Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (38 page)

She told Melrose he needn't do the drying, but she was obviously
pleased that a guest was doing scullery work and taking the load off
her narrow shoulders.

Indeed, no one (including himself) had paid any more attention to
Ruby Cuff than one would a lamp or a chair. He put the platter by and
chose something smaller—a teacup. Police had asked Ruby a few
rudimentary questions, but perhaps because Mrs. Braithwaite was clearly
the head of the staff and had been there the longest, Ruby had been
given short shrift. Ruby had that straight-up-and-down, tightly laced
and buttonhooked look that made it hard to tell if she were twenty or
forty. Had she been a beauty—like the Princess—this ageless limbo would
have served her well.

"Ruby, how long have you been employed by Miss Denholme?"

"Near ten year, sir." This seemed to please her. "You needn't dry
this," she said, holding up a big roasting pan.

Melrose had no intention of doing so as he watched her place it on
the rack.

"But then you must have known Miss Denholme quite well."

She looked less pleased at having to admit she didn't. "You needn't
try getting that bit of stain out of the egg cup. The Princess stuffed
out a cigarette in it. It's the Major's."

"I take it that's why she did it." The egg cup had stubby legs and
blue-dotted shoes. He frowned at it.

The smile did nothing to light up her plain features. "Cats and dogs
they are."

"I expect police asked you about your relationship with Miss
Denholme?" He redried the egg cup by way of avoiding the cutlery and
especially the heavy skillet.

"Well, they asked how long I been here and did I know anyone'd got
anything against her."

"Of course, there wouldn't be: I mean, no one you knew of?"

Since he'd appeared to have answered his own question, she saw no
reason to answer it again and just kept on running a rag around a
dented kettle.

Melrose sighed and picked up another egg cup. It had shoes, too,
yellow ones. He had a vision of egg cups, hundreds of them, marching
down Oxford Street. Blinking it away, he wondered how Jury got them to
talk—the suspects, the witnesses, the children, dogs, cats. Grass,
trees . . . Don't be absurd; you're just jealous. "Did Miss Taylor
happen to mention when she'd be back?" Melrose hadn't meant to give
voice to this speculation; it would throw him off target.

"No, sir." Ruby wiped a strand of hair back from her forehead.
"She's a strange one, ain't she? Do they all dress like that in New
York City?"

"Yes." He certainly had better not get into defending Ellen Taylor
or her clothes or he'd never get anything out of Ruby. He gave the
shoes another shine and watched Ruby bailing the water out of the
plastic tub. Then, after she'd plucked another tea towel from a drawer
and reached for the skillet, he beat her to it. That's what Jury would
do. He'd have done
all
the washing up. "No, Ruby, you've been
working too hard. Just have a rest." The skillet seemed to weigh a ton.
Had he been in charge of a kitchen he'd have thrown all the heavy stuff
straight out and used those plastic disposable things.

Ruby beamed—if the expression could be called that on her pudding
face—and let out a martyred sigh and announced as how she needed a
sit-down.

She made herself a mug of tea from the low-boiling kettle on the hob
and took a rocking chair by the fire where she sipped and was silent.

"Well, I certainly admire you, Ruby.
You"
(a slight
emphasis here) "don't crumble in a crisis." No response but a
self-satisfied little smile and a few more sighs. Martyrdom sat well on
the maid. "A horrible thing to happen," Melrose went on. "Horrible. And
on the moor. One wouldn't expect something like that out there."

She shrugged. "Moor's as good a place as any. Better. No one about
to see him do it."

Him
? He had set down the half-dried skillet and was now
half-drying the pot. "You think it was a man?"

With a slightly incredulous stare, she said, "Well, it warn't no
woman to do a thing like that."

"You mean a
woman
wouldn't? But Mrs. Healey . . ." He
tossed down the tea towel, ignoring the cutlery.

"Well, I didn't mean that." She shook her head. "Mrs. Healey doing
that ..." She shook her head in wonder. "
That
was a surprise.
I don't know her, mind you, not to talk to. She is a cool one. Though
she did like Abby. Always bringing her things, she was."

