Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (4 page)

"Just go on, Brian."

"And she said, 'I think you're right; don't pay it.' And then she
turned back to the window. Here I thought she wasn't taking in
anything, that she was in shock, that—well, let me tell you, that got
to me, that did. Apparently, she'd been taking it all in: Goodall's
speech, the others' yelling, her old man's intentions—all of it. And
hell broke loose. I thought Roger Healey would throttle her right then
and there. It was the exact opposite scenario, wasn't it? You see all
these films where the wife is wild, tearful, pleading for the rational
husband to pay, pay, pay."

"But he didn't. I don't understand, if it was two against one."

"It could have been a dozen against one. She had the money."

Jury sat up suddenly. "I thought it was Roger Healey's or the
father's money."

"No way. Those two had some, sure. Healey had a little, Charles
Citrine quite a bit of his own. But not five million, not
that
kind of money. It wasn't them the kidnappers were holding up; it was
the stepmother.
She
had the money. Her mother Helen's money,
apparently, a fortune. Some left to the husband—but he had his own,
anyway—a bequest to the sister-in-law, the rest to her daughter."

It was true that the accounts said that the Citrine-Healey family
had refused to pay the ransom. Not which one of them. Charles Citrine
had been the spokesman; therefore, the assumption was that it was his
considered opinion that the police were right; paying the money would
do nothing to insure his grandson's safety. Indeed, it might jeopardize
it.

Jury's head was in his hand; he was thinking of Nell Hea-ley,
remembering those hours during which he'd followed her.

"Eight years later," said Macalvie, "she kills her husband. Why?"

Rubbing his hand through his hair as if that might wake up his
brain, Jury said, "I don't know, Macalvie."

Another silence. "That is one awesome lady, Jury."

Thus did Nell Healey join the ten percent of the population
Divisional Commander Macalvie could live with.

The narrow house in the street in Mayfair was flanked by a jeweler
and an art dealer, both of them so pricey that each shop window
displayed only a single piece: a sapphire necklace that seemed to
float above its crystal display pole; and, in the art dealer's, a
single painting in a heavy gilt frame suspended by nearly invisible
wires. Mayfair itself seemed suspended in some dimension that escaped
the pull of gravity.

Inside the offices of Smart Publishing, Jury found another dimension
of light and muted sound—sylvan music piping from hidden speakers that
went well with walls painted watery yellow; the rooms, the hallway
were relieved only by an off-white that shaded into the pale color. It
had the look of meringue, possibly conceived by the editor of the
cookery column.

From what Jury could tell in the reception room where he sat
thumbing through
Segue
, there were two other magazines—a
glossy one called
Travelure
, and an artier number called
New
Renascence
. He loved that title. It was devoted to, or divided
between, haunts and habitats of the moneyed. Interiors filled with
marble, mauve curtains, Kirman carpets, and gloved servants; al fresco
scenes by sun-beaded pools; acres of landscaped gardens and
deep-shadowed paths through cypress and lacy willows, made for trysts
and meditations. A world, in other words, that existed nowhere except
between the covers of
New Renascence
.

Segue
was by far the most serious of the three, in addition
to being the most expensive, the richest and glossiest. No tales of the
buskers' lot here, Jury was sure. On the cover was a serious-looking,
serious-minded cellist against a backdrop of blue velvet. Jury was
trying to place the name, but giving up because he knew he'd never
really heard of the cellist, when the receptionist walked in with a cup
of coffee. Bone china, not plastic.

She stopped short and asked him his business. He told her he had an
appointment to see Mr. Martin Smart. When that failed to budge her, he
added (after shoving his warrant card forward), or anyone else who just
happened to know Roger Healey—did she, for instance? That sent her
quickly to her desk, where the china cup and saucer rattled as she
picked up the interoffice phone.

Having got the okay, she said, in a high, strident voice that
detracted from a soft, mellow body, that she would take him to Mr.
Smart. Three flights up, and they hadn't a lift.

He followed her from staircase to staircase. Her hips swayed nicely
beneath the gray silk dress whose shadows shimmered and dissolved as
she moved. Otherwise, everything about her seemed to come to points:
the tips of her breasts and the tips of her shoes; her chin, her tilted
eyes, the wing shape made stronger by artful application of kohl liner;
her glimmering hairdo of shellacked, highlighted spikes. She reminded
Jury of a small, rocky promontory. As he followed down the hall of the
top floor, he felt a pang; it was poignant in a way; for she now
reminded him of a thirteen-year-old getting herself up in an older
sister's garb, who would have been excessively pretty had she not tried
to be glamorous.

She stood at the doorway of Mr. Smart's office, which was empty of
Mr. Smart, and said, "He'll be here in just a minute."

