The Old Silent

'Martin Smart seems to think he was knowledgeable. How could the man you describe keep such a reputation as a critic?'

Stan reached out his arms slightly, inviting Jury to survey the room. 'You see any critics in here? They're sitting in Italian leather swivel chairs in their 'study' recycling shit in their PCs. The only one that comes to Nine-One-Nine is Duckworth. Listen, man, Healey didn't know sod-all about rock, jazz, nothing. What's all this about, anyway?'

'Mrs. Healey. She shot him.'

'She deserves a medal, not a fucking police investigation.'

Jury rose. 'Thanks for your help. But I'm wondering why you didn't tell all of this to my sergeant.'

'I had a chain-saw hangover, man. I didn't feel like jamming with a cop. Listen, stick around. We can go to that Brixton place I was saying.'

Jury shook his head, smiled, and extended his hand.

The band had slipped into a blues number and the old man by the piano had opened his case and was fitting the mouthpiece to a sax. Several couples had wandered onto the dance floor and stood in dreamy proximity to one another.

'Hey, Stone.' The dog was up in a flash. Stan turned and said to Jury, 'You going to look for Deli?'

Jury smiled. 'If I find her I'll let you know.'

'Hell, find me a landlady instead. Come on, Stone, let's lay some shit down.'

Stan pushed his way through a crowd that willingly parted for him, followed by the black dog. He leapt onto the raised platform beneath the blue lights, and nearly before his feet hit the floor he let go with a sizzling riff followed by some staccato picking that made Jury's skin prickle, it was that fast. Then he switched over to a murky ghost bend, picking up the blues line of the old man with the sax. Its languor made him feel the poisonous losses of the past were working their way through his bloodstream.

He turned to go, throwing a look at Karla, who was still leaning against the wall, still looking wanton and sad as a long rainy Berlin night.

34

Only the Princess (and Ruby, who opened the door to him) appeared to be in attendance at Weavers Hall when Jury turned up early the next morning.

Ruby said she imagined Mr. Plant was still asleep, as he always tended to be the last one down for breakfast: a look of disapproval accompanied this.

Plant was not, however, in his room. On the way down the hall he saw the Princess, in hers. The door was open; she was packing an old steamer trunk full of her elegant garments. One of these she was holding against her, assessing the effect in a cheval mirror. The blue dress was of crepe and chiffon, loose and languid, something the pre-Raphaelites would have admired.

Seeing Jury's reflection in her mirror, she turned, unsurprised, to ask: 'What do you think?'

'Beautiful. You're leaving?'

'Oh, yes. The Major and I are going up to London for a month or two. Or three. I'm weary of death…' She sighed.

(As she might have sighed over the London season or the tag-end of summer in Cannes, thought Jury.)

'It seems to be making the rounds like a virus.' She flashed a smile at him in the mirror, then turned to toss the blue dress over the open trunk, and to pick another garment from the wardrobe. 'And we see no one these days but police.' The Princess held the printed velvet jacket, sleeves bound in dark green satin, to her shoulders. 'That poor child,' she went on, as she caught her reflection from different angles, 'alone out there on the moors. I simply cannotbelieve anyone would want to do her mischief.' She tossed the jacket across the trunk beside the dress. 'The trouble is it's so difficult to know what to take. You've just been there. What are they showing? Givenchy? Lacroix? I heard Saint Laurent was changing his hemlines again. I hope not too short: he does such lovely long skirts.' At the moment she was holding one of her own against her waist, black and falling in a thousand narrow pleats. 'And you needn't look at me that way,' she said to the reflection in the mirror.

'What way?'

'Patronizing. Disapproving. Because I'm not at the funeral.'

'Funeral? '

She was turning this way and that, kicking the skirt about. 'Some cat or other. You should have heard the screaming this morning.' When Jury looked a question at her, she went on. 'Ruby: she found the cat in the freezer. Mrs. Braithwaite gave Abby quite a tongue-lashing. Didn't make any impression.'

She gave Jury an impatient, yet pearly glance. 'I didn't know the cat, for heaven's sakes.'

2

Behind the barn, the service was in progress. The four people there were framed like a picture by the big open doors at that end of the threshing floor. Jury stood in the shadow it cast, hesitant to join them, somehow feeling he hadn't the right to participate. He hadn't, after all, been around when tragedy had struck.

Melrose and Ellen stood solemnly on one side of the small grave, still open, into which the box containing Buster (under its black cloth) had been lowered. Six votive candles outlined the opening. On the other side sat Tim and Stranger, close together, with bandaged paws, both with the sort of blue and green ribbons presented at dog shows fastened to their collars. Tim kept trying to get at his blue one with his teeth. Stranger was looking up at Abby with sorrowful eyes, and then farther up at the sky as if, in her words, were some intimation of an animal heaven.

A little girl in powder blue and with a fresh ribbon in her hair (whom Jury assumed to be the friend Ethel) stood there by the dogs. Her head was bowed, her small hands folded against her starched skirt. She looked far more angelic and heaven-bent than Abby, planted firmly at the head of the grave in a black slicker and Wellingtons with her Bible, looking dark and retributive and wild with the wind blowing her black hair. She had that controlled expression of one who accepts pain and death as if they were unbridled, poorly trained hounds that would follow her to the end, gouging her heels.

Whether she was looking at him or through him, Jury couldn't tell. When she started reading again, he realized it wasn't a Bible, but a dark-covered, flimsy-paged book of poetry.

No more I'll see your splendid outward sweep

With ears erect and drooping head and tail

Nor view your gliding turns in front of sheep.

He saw the frown cross Ethel's face at the recitation of this verse. Then Abby snapped the book shut and the marker fluttered to the ground. It was his card, the one he had given her before he left. Surely, that had been longer than yesterday?

Picking up a handful of dirt, she let it trickle on top of the black cloth.

Ethel mewled: 'Oh, Buster, I'll miss you soooo…' That sentiment earned her a glare from Buster's mistress, and a warning-off of whatever specious words Melrose Plant was about to say. He shut his mouth.

Abby turned her face to the grave and nodded slightly and said, as if some terrible accounting between Buster and the wretched forces of this earth had been settled, 'Goodbye.'

And keep cold, thought Jury.

Abby retrieved his card from the ground, stuck it in her pocket, and then handed Melrose the shovel.

Ethel was playing hostess, handing out cups of tea and roughly cut slices of brown bread and butter. It was she