The Grave Maurice (15 page)

“She fit a horse like a kidskin glove,” said Arthur, as if following the line of his visitor's thoughts. “She knew horses, she really did.” He shook his head and replaced the photograph carefully.

Melrose cleared his throat. “She's beautiful.”

Ryder looked at him. “To say the least.”

The very least.

“I'll let George Davison show you the horse. I need to talk to my stepson again.”

AQUEDUCT

 

 

The little sign was there, but the horse was not.

“We don't put any other horse in this stall. Superstitious, maybe, but there it is. Never knew a horse like him,” said George Davison. “So high bred and low-down good-natured. That horse never had a mean bone in his body. Like Nell Ryder herself.”

The horse, Melrose noted, came before the girl, at least in the trainer's mind. “Do you think what happened will affect the stable, Mr. Davison?”

“Naturally.” Any fool could see that, his look said. But apparently not this particular fool. “We lost enough income to—”

“No, Mr. Davison, I don't mean the horse being stolen. I mean last night. The murdered woman.”

“Oh, her?” Davison shrugged. “Funny old business, that. But I don't see how it's anything to do with us.” They were walking down the row of horse stalls.

“It seems so strange. What could this woman have been doing?”

“Someone just dumped her, maybe.”

“Possibly. Very odd, though, if that's the case. You mentioned Nell Ryder. Her grandfather told me about her. It's one of the strangest things I've ever heard.”

“He hasn't been the same since. This place hasn't, either. You think he'd be selling off stock otherwise?” He shook his head. “That little girl just disappearing into the night . . .” He shook his head again.

Melrose knew he shouldn't appear overly curious, yet wouldn't anyone, hearing such a story?

Davison was stopping the two of them at nearly every stall and giving Melrose a lowdown on each horse that Melrose could have done without. (“Stalwart, beautiful jumper, by Forward, out of Mr. Don; Gingerbread Man, progeny of Ginger Biscuit and Seaward—”

“What do you think happened?”

Davison said, “That girl, she was a gypsy, you ask me.” He was looking in at a roan named Bobolink and rocking a bit on his heels.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, she pretty much did what she wanted. You know, independent.”

Melrose smiled. “ ‘Gypsy' usually suggests someone unsettled or a traveler. Is that what you mean?”

Davison shrugged, not so much out of indifference as uncertainty about what he did mean. “Maybe. She was kind of a puzzle.”

But the girl in the photograph had looked not at all like a puzzle but perfectly straightforward.

“I liked her, though; you had to like her. Here we are; here's Aggrieved.”

They stopped in front of a stall at the far end. Melrose smiled. “Aggrieved.”

“Course you can change the name if you want—”

Not in a million years, thought Melrose.

“—only he's got a good track record and the name means something, you know.”

“No, I won't change it.”

The horse was the color of polished mahogany. He shone with good health and good breeding.

“Aggrieved was a great two-year-old. Won twelve of fourteen starts. Yeah, one of the most promising I've ever come across and lived up to the promise all around. The next year he won fourteen out of eighteen starts. But I don't expect you mean to race him. He's eleven now. Go on and look him over.” Davison unlatched the stable door and the horse stepped back, shook out his mane.

“Oh, I don't need to do that. I'm sure any horse from this farm is as he's represented.” The fear of discovery made him pompous.

Davison looked at Melrose as if he must be completely mad. But all he said, and said it mildly, was, “Best you look.”

Hell, thought Melrose, trying to dredge up what he could from his reading about what to look for as Davison went into the stall and led the horse out.

Melrose walked around Aggrieved, sizing him up with a few
hms
and
humphs
and favorable nods trying to recall one thing—
ah!
The legs! He knelt down and ran a hand up and down the foreleg. But were the legs supposed to be hot or cold? He did this with the other foreleg, but steered clear of the hind legs. “Good bones,” he said.

“Best check the teeth.”

Oh, God. And the prayer paid off, for Davison did the honors of getting the mouth open with both hands.

Melrose looked, squinting. “They look fine,” he said. “He appears to be absolutely fine to me.”

That Melrose himself appeared that way to Aggrieved was a whole other thing. The horse had simply closed his eyes against whatever this person was doing. They knew,

Melrose was convinced, they
knew,
all right. They could ferret out lies.

“I'll just tack 'im up for you. Then you can put 'im through his paces.”

Oh, great; oh, wonderful. You couldn't get me on that horse with a crane.

Davison started off for the tack room, turned and came back. “Damn it all! We can't use our course. That tape's up, that police tape.”

Melrose tried not to laugh. How low had he sunk that he'd be grateful for a murder if it saved him from massive embarrassment. He blushed. “Oh, I'm sure the horse is all right. I'm not in my riding clothes, either.” He did laugh then, in a silly way.

Davison scratched his head. “You think he'll suit, then?”

“Absolutely. I can leave him here, can't I, until I get a—something to move him in?” Horse box? Trailer?

“Trailer? Of course.” Davison ran his hand down the horse's flank. “And that way”—he said to Melrose—“you'll be able to see how he performs when you come back!”

“Right.” Between now and never, he could read fifteen books by Dick Francis and work out how you do it.

“You're a good ol' boy,” said the trainer to the horse.

The good ol' boy opened his eyes, looked from Davison to Melrose and drew his top lip back over his fine teeth. He looked almost exactly like Humphrey Bogart in one of the actor's more considering moments, moments with a gun in his hand.

“That your car there, the Bentley?”

