Martha Grimes - The Old Silent

"Dear Miss Praed: The rifle you claim to have killed Doris Quick (p. 134) in Sussex would have blown her all the way to Cornwall, fired from that angle. Enclosed, please find…"

Stuff like that. And Polly shot a letter, like the bullet, right back.

Jury wondered, while Macalvie was giving "instructions" to some poor forensics clod probably also wed to the God of Inaccuracy, how the Praed-Macalvie correspondence was going. It was certain, given Polly's books, she didn't read the material the commander helpfully sent her.

Thus Jury smoked his cigarette and wondered how Yeats had got into all of this.

" 'A terrible beauty is born,'" said Macalvie. "That Yeats."

"Macalvie, there's only one W. B. Yeats."

"True. And what do you know about his bones?"

Jury frowned. Bones ? A line swam into his mind. " 'The old rag and bone shop of the heart'?"

"The rag and bone shop is where I work, Jury. No-"

Jury could hear drawers opening and slamming and then a paper rattling. "I kept this; I tossed it in Dench's face. Now we're talking about W. B. Yeats, remember? So you can imagine how those bones would have been gone over to prove they were his."

"Yeats was buried in County Sligo."

"France. In a temporary grave before they could get the bones back to Ireland. Someone comes along and says the bones were tossed into a huge paupers' grave and no one really knew if the remains were the poet's. Naturally, the family went nuts. Who can blame them? My point is: the expert said that after all that time it would be impossible to prove they were or weren't W. B. Yeats's bones."

"Meaning Dennis Dench could be wrong."

"He is wrong. Too many coincidences, too many . The time frame, the burial place, the dog-the little dog , Jury- the remnants of metal, et cetera, et cetera-"

"Speaking of poetry, Macalvie: when we were at the house in Cornwall I found a little paperback book in Billy's room. American poetry-Frost, Whitman, Dickinson, et cetera. Emily Dickinson is one of Nell Healey's favorite poets. It was a copy of the same book she had in her pocket when I was talking to her. She sent her copy to Abby Cable, little girl at Weavers Hall. Nell Healey's very fond of poetry; she used to read it to Billy and Toby, especially Frost and Dickinson."

"What's all this in aid of?"

"Several poems in this paperback are heavily scored or X'd. One in particular is interesting:

It was not death for I stood up

and all the dead lay down -"

"Sounds like headquarters-"

"Listen, Macalvie:

It was not frost, for on my skin

I felt siroccos crawl."

Jury stopped and there was a brief silence on Macalvie's end.

"In the margin there's a little notation, 'a desert wind, hot .' " Jury paused. "You know a band called Sirocco?"

"Yes…"

"Have you read the latest London Weekend or Time Out ?"

"I'm fully booked. I have an opening to attend in the Haymarket, front-row tickets for Derek Jacobi. Then there's Wembley Arena and Jimmy Page. And I always catch Michael Jackson. Hell no , I haven't read them."

"The name of the band used to be Bad News Coming. Then they changed it; Alvaro Jiminez said they wanted a new identity, or something. Sirocco was Charlie's idea. It was also Charlie's idea to change the tour date for the Odeon. Sirocco was supposed to do a concert in Munich first. Do you know how hard that is? To rearrange tour dates? The manager went through hell."

"Why'd they change it? Not that any of this means sod-all because I know where you're headed and you're wrong."

"No, you don't know where I'm headed, Macalvie. I'll get to that in a minute. Do you know their tunes? Or do you only listen to Elvis?"

"I've heard a few of their cuts. Weren't we playing one on the way to Cornwall?"

" 'Yesterday's Rain.'"

"Don't sing to me. The poetry was enough."

"The words wouldn't mean anything to you unless you'd seen a Magritte painting called 'Empire of Light.' There's a print hanging in-never mind, only that it was one of Nell Healey's favorite paintings. The words to that song are extremely resonant of both Cornwall and that painting."

Macalvie sighed. "At least Denny has a few bones to fool with."

"I talked to Charlie Raine. I went to the Odeon, took him to a pub for some lunch. He knew about the Healey case-"

"As does half the country."

"The kid's been out of England, Macalvie. With all he's got to do, why would he be so taken up with this case? He knew every detail. More than that, he thought I'd come to the Odeon because I knew who he was. He got the concert date changed because he wanted to be here."

"Um-hmm."

"Meaning?"

"We're back to the Unknown Kid, the third-party solution, or… oh, let me guess. Next you're going to tell me the skeleton in that grave was-"

"Toby Holt."

Macalvie's silence was so total that Jury could hear, from across the room, the black cat's twitchy little snores coming from the sedan chair.

"Toby Holt. Brilliant. Aren't you forgetting one crucial piece of evidence? Toby Holt was run down by a lorry five weeks later. Owen Holt identified the body."

"Who said he was telling the truth?"

"Why in hell wouldn't he?"

"Ten thousand pounds. A trust fund set up for Toby's schooling by Nell Healey. You didn't know about it; you were taken off the case." Jury told him what the Holts had said. "You know how the odds go down every day, every hour a kid is missing that he'll ever be found. It's not that coldblooded-"

"Just a tad illegal, for Christ's sakes. And how do you know this?"

"I don't, yet. But I think I will after I talk to Owen Holt."

Jury heard a drawer open, slam shut. Macalvie was getting out the paper cups. "It wasn't your case, Macalvie."

"Obviously. It never got solved."

"The lead guitarist, Charlie Raine." Jury paused. "I think he's Billy Healey."

In that cat-pad, quiet voice Macalvie used when he was really disturbed, he said, "Jury. Billy Healey is dead ."

"I was afraid you'd say that. Listen-"

"No. I'd rather talk to Denny. At least he serves wine."

"Listen: say I'm crazy-"

"No problem."

"Security at those concerts is nil. It's only laid on to keep the peace. The loudmouths, the beer-guzzlers, the snorters, the ardent fans. Wiggins has rounded up a few men who aren't on rota."

"Are you telling me you think someone's going to try to off your boy in the middle of a concert with-hell, you've seen too many Hitchcock films."

Jury was getting impatient, but still kept his voice low. "Come on, Brian, goddammit, I'm not talking about the London Symphony or the Royal Albert Hall. This is the Hammersmith Odeon, and these aren't people who toss on their gowns and tails to make sure they're seen. These are fans . These are people who don't eye the box seats to see if there's someone they've missed who's wearing a coronet. These are fans who plunk down ten pounds to see some of the greatest musicians in the world and they listen -"

"You should be reviewing for Juke Blues . Okay, okay, I get the point. There's so much noise you couldn't even hear Gilly if she was standing next to you. So you want reinforcements. Yeah, so go ahead. What time tonight?"

"Eight."

"Wonderful. That's all of six hours to round up whoever's stupid enough to buy this act and get them there. Great. Except it isn't Billy Healey, Jury."

"So what've we lost?"

"Probably our jobs. Not that that means anything."

Jury could almost hear the grin. "Thanks. I'm sending photos of six people on the wire. One in London, five here. One in particular. There's a mass exodus to London from West Yorkshire."