The Grave Maurice (25 page)

Diana, seeing her glass was empty, handed it off to Dick for another.

Trueblood then raised his. “To your long and happy life, Superintendent.”

Diane said, “I could have warned you that night was fraught with danger.”

“Oh, it was fraught all right. So why didn't you? Warn me, I mean?”

“You didn't ask me, did you?”

Jury laughed. “I guess I didn't.”

“The stars! The stars!” proclaimed Agatha, as if she were finished with their wastrel ways.

“How are you, Lady Ardry?” Jury reached his hand across the table to clasp hers.

Put out by Melrose's adamant direction that she was not to turn up at Ardry End this morning, she waggled her finger at Jury. “You cheated me out of my morning coffee, Superintendent.”

“So here you are having your morning whiskey,” said Melrose.

She tried to numb him with a look and, as usual, failed.

Eagerly, Joanna said to Jury, “Tell us, tell us! This boy and his dog—”

Jury smiled. “It should be the dog and his boy. That's one damned smart dog. I was lying there for what was probably only a few minutes, but felt a lifetime—”

Agatha butted in to stall the story, annoyed she hadn't heard this account before the others over morning coffee. “And did your whole life pass before you?”

“No,” he lied, not wanting to talk about it.

Joanna leaned toward Jury. “What was it like, nearly dying?”

Jury wanted to say terrifying; he had wanted to be terrified. Instead, what he had felt was the lure of the dark. He wondered how it was that inconsequential things came back to one at such moments. Because, he reasoned, they weren't inconsequential. He looked up to see five pairs of eyes, expectant.

“Terrified,” he said.

“This case you're working on,” said Diane.

“It's not a case. It's not my case, certainly.”

“Never mind. I've got a theory.”

“Oh, good,” said Melrose. “Scotland Yard can go back to bed.”

Diane plowed on. “This girl that's gone missing probably went off with her boyfriend, who'd told her they'd get married and when he just up and left her, she was too ashamed to go back home. It's not the leaving that's significant. It's the not coming back.”

They all looked at her. Trueblood said, “Diane, that's one of the most Victorian scenarios I've ever heard.”

“It sounds,” said Joanna, “like one of mine.”

“At this point,” said Jury, “it's as good as any other.” He smiled at her.

“Then what's your theory?” asked Diane. “White slavery?”

Trueblood said, “Aren't we ignoring the most obvious explanation? She's dead. It's the only thing that makes sense. There was no ransom demand because she's dead, maybe an accident, something the abductors didn't intend—” He shrugged away the rest of the scene.

“She's not dead.” Jury said it before he could stop himself.

Several pairs of eyes regarded him.

“How is it,” asked Melrose, “you're so sure of that?” Jury picked up his beer. He didn't answer.

 

“I like your idea of recuperating,” said Melrose.

“I'm not doing the driving. I'm just sitting here, enjoying the scenery.”

“We're on the M1. There isn't any scenery.”

Jury slid a few inches down in his seat. “I love this car.”

“You can't have it.”

“While I'm talking to Vernon Rice, where are you going to be?”

“Oh, I'll ‘hang' as they say in the Grave Maurice. Unless you want me to come with you?” His tone was hopeful.

“No. You've already talked to him. Both of us would be intimidating. Anyway, he doesn't know you know me.”

“Of course he does. He's Roger Ryder's stepbrother.”

“Yes, but he doesn't know we have any working relationship. As far as Rice is concerned, you're just some aristocratic oddball.”

“Thanks. Just remember, I had lunch with him. I mean we had quite a good conversation going.” He shook his head. “I just don't get it that you don't like him.”

“I didn't say that. Did I say that?”

“Oh, don't be as thick as two posts. You know you don't like him. But there's one thing you have in common.”

“What?”

“You don't believe Nell Ryder's dead.”

J
ury sat on Vernon Rice's sofa and understood what Melrose had meant. It was slimmed-down, pared-down luxury. The furniture was Italian or German or both, the colors muted, the lines clean. The chair he sat in, although its angles had looked forbidding, was superbly comfortable. He decided he preferred his own ramshackle flat with its Early Oxfam appointments, which was just as well, since he wasn't getting this one.

Of course it overlooked the Thames, one of those breath-taking views estate agents were always advertising that usually turned out to be a small slice of the river if you held your head in a certain way. But this view answered all of the demands of “breathtaking.” Right now the descending sun turned the pocked surface of the Thames to hammered gold.

Jury's dislike (he had lied to Melrose) of Vernon Rice only increased in these sumptuous surroundings (childish, but he didn't care; he let it increase), these proofs of the man's success. “Thank you,” he murmured as Rice handed him an espresso.

“You sure you wouldn't like a drink? I've got some really good whiskey.”

Jury thought, I'll bet. I'll bet it's a million years old. “Oh, no thanks. Coffee's fine.”

“Something wrong, Superintendent? You look a little, uh, disgruntled.” Vernon smiled.

So did Jury, trying to beat him to it, not succeeding. “Sorry, but I guess it's just spillover from the hospital. Too much nursing.”

“Too much shooting, maybe.”

Jury looked at him and could detect nothing but empathy. “That's nearer the mark, yes.”

“It sounds as if it were more than just a close call.”

“How do you—?”

“The dailies, Mr. Jury. The newspapers were full of it.

Don't tell me they weren't all over you in hospital the moment you woke up.”

“They weren't. That must have been Dr. Ryder's doing.”

Jury could remember very little of the first day—and possibly of the second or third. All he wanted was sleep, from which he awoke at one point to see Carole-anne framed in the window lighted by the sun, her red-gold hair on fire, and thought he was in heaven.

