The Grave Maurice

by Martha Grimes

  “Too bad about the insurance money, Danny, too bad Simone didn’t live to collect it. But I wonder if not getting it is better than getting it, after all. You could never have reentered the only life that means anything to you. Is it so great a hurdle-the racing commission, the Jockey Club? You’re clever; you could surely concoct some story about Simone’s having the idea in the first place, that you were driven into exile… whatever. After all, she alone talked to the insurance adjusters. But I really can’t imagine you never racing again. No, I can’t imagine that.”

  At the sound of an approaching car, tires on gravel, they all looked toward the front window.

  “Never mind about that,” said Jury. “It isn’t the police; that’s just my cab. I told him to come back in an hour’s time.” Jury tucked the pictures into his pocket and rose. “Well, I’m off. I’ll leave you two to sort it.”

  FIFTY-FIVE

  “Wales?” said an astonished Melrose Plant before Jury had shed his coat and Ruthven had taken it. “Actually, it is part of the UK, if I remember correctly.” Melrose shrugged as if he would need more convincing than that.

  Mindy preceded them into the drawing room, where she collapsed in front of the fire.

  “Three times?” said Melrose.

  Jury answered this indirectly. “Does it surprise you that Dan Ryder didn’t die in that racecourse accident?”

  Melrose’s eyebrows shot up. “My Lord! You mean you saw him?”

  “I did. I had an idea that Dan might still be alive.”

  “What made you think that?”

  “A couple of things: one was that anecdote Diane told us at the pub. The one about the jockey saying he’d like to come back not on but as that great American horse-what was his name?”

  “Spectacular Bid.”

  “It simply put a question into my mind, this ‘resurrection’ of a jockey, if it was possible that Ryder wasn’t dead. You see, I simply couldn’t imagine what would get Maurice to get Nell out to Aqueduct’s stall. Who on earth could talk him into it but the one person he cared more about than even Nell?”

  “His father. I see what you mean.”

  “But he wasn’t the person who abducted her.”

  “If not Dan Ryder-? I don’t get it; Maurice wouldn’t have done it for anyone else, as you say.”

  Jury shook his head. “It beats me. The only thing I can come up with is that somebody convinced Maurice he was acting for his father.”

  Melrose leaned over and scratched Mindy’s head. “I must say I’m curious as to how Ryder managed to fake his own death in a race.”

  “He didn’t manage it. The jockey riding that horse wasn’t Dan Ryder. He was supposed to be, but wasn’t.” Jury told him the rest. “It wouldn’t have worked, of course, if Simone Ryder hadn’t immediately identified the body as Dan’s.”

  Melrose frowned. “That must have taken some extremely quick thinking.”

  “Yes, it would. Now, where Maurice fits into all of this, I’m not sure. According to Danny, he didn’t ask Maurice for anything. He’s had no contact with him.”

  “You didn’t tell him?”

  “That Maurice is dead? No. I left it to her to do that.”

  “You believe that he wasn’t in contact with Maurice?”

  “Yes. As I said, another person must have used his father to get Maurice to help.”

  “Hm.” Melrose leaned back. He was about to speak when Ruthven entered the room.

  “I beg your pardon, sir. I thought you should know that Mr. Bramwell is back.”

  “What?” Melrose was out of his chair like a shot. “Where?”

  “Why, in the hermitage, sir. He’s asked for some beef tea.”

  Was that, Jury wondered, a smirk playing around Ruthven’s lips?

  “Beef tea?”

  “Yes, m’lord. He claims to have contracted a bad cold at Mr. Browne’s establishment.”

  “Good Lord. Come on, Richard!” Melrose flung out an arm as if he’d yank Jury from his chair. “We’ll beef tea him!”

  The hermitage, as if welcoming the hunter home from the hills, had a nice little fire going in the cast-iron stove.

  Mr. Bramwell was holding his hands out to it as if fire were his prime source of comfort. He did not wait for Melrose to open his mouth before he opened his own.

  “That book place you sent me to weren’t properly heated. I tol’ him to build a fire, but yea know ’im, tight as a tic, that ’un. It’s gone and got me all chesty.” Here, Bramwell demonstrated by beating a fist against his chest and hacking away.

