The Grave Maurice

by Martha Grimes

  “Oh, yes, just not one of my best moves.”

  “Lady Ardry is here, in a state of high dudgeon, it appears. She insists on seeing you immediately.”

  “Ruthven, why is it different from any other time? She always insists. Oh, very well.” He handed the horse over to Momaday.

  Ruthven always enjoyed Agatha being in a “state,” not only because he liked seeing her upset but because it kept her from carping about the offerings on the tea table, one of which she was stuffing in just as Melrose walked into the drawing room.

  Around a mouthful of scone, she accused him of something or other, but what it was, Melrose couldn’t make out except the tag end:

  “… to have done it!”

  “Done what, Agatha?” He was engaged in thanking whatever gods that happened to be hanging about Ardry End that she hadn’t witnessed his fall from the horse.

  She was glaring as if from every corner of the room as she buttered up another scone. He poured himself a lovely cup of Darjeeling, plunked in a sugar cube and a dollop of milk, selected a moist-looking piece of cake and sat down, wishing that Aggrieved was here, hay and all, to be taking tea with him instead of Agatha. Perhaps the Sidbury Feed Store could construct a scone net, which could be hung from the Georgian ceiling molding.

  He asked her again. “Done what?”

  “Oh, you needn’t play the innocent with me, Plant. It’s all over the paper!”

  Melrose frowned. How on earth could the Sidbury paper have gotten news of his acquisition of a racehorse? More important, why would the paper think it news at all? This rag Diane Demorney wrote for would now, in January, just be catching up with the flower show. But here was Agatha opening it, turning it for Melrose to see and tapping the offending piece with her finger.

  Melrose left his chair to lean over and see it. Of course, it had nothing to do with Cambridge, how could it? The newspaper was interested only in what went on in its own backyard. He plucked it from Agatha’s hands and read:

  HUNT SUPPORTERS FOIL ANIMAL-RIGHTS GROUP

  There on the front page was a picture of himself, Diane and Trueblood, in one of their careless moments (he would have said), but then all of their moments were pretty careless. They gave the impression they were attacking (or counterattacking) some of the animal protesters, when the three were about as aware of animal-welfare issues as the annual rainfall in Papua New Guinea. True, Melrose would never kick a cat (though he wouldn’t answer for Diane if it got between her and the martini pitcher), but insofar as the whole movement was concerned they were totally uninformed. Yet here they were, in that moment when Melrose had quickly put out his arm to support a young woman with a sign who just then had caught her foot and was falling toward him; and Diane, raising her stiletto heel to shake out a stone; and Trueblood holding his camera above his head to keep it out of harm’s way.

  What a wonderful photo op! He must send a crate of succulents round to the Sidbury photographer. What an image for misconstruction!

  “It makes me out to look the proper fool, Plant! You’re aware of that, aren’t you?”

  Oh, indeed, he was aware. He kept a straight face as he sat down and sipped his cooling tea. Here was a moment to relish! Should he try to work out how this made Agatha out to be a fool-not that that was ever too difficult-or just play it?

  Play it. “The point is, Agatha, if you must take up a cause, you also must be aware that there’ll be a backlash from the anti-cause (was that a word?).”

  “Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Melrose.”

  “Okay.” Melrose was eyeing the ruins of the tiered plate, looking for a pastry that had escaped Agatha’s ravaging. She had a way of biting off and putting back when she was especially irritated, taking it all out on the scones and seedcake. He did find an Eccles cake without tooth marks.

  “I’ve always thought it shameful, shameful, the way you neglect Mindy, here!”

  Mindy-here was flopped on the hearth in her usual position, soaking up heat.

  “How do you work that out, Agatha?”

  “She gets no exercise! Do I ever see you out with that dog on a lead?”

  “No, but that’s only because you’re over here having tea during dog-leading time.”

  Agatha, he saw, was actually waving that half-buttered scone around instead of eating it. She must really be on the boil! He said, “I can’t help but think we strayed from the subject, since I really don’t believe the animal-liberation people are trying to get us to walk Siberian tigers.”

