“On a flat course, like the wind.” As if the image was fixed permanently in his mind, Vernon looked toward the window.
But Jury’s image of this agile girl was blank; he couldn’t put a face to it. Wiggins had distilled what coverage there had been in the papers, but hadn’t produced a picture. “Have you a picture, Mr. Ryder? I’d like to see her.”
Arthur Ryder rose, saying, “I’ve got a wall full. Come and see.”
“Could Sergeant Wiggins have a word with your staff? The trainer? Anyone else around?”
“Absolutely. But let him finish his coffee.”
The look that Wiggins now trained on Jury made Jury wish to God he had a camera. It was almost clubby-Wiggins and his horsey friends.
Arthur Ryder said, “Vernon can show you the photos; I’ll take Sergeant Wiggins along to talk to George Davison. He’s my trainer.” Wiggins, having drained his cup (to the lees), went off with Ryder.
Vernon led Jury into the large office, where an entire wall of photographs and snapshots dominated the rest of the room-photos of horses and, almost as adjuncts or afterthoughts, humans.
Except for one human who could never be an afterthought-a girl with flaxen hair, strands of it blowing across her face as she leaned her head against her horse’s neck. It wasn’t that she was beautiful; it was that she seemed so present, so here among them. She was always with a horse in these pictures. If a horse was not directly involved, one or more were present as a backdrop. The largest picture was a real stunner. This horse was the one Jury and Wiggins had met down the drive by the fence. Here, Nell Ryder stood a little in the forefront, the reins tangled in her fingers, and looking at the camera dead on. Jury felt it. No wonder Plant couldn’t describe her. She was essence, all residue left back in the bottom of the bottle, a girl decanted.
His expression must have betrayed something for he caught Vernon Rice watching him. When Jury looked his way, Vernon smiled.
“Nellie has a lot of presence, hasn’t she? I saw it the first time I looked at her.”
It was almost, Jury thought, as if Vernon were coming to his rescue, letting Jury know that Nell Ryder had that effect on everyone.
Arthur Ryder had come in the back office door to stand beside Jury. He sighed. “Ah, yes, Nell. She was really-I miss her.” His thought, unfinished, stumbled up against loss.
Still slightly mesmerized by the face, Jury said, “Describe her.” Yet he thought one of the qualities that made Nell Ryder arresting was that she was indescribable, that anyone would stumble trying to do it, as had her grandfather. “What’s she like, I mean, beyond the photographs? How long ago was this one taken?” Jury inclined his head toward the one he’d just been looking at.
“Two years ago. Just before-” Arthur Ryder stopped to clear his throat. “She was fifteen.”
Jury found it hard to believe she was anywhere in her teens; the eyes that looked out from the photograph had too much wisdom in them. He knew he was projecting, reading something much too complicated into Nell’s eyes; she was a young girl, really. Just a girl.
“Fifteen,” Arthur said. “Seventeen, now. Her birthday was-is-just this week.”
“Next week, Granddad.” They all turned. Jury thought this had to be Maurice Ryder who’d come in from the outside through the office door. “Her birthday’s next week.” And who, his look said, are these gate crashers at the party?
His grandfather said, “Maurice, come on in.”
He was already in, his expression said.
Arthur Ryder introduced them.
If any more gravitas was needed, Maurice Ryder supplied it. He looked, Jury thought, oddly sunk. It was as if the worst that could happen had happened: the coup de grace, the final blow: his cousin’s disappearance.
Jury looked from him to the picture. They were close to the same age, but she looked so much older, as if the adult awareness that had grown in Nell by leaps and bounds had been arrested in Maurice, a dark-haired, handsome boy with a pale face and a starved look fed by misfortune. They did look alike, a family-resemblance sort of likeness. But it wasn’t the resemblance Jury was interested in; it was the difference. Maurice looked from the picture to Jury, almost as if he were jealous of Jury’s looking. But where Maurice (he bet) was obsessed, Nell looked focused. There was a world of difference between the two. Yet he didn’t really know what Nell’s qualities were.
“When did you last see her, Maurice?”
As if he really had to think about it, Maurice was slow to answer. “Evening stables.”
Meaning, probably, that Maurice had seen her last. Jury thought Maurice would always want to be last: the last person to see her would leave his face imprinted on her mind.
“Where did you see her?”
Maurice inclined his head backward a little. “In the stables. She’d carried out her sleeping bag.”
“Could you show me?”
“Okay.” He turned to the door.
The stall Nell Ryder had been sleeping in was empty, as if it had been kept that way in case she should return with Aqueduct in the middle of the night and need it. It was as large as a small room. Several others down the line were occupied; Jury recognized a couple of the horses sticking their heads out as the ones in the field where he and Wiggins had stopped. Gingerly, Jury put out his hand, and the horse with the silvery mane nudged it.
“Looking for treats,” said Maurice, smiling for the first time.
“What a gorgeous horse.”
“Samarkand. He is, yes; knows it, too.”
Jury would have been willing to ascribe certain human traits to animals, but vanity wasn’t one of them. Anyway, it was just a way of talking for Maurice.
“Sam’s my favorite. Nell, she’d never say who hers was; I think she didn’t want to hurt the other horses’ feelings.”
That made Jury smile. “She sounds like a sensitive person.”
“Oh, she was-is, I mean.”
It must have gotten harder and harder to rescue the present from the past, Jury thought. “This is a wonderful place to grow up. Or did you?”
“More or less. I came with my dad a lot and spent summers here and holidays, so yes, I guess I did grow up here.”
“You and Nell.”
Maurice didn’t answer beyond a nod of his head. Then he said, “After my aunt, Nell’s mum, died, Uncle Roger tried to keep her with him in London. But his schedule got so fierce he just couldn’t do it. Middle of the night emergencies, that sort of thing.”
“What about your parents?”
For some reason, Maurice felt his father should be defended; he did not feel that way about his mother. “They got divorced. You know what mum said to me? She didn’t want to put me through a long custody battle, so it would be better all around if I came to live with Granddad.” He gave Jury a wry little smile.
“What about your father?”
“He got custody by default. Not that he didn’t want it”-Maurice added
