The Old Silent

'You know Nell Healey actually shot her husband,' said Melrose. 'It's not a question of innocence or guilt.'

'It's a question of motive.'

'But do you honestly think knowing that will save her?' Melrose frowned.

'Yes.'

Melrose took out his cigar case. 'Sounds to me as if she doesn't want to be saved. What if she feels so guilty about not paying the ransom for this boy that she no longer cares what happens to her?'

'Then she'd have killed herself, not her husband, who was, according to Macalvie, absolutely beside himself when she refused to pay. Roger Healey was far from being a pauper; he was well off, but he didn't have that kind of money. Not big money. Neither does Charles Citrine. And the money wasn't the only question, either; it was the rotten dilemma of what would be in Billy Healey's best interests.' Jury took a cigar from Plant's case. 'Then, of course, Billy was Roger's son; he was only Nell's stepson.'

Melrose paused in the act of lighting their cigars.''Only'? Good grief, you're one of those espousers of the theory that blood is thicker than water?'

'Of course not. But nearly everyone pays lip service to that old shibboleth. The media would have had a high old time had it ever come out that it was Mrs. and not Mr. Healey who'd made the decision not to pay. Here's a woman rich as Croesus who wouldn't ransom her stepson. What does that look like? The evil stepmother looks in the mirror and sees the face of someone more beautiful. The competition, in this case, isn't Snow White, but her husband's son.'

'I can think up an even chillier scenario.'

Jury nodded. 'Only I saw her standing in that wood like someone in a trance; she was looking at an old gate between stones that no longer served a purpose, where Billy Healey and Toby Holt used to play. The look was so intense that I swear I wouldn't have been surprised to see that boy materialize right before my eyes. Perhaps he had, before hers.'

They both turned when a heavy, slightly stooped man with a checkered cap and an old brown cardigan, a trowel in his hands, came shuffling up to their table. His look was one of perpetual discontent, the narrow, tobacco-blackened line of his mouth downturned like a bulldog's. Glaring from the silver dish of vegetables to Jury and then Plant he asked,''Ow's them runner beans, then?'

Apparently, since the Old Silent's dining room was catering only for them that evening, all of the help had the run of the hall. This person before them would stand his ground and chew his tobacco until he'd got a report on the state of the vegetables. 'Excellent. And you're Mr.-?'

'Oakes. Jimmy Oakes.' He was picking up the dish and ruminating, apparently, upon the state of the runner beans. 'Bad crop, it be.'

'But these were very tasty, Mr. Oakes.'

The man shrugged and let out a whistle of breath. 'Sum-mat grundgy they be. Got 'em in Ha'erth.'

'I don't understand, Mr. Oakes. You're speaking of your owncrop having failed?' asked Melrose brightly.

'Thass it. Bad. F'got ta plant 'em.'

He shuffled off with his trowel.

'Roger Healey,' said Melrose, looking after Mr. Oakes, 'what sort of person was he?'

'Straight as an arrow, according to everyone I've talked to. People who worked with him loved him. Charles Citrine thinks Roger Healey was one of the finest men he'd ever known and blessed the day he married his daughter. Nell Citrine, you see, was thirtyish, unmarried, and-to use his word-'unstable.''

'Does that mean Miss Citrine was in and out of madhouses or had a difficult time choosing the correct sauce for the veal? When a man calls a woman 'unstable' it generally means she doesn't agree with him.'

Jury mopped up the last bit of liquid with a piece of his bread roll.''Slightly eccentric' he said.'

'She didn't share his political views, in other words.'

'I appreciate that you defend her without meeting her. Do you have any of those cigars?'

Melrose took a leather case from his breast pocket. 'I haven't met her, but you have; you said nothing about 'unstable' or 'eccentric''

'The strange thing is, even with her killing her husband in the lounge of an inn…'He lit the cigar and shook out the match. '… she didn't strike me as anything but normal.'

Except, he didn't add, for the silence. Jury crossed his arms on the table and turned the cigar in his mouth. 'Citrine is an extremely low-key, affable man. Hands in pockets, walks and talks with a sort of self-deprecating air.'

'So does our Mr. Oakes, but that doesn't make me want to trust him with my bean planting.'

'Why is Nell Healey the blight in this crop of perfect people? Daddy sits down over drinks and tells the very superintendent who's witness against her she's unstable; Roger is a white knight and beloved of all. Except for the aunt.'

'A notable exception, perhaps.'

Jury made a circle with his wineglass and thought of Rena Citrine. 'The aunt dislikes the family except for Nell Citrine. Though she strikes me as so self-engrossed she wouldn't do a hell of a lot by way of saving her.'

'That's three for our side, though.'

'Actually, four.'

Melrose smiled as he watched the sweet trolley lumbering across the oak boards, Sally behind it. 'Who's the fourth?'

'Brian Macalvie.'

'How could he possibly remember her after a brief meeting eight years ago? Pardon me. Divisional Commander Macalvie never forgets.' As the trolley came closer, he saw an enormous glass bowl of trifle wobbling about.

'He referred to her as 'one awesome lady.' '

'Good Lord, that's better than the Queen's patronage. So the cause is not lost.'

'When it comes to Macalvie no cause is lost. As long as it's his.'

'What'll it be, gentlemen?' asked the Old Silent's manager, later in the lounge.

'Pike liquor,' said Melrose. 'Or if that's unavailable, a glass of Remy. And coffee, thanks.'

The telephone brr-ed insistently as the manager looked a question at Jury. 'Just coffee.'

'Old Silent Inn,' said the man into the receiver, rather grudgingly, as if he feared the name would bring a new onslaught of inquiry. He then turned, handed the receiver to Jury, and went about serving up the cognac.

'Just hope to God it isn't Racer.'

It was Wiggins. 'How are-' Jury decided not to complete the routinehow are you; for Wiggins, the question was never routine. He settled for 'Hullo, Wiggins.'

Lack of inquiry notwithstanding, Wiggins proceeded to tell Jury both how he was and how the weather was, the two states being mutually dependent. 'Right rotter, it is, here, sir. Winter rain. You know what that's like…'

'I'd never noticed a difference between winter and summer, Wiggins. What have you-?'

'There definitely is, sir.' Patiently Jury waited for him to complete the forecast for both Wiggins's bronchitis and his personal rain. Wiggins finally realized that the point of his call was the investigation he had undertaken in London and not the state of his health. 'Sir, there's good news and bad news. Which do you want first?'

'Any news.'

'The bad news is that not one single person I've talked to has anything negative to say about Roger Healey. I've talked to ten people on the staff of that magazine, and they all say the same thing, different words. Roger Healey was to them a marvelous person, an incisive critic, a practiced musician. Several of them said little Billy was close to a prodigy, and his father was that proud of him. This all came up when several of them mentioned how Roger was a tower of strength and a monument to grief over the boy's loss…'

To Jury, such strength in the face of heavy loss seemed a bit appalling, a bit stone-cold, just as Wiggins's cliches implied.

'-but what's strange is that even the people, at least the three I talked to, whom Healey had cleverly insulted in his column didn't bear him any grudge or dislike him. The librettist, for instance, whose experimental opera