The Old Silent

Silence seemed to crowd him as they each took a sip from their mugs and then sat back looking into the milky depths as if some tea-leaf fortune might be forming down there. The Queen might not make a proper tea, but Abby had at least torn the tea bags open and tapped the loose tea into the pot. It was covered with a towel in lieu of a cozy. Jury's mug had a picture of Winchester Cathedral on it.

Abby lifted her head to look straight ahead of her and Jury followed her gaze. She was plucking at her shawl and staring at the little cot enclosure, the bookcase or, he thought, above it at the massive framed print.

'Where did you get that one, Abby?'

She looked away. 'Billy's mum. Mrs. Healey.' Then she turned a dark look on him. 'You never found him.'

Her look did not suggest she was holding him personally responsible. But he was a policeman and he must bear the weight of the failure of his fellows. 'I know.'

'He's gone. He's dead. He was my friend, him and Toby. We used to play a lot over there at his house. We climbed trees.'

In the starved orchard. Yet, she could have been no more than three or four.

'So now I guess I get sent to Lowood School,' she said, sitting stiffly. He opened his mouth to reply but she didn't give him a chance. 'Well, if they think I'm stupid like Jane Eyre, they'll see. There's no headmaster that's going to hang a cardboard round my neck.' Her eyes narrowed, her mouth tightened, as if the grisly scene were being enacted right before her. 'And if they think they're going to make mewalk round and round out in the rain like that dumb Helen-' Swiftly she fired a glance at Jury. 'Stranger'll be outside that wall and he'll get me out. I'm not walking round and coughing in the rain.' Here she mimicked a coughing fit. 'And then that Helen just lies in bed dying and smiling like the angels are all sitting there feeding her Kit-Kats.' Furiously, she shook the black bobbed hair. 'It sounds like Ethel.'

How long had she sat beneath that lamp poring over the details, hearing the rain on the old barn roof, the rain in the courtyard, the rain in her mind?

Jury looked at the collie, sitting up, its ear perked, sensitive to some sign of distress. 'This dog looks smart enough to save anyone.'

Abby was collecting the plates. 'Except Jane Eyre. Nothing's smart enough to save her. She's hopeless.' She held her cup as if it were a great weight in her rounded hands.

'Like Ethel,' said Jury. The corners of her mouth quirked upward.

Jury looked at the painting on the wall on the other side of the barn. It was large enough that the details were clear. 'I like your painting.'

Putting down the plates, she said, 'It's my favorite.' After a little silence while both looked at it, she said, 'Why's it dark at the bottom with that house and those black trees like it's night, and the sky's blue above like it's day?'

Jury shook his head. 'I'm not sure,' he said. Her expression told him he'd better come up with something better than that.

Her voice rang out, 'It's like a church.'

'I don't see what you mean.'

Abby leaned closer. 'The tall tree looks like a steeple.'

He cocked his head, staring at the painting. 'No, I don't think so.' He felt her sidewise glance, heard her chair scrape back. Then she marched round the table to stand directly in front of him, the table between. 'A steeple,' she said again, raising her arms and pressing the palms of her hands together to illustrate, her cheeks glowing with the intensity of her conviction. Jury moved his head to see the painting, but she did a sidestep that blocked his line of vision. She had made her point, taken her stand, and no comparison with the real article was necessary.

Jury blinked under the sheer force of her blue eyes.

When he didn't respond, she dropped her arms. Then she came round the table and clenched his sweater sleeve, pulling at him. 'Come on!' He allowed himself to be yanked from the bench at the same time she made a clicking sound with her tongue, and the dog rose immediately, alert. She was to deal a stunning blow to this man's perceptive powers, and a witness was needed. Stranger followed.

The three of them faced the painting, 'Empire of Light.' Since she was to be guide in this museum, he let her continue:

'There's that streetlamp. It's right in the middle.' Then she was silent.

He glanced down at her, saw she was chewing her lip, her arms folded tightly across her chest, her fingers plying the loose threads of shawl. Stranger looked up at Jury looking down as if he too wondered how this would extend her church analogy.

'You're right about the streetlamp and the lighted windows.' His eye traveled from the night below to the day above, a sky of light but vibrant blue, a pattern of white clouds drifting, and he wondered about the limits of his own mind. Of his compulsion to turn a whole into parts, into symbols and emblems. It was his job, in a way. The whole he couldn't see; he worked with bits of mirror, slivers of light. What was he last seen wearing? Identifying marks? Routine investigation. The streetlamp was the focus here; but if you looked at it too long, would it suddenly switch off? The painting hung in comfortable silence, perfectly accessible if one looked at it the right way.

Her voice, in a higher register, broke into his thoughts, insistent: 'It's better than Lowood School.' Turning sharply, she stumped over to her crate-bookcase and hefted Jane Eyre to her chest with one arm, the other hand, finger wetted, shuffling through the pages with a furious energy of its own. Proof found, she marched back. 'Here.' She shoved the book forward, her finger stabbing the face of the master. He was thrashing a child with his cane.

The picture spoke for itself. Wordlessly, she sat down on a milking stool, head bent as she flailed through this awful book, searching out further horrors.

Jury kept his eye on the painting as he said, 'They can't send you to Lowood School. You're too important.'

Immediately, the rustle of pages stopped. He could feel her looking at him, but when he turned his head, her own head dropped her face almost flat against the open book, as she traced a line with her finger and pretended not to hear him.

He said, 'Perhaps you'll live in the 'Empire of Light.''That he knew would be a notion so outrageously exciting that she could quarrel it down.

Her head snapped up and the beguiling look of patience-being-tested-to-its-limits returned. If he was such a nit, she would have to be practical for both of them. 'People can't live in pictures.' She then lowered her head and sifted through the pages until she found another illustration to live in.

'It's not as nice as your barn, but it might be just as real. You might be living in one of those lit-up rooms.' He nodded toward the painting.

'If it was real, you can bet Ethel would be living in the other one,' she said to the book in her lap. 'Besides, it's dark there.'

'Very dark in some way.' He walked over and sat down in a rocker. From his pocket he drew a packet of Orbit gum. Sliding a stick out, he said to the crown of her head (still bent over the book), 'Would you like some?'

Abby looked at it, took the stick and seemed to study it to see if it was her brand, thanked him, and then took a dented metal box from the crate. She lifted the lid and put the gum inside. The box rattled as she returned it to the shelf. 'He's all right, I expect,' she said, turning the book so that Jury could see the illustration of the doctor who (the caption read) had come to tend Helen.

'Yes.' He rocked for a moment, as he watched her roll the page from the corner down, first with her finger, then with the palm of her hand, slowly. 'Well, I can tell you something else that will probably happen, though it's not nearly as good as the 'Empire of Light.' Happen to you, I mean.' Jury shoved a stick of gum into his mouth and waited as her face came slowly up. 'It's much better than Lowood School, though you still might not like it much.' He scratched his head. She put the book on the bed. 'You see, your Aunt Ann owned the Hall. Now it belongs to you.'

She snapped shut Jane Eyre as she had the lid of the metal box. Her face, for the first time, melted into a childlike, wide-eyed surprise. 'I can't. I don't own anything except Stranger and the things in here.' She shoved the book away and absently started scratching behind Stranger's ear, which had perked when