The Grave Maurice

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