Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (41 page)

"You been talking to Rubber Ducky?" His head was turned to watch the
band and his eyes squeezed in pain at the high whine of the slide
guitar. "Oh, we have
certainly
got a double platinum."

The customers were beginning to wake up and inch nearer the stage.
Stone was back with a bottle clamped in his jaws and Stan took it and
snapped the cap off with an opener on his keychain. The dog lay back
down again. Stan shoved the Abbott's toward Jury.

"Again, why?"

"Huh?"

"Roger Healey. Why was he trying to get at you?"

"I expect because he was coming on to my old lady."

"Are you saying Healey was having an affair with your wife?"

"Aren't you old-fashioned? I never said she was my wife." He was
searching out a butt in the littered tin ashtray. Jury tossed his own
packet on the table, but Stan said, "Thanks, but new ones don't taste
as schmuzzy." He found half a cigarette and lit it. "Deli's not my
wife, though I think she might be several other guys'. She said, no,
she wasn't screwing Healey, but Deli couldn't open her mouth without
lying. She even lied about the weather. Pathological, right?"

"Deli who?"

Stan's eyes were on the group bathed in blue light. He didn't answer.

"Mr. Keeler?"

His fingers were beating a rhythmic tattoo on the table.

"Deli's last name?" asked Jury patiently.

"I never asked. Dickie's getting better; he must've cleaned the moss
off that slide."

"Sounds great to me, but we won't stick around for it. Come on."
Jury rose and the lady whom one of the customers had called Karla
turned her head slowly to stare at him. People didn't order her boy
around, it seemed.

"Come where, for God's sake?"

"New Scotland Yard. You can't seem to keep your mind on answers
here."

"You're a real happening guy."

"That's me."

"Look, I don't know if it's her real name." Stan motioned him to sit
back down. Karla looked off into the unfiltered air again. "She said it
was Magloire. Delia Magloire. No one knew how to say it right, so we
just called her Deli MacGee."

Jury had his notebook out. "Where was she from?"

"Martinique. So she said. Well, she did look like she might of come
from the islands. Honey-colored skin, hair as black as Stone here." He
reached down to scratch the dog's head. "Don't ask me where she went to
. . ." His voice trailed off as he concentrated on the inert dog. Stone
was a good name.

"Pretty?"

"Oh, yes. Thick as two planks, but pretty, oh, yes."

"How'd she meet Healey?"

Stan mashed out the butt, searched for another. "She was on her way
to the Hammersmith Odeon and stumbled into the Royal Albert Hall by
mistake. You believe that, you believe anything. About two a.m. she
weaves past Nose and up to the flat and says, 'Love, Eric's got this
big new band . . .' " He raised his eyebrows above the tiny
match-flame. "The London Symphony. She wanted me to think she was that
dumb. Then she starts talking about this famous music critic and kind
of oomphing round the old bed-sit, puts on Robert hootchi-koo Plant and
wants to dance. I never could figure out what possible centrifugal
force could blow Deli across the path of that pissant Healey."

"When did Deli leave?"

Stan shrugged. "Year ago." He glanced at the small stage where the
blue lights made the group look cyanosed. Dickie's slide screamed in
Jury's ears. He wondered how Wiggins could make it through a concert
without a nosebleed. "If that slide's got moss on it, you couldn't
prove it by me," he shouted across the table. "Did you believe her?
About Healey?"

Stan shrugged. "Why not? The guy was a lech."

It was getting harder to talk and to hear. The riffs were
ear-splitting and the drummer had gone into an epileptic frenzy. Jury's
ears seemed to have closed up, as if he were in a plummeting airplane.
Stan was pulling a black Stratocaster from the case on the floor.

As he fastened the leather strap around his neck, the dog gave a
terse bark. "Sounds like Dickie's picking with the top of a tin again.
I think I'll join. Stick around.

"Where's the picks, Stone?"

The dog snuffled in the long arm of the case and brought out a
tortoiseshell pick.

"Not
that
, for chrissakes. Thinner."

Stone spat out the one in his mouth, rooted again, brought out a
black one nearly thin enough to see through.

"Thanks." He stuck the pick beneath the strings.

"Did Deli MacGee dump Healey?"

"I'd say so. She made some comment about him 'trading licks' that
wasn't—how'd she put it?—'within my venue.' " Stan smiled. "I kinda
liked that."

"What did she mean?"

Stan brought his hand away from the tuning knobs, hit a chord. "Come
on
, man. What'd'ya
think
? Healey wasn't an axeman.
At best a ladies' man, at second best a lech, at worst a sado. You look
surprised. You're a cop; you've seen these squirrely types before."

"And were those reviews written after Deli walked out?"

"You got it."

"Jealousy?"

"Who knows?" Stan shrugged. "Who cares?"

You do
, thought Jury, sadly, looking at the smudges under
Stan Keeler's eyes. "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.

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
cannot
believe 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. "/ didn't know the
cat, for heaven's sakes."

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 (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.