The Old Silent

receiver, the door handle, the entire damned thingif he wanted to.'

'Except the coins. No way to get to the coins you've slotted into the box. As long as Telecom doesn't go at it with an axe.'

Sanderson was silent.

They hadn't done it; Jury knew it would click into place in Sanderson's mind much faster than it had in Gilly Thwaite's. It would probably be one or more of the coins lying on top. The calls had been made only within the last thirty-six hours.

Jury thought he'd give him breathing time by becoming obnoxious. 'I'm not stupid, Chief Superintendent. I know that the last time you asked for help was with the Ripper case. That man is brilliant; Yorkshire police made things so difficult for him he threw up his arms and went back to London.' Jury was depending on Sanderson's being the professional that Racer wasn't. He'd know what Jury was saying.

He did. 'The only prints we have are Nell Healey's, the ones taken when she was charged.'

'There's a brandy decanter that was getting some heavy use at the Citrine house. I'm sure you could find some reason to take something from that house. As for prints, I have some others. A package will be delivered to headquarters this afternoon. Do you want the details?'

'Hell, no.' The line went dead.

Jury drank off the dregs of his beer, as he dialed the Holts' number. Fortunately, it was Owen who answered. Yes, he supposed he could meet the superintendent at the inn if it was important.

Jury rang off and sat regarding the largely uneaten sandwich and felt Sergeant Wiggins was looking over his shoulder-have to keep your strength up, sir. He stared down at the table, wondering what it was he had missed. Some detail, some small detail seemed to have lodged beneath his consciousness like a figure under thick ice, the contours of which one couldn't make out. He went back over the conversation with Sanderson, tried to chip away at it. Nothing would surface. He sighed and picked up the sandwich and ate it as he looked at the notes Plant had made in his straight-up-and-down, rather elegant hand.

The Princess was a 'possible' (Poss.). She might have been in her room since tea with one of her 'sick headaches' (as she had said), but the ermine-lined boots had been missing when Plant had walked through the hall. George Poges: verified dinner O.S.I, but after? Poss. Ramona Braine: TL to bed early. Snores. And Malcolm, well, highly unlikely, although he had the temperament for it. By his name was an X. Impossible. Same for Mrs. Braithwaite and Ruby, both ot whom were either in their rooms or the kitchen. But Jury had to grin at the way the handwriting changed when it came to Ellen Taylor. One could actually feel the grudging tone in the hand that had grown stiffer, tighter, almost at the end shriveling into indecipherability. It must have killed Plant to strike out the Xand pen in Poss. (since Ellen hadn't shown up at Weavers Hall until long after Abby appeared to have left). But Plant could not resist the editorializing: Absolutely ridiculous!

Jury sat for a few moments thinking of Dench and Macalvie. He dialed the Exeter number.

He picked up on the first ring, interrupted the first ring. 'Macalvie here.'

It was amazing. Macalvie managed to be both out and in simultaneously; Jury knew he seldom hung round his office, yet he always managed to be at the telephone. He seemed to have doubled himself in some magical way.

Before Jury could say anything but his name, the receiver was moved and the commander was yelling at someone. Since Jury could hear a sharp voice return the thrust, it must have been Gilly Thwaite.

'She's got scissors for a mouth. Yeah, Jury what?'

'She's probably the best person you have. You'll push her so far she'll put in for a transfer.'

A sound between a gargle and a laugh came over the wire. 'Are you kidding?'

It sounded much like Melrose Plant's Absolutely ridiculous! Jury smiled, and said straightaway, 'You're making no allowance at all that Dennis Dench is right?'

'No. He's wrong.'

Jury heard a slight creak and a small thud: Macalvie leaning back and planting his feet on the desk. Jury could see him there, probably sitting in his coat. 'You ever heard of W. B. Yeats?' Macalvie asked. Before Jury could answer, Macalvie put him on Hold to deal with another call.

Macalvie was an omnivorous reader, a habit picked up from standing by bookshelves in suspects' homes. It had paid off several times, once in particular when he'd come across one of Polly Praed's mysteries, among the tooled- leather volumes of a Greek scholar who was suspected of having coshed a fellow-academic with an easing knife, but who had claimed not even to know what an easing knife was. Polly's book was titled Murder in the Thatched Barn. While his D.I. questioned the professor, who'd done masterful translations of Pliny the Younger, Macalvie speed-read the first half of the book. He later informed Melrose Plant that his lady mystery- writing friend didn't have exactly the wings of Pegasus, indeed must have been writing with horse's hooves, so turgid was the plot and so asinine the policework. But he was now a rabid fan, since she'd helped him out, all unknowingly.

'Dear Miss Praed: The rifle you claim to have killed Doris Quick (p. 134) in Sussex would have blown her all the way to Cornwall, fired from that angle. Enclosed, please find…'

Stuff like that. And Polly shot a letter, like the bullet, right back.

Jury wondered, while Macalvie was giving 'instructions' to some poor forensics clod probably also wed to the God of Inaccuracy, how the Praed-Macalvie correspondence was going. It was certain, given Polly's books, she didn't read the material the commander helpfully sent her.

Thus Jury smoked his cigarette and wondered how Yeats had got into all of this.

' 'A terrible beauty is born,'' said Macalvie. 'That Yeats.'

'Macalvie, there's only one W. B. Yeats.'

'True. And what do you know about his bones?'

Jury frowned. Bones? A line swam into his mind. ' 'The old rag and bone shop of the heart'?'

'The rag and bone shop is where I work, Jury. No-'

Jury could hear drawers opening and slamming and then a paper rattling. 'I kept this; I tossed it in Dench's face. Now we're talking about W. B. Yeats, remember? So you can imagine how those bones would have been gone over to prove they were his.'

'Yeats was buried in County Sligo.'

'France. In a temporary grave before they could get the bones back to Ireland. Someone comes along and says the bones were tossed into a huge paupers' grave and no one really knew if the remains were the poet's. Naturally, the family went nuts. Who can blame them? My point is: the expert said that after all that time it would be impossible to prove they were or weren't W. B. Yeats's bones.'

'Meaning Dennis Dench could be wrong.'

'He is wrong. Too many coincidences, too many. The time frame, the burial place, the dog-the little dog, Jury- the remnants of metal, et cetera, et cetera-'

'Speaking of poetry, Macalvie: when we were at the house in Cornwall I found a little paperback book in Billy's room. American poetry-Frost, Whitman, Dickinson, et cetera. Emily Dickinson is one of Nell Healey's favorite poets. It was a copy of the same book she had in her pocket when I was talking to her. She sent her copy to Abby Cable, little girl at Weavers Hall. Nell Healey's very fond of poetry; she used to read it to Billy and Toby, especially Frost and Dickinson.'

'What's all this in aid of?'

'Several poems in this paperback are heavily scored or X'd. One in particular is interesting:

It was not death for I stood up

and all the dead lay down-'

'Sounds like headquarters-'

'Listen, Macalvie: