Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent Page 12

  "I'll take any line at all at this point. Where is Weavers Hall?"

  That he was so amenable to what she seemed to regard as her starved selection made her go about her maps and pencils with alacrity. "It's just here, near the reservoir." She stabbed her sharp pencil at a point in the map a short distance from the village. "That's the road off to the right after Stanbury, which is a mile away. Altogether, not above two miles."

  "You're very helpful; thank you. Does this place do meals? Has it a restaurant, that sort of thing?"

  Her look was baleful, as if just having got him sorted out, she must now disappoint him. She put in quickly, "But Miss Denholme does a nice evening meal."

  He smiled. The expression "evening meal" always made him think of beef shin and creamed potatoes, for some reason. Well, he would dine with Jury, anyway, tonight.

  "Is her wine list extensive? Never mind," he said, when the brown eyes rounded in surprise. "Only kidding."

  13

  The Beastly Boy was engaged in the torture of a gray cat when Melrose came upon him on the grounds of Weavers Hall, directly after he'd parked the Bentley. He cursed himself for a fool for not having worked out that the lady at the tourist information center could well have directed the family here, as it was one of the few accommodations left.

  Behind a large, flat rock, the center of a pile of smaller, crumbling pieces of stone, the Beastly Boy was more or less sitting on the cat, trying to force salt-and-vinegar crisps down its throat, at the same time bonging its head with what appeared to be a rolled-up poster. A huge bag sat up against one of the stones. The cat struggled and whined miserably. The boy had his back turned, and a band of pale, flaccid flesh showed where his Banana Republic T-shirt had ridden up and his jeans had ridden down.

  Probably owing to one of those portable stereos that sat against a wire fence and from which blasted forth rock music, the boy didn't hear Melrose's approach. Behind this fence, chickens scratched, ducks weaved drunkenly, and a rooster walked about apparently baffled.

  The stereo was one of those that the young seemed to walk like dogs or carry about on their shoulders (having no other burdens). When he heard one walk by him on a London pavement, he always thought of it as a tribal call, one of the tribe on Regent Street signaling to his kind over on Piccadilly, perhaps. This one was putting out a musical hash consisting of (it sounded like) a couple of hundred cymbals and a thirties Chicago shoot-out.

  Sitting on the flat stone was a bottle of lemonade that the boy reached up for as the cat tried to squirm its way from under him, and Melrose saw that he meant to force this too into the cat's mouth. He immediately pulled his walking stick from the leather straps of his suitcase, flicked it under the wrist that held the lemonade, and sent the bottle hurtling through the air, to land with a thud on the earth by the fence. Some ducks, beating their wings, waddled over to see what was going on.

  The boy let out a yell, and the red flush across his face suggested the onset of a tantrum. He was up and fairly twitching with rage. The cat got up from its splayed position and shook itself.

  "That's my lemonade!" But his eyes were on the innocent-appearing walking stick, actually a cosher, a leather tube filled with tiny pellets. Melrose was leaning on it looking at the broken, crumbling stone pile.

  "Been to Stonehenge, too?"

  The boy glared as well as he could, considering the thick-lensed glasses. The cat stopped looking muzzy and torpedoed down the road toward the outbuildings—a barn, stables, and a small stone cottage. A dog the color of bracken and snow like a border collie was barking at the cat's approach, either urging it on or warning it off. Melrose imagined a platoon of dogs would look safer to the gray cat than the company of the Beastly Boy, who was now looking at Melrose and mashing crisps into his mouth ferociously. Around them, he said, "You're stupid."

  "I'm also bigger." Melrose tapped the cosher against his palm.

  As he took a step backward, the boy's spider-lashes fluttered several times. He seemed to be thinking, and a hard job he was making of it given the face twisting like taffy. "I'm telling Mum."

  "Oh, do. Then Mum will come to me and / can tell her. Mum and everybody else at this place."

  The boy's eyes narrowed; he looked in the direction of Melrose's car and said, "Our car's better than yours."