Melrose came over to stand by the fireplace. "You say
that

was surprising as if you weren't especially surprised by Miss
Denholme's murder. And you said you didn't mean 'that'— that a woman
mightn't have done it. What did you mean?"

Resolutely, Ruby clamped her lips like a penurious old lady snapping
her purse shut.

He oughtn't to have been so direct. Now her eyes were beginning to
close. "You know, it's rather odd Miss Denholme never married. She
certainly was an attractive woman." Ruby's eyes opened, studying him
carefully. "As a matter of fact"—he laughed artificially—"she had a bit
of the, ah ... well, no speaking ill of the dead and that sort of
thing." His smile glittered, he hoped, like his green eyes. They had at
least been said to glitter by those who didn't compare them with scarab
beetles.

"Meaning her ways with men?" Ruby's smile was thin and a little
mean. "Well, there was plenty of them to dance attendance."

At last his efforts were paying off. "Around
here
?" He
laughed again. "It's a bit of a wasteland for romance, isn't it?'

"I never said romance. I do the rooms, you know."

With that elliptical statement and a crimped, probably jealous
little smile, she was off for her own lie-down.

Ruby Cuff had a prurient mind, thank God. Ann Denholme had not
apparently drawn the line at her own guests.

And who else? Melrose was wondering now, as he looked fretfully out
of the front room window and yet again checked his watch. Nearly nine
o'clock and no Ellen. No Abby, either. He'd just been down to the barn
three times after his talk with Ruby and no sign of her.

He settled down with a large brandy to think, trying to console
himself with the notion that Abby was totally unpredictable and was
out with Stranger digging out sheep, or something.

Except no more snow had fallen.

Indeed, it had been melting. But it must be sheep.

A blind cast.

Abby lowered her head on her folded arms and wished she'd paid more
attention to Mr. Nelligan. A blind cast had to be the hardest thing to
do and she didn't even know where Stranger was.

Tim nosed at her hair and whimpered. Abby raised her head and looked
squarely into the eyes of this dog she'd always thought of as a lazy
layabout, although she knew it was Ethel's fault. Ethel never tried to
train him, no wonder. The only commands he'd ever heard he'd got came
from Abby—

So it might be possible, even a blind cast. Right now, looking into
Tim's sparkling eyes, she was willing enough to swallow all the tales
of Babylon, Summertime, and impeccable breeding. Abby curled her
fingers in Tim's coat and tried to bore, mentally, into his mind. Sheer
concentration was the trick. She'd been at a lot of sheepdog trials and
she'd seen what those dogs could do. She had seen the best of them head
off a mob of sheep without getting a single command.

If Tim had all that royal blood in him, even if he hadn't been a
working dog since Ethel got her little white uncal-lused hands on him,
still, blood was blood and you didn't forget how to do what you'd been
born to do. The Queen of England would never
forget
how to be
a queen; it was like bicycle riding.

The night had grown colder, the moon surrounded by mist, the stone
walls insurmountable. Her mouth was frozen more with fear than cold,
her waterproof crusty with rime, her hair straggly-wet with mist.

But she was
not
going to be like Jane Eyre's friend Helen
and go round and round in a ring in sopping rain and soppy obedience to
her torturers, a saint among devils.

Stranger. Well, she was going to believe he was out there waiting
for a signal. Way off, the sheep were dotted about the hillside. It was
more difficult now, the moon having gone misty, to see them, how
distant, how far-flung. Mr. Nelligan, despite his habits, never seemed
to lose one and he had over a hundred and fifty. ... It seemed an
impossible task; her heart hammered.

Then she heard—this time a little closer—the sort of rock-chinking
noise someone might make scaling a wall. She turned slowly in her
hideout and raised her eyes to see, over the shooting butt, a black
mass slowly rising above the dry-stone.

Abby dropped her eyes, turned back to stare at Tim, the energy that
had stoked her rage now massed like a fiery ball into sheer
concentration. She would move Tim out to the right where he'd have at
least the protection of a white backdrop, what was left of the bank of
snow against the long hedgerow.

Very slowly and softly she said to Tim, "Away to me."

Tim jerked up, turned, and streaked toward the snowy rise where he
turned right again and ran like a white projectile to the far moorland.

