Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (29 page)

" 'Dear Abby, I like this picture. Love, Nell,'" Jury raised his
eyes, but she was looking everywhere else and pulling back her black
hair, twining it tightly as if she were going to pin it there, then
letting it fall and giving Stranger some brusque and vocal command
which seemed to surprise the dog. Immediately, he went to the door of
the barn to stand lookout.

Then Abby slid off her cot, pounded her booted feet about on the
rug, and kneeled down to mess with her records. "I expect you'll have
to go now; after I listen to my record I'm going to have a lie-down,"
she said.

"Okay," said Jury, rising.

"I've got three Ricky Nelsons—or Ethel does—and one Dire Straits and
two Elvises."

Brian Macalvie's all-time favorite. He smiled. "I've got a good
friend who likes Elvis."

"He's dead." She put the needle on a few bars into the song. Elvis
was singing "The Impossible Dream." They listened. "What's an
'unrightable wrong'?" She pointed at the record. "And if it's something
so bad you can't put it right, then why's he trying to do it?"

She wasn't angry; she was anxious. Surely there had to be an answer.

Jury stared at the record. He thought for a while and said, "Because
some people never give up, no matter what the odds."

One puzzle answering another. This, apparently, made total sense,
for she returned to her ever-so-slightly deprecating air and asked,
"Don't
you
have a card?"

Jury pulled out his wallet and handed her one.

As he looked back she was studying it, hard.

Melrose was flooded with relief.

Trying to break the sound barrier, the motorcycle ripped up the
rocky road and came spitting to a halt in the gravel outside of the
drawing room. The room itself vibrated and the gray cat went rolling
off the sill when Malcolm threw open the casements, leaned out, and
shouted something lost in the January night.

Music in the form of a death-beat of drums that sounded like a
funeral dirge came with her through the door.

Ellen came pounding down the hall, threw open the door, and stopped
there, with the sort of portable stereo propped on her shoulder that
Melrose had seen being carted about Piccadilly by gangs of thugs. Now a
voice had joined the drum-bass-beat which seemed surprisingly
inappropriate for the background havoc: it was grainy but soft:

Caroline says
—

as she gets up off the floor

"Hi," said Ellen, in a general salute and with a particular look at
Jury. She had not changed her clothes, although she wore different
earrings: they were long overlapped triangles of dull black that looked
heavy enough to anchor a small boat. There also seemed to be a
different layering of chains around her neck.

life is meant to be more than this and this is a bum trip

sang the mournful voice raised now against the dirge of drums and
guitars.

Ellen turned the volume down, and handed the set to Melrose, general
dogsbody, before she turned to Jury, who had risen from the sofa and
was introducing himself as a friend of Mr. Plant.

Melrose sighed. He set the stereo on one bookcase shelf and leaned
against the row of John D. MacDonalds.

but she's not afraid to die all of her friends call her A-las-ka

He was getting interested in Caroline, who appeared to be mainlining
drugs.

when she takes speed, they laugh and ask her

". . . one of the funniest books I've ever read," Jury was saying to
Ellen.

It was the first time Melrose had seen Ellen Taylor lose her cool.
She gaped. "Are you saying you've actually read
Sauvage Savant
?"

"Not all of it . . ."

How, wondered Melrose, had he read
any
of it? He hadn't
even
heard
of the girl until yesterday. Were they selling her
books at Haworth parsonage?

Melrose turned up the volume on the stereo. There was the sound of
tinkling glass. Caroline had thrust her hand through a window—

it's so cold in A-las-ka

The voice suddenly blared.

"How about turning that off," Jury called over, "and joining us?"

The two of them were sitting on the sofa, comfy as long-lost friends.

Afraid that he might never know Caroline's fate, he turned the
volume down, but not off.

it's
so cold in A-las-ka

Caroline should have a go at West Yorkshire, he thought, as he took
the wing chair George Poges had vacated, trying to bury the stereo
between himself and the chair arm.

". . . 'hot'?" Jury was asking. "Does that mean successful? Or
absolutely famous?"