  “Properly heated? My God, man, at least you were inside!”

  “Felt like ruddy outside t’me. And would your Mr. Browne bring me so much as a cuppa? Ha!”

  Melrose put his face as close to Bramwell’s as he dared without catching a few things and said, “Mr. Bramwell, think: Theo Wrenn Browne wasn’t in your employ; you were in his.”

  “Worse luck for me, then.” He opened the little door of the stove with a sturdy stick, which he then used to poke at the coals, a comforting red. “If that’s the way you treat those in yer employ, why I don’t see how any of you keep staff round ’ere.” Thunk went the little door as he slammed it shut.

  “We seem to have had no trouble thus far.” Melrose accidentally knocked his head against the lintel bearing the skull and MEMENTO MORI. A clump of moss fell in his hair.

  Bramwell repeated his phlegmy cough. “I ought t’be in bed, me, ’stead o’ sittin’ ’ere.”

  “Well, perhaps we can find a nice hospital bed for you. Bedlam has a big turnover.”

  “None o’yer doctors, no thanks, not after what ’appened t’ my Doris. Did I tell yea about-?”

  “Your Doris? Yes-” Melrose would have banged his head on the skull again but he didn’t want more moss in his hair.

  Bramwell swiveled his gaze to Jury, for here was one who hadn’t heard the story. “My Doris goes into ’ospital to get one o’them ovaries seen to, and what do they do but take out the whole womb. The whole bloody boiling, don’t they? Well, I tells ’er, fer God’s sake, lass, sue the bleedin’ place. Absolutely disgustin’ I calls it, doctor don’t even know what bleedin’ operation ’e’s supposed t’be doing. My God!” Turning again to Melrose, he said, “I’d sooner be right back ’ere sleepin’ rough, me. That Theo Browne puts me in mind of a weasel.” He settled himself back against his pillowcase of belongings.

  Jury pulled at Melrose’s sleeve. “A word?” He backed away from the hermitage entrance.

  “What?” Melrose scowled.

  “Are you missing the point here? The point not being to evaluate you and Theo as respective employers; the point being to fire this bloody fool before he seeps into every crack and crevice of Ardry End.”

  “He’s certifiable.” Melrose mumbled imprecations… um… mumm… ass…

  “Fire him, for God’s sake!” Jury pushed Melrose back to the entrance.

  “Mr. Bramwell!”

  Bramwell could look quite piteous and imploring when it suited him, as it did at the moment. (Oh, he knew what the two were up to!) He pulled his collar tight with a trembling hand.

  Melrose opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. He felt like a fish. Fortunately, he was saved from continuing by Ruthven, who, coated and scarved, approached over the acre or two between house and hermitage. This momentary reprieve turned Melrose hearty: “Well, here comes your beef tea.”

  Bramwell immediately dropped his orphan-in-the-storm persona and flexed his fingers, preparatory to picking up whatever was on the tray which Ruthven set down on the smooth stump that Bramwell used for his breakfast, lunch and dinner table, as well as for morning coffee and afternoon tea.

  Melrose noted there was considerably more than beef tea on the tray. There was a substantial pile of sandwiches: cheese, chicken and prosciutto. This last really annoyed Melrose as he liked prosciutto with melon and there probably wasn’t any left. “I see your dicey health isn’t affecting your appetite, Mr. Bra
mwell.”

  “Got to keep me strength up. Thank you, Mr. Ruthven,” he said as Ruthven shook out a big napkin, which the hermit spread carefully over his wide front. Selecting a sandwich of prosciutto, he said, “I’ll say this fer yea, yea don’t stint.”

  He could have been saying this to Melrose, Jury, Ruthven or God.

  No, thought Jury. God stints.

  They were feeding carrots to Aggrieved, both of them looking and listening for Momaday.

  “I am completely cowed by staff,” said Melrose. “Cowed.”

  “By these two you seem to be.”

  “It’s why I don’t have more.” It wasn’t, really; he was just enjoying feeling sorry for himself.

