“But now,” said Jury, “Sara was becoming more and more convinced she’d be seeing the last of Dan Ryder. He’d be in South America with this woman in the pub. I wonder what Ryder told her about his wife.”
“But how in heaven’s name did Sara Hunt and Simone wind up at Ryder Stud?”
“Simone might have been going there herself for some reason. Some unfinished business. But whatever it was, Simone and Arthur Ryder had never met, or that’s what he said. But he had met Sara. Vernon drove her to the Ryder place. Beyond that I can’t sort it.”
“Could Sara have followed her?”
“Could have gone with her, for all we know. Sara is a very determined woman, count on it.” Jury plugged the cork back in the bottle.
“Sacrilege to waste this wine.”
“Who’s wasting? We’re taking it with us. Come on; I need to call Cambridge.”
They pulled their coats on, Melrose settling the bottle in his oversized pocket. He patted it like a baby.
As they went through the door of the pub, shoving the piece of wood back under the door to brace it, Jury said, “You’ll be needed as a witness, you know, if she’s indicted.”
“I expect so. Only, is there evidence enough to make an arrest?”
“Maybe, maybe not. I’ll let Barry Greene know-he’s the DCI in Cambridge-and he can get in touch with the police in Cardiff. I honestly don’t know. At least before we didn’t have a blind chance of arresting Sara Hunt. Now we do.”
After Jury had made his call and they’d toasted progress with another glass of wine, they decided to go out again, and Melrose told Martha to hold dinner. This time the Jack and Hammer was the destination of choice. “As long,” said Melrose, “as you feel ready for vocal confusion.”
“I’m ready. And it occurs to me there might be a way of handling the Bramwell crisis.”
“No, he’s not going with us.”
“I’m thinking we might pop in to see Theo Wrenn Browne.” Jury smiled thinly.
When it came to Richard Jury, Theo Wrenn Browne was, at best, ambivalent, at worst, wretchedly jealous. How he coveted the admiring glances slewed Jury’s way! Yes, he was jealous of Jury in the same way he was jealous of Melrose Plant: both had everything Theo wanted. Although Jury didn’t have a fortune to throw around (as did Plant), he easily made up for this in his job of detective superintendent at New Scotland Yard, and having all of that power over life and death. He could point a finger and nests of vipers would disappear. (This image sent a pleasant little shudder up and down his wiry body, the roots of which frisson Theo wasn’t eager to investigate.)
“Mr. Jury, how nice to see you again! And is this visit business or pleasure?”
“Both. You have an employee here named Bramwell? Frederick Edward Bramwell?”
Theo was brought up short. “I did have such a person here, but no longer. He left. He hinted he was returning to Mr. Plant’s place.” Theo tittered.
Or at least it sounded like a titter to Melrose, who had posted himself by the tiers of magazines where he could listen and pretend not to hear.
Mustering just the right amount of gravitas, Jury said, “That’s a rum go.”
Rum go? Melrose looked round. Had he mistakenly walked into an H. E. Bates novel?
Now Theo didn’t know whether to cheer or weep. Then realizing he could do better than “left,” he said, “Well, I had to fire him, didn’t I?”
“Damn! This would have been the perfect place.”
“Pardon?” Theo danced his eyebrows around, puzzled.
“Oh, sorry.” Jury sighed. “We’ve been trying to get the goods on Fast Eddie for years now.”
Get the goods on? Had Jury been filling up on TV cop shows? And “Fast Eddie”-Melrose knew he’d heard that name. “Fast Eddie.” It was from some American film, wasn’t it? They called people those kinds of names over there.
“Fast Eddie? I’m not following you, Superintendent.”
“We call him that. It’s the initials, isn’t it? Frederick Edward? His speciality is rare books, and I mean very rare. Like the Pleiades edition of Ulysses. Don’t see many of those lying around, do you?”
Theo was overcome with ignorance. “The Pleiades edition? I don’t think I’m familiar… I find all this hard to believe, Superintendent.”
You’re not the only one. Melrose turned a page of the Beano comic he was reading.
