Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (28 page)

Until Abby cleared her throat, he hadn't realized she'd come up
behind him. "Ummm." He cocked his head this way and that and said, "She
looks sticky-sweet. And she also looks underneath as if she'd dump that
basin of milk over that black cat that's clawing her dress."

"That's Ethel," said Abby. She walked away.

Jury's eye took in the rest of the barn at this end: the corner with
the cot and the crate that held a stash of books and comics. "May I
look at your books?"

"Yes," she called over to him. "But I wouldn't look at
Jane Eyre
."

"No? Why not?"

"If you want to be sick."

But
Jane Eyre
seemed to have got some rather thorough
handling, despite its sick-making propensities. He leafed through it
and saw the many downturned tips of pages. It was a heavy old volume,
illustrated.

"This one's better," she said, kneeling down to remove the black
drape from the box that Jury could see now had held boots. She lifted
the lid and pulled out a small book. "Mrs. Healey gave it to me. Her
aunt brought it. I wish she'd come instead."

It was the book of poetry Nell Healey had been holding when he saw
her on the path. And it was a duplicate of the one in Billy Healey's
room. He thumbed through it. Many of the same markings were there, and
the same notes in the margins. "This looks like it might have been a
favorite book."

"It was." She took it back, returned it to the box, refitted the
black cover.

Jury frowned. "Why do you keep it in there?"

"It's a hiding place. Come on." She rose and pulled at him, still
crouched down.

"Why is the box covered in black, then?"

"Because it's for Buster's funeral. She died."

She
? "Was she a pet?"

"My cat."

Jury was fascinated. "Did you bury her?" Abby seemed surrounded by
death.

"Not yet.
Come
on."

Back at the table, he watched her pour milk into her cup and add
four teaspoons of sugar. She poured the same amount of milk into his
and added the same four teaspoons of sugar.

Silence seemed to crowd him as they each took a sip from their mugs
and then sat back looking into the milky depths as if some tea-leaf
fortune might be forming down there. The Queen might not make a proper
tea, but Abby had at least torn the tea bags open and tapped the loose
tea into the pot. It was covered with a towel in lieu of a cozy. Jury's
mug had a picture of Winchester Cathedral on it.

Abby lifted her head to look straight ahead of her and Jury followed
her gaze. She was plucking at her shawl and staring at the little cot
enclosure, the bookcase or, he thought, above it at the massive framed
print.

"Where did you get that one, Abby?"

She looked away. "Billy's mum. Mrs. Healey." Then she turned a dark
look on him. "You never found him."

Her look did not suggest she was holding him personally responsible.
But he was a policeman and he must bear the weight of the failure of
his fellows. "I know."

"He's gone. He's dead. He was my friend, him and Toby. We used to
play a lot over there at his house. We climbed trees."

In the starved orchard. Yet, she could have been no more than three
or four.

"So now I guess I get sent to Lowood School," she said, sitting
stiffly. He opened his mouth to reply but she didn't give him a chance.
"Well, if they think I'm stupid like Jane Eyre, they'll see. There's
noheadmaster that's going to hang a cardboard round my neck." Her eyes
narrowed, her mouth tightened, as if the grisly scene were being
enacted right before her. "And if they think they're going to make
me
walk round and round out in the rain like that dumb Helen—" Swiftly she
fired a glance at Jury. "Stranger'll be outside that wall and he'll get
me out. I'm not walking round and coughing in the rain." Here she
mimicked a coughing fit. "And
then
that Helen just lies in
bed dying and smiling like the angels are all sitting there feeding her
Kit-Kats." Furiously, she shook the black bobbed hair. "It sounds like
Ethel."

How long had she sat beneath that lamp poring over the details,
hearing the rain on the old barn roof, the rain in the courtyard, the
rain in her mind?

Jury looked at the collie, sitting up, its ear perked, sensitive to
some sign of distress. "This dog looks smart enough to save anyone."

Abby was collecting the plates. "Except Jane Eyre. Nothing's smart
enough to save her. She's hopeless." She held her cup as if it were a
great weight in her rounded hands.

