The Old Silent

'They met in Berlin. This whole round of songs is about their relationship.' The earphones went up again. Unfortunately they didn't cut out her voice.

'Who cares where they fucking met? ' She started wheeling round and round, reminding him of Abby. Goading Ellen was almost as much fun as goading Agatha.

'You look really fucking stupid with those earphones on,' she shouted.

'Is that all you think about?' he asked mildly.

She stopped her dervish-turn two feet from him and looked at him suspiciously. 'Is what?'

Melrose reached out his hand, shoved the fingers in the neck of her black jersey, and pulled her to him. As he kissed her, harder than he'd ever kissed anyone, she made a strangling sound-perhaps, one part of his mind told him, because his fingers were looping the neck of the jersey too tightly. Still with his mouth on hers, he let the jersey go, put his hand instead on the back of her head; her hair was softer than it looked, given the tangled and crinkly style. After a certain amount of pounding her fists against his heavy sweater, she went limp. That part of his mind into which blood was still pouring (all the rest was going off in different directions) thought that perhaps she was dead. Strangled. He went on kissing her.

But he must have let her go at some point because she was standing back, getting her breath, and muttering. He seemed to see this through a filament as if there were a wavering, clear waterfall between them. Or possibly he was getting cataracts.

Ellen wandered drunkenly over to her BMW and lay across the leather seat, still mumbling.

'Are you being sick?' asked Melrose. 'Did we stop too soon?'

She raised herself and wheeled on him. 'No! My Lord, I havenever been kissed like that-'

'That's because you've manacled yourself to Manhattan men. They're all dolts who spend their lives chasing the elusive shadow of success instead of women-'

Her hands, like headphones, leapt to her head. 'Shut up shut up shut up. I wasn't complimenting you. My God, I was nearly raped by an earl.'

'Is that the trouble then, I mean the 'nearly' part?'

Her hands dropped away. She stared at him. 'What conceitHow does any woman manage around you? Why don't they tear off their earlobes, or something?'

Melrose thought of Vivian, leaving tomorrow. She hadn't wasted time on Manhattan men. Only Italian, he thought woefully. He was floundering. He didn't know what was happening to him. He was listening to the bedroom scene where Caroline had cut her wrists, and he felt like weeping. But he came round in a minute as if he'd just had a fever-flash and saw Ellen looking at him with real concern.

'Ellen, you're too smart, too young, too much wanting to be another Bronte. Get out of this place; you'll die of illusion.' Melrose restationed his earphones. 'Let's go to Berlin.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.' It was hopelessness rather than dismissal in her tone. 'I have deadlines to meet.'

Melrose shrugged. 'Let's go to New York, then, and meet them. Stop talking. I think another clue about Caroline just went missing.' He pressed the 'phones to his head.

Calmly, Ellen went back to adjusting the lugs on her BMW wheel.

37

The WPC brought her into the wood-paneled room that might have been the library of a home, except for the lack of books and that it was furnished only with a long table and a chair at either end. Jury turned from the barred window where he'd been staring out at a snow-threatening sky only a shade lighter than the room itself. No burning logs, no turkey carpets relieved its unblemished paint. The room was clean in that way of places that few people stop at. Jury shut his eyes and opened them again, childishly surprised that the scene hadn't changed. That in its place there wasn't a tall tree, a weak slant of sunlight, a rotting gate.

Nell Healey herself was dressed in a square-necked prison dress, and looked like a figure in a tintype, where the faces take on the tincture of the amorphous, steely gray edging. Because of their unsmiling complicity with the camera, the faces seem all to look the same.

She was looking at him, waiting. Neither of them sat down. It was not a room to linger in, to look over the photograph album, to reminisce about the past. They stood nearly the width of the room apart.

'It's nice of you to come.'

Her voice was threadbare, unraveling. She coughed slightly.

He rejected the usual openings-I hope you're not catching cold; I've just seen your father, your aunt; are they treating you well. Perhaps her own silences were infecting him.

He began to see the uselessness of that sort of talk. So he said, 'I was talking to Commander Macalvie. You remember him, I know. There's probably no way he can avoid testifying.'

Was that all? Her vague smile was a little dismissive. 'With the Lloyd's banker dead and the superintendent in charge, you mean that he's the only one left who knows about the ransom.'

'Knowing him, I don't think the prosecution will relish the testimony, even though they might think they're pulling a plum from the Christmas pudding. They'll be wrong.'

She frowned. 'Won't this have got him in trouble? To say nothing of you. I know Father called the Wakefield headquarters-'

'I'm always in trouble. At least with my chief.'

'Commander Macalvie is very convincing.'

'Very.'

'And is he usually right?'

'Nearly always.' You tell her, Jury. Go ahead. The shots of the boy's skeleton passed before his eyes. 'Nearly,' Jury repeated. He felt ill. The temptation to show her the magazine, to tell her about the lunch with Charlie, was strong. But he didn't; he couldn't. Partly, it was Macalvie, but partly something else. He couldn't pin down the something else.

'Is that what you came here to tell me?'

'No. I want you to tell me what happened.'

Is that all? her little smile said. She had turned her head toward the window. Did she care there were bars? He doubted it. She was no more prisoner in here than she'd been that afternoon a week ago, standing and searching the crippled orchard.

'Friend of mine,' said Jury, 'was talking about the Greeks. Medea, Jocasta, Clytemnestra. You remember the tale of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon? I mean the whole of it? Agamemnon has always been considered the husband betrayed and murdered.'

She seemed amused in his telling of this tale. 'And that's true. Are you drawing an analogy with me? Does your friend think I'm as evil as Clytemnestra, then?'

'He was talking about Ann Denholme.'

Her expression changed very swiftly, became impassive.

'You knew Abby was her daughter. You also knew Roger was her father. I'm not sure how, but you knew.'

She actually smiled. 'I murdered him in a fit of jealous rage. Is that it?'

'No. You murdered him because you thought he murdered your son. And not for the reason Agamemnon nearly sacrificed Iphigenia. In that case, it was a sacrifice demanded by the gods. Fortunately, the gods gave him a last- minute reprieve. In this case, there were no gods to appease. And no reprieve. Healey wanted the money.'

Her mouth slightly open, she watched his face.

Nell just avoided stumbling as she took a step toward the nearby chair and put her hand on its back. She was too careful to stumble, too controlled to lean.

'Commander Macalvie always thought that you suspected something, that you came to that decision not to pay up with extraordinary swiftness and decisiveness. The kidnapper had to have been someone Billy would have gone with willingly; there wasn't a sound, not even from the dog. You never thought they were taken by force. But who