The Grave Maurice (26 page)

Jury laughed. “No, it just surprises me.”

“Why?”

“Women like a man who'd go to a lot of trouble for them. Obviously, you would. It's romantic, among other things. I'm just surprised you haven't been snagged.”

Vernon smiled. “I'm not all that easily snagged, Superintendent.”

“I can see that.”

“I was engaged once, a few years ago. I decided it wouldn't work.”

“Why? I'm interested.”

“I just didn't love her enough.” Vernon rinsed out his and Jury's cups, saying, “I don't know about you, but I'm switching to whiskey. Want some?”

“Thanks. Just soda it up a lot.”

“Worried about your drinking? You can always visit SayWhen.” Vernon told him about it.

Jury laughed. “Great idea. But that's not my reason. It's because I'm taking some sort of medication.”

Vernon was at the drinks table uncapping what looked to Jury like a fifth of Glenfiddich. “What kind of medication?”

“Dimerin, I think it is.”

“Oh, that stuff. It won't hurt. You could mix it with engine oil and it wouldn't do a thing to you.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I own thirty-three percent of the company. I got in on their IPO. I don't do that sort of thing blindfolded. I really find out about their product. This particular corporation's stock is going to split soon—”

Jury smiled. “Save me the details of corporate finance. It's all lost on me.” That sounded properly stuffy. Or superior. Why was Rice bringing out the worst in him? Or perhaps it was himself, bringing out the worst.

“Poor you. It's really very entertaining.”

“Entertaining? That's what you do it for?”

“No. I do it for the money.”

Jury laughed and took a sip of the whiskey. It was very mellow. “Let's get back to love. You said you didn't love her enough. How did you know in the end that you didn't?”

For a moment Vernon merely stared at his glass. Then he slid down on the sofa and looked up at the ceiling. “Because when she went away I didn't miss her. Because I could stand having her out of my sight; because I didn't want to touch her every time I saw her; because I didn't have the urge to buy her flowers every time I passed a flower stall; because I didn't look for her around every corner; because she wasn't in my head every time I looked up from a market report; because she didn't make me feel stoned—and didn't make me feel glad I wasn't; she didn't fire up my imagination; she didn't make me forget the gloom of the past, as the song goes. Because she didn't make me almost wish she'd disappear so I could find her.”

That hung in the air while Vernon studied the diamond facets of the glass he seemed to have been committing to memory as one would a woman's face, which, in all likelihood, one would never see again. “It was like that.”

Jury hardly knew what to say. “It was?”

“Yeah. Really adolescent. Not what you'd call real love, I guess.”

Jury looked at him. “If it isn't, maybe it ought to be.” Jury drained his glass. “I appreciate your time. I've got to go.” He rose.

Vernon went to the door with him. “You'll find her.”

It wasn't a question.

Jury never made promises about the outcome of a case, and this one surely would end badly, if it ended at all. That's what worried him, that it never would. “I'll try.”

It wasn't an answer.

 

“I'm going to Wales,” Jury said, taking a stool beside Melrose in the Grave Maurice.

“
Wales?
Why on earth?”

“There's a woman there who knew Dan Ryder. I want to talk to her.” When the turbaned barkeeper stopped in front of him, Jury ordered whatever was on tap. Then he said to Melrose, “I see what you mean about him.”

“What do I mean?”

“About Vernon Rice. He's one of the most likable men I've ever met.”

“Told you.”

Jury turned and smiled at Plant. “That only makes me that much more suspicious.”

I
t was a gloomy day, even by January's standards. Ver-It was a gloomy day, even by January's standards. Vernon matched it well. He had just returned the receiver to its cradle and was standing before the big office window with its view of St. Paul's, or at least of its spire. Too many buildings were crowding into the City and ruining some of London's views. He couldn't turn his thoughts to that for very long or to much else. He hadn't liked the conversation with Leon Stone.

“With nothing new by way of either evidence or information, I've run up against a blank wall.” Pause. “Vernon, I know it's hard for you to hear, but I honestly think Nell Ryder's dead.”

“No, she isn't.”

“That's wishful thinking on your part.”

“No, it isn't. Wishful thinking is thinking you can sell ten thousand shares of British Telecom short and make a killing.
That's
wishful thinking.”

Leon Stone sighed. “I hate to keep taking your money.”

“First time I ever heard anyone say that.” Vernon had laughed, not joyfully. Then he'd hung up.

He wanted Leon Stone to believe at least in part that Nell was still alive. Arthur didn't, not anymore, Vernon was sure. He stood at the window and went back over her disappearance again. The trouble with this was it was the same old track; he wished his mind would derail, shake itself up a bit.

That police superintendent, Jury, was the only new thing that had entered the picture. Seemed pretty smart, maybe he'd come up with something. Vernon swiveled his chair around and sat down in it, back on track, going over it all again.
Do not sit here brooding, for God's sake. Do not brood.

“Want a ploughman's?” Samantha put her head around the door.

The door was always open, but she seemed to like this sort of hugger-mugger approach.

He looked around. “No thanks.”

“I'm bringing something back for Daph and Bobby. You sure?”

“I'm sure. You know it's raining like hell.”

“It's always raining like hell. See you later.”

He supposed she was leaving; he couldn't hear her; the carpet was so thick in the outer office you could deploy an elephant herd and not hear it.

“Bye,” he said to something as he looked at his TV screens, market reports on CNN and the BBC. He muted the sound and spent a few minutes watching the ticker tape. Then he got up, reached for his laptop, looked at what was there, from the laptop to the desktop, not much happening.

“Vernon.”

Vernon looked over his shoulder and froze. He dropped the laptop and felt the pain only as some vague reminder you couldn't drop heavy objects on your foot and not feel it.

“Vernon,” said Nell, “I need your help.”

