The Old Silent

(Ethel informed them) who had had to remind Abby that people had to be fed after funerals. It was the proper thing to do. And it took her all yesterday to make the cake.

Abby sat in her rocking chair, white-knuckled hands round the ends of the arms, gazing at the floor. Ethel skipped lightly across the floor, wanting, apparently, to bounce the full skirt of her dress and show off her lace petticoat.

As she put the piece of cake on the bookcase-crate she whispered, 'That poem was about a dog; Buster never ran around sheep.'

Abby gave her a look that would have flattened an entire mob.

Then Ethel twirled off, skipping back to Melrose, Ellen, and the dogs. She removed the ribbons from their collars and went over to the bulletin board to pin them up. They were old ribbons, weather-worn and faded. Tim, Jury noticed, had had the blue one. Stranger's was green. Second prize.

Abby stared at her, one hand removed from the chair arm and curling in a fist in her lap. 'That's Ethel,' she said with a sigh, the first words she'd spoken to Jury. He was sitting on her bed deep in the comforters.

'That's Ethel.' He smiled.

Her mouth hooked up at the corners, but she quickly stopped the grin that threatened. Grinning was not on, not at Buster's funeral. 'The earl was there when I got Buster.' When Jury looked puzzled, she said, 'At Loving Kindness. The vet's. He had his cat but I don't know what he did with it.'

The notion of Melrose Plant wrestling a cat into the vet's made Jury smile. It had to have been a stray. The only animal that Plant had ever bothered to develop a rapport with was his old dog, Mindy.

'I'm sure the cat wasn't his,' said Jury. 'He must have found it by the road, or somewhere.'

'Oh.' Abby rocked a bit harder, absorbing this new information. The earl wasn't a heartless wretch who'd dump his cat and never go back. 'Anyway, he's pretty smart.' The corners of her mouth hooked up in a smug little grin. 'He found Ethel's hiding place.' She gave Jury a look. 'And he's not a policeman, either.'

'Where was it?'

'Over behind the medicine bottles. It was just another bottle that had a Present from Brighton written on it.'

'Incredible. How did he know?'

She shrugged. 'I don't know, except he told her he knew, and right away she looked over there.'

Holding back a smile, Jury studied the runners of the rocking chair, moving fast as a swing. After a few moments, he said, 'I'm sorry you had to go out on the moor again this morning. It must have been hard.'

'Not as hard as the first time,' she said with a wonderful note of je ne sais quoi.

'Do you mind talking about it?'

With a pretense of world-weariness not even the Princess could have matched, Abby told him. About the phone call, the voice muffled, coughing, saying something about Stranger and Mr. Nelligan's sheep. She told Jury about the whole dreadful experience.

He asked her nothing further; there was no sense in making her repeat answers she'd already had to give a dozen times over. Jury said, 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry I wasn't here.'

He followed her gaze to the bulletin board, where Ethel was carefully pinning blue ribbons up. 'It doesn't matter. I had Stranger and Tim. And sheep.'

In that, there wasn't a hint of accusation, not a shred of irony. It was a statement of fact: this is the way the world is.

Jury sat there watching her eat her cake, feeling her disappointment.

3

'Her daughter.' Jury shook his head as he jammed in the Volvo's cigarette lighter.

'Everyone who saw them did think Ann Denholme was Abby's mother. That's the irony.' In the passenger seat, Melrose was fiddling with the radio. The doors on both sides were open, the car sitting in the drive where Jury had left it.

'Finding Trevor Cable wasn't hard. Wiggins said he sounded like a nice fellow, said he was helpful, if 'a bit croupy,' to quote my sergeant. It wasn't he who wanted to get rid of Abby. That row with Trevor Cable Mrs. Braithwaite overheard was Ann Denholme's demanding Abby come back here.'

'She wanted her back so Abby could live in a barn?' Melrose shook his head. 'I feel as cold right now as I think I'll ever feel.' He gazed through the thin, drifting rain toward the barn from which they had just come. 'Medea would have won the Mum-of-the-Year award compared with Ann Denholme. Jocasta would be an absolute plum. And Clytemnestra, good grief, a veritable heroine. People seem to forget that Agamemnon did offer up their daughter on that dismal island to appease the gods. Wouldn't you think they'd have got tired of all that patricide, matricide, infanticide, and incest? And isn't anyone going to tell Abby? Wouldn't it be better if she were undeceived?'

'Wouldn't it only mean her having to work through yet another deception?'

'What about the uncle? Trevor Cable? Sounds as if he wants her back.'

'Would she go back? If you thought your real father had given you up, would you want him back?'

Melrose replaced the car's radio handset, sat back, said nothing for a while. Then, 'But she's only a little girl, Richard. She has to havesomeone.'

'By that you mean some blood relation. Since when was blood really thicker than water? I've yet to hear relations who really cared everutter those words. Which is why it's a cliche, I expect.'

Melrose opened the glove box. 'Superintendent Sanderson will think it provides Nell Healey with one hell of a motive for murdering Ann Denholme if Roger was the father.'

Jury slumped down in his seat. 'I smell money in all of this.'

'I smell The Scarlet Letter.'

'Ann Denholme didn't strike me as a martyr. Far from it. She struck me much more as a blackmailer.'

'What I meant was, in this case it's little Pearl who suffers. I'm talking about Abby as a constant reminder to Healey. Ann was flaunting her would be my guess.' Melrose closed the glove box. 'Perhaps something happened with the 'arrangement.' Perhaps the original idea was that if Ann got rid of Abby, Healey would divorce his wife and marry her. Something like that. But she must have been a very foolish woman to let it go on for over ten years.'

'It makes sense.' Jury stopped. 'Are you looking for something?'

Melrose had bent down to peer under the dashboard.

'Me? No.'

Jury sat back. 'Emotional blackmail, though, would work with the guilty minister in your book. But it certainly wouldn't work with Healey.'

'There're other ways of keeping someone on a string. And telling the wife would make for a very heavy piece of rope.'

'And then she kills him? Nell Healey knew what he was like. He must have been incredibly smooth, incredibly plausible with others. But she wouldn't have killed him because of his affairs with other women.'

'But if she found out Abby was his daughter-?'

Jury shook his head.

'Then why?' Melrose was running his hand under the dashboard.

'It's beginning to look-what in the hell are you doing?'

'Doesn't this car have a tape deck?'

Jury shut his eyes. 'Judas priest.'

'Not them. Ellen found a copy of Rock 'n' Roll AnimalBut there's something wrong with Malcolm's stereo.'

Jury reached round to the back seat and shucked the Sony to Melrose. 'Here. I'm going over to the Citrine