The Grave Maurice (23 page)

Diamond shrugged, put his drink on the table. “I've got to be getting back to the farm. Would you tell Arthur I'll see him soon?”

Jury nodded, shook his hand. Roy Diamond turned to Wiggins, who was still seated, and shook his hand also. “Good-bye.” He turned by the door. “And good luck.”

 

Arthur Ryder, who entered a moment later, was a man who, like Roy Diamond, obviously spent most of his time in the open air. The difference was Ryder did it with his sleeves rolled up. He seemed a little uncomfortable bound by his own four walls. The discomfort didn't stem from a police presence in his living room; he was genuinely pleased Jury and Wiggins had come. After they were all seated, he said, “This is really kind of you, Superintendent.”

“Not at all. When you're in hospital you look for things to engage you. Your missing granddaughter engaged me. I'd like to help. Since I'm not on duty, I've plenty of time.”

Ryder opened his mouth to respond when another man came into the room holding a pot of coffee. “This is Vernon Rice, my stepson. When my son called me, I called Vernon and asked him to come. Vern has his own investment firm in the City.” Arthur Ryder seemed rather proud of this.

Vernon Rice was an extremely good-looking man with hair just about the burnished brown of the bay in the pasture. His eyes, although gray, were so bright they looked startled. They gave gray a whole new meaning. He held the pot aloft and looked a question at Jury and Wiggins. Jury declined; Wiggins accepted. Wishing it were tea instead, thought Jury.

As he poured the coffee into cups already sitting on a tray, Rice said, “I've still got a private investigator looking. I know it's been over a year and a half, but you never can tell.” He handed Wiggins a cup and set the cream and sugar by him.

Jury smiled. He bet Vernon Rice could pin down the very day the girl had gone missing. He also had the impression that Rice was a “never-can-tell” person. Meaning he operated on faith. Strange for a man in his line of work.

“There was also a horse taken?”

“Aqueduct.”

“Could he carry two people and still jump stone walls and fences?”

“He's a 'chaser. He's won the Grand National twice.”

Vernon smiled. “He could jump rooftops if he had to.”

“Nell could ride him?”

“On a flat course, like the wind.” As if the image was fixed permanently in his mind, Vernon looked toward the window.

But Jury's image of this agile girl was blank; he couldn't put a face to it. Wiggins had distilled what coverage there had been in the papers, but hadn't produced a picture. “Have you a picture, Mr. Ryder? I'd like to see her.”

Arthur Ryder rose, saying, “I've got a wall full. Come and see.”

“Could Sergeant Wiggins have a word with your staff? The trainer? Anyone else around?”

“Absolutely. But let him finish his coffee.”

The look that Wiggins now trained on Jury made Jury wish to God he had a camera. It was almost clubby—Wiggins and his horsey friends.

Arthur Ryder said, “Vernon can show you the photos; I'll take Sergeant Wiggins along to talk to George Davison. He's my trainer.” Wiggins, having drained his cup (to the lees), went off with Ryder.

Vernon led Jury into the large office, where an entire wall of photographs and snapshots dominated the rest of the room—photos of horses and, almost as adjuncts or afterthoughts, humans.

Except for one human who could never be an afterthought—a girl with flaxen hair, strands of it blowing across her face as she leaned her head against her horse's neck. It wasn't that she was beautiful; it was that she seemed so present, so here among them. She was always with a horse in these pictures. If a horse was not directly involved, one or more were present as a backdrop. The largest picture was a real stunner. This horse was the one Jury and Wiggins had met down the drive by the fence. Here, Nell Ryder stood a little in the forefront, the reins tangled in her fingers, and looking at the camera dead on. Jury felt it. No wonder Plant couldn't describe her. She was essence, all residue left back in the bottom of the bottle, a girl decanted.

His expression must have betrayed something for he caught Vernon Rice watching him. When Jury looked his way, Vernon smiled.

“Nellie has a lot of presence, hasn't she? I saw it the first time I looked at her.”

It was almost, Jury thought, as if Vernon were coming to his rescue, letting Jury know that Nell Ryder had that effect on everyone.

