The Grave Maurice

by Martha Grimes

  “This detective”-he pointed to the book-“reads about it and at some point decides the whole tale of Richard’s killing the princes is codswallop. So he does more and more research, getting his girlfriend to bring him books and finally comes up with a totally different solution. Clever idea, I think.”

  “If I had a girlfriend, maybe I would, too.” He riffled the last pages. “How does it end?” Jury did not like detective stories, especially those starring royalty, so he cut to the chase.

  Wiggins, however, wouldn’t follow. “You’ll just have to read it, won’t you?” Wiggins laughed as one might at an intractable, bedridden child. “What I thought was, I could bring you information about one of our cases and you could chew on that.”

  “Ah,” said Melrose, tilting his chair back against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. “Why don’t you chew on this?”

  THREE

  Maurice was always up early, up at first light, when the world was waking. Cold as it was, rime on the panes, old snow still crusted at the roots of trees, stiff grass more like ice shards than pasture-still he loved it. Although he had to admit one of the reasons for this early hour was that he wouldn’t have to see or talk to, or be seen or talked to by, anyone. It was even too early for his uncle, Roger, who occasionally stayed over. When he did, he liked to come down to the track and watch Maurice exercise the horses.

  A couple of nights ago, at dinner, Roger had said, “I’ve an interesting patient, a police superintendent. Scotland Yard, no less. Well… I was just thinking”-his laugh was artificial-“I might tell him the story. Of course he might already have heard… and it’s been almost two years-”

  “Tell him,” Maurice interrupted, “the story.”

  You can’t give up, Maurice thought now. You can’t give up trying. “Right, Sam?” He tossed the blanket over the horse, then the bridal and saddle. Samarkand nudged his shoulder as if to say Let’s go and Maurice led him out of the stall. This walk from stable to track was just about the best part of Maurice’s day-except, of course, for the ride itself.

  No school because it was still the Christmas holiday, but that would end soon. He didn’t really mind school; he had always had a capacity for discipline. He thought it came from caring for the horses, from watching George Davison, the trainer, from watching exercise lads and jockeys, from watching his father, his father up on Samarkand years ago. That horse and Dan Ryder-this was what the sportswriters called the “racing dream team.”

  He thought about his father. In no other way was Danny Ryder a “dream.” Too bad he ain’t a horse-it’s the only thing he’s good with, he’d heard the exercise boys say. No wonder she left. Maurice spent a fair amount of time trying not to hate his mum. She had not been a weak woman; she could stand up to his father when she wanted to. She had been-Maurice searched for a word-vague. Vague, yes. She had never seemed certain of what she wanted. It was, he thought, a peculiar flaw in character, maybe even a dangerous one. His mother had been small, pretty and American. She had been as indecisive about having a child as she had been about leaving New York or choosing a restaurant or a dress. Marybeth was definitely a wait-and-see person, lazy rather than careful. Certainly not reckless. No, recklessness was his father’s style.

  It would appear she had left without a qualm. It was as if he were no more than a bad climate she wanted to get away from. He had heard a good bit of this from conversations between his granddad and his uncle. Maurice could sympathize with Roger. He was nice. Distant, but nice. And God knows the distance of these last twenty months was understandable. Maurice himself felt at a distance from everyone. And because guilt weighed so heavily on him, too, there had been no one to go to for consolation when Nell disappeared.

  “Kind of queer, Dr. Ryder. Why was your girl sleeping out here?”

  The skin around Roger’s mouth was very white, papery and pinched, and his indrawn breath sounded more like a gasp, as if he’d lost his source of oxygen.

  Maurice had followed his uncle Roger and the detectives out to the stables. He had stood back by the door, in the shadows, listening, wanting to hear her name, as if its mention were hortatory and would call her back.

  In the night his grandfather sat with Roger, an arm draped over his son’s shoulder.

  Maurice hung back, sitting on the stairs and looking through the rails, listening for her name.

  FOUR

  “You’re looking remarkably well this morning, Superintendent.” Dr. Roger Ryder looked at Jury’s chart again and smiled. “You’ve got real stamina.” “Good,” said Jury, “but now aren’t you going to tell me I’m lucky to be alive? Nurse Bell reminds me of that a dozen times a day.”

