Eagerly, Joanna said to Jury, “Tell us, tell us! This boy and his dog-”
Jury smiled. “It should be the dog and his boy. That’s one damned smart dog. I was lying there for what was probably only a few minutes, but felt a lifetime-”
Agatha butted in to stall the story, annoyed she hadn’t heard this account before the others over morning coffee. “And did your whole life pass before you?”
“No,” he lied, not wanting to talk about it.
Joanna leaned toward Jury. “What was it like, nearly dying?”
Jury wanted to say terrifying; he had wanted to be terrified. Instead, what he had felt was the lure of the dark. He wondered how it was that inconsequential things came back to one at such moments. Because, he reasoned, they weren’t inconsequential. He looked up to see five pairs of eyes, expectant.
“Terrified,” he said.
“This case you’re working on,” said Diane.
“It’s not a case. It’s not my case, certainly.”
“Never mind. I’ve got a theory.”
“Oh, good,” said Melrose. “Scotland Yard can go back to bed.”
Diane plowed on. “This girl that’s gone missing probably went off with her boyfriend, who’d told her they’d get married and when he just up and left her, she was too ashamed to go back home. It’s not the leaving that’s significant. It’s the not coming back.”
They all looked at her. Trueblood said, “Diane, that’s one of the most Victorian scenarios I’ve ever heard.”
“It sounds,” said Joanna, “like one of mine.”
“At this point,” said Jury, “it’s as good as any other.” He smiled at her.
“Then what’s your theory?” asked Diane. “White slavery?”
Trueblood said, “Aren’t we ignoring the most obvious explanation? She’s dead. It’s the only thing that makes sense. There was no ransom demand because she’s dead, maybe an accident, something the abductors didn’t intend-” He shrugged away the rest of the scene.
“She’s not dead.” Jury said it before he could stop himself.
Several pairs of eyes regarded him.
“How is it,” asked Melrose, “you’re so sure of that?” Jury picked up his beer. He didn’t answer.
“I like your idea of recuperating,” said Melrose.
“I’m not doing the driving. I’m just sitting here, enjoying the scenery.”
“We’re on the M1. There isn’t any scenery.”
Jury slid a few inches down in his seat. “I love this car.”
“You can’t have it.”
“While I’m talking to Vernon Rice, where are you going to be?”
“Oh, I’ll ‘hang’ as they say in the Grave Maurice. Unless you want me to come with you?” His tone was hopeful.
“No. You’ve already talked to him. Both of us would be intimidating. Anyway, he doesn’t know you know me.”
“Of course he does. He’s Roger Ryder’s stepbrother.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t know we have any working relationship. As far as Rice is concerned, you’re just some aristocratic oddball.”
“Thanks. Just remember, I had lunch with him. I mean we had quite a good conversation going.” He shook his head. “I just don’t get it that you don’t like him.”
“I didn’t say that. Did I say that?”
“Oh, don’t be as thick as two posts. You know you don’t like him. But there’s one thing you have in common.”
“What?”
“You don’t believe Nell Ryder’s dead.”
THIRTY-TWO
Jury sat on Vernon Rice’s sofa and understood what Melrose had meant. It was slimmed-down, pared-down luxury. The furniture was Italian or German or both, the colors muted, the lines clean. The chair he sat in, although its angles had looked forbidding, was superbly comfortable. He decided he preferred his own ramshackle flat with its Early Oxfam appointments, which was just as well, since he wasn’t getting this one.
Of course it overlooked the Thames, one of those breath-taking views estate agents were always advertising that usually turned out to be a small slice of the river if you held your head in a certain way. But this view answered all of the demands of “breathtaking.” Right now the descending sun turned the pocked surface of the Thames to hammered gold.
Jury’s dislike (he had lied to Melrose) of Vernon Rice only increased in these sumptuous surroundings (childish, but he didn’t care; he let it increase), these proofs of the man’s success. “Thank you,” he murmured as Rice handed him an espresso.
“You sure you wouldn’t like a drink? I’ve got some really good whiskey.”
Jury thought, I’ll bet. I’ll bet it’s a million years old. “Oh, no thanks. Coffee’s fine.”
“Something wrong, Superintendent? You look a little, uh, disgruntled.” Vernon smiled.
So did Jury, trying to beat him to it, not succeeding. “Sorry, but I guess it’s just spillover from the hospital. Too much nursing.”
“Too much shooting, maybe.”
Jury looked at him and could detect nothing but empathy. “That’s nearer the mark, yes.”
“It sounds as if it were more than just a close call.”
“How do you-?”
“The dailies, Mr. Jury. The newspapers were full of it.
Don’t tell me they weren’t all over you in hospital the moment you woke up.”
“They weren’t. That must have been Dr. Ryder’s doing.”
Jury could remember very little of the first day-and possibly of the second or third. All he wanted was sleep, from which he awoke at one point to see Carole-anne framed in the window lighted by the sun, her red-gold hair on fire, and thought he was in heaven.
Insofar as police, hospital personnel and visitors went he had shut down his mind. It was as simple as that. He wanted no more than the sketchiest outline, the bare bones of what had happened. He wanted none of that
“But of course they didn’t know the rest of the story-”
(Was Vernon Rice a mind reader now?)
“-the papers never do; they make up what they want.”
