The Grave Maurice (24 page)

When Jury walked into the dining room the following morning, time had been restored to its familiar sequential meanderings. Melrose Plant was reading at the table, munching toast. “Have I held things up?” Jury asked.

Melrose merely looked at him and chewed. “The others have gone on ahead. They're hoping to reach the summit before dark.”

Jury rubbed his hands, looking at the silver domes, smelling the sausage-drenched air. “I take it that's a no. I haven't held things up?”

“Suit yourself. As long as it isn't after eleven a.m. Nothing around here we can do to hold anything up—”

“Why do I have the feeling”—said Jury, setting a silver dome to one side and sniffing syrupy pancakes—“that my question will keep you going for some time, whereas another person might simply have answered, ‘Not at all, not at all'?”

“Well, that's simple enough. This hypothetical person isn't busy scaling Everest. So of course he or she'd say ‘Not at all, not at all.' ”

Jury spooned eggs and a small pile of mushrooms onto his plate, then forked up sausages (a largish number), speared a tomato and sat down. “I told you.”

“Told me what? Did you know that Forego girthed seventy-seven inches?”

“That question makes me feel like I'm having breakfast with Wiggins, who asks things like, ‘Do you know that kava-kava, if made up into a poultice, is good for boils?' ” Jury ate his sausage.

“And your answer was—?”

“Very funny. Is that a word? ‘Girthed'?”

“It's a horse word. You've got to know something about them, of course.”

“I do. Pass the salt.”

“Are we a trifle
testy
this morning?”

“I am. I don't know about you.”

Melrose took a look in the teapot and rang for Ruthven. “There's just too damned much to learn about horse racing. So I'm taking a page from Diane's book.”

“There's only one page in Diane's book.” Jury nibbled another sausage. He hated to see the sausage go so soon. “Take it, and there won't be any book.”

“Anyway, I'm doing what she does and concentrating on just a few horses and a couple of races. I love their names. Spectacular Bid—isn't that wonderful?” He paused and thought about the name and was surprised when Ruthven suddenly appeared at his side.

“Sir?” he said, inquiringly, and to Jury, “Superintendent, and how are you this morning?”

“Fine, Ruthven. Tell Martha this is a great breakfast.”

“We could use some more tea,” said Melrose. “Hot water's gone, too.” Ruthven returned to the kitchen. “They like you more than they like me.”

“Everyone wants to stay on the good side of the Bill.”

“So, using Diane's method, I think I can manage to learn enough. She makes you think she knows a lot more than she does.”

“No, Diane makes me think she knows a lot less than she does.”

“I don't mean us. I mean other people, strangers, who don't know her methods. There's no question she helped me out on that gardening business.”

Jury had risen and returned to the buffet, looking under domes. “Where're the mushrooms? They were right here—”

“That's right. They were right there until you scraped the sauté pan clean with your little spoon.”

“Could you just ask Martha—?”

“For you Martha would slaughter a hog.”

And here she came with the teapot and a steaming silver dish, replacement for the one Jury was hanging around right now. “Mushrooms! I knew you'd be wanting more o' my mushrooms!”

“You're a lifesaver, Martha. That's just what I was asking for.”

Pleased as punch, Martha walked out leaving Jury to spoon up the mushrooms.

“You've said nothing about the Ryders yet.”

“I know.” Jury brought his plate back to the table. “It's not for lack of thinking about them.” He fell silent, turning his fork over and back and over again.

“Yes? Well? Think about them out loud then.”

Jury sat back. “Vernon Rice was there, too.”

“Ah! So you got them all at once.”

“I got them all at once, yes.” He picked up his teacup and held it out for a refill. “Also a chap who owns Highlander Stud named Roy Diamond.”

“I didn't meet him.” Melrose felt irrationally cheated. “And? What did you think of them? There seems to be an undercurrent here that I can't plumb.” Melrose poured the tea and, when Jury didn't answer, said, “What?”

“Vernon Rice—” Jury heard an acerbity in his tone that he had wanted to keep out of it.

“It already sounds as if you don't much like him. I do.”

“I know you do. But you spent a long time with him and by himself. I mean, out from under the Ryder Stud influence.”

“ ‘Influence'?” Melrose gave a short bark of laughter. “Rice doesn't strike me as the type to be influenced by anyone.” Melrose thought for a moment. “Unless you mean Nell Ryder?”

“Of course.”

“But that isn't exactly ‘under the influence of.' That's more that he simply cares about her.”

“Try ‘loves.' ”

“Yes, I suppose—”

“As ‘in' with.”

“Are you saying—? But look here, she was only fifteen.”

“Poe's cousin was only fourteen.”

Melrose gave that laugh again. “Ye gods, that's
Poe
.”

“His behavior was aberrant, you mean?”

Melrose scratched his neck, confused with feeling. “No, I expect not. I mean, back in Poe's time it wasn't all that unusual to marry a young girl. Virginia, her name was.” It came back to Melrose in a little flood of what he supposed was Proustian involuntary memory. Baltimore—Poe's house, the little rooms, and the passion of the curator in defending Poe against his detractors, the plagiarized manuscript, the vulgarity of its perpetrator.

“You look unhappy.”

“The curator of the Poe house recited the end of a poem, something about a cloud that took the form
‘of a demon in my view.'
Melrose gave a self-conscious shrug. “I was just remembering . . .”

“No wonder,” said Jury.

“You were in Ryder's office, weren't you? You saw the photos. Weren't you struck?”

