Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent

by Martha Grimes

Dennis Dench took one last sip of wine and said, "Hullo, Brian. They're not the Healey boy's remains."

  As they left the dining room, Dench looked back over his narrow, sloping shoulder at Macalvie. "You should know that; I've told you half a dozen times."

  "Oh, sure." It was Macalvie's deadpan tone, the one he used when he wasn't going to argue a point.

  They passed down a cheerlessly white, though well-lit hall toward a door at the end, and Jury paused to look at a large print that supplied about the only color in the house he had seen thus far. It would have to be an O'Keeffe, the one of the cow's skull.

  "Nice, that," said Dennis, coming back to stand by Jury. He fiddled with his thick glasses as if they were an out-of-focus microscope. "Very good." He stepped back a bit, cocked his head, frowned slightly. "Well ... as good as a painter could get in that particular line."

  The basement laboratory was no more antiseptic than the rest of the house, although it was considerably more interesting. It had not an O'Keeffe but a Daliesque quality in its display of bones, leathered skin, objects floating in large jars —all less horrific than surreal. There were two skeletons in full bloom, if the bright red carnation between the ribs of one and the daisy chain round the collarbone of the other were an indication.

  Dennis Dench shook his head. "Minerva's always doing that."

  "Minerva?" asked Sergeant Wiggins, who turned from his inspection of a jar.

  "One who let you in. Thinks it's all a bit of a giggle."

  Jury couldn't imagine the young woman who let them in giggling about much of anything; her skin was the color of the ashy mask contoured over the frame of a skull.

  Plucking a starched white jacket from a hook, Dennis said, "I've told her a dozen times the lab needn't be hoovered, but she still insists the floor needs scrubbing and the 'skellies' dusted. I think she's named them. Naturally, she doesn't touch anything else because I told her I would put her in the tub there"—he nodded toward something like a washtub—"and then her skelly would be scattered over Salcombe estuary."

  "What are you putting together?" Macalvie nodded toward the long white table with a Formica top where a sandbox rested on one end and, on the other, the threatening tub. Bones protruded from the sandbox, apparently drying; in the tub of viscous liquid, other bones were being divested of remaining flesh. Having pulled on his surgical gloves, Dennis pulled out several smaller bones and plunged them into another bath. The hanging light was dazzling, a false sun. "Jason at the beach?" asked Macalvie, chewing his gum.

  Dennis addressed Jury. "I told him not to drag you all the way here from Exeter."

  "You're well known, Dr. Dench. It's not a lost trip."

  Dennis Dench gave Macalvie a pursed little smile.

  "Call him Denny," said Macalvie, walking over to a cabinet and knocking on it as if he expected someone or -thing in there to open up. "Let's see Billy Healey's skeleton, okay?"

  Having dipped the two bones in the tub, Dench now stood them up in the sand and said, "You can see the skeleton, but it's not Billy Healey's."

  Macalvie was trying to open the cabinet door. "Just because I don't have a degree in osteoanatomy doesn't mean I haven't read up on it. Who the hell built this cabinet? Dr. Caligari?"

  "The skeleton's over here, Brian. You never did have the patience of Job."

  He removed the white cloth from the skeleton of a child that Jury would have guessed to be preadolescent. It was restored except for a few fragments that lay in a neat semicircle beside the leg. Beneath the child's skeleton were the tinier animal bones.

  Macalvie stood, hands in pockets holding back his rain-coat. He nodded toward the bone fragments. "You can't jigsaw those in?"

  "Wouldn't be worth it. There's probably been warpage anyway. They wouldn't tell you anything more."

  Wiggins, having had his fill of pickled things in jars and the range of photographs tacked on the wall, came over to have a look. Running his hands over his rib cage, he said, "Seems everything's there." He might have been making comparisons. "What's the most difficult thing to determine, Professor? From the skeletal remains?"

  Macalvie snapped, "Age."

  Dennis Dench looked away, pained. "How many times do we have to have this argument, Brian? Age in a child is the easiest thing to determine. You know perfectly well—from what you've told me you'd read—complete epiphyseal fusion in a skeleton is found only in adults." He turned to Wiggins and Jury: "In this case, it was fairly easy. It's a skeleton of a subpubic male Caucasian of between fourteen and, I'd say, sixteen. The Healey boy was only twelve."