  “You know nothing about it!” Realizing she had a scone in her hand that could as easily be in her mouth, she put it in and munched. Then having resurrected her weak argument, she said, “You surely must see the idiocy if not the inhumanity of a pack of hounds running down a poor little fox!”

  “Yes, it is idiotic. Oscar Wilde said so and I agree. But that particular idiocy is a wholly different argument and not the one you’re trying to make. As far as I’m concerned the entire hunting issue is a smoke screen for a class war.” He didn’t know if he believed that or not, but it was as good an argument as any. “Why choose a thing that is least abusive-certainly ‘least’ in terms of numbers-to make an issue of? If the welfare of animals was really at the heart of yesterday’s masquerade, then why not spend one’s time and energy on ridding the earth of far more brutal practices-slaughtering seals, mowing down wolves and deer from a helicopter, obliterating animal habitat, tracking and shooting the Siberian tiger in order to grind its bones for medicinal purposes”-which had for Melrose a terrible mythic ring to it-“so what it really comes down to isn’t the welfare of the fox, but of the pink- and black- and tweed-coated citizens of the upper classes whom we would like to unseat.”

  Agatha’s attention, hard to keep in the best of circumstances, had strayed and was riveted on the long window off to her left. “A horse just passed that window!”

  “Momaday’s walking it.”

  Hopeless.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The Sidbury paper was open on the table in the Jack and Hammer, the table’s four occupants having a good old laugh.

  “How droll,” said Diane Demorney, in her Noel Coward mood, her cigarette dripping ash over the paper and coming dangerously close to the martini glass. Diane was dressed in conventional and nondroll black, one by that Asian designer she’d been favoring lately (Issy? Icky? Mickey?) “We three mistaken for animal activists. They’ve obviously never come up against my cat. All I was doing”-she tapped the picture with her cigarette holder-“was shaking a stone from my shoe.”

  “What’ll we do for an encore?” said Trueblood.

  “Wear mink and walk down Oxford Street,” said Vivian. “I wish I’d been there.”

  “We did invite you, old girl,” said Trueblood. “We should join the hunt. Must be someplace we could rent a horse.”

  “Look no farther than my back garden. I have a horse stabled there.”

  He might as well have said he had a 747 hangered there, for the looks he got. He smiled.

  “What on earth for? You don’t ride, do you?” said the scandalized Trueblood.

  “How amusing.” Coming from Diane, this was high praise indeed.

  “My riding isn’t all that good, but I plan on racing it. It’s a Thoroughbred.” Melrose felt quite smug.

  Diane said, “Remember Whirlaway? That is, remember reading about him, it being long before our time? Whirlaway was owned by Calumet Farm, that racing empire that was ruined by greed and mismanagement.”

  Another Diane nugget.

  “I can sympathize with greed, but why anyone would want to engage in a thing that needs management, I can’t imagine.” She seemed to be brooding over her drink.

  Vivian asked, “But where are you going to race him, Melrose?”

  “Well…” He should have given this more thought. Newmarket? That was in Cambridgeshire. “Newmarket, possibly. I’m going to have to get advice from the Ryder trainer.”

  “You know, Melrose,” Diane said,
screwing another cigarette into her black holder, “you could have a nice little horse enterprise yourself with all of that land of yours.”

  “I could plant cotton, too, but I’m not going to.”

  “Don’t be a stick. Imagine what fun it would be for all of us. You’ve enough land there for an honest-to-God racecourse.”

  “And put up stands and have a few turf accountants around and a full bar?”

  “Certainly, a bar. The rest is optional.”

  “Diane,” said Vivian, “if I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were serious.”

  “Of course I’m serious.” She returned her look to Melrose. “Or-”

  “ ‘Or’?”

  “Is-what’d you say your horse’s name is?”

  “Aggrieved.”

  “You can rename it. Thunderbolt-there’s a good name.”

  “Why on earth would I do that? Aggrieved is a high-stakes winner.”

  She waggled her cigarette holder at him. “For heaven’s sake, Melrose, you don’t want people knowing that; you don’t want to give the whole bloody thing away. The idea is to get odds of say fifty to one and make a packet of money.”

