The Grave Maurice (40 page)

“Who is it down to, then?”

She looked away. “I'm not saying anything else without my solicitor being present.”

Fine time to think of that, thought Jury, reaching into his coat pocket for the snapshots.

Jury sat back, looking her up and down, making a point of doing so. “You're about—what—five two?”

Surprised, she sat back. “What in God's name has that got to do with anything?”

“I think you're an extremely attractive woman.”

This earned him a false smile and a cloying tone. “I wouldn't suit you; I'm only five three.” She looked him over, as he had done her, at least as much as she could with a table cutting them in two. “You're
way
over six feet.”

“Four inches over, yes.”

“You're not half bad yourself.”

“Thanks.” Jury was fascinated. Valerie Hobbs could and probably would—despite Nell's testimony—go down for this crime all on her own, yet here she sat, confident enough to put moves on him. So what was it? How could she have been sold such a bill of goods? Assurance that she'd be all right, probably escape a prison term for this frightful crime? Someone with plenty of influence over her must have convinced her it would be a stroll in the park.

Jury took one of the snapshots he'd carried away from Sara's collection and said: “Here's another extremely attractive woman, also petite, like you. Ever seen her?” He pushed the picture across the table.

“No. Who is she?” She pushed it back toward him. “Should I know her?”

Jury sat looking at her.

She flicked ash from her cigarette onto the floor. She laughed briefly. “Are you trying to intimidate me?”

“No, not really. I think it would be difficult to do that. You really have nerves of steel, Valerie.” Jury was leaning toward her again, his hands folded on the table, managing to make steely nerves sound erotic. “I wouldn't be surprised,” he went on in the softest voice he could muster, “if you were a match for just about any man, even one who might be a match for any woman.”

She looked uncertain, gave a half laugh and said, “You speaking of yourself, then?”

Jury laughed and sat back again. “Good Lord, no. Me? I'm quite easily taken in.”

Valerie Hobbs uttered a soundless laugh. “That is
such
a lie.”

“Perhaps, but—” He leaned forward again, fixing her with a look that one might say spoke volumes yet was being forever misread. “Has he really got such a hold over you that you refuse to give him up?”

Her cigarette stopped on its way to her mouth. “Has who?”

Jury shrugged. “There's somebody you're protecting.”

Again, that mirthless little laugh. “You're bonkers, Superintendent.”

Jury pulled out another snapshot, pushed that one toward her, too. “Same woman, only this time—”

Valerie Hobbs picked it up, looked from the snapshot to Jury and back again. And laughed. “The man she's with? Yes, I know him: Dan Ryder. Isn't that who this is? He's
dead,
for God's sake. D-E-A-D. You really haven't a clue, have you?”

It wasn't the reaction he'd expected.

Perhaps she was right; perhaps he hadn't a clue.

I
t was dark, the middle of the night, when Maurice took Aqueduct from his stall, saddled and cantered out to the far field and Hadrian's walls. Maurice knew Aqueduct could do it, whether with Maurice up on him was another matter.

The air was like crystal, clear and sharp. Aqueduct was the sort of horse you could feel glued to, as if horse and rider were one inseparable entity. That was a good feeling; it was also a dangerous one. You could stop paying attention because you thought the horse would do it for you.

Maurice had found it hard concentrating on anything since Nell's return. Like the crystal air, he felt he could be seen through; he felt he could break. What had been a massive relief when he'd first seen her was now a dead weight. Nell had almost vanished off the face of the earth. Maurice didn't want to think about it anymore.

The ground—hard, icy and wet—was soon churned to muddy slickness. The first three walls had been taken easily enough. Now they were approaching the fourth wall, which was higher than both the fifth and the sixth, so that if he could get over it, it would mean he could probably get over all of them.