  Melrose slipped the walking stick back through the flaps of the suitcase and said, "Let's swap." He picked up his case and was about to turn on his heel when the boy turned up the volume of his stereo and shoved it toward the fence. The chickens were clucking and dithering about and the ducks rushing to the other end of the fenced enclosure.

  Oh, for the Lord's sake, thought Melrose. "Stop that," he said.

  "Thought maybe they'd like a front-row seat for Sirocco. You don't even know what they are, do you?" he asked smugly, over the blast of music.

  "A hot wind that comes off the Sahara. Good-bye."

  "Stupid!" the boy yelled at his departing back. "It's one of the best rock groups in the world!" He waved the poster. "I got front-row seats!"

  Melrose kept on walking. He hoped Peter Townshend and rock stars like him were still breaking up their guitars, setting their drums on fire, et cetera, so that the pieces and burning bits flew into the front-row seats. As he was nearing the stone path, he looked to his left and saw a small girl coming from the barn and stables. He squinted. It was the Fury, the child he had seen at the vet's. Her black hair glittered like a helmet; she was wearing a white shawl that nearly reached her ankles and a dress too long for her.

  If she saw him, she gave no sign of it. Given the determined walk and the look on her face, he seriously doubted she saw anything else but the object of her fury, there by the fence. She was carrying the gray cat over her shoulder like a bag of meal.

  Several ducks left the barnyard brawl and rushed over to a corner of the fence nearest her as if they sensed something was coming, preferably dinner; and the rooster staggered over, planting each claw on the ground, digging in.

  Seeing her, the boy let the stereo slide from his hands, music still playing, and tried to back straight through the fence. No escape. Melrose, like the ducks, could smell something in the wind as the girl set the cat down by the pile of stones. The cat calmly washed its paw, all threat of danger apparently forgotten under the protection of its patroness.

  Melrose dropped his suitcase and started toward her as the Fury stepped closer to the boy. Did this little girl live every day on the cliff's edge? he wondered.

  Apparently so. Before he could reach out, the arm was winding up, and she threw a lightning punch at the boy's chin that cracked when it landed.

  The chickens were going crazy; the rooster was stalking like Frankenstein's monster; and from the stereo came fran-t'c applause, whistling, and cheering voices that built to a roaring crescendo. The boy slid down the fence and let out a howl that mixed rather well with an ovation that should have broken the portable stereo to smithereens.

  "Stop that!"

  The voice pulled Melrose round as if by physical force and he saw, running from the doorway of Weavers Hall, the turbaned woman in the turquoise outfit, the Beastly Boy's mother. She startled the gray cat, who sensed more danger coming and bolted down the road. The chickens thrashed about, colliding, just as the venomous woman screeched at the little girl. Melrose lost that precious moment in which he could have strong-armed her or even tripped her—anything to stop her before she gave the Fury a backhand slap that should have knocked the child to the ground, but didn't even bend her. The child stood there, stubbornly planted with feet apart and refusing to go down for the count.

  He bent down beside the little girl. "Are you all right?"

  She nodded, frowning at him, not in displeasure, but as if she were trying to recollect where she'd seen him before. She did not have, as he had first thought, brown eyes. They were a deep navy blue and, at the moment, glazed with tears that didn't fall. She gazed off toward the hills beyond, mindless of the scarlet splotch on h
er face, like the ineradicable mark of a witch's hand. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her mouth downturned.

  "Yuk, yuk, yuk!" She stamped her feet as if they were caught on hot coals. Then she whirled about and ran off in the direction of the barn, her arms raised, the shawl fluttering like wings. She'd stop and whirl like a dervish, then run again as if God's wrath followed her, her white shawl flying, hair black as sin.

  14

  While Melrose watched the white shawl disappear into the barn, a woman had come out on the walk and was sweeping the flagstones. To see her there, also wrapped in a shawl, a dark one, long enough to reach to her shoes, and engaged in this homely task, made him feel the world had suddenly righted itself. And yet when she righted Aerself Melrose had the eerie feeling he had seen her before as the woman walking across the moor. Her posture, the determined look in her eye, the long shawl, all contributed to this sense of deja vu.

