Martha Grimes - The Old Silent

In the Old Silent there was a better-than-average lunch-time crowd in the dining room. Jury walked through the lounge and saloon bar and asked the proprietor for a pint of Abbott's, a cheese sandwich, and the use of the telephone.

Sitting near the fire were a young man and woman with a distinctly newlywed look about them paying no attention to Jury.

Jury was halfway through his drink, thinking again about that argument between Macalvie and Gilly Thwaite in the forensics lab. His call to Bradford station having gone through the hands and ears of three policemen, before Chief Superintendent Sanderson decided to pick up. "What is it, Superintendent?" Sanderson asked edgily, making it clear he didn't want to know the answer.

The young waitress put Jury's sandwich before him-a slab of cheddar between slices of richly grained bread, the platter nicely done up with cress and tomato. He thanked her.

"For what?" asked Sanderson.

"Nothing. The waitress. I'm at the Old Silent having a sandwich."

"Unfortunately I haven't time for lunch. We could sit here and have a meal together. Why're you calling, Mr. Jury?"

"About the telephone kiosk along the Oakworth Road. About a mile from the Grouse-"

Roughly, Sanderson cut in. "I know where it is. And so do my forensics people. Next question?"

Jury smiled as he bit into the end of the sandwich. Very good, but he wasn't really hungry. Sanderson certainly didn't dawdle along with preliminaries. "None. I wanted to apologize."

The silence meant that he'd caught the superintendent slightly off-guard, as Jury hoped he would: not that an "apology" meant a damned thing; it was that Sanderson was gearing up to stomp on Jury's next words. Now, of course, he had to refute the apology. Jury pushed the cress off the sandwich and took another mouthful that he didn't want.

"Mr. Jury, your apology is noted and means sod-all to me and my department. You happen to witness a crime in a jurisdiction you've nothing at all to do with and you persist in investigating same. All of this has, as I'm sure you know by now, been reported to your superiors. You've been getting in our way-"

Not mucking about in our manor . Jury wouldn't mind working for Sanderson.

"-so if I were you, I'd stop chewing in my ear."

Again, Jury smiled. "I was wondering." Jury took a drink of his beer.

Another brief silence. "Wondering what?"

"About that call box-"

Sanderson must have been leaning back in his chair, for the sudden thump sounded like something hitting the floor. He was probably furious with himself for having forgotten the original thread of this conversation. "Listen to me: you know goddamned well that we're not rubes and that we don't need London to tell us how to lift fingerprints. That kiosk was gone over so thoroughly it'll probably need a paint job. We are routinely putting a trace on any prints we found." He lowered his voice. "But I doubt very much that a killer would forget to wipe the receiver, the door handle, the entire damned thing if he wanted to."

"Except the coins. No way to get to the coins you've slotted into the box. As long as Telecom doesn't go at it with an axe."

Sanderson was silent.

They hadn't done it; Jury knew it would click into place in Sanderson's mind much faster than it had in Gilly Thwaite's. It would probably be one or more of the coins lying on top. The calls had been made only within the last thirty-six hours.

Jury thought he'd give him breathing time by becoming obnoxious. "I'm not stupid, Chief Superintendent. I know that the last time you asked for help was with the Ripper case. That man is brilliant; Yorkshire police made things so difficult for him he threw up his arms and went back to London." Jury was depending on Sanderson's being the professional that Racer wasn't. He'd know what Jury was saying.

He did. "The only prints we have are Nell Healey's, the ones taken when she was charged."

"There's a brandy decanter that was getting some heavy use at the Citrine house. I'm sure you could find some reason to take something from that house. As for prints, I have some others. A package will be delivered to headquarters this afternoon. Do you want the details?"

"Hell, no." The line went dead.

Jury drank off the dregs of his beer, as he dialed the Holts' number. Fortunately, it was Owen who answered. Yes, he supposed he could meet the superintendent at the inn if it was important.

Jury rang off and sat regarding the largely uneaten sandwich and felt Sergeant Wiggins was looking over his shoulder- have to keep your strength up, sir . He stared down at the table, wondering what it was he had missed. Some detail, some small detail seemed to have lodged beneath his consciousness like a figure under thick ice, the contours of which one couldn't make out. He went back over the conversation with Sanderson, tried to chip away at it. Nothing would surface. He sighed and picked up the sandwich and ate it as he looked at the notes Plant had made in his straight-up-and-down, rather elegant hand.

The Princess was a "possible" (Poss.) . She might have been in her room since tea with one of her "sick headaches" (as she had said), but the ermine-lined boots had been missing when Plant had walked through the hall. George Poges: verified dinner O.S.I, but after? Poss . Ramona Braine: TL to bed early. Snores . And Malcolm, well, highly unlikely, although he had the temperament for it. By his name was an X . Impossible. Same for Mrs. Braithwaite and Ruby, both ot whom were either in their rooms or the kitchen. But Jury had to grin at the way the handwriting changed when it came to Ellen Taylor. One could actually feel the grudging tone in the hand that had grown stiffer, tighter, almost at the end shriveling into indecipherability. It must have killed Plant to strike out the X and pen in Poss . (since Ellen hadn't shown up at Weavers Hall until long after Abby appeared to have left). But Plant could not resist the editorializing: Absolutely ridiculous !

Jury sat for a few moments thinking of Dench and Macalvie. He dialed the Exeter number.

He picked up on the first ring, interrupted the first ring. "Macalvie here."

It was amazing. Macalvie managed to be both out and in simultaneously; Jury knew he seldom hung round his office, yet he always managed to be at the telephone. He seemed to have doubled himself in some magical way.

Before Jury could say anything but his name, the receiver was moved and the commander was yelling at someone. Since Jury could hear a sharp voice return the thrust, it must have been Gilly Thwaite.

"She's got scissors for a mouth. Yeah, Jury what?"

"She's probably the best person you have. You'll push her so far she'll put in for a transfer."

A sound between a gargle and a laugh came over the wire. "Are you kidding ?"

It sounded much like Melrose Plant's Absolutely ridiculous ! Jury smiled, and said straightaway, "You're making no allowance at all that Dennis Dench is right?"

"No. He's wrong."

Jury heard a slight creak and a small thud: Macalvie leaning back and planting his feet on the desk. Jury could see him there, probably sitting in his coat. "You ever heard of W. B. Yeats?" Macalvie asked. Before Jury could answer, Macalvie put him on Hold to deal with another call.

Macalvie was an omnivorous reader, a habit picked up from standing by bookshelves in suspects' homes. It had paid off several times, once in particular when he'd come across one of Polly Praed's mysteries, among the tooled-leather volumes of a Greek scholar who was suspected of having coshed a fellow-academic with an easing knife, but who had claimed not even to know what an easing knife was. Polly's book was titled Murder in the Thatched Barn . While his D.I. questioned the professor, who'd done masterful translations of Pliny the Younger, Macalvie speed-read the first half of the book. He later informed Melrose Plant that his lady mystery-writing friend didn't have exactly the wings of Pegasus, indeed must have been writing with horse's hooves, so turgid was the plot and so asinine the policework. But he was now a rabid fan, since she'd helped him out, all unknowingly.