Theo went on. “You see, Mr. Bramwell didn’t appear to know a thing about books.”
Jury guffawed. “That’s his game, Mr. Browne. He presents himself as being quite unlettered, to say the least.”
The very, very, very least.
“But why on earth,” Theo said, looking pained, “would such a person want with working in my bookshop?”
Jury leaned across the well-polished counter which separated Theo from the rest of humanity and said in a low voice, “Because he always makes his contacts through bookshops.”
Theo drew in a breath, sharply.
“If Mr. Plant can persuade the man to come back here, you would be doing me a huge favor. And, of course, the Yard. This man’s got right up my nose over the last couple of years.”
Melrose sighed, wishing Jury would stop talking like a cop in a bad thriller.
Theo leaned closer to Jury so that now their noses were nearly touching. “Is he, well, dangerous at all?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so, Mr. Browne. But of course”-Jury stepped back and put his palms up-“I certainly wouldn’t ask you to do something you’d be uncomfortable with. After all, we can’t all be heroes.” Jury flashed him a heroic smile.
Well, that did it for Theo. Any appeal to his heroism completely unnerved him-not that there had ever been such an appeal up to now. Yes, he would have Mr. Bramwell back if it meant helping the police.
“So all we have to do is talk Bramwell into returning to the Wrenn’s Nest.”
Joanna Lewes, who was sitting next to Jury in the Jack and Hammer said, “Isn’t that illegal or criminal or something to impersonate a police detective?”
“I am a police detective,” said Jury.
“I know; but you were pretending this was a real case.”
Jury laughed. “You’re obviously unaware of all the ‘pretending’ the police do.”
“Anyway,” said Melrose, “how do I get him to agree to go back?”
Trueblood said, “Tell him Theo’s a bookie.”
“Oh, that’s brilliant.”
Trueblood lit a pink cigarette. “You have no imagination, you know that?”
Vivian said to Jury, “You’re supposed to be resting and yet you go gallivanting all over the country searching for”-she shrugged-“whatever. You’ll land yourself right back in the hospital with that dreadful nurse.”
“Hannibal.” Jury smiled. “You could say Hannibal was really into death. Nothing gave her more pleasure it appeared than an unsuccessful attempt to resuscitate some poor sod flailing like a fish in the OR.”
“Consider my Doris and be grateful they didn’t remove all of your organs.”
Jury laughed. “She was always-” He stopped, hearing Nurse Bell’s whiny voice. Dory. “Poor tike, poor little Dory… arrhythmia, and no one knew it…”
“Something wrong, old bean?” asked Trueblood.
“What? No. I just have to-” Jury rose suddenly and went to the bar where Dick Scroggs was reading the paper. “I need your phone, Dick.”
Dick fished it out from the shelf beneath the bar. “Here you are, sir.”
Jury passed behind some member of the Withersby clan, sullenly nursing a beer. He got out his address book and thumbed to what he wanted. Then he punched in the number of the hospital, called and asked for the surgical ward. A crisp voice answered, and he asked for Dr. Ryder. He was, of course, put on hold. A long silence, bleak as the Withersby face down the bar. (Why did they all look so alike? That cropped look of the face, the squarish jaw, stopped too soon?)
He waited. It would be forever, if t
he nurse came back at all. He hung up, redialed the hospital and asked again for the surgical ward. Only this time he asked for Nurse King. Christine. Was she on duty? On duty and right there, said the voice.
Chrissie King came on the line. Jury could almost hear the devotion throbbing at the other end. He asked her if she could locate Dr. Ryder, or at least find out where he was and get a message to him.
“But I know where he is, I mean, I know where he said he was going-to Cambridgeshire. It was late yesterday he left. He said something about a funeral.”
Dear God, Jury thought, taking the receiver from his ear and resting it against his forehead as if to cut short the bad news. Maurice. How could he have forgotten?
The receiver back against his ear, he said, “Chrissie, you’re a godsend, you are. Thanks.”
“Oh, yes. Glad to…”
She said it as if he’d just asked her to go steady.