  Besides that, she was attractive in a sullen sort of way. He could not see her eyes, as they were downturned to her task, but her hair was mahogany and her skin as clear as the little girl's. Indeed, she looked like an out-of-date edition of the child, like last year's fashion, the quality still there, the seams frayed. The little girl's mother, most likely, she worked with the intensity of one whose last chance had come to prove herself.

  Suddenly, she looked up. "Oh, sorry. I was thinking about something." Even the smile was tense. "Are you Mr. Plant? That the tourist board rang up about?"

  Melrose nodded. She was a random beauty, as if everything were there, but hadn't been got quite right, like the early stages of a portrait the painter had given up on: the eyes well spaced, but the irises a washed-out blue; the mouth full, but tilted down at the corners; the complexion clear except for a few barely discernible pockmarks, the legacy of a childhood disease.

  She reached out her hand. "I'm Ann Denholme." She started to pick up his bag, but Melrose immediately took it himself.

  "The family who must have arrived before me—may I ask their name?"

  They walked through the big oak door into a hall filled with dark wood and faded turkey carpeting. "The Braines, mother and son." She looked with disgust toward the upper rooms. "Only just got here and already there was some sort of fight out there between the son and Abby, and she threatened to pack up and leave." She had removed the shawl and hung it on a peg inside the door. Now, she had her arms crossed and was rubbing her elbows, looking troubled. "He's absolutely beastly, that boy—"

  Melrose smiled and nodded.

  "—but Abby doesn't seem to be able to understand that she can't treat guests as she pleases."

  "Abby didn't start it; I did."

  Ann Denholme was leading him down a hallway and stopped to look back. "You?"

  "Me. The son's the type who'd tear the wings off Clouded Yellows and lovebirds." They had come to the landing. "When I came round the house—" Melrose stopped. It wasn't because of some sense of honor that he refused to tell of the peccadilloes of others; the reason (he told himself) that he did not rat on people was because he was rich and didn't need to. Amazing what a bit of money could do toward solving life's little problems. "I reprimanded him."

  As they walked the long hall past several doors with handsome walnut frames, she asked, "For what?"

  So the Beastly Boy hadn't told; he wouldn't have wanted Melrose's version to come out. Besides, Melrose could stalk the halls with his cosher at night. "He was annoying the chickens. Which room is mine?"

  "The chickens?" She regarded him doubtfully as she opened the door and stood against it, her hand on the knob so that he could precede her.

  It was a Victorian room, overstuffed and crammed with its four-poster bed, button-back velvet side chairs, double bureau, long curtains with heavy tie-backs, washstand, faded sprigged wallpaper, gold fan in the empty fireplace, pottery on the mantelpiece. Charming, nonetheless, possibly because of its busyness, as if a little old lady in flounces and cap had fussed about adding yet other pieces of unnecessary ornaments.

  As he unbuckled his case and threw the straps back, he said, "I saw your daughter at the vet's today. True Friend, I think it's called."

  "Abby's not my daughter."

  Her tone, he thought, was chilly. "No? But she looks exactly like you and since she lives here, I assumed . . ."

  "She's my niece, my sister's girl. That would account for it, I expect." Her eyes were fastened on Melrose's dressing gown of silk paisley, a gift that Vivian had brought back from one of her Italian jaunts. "That's beautiful. I love materials, though I can't afford that kind." That she was sitting on his bed, admiring his dressing gown, struck Melrose as a bit odd, however flattering it might be. Things seemed to break out rather suddenly at Weavers Hall—fights, sex—like a rash.

  There was a brief knock on the door frame and a ruddy-skinned woman, probably in her late sixties and with a pansy-shaped face, said, "Mug of tea, sir?" She held a thick Delft mug toward him.

  Said Ann Denholme, "Thank you, Mrs. Braithwaite." Her voice was curt. But the woman seemed to take it in stride. She made a tiny curtsy and took away the same smile she had brought with her. "I always serve tea in the drawing room downstairs about this time, but I thought, in the circumstances . . ." Her voice trailed away.

  "You mean, that I might want to avoid Mrs. Braine and her son." Melrose was mildly annoyed that he was being told to keep to his room and stay out of further trouble. "On the contrary, I'd be delighted to join the other guests for tea."