It was this wall, the fourth, that had stopped Criminal Type (but he wasn't a jumper, anyway) and it seemed suddenly to rise up before him. He had lifted himself above the saddle, with his head nearly on the bridle, and then Aqueduct was flying, sailing through the sharp midnight air. That was, at least, the feeling as the horse surged over the top of the wall, but on the descent, Aqueduct's hind leg got caught in a stone outcrop and they came down like a thunderclap.

In a flash, Maurice knew, as he was thrown at lightning-bolt velocity against the wall, Maurice knew he would not have to feel it any longer: the betrayer betrayed.

W
hen Jury got back from Cambridge, Carole-anne was glittering around his flat in midthigh black sequins, doing several nursey things, or at least what she imagined nurses must do—plumping pillows, lining up shoes, making tea, a steaming cup of which was sitting on the small table beside Jury's chair.

It did not disturb Jury that she was in his flat when he wasn't there; sometimes he wished she'd be in it more when he
was
there. He marveled that the three of them (with Stan Keeler making an often-absent fourth) were still here together. Mrs. Wasserman, of course, couldn't be pried free of her “garden” flat (basement, in other words) for love or money. But it did surprise him that Carole-anne had remained stationary for all of these years. He didn't wonder about her love life—well, not often—because it struck him as intrusive even to think about—

—it, although he certainly watched whenever she was in Stan's presence.

“What?”

Carole-anne was in her hands-on-hips posture, a stance he really liked because it was very hippy and tonight had sequins on it. “Just wondering about the dress. Where're you going? To another rally of the public-footpath people?” Jury was taking off his shoes, feeling his tired feet had been to the rally themselves.

Doubtfully, she smoothed her hands down over the short black dress. “What's wrong with it, then? Stan likes it.”

“I'm sure Stone likes it, too, but that doesn't mean you have to lead it around on a leash.”

Puzzlement. “What's that mean?”

Jury had no idea. He just said it. “There's nothing wrong with it, nothing, believe me.
Oh-ho
and
mmmmmm
nothing. If you walked down a public footpath in that there'd be no argument from Lord Stickywicket about whether the footpath was his or yours.”

Carole-anne gave him a look. “Super, why does it always take you forever to say something?”

Jury smiled. It was exactly what he'd said to Melrose Plant.

She merely flapped her hand at him, saying, “Oh, never mind.” She began rearranging magazines on the cherry coffee table.

“Carole-anne, those magazines are ten years old; they don't care anymore.”

“I'm going to the Nine-One-Nine.” She sighed and shook her head. “Too bad you're recuperating or you could come, too.”

In high-pitched mimicry, Jury repeated, “ ‘Too bad you're recuperating or you could come, too.' I'm perfectly capable of going to the Nine-One-Nine. It's only”—he checked his watch—“ten o'clock.”

“You really are behaving peculiar. I don't know what's got into you lately.”

He smiled. “Just three bullets.” He lost no opportunity to play the bullet card. Shameful.

Carole-anne went properly remorseful, put her hand on his forehead to check his temperature (or possibly to feel for brains) and left. He then poured himself another cup of tea and reseated himself. It was not because he was tired or “recuperating” that he hadn't gone with her, but because he wanted only to think. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back. His thoughts were a blur.

Valerie Hobbs. She was a stubborn woman. Stubborn and seriously misled. He hadn't really hoped for more than he'd gotten. Valerie had her impulses under control, so that her laugh and her
“you haven't a clue”
response to the picture of Dan Ryder told him that he was wrong about Valerie. But that didn't mean he was wrong about Sara Hunt.

Sara Hunt. Sara did not have as much to lose. Both of them would clearly go to the mat for a man they loved. Did women like danger? Did they find it romantic?

Suddenly, Jury thought of Maurice and sat up. Maurice needed to tell someone the truth about what he'd done.

With the receiver cradled between ear and shoulder, Jury hurriedly went through his address book, found the Ryder number and punched it in. The phone rang several times before someone got to it.

The voice, Jury was fairly certain, was Vernon Rice's.