Jury hung up, found the Ryder number in Cambridgeshire and called. No answer. He put the receiver back and thought for a moment. Then he went back to the table and asked their pardon as he had to leave.
“So do you,” he said to Melrose, pulling him out of his chair. “Come on.”
The others were not so much curious as enthralled.
“Revenge. We didn’t really explore that possibility.”
Melrose, floating the Bentley from park into drive, said, “But we did explore it.”
“Against Ryder Stud and Arthur himself, yes. How I could have overlooked Roger Ryder, God only knows.”
“Because the focus was on the stud farm. That’s where Nell lived, after all.”
Hell, Jury thought. His side throbbed unsympathetically.
FIFTY-SEVEN
Nell walked into the office to get the breeding book where she would record the foal’s birth and its forebears. She liked doing this; it seemed to give life an order that it otherwise didn’t have. At least these books presented the illusion, the appearance of orderly progression, and that was worth something and should be respected. The horses themselves certainly should be, and if these bracketed markings did that, well, good.
She had passed Davison, who was muttering a blue streak of profanities, making for Fool’s Money’s stall with a man who looked familiar. A small man, no doubt a jockey from some stable around here. There were so many of them. She stopped Davison and asked what was wrong. Ah, you know, they’re putting more weight on Fool’s Money than he ought to carry. Nell had reminded him (utterly unnecessarily, for Davison knew it) that the greater the Thoroughbred, the heavier the weight. It was to even things out for lesser horses. The small man nodded. They walked on.
Halo, son of Lucky Me by Lockout out of Angel Eyes by Treasure. She repeated it like a mantra as she looked for and found the breeding record beneath a stack of folders on her grandfather’s desk. Lying there, too, was his penknife and a bit of wood. She picked up the smooth wood, wondering what he was fashioning this time. She set it back down by the knife.
Halo, son of Lucky Me by… All of this should give the scrawny little Halo a promising start. The mare Angel Eyes stood at the Anderson stables. She had been bred to Lucky Me as part of the season Anderson had bought, his mare to be bred to the Ryder stable’s Lucky Me. Halo, son of Lucky Me-
It kept her, for a few moments, at least, from thinking about Maurice. She clasped the book in her arms and rested her chin on its scarred binding, and shut her eyes. Maurice. What disorder there had been in his poor life should have left the family unsurprised by his death, though of course she couldn’t mouth that thought. She did not tell her grandfather that she’d been afraid for a long time of something, not this, certainly, but something. Everyone had to think of it as an accident, pure and simple. Thrown from a horse against a stone wall-what else could it reasonably be?
It could be a great deal else. It could be Maurice trying to show that he really was Danny Ryder’s son. He’d been competing all of his life with the shadow of Dan Ryder. How could he not? Maurice was very smart: he knew the danger of jumping Hadrian’s walls after dark, if one wasn’t a good jumper.
She had liked her uncle, even despite his being such a deplorable father. She had liked him for his feeling for horses. It was strange to her how a man could be not much good in so many ways, ruinous to others, yet still retain a passion for one thing-in Dan Ryder’s case, horses. In that respect, they were alike. It made her uncomfortable to think they were alike in this way for that might imply they were in other ways, too. At times she was afraid that her passion for horses had drained her of feelings for people. But she did love people-her father, grandfather and Vernon. She really loved Vernon in ways she knew were hopeless for a seventeen-year-old girl. Ruefully, she hoped she’d never have to choose between Vern and a horse. She laughed. Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you’d choose Vern. And her other self said, Doesn’t that depend on the horse?
Nell laughed again, straightened, wondered how she could laugh with Maurice dead. She felt cold; she felt the blood drain from her face. Maurice. But she hadn’t cried. Tears sometimes came to her eyes, but didn’t fall. She wondered again if she was, after all, a cold person. When was the last time she’d cried over anything but the mares or flown into a rage? She couldn’t remember. Was it because of the last months at Valerie Hobbs’s place, where she’d schooled herself in repressing her feelings so that she could stay clearheaded? Or simply keep from shattering to bits? You’re so dramatic! But she had never really thought of herself as self-dramatizing.
