The name of Roger Healey had not registered with Jury when he had heard it in the inn in West Yorkshire. The West Yorkshire policeman who had arrested Healey's wife the night before in the Old Silent had told Jury the man had something to do with art or music-he wasn't sure what-except that he was important. The local detective sergeant from Keighley certainly knew the family was important in these parts, and his ambivalence about arresting one of its members was clear.
Superintendent Sanderson had no such ambivalence, either about having Jury as the single witness to the murder of Roger Healey, or about having a member of the C.I.D. of the Metropolitan Police on his turf. Sanderson was a tall, rail-thin policeman with a practiced, inconclusive manner that would throw anyone off guard. In the unlikely event Jury's testimony would ever be needed, it would carry far more weight than that of some myopic villager. As of now, Jury could get off his turf and out of the investigation now proceeding with the Yorkshire constabulary.
Sanderson would have no difficulty proceeding. It wasn't even a case of rounding up suspects, of listening to the regulars in the public bar of the Old Silent give conflicting reports of who did what to whom; and the five people who had rushed in from the bar were clearly relieved that they were straight out of it. They had stood about in horrified silence until police had arrived. It was Jury who had summoned them.
And it was Jury to whom she had, just as silently, handed over the.22 automatic. No resistance. She hadn't said a word, had sat down in the same chair, had answered none of his questions, had not looked at him again.
The inquest was convened the following day merely to establish certain facts, such as the identity of the dead man. The identity of the perpetrator was clear.
Her name was Nell Healey and Jury had been right about her relationship to the dead man; she was his wife.
Given the reputation, wealth, and influence of the Citrine family in West Yorkshire, and given her lack of any criminal record, she was released on bail. That, Jury knew, would buy her at least a year of freedom; the case would be unlikely to get to the Crown Court before then, not with all the other stuff on the docket. The only question that had gone unanswered was why she'd done it. But largely it seemed to be the sympathy engendered by her past woes that tipped the scale in her favor.
It was those woes about which Jury was now reading in the newspaper that lay on his desk at New Scotland Yard. He remembered the Healey-Citrine names. It had happened eight years ago and had struck him as especially dreadful.
"Really sad, that was," said Detective Sergeant Alfred Wiggins, who'd dug out the clippings, and whose own reading matter was a copy of Time Out. "You wonder, how could anybody do that to a kid?" Wiggins was slowly stirring the spoon in his mug of tea and tapping it against the rim with all of the solemnity of an altar boy perfuming the air with incense.
Just as religiously, Wiggins opened a fresh packet of Scott's Medicinal Charcoal Biscuits, taking pains that the wrapping wouldn't crackle. It was not often that Jury didn't answer him, but this was one of those times, and it disturbed Wiggins (as if it were his own fault) that the superintendent's mood, usually calm, almost soothing, was going sour over this case, and not Jury's own case, either. Thus, Wiggins felt impelled to talk doggedly on, even though it might be better to shut up. And since he was never one much for epigrammatic or witty turns of phrase, he would trap himself into further cliche-ridden sentiments.
Jury's mood was as black as the biscuit Wiggins was now crumbling into a cup of water, and, irrationally irritated by his sergeant's pursuit of some elusive and Platonic Idea of health just as he was reading of the kidnapping of one boy and the disappearance of the friend who had been with him. Jury said (rather sharpish, Wiggins thought), "Most people settle for digestives, Wiggins. And they don't have to stew them in water."
His quick response was triggered less by Jury's tone than by Jury's replying at all. Said Wiggins, brightly, "Oh, but digestives don't really do anything for you, sir. Now, this-"
Wanting to forestall a lecture on the benefits of charcoal to the digestive tract, Jury said, "I'm sure it does," and smiled to indicate that he'd only been joking, anyway.
It had happened in Cornwall when Billy Healey and his stepmother, Nell Citrine Healey, had been on holiday, together with a friend of Billy's named Toby Holt.
Keeping his eye on the newspaper, Jury shook a cigarette from a packet of Players and read Roger Healey's statement to the press. It was formal, almost pedantic, full of catch-phrases of grief and comments about his son's prodigious talent as a pianist, so that one almost got the idea that if the kidnapper didn't see to it he practiced every day, it would be similar to a diabetic going into insulin shock. The usual "we will do anything in our power to see our boy is returned…"; the usual… police are working round the clock"; the usual.