“It's Richard Jury. Sorry, it's a little late, but it's important. I just wanted a word with Maurice, if he's around.”

On Rice's end, dead silence.

“Vernon?”

“Yes, I'm here. Sorry.” He cleared his throat as if that might get his voice working again. “I'm afraid this is . . .”

The voice just trailed off. Something must be seriously wrong. “Nell. Has something happened to her?”

“No. It's not Nell.” Vernon tried again to clear his throat. “It's Maurice. There was an accident. Maurice is dead.”

The words hit Jury one two three, as if he'd been clubbed. He got up, felt dizzy, sat down again. He could think of nothing to say as he shook and shook his head as if Vernon Rice could see he was reacting to this news. He couldn't find his voice to ask what had happened. He sat staring at the listing picture of the horses gathered at the white fence.

Vernon inferred that Jury was having trouble and told him briefly what had happened. “Maurice was out earlier jumping Aqueduct over those walls—you know, Hadrian's walls—and Aqueduct, well, who knows exactly what happened? Maurice was thrown, must have vaulted against the stone. Nell started looking for Aqueduct when she found the stall empty. She found the horse, unharmed. Then she found Maurice.”

Nell had to be the one to find him. Jury shut his eyes.

“Do you want to talk to her?”

“No, not now. Maybe tomorrow. That poor lad.”

“Yes. He went just the way his dad went. God.”

Jury held the dead receiver for a long time before he put it back, got up and went over to the picture and set it straight. He didn't think he would ever be able to tell himself why. Where had he got it, this gentle scene? A hand on each side of the picture, as if either to imprison or protect it, he leaned against the wall and looked at the water-color of the horses at the fence. As far back as he could remember, he'd had it. He leaned his head against a fisted hand and his face so close to the glass he could make out only an amorphous white, brown, black. He wondered why he'd never paid any attention to it until the other night, and felt as people will feel a sense of loss that comes from neglect—the call you didn't make, the book you didn't read, the woman you didn't kiss. Why did he feel that place, that pasture so infinitely desirable but inaccessible? Freedom, was that it?

Maurice, unless he'd known there at the end, would never know.

Jury turned and looked at the table near the window where sat his old turntable and records and felt himself spinning out of control. He could feel himself sobbing, but as if the sobs were those of another person, the arm another's arm that shot out and swept the magazines, the keys, the heavy ashtray off the table. He retrieved the ashtray and hurled it against the bookshelves, where it landed and bounced onto the rug.

The door flew open.

Carole-anne rushed in and up to him and threw her arms around him as if to contain the fury. Then she pushed him down on the sofa, keeping her arm around his shoulders as if afraid to take away this support, fearful he might erupt.

Stone sat at his feet and whimpered. For Stone, that was out of control. Jury put his hand on the Lab's head. “Sorry,” he said.

“Oh, Stone don't mind. All the times he's put up with Stan raging around.”

Stan Keeler raging?

“I should have gone with you. I could use a few lashings of his guitar.”

“Well, right now what you need's a lashing of tea.” But she hesitated, not wanting to take her arm away. She moved her face back, frowned in question.

“I'm okay.”

She patted his shoulder and went toward the kitchen, stopping first at the record player and looking through the records. She took one from its sleeve, put it on and continued to the kitchen as the twangy voice of Willie Nelson sang of all the girls he loved before.

Pots and pans were rattling around and suggested more than tea was being prepared. Soon he heard the spit of something hitting grease.

Willie Nelson. Now he remembered where he'd gotten that recording. It was Carole-anne who'd walked in with it when Jury's old fiancée, Susan, had been in the flat. Carole-anne had put it on and told Susan it was “their” song. Carole-anne in a Chinese red silk dress with “their” song was a force to be reckoned with, and Susan lost the reckoning. He listened to the sounds coming from the kitchen and the voice singing along with Willie Nelson.

She came out of the kitchen holding a plate and a cup. “Why're you laughing?” A ton of relief was in her voice.