Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (8 page)

He had got his pipe going again and the smoke curled away in a cold
draft that touched Jury's neck, probably from the rattling pane at the
end of the room. "Well, there was Billy, Roger's son. Do you know about
that?"

Jury nodded. "And the Holt boy. Still, that was a long time ago."

"Yes. The poor Holts. But he was adopted, I think."

Roger's
son. And Toby, but
he was adopted
. Blood
ran very thick and water very thin around here. "To a mother, it could
have been yesterday."

"The real mother died in an accident when Billy was a baby. Nell was
his stepmother."

There it was again.

Why was everyone so determined to point this out? That Nell Healey
could only have some diluted measure of a real mother's feelings, the
water that could never be as thick as blood? "Let's assume that it did
have to do with that kidnapping eight years ago—" Citrine started to
object, but Jury forestalled this. "We're just speculating. What could
have happened that might have built up over those years in your
daughter's mind?"

"You mean, that the ransom wasn't paid?"

Jury waited.

"Surely, if she wanted revenge because we refused—" Citrine made a
helpless gesture.

"By 'we,' you mean Roger Healey and you."

"We were only taking the advice of the police, Superintendent."

As Citrine shifted in his chair, Jury's eye was drawn to the tiny
spider that plummeted, from its fluttering contact with the leg, nearly
to the floor on its silky life line. Jury had never before known a
family of such shaky relationships. Blood bonds seemed absent, or
appeared tenuous at best. At worst, easily broken.

Citrine didn't know, of course, that Jury was aware it was Nell
Healey's money, and Nell who had refused to pay up. The only ones who
knew this, as far as Charles Citrine was aware, were himself, Roger
Healey, Nell, the Lloyd's banker, and the superintendent in charge. The
police sergeant Citrine may even have forgotten: Brian Macalvie.

On the other side of the winch, a passageway through the main gate
used to give easier access to foot passengers, Jury found the small
door to the tower. Above the door on an ironwork standard was a bell
from which a string dangled. He pulled it; the bell jangled; in a
moment he heard a buzzing sound. Jury looked uncertainly at the door
for a while, unable to place the source of the sound. Silence. He
pulled the bell cord again, and again there was the same buzz. Then
assuming there was some setup here like the security system in a London
townhouse comprised of flats, he pulled at the big iron ring. The door
opened.

It opened on near-total darkness. The weak light from lamp niches
cast Jury's shadow in grotesque, fun-house shapes as he moved upward
and around on the stone steps. Thank God, he thought, he didn't suffer
from vertigo, or halfway up he'd've been a goner. Round and round he
went, stopping once to loosen his tie. He studiously avoided letting
his gaze drift to the steps as he felt, rather than saw, something
scuttle down them.

Irene Citrine certainly valued her privacy if not her friendships.
He was, hard put to imagine her girlfriends giggling up these cold
steps to tea and bread and butter sandwiches.

A slant of light suddenly broke across the steps, and from round the
bend he heard a voice flute a greeting. "Sorry about the stairs and the
security system," said Irene Citrine, who more or less filled, in
silhouette, the door at the top, "but you never know who's mucking
about out on those damned moors, do you?" She took Jury's hand in a
hearty grip and more or less hoisted his six-feet-two frame through the
door.

Irene Citrine—who introduced herself as Rena—told him Saint Charles
had hit the intercom to tell her Jury was coming and to try to control
herself.

"Of course, a little gunplay in the local is small potatoes to the
Moors Murders and the Yorkshire Ripper. Still." As if he were going to
protest, she held up her hand and said, "Sorry, sorry. I'm not all that
cold-blooded. Poor Nell is in one hell of a spot, but we'll get round
it somehow. Care for a drink?" She swept, in her hibiscus-patterned
muumuu, to the other end of the room toward what appeared to be an old
pulpit.

Jury took a moment to catch his breath and survey the lighting
arrangements. Although a couple of floorlamps splayed cones of light
near a sofa, Rena Citrine favored cresset lamps with floating wicks
and fat tapers. There were several of these positioned on iron spikes
attached to brackets. The oil lamps, though, were lit, and their
shadows reached long fingers across the thick oak table.

Against one wall was a medieval bench strewn with brightly colored
cushions that didn't do anything toward making it look more sittable.
On the facing wall was a fireplace with a joggled lintel and a cornice
elaborately carved with a little row of heads, none of them looking
less than unspeakably insane. Old lancet windows through which
lozenges of light burrowed were inset around the octagonal walls.

