The Old Silent

Dennis Dench shook his head. 'Minerva's always doing that.'

'Minerva?' asked Sergeant Wiggins, who turned from his inspection of a jar.

'One who let you in. Thinks it's all a bit of a giggle.'

Jury couldn't imagine the young woman who let them in giggling about much of anything; her skin was the color of the ashy mask contoured over the frame of a skull.

Plucking a starched white jacket from a hook, Dennis said, 'I've told her a dozen times the lab needn't be hoovered, but she still insists the floor needs scrubbing and the 'skellies' dusted. I think she's named them. Naturally, she doesn't touch anything else because I told her I would put her in the tub there,'-he nodded toward something like a washtub-'and then her skelly would be scattered over Salcombe estuary.'

'What are you putting together?' Macalvie nodded toward the long white table with a Formica top where a sandbox rested on one end and, on the other, the threatening tub. Bones protruded from the sandbox, apparently drying; in the tub of viscous liquid, other bones were being divested of remaining flesh. Having pulled on his surgical gloves, Dennis pulled out several smaller bones and plunged them into another bath. The hanging light was dazzling, a false sun. 'Jason at the beach?' asked Macalvie, chewing his gum.

Dennis addressed Jury. 'I told him not to drag you all the way here from Exeter.'

'You're well known, Dr. Dench. It's not a lost trip.'

Dennis Dench gave Macalvie a pursed little smile.

'Call him Denny,' said Macalvie, walking over to a cabinet and knocking on it as if he expected someone or - thing in there to open up. 'Let's see Billy Healey's skeleton, okay?'

Having dipped the two bones in the tub, Dench now stood them up in the sand and said, 'You can see the skeleton, but it's not Billy Healey's.'

Macalvie was trying to open the cabinet door. 'Just because I don't have a degree in osteoanatomy doesn't mean I haven't read up on it. Who the hell built this cabinet? Dr. Caligari?'

'The skeleton's over here, Brian. You never did have the patience of Job.'

He removed the white cloth from the skeleton of a child that Jury would have guessed to be preadolescent. It was restored except for a few fragments that lay in a neat semicircle beside the leg. Beneath the child's skeleton were the tinier animal bones.

Macalvie stood, hands in pockets holding back his rain-coat. He nodded toward the bone fragments. 'You can't jigsaw those in?'

'Wouldn't be worth it. There's probably been warpage anyway. They wouldn't tell you anything more.'

Wiggins, having had his fill of pickled things in jars and the range of photographs tacked on the wall, came over to have a look. Running his hands over his rib cage, he said, 'Seems everything's there.' He might have been making comparisons. 'What's the most difficult thing to determine, Professor? From the skeletal remains?'

Macalvie snapped, 'Age.'

Dennis Dench looked away, pained. 'How many times do we have to have this argument, Brian? Age in a child is the easiest thing to determine. You know perfectly well-from what you've told me you'd read-complete epiphyseal fusion in a skeleton is found only in adults.' He turned to Wiggins and Jury: 'In this case, it was fairly easy. It's a skeleton of a subpubic male Caucasian of between fourteen and, I'd say, sixteen. The Healey boy was only twelve.'

Macalvie shook and shook his head. 'Don't tell me you can cut it that close.'

'The devil I can't; except for some environmental variants, bone fusion can be traced in a growing child with exactitude from year to year.'

Macalvie said, generously, 'Okay, even if I give you that-'

'And what about the odontologist's report? Everything points to this as the skeleton of a boy older than Billy Healey.'

Jury said, 'You mentioned environmental variants. That would include malnutrition, wouldn't it?'

Dennis frowned. 'No sign of that here, though. You're referring to the Healey boy's allergy to milk products?'

'I understand Billy Healey had to take heavy doses of vitamins and calcium… There was some doubt as to whether he took all he was supposed to.'

Answering for Dennis, Macalvie said: 'No actual signs of malnutrition, but that doesn't exclude the bones as being those of the Healey kid.'

'Brian, I hate to remind you: I've written three books on the subject.'

'I know. I've read them.' He was standing in front of Dench's desk running his finger over bindings. Quickly he pulled one out, flipped through it, found the column he wanted, and said, 'I quote: 'Ossification centers are often difficult to recognize and sometimes lost in an immature specimen.'' As Dennis raised his eyes to the ceiling, Macalvie flipped the pages again. 'Here you've got a case of a youngster whose height could be determined only within three inches. That's a hell of a variable, three whole inches.'

'Oh, come on, Brian. All anyone has to do is watch a games match at some school to see a boy of twelve can be as tall as one of sixteen. And the difference in Billy's and Toby's height wasn't apparently that much. An inch, inch and a half. Anyway, we're not talking stature here, we're talking age.' Dennis's look at the skeleton was remorseful, his hand drawn down the long femur bone in a gesture that suggested it was flesh and blood he touched.

'You're forgetting something, Denny. Let's assume you're right about the age,' said Macalvie. 'The only thing you're basing your conclusions on is one little thing-'

'It's not a little thing. Each epiphysis fuses with the bone shaft at a particular age-'

'Can you forget that for just one damned second while I go on?'

'No.' Dennis carefully realigned the femur of the dog with its pelvic bone.

Carefully, Macalvie leaned his hands on the table just above the skull and leaned over the small skeleton. 'Jesus, but I'm glad you're not on my forensics team-'

'So am I.' Dennis politely stifled a yawn. 'You've got a thick skull.' He ran his eyes slowly over Macalvie's face. 'Literally.'

'You're working in a vacuum, Denny. I'll tell you why I'm right-'

'You're wrong.'

'Because, number one,'-Macalvie had moved over to the rack of test tubes and pulled two from its pronged fittings- 'these soil samples. Now, the vicar of that church told you, although you've conveniently forgotten, nobody's been buried, to his knowledge, in that disused graveyard for forty years, and here we come up with soil removed and replaced long after that. I sent this stuff through forensics-'

'Thought you didn't trust them.' Dennis had stepped back to look, sadly, at the small dog's skeleton.

'They didn't know what it was for.'

'I could tell you the same thing they did.'

'Maybe. Since you seem to know everything. The disturbance of this soil and its constitution shows that the grave was dug within the two-year period when a nearby mineshaft was excavated because we've got traces of zinc and other substances in the soil. That's one. Two: in those two years not one preadolescent male Caucasian went missing from the area without either returning voluntarily or having been found or the remains having been found-'

Wiggins turned from his study of the markout of the gravesite and frowned. 'Pardon, sir, but isn't there a fallacy in that argument? What about cases not reported?'

'All right, I'll give you that. But we're still talking about a missing boy and a dog buried together in a structure obviously fitted out to sustain life. Until somebody pulled the plug.' He was talking to Wiggins over his shoulder, his hold on the table still secure as if Dench might drag it out from under him.

Macalvie went on. 'To say nothing of that deserted cemetery being found within a quarter mile of the Citrine house. And with all of this evidence, you're standing there and talking about a possible three- or four- year difference in bone fusion.'

'That's right. And I'm dealing in facts; you're dealing in induction. You're adding up a lot of information and coming to a conclusion. But a piece of your information is missing. Ergo. Erroneous conclusion,' said Dennis calmly.

Macalvie shook his head quickly, like a swimmer clearing water from his ears. He glanced at Jury, who'd been leaning against the counter. 'You've said sweet nothing. How do you rate the chances that two kids with two dogs