Jury nodded. "Thanks." When Jury smiled at her, she smiled herself,
but uncertainly, and kept her hand on the porcelain doorknob, swinging
the door slightly back and forth, biting her lip, perhaps thinking she
might linger there herself for the moment of Mr. Smart's absence. She
had very small white teeth. Definitely thirteen, he decided, even
though she was thirty.

Jury seated himself in a pricey-looking leather chair that seemed,
in its softness, to fold around him. The dark green walls stenciled in
old gold beneath an old gold molding, the floor-to-ceiling bookcases,
the library steps, the mahogany escritoire that housed a wet-bar, the
massive desk, the Italian leather furniture all struck Jury as
expecting the imminent return of the CEO. The desk itself was piled
with papers and magazines, all artfully arranged in stand-and-deliver
stacks. Jury craned his neck to look at the wet-bar. No cat in there;
Mr. Smart had settled instead for Courvoisier and hand-cut crystal. The
whole office looked hand-cut. Indeed it was the most bespoken-appearing
room Jury had ever seen—everything measured, trimmed, and cut to
precise tastes.

Jury turned and half rose when one of the personnel (the only one
not dressed to the nines that Jury had seen in these offices) stalked
in, leaving in his wake a trail of papers, plunked the rest on the
desk, and turned to leave, nodding to Jury.

At least Jury thought he had turned to leave. Instead he folded his
arms under sweaty armpits and asked Jury what he wanted, in an
abstracted and rather unfriendly tone. But before Jury could answer,
he'd navigated the lake of the desk, sat down, and reduced everything
on it to a shambles within five seconds.

Martin Smart made annoyed clicking sounds with his tongue, murmured
he wished to hell she'd leave his stuff alone, how was he supposed to
find a goddamn thing? The ordered desk files became a swimming mass.
Apparently satisfied, he stuffed a cold-looking, rather shredded stump
of cigar in his mouth, folded his arms, and sent papers aflutter as his
arms clamped down on them. He said to Jury, "Something I can do for
you? Oh, don't bother with that."

Jury had bent in his chair to pick up a few of the orphaned papers
that Smart had left in his wake.

"I can find them easier if they're down there. What can I do for
you?" he repeated, round his cold cigar. He seemed to be running his
hands underneath the papers searching for matches, gave it up, opened a
drawer, peered in, gave that up, and asked Jury if he'd like a drink.

"No, thanks. Like a light?"

Smart yanked the cigar from his mouth, looked at its unpleasant
condition, shrugged and said, "Why bother?" He put it down on the
papers. "You're a superintendent, right?"

"Right."

Mr. Smart pursed his lips and shook his head in wonder. "How'd you
get that high? Wha'd'ya have to do to get way up there?"

He sounded genuinely interested, as if he were either doing a bio
on Jury or thinking of applying for a job with the C.I.D.

"It's not the rarefied air you might imagine. Chief superintendent,
assistants to commissioner, and the commissioner himself. They're all
above me. No one's above you."

Martin Smart seemed to like this analogy. He smiled broadly. "Wrong.
You're forgetting the readers." He squinted, leaned over his mess of
papers, and said, "Superintendent Jury. Jury, Jury, Jury." He tapped a
staccato beat with his index fingers. "Where've I heard that name? Oh,
hell. You were the one at that place up in West Yorkshire when—"

"Roger Healey was shot." Jury couldn't somehow bring himself to say
murdered
.

Smart clapped his hand to his forehead. He made a quick turn in his
leather swivel chair, rolled it over to the green-curtained window bay,
sat like a patient in a wheelchair staring out from his hospital
prison, then turned and inched the chair back. "Roger." He found a
cigarette and a silver-brushed lighter that had managed to go missing
under a cover of old
Segue
copies. "Hell."

"You were close to him, were you?"

"Not exactly. He wasn't a staffer; he was a contributor. But
absolutely one of the best. First rate. A few times he'd bring in a
piece and we'd talk. A nice man. A really nice man. Old Alice out
there"—he poked his cigarette toward the hall—"had a real thing for
him. All the women did. Well, he was nice to them, wasn't he? Bring
round flowers and candy." He knocked some ash from his cigarette with
the tip of his little finger. "A damned bloody shame, that was. No one
can figure it out."

"Did you ever meet Mrs. Healey?"

"Never did, no."

"Any of your staff know Roger Healey? Aside from the flowers and
candy?" Jury smiled to take the bite from his tone.

"Might ask Mavis. Mavis Crewes." He leaned back and stared up at the
rococo ceiling molding with a frown that suggested he had no idea who'd
done the fancy plastering job or why. "Mavis, Mavis, Mavis."

Martin Smart seemed to have a ritualistic fascination with names.
"Who's she, and where?" Jury had his notebook out.