"Like Ethel," said Jury. The corners of her mouth quirked upward.

Jury looked at the painting on the wall on the other side of the
barn. It was large enough that the details were clear. "I like your
painting."

Putting down the plates, she said, "It's my favorite." After a
little silence while both looked at it, she said, "Why's it dark at the
bottom with that house and those black trees like it's night, and the
sky's blue above like it's day?"

Jury shook his head. "I'm not sure," he said. Her expression told
him he'd better come up with something better than that.

Her voice rang out, "It's like a church."

"I don't see what you mean."

Abby leaned closer. "The
tall tree
looks like a
steeple
."

He cocked his head, staring at the painting. "No, I don't think so."
He felt her sidewise glance, heard her chair scrape back. Then she
marched round the table to stand directly in front of him, the table
between. "A steeple," she said again, raising her arms and pressing the
palms of her hands together to illustrate, her cheeks glowing with the
intensity of her conviction. Jury moved his head to see the painting,
but she did a sidestep that blocked his line of vision. She had made
her point, taken her stand, and no comparison with the real article was
necessary.

Jury blinked under the sheer force of her blue eyes.

When he didn't respond, she dropped her arms. Then she came round
the table and clenched his sweater sleeve, pulling at him. "Come
on
!"
He allowed himself to be yanked from the bench at the same time she
made a clicking sound with her tongue, and the dog rose immediately,
alert. She was to deal a stunning blow to this man's perceptive powers,
and a witness was needed. Stranger followed.

The three of them faced the painting, "Empire of Light." Since she
was to be guide in this museum, he let her continue:

"There's that streetlamp. It's right in the middle." Then she was
silent.

He glanced down at her, saw she was chewing her lip, her arms folded
tightly across her chest, her fingers plying the loose threads of
shawl. Stranger looked up at Jury looking down as if he too wondered
how this would extend her church analogy.

"You're right about the streetlamp and the lighted windows." His
eye traveled from the night below to the day above, a sky of light but
vibrant blue, a pattern of white clouds drifting, and he wondered about
the limits of his own mind. Of his compulsion to turn a whole into
parts, into symbols and emblems. It was his job, in a way. The whole he
couldn't see; he worked with bits of mirror, slivers of light.
What
was he last seen wearing? Identifying marks? Routine investigation
.
The streetlamp was the focus here; but if you looked at it too long,
would it suddenly switch off? The painting hung in comfortable silence,
perfectly accessible if one looked at it the right way.

Her voice, in a higher register, broke into his thoughts, insistent:
"It's better than Lowood School." Turning sharply, she stumped over to
her crate-bookcase and hefted
Jane Eyre
to her chest with one
arm, the other hand, finger wetted, shuffling through the pages with a
furious energy of its own. Proof found, she marched back. "Here." She
shoved the book forward, her finger stabbing the face of the master. He
was thrashing a child with his cane.

The picture spoke for itself. Wordlessly, she sat down on a milking
stool, head bent as she flailed through this awful book, searching out
further horrors.

Jury kept his eye on the painting as he said, "They can't send you
to Lowood School. You're too important."

Immediately, the rustle of pages stopped. He could feel her looking
at him, but when he turned his head, her own head dropped her face
almost flat against the open book, as she traced a line with her finger
and pretended not to hear him.

He said, "Perhaps you'll live in the 'Empire of Light.' " That he
knew would be a notion so outrageously exciting that she could quarrel
it down.

Her head snapped up and the beguiling look of
patience-being-tested-to-its-limits returned. If he was such a nit, she
would have to be practical for both of them. "
People
can't
live in
pictures
." She then lowered her head and sifted
through the pages until she found another illustration to live in.

"It's not as nice as your barn, but it might be just as real. You
might be living in one of those lit-up rooms." He nodded toward the
painting.

"If it was real, you can bet Ethel would be living in the other
one," she said to the book in her lap. "Besides, it's dark there."

