The Grave Maurice (28 page)

So did she and her smile was broad. “I'm sorry.” She handed it back. “Do you really need to prove it? Wouldn't anybody let you in? Any woman, anyway?”

“Thanks.” He did not respond to this flirty attempt to ingratiate herself to the police. He sat down in the armchair she indicated, covered like the sofa and other chairs in an Oriental print—birds, green stems, bamboo—much faded. He felt the need to restore, or right, the balance between them.

She seemed extremely composed and was probably one of those witnesses who could take over an interrogation and wind up doing most of it. Yet she didn't really seem to see herself in that role as she sat with her hands neatly folded on her knees, smiling slightly, waiting. He was, after all, trained to take over; unfortunately, she seemed just as well trained to derail any conversation she did not like. He intuited this.

“You'd make,” he said, “a hell of a good double agent.”

Her eyes widened and he saw they were a soft, ambiguous brown. Why “ambiguous”? He didn't know.

“I would?”

“Oh, definitely.”

Her hair was a sort of toffee color, a tarnished gold, as if it were waiting for the light now streaking the window behind her to provide the highlights.

“I'm taking that as a compliment.”

Jury laughed. “Why? Agents are deceitful and slippery.”

“Because that's the way you meant it. They're also very clever. That's something I'm not. I've always lacked that—cleverness.”

“Why do I doubt that?”

“No, but it's true.” She smiled again. “So you've come to recruit me for an undercover job.” The smile broadened as if she really meant it.

Jury couldn't tell. He was almost relieved to see the upper two teeth just a shade crooked, but then he thought there was something of childhood in that crookedness and that, too, might be deceptive. “Actually, I've come to ask you some questions.”

“About what?” She settled back in her chair.

“You knew Dan Ryder, the jockey?”

At that moment, a presence up to this point absent, something veiled and ghostlike, entered the room, and Jury sat forward and just resisted the impulse to reach out for it. Yet her expression hadn't changed. That was the problem, wasn't it? Something had entered to change it, and it hadn't changed at all.

“I didn't really know Dan Ryder; I met him a few times. It was at—” She looked at the mantel, Jury presumed at the silver-framed pictures sitting there between two old brass candleholders. She rose and crossed to it and picked one picture up, which she handed to Jury. “That was Newmarket races. He's up on Criminal Type—or at least that's what I thought—and that's Arthur Ryder holding the reins. And the trainer, I forget his name. I'm in the background, there.” She tapped the glass.

“Who introduced you?”

“Arthur did. I'm a very distant relation. Then I saw him—Dan Ryder, I mean—again when he won again. It was Cheltenham Racecourse, then again at Doncaster. The Derby at Epsom was brilliant. Lucky Me won carrying 129 pounds. Halfway round he slammed into the fence and I was sure Danny was going down. But he righted himself and won by three lengths in 1:11:36. Yes, he was quite something.”

Danny?
Jury waited, but she said nothing more and replaced the picture. “That was all, just those three times?”

She smiled. “Isn't it enough for you?”

Definitely a derailer. “For me, possibly. As for you, it depends.”

“On what? I'm in the dark, Superintendent. Why are you asking about Dan Ryder? He's dead. He died somewhere else, not in the UK. France, it might have been. A racing accident.”

“Auteuil racetrack, near Paris.”

She turned her look to the room, and Jury had a most unnerving response to it. He could have sworn she was looking at somebody or something he couldn't see. The feeling passed, but left him disturbed.

She said, “This must have something to do with Arthur Ryder's granddaughter. Her disappearance.”

Jury nodded. “It does. Did you know her?”

“No. Wales is a long way from Cambridgeshire. I'm one of the Ryders merely by dint of an aunt once removed. I'm some kind of stepcousin.”

“Obviously, you like racing.”

“Yes. I go whenever I get the chance. A friend invited me to the Cheltenham Gold Cup.”

He thought for a moment. “Then you didn't have any interaction with Dan Ryder? That seems strange given you know these races so well.”

She laughed. “That's the point: I went to see the Derby, not Dan Ryder. I recall it so well because it was so dramatic. I didn't know Dan, as I said before. Twice.”

Jury smiled. “Sorry.”

She made to rise. “Would you like some coffee, Superintendent?”

“I would. Thanks.” It was less a desire for coffee than it was to have her leave the room so he could look around.

The room's emanations—oh, surely, that had been his imagination?—coupled perhaps with the size of the house and its empty lower rooms—disturbed him. Or perhaps she did. Well, he knew she did, that was the pathetic truth. But what had her eyes been trained on during that look over his shoulder? He crossed to the sofa and sat where she had sat. There was nothing behind his now-imaginary shoulder but the high Gothic window, out of which he could see a figure draped in cloth, the stone folds of which hid her almost entirely. He went to this window and looked out on a sadly neglected garden, which no amount of nurturing sun or rain would restore to what it had been.

Houses such as this troubled Jury. Not because of their being neglected, but because of the presence of the past. What must it be like to be the last member of a family who had once lived here? Why did she live here alone? Wales was always touted as a land of great natural beauty. Why, then, did the distant mountains, the rocky land, the deserted garden strike Jury as harrowed and precipitate? Whoever found beauty here must like her beauty dangerous. He was still looking out at the mountains beyond and the blank day when he heard her footsteps advancing, and, turning, almost expected to see not Sara, but someone else.

Over the tray with the coffee service, she gave him a fleeting smile, one fled in an instant along with his rational self. He felt enveloped by pure feeling. The sensation passed and he was sorry to see it go.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, no. Here, let me help you with that.”

She had stopped with the heavy silver tray carrying a sadly tarnished silver coffeepot and china cups. But before he reached her, she set it down on a side table. “That's all right; it's lighter than it looks.” She poured strong black coffee into a cup. “Cream? Sugar?” she asked.