T
hey stood staring at each other for some moments. They stood staring at each other for some moments. Vernon was afraid to move in case the image shattered. But no lightning spiked, no thunder boomed, and he moved so quickly toward her he could not remember crossing the room. The cold rain saturating her clothes became his cold rain.

“Nellie.” Arms around her, Vernon said it again.

As if in getting him wet, she realized she herself was soaking wet, she asked Vernon if there was anything around that she could wear. Her wet clothes had been discarded and she had wrapped herself up in Vernon's bath-robe; Samantha, having returned with the food Vernon didn't eat, had then been dispatched to buy Nell new clothes—jeans, shirt and wool jacket. And boots. Hers would never dry in time. “In time for what?” Nell asked.

“Dinner.”

In between the wet clothes and the dry ones, Nell told Vernon the story.

He listened for half an hour, interrupting the flow of her talk only once to get her a blanket because she had shivered. He kept clothes and blankets in his office because he sometimes slept there.

With the blanket tucked about her, she went on. “I should have run away after Valerie finally let me out of my room.”

“This is the Hobbs woman?”

Nell nodded. “I should have left them; I should have run.”

“Nell”—he put a hand on her arm—“forget ‘should.' You did what you thought was right. That's enough. Go on.”

She told him about the imprisoned mares. “It's—I can't think of any words to describe it. But I suppose just stating the facts describes it, doesn't it?”

Vernon asked, “This guy who grabbed you in the barn that night—why did he? Do you know?”

Nell looked toward the window, thinking. She did not want to turn his attention to the man and the pitch-black room. She knew it would overwhelm the rest. “I don't know, I honestly don't. The first thing he did was to spray something in my eyes. I couldn't see.”

“You couldn't identify him, then?”

She shook her head. “I know he was short and wiry from having to sit in front of him. He could've been a jockey, for that matter. He was certainly a good rider. As far as I know, I didn't see him again. I don't think he was one of the men who worked for Valerie Hobbs.”

Vernon looked at her. “It was you,” said Vernon. “The anonymous tip to the police.”

“Yes. Who was that woman? I never saw her before.”

“Neither had anyone else. She was Dan Ryder's wife. Widow, I mean. Police traced her back to Paris.”

“That's—” She shook her head. “I don't understand.”

“Neither do we. Arthur'd never seen her. Have you called him? Does he know you're back? Does your father?”

“No. Not yet. Please don't tell anyone.”

Her look was so beseeching he wouldn't have told whatever she didn't want told to whomever she didn't want it told.

“Do you have any idea how much they . . . sorry.” He realized he'd be laying a guilt trip on her. “Of course you have.”

“It'll only be another few days. We can get the mares out, can't we?”

“One way or another. Yes, I can certainly try. Valerie Hobbs. That's the owner, as far as you could tell?”

“I'm not sure; I think she was. There were a number of others, men. I didn't get to talk much to them. I mean, they weren't supposed to talk to me. One of them did; he was pretty nice. Bosworth.”

Vernon was up and pacing from sofa to window. The rain had stopped: the dome of St. Paul's seemed to shine, rain washed or light washed.

Nell went on. “I don't think this Valerie Hobbs was the—what do you call it?—instigator.”

He turned and smiled. “The perp? Perpetrator?”

“Yes. I think she was in someone else's pay.”

“The bastard who grabbed you?”

She shook her head. The one who'd abducted her was not the one who'd paid repeated visits to her room in the night. “I never saw him again.”

Vernon sat down beside her. “Nell, can you think of any reason someone would think you're a danger to them?”

“Not beyond his assuming I saw him—”

Samantha walked in with several Fortnum's boxes. She set them beside Nell, saying, “It's the only dependable place to shop.”

Nell thanked Samantha, thanked both of them, for going to all this trouble.

“Trouble?” said Vernon. “Is there a woman alive who'd rather type than shop? She enjoyed doing it.”

Samantha stuck out her tongue. She enjoyed doing that, too.

The boxes open, Nell pulled out a white silk shirt, Calvin Klein jeans, a blue and brown Harris tweed jacket and a black velvet skirt. Nell pronounced them all beautiful. “I'll get dressed.”

“Good. We'll go to dinner.”

Samantha asked, “Where, Aubergine? Did you make a reservation?”

“No, but I've got the maître d' in a hedge fund that's making him enough money he can retire. He's thirty-one, so he's pleased.” To Nell he said, “Had you planned on overnight digs? You can stay with me. I've got three bedrooms and I'm your stepbrother.” He smiled.

“Oh, my,” said Samantha. “I can see a clever defense attorney mounting that as an argument against the possibility of sexual misconduct.” She said to Nell, “Listen, don't worry on that score. He's about as romantic as a rise in interest rates.”

“You'd know, would you?”

Samantha laughed, said good night and headed for the door. Vernon watched her go, smiling. She really was worth her weight in gold securities.

V
ernon poured himself a finger of whiskey and went over to the mirror, waiting for Nell. In the time she'd been here, a gloomy afternoon had changed to an iridescent evening. The lights of streets and buildings and houses glittered; St. Paul's dome was bathed in moonlight, and he wondered, How could a day that started as woefully as this one end up the way it had?

“Everything fits,” said Nell behind him, adjusting items that needed none, buttoning a button on the Harris tweed jacket and then unbuttoning it, the same with the white silk blouse. “Even the shoes.” She held up a foot. She smiled. Actually, she beamed.

To Vernon she looked not only happy but also gorgeous. “Perfect” was all he said.

“I'll bet this is a good restaurant.”

“Would I take you anywhere else?”

“No. But there's probably a dress code.” She looked unsophisticated and uncertain.

“They always hand me a tie at the door. Listen, if the cut of that coat can't get you in, we don't want to go. Come on.”