  Ryder laughed. “No, somehow I don’t equate three bullet wounds with good luck. You’re feeling okay, are you? I mean emotionally as well as physically?”

  “Absolutely. When will you throw me back into the cesspool of police work?”

  “Ah. As far as releasing you is concerned, I think another two or three days ought to do it. But as far as police work goes, uh-uh.” Dr. Ryder held up an admonitory finger. “Have to wait several weeks for that. Are you bored?”

  Jury held up The Daughter of Time. “I’ve this to entertain me; it’s a policeman in hospital working on the historical case of Richard the Third. Unfortunately, as he solves it, it doesn’t leave me anything to do.” Dr. Ryder, Jury thought, was hesitating over something. He kept looking at the door and not leaving. “Something wrong?”

  “I just wondered,” Ryder smiled, trying to contain his anxiety, “if you’d like a real case to think about. Fact, not fiction.” Ryder moved over to the one good chair and placed his chart on the floor.

  “Of course I would. Tell me.”

  “It’s about my daughter. You might have read or heard about some of this. It happened nearly two years ago. She vanished.”

  For a second, Jury shut his eyes. Even though Melrose Plant had told him the story overheard in the pub, he was still unprepared. Vanished. Was there a word in any tongue, any language that was more affecting than that one? It chilled him. “My God. How old is she?” He would try to keep the girl in the present.

  “Now she’d be seventeen. Then she was fifteen. And Nell didn’t run away.” Ryder, in a voice that Jury imagined would be forever tremulous when he talked about her, gave Jury an accounting of what had happened. “It was bad enough before, but it got to be worse when there was no demand for ransom. That threw us completely.”

  “I can understand why. What about… Could you hand me some water? My mouth keeps drying up.”

  “A reaction to the medication. It’ll soon go away.”

  “What about her mother? Where was she?”

  “Her mother’s dead.”

  “I’m sorry.” Jury hesitated. “You’re quite sure your daughter didn’t leave voluntarily?”

  “She didn’t run off, no.” Roger rubbed his hand over his cheek, a nervous gesture. “I know any parent would say that, but Nell was a very contented child. Unlike Maurice-that’s Danny’s son-who never got over his mother’s walking out. But why shouldn’t Nell be happy, given the life she led? For kids a stud farm would be, well, idyllic.”

  Idylls, thought Jury, have a bad way of banging up against reality, if, indeed, they were idylls in the first place. Roger Ryder struck Jury as a doctor who took nothing at face value, but as a parent, probably everything. Such parents, well meaning and loving, weren’t unusual. And actually could hardly be blamed for not knowing what was in their kids’ minds and hearts.

  Roger got up and walked over to the window, where he leaned his arm against the frame and bent his head toward the glass as if he hoped to extract some bit of knowledge from his reflection, but he said nothing.

  “How did Nell react to her mother’s death?”

  “She was quite accepting of it, quite cool.”

  No she wasn’t. She only appeared to be.

  “Your brother’s wife walked out.”

  Roger nodde
d. “Marybeth’s leaving didn’t really surprise me. I don’t think it surprised Danny, either, to tell the truth. I think she was a token wife-you know, one more beautiful thing that sticks around for the winner’s circle, accepts some flowers, takes a bow and then departs. Danny always had plenty of women around. He had some sort of charisma that attracted women. He was flamboyant, probably trying to fill the emptiness most of us fill with food, booze, cigarettes. A jockey has to give all of that up, every habit in the book. Danny was always trying to lose that extra pound. It’s a hell of a life, so I guess you make up for it in other ways. Marybeth seemed totally indifferent to Maurice, who was and still is a very sweet boy. Just awfully sad. So much so it can be irritating.”

  Jury thought he heard an undertone of something alien to sweetness and much more aligned to “irritating.” It could be jealousy or envy or even a well-tamped-down rage. His own child, Nell, was gone while his flamboyant, quixotic brother’s child was here. All of these feelings were darkly cloaked in shame or guilt. “Your daughter lived with her grandfather?”

  “At his prompting. He could think of nothing better than having the grandchildren around. Danny lived in Chiswick, but Maurice spent nearly all of his time at the farm. The thing was that both of us had the kind of careers that just didn’t allow us to be home enough and the farm is such a wonderful environment.”