Except that the stepmother had made no comment at all.
Jury tried to put himself in the place of a father whose child had been kidnapped. He had never had children, but he had been close enough to several that he could feel at least something of what it must be like to lose one. Certainly, he'd seen enough grief-stricken parents in his work. Some had been silent; some had gone in for marathon talking. But none had given a Hyde Park speech. Jury wasn't being fair, he supposed. After all, Healey was a music critic and columnist used to putting thoughts into words; he was an articulate man, and probably a composed one.
The photo of Billy himself looked almost out of place amidst this platitudinous talk. In the old shot of Billy Healey, the camera had caught the boy in a moment when he must have been looking toward something at a distance. His chin was raised, his mouth open slightly, his eyes transfixed and somehow puzzled. The angle of light eclipsed a portion of his face, bringing out the other in even bolder relief, accentuating the straight nose, high cheekbone. He was handsome, pale, his hair brownish and silky-looking. He looked, Jury thought, a little other-worldly, unapproachable, and with the intensity of his expression, unassailable. He looked more like his stepmother than his father.
And of her, there was only the picture in which she was being escorted from the house, and where she must quickly have drawn part of the paisley scarf she wore up over her face. Since her head was also down, the reporters were getting a very poor view. And taking a poor view, given the underlying tone of resentment that Mrs. Roger Healey was unavailable for comment. Her husband had done most of the talking.
The stepmother was good copy; she'd been the only one present, except for Billy's friend, when the boys had disappeared. Given the rather tasteless litter of photos and snaps this particular newspaper had mustered, it was clear they'd like to keep a story of the kidnapping humming along. There were several old snapshots of Billy, angled down the side of the account, one of him with a couple of schoolmates, very fuzzy. Another of him leaning against a fence with the other boy, Toby Holt. Sitting on a big stone slab in front of them was a small, dark-haired girl, squinting into the camera.
"And the chief's not too happy, as you can imagine," said Wiggins, following his own train of thought.
"He never is, not where I'm concerned."
"Wondering what you were doing in Stanbury, anyway."
"It's next to Haworth. I'm a big Brontë fan."
"When you were supposed to be in Leeds."
Jury looked up. "What is this, a catechism? Baleful mumbles."
"You might be witness for the Crown," Wiggins went on, relentlessly.
"Would he rather I'd be witness against? He knows damned well I won't be called as one. Sanderson will give my evidence. It's West Yorkshire's case, not mine."
Wiggins was making a little sandwich of two black biscuits and something slathered in between.
"What's that thing?"
"Charcoal biscuits and a bit of tofu and tahini. I'm a martyr to my digestion, as you know." The whole thing crumbled as he bit down on it; he wiped his mouth with the huge handkerchief tucked into his collar.
Jury looked up from the files and down at the notes Wiggins had made. "This publisher Healey worked for. Get me in to see him."
"Sir." Wiggins's hand hesitated over the telephone. "When?"
"This afternoon. Three, four."
"It's nearly two." The hand free of the tofu sandwich hovered over the telephone. "I was only thinking."
"That it's not my case. You're right. Get me in to see this publishing tyro, Martin Smart." Jury smiled.
Still Wiggins was slowly chewing his sandwich. "The guv'nor's complaining-"
Guv'nor? Racer? Since when was Wiggins calling him that?
"-you're waffling on a couple of cases. The Soho one, for example."
It was a drug-related death, nothing for C.I.D., something the Drug Squad could handle easily. Racer perfectly well knew this. Anything to keep Jury from using his talents in a more attention-grabbing way. Name and picture in paper. Racer hated it.
"I'm sick, Wiggins."
Wiggins put on his best bedside manner. "There's no question there, sir. Pale as a ghost you've been looking. You need leave, you do, not another case."
Jury grinned. "I know. So get me an appointment with Healey's publisher." Jury rose, feeling lighter than he had in weeks.
"I'm a martyr to my digestion, Wiggins. I'm going to see your guv'nor."