  Macalvie shook and shook his head. "Don't tell me you can cut it that close."

  "The devil I can't; except for some environmental variants, bone fusion can be traced in a growing child with exactitude from year to year."

  Macalvie said, generously, "Okay, even if I give you that—"

  "And what about the odontologist's report? Everything points to this as the skeleton of a boy older than Billy Healey."

  Jury said, "You mentioned environmental variants. That would include malnutrition, wouldn't it?"

  Dennis frowned. "No sign of that here, though. You're referring to the Healey boy's allergy to milk products?"

  "I understand Billy Healey had to take heavy doses of vitamins and calcium. . . . There was some doubt as to whether he took all he was supposed to."

  Answering for Dennis, Macalvie said: "No actual signs of malnutrition, but that doesn't exclude the bones as being those of the Healey kid."

  "Brian, I hate to remind you: I've written three books on the subject."

  "I know. I've read them." He was standing in front of Dench's desk running his finger over bindings. Quickly he pulled one out, flipped through it, found the column he wanted, and said, "I quote: 'Ossification centers are often difficult to recognize and sometimes lost in an immature specimen.'" As Dennis raised his eyes to the ceiling, Ma-calvie flipped the pages again. "Here you've got a case of a youngster whose height could be determined only within three inches. That's a hell of a variable, three whole inches."

  "Oh, come on, Brian. All anyone has to do is watch a games match at some school to see a boy of twelve can be as tall as one of sixteen. And the difference in Billy's and Toby's height wasn't apparently that much. An inch, inch and a half. Anyway, we're not talking stature here, we're talking age." Dennis's look at the skeleton was remorseful, his hand drawn down the long femur bone in a gesture that suggested it was flesh and blood he touched.

  "You're forgetting something, Denny. Let's assume you're right about the age," said Macalvie. "The only thing you're basing your conclusions on is one little thing—"

  "It's not a little thing. Each epiphysis fuses with the bone shaft at a particular age—"

  "Can you forget that for just one damned second while I go on?"

  "No." Dennis carefully realigned the femur of the dog with its pelvic bone.

  Carefully, Macalvie leaned his hands on the table just above the skull and leaned over the small skeleton. "Jesus, but I'm glad you're not on my forensics team—"

  "So am I." Dennis politely stifled a yawn. "You've got a thick skull." He ran his eyes slowly over Macalvie's face. "Literally."

  "You're working in a vacuum, Denny. I'll tell you why I'm right—"

  "You're wrong."

  "Because, number one"—Macalvie had moved over to the rack of test tubes and pulled two from its pronged fittings— "these soil samples. Now, the vicar of that church told you, although you've conveniently forgotten, nobody's been buried, to his knowledge, in that disused graveyard for forty years, and here we come up with soil removed and replaced long after that. I sent this stuff through forensics—"

  "Thought you didn't trust them." Dennis had stepped back to look, sadly, at the small dog's skeleton.

  "They didn't know what it was for."

  "I could tell you the same thing they did."

  "Maybe. Since you seem to know everything. The disturbance of this soil and its constituti
on shows that the grave was dug within the two-year period when a nearby mineshaft was excavated because we've got traces of zinc and other substances in the soil. That's one. Two: in those two years not one preadolescent male Caucasian went missing from the area without either returning voluntarily or having been found or the remains having been found—"

  Wiggins turned from his study of the markout of the gravesite and frowned. "Pardon, sir, but isn't there a fallacy in that argument? What about cases not reported?"

  "All right, I'll give you that. But we're still talking about a missing boy and a dog buried together in a structure obviously fitted out to sustain life. Until somebody pulled the plug." He was talking to Wiggins over his shoulder, his hold on the table still secure as if Dench might drag it out from under him.

  Macalvie went on. "To say nothing of that deserted cemetery being found within a quarter mile of the Citrine house. And with all of this evidence, you're standing there and talking about a possible three- or four-year difference in bone fusion."

  "That's right. And I'm dealing in facts; you're dealing in induction. You're adding up a lot of information and coming to a conclusion. But a piece of your information is missing. Ergo. Erroneous conclusion," said Dennis calmly.