  “If the odds were like that, old fish,” said Trueblood, “hardly anyone would bet on him and who’d do the payout?”

  “Whoever is used to doing it. I don’t know; I’ve never been much of a gambler. I mean except in the London clubs, such as they are.” She shrugged and sat back. “What you could do then is join the National Hunt.”

  “No, I could not. I don’t ride-” Recalling what he felt had been a very encouraging canter, well, almost a canter that morning, he added, “I mean I don’t ride that well…”

  Trueblood leaned forward. “But it’d be a great follow-up to this!” Trueblood tapped his knuckles on the paper. “I mean, it’d drive Agatha mad and the other so-called animal-rights person, that snake, Theo Wrenn Browne.”

  “Him?” said Vivian, surprised. “Since when has he ever liked animals at all? He’s always kicking at Ada Crisp’s dog and if anyone in the village tries to go into that bookshop with his pet, Theo drives them out. He hates animals.” Then to Melrose: “How’s Richard? Is he better?”

  “He is indeed.”

  “Ah! Richard Jury!” said Diane. “Is he recovered?”

  “Recovered, at least enough to leave the hospital tomorrow. He’s coming here to rest up.”

  Diane actually spilled a few drops of her drink, bringing the glass down on the table in martini applause. “Wonderful!”

  “He said he might have to spend a night in Islington to give his two doting neighbors a chance to take care of him.”

  “Everybody wants a piece of him,” said Trueblood, signaling to Dick Scroggs for refills.

  “How true,” said Diane.

  “You’d devour him where he stands,” said Trueblood.

  “He’s highly devourable,” said Diane.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Even had she not taken an oath to succor her fellow-man, Chrissie King would have done it anyway, and she stood in the door to Jury’s room wishing she could.

  “Chrissie, would you mind pounding some life into these pillows?”

  “Oh… of course! Sorry, I was… my mind was wandering…” She rushed to the bed as if he’d called for artificial respiration. (Didn’t she just wish!) She pulled and padded and resettled the pillows.

  “Thanks, Chrissie. You pulled duty tonight instead of Miss Brown?”

  She nodded. Actually, she bought the duty for twenty pounds in addition to picking up Sara Brown’s duty tomorrow afternoon with a churlish patient Nurse Brown especially disliked.

  “Can’t say I’m sorry. I expect it must be a waste of time for you to have to tend to someone like me who’s really okay now.”

  Chrissie’s words rushed out as if in advance of the voice to utter them. “Oh, but you’re not all that okay. I mean it’s not you’re really sick or anything. But with what you’ve been through…” Her head tilted nearly to her own shoulder as she looked at him.

  Jury hid a smile. Chrissie wanted him unrecovered, too, just as Hannibal did, for wholly different reasons. “Dr. Ryder seems to think I am; he needs the bed. God knows, he needs this private room. So he’s tossing me out tomorrow afternoon. I hope I’m not spoiling an evening out for you. You must have boyfriends to spare.”

  What, Chrissie wondered, were they? Boyfriends?

  She had a way of shaking and nodding her head at the same time that intrigued Jury. “No? Yes?” He tried to mimic the head shaking by way of keeping her company. He wasn’t flirting with her; at least, he didn’t mean to be. Rather, he was attuning himself to her. It was a way he had-born with it or developed it-from years of questioning suspects, in those cases to discomfit them, in Chrissie’s case to comfort.

  Jury was aware that he insinuated himself into the lives of witnesses and suspects, but that really was the only way of going about it. It was the only way to see the skull beneath the skin. He had to admit he encouraged the attachment people had to him. It might have been something like transference, that psychiatric tool. But the psychiatrist was trained to remain uninvolved, like a target transfixed to a spot while the rifle sought to pick him out of the shadows.

  That image of gunplay brought the whole awful incident on the dock back to him. Poor Mickey.

  “Is something wrong?” asked Chrissie. “Shall I get Dr. Ryder?”

  “No, no. I’m just tired, a little.”

  “Then I’ll leave,” she said sadly.