Abby huddled down. She didn't think the Gun would waste a cartridge
(and also give away his or her own position) by shooting at a fleeing
dog.

Thus the crack of the rifle shot totally disoriented her for a
second; her mind whirled with the explosion of it; a terrifying noise
that could have blown up every living thing on the moor, could have
blown up the moors themselves. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Yet one part of her mind was still and told her to take advantage of
the second's aftermath of that shot. With her eyes still shut, she
stuck her fingers in the corners of her mouth and whistled. It was so
piercing that she knew it would carry as far as the rim of the hill,
way off.

Then it was quiet. Abby opened her eyes to see that Tim was still
streaking toward the far fields.

The Gun had missed.

The Gun was a fool and Abby, in her excitement, was almost getting
up to shout it out, to tell whoever it was:
You missed, you
missed, screw you, you bloody, stupid sleazeball
. Sleazeball was
one of Ellen's best words.

Everything was quiet now.

Tim was alive; she was alive; the moors remained.

Melrose moved the Braine woman's lap desk, still with cards
outspread, and slouched down in the deep armchair that she had staked
out as her territory.

He had the Tarot and Malcolm's portable stereo for company. The
Magician stared up at him; the stereo squawked lightly and
indecipherably with one of Malcolm's
oo-ah-oh-oh-oh
teeny-bopping tunes. He reached over and pushed the stop/eject button
and looked over the several tapes to see who this brain-curdling group
was. BROS. The picture in the empty plastic box showed four very young
men who looked like they'd just graduated from the Beavers. He found
the Lou Reed tape and slotted that in, turned up the volume, and leaned
back to think.

Caroline says
—
while biting her lip

Melrose had to admit to a fascination with Caroline's chronicle,
with her drugged-out, crazy, wasted life. All of the songs were about
Caroline, he was certain, though her name came up in only two. Caroline
and her lover or husband and their marriage made in hell.

it's so cold in A-las-ka it's so cold in A-las-ka

Endless snowy wastes. Melrose got up and went to the window again
and saw the moon cast an ambient light across the misty courtyard.
Where could the girl be but on the moors? Suddenly, he thought of Mr.
Nelligan and relief flooded him for a few moments. Abby was probably
sitting in Mr. Nelligan's van warming herself with a cup of cocoa at
the very moment Caroline was being beaten.

But he didn't really believe it and walked morosely back to the
armchair. Absently, he rolled the brandy around the balloon glass and
thought about Ann Denholme. Ann Denholme sitting on his bed. Ruby's
comments. The persistent beat of the most depressing of the songs

they're taking her children away

because they said she was not a good mother

A relentless dirge of guitar chords. It mimicked the repetitive,
meaningless sexual encounters of Caroline—army officers, incest, she
drew the line at nothing. He half-smiled thinking of Major George
Poges. But even given Ruby's hints of Ann Denholme's promiscuity,
Melrose couldn't imagine her trying it out on Poges.

miserable rotten slut couldn't turn anyone away

Up again, he paced round the room. He stopped, went out into the
hall, looked at the boots lined up there, and noticed the Princess's
ermine-lined ones were missing. Perhaps she'd decided to dine with
Poges after all.

What was a woman like that, with her printed velvets and figured
satins, her Worths and Lady Duff Gordons . . . what was she doing here?

He returned to the front room and the fireplace and leaned his head
down on his folded arms. Police. Should he call them. About what? No
one else was in the slightest way concerned that Abby hadn't eaten her
tea. He sighed and paced.

Charles Citrine. Charles Citrine was a regular visitor to Weavers
Hall. ... It was ridiculous to jump to such a conclusion. He knew the
man only through that brief meeting. Still.

Ann Denholme had got a phone call; she'd left and been walking in
the direction of that house. When he'd stopped by on his way from
Harrogate, had he seen that cloaked figure against the sky taking the
same route?

But if Charles Citrine had rung up, if he were the one waiting on
the moor, why? Or one of the others in that household—Nell Healey or
her aunt. Had Charles Citrine thought to marry Ann Denholme?
Inheritance couldn't be a motive. Had the sister, Rena, hope of her
brother's money? According to Jury they didn't get on. And Nell Healey
was far richer than her father. If not money, what?