  "You would? There are only two others. I doubt you'd find much in common with an elderly major and a slightly . . . urn . . . decaying Italian princess. Or so she says." Ann Denholme smiled to let him know her assessment of her guests was good-humored. Then she said, "I must tell you, the mother was extremely upset over Abby. And you."

  "Miss Denholme, I must tell you that I am not upset over the Braines. The son should be a ward of the state."

  Ann Denholme colored slightly, obviously realizing she hadn't gone about this in the right way. "Of course. Mrs. Braithwaite's taken in the tea now. I can just have her fetch another cup."

  "Here's my mug—" He held the Delft blue mug aloft. "— that'll do."

  "No, no. I'll just tell Mrs. Braithwaite . . ."

  "Please don't bother. I'm meeting a friend in two hours for dinner at—"

  But she'd already left the room.

  Melrose sighed and shook his head.

  He should have ratted.

  Discordant piano music, as if a cat were prowling the keyboard, came from the drawing room.

  The piano was somewhere behind the open door. He could not see it but knew that the Beastly Boy was the one slamming away at it. The mother allowed this racket to continue, sitting over there before the fireplace with a lap desk full of playing cards. Another occupant of the room, herself seated on a chaise longue, was a handsome, sixtyish woman dressed rather formally in lavender silk.

  Melrose couldn't imagine anyone more turquoise than the Braine woman. She had sloughed off the balloon of a jacket, but was still wearing the tight blue-green pants. However, she had added a few more items to her costume: spike-heeled shoes with an ankle strap, also turquoise; drop earrings of blue and green glass that looked like bits from broken bottles; a heavy lathering of turquoise eyeshadow. Mel-rose put on his gold-rimmed spectacles as he moved farther into the room, nodding to the ladies, and coming to rest by a floor-to-ceiling bookcase. He noticed that a book lay splayed open on the piecrust table by the Beastly Boy's mother. Surely not (thought Melrose). Yes it was. The Turquoise Lament by Mr. John D. MacDonald. The ensemble was complete—no, it wasn't, for now Mrs. Braine was stuffing a cigarette into a turquoise holder. She was the most turquoise woman he had ever seen. This was relieved only by eyes, hair, and turban, all black.

  Master Malcolm had stopped for one blessed moment, but was poising his crablike fingers over the ivories, when Melrose said, with a twitching smile, "Play it again, Sam."

  Malcolm, momentarily stunned, whe
eled round on the piano stool. "Wot?"

  There were traces of an accent surfacing that spoke not of Chelsea or Kensington but of Shoreditch. "Merely joking. Well, this is a charming scene!" he said heartily, moving to the fireplace and wanning his hands

  The aristocratic lady in lavender glanced over the top of a slim volume (read, Melrose thought, precisely for the purpose of glancing over) and regarded him shrewdly.

  Immediately after Melrose spoke to him, Master Malcolm slid from the stool and inched toward Mummy, who sat glaring at Melrose, and, with her arm round her son, muttered comforting words like "Lovie," and other endearments that made Malcolm look as if he'd rather be out kicking dogs.

  "Are you playing solitaire, then? Ah, the Tarot. Well."

  Ramona Braine stared at him from coal-pit eyes and said, "Taurus."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You. Born under the sign of the Bull. Stubborn, given to rages. Though you can be loyal. I knew there would be trouble. I felt it. And more to come. Much more."

  They might have been sitting in a caravan, given that fairground-gypsyish tone she used. Since she put no time limit on the trouble, the prediction was safe enough. "I'm an Aquarian, actually." He smiled.

  "Just barely," she answered, gathering her cards together. And then she looked round the room as if some effluvium were forming, and mentioned the chill when she'd crossed the doorsill. "Mark me," she added, drawing Malcolm to her.

  "Ah, leave off, Mum." The boy broke from her entwining arms and lurched over to a chair where he sat with his hands stuffed in his pants pockets and his chin on his chest.

  The Turquoise Lament rose, adjusted her several wire-thin blue bracelets, and commanded Malcolm dear to come along.