In all of these ruminations her eyes traveled round the room-the books, the wall of photographs-Do I still look like my old self?-until her glance rested on the coatrack near the door. Silks.
She went nearly rigid. The green and silver silks were on a hanger. The stranger’s, the jockey’s, they must be. And then a shape came to her, burst into her consciousness like glass shards flying together, turned back to their recognizable shape. She felt as if she had in that moment turned into some other girl.
Nell whirled around and snatched the penknife from the desk. She flicked it open and moved to the rack and slashed the shirt, lacerating it again and again until it hung in rags. Then she dropped the knife on the floor and ran from the house to the stables.
In minutes she had Aqueduct saddled and was out of the stable yard and gone.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Diane had generously tossed Jury her cell phone, surprised that these weren’t routinely it issued to Scotland Yard detectives. Jury was using it as he and Melrose left the A45 for the A14, heading for Cambridge.
He snapped the cell phone closed. “I can’t get through. There’s something wrong with the damned thing.”
“What’s wrong,” said Melrose, easing the Bentley around an articulated lorry, “is probably that Diane forgot to pay up for more time. Doesn’t some voice tell you that?”
“I didn’t get a voice.”
Melrose entered a roundabout near Godmanchester. “Ryder will be there, not to worry.” He meant Roger Ryder. “With Maurice’s funeral coming up, he’d stay for Arthur’s sake.”
“Who is this creep ahead of us?” said Jury.
“Which creep? There are so many of them.”
“The one in what looks like one of those ice cream vans. You know, jingle, jingle, jingle, and going five miles per.”
It took them another hour to get to the turnoff that led to Cambridge, an hour filled with rather churlish observations from Jury about his fellow motorists; and okay okay okay from Melrose. Melrose tried to take Jury’s mind off the incompetency of British drivers (all of whom appeared to be driving to Cambridge this afternoon) by getting him to talk about the case, but Jury proved uncharacteristi-cally taciturn.
“You know, don’t you?”
“Know what?”
“Oh, stop being stupid. You know why what’s happened, happened.”
“Pass him” was Jury’s only comment, indicating the car ahead.
“I can’t. A car’s coming from the other
direction. They do that, you know. This is a two-lane road and we’ve got hedgerows on either side and curves we can’t see around.”
Jury made a squiffy sound and stared out of the passenger window as if he’d happily roll up the hedgerow and toss it at the cows. There were several ruminating cows near the road.
“We’re nearly there, for heaven’s sake.”
No comment from his passenger.
“You’d be a total disaster at an AA meeting, you know that?” Melrose knew this comment, unrelated to anything at all in the present conversation, would pry a response from Jury.
“AA? What’s AA got to do with anything?”
“It doesn’t, for you. The thing is you’re supposed to share. ‘Thank you for your share’ is what they like to say.”
“That is so a thing I would not be caught dead saying.”
“Perhaps, but then you’re not an alcoholic.”
“A debatable point.”
“Anyway, I think ‘thank you for your share’ is rather warm and friendly.”
“Please don’t say it again.”
Melrose considered. “I’d say Long Piddleton is a really alcoholic place. I mean, there’s so little to do.”
The hedges gave way to dogwood and white birch trees and silver fern. The road widened.
“Does Vernon Rice have an alcoholics chat room on his Web site? I bet you’d always see ‘thank you for your share’ posted there.”
“The only share I want is ten percent of Microsoft.”
“Thank you for your share.” Melrose turned off onto the Ryder drive.
In the distance beyond the white fence horses grazed, one or two turning their heads to inspect the Bentley and its contents. The car spat up gravel as it stopped by the front door, which at the same time was opened by a haggard-looking Arthur Ryder.
“Saw the car. I remembered it.” He nodded toward Melrose and evinced no interest in his appearing here with Richard Jury. It was as if anything worth questioning had been nullified by the death of his grandson.
Jury apologized for intruding. “I wouldn’t if it wasn’t important.”
The Grave Maurice Page 33