  “No, don’t. It’s me I’m tired of. All of this self-involvement. I’m not tired of you. Listen: pull up a chair, will you? Tell me about yourself.”

  Even had there been screams for her attention all up and down the corridor beyond the door, Chrissie King would have pulled up a chair.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The next day, Jury was dressed and packed and sitting with Wiggins waiting for his doctor.

  “Hannibal,” said Wiggins, “has given me this list of medications and instructions and what to do if certain things occur, you know, like falling off a cliff or running from stampeding elephants.”

  Jury laughed. Wiggins seldom made jokes in this way. Roger Ryder walked in with, unfortunately, Hannibal, who for some reason attached herself to Wiggins.

  Dr. Ryder said, “Superintendent, you’re good as new. How do you feel?”

  “Better than as good as.”

  “All you need to do is watch that bandage-” He pointed to Jury’s midsection. “And don’t do any rowing, will you?”

  “I’ll make an effort to resist.”

  Ryder smiled. “Don’t make an effort, either.”

  Laughter? They looked over to see Hannibal in a near fit of laughter. What was it, Jury wondered, about Sergeant Wiggins that had this effect on others? He was hardly a bon vivant. But he seemed to reverse a natural inclination in others-turn sour sweet, make water run backward, find some hidden spring. Jury smiled. Wiggins would have made a swell dowser.

  Jury took Ryder’s arm and led him out of earshot. “There’s something I really would like to do. I’d like to look for your daughter.”

  Ryder looked at him, too stunned to speak.

  “I’ve been thinking about her, her disappearance, ever since you told me about it. In hospital, you’ve little to do but think. I know it’s been nearly two years and you might rather not have this wound reopened-” Jury hated the cliché, but it didn’t bother Roger Ryder.

  “It’s never closed, Mr. Jury.” He paused. “You think there’s some hope Nell is still alive, then?”

  Hope was certainly reborn in the father, to judge from his expression. “I think so. The facts here just don’t make it sound like the kidnapping or abduction we’re used to seeing. I’d need to talk to people-to your father, to the others at the stud farm. If you could let him know I’m coming…”

  “Absolutely. When do you think you’d feel like it?”

  “Right now.”

  Roger
Ryder rocked back on his heels. “Oh, no, Superintendent, I couldn’t let you. I couldn’t agree to spending your first day out of hospital-”

  “I’m fine, Doctor.”

  “But… this sort of thing, it’s exhausting, you know.”

  Jury didn’t know if he was talking about an inquiry or being in hospital. “It’s no exertion, really. My sergeant could simply drive me and I’d ask a few questions.”

  “But-”

  “Look, I could go back to my flat straightaway and spend the entire afternoon having to answer a lot of questions about the way I feel, and be visited every fifteen minutes to make sure I really do feel all right. Or I could go to your farm and ask a few questions. Now, which of those alternatives sounds more likely to promote a quick recovery?”

  “But-”

  But Roger was smiling.

  “Waterloo Bridge,” said Jury.

  “Waterloo Bridge?”

  “Wiggins, can’t I say anything without you saying it back?”

  Wiggins actually looked as if he were considering this. Jury shook his head, and again said, “Waterloo Bridge. It’s right down there.” He pointed in an indeterminate direction. “If we leave right now, we may be able to get away from the curb by dinnertime.”

  Clearly against his better judgment, Wiggins pulled away from the curb with a lot of engine noise and a jerk that pulled Jury forward in his seat. “Is it that lad you want to see?”

  “Benny Keegan. Yes.”

  “Why’s that, sir?” The car idled at a zebra crossing, waiting on several pensioners tottering across it with their string and plastic bags full of groceries. One in particular was finding it hard going. “It’s that zimmer bar holding her back,” complained Wiggins.

  “I’d be happy to wait while you kick it out from under her.”

  Wiggins slid Jury a look.

  “Why do I want to see Benny? Because he saved my life. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Strictly speaking,” said Wiggins, bringing the car to rapid life again, “it was Mr. Plant that did that. He’s the one that got the ambulance.”