  Aggrieved, seeing another carrot come out of Jury’s pocket, nudged his shoulder with some force. Jury shoved him back. Melrose, unaware of this small fracas, kept talking about the staff he didn’t have: “A chauffeur, a vegetable cook to help Martha-”

  “Who wouldn’t be able to stand it-” Jury bumped Aggrieved’s elegant neck, payback for another muzzle in the face.

  “-more stable staff, a valet de chambre, a maid. No, two maids, one a ’tweenie.” Melrose liked that word. “A ’tweenie.”

  “Was there ever such a staff at Ardry End?”

  “No. But it sounds good.”

  “I swear,” said Jury, back inside the house, “I’m having a nap.”

  “And I swear I’m having a drink.”

  Each having had what he’d sworn he’d have, they were presently out driving along narrow country roads. Jury had said he wasn’t ready yet for the “vocal confusion” of the Jack and Hammer.

  “I’ve heard it called a lot of things, but never vocally confused,” said Melrose.

  Early evening was shading off into night. It had been one of those winter days when trees and houses had razor-sharp outlines and the air was clear as a bell. Jury looked off to his left and up a gentle-climbing hill. “Look up there.”

  “The pub, you mean? It’s rather grand, isn’t it, the way it sits up there and looms over the village?” Melrose had already turned the car into the even narrower road sloping up the hillside. “Let’s go inside.”

  Deserted. This was a word that conjured images of empty rooms, skewed curtains, of squares of deeper hue on walls where pictures have been taken down. The Man with a Load of Mischief did not seem so much deserted as sad. Had it not been for dust and leaves blown into corners, and wall sconces unresponsive to the push of a switch, it would not have surprised Jury to see the manager still behind the bar, or that arthritic old waiter passing by with a tray or customers spotted at tables and barstools around the room.

  It was not dark but shortly would be, and filaments of what was left of mingy winter light managed to steal past the grime of the casement windows and suffuse the dead air with a bit of life. In the entrance hall, Melrose looked at those same framed prints of the hunt making its silly progress along the papered wall. Even the wallpaper had escaped the years’ abuse, where one would expect it to be hanging in long flaps, it still clung fast. He followed the sound of Jury’s voice into the saloon bar.

  Jury said, “It’s all here: the equipment”-he rested his hand on the china beer pulls-“the drink, the glassware.” Bottles of whiskey, gin, vodka and dark syrupy liqueurs ranged across shelves, doubled by the mirror behind the bar. “I’m astonished the place hasn’t been vandalized. My Lord, it’s been-what? thirteen, fourteen years?”

  Melrose brushed his hand over the barstool and sat down. “Do we have vandals around here? I mean, except for Agatha? And this place was vacated, if you remember, in rather a hurried way. I found Mindy up here, you know. Anyone who would leave his dog behind to fend for itself, well… I used to walk her up here in case she was homesick and so she could chase invisible stuff. She quite enjoyed that; I’ll have to bring her here again.” Melrose squinted at the row of bottles. “If those bottles of Johnny Walker and Bells are still here, what about the wine cellar?”

  Down in the cellar they stood in more dead leaves and dust, but, of course, one expects, no, wants wine bottles to be dusty, for it proves something or other. Shelf after shelf, marching along the cold room, held the wines of Bordeaux, Tuscany, Spain; wines from the Médoc; Cabernet Franc and Merlot; grand cru from Puligny-Montrachet; Chardonnays from California; sherry from Spain; Sauternes-someone had known a lot about wine.

  Jury said, “I never paid any attention to this.”

  Melrose was running his finger over the bottles. “Of course not. You were too busy with the body.” He stopped, pulled out a bottle of white wine. “Grab a red.”

  Jury grabbed and they hastened up the cellar steps.

  Again behind the bar, where he’d set out glasses for Melrose to wipe, Jury sank the corkscrew into a bottle and pulled, gently.

  “Be careful with that. It’s from Campania.”

  Jury started to tug. “That near Northampton?”

  “No, Naples. You’ve heard of Pompeii?” He nodded toward the bottle. “That’s a Falerno. Hard to find.”

  “Time has been careful. I expect I can be.” The action of pulling made a pleasant little op and he poured the wine into the glasses.

  They tasted. Jury held his up to the light. “Like the wine-dark sea.”

