Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent

by Martha Grimes

  Back at the rear of the auditorium, light fanned briefly across the wall as one of the doors swung open and shut. Whoever it was was standing back there or had sat down.

  Mary Lee, Jury bet, and smiled. Then the memory of Charlie writing on the clear surface of the shoe came back to him.

  "The longer I kept quiet about it, the more guilty I felt," Charlie was saying. "And the more guilty I felt, the harder it was to do anything, to come back, to tell the story. The old vicious circle of guilt. Why didn't I do something to save him?"

  The question was rhetorical, but Jury answered it anyway. "Because you knew damned well they'd kill you."

  Charlie rested his forehead against the guitar frets, eyes closed. "But not to do anything about it later—"

  "You did. You thought if he'd lived, Billy Healey would have gone on to have a highly successful career as a concert pianist—"

  "He would have." Charlie brought the guitar back up to his lap.

  "I doubt it."

  Charlie looked round, sharply. "That was the whole idea."

  "His father's idea. Not Billy's. And not necessarily Nell Healey's. Wasn't it hard to get him to practice?"

  "Yes. But he was a natural."

  "Come on, Toby. You, of all people, would know that even a 'natural' has to practice like hell to get where Roger Healey wanted his son to go. Billy was lazy. Irene Citrine said that. On the other hand you were just the opposite. Determined. Or as your aunt put it, pigheaded."

  He had to smile. "I expect I was."

  "You 'expect' you were? You weren't a 'natural'; you couldn't play anything. That is, you couldn't play anything until you were so driven by guilt to pick up on a career that Nell's son had lost; there roust have been times when you wished you could have died in his place."

  "There were."

  "And you did. In a sense you became Billy. It must have been hell. No musical inclination, no background, presumably no talent. I thought you were Billy."

  "You thought / was—why?"

  Jury told him about the poetry, the picture, and the impression Charlie himself had given him about the Healey case. "Let's say I thought you were Billy because you couldn't possibly have been Toby Holt. And Toby would have been the only other one who knew all of that."

  "If you practice twelve, thirteen hours a day, you don't need background. Sometimes the fingers of my left hand would bleed and I'd just wrap gauze round them and put on a surgical glove and keep going. Some martyrdom, right?"

  "Which you apparently plan to complete by quitting at the top. You told me you'd got as far as you needed to and I wondered what that could possibly mean. So now you're quitting. And to do what? Live in West Yorkshire and become a shepherd? A groundsman?"

  "I have to go back; I have to tell them what really happened; I want to see her."

  "Yes, I know. But for God's sakes, don't think of staying there. It's not meant for you, Charlie. This time, it could really kill you."

  "That's pretty dramatic. I was thinking about Abby. With her aunt dead, well, she could use some help."

  Abby. Yes, she could have used it a long time ago. "Nell Healey will see to that." Jury turned from trying to see into the shadows of the back to look at Charlie. "You've paid up, Charlie. And, anyway, you haven't done what you'd sworn you'd do."

  Charlie cut a bleak smile in Jury's direction. "I haven't?"

  "No. You haven't quite peaked. Sirocco hasn't played Wembley Stadium." Jury called to the rear of the auditorium, "Isn't that the order, Mary Lee? The Marquise, Town and Country, Odeon, Arena, Stadium?"

  A shadow moved and she started down the aisle. "What about the Ritz?"

  Jury shaded his eyes and looked back.

  "Remember me?" asked Vivian.

  Vivian had Marshall Trueblood's Armani coat slung about her shoulders. Underneath was a gown Jury could see as she moved closer to the stage that the Princess would have approved. It was burgundy, fluid, semitransparent and fit her body like a second skin to just below the hips where it flared out. It had a languid, pre-Raphaelite look. Her hair was done up partly on top of her head, partly down, as if the hair had escaped its entrapment on top. She wore long emerald earrings.

  The combination of her appearance (which was gorgeous) and the surprise of seeing her here made Jury's mind go blank. "Why in hell are you wearing Trueblood's Armani coat?" That was a sporty question, he thought, cursing himself.

  But she took it in stride. "Because I had the coat-check ticket for it in my bag. I'm supposed to have gone to powder my nose during the entree; we started dinner without you, but no one will have finished, not if Agatha had her way about the seven-course meal and Melrose orders one more bottle of wine. He told me you were here." Vivian beamed up at Charlie Raine, whose own smile would have lit up the Embankment. "I was cheated. They got to hear you; I didn't."