Arthur Ryder had come in the back office door to stand beside Jury. He sighed. “Ah, yes, Nell. She was really—I miss her.” His thought, unfinished, stumbled up against loss.

Still slightly mesmerized by the face, Jury said, “Describe her.” Yet he thought one of the qualities that made Nell Ryder arresting was that she was indescribable, that anyone would stumble trying to do it, as had her grandfather. “What's she like, I mean, beyond the photographs? How long ago was this one taken?” Jury inclined his head toward the one he'd just been looking at.

“Two years ago. Just before—” Arthur Ryder stopped to clear his throat. “She was fifteen.”

Jury found it hard to believe she was anywhere in her teens; the eyes that looked out from the photograph had too much wisdom in them. He knew he was projecting, reading something much too complicated into Nell's eyes; she was a young girl, really. Just a girl.

“Fifteen,” Arthur said. “Seventeen, now. Her birthday was—is—just this week.”

“Next week, Granddad.” They all turned. Jury thought this had to be Maurice Ryder who'd come in from the outside through the office door. “Her birthday's next week.” And who, his look said, are these gate crashers at the party?

His grandfather said, “Maurice, come on in.”

He was already in, his expression said.

Arthur Ryder introduced them.

If any more gravitas was needed, Maurice Ryder supplied it. He looked, Jury thought, oddly sunk. It was as if the worst that could happen had happened: the coup de grace, the final blow: his cousin's disappearance.

Jury looked from him to the picture. They were close to the same age, but she looked so much older, as if the adult awareness that had grown in Nell by leaps and bounds had been arrested in Maurice, a dark-haired, handsome boy with a pale face and a starved look fed by misfortune. They did look alike, a family-resemblance sort of likeness. But it wasn't the resemblance Jury was interested in; it was the difference. Maurice looked from the picture to Jury, almost as if he were jealous of Jury's looking. But where Maurice (he bet) was obsessed, Nell looked focused. There was a world of difference between the two. Yet he didn't really know what Nell's qualities were.

“When did you last see her, Maurice?”

As if he really had to think about it, Maurice was slow to answer. “Evening stables.”

Meaning, probably, that Maurice had seen her last. Jury thought Maurice would always want to be last: the last person to see her would leave his face imprinted on her mind.

“Where did you see her?”

Maurice inclined his head backward a little. “In the stables. She'd carried out her sleeping bag.”

“Could you show me?”

“Okay.” He turned to the door.

 

The stall Nell Ryder had been sleeping in was empty, as if it had been kept that way in case she should return with Aqueduct in the middle of the night and need it. It was as large as a small room. Several others down the line were occupied; Jury recognized a couple of the horses sticking their heads out as the ones in the field where he and Wiggins had stopped. Gingerly, Jury put out his hand, and the horse with the silvery mane nudged it.

“Looking for treats,” said Maurice, smiling for the first time.

“What a gorgeous horse.”

“Samarkand. He is, yes; knows it, too.”

Jury would have been willing to ascribe certain human traits to animals, but vanity wasn't one of them. Anyway, it was just a way of talking for Maurice.

“Sam's my favorite. Nell, she'd never say who hers was; I think she didn't want to hurt the other horses' feelings.”

That made Jury smile. “She sounds like a sensitive person.”

“Oh, she was—is, I mean.”

It must have gotten harder and harder to rescue the present from the past, Jury thought. “This is a wonderful place to grow up. Or did you?”

“More or less. I came with my dad a lot and spent summers here and holidays, so yes, I guess I did grow up here.”

“You and Nell.”

Maurice didn't answer beyond a nod of his head. Then he said, “After my aunt, Nell's mum, died, Uncle Roger tried to keep her with him in London. But his schedule got so fierce he just couldn't do it. Middle of the night emergencies, that sort of thing.”

“What about your parents?”

For some reason, Maurice felt his father should be defended; he did not feel that way about his mother. “They got divorced. You know what mum said to me? She didn't want to put me through a long custody battle, so it would be better all around if I came to live with Granddad.” He gave Jury a wry little smile.

“What about your father?”

“He got custody by default. Not that he didn't want it”—Maurice added quickly—“my dad's a champion, or was, I mean. A great jockey. Finally, he took off for Paris and got married again. Then there was the accident that killed him. It was on a racecourse near Paris, when his horse slammed into a fence.”