  “What about you?”

  Roger shook his head. “I have to live in London because of my work. But I go to the farm nearly every weekend.” Roger smiled. “ ‘Lucky you,’ as Vernon says.”

  “Vernon?”

  “Stepbrother.”

  “What did he mean by that?”

  “That Dad was taking over his sons’ responsibilities. Not that he really meant it.” Unoffended, Roger smiled and looked out the window again. “Vernon came as part of the package when Dad married again. Felicity Rice, an extremely nice but oddly colorless woman. Our mother had been quite beautiful. I never understood Felicity and Dad. Except I can say for Dad, it was no midlife crisis. Felicity wasn’t exactly one of your blond bombshells. She’s dead now, too.”

  “You’re smiling, though. Why?” Jury saw the adolescent kid peering out from behind the doctor’s mask.

  “Not about Felicity. About Vernon. He can say things without cutting you down, if you know what I mean. Vernon’s very smart, very ambitious and very rich. He lives in a classy penthouse in Docklands. And he’s generous. Dad got a loan from him a while back. We were-well, Dad was-assuming he had a buyer for one of the yearlings, a colt he was supposed to get one and a half million for and the buyer backed out. He knew he’d find another buyer, but he needed some money to tide him over-”

  Jury interrupted. “One and a half million for a horse that hasn’t proved himself yet?”

  Roger laughed. “Oh, hell, that’s nothing. Thoroughbred racing is a lucrative business. And the colt was one of Beautiful Dreamer’s. Ever heard of him? You would if you knew anything about racing. There was never much doubt this colt would perform.”

  “It sounds like one hell of a gamble.”

  “It always is. It’s a risky business. But one with huge rewards.”

  “Your brother Vernon. What does he do, then?” Roger smiled broadly. “Money.”

  FIVE

  “A taped interview with Dr. Ryder,” said Jury, sliding the file Wiggins had brought him onto his tray table. “Interview conducted by DCI Gerard, Cambridgeshire constabulary. Gist of it is that Nell Ryder, fifteen years old, was abducted from Ryder Stud Farm on the night of May 12, 1994. Twenty months ago, that would be. The girl was sleeping in the same horse stall as a horse named Aqueduct. He was sick, feverish and Nell Ryder often spent the night in the stables to keep an eye on a sick horse.

  DCI GERARD: You’re a wealthy man are you, Dr. Ryder?

  RYDER: No, I’m comfortable.

  DCI GERARD: Ryder Stud then. Your father is quite wealthy.

  RYDER: Intrinsically? Yes. Depends on how you look at it. In terms of liquidity, I mean money lying around, no. In terms of the stock-the Thoroughbreds-very.

  DCI GERARD: Could money be raised fairly easily?

  RYDER: I don’t know. Probably. I know his stepson’s got a lot of money, and he’d certainly help.

  DCI GERARD: We can expect a ransom demand.

  “Questions follow relative to the doctor’s whereabouts; he was asleep, no witnesses. He’s incensed, naturally, to be taken as a suspect. Questions about Nell’s mother. She’s dead. About his brother, Danny Ryder, also dead.

  DCI GERARD: Your brother was the famous jockey, wasn’t he?

  RYDER: Yes. One of the best. He rode Ryder Thoroughbreds in every important race in this country and in Europe and the States. He was a great jockey.

  DCI GERARD: He died-

  RYDER: In France, a racing course near Paris. Auteuil. Thrown from his horse.

  DCI GERARD: Hell of a life, it is. It seems to explode all over the place or thinking about food food food. Lester Piggot lived on champagne and a lettuce leaf. [Pause] Well, pardon me, Dr. Ryder. I get carried away sometimes.

  Jury looked up, smiling. “ ‘Carried away.’ I like that. Apparently, Gerard has a cousin who’s a jockey. I like the description. Questions about the Ryders’ wives. The doctor’s is dead, her name being Charlotte. The jockey’s-Marybeth-is living somewhere in America. His first wife, that is. He married again after he went to Paris. Woman who lives in Paris but as none of the Ryders have met her, Ryder doesn’t know if she’s a Parisian or possibly an Englishwoman.” Jury closed the file and sat back against his pillows.