She was certainly overworking that word, he thought grumpily,
twisting the volume up just a mite. The song had changed; things were
getting worse, apparently. They were taking Caroline's children away.

because they said she was not a good mother
—

"Good question." Ellen half-smiled. "To tell the truth, it probably
does mean famous, but only in the Warholian sense. . . ."

Dickensian, Shavian, Warholian. Well, thought Melrose, perhaps one
could turn anyone into an adjective these days. He was beginning to
feel extremely Carolinian.

"Andy Warhol?" Jury laughed. "Don't be modest—"

No danger of that, thought Melrose. "Fame," he said, and they both
looked at him. "It's just as well, perhaps, you're not famous." He
looked up at the ceiling moldings. "It comes from
fama
, you
know." How sententious could one sound? "Do you know what that means?"
They were silent. "Ill-report. Rumor." He smiled slightingly. "Better
to stay away from it." Melrose returned his attention to the stereo.

because of the things she did in the streets in the alleys and
bars

Anyone can make a mistake.

"You're right, I guess. The old bitch-goddess, success."

She sighed.

"You've been biking around England, have you?"

"Umm. On a BMW. Picked it up in London."

"It's a K-100 RS. Ninety horsepower. Pretty powerful." Good grief,
thought Melrose, could the man see through walls?

Surprised, she said, "Yeah. Very."

A bum trip, thought Melrose, definitely.

that miserable, rotten slut

So Caroline was . . . well, "loose." Melrose wrapped his arm
protectively around the stereo. The gray cat swayed over and sat at his
feet, blinking up at his benefactor. At least, thought Melrose—part of
his mind still studying Jury studying Ellen—I inspire awe in some
living creature. The gray cat yawned and walked away.

"You weren't around to talk to the Yorkshire police," said Jayy,
lighting her cigarette.

' (Ellen hitched an old footstool over with her foot and propped her
heavy laced-up shoes on it as she exhaled a bale of smoke. "You know
why?" She looked at Jury through lowered lashes.

"Can't imagine."

Melrose sighed.

"Because I didn't know they were here." She flattened her head
against the sofa, blew three smoke rings toward the ceiling.

When Jury gave him a look, Melrose turned down the volume, but just
a mite. The dreadful, sleazy, heartrending story of Caroline and her
lover or husband was too gripping. He knew the questions Jury would ask.

Who was he kidding? No he didn't. His stomach turned over.

"Where were you, then?" Jury smiled. Melrose glowered.

"Harrogate."

"
What
?" Melrose nearly pushed Malcolm's stereo off the
chair.

Ellen raised her eyebrows. "Har-ro-gate." She rounded the syllables
as if she were teaching first form. "It's famous. The spa, et cetera."

"That's a distance," said Jury, "on a motorcycle."

She slapped her forehead dramatically. "My God, I just
said
I ran it all the way from London. So what's Harrogate to that? Fifty,
sixty miles. Nice place. Did you know they made
Agatha
—"

"Yes," Melrose snapped as the drums and bass got slower and heavier.

"Miss Taylor—"

She sort of leaned her shoulder toward Jury. "Ellen."

"Ellen. What exact route did you take, then?" He smiled.

She stubbed out her cigarette and stuffed her hands in her jeans
pockets. "You know something? You sound like a cop. I'm calling the
embassy."

"Good idea," said Melrose.

Jury ignored both of them and pulled the map out again. "Let's see,
now. Did you come by way of Ilkley?"

Ellen had turned her head toward the window, intent upon the distant
hills and dark gray horizon. She stuffed a stick of gum in her mouth
and looked at the map.

This, thought Melrose, discomfort rising in him like bile, was
beginning to sound too much like the scene with Major Poges.

She shrugged. "Dunno. Probably around here—" Her finger punched at
a place on the map.

Jury handed her the pencil.

Melrose felt a
frisson
of fear. He watched her, sitting
there chewing her gum with her feet propped up, running the pencil
across the paper as if she were doing nothing more serious than a
kiddie joining dots. Melrose wanted to see the map, but he felt
fettered to the chair and to the depressing song.

