomit outside Doubleday if I see a window display of one more book about Manhattan. I'm doing all the others: it's to be a sort of trilogy, no, a quartet, I guess…' She pondered this as she studied the night sky.

Why was the dog looking up there too? Melrose wondered. Had the collie and Ellen some affinity?

'The Bronx, Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens. Maybe I'll toss in the Jersey shore.'

'That's not New York.' Melrose touched the collie's paw with his cane, to see if he could get a reaction. He didn't.

'Who can tell anymore?'

Melrose shifted his walking stick from one hand to another, thinking of this exotic city, so huge that part of it was an island surrounded by other islands and boroughs, each a kind of city in itself. He was wondering if perhaps he shouldn't take some sort of inventory of himself: was he spending too much time with his port and paper before the fireplace? Shuffling about his village until he would drop dead of a stroke across Miss Crisp's chamber pots? Or in Agatha's cottage in Plague Alley…? Pull yourself together, he told himself. Then he smiled. It was time to rewrite his will. He did this every half-dozen years or so to drive Agatha to distraction. He was holding back that wonderful nugget involving primogeniture until she got totally out of hand-

'You all right?' asked Ellen, whose gloved hands were rubbing the handlebars. The noise of the engine ripped through the frosty air. 'Your face looks funny.' She squinted. 'You've got great eyes, incidentally. Really green.'

Melrose knew his eyes were green. But great? He opened his mouth to thank her-

'Like scarab beetles.'

He closed his mouth. As she gunned the accelerator again, he said, 'I'd be happy to offer you a lift,'-he pointed toward the Bentley, moonraked and glimmering, with the reservoir shining off in the distance-'only I'm not going into the village. I'm meeting a friend at a place down the road.'

'Was it the inn I passed?'

'Probably; it's called the Old Silent.'

'Well, maybe I could get a bite there.'

Melrose cursed himself for mentioning the inn. 'Ah, I… don't think so. It's more or less off limits; it's a crime scene, you see.'

The noise stopped. 'Say again?'

He wished he hadn't said once.

'So how come you're going there? If it's closed to the public?'

'I, ah, I'm only meeting someone.'

'What happened? What crime?'

'A man was killed there a couple of days ago.'

'Killed? You mean murdered, don't you?' She frowned, as if the culprit stood here in the moonlight before her.

'Well, yes, I expect you could say that.' He had the lunatic notion he was including the collie in his answers. The dog's ears had pricked up; he certainly looked as eager for details as did the girl.

She shook her head, muttering some imprecation to the skies or the gods. 'Jeeeezzz. Well, you're obviously not going to talk.' Suddenly, her head swung round. 'You're a cop, aren't you?'

'No, absolutely not-'

'Hell, all this time I've been hanging around talking to the cops.'

The collie yapped when the motor roared again.

'Look, I'm not-'

'Stranger!'

The call came from the direction of the barn; Melrose looked around quickly to see the dull glow of a lamp, one of those ancient oil lamps, upraised, casting only a blur of light along the ground.

He could not have been more astonished if suddenly a highwayman, masked and cloaked, had stopped Melrose's coach. There was no threat in this voice: it was clearly pitched enough to cut through the noise of the motor Ellen kept revving up.

As the dog whipped round and streaked like a swimmer through the ground mist toward the lamp, she asked,'Who is that?'

'A little girl. Her name is Abigail, I believe.'

'She lives here?'

Melrose nodded. His eye followed the lamp that looked disembodied, hanging on an invisible arm.

Ellen kicked the motorcycle into action, said See you, and streaked away much as had the dog, each going in the opposite direction.

He watched her down the drive until she and her BMW were swallowed up by the corridor of trees. Through their trunks he could see a skin of moonlight on the reservoir.

Then he turned his head toward the black, ivy-latticed window, wondering, in a momentary surge of anxiety, if he'd imagined the fuzzy gold-lit interior, the patches of color, the underwater movements. But no, of course not: it was lit, though the silver and turquoise were gone and the only movement came from the maid. He could see the black patch of her dress moving from pane to pane, as lights went out, one after another and it, too, grew darker. And then the moon, like the interior lights, suddenly went out, behind a cloud, as if Ruby had thrown a switch.

Melrose lit a cigarette, more he thought to see the flame spurt up than because he needed a smoke.

As he got in the car and quickly flicked on the headlamps, he heard the voice again- Stranger-and the crisp bark of that dog.