  Macalvie shook his head quickly, like a swimmer clearing water from his ears. He glanced at Jury, who'd been leaning against the counter. "You've said sweet nothing. How do you rate the chances that two kids with two dogs could have been buried secretly in that time frame and so close to the Citrine house?"

  Jury had had his eyes on the tiny skeleton of the dog under the boy's feet—for his mind had encased them in stone like the effigies he had so often seen in the churches and cathedrals—lord and lady, earl and countess—with a little dog, and sometimes two, cushioning their feet. And he remembered the position Dennis Dench had inferred; the bones of the dog had been lying atop the skeleton of the boy. While part of his mind stood aside and looked at the problem objectively, he himself could hardly breathe and his own eyes were no longer dazzled by the glare of the hanging light, the fluorescence, the almost screaming whiteness of the walls, the Formica. They had grown steadily dimmer, though his ears had taken in everything the others were saying. At the same time he watched the light fading like headlamps sweeping by in the fog and the then total darkness. He could hardly breathe. Which of them had used up the last of the oxygen? The child? The dog? He had had the dog, at least. The dog that Jury doubted had been sealed in the grave for companionship.

  But who knew? Who could possibly tell what a mind so warped would do? "I was wondering about Toby," Jury finally said in answer to Macalvie.

  "Toby? Toby's dead. You read the report."

  "He was fifteen."

  Dennis Dench laughed his short, brittle laugh. "Convenient, that would have been for me."

  "It was certainly convenient as hell for the kidnapper.

  The only witness dies in an accident? Talk about coincidence."

  "Believe me, I did," said Macalvie. "According to your police there wasn't a single reason to tie that lorry driver to Toby. The lorry was actually stopped at a zebra crossing-I didn't know they did that-and the kid bolted across it when he started up. It was dark, raining, he swerved. Too late."

  "That's another thing. What in the hell would the boy be doing in London?"

  "Running. Is there a better place to hide than in a crowd?"

  "The natural thing for a kid to do is run home."

  Macalvie sighed. "Not if there's somebody at 'home' who knows you're witness to a kidnapping."

  "That's your theory, Macalvie."

  "So what's yours?"

  "I don't have one."

  Macalvie went over to stand beside Wiggins who was studying the photographic mockup. He unfolded an old newspaper clipping and laid it on the counter beside the partially reconstructed photograph. The picture in the paper wasn't a studio pose; it showed a young boy with a puzzled look, his hair covered by a woolen jacket hood like a monk cowl. He was squinting. Macalvie studied the picture for a moment and said to Dennis, "I couldn't tell me old mum if her eyes were nothing1 but silver discs; mind if I change this?"

  "Yes." Dennis was covering the small skeleton.

  Even while asking the question, Macalvie cut a piece from a scrap of paper, penciled something in while looking at the clipping, and put the tiny strip on the photograph. "Give me your scarf, Wiggins."

  With some reluctance, Sergeant Wiggins unwrapped the brown scarf as carefully as a doctor removing bandages from a patient who'd just had an eye operation.

  Macalvie arranged the scarf around the skull in the photo,

  simulating the newspaper picture. He put the rest of the scarf over the left-hand side of the face and what remained was a fuzzy, but reasonable facsimile of a face.

  "If that isn't Billy Healey, I'll turn down the promotion to assistant constable."

  Dennis tucked the covering round the skeleton of boy and dog, as if, in the ordinary way of good nights, he were putting them to bed. "Since the chief constable hasn't offered it, it's not much of a bet."

  Macalvie grinned. "Thanks for letting us take up your time."

  They walked back through the dining room where the dishes still remained, together with the bottle of white wine. Dennis Dench took three glasses from a sideboard, set them on the table, and said, "You've got to taste this. It's superb. Chablis Moutonne."

  Holding it up to the light, Macalvie rolled it in the glass as Dennis Dench rolled his eyes at Macalvie.

  "He knows as much about wine as he does about bone fusion," said Dench.

  Macalvie sipped, rolled the wine in his mouth. "Full and direct. Subtle bouquet, though a bit violent. Admirably dry —what do you think, Wiggins?"

  Wiggins sipped it; his mouth puckered. "Very dry, sir."

  "Bone dry," said Jury.