/
am the waterboy the real game's not oh-vah here

Handing the map back to Jury, she put her hands behind her head.
"You dig Lou?"

His gaze on the mantle of clouds beyond the window, he heard her,
but it was a moment before he realized Ellen was addressing him, not
Jury.

"What?"

"Lou Reed."

He turned off the stereo; he'd have to leave the two of them to
their wretched fate. Getting up, Melrose felt a stiffness in his
joints, as if he were a recent accident victim.

"What
is
this tape?"

"Berlin"

"East? No wonder."

Irritably, he moved to the window near the sofa, where he half-sat
on the windowsill. He watched her mouth purse; she blew a pink balloon
of gum in his direction until it smacked back against her face.

His eyes still on the map, Jury put out his hand to Ellen: "Mind if
I have a stick of that gum? I'm all out."

Melrose had never known him to be all
in
, where chewing
gum was concerned.

Ellen shrugged. "Sure." She pushed out a stick, which Jury took and
put in his pocket. "Thanks."

Little tricks, little tricks, thought Melrose . . . just Jury's
police tactics to raise her anxiety level and make her squirm. The
suspect, however, was simply sitting there in a sloppy heap and making
circles with her thumbs. She yawned like the cat. Yawned? A
woman
yawning around

Richard Jury? He squinted out the window. Were the stars all in
place?

"How's Abby taking all this?"

"Very stoically." Jury turned the map around.

"She's one cool kid."

Jury turned the map back. "I agree. One cool kid."

Ellen's head snapped round. "You mean you talked to her?"

"That's right."

Melrose was getting nervous again. He left the window and sat on the
arm of the cabbage-rose chair. Between the arm and the cushion was a
bright card. He plucked it out. The Hanged Man. He stuffed it back.

"Well, but is there some big
secret
, or something?" Her
voice deepened dramatically, exaggerating the words.

"Uh-uh."

"I mean, did she say I stuffed her in a snowdrift or tossed her over
a wall and then went off she knew not where?"

"Uh-uh."

"Stop
saying
that!" Her long earrings clicked and clinked
when she stood up, pressing her fingers against her breasts. "You think
/ was involved?
Moi
?"

Melrose said from under the tent of his hand, "Oh, shut up, for
God's sakes; stop being dramatic; and you're talking to a fiendishly
clever policeman."

"Clever," said Jury. "But fiendishly? You don't have to hang around,
Ellen."

"
Thought
you were a cop."

But she seemed unwilling to go. Now her fingers were spread against
her buttocks, thumbs jammed into rear pockets.

It was, Melrose thought, irritated with himself, a very sexy pose.
Although with all of that black leather and those nerve-jangling
chains, he couldn't see why. For Vivian Riv-ington, it had always been
twin-sets, good wool, or some Italian designer. He shook himself. Jury
was handing him the map.

Melrose looked at it, at the line George Poges had drawn across
Keighley Moor, at the Oakworth Road and the Grouse Inn. He looked at
Ellen's own line. He looked at Jury.

Ellen turned from one to the other. "You two going to communicate by
semaphore?"

Jury smiled. "You're free to go."

" Tree to go.' You guys actually
say
stuff like that?"
Wearily, she shook her head and picked up the stereo. "Shit. I'm going
upstairs and put on a little Trane."

"Dinner?" asked Melrose. They were standing in the courtyard,
shoulders shrugged up against the cold.

"Afraid not. I've got to get back to London." Jury was facing the
barn. At the bottom of the drawn curtain over the small window he could
see a ragged edge of light. "Perhaps you should take your friend Ellen
to dinner."

"All of that business about the route, Ilkley, Harrogate. You don't
really think she was out on that moor . . . you know.".

"Did I say that?"

"You meant that."

Jury turned up his coat collar and smiled. "Tell her I love her."

"The hell I will." Melrose's footsteps crunched across the broken
shale as he turned and started back toward the house.

Jury walked to the door of the barn, took out one of his cards,
folded it lengthwise twice, and wedged it in between the outside
wrapper and the silver that covered the stick of gum Ellen Taylor had
given him.

He knelt and shoved it under the door.