  Melrose asked, “What about ransom? What happened there?” He had captured the one decent chair, leaving Wiggins to arrange himself on the unforgiving wooden one.

  “Never was one, it seems.”

  “What?”

  “They just took her. End of story. I mean, insofar as Cambridgeshire police knew. Oh, they didn’t stint in looking for her; it’s just that nothing else turned up. And, of course, in the absence of any ransom demand, it would be treated as an abduction rather than a kidnapping.”

  “Then maybe,” said Melrose, “it was the horse. What’s the name?”

  “Aqueduct. Quite valuable, especially for breeding purposes. I wondered about that, too. I expect when you find an animal missing along with a human, you assume the target was the human.”

  “They didn’t expect to find a girl along with the horse. Do you suppose they had to take her to keep her quiet?”

  “Very possibly.” Jury looked again at the report from Cambridgeshire police. “A number of valuable Thoroughbreds: Beautiful Dreamer, Criminal Type-”

  “Criminal Type, I like that name. Odd for a horse.”

  “So is Seabiscuit,” Wiggins said. “Do you know how that name came about? Seabiscuit, I mean?”

  Trust Wiggins to know the derivation of anything with biscuit in it. He was sitting there eating one right now.

  “There was a horse named Hard Tack, which is what sailors are often left with to eat. See? Hard Tack/sailor.”

  Both Jury and Melrose looked at him. Neither spoke. “Sea relating to sailor; biscuit meaning a lesser version of hard tack. It’s rather clever.”

  Jury and Melrose still looked at him, neither commenting.

  Wiggins was leafing up pages in his notebook. “Ryder Stud Farm has diminished somewhat since Nell Ryder disappeared. It’s almost as if she were the heart of the place. Perhaps she really was, to her grandfather. Then there was also Danny Ryder. Not only was that a personal loss, but a real financial hit. When he was up on this Samarkand, they were virtually unbeatable.”

  “What’s the chief source of income? The purses?”

  “No. Breeding. Ryder has a stable full of Thoroughbreds retired from racing, but worth a lot in breeding.”

  “Owners take their mares to Ryder Stud and pay for the pleasure?”

  “Pay a lot for the pleasure for a stud such as Samarkand. It’s the practice, I heard, to sell shar
es. An owner pays, say, anywhere from a hundred thousand to a quarter million for the privilege of bringing one of his mares one time a year.”

  Melrose sat up. “A quarter million? For that price I’d do it myself.”

  “Who’d pay that much for you?” asked Jury. “So a return on the stallions set to stud in a given year could be how much?”

  Wiggins again thumbed the pages of his notebook, said, “In ’92, for instance, over five million.”

  Jury sat up. “What? And that’s just the breeding part of it?”

  Wiggins nodded. “Just from breeding, yes.”

  “How much from the purses?”

  “From Samarkand alone-this would be a decade ago-1.8 million.”

  “No wonder they call it the sport of kings,” said Melrose.

  “Of course, looking at the other side of the ledger,” said Wiggins, “it’s an exceptionally pricey operation. The people you need working for you, many of whom are highly trained-jockeys, vets, trainers, grooms-do not come cheap. Arthur Ryder wanted the best of them. His trainer alone got a quarter million a year, and that’s low for a trainer. It’s expensive and it’s very dicey, as much as farming is, and farmers don’t have to carry insurance on each cow and plot of swede. Insurance on Samarkand alone was two million. But Arthur Ryder hasn’t been in tip-top shape since first his son Danny and then his granddaughter Nell went. Financial reverses, accidents with the horses, troubles seemed to heap themselves on Arthur Ryder’s head.”

  Jury lay back, closed his eyes. “ ‘Not single spies but in battalions.’ ”

  “Sir?”

  “Trouble coming. Claudius.”

  As if to bear out Claudius, Nurse Bell entered the room. But only single spies, Jury thought. A blessing.

  “I’d say you two”-here she crossed her arms and glared at Melrose and Wiggins-“have visited quite enough for one day. And I warned you he”-she smiled ungraciously at Jury, it was more of a sneer-“shouldn’t be listening to police business. He’s supposed to be resting, not listening to you two. You don’t seem to appreciate he was at death’s door, and though we snatched him back once, we mightn’t be so lucky again.”