“And his wife?”

“We never met her, his new wife.”

“Did you ever want to be a jockey, then, like your father?”

“I always wanted to be a jockey. He was one of the greatest, you know. He's in the jockeys' hall of fame. But after I grew four inches like all at once, I gave up on that. I'll tell you who'd make a good jockey.”

“Who?”

“Nell. She'd be awesome.”

“That good on a horse, is she?”

“Yes. Nell had—has—”

(The present rescued again.)

“—an instinct. She just
knows
what's going on with them.

And she always says anyone could if they'd just take the trouble. But that's not true. Not even George has that way about him. He knows it, too. He likes to say that Nell is really a horse, zipped up in girl costume.”

Jury laughed. “Some costume, Maurice, if that's what it is.”

Maurice looked at him and smiled for the second time. “You can say that again.”

On their way back to the house, he saw Wiggins with two men, a wiry young man and a short stocky one. The older man Jury presumed to be Davison.

Wiggins introduced them as Neil Epp, head groom, and George Davison.

“You're the trainer, Mr. Davison.”

“That's it.” George Davison was one of those men who appeared to be all business. No time for messing about when there was work to be done. This police business might or might not be messing about.

The horse whose bridle Neil Epp was hanging on to was as black as the bottom of a mine. Black and sleek. Jury nodded to him. “And who's this?” he asked, looking at the horse.

Looking as proud as if he'd invented him on the spot, Davison said, “Criminal Type.”

Jury smiled, liking the name. He ran his hand down the horse's neck. “Beautiful. I bet he's won a few for you.”

“Indeed he has, despite the extra weight he always has to carry.”

“Why's that?”

“To even the chances. Only time I ever lost me temper with the Jockey Club it was over that weight allowance in the Derby year before last, when Dan was up on him. Would've been, I mean. They said Criminal Type'd have to carry another fifteen pounds. Bloody unfair. So I scratched 'im.”

Jury knew George Davison could talk all day about his horses to anyone who served as a listening post. It was almost by way of talking to himself.

“Your people going to get anywhere with regards to young Nell?” said Neil Epp. “Been two years, it has,” he said, as if none of them knew it.

This earned him a sweltering look from Davison, who was no doubt a proponent of the less-said department.

“I certainly hope so, Mr. Epp. We'll try. Wiggins?”

“I've got it all, sir.” Wiggins flapped his notebook.

They set off for the house. Jury felt he had to see those pictures again.

“I want to fix her in my mind,” he said to Arthur Ryder and Vernon Rice.

The four of them took up positions again in front of the wall of photographs. Jury was almost convinced of the truth of that old superstition about the camera's catching the soul of its subject, which then resided in the photograph. Melrose Plant had said, “She gives déjà vu a whole new meaning.” Jury said, “It's strange. I get the feeling I've seen her before.”

“That's a common reaction, you know, from just about anyone who sees these photos,” Vernon Rice said. “It's that she looks familiar, that a person already knows her. You do get what I mean?”

Jury got it.

Brand-new clothes. Same old dream.

Wiggins went on in this way for a good while after delivering Jury to Ardry End and the ministrations of everyone there, barely awake enough to receive enthusiastic greetings not only from Melrose Plant but also from Ruthven and his wife, Martha, who had cooked what she mistakenly thought to be Jury's favorite meal—roast beef and potatoes—when actually the meal that won the gold was one of Carole-anne's fry-ups in its greasy symmetry of egg, bacon, sausage and fried bread (the Little Chef version was merely a shadow on the wall of Plato's cave) and during which Momaday had presented his sorry self to go on and on about Aggrieved and how he'd be “whipping that horse into shape, never you mind, good as won the 2000 right now,” and Martha (of all people!) telling Momaday the horse was too old for the 2000, and (following a brief argument on that score), Ruthven at last leading Jury up to his favorite room and watching him fall across the bed as if he'd been bludgeoned—all of this leaving Melrose feeling the evening hadn't so much as ended as collapsed around him, compressing and elongating like a bellows or in a wind tunnel with some Proustian crazy.