Insofar as police, hospital personnel and visitors went he had shut down his mind. It was as simple as that. He wanted no more than the sketchiest outline, the bare bones of what had happened. He wanted none of that
pas trop vite
Proustian precision. Leave out as much as possible, otherwise, he was afraid he'd tank.

“But of course they didn't know the rest of the story—”

(Was Vernon Rice a mind reader now?)

“—the papers never do; they make up what they want.”

For the first time, more so even than in hospital, Jury felt like an invalid. His hand had shaken slightly returning his empty cup to the table. But not slight enough to prevent Rice from seeing it.

Jury said, “I want to talk to you about Nell Ryder's disappearance. I couldn't make out when I was at the farm whether you said you believed she was still alive because of her grandfather's feelings, or if you really—”

“Believe it? I believe it, yes.”

Jury could sense Rice's desperation. He wanted everyone who'd known Nell Ryder to believe it; he wanted someone else's confirmation.

“What do you think of her father?”

“Roger's a good father, I know, even though he does have to spend most of his time in London. He goes to the farm almost every weekend, Arthur says.”

“And his brother?”

“Danny was much different. He was a great jockey, but in other ways—” Vernon shrugged. “He had his addictions—gambling, women—not drink or drugs, though, which was probably because he had to keep his weight in line and his mind clear. But women—
lots
of women. I know a couple of husbands who weren't too happy with him. I think he broke up a marriage here and there. It's strange, you know, because you can't tell that just looking at his picture. But I'll tell you, one blink, a woman would be all over him.”

“Did you know any of these women?”

“No—yes. I forgot the one I did some investing for. Sara . . . Sara—Hunt. Actually, she's some distant relation of the Ryders. I drove her out to Arthur's one Sunday. Wait a minute and I can give you her address. I don't know that she was actually involved with Dan.” He shrugged. “Still, I always got the impression that for a woman, to see Danny race was to be involved.”

Jury sat forward. “I'd like the telephone number if you have it.”

While Vernon was fiddling with an address book, Jury said, “What about his niece, Nell? She's certainly beautiful. Would he have tried something on there?”

Vernon's eyes hardened, changing from a foggy gray to granite. “No. Someone would have killed him. And one thing I can credit Danny with is that he wouldn't have hurt any member of his family.”

“And Nell? How did she feel about him?”

“Danny was great with horses, had a special relationship with them. I heard that he never used a whip, not even as a directional signal. Times I thought he could ride a horse through hell and not get burned. Well”—Vernon spread his hands—“that's all Nell needed to know. She liked him.” Vernon paused. “He was one hell of a jockey; some said he was up there with Lester Piggot.” Vernon shook his head, studied the mantel where a few framed pictures were lined up. “I really feel for Maurice; Maurice idolized Danny, poor lad. He'd have done anything for Danny.”

“I talked to Maurice when I was at the farm. He seems to be—as the Irish love of euphemism has it—destroyed by Nell Ryder's disappearance.”

“He'll never get used to it. Maurice tends to blame himself when things go wrong.”

“He thinks what happened to Nell is partly his responsibility?”

“Believe it. He's never said so in so many words, but I bet he does. Maurice has taken on his shoulders the sins of the father. I never know whether to hit him or weep. Not only that, he wanted to be another Danny—omitting, of course, the X-rated bits.”

“But he's too big. What a disappointment for him.”

“Yes. Add to that, though, that Nellie isn't. She's the right size. And it wouldn't surprise me if she wanted to be one, too, but never said so because of Maurice. She's like that.”

Vernon retrieved Jury's empty cup and his own and went to stand by the window as if he'd forgotten already why he was there. Then he came out of his trance and went to the espresso machine.

“She appears to evoke very strong feelings in people, and in some cases, just from her photos.” Jury knew she had in him, also in Melrose Plant.

Vernon rubbed the side of his head. “That's because she's so intense, so—I don't know, focused, maybe—that when she looks at you, it's about you; she hasn't a dozen other scenarios crowding her mind. Only you. I doubt there's a man or woman or child who wouldn't respond to that.”

“Certainly you have.”

“Oh, yes. The first time I saw Nellie was only a few months before she disappeared. She was fifteen. She was in one of the horse stalls, filling the feed basket and singing under her breath in case—she told me later—anyone was around; she didn't want them to hear her. She was always singing in that whispery way so no one would hear. No one but the horses. She turned and smiled a little. Anyone else would've said, ‘Oh! Who are you!' She just said ‘Hello.' ”

“For a young girl, she sounds pretty composed.”

“That's just what I said to her. I said she had a lot of poise. She said it was probably because of the horses.”

Jury smiled. “She was good with horses, wasn't she?”

Vernon nodded. “Davison—the trainer?—has always been impressed with her. Thinks she'd make a great trainer.”

“She was in the stall with Aqueduct because he was sick, is that right?”

Vernon nodded. “It was around dinnertime that Maurice told her he thought the horse might be suffering from stable cough.”

“Did she often stay with horses like that?”

“As often as a horse gets sick. Arthur has a couple of vets on call, so anything that looks like trouble they can nip in the bud.”

“Hm.” Jury sat thinking. “I get the impression Nell was very self-disciplined.”

“Extremely.”

“All right. How then might she react to being kidnapped?”

The question took Vernon by surprise. “You mean, would the discipline kick in?”

“That's what I mean. Would she be cool?”

“Cool. I think she'd be up for that. She'd be able to bring that off, yes.”

Jury smiled. “ ‘Fear wearing black.' Definition of cool. Maybe it's also the definition of courage. Would she be courageous?”

“Yes. Depending on what was at stake.”

“If something wasn't at stake, you wouldn't need courage.”

Light had been steadily lessening while Jury was talking to Vernon Rice, as if a door were closing on it. He looked at the line of pictures over the fireplace. He could see from where he sat that they were all of the Ryder family. “You've never been married?”

“No. Should I be?”