“Neither.”

“Black is the only way to drink coffee, I think.”

“And strong,” he said, taking the cup she held out. He sat down again as she reclaimed her seat on the sofa.

She said, “I read about the death of that woman on the Ryder course. That is so strange. Arthur Ryder's an unlucky man.”

“I doubt luck has much to do with it. Did you have any idea at all about that shooting?”

“I? Why, no. I told you I barely know the Ryders.”

Jury sat back with his cup. “But you know his stepson, Vernon Rice.”

Surprisingly, she smiled. “Ah, yes. I do know him, yes. He handled some investments for me.”

“You like him, to judge from your smile.”

She laughed. “It's just that he was so utterly friendly. He was beguiling, really. And the investments paid off handsomely.”

“You trust Vernon Rice?”

She looked bewildered. “Yes, of course.”

Jury smiled. “That ‘of course' implies that anyone would.”

“What are you saying? Vernon is some sort of con man?”

“No, not at all.”

They were silent for a moment, drinking their coffee, aware of each other's presence. Then Jury said, “Dan Ryder was, as I understand it, quite a ladies' man.” He felt the phrase to be old-fashioned and a little silly now.

She looked up from her coffee. “I don't—” She stopped. “I don't know if he was.”

“I understand he had a number of affairs and broke up more than one marriage.” Jury rose and moved again to the fireplace, where he picked up the snapshot of the winner's circle at Newmarket races. “Very charismatic, from what I've heard. Do you think so?”

“I wouldn't know.”

“But you found him attractive?”

“I suppose so.”

“I'm just curious.” He laughed a little. “As a man, I mean. I wonder what exactly a woman finds attractive.” He looked at her, holding her glance, which he suspected wanted to run away. “I've seen photographs of him at the Ryder place and he doesn't strike me as all that, well, alluring, you could say. What exactly did you respond to? Or perhaps it wasn't his looks. His manner? His touch?”

She sat for a few moments, her face expressionless. Then she said, “But then, you're a man, aren't you?” Suddenly she rose, looking stricken and pale, as if she'd just received a report of a death. Picking up the silver cream pitcher, she said, “I think this cream has gone off. Excuse me.”

Jury watched her leave.
But we don't use cream.

He took his cup and returned to the window and its view of the distant mountains.

When she returned with the cream, she had clearly collected herself. “I was about to go for a walk when you came. Would you mind? I mean, we could talk while walking, couldn't we?”

As she stood there with the little cream jug that no one had needed, Jury felt her anxiety and would almost have taken back what he'd asked her. She was still in love with Danny Ryder and desperate to keep the attachment hidden.

They gathered up coats, he helping her on with hers, and left the house. A walk had not been her aim. Getting rid of him probably had been. If she'd lied about her involvement with Ryder, she might have lied about other things.

Still, he could feel her need not to drag him from whatever corner of her mind she'd banished him to. What surprised Jury was that she still harbored these feelings after several years. Then he thought, how banal. Feelings, he well knew, could last a lifetime. Anyone who thought time healed all wounds must have sustained only the most minor lacerations.

Their walk in the grounds led them around the dry pool, filled now with shriveled leaves. In the center was a stone figure, a woman pouring what perhaps in a warmer month would be water, a circle of fish with incongruous, open mouths below her.

“Like a lot of things here,” she said, “the fountain doesn't work.” Her glance canvassed the desolate gardens. “I'm not truly neglectful; I get some boys in from the village to care for it in the spring.”

“I didn't think you were—neglectful, I mean.”

She turned, her hand bunching the collar of her coat more closely around the neck. “Then what? What in the world do you think I am, for you obviously have reservations about me?”

“Amorous.”

Her hand dropped away from her collar. She laughed. “Whatever makes you say that?”

“That's why you live here alone, isn't it? In exile, you could say. Better that than a broken heart. Too much feeling, that's what keeps you here.”

It was as if she couldn't believe what she'd heard. Her mouth opened, closed again.

“Much safer,” he added. “Much.” He looked into her brown eyes and a thread of green outlining the iris. Then at her soft mouth. He started walking again.

But she just stood.

He turned round and smiled. “Come on; it's too cold for standing still.” He held out his hand, which was warm. She walked a few paces and put her own, which was cold, in his.

“Is this peculiar talk about my amorousness—is it to trick me into something? Some admission of guilt?”

“Of what?” He stopped and looked at her.

She laughed. “Oh, I see, no trickery involved in this discussion.”

“No.”

“You must be very good at getting suspects to confide in you.”

“Not particularly. How long have you lived here?”

She hesitated, wondering, probably, if the question was loaded. “Since my divorce four years ago.”

“It must have been painful then to drive you here.”

Again she stopped and looked up at him, slowly shaking her head. “You really are clever. You could just ask me why I divorced my husband. I found his temper impossible to take, eventually. The divorce was acrimonious, to say the least. He liked cars, to race fast cars. I always thought that was a little, I don't know, adolescent.”

“That's too bad. It's too bad about the way things start out and the way they end up.”

They were walking by the disconcerting statue of the woman draped in folds of granite cloth. One could see nothing of the figure but an arm extended.

“Why did the sculptor hide all of her body except for that arm? Why is she so totally draped?” Jury asked.

“I don't know. My parents—or grandparents—put her there.”

“Why do we assume the figure is a woman?”

“Yes, you're right. But no one has ever thought that it wasn't.”

“It could as easily be, oh, Judas, suffering from the remorse of betrayal.”

For a minute she was silent, watching the statue as if she expected the figure to turn its face to her and explain. “Perhaps it's because it's hard to imagine a man in that state.”

“Come on! Are you suggesting men don't suffer that much?”

“It's been my experience they don't.”