A scarred satinwood writing table dominated the room: covering it
were papers, manuscripts, stacks of books, a typewriter, an Apple II
personal computer with an enormously long cord snaking across the room
to some source of electricity Jury couldn't see; ashtrays, each holding
a partially smoked cigarette as if each smoke had claimed its own
ashtray grave; a welter of bottles; several canvases in oil leaning
against the wall; stacks of books, largely popular novels. On the top
shelf leaned little framed photos, snapshots of her travels,
apparently.

Jury leaned closer to look at the photos; Rena Citrine on a white
sand beach in a bikini (there must have been more under that muumuu
than one could guess); Rena on some sort of fishing boat; Rena and
another woman holding between them a huge fish; several more of Rena
in cafes and a club that looked, with its palm fronds, wicker, and
partly black combo, like something in the Caribbean. She was crushed
between a man and the woman in the fish-picture, all wearing those
overly gay, false smiles one does for club photographers. Hung on both
sides of the fireplace and on the wall were posters of the warm sands
and sunlit seas that must have been the sources of these pictures.
Barbados. Bimini.

Just looking at them made Jury feel colder here in this tower. These
pictures against the backdrop of this dark medievalism made him wonder
if he were in the presence of some apocalyptic cultural collision.

"How about a Tequila Sunrise?"

Jury's head moved round from the pictures. "A what?"

Rena Citrine was busy with a silver cocktail shaker. "What'd Charles
give you? A glass of cold tea or did he hobble to the well for water?"
She rattled the shaker from one side to another.

Jury smiled. "He offered me coffee, actually."

"But did it materialize?"

"I didn't want any."

The liquid from the shaker gurgled into a couple of fluted cocktail
glasses. Both of these she brought round from behind the pulpit that
served as drinks cabinet and handed one to Jury. The drink was a cloudy
pinkish lavender. He sipped; he choked.

She gave his back a good thwack. Rena was stronger than she looked,
with those angular shoulders and slim arms.

"Straight from Barbados, this lot is. You can't beat their rum."

"I wouldn't want to," he said.

Irene Citrine scooped some papers from one bench and more or less
shoved him down on it; then she went round to the other side of the
table and sat on the opposite bench, clearing some more papers from the
table before her. Through eyes that were tearing from the rum, he
looked at her, sitting with her pointy chin resting on her laced hands,
staring at him from amber eyes whose irises were wedge shaped, cat's
eyes. She had narrow shoulders, their slope increased by the tentlike
dress. Her hair was a vibrant red that fell from a center part to her
shoulders and seemed to have a life of its own, the way it sprang up
and out as if it were plugged into an electrical socket. It was
sprigged with gray, and because of the fanciful play of light it looked
caught up in a loose net of silver.

"Cheers!"

Jury took the sticky, fluted glass, sipped at a liquid the color of
which only Sergeant Wiggins could love, and choked again. His throat
was on fire.

"You get used to it. I've been into rum ever since Archie —my late
husband—and I went beachcombing in Barbados. Do you like my posters?"

Jury nodded. "Is that your husband sitting in the club, there?"

"Him? No, that was just a couple we met in Bimini. My favorite
place. Spent two months there. Archie was camera-shy. Also cash-shy. A
fact that Charles never lets me forget. He probably didn't tell you I
was married, did he?"

"No," said Jury, his eye resting on the blue and mauve poster of
Atlantic waters breaking on the beaches of Bimini. The sunset matched
the drink, which he shoved a little way from him in case it was
combustible.

"He wouldn't. He refuses to acknowledge a Citrine would run off with
a fortune-hunting American." She raised her glass again. "To Archie
Littlejohn, God rest him."

"I'm sorry."

"About what?"

"Well, that you lost him."

"Lost me would be more like it. Last time I saw Archie was three
years ago when he took out a deep-sea fishing boat off Bimini. There
went my last thousand quid. My part of Daddy's money. Dear Daddy was
very Victorian and thought women couldn't be trusted with the stuff; so
Charles got the lion's share. I have to admit Charles did work for much
of his; still, he's one of those lucky people that money just seems to
stick to. So ... Archie floated away and I decided to come back to the
old homestead. Well, I was dead broke, wasn't I? We'd spent all my
money." She looked round the tower happily. "It suits me. I do a lot of
reading, walking, go grouse- and pheasant-shooting with Charles,
largely because it irritates him so much I'm a better shot than he is.
But, mostly, I have my painting to keep me busy."

Jury squinted over his shoulder at one of the canvases. Cutting
across its dark surface was the merest splinter of light. "Not much
light for painting."

She shrugged. "Well, my work gains a lot in visual impact in the
dark. You won't believe this, but I've actually sold some."

True, Jury found it hard to believe, but he said, "That's grand."

"They don't think so after they get them home and see them in
daylight."

Jury looked up at the boarded-over hole in the roof of the turret.
"Are you building yourself a skylight, or something?"