  "The guy's a genius," said Macalvie, as the three of them stood near the car. The rain driven in from the estuary blew Wiggins's scarf back; he snatched at it, clearly not wanting to lose it twice in one evening. "Too bad he's so stubborn," added Macalvie, slamming the car door.

  "How far is it to the Citrine place?" asked Wiggins, staring out into the cloud of rain.

  Jury turned to answer. "No farther than it'll take to hand out three or four tickets, probably."

  Jury, sitting in the back seat, wondered if the Devon-Cornwall constabulary fitted out all of its official cars with tape decks or whether Macalvie had managed one just to listen to Elvis.

  After twenty mites, they were leaving "Heartbreak Hotel" and entering into a memory of a bright summer's day, purely temporary; bright summer's days usually were.

  Wiggins, sitting beside Macalvie in the front seat, had been going on about telephone kiosks for the last fifteen minutes or so, probably (Jury thought) in an attempt to lead Macalvie round to explaining Gilly Th wake's own call box and Telecom's part in it.

  "It's like the red double-deckers. Landmarks, those red call boxes are, and they're taking them all down. Only leaving up a few, for nostalgia's sake, probably. I'm surprised there're those in Exeter still standing. Like the one Miss Thwaite was talking about. . . ,*"

  No comment. Macalvie was singing along with Elvis about the empty chairs, the bare parlor.

  "A crying shame," said Wiggins.

  "What is?" asked Macalvie, as the parlor and doorstep of "Are You Lonesome Tonight" vanished like the flying landscape.

  "That the kiosks are coming down. The government's only keeping about two hundred of the K2's-that's the regular one, like the one Miss Thwaite was talking about. . . ." Wiggins paused. No response. He went on with a sigh. "I always liked the Jubilee one. A bit fancier on top. Very valuable that would be now." Wiggins's laugh was more of a giggle. "Don't think you'd find Telecom trying to break one of those call boxes open." There was no answering comment from the front seat One would have thought those two never used the telephone. Wiggins's sigh was huge this time. "If you wanted one, I mean one of those King Geor
ge

  boxes, you could actually buy one. Cost you over a thousand quid, maybe two. There's a firm exports them. They refurbish them. Americans probably keep 'em in their halls. Cast iron, post-office red. I wonder how the American call boxes work. How they get the coins out—"

  Jury turned and gave him a look. "Bulldoze them." Jury shook his head, turned back again.

  Wiggins was undaunted. "Antiques dealers are buying them up and selling them, too, if you can imagine."

  "I can imagine anything about antiques dealers." Ma-calvie pushed the eject button and Elvis came out.

  Jury was trying to think about Dench's bones as he watched what he could of the dark landscape Macalvie was fast leaving behind, and with it, one of the new eyesore-call boxes Wiggins so abhored, telephone encased in its acrylic surround. Suddenly, the car was rocking with heavy metal.

  "My God, Macalvie. Turn that down."

  "Led Zep?" Macalvie half-twisted his head to the back. "You don't even like Led Zep?"

  Even. Jury the musical stick-in-the-mud. "And keep your eyes on the road."

  "Beautiful voice, he has, that Robert Plant," said Wiggins, da-de-daing "Stairway to Heaven."

  "And Page's guitar. That bow work is cosmic, cosmic. I don't go at all for the noodlers, Edward, Yngwie, those guys."

  Noodlers?

  "Oh, I can't agree with you there, not at all. You can't call them just speed freaks. Yngwie's got progressions as classical as they come," said Wiggins.

  Yngwie? Edward? Were all fans on a first-name basis with their idols? "What about Charlie?" asked Jury.

  Again, Macalvie twisted round. "Charlie who?"

  Jury sighed. "Raine. Don't you keep up with the current scene?"

  "You talking about that group that's in London? I've got something here."

  To Jury's dismay he took his hand off the wheel to scrabble amongst his tapes, slid one in. A voice, clear as the frozen night, was in the middle of a song.

  . . . sky was blue above the trees but only for a while

  It sounded to Jury as if it were going the way of Elvis's bright summer day. The light gave way to darkness, summer to winter, stone walls to the ravages of time, cliffs to the lashing of waves. It reminded Jury, in some way, of the clair-voyee.