arms rested on the chair arms, hands dangling, one thumb worrying the gold band and the sapphire ring. It was as if she were considering removing them and putting them in his hand.
Slowly she pulled her handbag like a dead weight to her lap. She pushed back the leather flap and withdrew what looked like an envelope or a letter. She had taken it out at dinner and returned it to her bag again and again as if this were a magic ritual that must be performed. She stood up with this piece of paper-letter or whatever it was-and said something Jury couldn't hear.
Still she held the bag before her like a breviary, its leather flap back and dangling, as if the thing were now empty, useless and bereft of a valuable possession.
He reached over, snatched the letter from her hand, and tossed it in the fire.
For a moment they regarded one another, still oblivious to any other presence in the room, so intent were they upon whatever business had drawn them together. The man turned and started for the door.
She stood there, just her profile in light, the rest of her in shadow, like a figure turned to stone by an angry god.
'Roger.'
It was the first clear word Jury had heard. The man made a halting sort of turn and she reached into the bag, pulled out a gun, and shot him in the chest. He stood staring blindly as if the shot had gone wild. But in the few seconds it took Jury to stand and overturn the table beside him, the man crumpled and fell. She pointed the gun down and shot him again.
2
The name of Roger Healey had not registered with Jury when he had heard it in the inn in West Yorkshire. The West Yorkshire policeman who had arrested Healey's wife the night before in the Old Silent had told Jury the man had something to do with art or music-he wasn't sure what-except that he was important. The local detective sergeant from Keighley certainly knew the
Superintendent Sanderson had no such ambivalence, either about having Jury as the single witness to the murder of Roger Healey, or about having a member of the C.I.D. of the Metropolitan Police on his turf. Sanderson was a tall, rail-thin policeman with a practiced, inconclusive manner that would throw anyone off guard. In the unlikely event Jury's testimony would ever be needed, it would carry far more weight than that of some myopic villager. As of now, Jury could get off his turf and out of the investigation now proceeding with the Yorkshire constabulary.
Sanderson would have no difficulty proceeding. It wasn't even a case of rounding up suspects, of listening to the regulars in the public bar of the Old Silent give conflicting reports of who did what to whom; and the five people who had rushed in from the bar were clearly relieved that they were straight out of it. They had stood about in horrified silence until police had arrived. It was Jury who had summoned them.
And it was Jury to whom she had, just as silently, handed over the.22 automatic. No resistance. She hadn't said a word, had sat down in the same chair, had answered none of his questions, had not looked at him again.
The inquest was convened the following day merely to establish certain facts, such as the identity of the dead man. The identity of the perpetrator was clear.
Her name was Nell Healey and Jury had been right about her relationship to the dead man; she was his wife.
Given the reputation, wealth, and influence of the Citrine family in West Yorkshire, and given her lack of any criminal record, she was released on bail. That, Jury knew, would buy her at least a year of freedom; the case would be unlikely to get to the Crown Court before then, not with all the other stuff on the docket. The only question that had gone unanswered was why she'd done it. But largely it seemed to be the sympathy engendered by her past woes that tipped the scale in her favor.
It was those woes about which Jury was now reading in the newspaper that lay on his desk at New Scotland Yard. He remembered the Healey-Citrine names. It had happened eight years ago and had struck him as especially dreadful.
'Really sad, that was,' said Detective Sergeant Alfred Wiggins, who'd dug out the clippings, and whose own reading matter was a copy of
Just as religiously, Wiggins opened a fresh packet of Scott's Medicinal Charcoal Biscuits, taking pains that the wrapping wouldn't crackle. It was not often that Jury didn't answer him, but this was one of those times, and it disturbed Wiggins (as if it were his own fault) that the superintendent's mood, usually calm, almost soothing, was going sour over this case, and not Jury's own case, either. Thus, Wiggins felt impelled to talk doggedly on, even though it might be better to shut up. And since he was never one much for epigrammatic or witty turns of phrase, he would trap himself into further cliche-ridden sentiments.
Jury's mood was as black as the biscuit Wiggins was now crumbling into a cup of water, and, irrationally irritated by his sergeant's pursuit of some elusive and Platonic Idea of health just as he was reading of the kidnapping of one boy and the disappearance of the friend who had been with him. Jury said (rather sharpish, Wiggins thought), 'Most people settle for digestives, Wiggins. And they don't have to stew them in water.'
His quick response was triggered less by Jury's tone than by Jury's replying at all. Said Wiggins, brightly, 'Oh, but digestives don't really
Wanting to forestall a lecture on the benefits of charcoal to the digestive tract, Jury said, 'I'm sure it does,' and smiled to indicate that he'd only been joking, anyway.
It had happened in Cornwall when Billy Healey and his stepmother, Nell Citrine Healey, had been on holiday, together with a friend of Billy's named Toby Holt.
Keeping his eye on the newspaper, Jury shook a cigarette from a packet of Players and read Roger Healey's statement to the press. It was formal, almost pedantic, full of catch-phrases of grief and comments about his son's prodigious talent as a pianist, so that one almost got the idea that if the kidnapper didn't see to it he practiced every day, it would be similar to a diabetic going into insulin shock. The usual 'we will do anything in our power to see our boy is returned…'; the usual… police are working round the clock'; the usual.
Except that the stepmother had made no comment at all.
Jury tried to put himself in the place of a father whose child had been kidnapped. He had never had children, but he had been close enough to several that he could feel at least something of what it must be like to lose one. Certainly, he'd seen enough grief-stricken parents in his work. Some had been silent; some had gone in for marathon talking. But none had given a Hyde Park speech. Jury wasn't being fair, he supposed. After all, Healey was a music critic and columnist used to putting thoughts into words; he was an articulate man, and probably a composed one.
The photo of Billy himself looked almost out of place amidst this platitudinous talk. In the old shot of Billy Healey, the camera had caught the boy in a moment when he must have been looking toward something at a distance. His chin was raised, his mouth open slightly, his eyes transfixed and somehow puzzled. The angle of light eclipsed a portion of his face, bringing out the other in even bolder relief, accentuating the straight nose, high cheekbone. He was handsome, pale, his hair brownish and silky-looking. He looked, Jury thought, a little other- worldly, unapproachable, and with the intensity of his expression, unassailable. He looked more like his stepmother than his father.
And of her, there was only the picture in which she was being escorted from the house, and where she must quickly have drawn part of the paisley scarf she wore up over her face. Since her head was also down, the reporters were getting a very poor view. And taking a poor view, given the underlying tone of resentment that Mrs. Roger Healey was unavailable for comment. Her husband had done most of the talking.
The stepmother was good copy; she'd been the only one present, except for Billy's friend, when the boys had