"Managing editor of
Travelure
. Isn't that a hell of a
name? I wanted to call it
Travel
, period. Our marketing
people—and Mavis, of course—argued there must be a dozen going under
that name." He flashed Jury a smile. "Find one. Find one that isn't
tarted up with something in the name that's to make you think you're
heading for the end of the rainbow. So I suggested calling it
Holy
Grail
. You know, I honestly think they'd have bought it. Anyway,
Mavis is good at her job; she's been thirty years in the business. I
leave her alone."

The implication was that he was happy to have Mavis leave
him
alone. "Is she here today?"

Again Smart's eyes lifted to the ornamental ceiling as he shook his
head. "I told her she could work at home whenever she wanted.
Naturally, she travelures a lot of the time. She's big on Africa.
Kenya. So forth. Her husband was a safari nut. She lives somewhere near
Kensington Gardens. Old Alice can give you the address. Hold it." Smart
hit the intercom, got old Alice, and scribbled down the information.
"Here." He handed the address to Jury. Then he sat scratching his
fingers through his hair, hard, making a spiky, stand-up mess of it. It
appeared to be his way of reducing stress, something like Churchill and
his ten-minute naps. "Since it's clear that the wife murdered him, why
are you here? I don't understand."

"Just trying to tie up a few loose ends."

"Having to do with Roger?"

"Not only Mr. Healey."

"Pretty soon you're going to say 'routine investigation, sir.' The
papers made a big thing out of the kidnapping of those boys all that
time ago."

Jury nodded.

"Does that tie in?"

"I don't know."

"You're a mine of information." Smart washed the sea of papers about
for no apparent reason. "You should work on one of these rags we
publish."

"Everyone liked Roger Healey, then?"

Martin Smart gave Jury a sharp look. "Far as I know. Shouldn't we
have done?"

"Of course. It's just that a person who's universally liked . . ."
Jury shrugged.

"A cynic, too." The trick smile showed itself again. "I know what
you mean, but I don't know what you're up to. I wouldn't say
universally
liked. There's probably a few concert musicians who could have flayed
him, I don't know. The thing about his reviews, though, is they weren't
laced with stings and arrows. Edgy, sometimes." He started gathering
up papers and stacking them neatly, then stopped and dealt them out as
if they were playing poker. "Of course, there's Duckworth."

"Duckworth?"

"Morry. He's American. Rhythm and blues, straight blues, heavy
metal, reggae, New Wave, that stuff. They call it rock and roll."

"He doesn't—didn't like Roger Healey?"

"Means little. Duckworth doesn't like anyone. Except me. I found him
glued to his earphones in the Village—New York City. Let me tell you,
it took a lot to lure him over here. I hate that effing word. I only
toss him out because you're clearly determined to find
someone
who didn't like Roger. Sounds a bit biased, if you don't mind my saying
so. But I'm sure the Met has reasons the mind will never know. Here's
Duckworth's number." Again, he handed Jury a scrap of paper, torn from
a letter from the chairman of the board, Jury noticed when he looked at
it. "It's probably a prison cell."

"The Met appreciates your help. Could I have a look at some old
issues
of Segue
?"

"Healey's reviews? Of course." Smart hit the intercom again, spoke
to his secretary, then leaned back with his hands laced behind his
head. "Superintendent, what
are
you looking for?"

Jury pocketed his notebook, rose, thanked Martin Smart, and said,
"Nothing in particular."

"You really
should
work here."

Jury
turned to go, turned back. "Would you mind if
my sergeant came round in a day or two to talk to some of your staff?"

Smart gazed again at the ceiling. "Hell, no. Send the Dirty Squad
for all I care. Liven the place up." He screwed up his face. "Why the
hell would she kill him?" He looked at Jury. "Maybe they were having a
bit of trouble?" His expression was perfectly serious.

"I expect you could say that." Jury said good-bye.

Jury could not quite believe the interior of this house off
Kensington Gardens, near Rotten Row. From the outside, it was just
another narrow, Georgian building, with its yellow door and
dolphin-shaped brass knocker.

But the inside seemed to stretch endlessly and cavernously to this
room in which he now sat with Mavis Crewes, a room that seemed part
solarium, part enormous floor-to-ceiling aviary full of bird plumage,
bird twitter, bird greenery. A tiny, bright eye, opening and closing
like a pod, regarded him through the fronds of several palmettos.

Nor was it the only greenery, for round about the room were set tubs
of plants, some treelike and overhanging; some tough and flat-leaved;
some feathery and ferny; but all suggesting jungle heat and dust. This
was further enhanced by the near-life-sized ceramic leopard looking
slant-eyed out of the rubber plants, and by the boar's head,
open-mouthed and glaring glassily from the wall to Jury's right. Behind
him sat a gun case; his feet were trying to miss contact with the zebra
rug beneath the table carved from a tree her last husband had carted
back from Nosy-Be. A tree (Mavis Crewes had told him) that
wasfady
—taboo.
Her husband wasn't superstitious.