“I was definitely struck.” Jury drank his tea.

Melrose nodded. Then he said, “Aren't you finished? I want you to see my horse.”

“That sounds a treat,” said Jury, shoveling in some more mushrooms.

 

“There's nothing to it,” Melrose said suavely.

“Of course, there's something to it,” said Jury, “and I haven't got it.”

“But he likes you. I can tell.”

“Now just how do you make that out?”

“Look, he's trying to nudge you.”

“To get another apple, that's why.”

“Maybe we shouldn't give him any more. He might get sick.”

Just then Momaday lurched up behind them. He was wearing the long cowboy coat Melrose had given him for Christmas, thereby feeding Momaday's image of himself as hunter, rancher, rustler, sheriff and a lot of other things that fit the myth of the Old West that Momaday wasn't. But it had him slapping that rifle into play, aiming and shooting and if he hit anything it was by sheer accident—that same Momaday had come up behind the two and barked an order: “Don't you be feedin' that horse apples!”

Both Melrose and Jury jumped as if they'd been found out by Aunt Polly and exchanged a look.

“Just one.”

“One, that's right.”

They had taken turns and fed him four.

Melrose changed the subject. “I was just telling Superintendent Jury here that he should get up on Aggrieved and go for a ride.”

Momaday made a lengthy snuffling noise, his version of a laugh, and within and around this said to Jury, “Oh, you shoulda been here t'other day to see Mr. Plant, here (none of that ‘Lord Ardry' and ‘m' lord' nonsense from Momaday, never fear!) up on Aggrieved and trying to dismount”—snuffle, snuffle—“and t' fall clear off t' other side!” Laughing fit to kill, Momaday walked off, gun broken over his arm.

Jury looked at Melrose. “Nothing to it, right?”

“Y
ou ate seven sausages. I counted. You ate more sausages than Aggrieved ate apples.”

They were strolling through the village. Jury stopped in front of Betty Ball's bakery, where he expressed an interest in the pumpkin muffins on display in the bakery's window.

“Seven sausages. You couldn't possibly eat a muffin. They're left over from Halloween, anyway.”

Jury reached in his coat pocket and drew out an amber vile containing some white pills. “Dimerin and sausages, the doctor's orders.”

“Well, you don't need a muffin.” He pulled on Jury's coat.

They crossed the narrow bridge that spanned the equally small and narrow river and Jury stopped and regarded the small green and its pond. It was as if the scene were miniaturized, like the miniature Bourton-on-the-Water where a Lilliputian copy of the village itself was kept on display. He looked off to the left at the largest house in the village. Vivian Rivington's. If he took his emotional temperature, his Vivian temperature right now, he wondered what it would read. But you can't do that, can you? For the real indicator is that surprise appearance, that sudden turning and seeing a woman walk through a door, or seeing her sitting on that bench. It's the only thing that makes the mercury spike, the only gauge. He could still see her as he'd done the first time when she'd appeared before him, recall her embarrassed look, her fingers fussing with the hem of a brown jumper. What in God's name was he up to, always falling in love at first sight?

There was only a ruff of snow round the pond like a collar of icing on a cake. It would soon melt away. Back then the entire green had been carpeted in snow.

“What are you doing?” said Melrose. “By the time we get to the Jack and Hammer it'll be closed again. We don't keep London hours here. Well, maybe we could, but Dick Scroggs won't keep them.”

They started walking again. “I was just thinking about the first time I came here.”

“Few things are more dangerous than that.”

They were walking along Long Piddleton's main street now. “What do you mean, dangerous?” asked Jury.

“We make these minute revisions, look at it from a slightly different angle: that pond, that bench there or not, whatever it was that made it more desirable, its loss more bitter. Memory's plague causes unnecessary suffering.”

Jury stopped short. “What in hell are you talking about? When did you start finding memory so finely nuanced?”

Melrose pursed his lips. “Since I saw it might get us from the green to the Jack and Hammer without your stopping and gawking every two minutes. And”—he spread his arms—“here we are!”

 

And here
they
were, too, still having misgivings about Jury's survival, so that to see him walk in was a real thrill.

“I quite liked that other case,” said Diane to Jury, “except, of course, for that shooting at the end of it. Anyway, I'm not one to talk. I hit Melrose's vodka. His last bottle, I might add.”

Melrose asked Jury, “Can I tell them about the vanished girl?”

“Go ahead. It's not a Scotland Yard matter. It isn't really a case.”

“Okay.” He turned to an audience already turned to him as if he had brought a lifesaving draft. “This all happened when I was in the Grave Maurice—”

“Where's that?” asked Trueblood.

“A pub across the street from the Royal London Hospital.”

“Ah, that's where Superintendent Jury was,” said Diane. “I remember sending a wreath of roses.”

“Are you going to keep interrupting?”

No one spoke.

Melrose told them about the vanished girl.

At the end of this brief account, Vivian Rivington, with Agatha behind her, appeared in the sun-splashed doorway of the Jack and Hammer like a ray of hope, a thing Jury had given up on, lying on that dock in the dark. He could still see the stars in that implacable night sky. He smiled. It was hard to give up on Vivian. He wondered if her Italian count was gone for good.

“Richard!”

Her look was a mixture of wonder and relief. Perhaps she wouldn't believe he was alive until she saw him. “Hello, Vivian.” He went to meet her and gave her a kiss on the cheek that she didn't seem to know what to do with. Then, suddenly, she threw her arms around him. He returned this heartfelt hug.