It was the only one parked in the turnaround, so who else's could it be? “Yes, it is.”

“Mr. Plant!” called Arthur Ryder, coming toward them. “I'm really sorry, but so much has been going on. . . .

George has taken care of things, though. Best trainer in the country. Do you like Aggrieved?” Arthur also ran his hand down the horse's flank. “I love this horse, always have.” The horse seemed to lean into him, as if calmed by Arthur's company. “So he's all right, is he?”

“More than all right.”

Arthur nodded. “Good. Would you want to leave him here until you get transport?” There was the distant ringing of a phone. “Sorry, again. I'll be back straightaway. I've been on the phone with the Cambridge police. That's them ringing back probably. Maurice can help you if you need something.” This was called back over Ryder's shoulder.

Maurice was walking toward them. He had an intensity that bordered on the savage. He was handsome, with looks that apparently came from the jockey in the photographs who Melrose had virtually committed to memory, so that he'd recognize any pictures here of Dan Ryder. Again, though, Melrose understood the nature of resemblance, how it could be counterfeited in an expression of face and voice, gesture and movement. Attributes the camera could not always catch.

Melrose bet the boy's looks would be devastating to girls—the nearly black hair, the pale skin, a romantic figure one might meet up with in an Arthurian tale, knights or chevaliers. A poet, a Rupert Brooke profile. Heroes. What was that line Jury had quoted more than once from Virgil?
Agnosco . . . flammae?
That would be Maurice's effect on women. There was something in his looks that would remind them of something lost. Someone, somewhere, some time. The face one couldn't quite place, but that shouldn't have been let go.

Nell. Maurice. They were only a year apart. Together they could probably cut a path through the romantic world worthy of Dido and Aeneas. She looked as if she could easily match the boy's intensity. He wondered what the difference was between them. He did not know why he wondered this.

Melrose thought all of this in the short time he watched Maurice coming. He imagined Maurice thinking that here was the stud farm in financial difficulty and here was this rich, no doubt self-satisfied aristocrat come with all of his money and knowing sod-all about horses to take away one that Maurice had known all of Aggrieved's life, a horse now to be used by the toff's family only to have all his fleetness bred out of him.

Ah, if only the boy knew! Aggrieved would be living the life of Reilly! Momaday finally had something useful to do (from Melrose's point of view if not Momaday's), cleaning out the old stable on the property. Melrose's father had been quite adept at the art of dressage, an interest Melrose had not inherited. For which he was grateful.

The boy looked if not exactly sad, then serious. It was the look of a mourner at a wake, where life was going on with laughter and song and which he couldn't understand.

“Mr. Plant? Granddad said you came to have a look at Aggrieved.” He glanced from Melrose over to the stable. “You're buying him, then?”

“Yes. He's a beautiful horse.”

Maurice looked at him as if that might be the expected and banal answer from one who knew nothing about Thoroughbred horses, or any other horses, probably.

Melrose cast about for a way to get on the subject of Nell Ryder. He didn't have to.

“Everybody loves this horse. Especially Nell. She's my cousin; you probably heard about her.”

“Yes, your grandfather told me about her.”

Maurice nodded. “Nell—”

The name broke off and drifted, like a spar from a wreckage. He still had a hand on Aggrieved's rump.

Melrose helped him out: “She was very good with horses, at coaxing them to do what she wanted, wasn't she?”

Maurice looked at him almost as if wondering why and from where Melrose had learned this. He seemed both to want to and not want to speak of her. “She was brilliant; even George said she'd make a first-rate trainer.” Now Aggrieved was back in his stall and Maurice began to inspect the mixture of oats and bran in the hanging manger. “I hope you have other horses.”

“Well, not exactly yet.”

Maurice looked pained. “You know horses are very social animals. They've got to have others around them. Even if it's just a pig or a goat.” He looked at Melrose for confirmation, suspicious of the munificence of the Ardry End barnyard.

Having not told the big lie, Melrose felt comfortable with a lot of little ones. “I have a lot of land and a lot of good pasture. I have a pig in a sty, a goat in the barn, a swan in the pond (an aunt in the drawing room) and ducks in the lake.” He felt as if he were playing some variation of Cluedo. “Believe me, Maurice, this horse will get the best of care.”

“Stable has to be mucked out every day. I expect you know that.” Maurice didn't sound as if he believed it, though.

Indeed, Melrose found him far more suspicious than his grandfather Arthur had been or even George Davison. “Absolutely. I've got a really good stable lad.” The thought of Momaday as a “lad” made him want to laugh. “Tell you what, Maurice; I'll take some Polaroid shots and send them to you straightaway (with Aggrieved holding up a copy of that day's newspaper). How's that?”

Maurice's face lightened up considerably. “I wish you would. See, that way I can have a picture in my mind of where he is and what he's doing and feel I'm watching him.”

Melrose found this almost heartbreakingly sad. “I will. And I'll ring you or write to you or both. And you're always welcome to visit him.”

The boy seemed far easier in his mind and now quite friendly. “It's really hard for me, selling off the horses.”

“Oh, but surely only a few?”

“Yes, but still . . . Granddad really has to do it when he's low on funds. Some of the staff has been let go, a few of the lads and one trainer. We've got fewer entries in high-stakes races, too.”

Arthur Ryder came out of the house and was walking toward them. “You're leaving him for now, right?” He looked off toward the stables; then he put a hand on Maurice's shoulder. “This boy knows more than I do about these horses.”