She squinted upwards. "That's my passive solar heating. Happened a
couple of weeks ago. Some firm was supposed to come fix it." Three
Tequila Sunrises had made her, apparently, quite tolerant of the
indifference of the contractor. "I get the odd bat or two."

She was picking up the thick candlestick to light another cigarette.

When she leaned across the table toward Jury, the tops of her
rounded breasts were thrust against the neckline of the muumuu, in the
candlelight white as the hibiscus, and the gold wedges of her eyes
flickered. Jury wondered if she knew that her Archie might not have
married her for her money after all. "What happened?"

"Helen. Our family weren't exactly poor, the Citrines. But I'm
talking about what they take to National Westminster in an armored
car.
Real
money." Rena sat back, turned the stem of her drink
slowly, looked a little sad. "I liked Helen. She was wooly-headed,
extremely pretty, silly, but a good person. Left me a handsome bequest
which I managed to run through with the speed of light. All the rest
went to Nell. My saintly brother Charles has Daddy's money. Am I
supposed to be talking to you?" The "supposed" came out with a bit of a
slur along with the smile.

"Superintendent Sanderson wouldn't think so." Jury returned the
smile.

"You're better looking than he is."

"So are you." Jury raised his glass as if in toast to her looks, but
really to keep her from frothing more of the flammable cocktail into
it. "There're only the three of you here now, is that right?"

"Except for the odd servant or two. I seldom venture downstairs
except for dinner. That's always good for a laugh. The aperitif, a few
acid smiles handed round; first course, trumped-up laughter; main
course, squabble; and for afters, silence."

"False smiles, fights, and silence. Doesn't sound too inviting."

"That's when we're having fun. Or were, I should say. Roger—" She
looked away, past the fireplace and the posters toward the narrow
window. Then she took a cigarette from a little tray, struck a wooden
match across the underside of the table, and said, ". . . provided
some amuse-ment." Her tone was wry. "He was the essence of a Ralph
Lauren advert. Polo. The cologne, not the sport. Although I could
certainly imagine him playing it."

"Then you don't agree with your brother?"

"I never agree with my brother, if only on principle. You mean about
Roger?"

"Mr. Citrine talked about him as a fine man. Devoted father,
husband."

Rena wiped some ash from the table to the floor. "Oh, 'fine.'
Whatever that means in Charles's lexicon. Roger was charming—handsome,
witty, sophisticated, talented. And shallow. I don't know much about
music but I'd be willing to bet he failed as a musician because there
was nothing behind the technical razzle-dazzle. I mean, doesn't one
need a
soul
or something to be a great musician? Even Billy
had more substance. He was a nice enough child if a bit lazy. Sweet,
charming—well, that was probably in his genes—but he didn't really
apply himself. Unfortunately, he wasn't all that crazy about being a
prodigy, which Roger didn't like at all. He could be a real tyrant."
She smoked and studied the shifting shadows thrown by the candles. "Not
nice to speak of Roger that way, perhaps, after what he'd been through
with Billy and that other child, Toby. God. What a decision to have to
make ..."

"What would you have done?"

"Paid up, of course. But then I never take anyone's advice." Her
face hardened. "What a bastard."

Jury frowned. "Roger Healey on his own didn't have the money to pay
that ransom."

"It might have been Citrine money, but the father, certainly, would
have the say. If he didn't insist, then—" She shrugged.

"You don't know the statistics on—"

"I don't care about the effing statistics, Superintendent. Poor Nell
hadn't nearly as much say, had she? She was 'only the stepmother.'
Well, she was a better mother than most I've seen. There's something
about Nell that just reaches out to kiddies. Toby Holt adored her; he
did little jobs round the place for which she overpaid him." Rena
smiled. "She'd read to them for hours, tell them stories, read poetry,
play the piano. She even tried to give Toby piano lessons. But he
hadn't any talent." She lit another cigarette from the tallow beside
her.

"You think that's why your niece killed her husband."

"She waited a bloody long time to do it, then." She punctuated this
by thumping the candlestick back on the table. "Roger might not have
been the devoted husband Saint Charles makes him out to be."

"Meaning?"

"Talked to anyone Roger worked with? There's a woman named Mavis
Crewes. She's visited here two or three times. Edits one of the
magazines, pretended she wanted to do a travel piece on this part of
the country. Loved our house. So feudal. Talk to her."

"And you believe Nell Healey found out about it?"

"Nell is
not
dim. Quiet, but perceptive. Then, again, also
trusting. Perhaps a bit naive."

Naive
was not the word Jury would have chosen, not after
Macalvie's account. "How does—did—she speak of her husband?"