  "I can always fix that."

  "You wouldn't!"

  "I would." Charlie strapped the Fender round his neck. "What do you want to hear?"

  Vivian thought for a moment. " 'Yesterdays'—not the Beatles' one, the one by Jerome Kern. Do you know it?"

  Charlie thought for a moment, shook his head, "I know the Beatles'. Will that do?"

  "It'll do," said Jury, sitting down in the front row with Vivian beside him. He wrapped his arm over the back of her seat.

  As Charlie, twenty-three years old, sang about a day when his troubles had been far away, here in the building where the last briefing for D-Day had taken place, Jury was drawn back to the flat on the Fulham Road, Elicia Deau-ville, and the rubble that once had been his and his mother's parlor.

  He was just as glad he hadn't been there on the moor to see the black-clad arm of Ann Denholme lying against the white backdrop of snow.

  He feared, as the song said, that all his troubles might be here to stay.

  43

  "Toby Holt?" said Melrose. "My God, that shows determination equal only to Agatha's trying to knock off every eligible female in sight."

  Sitting at a table as far from the small stage as he could, Jury smiled. "Thanks for not beginning with 'So Commander Macalvie was right.'" His head was throbbing from a combination of no sleep, Wiggins's report from the hospital, and the slashing licks of Dickie's rendition of "Deja Vu" (determined, according to Stan, to prove he was as fast as Yngwie).

  Melrose squinted through the smoke-filled room. "How did Vivian get here?"

  Jury put his hand to his head as Dickie let go with another ravaging chord progression and wished for once he had access to Wiggins's pocket pharmacy. "It was her idea." He waved his hand toward the blue-lit stage of the Nine-One-Nine, where Vivian, pumps off, was churning and applauding. "Have any of those cigars?"

  "This was Vivian's idea?" Melrose fumbled inside his jacket pocket for his cigar case.

  "One of London's best-kept secrets. One of those underground places you hear about through word-of-mouth, and not much of that. The regulars want to keep it to themselves. Vivian wanted to see the 'real' London."

  "/ don't want to go back to the Ritz and a lot of rich, boring tourists. You must know some nice, sleazy club." To which Jury had said he didn't do much club-hopping. " Well, you must raid them sometimes." She seemed sure he knew every club in London's underbelly.

  "She kept reminding me it's her last night in London. Exact words, 'my last night on English soil.' " He smiled at Melrose.

  "How dramatic." Melrose draped his black dinner jacket with its ribbed satin facing over the wooden chairback. "If we keep her drinking she'll forget and go all the way to Istanbul."

  "I think the Orient Express stops in Venice. They'll chuck her out."

  "Is Wiggins still at hospital?" Jury nodded. Melrose asked, "What's her condition?"

  "As bad as can be expected. Slips in and out of a coma. Wiggins said she was talking like someone in a dream. About Healey, Ann Denholme. Some things we'd deduced."

  "Extortion, blackmail, that sort of thing?"

  Jury swallowed some of th
e club soda. The headache was lessening. "Unfortunately, she chose Rena instead of Charles. 'Pay up or I'll tell his wife about Abby.' My God, she might as well have put a gun to her head as let Rena Citrine know Abby was Roger's daughter."

  "And if Nell Healey had found out about Abby, the Fury would have got the lot, wouldn't she?"

  "The entire inheritance, is my guess."

  "My Lord, but Healey took chances. Involved with two women up there right under his wife's nose? Not to mention Mavis Crewes."

  "I think his involvement with Rena might have been pure greed. And she certainly tried to steer me away from revenge as a motive—wanted me to think it was adultery." Jury shrugged. "But then again, who was she actually with on Bimini? I'm having Wiggins check to see if there's a record of a marriage between Citrine and Littlejohn. Roger might have decided to run through what money Rena had. We'll probably never know. But Rena certainly had expecta-tions insofar as Nell was concerned; Rena was careful to champion her cause, to stick by her." Jury looked through a film of smoke toward the right-hand wall. "I see Trueblood's found a friend."

