Rainbow's End by Martha Grimes

the riverbank.
    Light gathered over the river, still and still gliding, glanced and darted through the dark branches as if the sun, in its slow descent, had fallen suddenly, then caught itself and now fanned out in a golden siltof light. Jury watched the swan, stationary as a paper cutout pasted against the water. Death seemed far away.
    â€œWhat are you getting at?” Jury asked it again.
    â€œDeep time,” said Macalvie.
    Jury looked at him as the waitress set down their dinners, told them to be careful of the plates. They were hot. “What’s ‘deep time’?”
    â€œThe kind of time you think of when you see Old Sarum or Stonehenge. That kind of time. Deep time.”
    â€œWell, that explains it.” Jury separated his fish from the bone.
    â€œLike trying to think in terms of light-years. We can’t do it.”
    Jury watched him over the plate of succulent trout. Macalvie seemed to be tasting his thoughts, his words, and not his dinner. “Think of the king’s yard, Jury.”
    â€œI would if I knew what it was. Your fish is getting cold.”
    â€œThe king’s yard was the measurement between the end of the king’s nose and the tip of his finger. Right?” He raked his fish off the bone.
    â€œIf you say so.” The trout was delicious.
    â€œIf you think of this measurement in terms of ‘deep time,’ our civilization would disappear in a single fingernail filing.” He prodded his fish with his fork.
    â€œThen let’s hope the king doesn’t get a manicure.”
    Macalvie gave him a dark look. “I’m serious.” Ignoring his plate, he gazed at the river. “Movement in time is deceptive, Jury. Because we’re in the wrong time frame. You know how I feel? As if I’m accelerating at a hundred per and holding in my hand one of those time-release photos of . . . I don’t know . . . the petals of a flower opening slowly as I watch. It’s jarring. Did you ever think there might be two worlds moving along, side by side, but at different times?”
    Jury smiled. “Only when I’m with you, Macalvie.”
    â€œVery funny. Stonehenge, Sarum, Avebury—they make me feel that. Everything we do now is speeded up so much, the time release working in the opposite way.” Macalvie separated the long bone from the fish, looked at it. “I like the patience of science, the way they can repeat experiments ad infinitum. Like Denny Dench.” Dench was a forensic anthropologist.
    Jury thought it was probably the fishbone that reminded him. The only time Jury had met this brilliant forensics man, Dench had been lining up the bones of a quail he’d been eating.
    â€œWhat do you think is the most potent motive for murder, Jury? Love? Greed?”
    â€œRevenge.” Jury was surprised that his answer was so emphatic. “The Greeks knew that.”
    The two of them sat now in silence, turned toward the window and the river beyond. The rim of the sun, vapor-orange, showed just at the edge of the trees. The sky was nearly purple. “It’s rainbow mechanics,” said Macalvie after a time. “There appear to be colors, separate bows of color, but they really just bleed into one another. If they’re there at all.” He kept looking out of the window, at the sky. “She was only thirty. At least if you live to fifty or sixty you’ve had a chance to work things out. Not that you’ve taken advantage of it, but at least you had the chance. You had a proper go.”
    â€œA proper go,” thought Jury, watching the swan under the dripping boughs on the other side of the river seem to drift, propelled by the motion of the water. “ ‘Fondly I watched her move here and move there . . . ’ ”
    Macalvie raised an eyebrow in question.
    Jury hadn’t even realized he’d said it aloud. “It’s an old poem, or an old