The Grave Maurice

Hannibal’s gone, so I can speak freely.”

“Thank God. Only I didn’t see the woman. How could I recognize her?”

“You said you were very near the stretcher as they brought it by, moving it toward the ambulance.”

“Yes, I was, but-”

“That’s good enough.”

“How can it be?”

A huge sigh from Jury. “I’m not helping you out in a criminal act, for God’s sake. All you want is to view a dead body. Where are you?”

“Pub down the street.”

“Go back to the station. I’ll call Cambridge right away. I’ve a good friend there. Greene’s his name in case someone asks. Detective chief inspector, he is.”

Melrose drank off most of the pint waiting for him at the bar, bought a packet of vinegar crisps and ate them while walking back down the road. He had nearly finished them when he realized a dead body might best be seen on an empty stomach.

Nothing of that nature occurred, however. As a young woman police constable led him on and off the elevator and down a corridor to the morgue, his stomach was perfectly fine. And it wasn’t as if he’d never seen a body before. Last year in Cornwall, for instance. But that was a case of the very recently dead, when they looked exactly the same as they always had. Except for the blood and the bullet holes. But the blood had been hidden by the thick dark rug, and the bullet wounds were invisible, at least from where he stood.

In the long corridor, he hung back. This episode had turned suddenly serious on him. In his mind’s eye he saw the face of Nell Ryder and marveled at Vernon Rice’s conviction that she could not be dead. And he had this irrational fear that he would look down at this dead woman and he would see Nell Ryder. It was as if the others who had seen this woman-her grandfather, Maurice, even the trainer, Davison- had blinded themselves to the face they saw.

Why was he doing this? Why? The photograph had looked alive, as if it had captured Nell, and the old superstition was true about the camera’s catching the soul of its subject.

He had been walking slowly, and now stopped dead. With a conviction to rival Rice’s own, he was sure that she was dead. His throat felt constricted.

“Coming, sir?” The pleasant WPC turned toward him and smiled.

Melrose picked up his pace. “Sorry.”

“That’s all right. Most people walk more slowly here. Is it a family member you’ve come to-sorry, you don’t know yet, do you?”

“No.”

They had stopped for a moment. They started walking again.

“It’s right here, sir. See, there’s a panel they’ll slide back, and you just look through that pane of glass.”

Melrose did not respond; he merely waited. The panel slid back and he was looking at the woman lying on the gurney. His eyes widened in astonishment.

“Is it who you thought?”

“No.”

“You don’t recognize her, then?”

“Yes. I do.”

Sitting in one of the interview rooms, he had told the detective inspector working the case as much as he could about the woman at the bar in the Grave Maurice.

Unfortunately (Melrose told the detective), he hadn’t paid much attention to the other woman, so couldn’t help them there.

“Did she appear to know Dr. Ryder personally?”

“It’s hard to say. She certainly knew about him. She knew about his niece, Nell Ryder.”

“You think, then, this woman knew the family, or at least one of them intimately.”

“I rather doubt the intimacy since none of them even knows this woman.” Or say they don’t, Melrose didn’t add.

“Or say they don’t,” the detective did add.

“They wanted to know if I owned a weapon. A.22, to be more precise. I told them no, but they wanted permission to search my flat, anyway.” Vernon told Melrose this on the way back to London. “Who the hell is she?”

Melrose was watching the rain-slick road, now dark. “When did Dan Ryder die?”

“A little over two years ago.”

“Before Nell disappeared.”

Vernon turned in his seat to stare. “You think that comes into it?”

“Merely a thought. It’s just that you’ve now had three terrible events occur in a short time. It’s possible all three are connected, don’t you think?”

Vernon shook his head. “Possible, but unlikely.”

Up ahead Melrose spotted the carnival red of a Little Chef, the black- and-white-checked trousers of its familiar logo. An icon of childhood. He would devil his parents to stop at every one. Even as a child he realized this was completely unreasonable, to expect them to keep stopping. But it was merely a step in a plan: for then he was almost certain they’d stop at every third one, and that made at least two stops per longish trip, often three. Melrose thought himself pretty cagy, even as a child, really good at working a room.

“Great, I could use some food,” Vernon said.

Without knowing it, Melrose had pulled off the road and into the Little Chef’s car park. He laughed. He must have gone on autopilot. “Did you like these places when you were a kid?”

They were climbing out of the car and Vernon slammed his door with a flourish. “Hell, yes. Little Chefs and Happy Eaters, though they were clones of Little Chefs. Let’s go.”

They walked toward what Melrose thought were impossibly lighted-up windows.

The tables, counter, mirrors were so cleanly bright they might have been scrubbed between each load of customers. The waitresses and waiters were as clean as nurses and doctors who had just scrubbed in. It was like having the hygienic benefits of an OR without the mortal consequences.

Melrose slid across the cool plastic bench in the long booth and grabbed the menu.

“Beans on toast,” Vernon said, barely glancing at the offerings.

Melrose ordered everything fried-eggs, sausages, bread, chips and a tomato.

Vernon said, “You wouldn’t catch me eating beans on toast at home.” The waitress set down their coffee, smiled her clean smile and left.

“Of course not. It’s what you eat at Little Chef. I know a detective sergeant who likes Little Chef but doesn’t appear to connect it to childhood. He’s not nostalgic so he loves it for its