  Marshall Trueblood had been in the place for all of fifteen minutes and he was already having an animated discussion with Karla. At least, Trueblood's part was animated. Karla was standing in the same spot, in the same position, holding up the wall against which Marshall Trueblood was leaning his elbow, his head against one hand and his other gesticulating wildly. In answer, Karla merely smoked and gave Trueblood the best of her profile. Her lips, otherwise, did not move. Trueblood was wearing a paisley dinner jacket, black cummerbund, and a cerise bow-tie, butterfly fashion, beneath a wing collar.

  "But to try and kill Abby? The very night after Ann Denholme? She had plenty of time for that—" Melrose paused. "No, she wouldn't. Because Nell Healey was to be taken into custody the very next morning. And all three of those killings were to look like her revenge on her husband having not just an affair but a child by that affair."

  "Try to imagine Irene Citrine's state of mind when she walked into Abby's barn and saw that Sirocco poster," Jury said.

  "Why did she recognize him when no one else did? Had he changed that much since he was fifteen?"

  "She was the only one who knew Toby Holt was alive; not even his uncle could be certain. Three years ago the band was playing clubs in the Florida Keys. Remember, she spent several months on Bimini. But it's not only that. It's context Rena saw that poster in a context she could hardly have forgotten. A young man against a tree right beside a view of the Cornwall coast. The only person who could identify her, and he's right here in London."

  "Look at that, would you?" Melrose nodded toward the tiny dance floor. Trueblood and Karla were dancing to a bluesy, jazzy version of "Limehouse Blues." Arms shot straight out to the side and holding each other at arm's length, Karla's hand on Trueblood's shoulder. They were staring into each other's eyes. The other couples on the floor didn't seem to notice and were hanging on to one another for dear life, moving in a hag's dream.

  "Oh, to be young," said Melrose. Then he half-rose from his seat. "Who's Vivian dancing with? If you call it dancing. She's got her arms round his neck."

  "Incidentally, where's your beloved aunt?" He looked round at the door of the Nine-One-Nine, as if Agatha might march through it.

  "In Wanstead somewhere." Melrose was half out of his seat, watching the dance floor.

  "Wanstead? What's she doing in Wanstead?"

  He sat down again. "Because she insisted on coming with us. After you called the hotel, we tried to shake her off and couldn't. Trueblood told her this was a dreadful dive where cocaine and crack dealers met. Nothing would do but Agatha had to come along. So Trueblood and I fixed it up that when the doorman got her into a cab, Trueblood would get in while I bumbled about on the pavement, hand the cabbie an address, and then suddenly remember he'd left his money in his room, get out, slam the door and say, 'Go on without us; we'll be along in a minute.'"

  "You mean you abandoned poor Agatha to wander in Wanstead?"

  "We did not abandon poor Agatha. We're gentlemen, aren't we? There was a note to the cab driver that if he had trouble with the address to drive his fare straight back to the Ritz. Well, of course, he had trouble. There was no such address." Melrose smirked. "We're not heartless, just fast on our feet."

  "Christ," breathed Jury. "Speaking of being fast on your feet, I think I'll cut in." Perhaps it was the soothing sound coming from the old sax player, but his headache had all but disappeared.

  "You mean you dance?"

  "I can certainly do that." He flung his arm toward the floor where the cyanosed couples were hanging onto one another as if rigor were passing off.

  Melrose started to get up. "/ dance. I'm quite expert."

  Jury shoved him down. "What's this to you? You've got your American lady." Jury sat back down again. "Whom, I might add, you actually suspected of these killings. 'I'm glad Ellen's in Yorkshire, I'm glad Ellen's in Yorkshire.' "

  "Shut up. Naturally, I suspected she stayed behind—the only one who did—just to throw us off. That she jumped on that damnable bike ten minutes after we left and careened down the M-one."

  "I'm surprised you didn't call Weavers Hall to check up on her."

  "I did," said Melrose morosely. "She left. Gone. Vanished."

  "Suspecting your lady?" Jury clicked his tongue. "And what would be her connection with the Citrines and Charlie Raine?"

  "The New York—Yawk—connection. Obviously, I couldn't sort out a motive. And who says she's my 'lady'?"

  Jury took out several color brochures stamped Shane Street Travel and dumped them on the table. "The Chrysler Building fell out of your coat."

  Melrose snatched them up. "The place was near the Armani shop. I just popped in for a moment."