"Very dark in some way." He walked over and sat down in a rocker.
From his pocket he drew a packet of Orbit gum. Sliding a stick out, he
said to the crown of her head (still bent over the book), "Would you
like some?"

Abby looked at it, took the stick and seemed to study it to see if
it was her brand, thanked him, and then took a dented metal box from
the crate. She lifted the lid and put the gum inside. The box rattled
as she returned it to the shelf. "He's all right, I expect," she said,
turning the book so that Jury could see the illustration of the doctor
who (the caption read) had come to tend Helen.

"Yes." He rocked for a moment, as he watched her roll the page from
the corner down, first with her finger, then with the palm of her hand,
slowly. "Well, I can tell you something else that will probably happen,
though it's not nearly as good as the 'Empire of Light.' Happen to you,
I mean." Jury shoved a stick of gum into his mouth and waited as her
face came slowly up. "It's much better than Lowood School, though you
still might not like it much." He scratched his head. She put the book
on the bed. "You see, your Aunt Ann owned the Hall. Now it belongs to
you."

She snapped shut
Jane Eyre
as she had the lid of the metal
box. Her face, for the first time, melted into a childlike, wide-eyed
surprise. "I can't. I don't own anything except Stranger and the things
in here." She shoved the book away and absently started scratching
behind Stranger's ear, which had perked when the dog heard its name. "I
don't own anything," she repeated, and her face whitened with the
dreadful thought of something she couldn't handle dropped in her lap
like the book she'd just discarded.

"You'll be able to do anything you want, almost."

"I have enough as it is." She retrieved the metal box and held it on
her lap, her hands locked over the top.

"You wouldn't really have to do much. Nothing would really change.
Cook would still be here, and Mrs. Braith-waite. And Ruby."

Quickly, she looked up at him, her eyes narrowed as if assessing the
desirability of Ruby staying on as one of her staff. Then she said, "I
know one thing. If I owned this place, there's certain people would
have to leave."

"Such as?"

"Malcolm!" Again, she managed to turn her face to putty by pulling
down on her cheeks with her fingers so that the red underlids of her
eyes were visible.

"He tried to kill my other cat. The earl saved it. I expect he's all
right."

Jury thought she meant the cat until the lid of the box came up and,
after rummaging about, she handed over a card. It was one of Plant's.
Title, address. A trifle nicked round one edge because Lord Ardry was
no longer Lord Ardry and he carried them only for emergencies. Jury
smiled. "I know him. He's definitely all right." He handed back the
card.

Abby took it absently, pondering over whatever valuables she had
inside the box. She drew out a locket and held it swinging hypnotically
from its golden chain. "Billy's mum gave it to me."

It was pure gold, twenty or twenty-two carat, he thought. Jury
snapped it open and saw, side-by-side in a double frame, two boys
looking out at him. That they resembled one another was owing to the
slightly fuzzy sepia tint of the photos, to their similar smiles and
sweaters. Another look told him that the one on the right was older.
Four years would make quite a difference at eleven and fifteen. What a
treasure, he thought, for Nell Healey to give away.

Jury said, "It's Billy and Toby, isn't it?"

"We were all best friends. I always went over there to play with
them and climb the trees. From the top of the highest one—it's this
big
giant tree—I could see everywhere." She raised her eyes, looked at the
old beams of the high roof, and grew almost breathless thinking about
it. "
Everywhere
. All of the moors and Haworth. Goose Eye and
Keighley. Even Leeds," she added, considerably expanding her horizon.
"I've never been there," she added flatly, and sifted again through the
box.

How much was remembrance and how much fantasy?

Jury handed back the necklace and, wordlessly, as if this were a
solemn rite of exchange, Abby handed over a white envelope, dirty
around the edges with fingering. The inscription was written in
flowing letters, the postmark was faded. He could make out
Venezio
and the year. It was the same year that Billy and Toby had disappeared.
The notecard inside was a duplication of the Magritte print.

He looked up. She shrugged its importance off and said, "You can
read it."