  “Um, um umm, ummm!” said Melrose, nodding and shaking his head simultaneously. “Wow, wow! When did I last taste wine this good?”

  “It is good.”

  Melrose rapped the bar. “You know what we should do? We should buy this place. God knows why some family with a couple of Labs and disgusting children hasn’t snapped it up for a country home.”

  “Because of its sinister past. People might like to come here for a drink, hoping the mystique rubs off, but I don’t think they’d want to live here. What do you mean, buy it?”

  “We should.”

  “Maybe you should; all I’ve got is the clothes I stand up in. Don’t be daft; do you know even half the difficulties of running a restaurant?”

  “Can’t be all that hard.” Melrose slid his glass toward the bottle for more.

  Jury poured. “First, there’s staff. Now, for someone who can’t fire a hermit, I’d say this alone would make the venture hopeless.”

  “You could do the firing. So that’s one problem sorted.”

  Jury braced his hands against the bar, preparatory to delivering his feelings about all this. “You are hopelessly naïve, do you know that? A restaurateur takes on fixed expenses, rent, equipment, maintenance-the linen alone would sink most so-called entrepreneurs-and has to deal with a volatile, transient, undertrained or overtrained, temperamental staff; a perishable inventory-my Lord, the list goes on and on. And do you know what percentage of these establishments succeed? Maybe thirty percent.”

  “How is it you know so much about it?”

  Jury took a drink of the rarefied wine. “Danny Wu.” “Who’s he?”

  “One of the restaurateurs of whom I speak. He owns a restaurant called Ruiyi in Soho. He also does other things as a sideline. At least Racer is convinced of that.”

  “Is his place successful?”

  “Incredibly. You almost have to be a copper to get in.”

  “Well, there you are.”

  “No, there I’m not and neither are you. I know you see yourself swanning round the dining room recommending a wine to accompany braised llama and acorn saute. You’d be out a fortune just after opening night.”

  “There’s always another fortune.”

  “You know what your problem is? You’ve got too much money.”

  “I do?”

  Jury shook his head.

  “Anyway, you were just doing the food part. What about the room part? That shouldn’t be difficult.”

  Jury clapped his hand to his forehead. “You have no idea how much work is involved in this venture.”

  “Work? Good God, I don’t intend to work. That’s what we’d be paying all of those volatile undertrained people for. Work?” Melrose made
a pfffffff-ing sound, indicating his total abjuration of work. He pulled over one of the yellowing cocktail napkins, which Jury had slapped down on the bar, and took out his pen. “First, these napkins would probably have to be replaced, don’t you think?”

  Jury just drank his wine and shut his eyes. The wine was even better when he didn’t have to look at Melrose. He wished he had Door Jam and a headset. Then he took the envelope from his inside pocket and found a pencil stub in a cup underneath the counter. “Let’s say the food for a month would cost a hundred thou.” Jury wrote it on the envelope. Underneath that he jotted in another hundred thou for pots and pans. As he turned the envelope for Melrose to see the absurdly fabricated sum, the snapshots fell out.

  “What are these?”

  “Our suspects.”

  “This is definitely Simone Ryder,” said Melrose. “Or at least the dead woman I saw in the morgue. Who’re the ones-?” Melrose stopped and pulled over the pictures of Valerie Hobbs and Sara Hunt. He looked at the one of Sara Hunt for some moments as he lit a cigarette. “You said you didn’t have anything to connect this Sara Hunt to Simone Ryder?”

  “Right. Not a shred of evidence.”

  Melrose smiled. “Well, now you have.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  Melrose. held up the snapshot. “The woman in the Melrose held up the snapshot. “The woman in the Grave Maurice. The other woman. The one Simone Ryder was talking to.” Jury took the picture out of Melrose’s hand. “Sara Hunt. I’ll be damned.”

  “I wasn’t paying any attention to her. She was, for the most part, the listener. Simone Ryder was the one telling the story.”

  “And talking about her deceased husband?”

  “I assume so. She was saying something about Roger’s brother. Then ‘insurance’ and then-well, she must have been referring to herself going to a warmer climate, like South America. Ironic, isn’t it? The very woman she’s talking to knows Dan Ryder is still alive.”