  "Um-hmm." Jury stood up. "If you pop off the QE Two or the Concorde in New Yawk, you'll have to walk a hell of a long way. She's from Maryland."

  Melrose stopped in the act of stuffing the travel agent's agenda back in his pocket. "What? Don't be ridiculous. What makes you think—"

  Like a sleight-of-hand artist, Jury now dropped a book on the table. Sauvage Savant, paperback edition. He flipped open the back cover. The picture of Ellen was taken on a windy day and she looked exactly as she had the first . . .

  and last time he saw her. Jury tapped the caption. "Baltimore." He smiled.

  Casually, Melrose drew his cigarette case out, tapped a cigarette before lighting it and said, "I knew the accent was a put-on. No one really talks like that."

  44

  Against the splendid backdrop of the brown and cream Pullman cars of the Orient Express, Vivian stood self-consciously smiling as Jury and Melrose took turns with the camera. Vivian alone; Vivian with Jury; Vivian with Melrose; Vivian with Trueblood's hands positioned bat-wing-like behind her head (of which, Vivian, smiling self-consciously, was unaware). Vivian with Agatha; Agatha alone; Agatha alone; Agatha alone—snap, snap, snap, snap.

  Compared with Vivian's flawlessly cut and fluid creamy-wool dress and brimmed hat, her fellow travelers, walking by with chins high, pretending they weren't attracting attention, looked as if they'd been turned out by some of the Princess's favorite designers—Worth, Mme. Vionnet, Chanel, even Lady Duff Gordon, with their long draped skirts, printed velvets and silks, crepe-de-chines and low-slung waistlines, fluttering printed scarves, ropes of pearls, cloche hats and headbands. They might have been headed for a 'twenties bistro.

  The gentlemen were no less dressed to the nines in peacock blue and salmon striped jackets, doeskin trousers, bottle-green waistcoats and double-breasted dark blue reefers aplenty. In the midst of them, Marshall Trueblood, who had turned up with Karla on his arm (or he on hers, given the difference in their heights) was absolutely the quintessence of taste amongst all of the (what he called) "reefer madness." He was wearing his new Armani jacket with its low-sloping shoulders and loose-cut sleeves. Armani's clothes always had that comfortable, broken-in look from the very momen
t one put them on. Melrose almost wished he'd bought more. Would he cut a swathe in the Jack and Hammer, looking comfortable and creased?

  He heard his name barked. Agatha, again, positioned by the gold crest on the Pullman car, looked fairly broken-in herself after her sojourn in Wanstead, for which she said she'd never speak to them again. Unfortunately, she never kept her word and here she was yelling, "Trueblood! Leave that person and come here for another picture."

  That person, Karla. who evinced no interest in the handsome people or the handsomely appointed train compartments—the little tables set for luncheon, the upholstery, the passengers in motley—wandered off to stand against the wall of the cafe and smoke the Eternal Cigarette. Given her marvelous shingled haircut and that same sheared-up dress that fell at odd angles, she was a natural for the present company. Karla stood, staring off across the tracks of Victoria Station as if she'd only been looking for a wall to hold up.

  Melrose instructed Agatha (who'd put herself firmly in the middle of the camera's lens) to move away from Jury over to the end because given Jury's height (and her girth, he didn't add) she'd look like a toad. That moved her. Melrose carefully adjusted the camera's prospect to cut her out, although the ostrich feather in her hat managed to land in front of Trueblood's chin.

  It was exactly ten-forty and the passengers were lining up in the reception area, and people bound for their second-class seats on other, less-colorful platforms flowed round this elite group, some smiling at the peacock clothes, some shaking their heads as if to dismiss this homage to rampant conspicuous consumption.

  The Orient Express personnel, most in brown livery, wore smiles that betokened the most personal service this side of

  Charing Cross Hospital's intensive-care unit. They were presently seeing to the tickets and luggage.

  Melrose spotted the tag on Vivian's single trunk. "Good Lord, Vivian, is this all? The one trunk? What it holds wouldn't last Agatha a day in Harrogate." Agatha was going, she said, straight back to Harrogate, was going to hail a cab ('Wo, Mr. Trueblood, I do not need your help!") and zip straight to Waterloo as soon as the Orient Express chugged out, spot on eleven. She had told Melrose that she had no intention of accompanying him back to Long Piddleton, not after last night. He must suffer the consequences of his tricks.