The Grave Maurice

“What was?”

“Killing the horses. I made a bargain: I wouldn’t run if she’d let me take care of the mares.”

“My God.” Vernon turned away, angry with such recklessness, or was it such devotion to something he didn’t understand. “You could have gotten away long before you did.”

She sat back and looked at him. “Believe me, I’ve given myself more hell than you or anyone else could on that score. Look, I know it was awful of me not to go home. But, in a sense, I was home. I have been home for three weeks.”

It wasn’t as if she were denying her family for her own sake. Even as obsessive as she was about these mares, it wasn’t her own welfare she was concerned with. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, I won’t keep pushing it.”

“Thank you. And there’s something else I’d like to do. I’d like to put them out of business.”

“The Hobbs woman will be out of business.”

“It’s not illegal, the operation she’s running.”

“No, but it is illegal to conspire with kidnappers. Put who out of business?”

“The pharmaceutical company that produces this hormone drug.” She reached into a pocket of the coat tossed over the back of the leather sofa and pulled out several folders, which she then tossed on the table between them. “At least, I’d like to do them some damage.”

Vernon looked at her. He would have laughed had she not looked so implacably serious. He picked up the folder picturing a sweetly posed mare and her foal. “You want to put it out of business-that’s what you’re saying? Nellie, Wyeth-Ayerst is a major pharmaceutical company in the States. It’s huge.”

“All the more reason, isn’t it? You’re a shareholder. You tried to get Dad and Granddad to invest. You said they should do ‘before the stock split.’ ”

Vernon was openmouthed. “How in hell can you remember that?”

“Because-” Because I always listened to what you said, because you were important to me, because I was always glad when you came to the farm.

There was a shift in her expression, a look not at all implacable, that Vernon could not read and wished he could, as if, like a horse, she had slipped her reins and could now run free, as if whatever drove her had stopped driving her for two seconds, and in that brief time, he felt he had her; had her worked out, clocked her pace, seen her colors. In the next second, the look was gone. It was amazing what could wash over a person in the blink of an eye. “Nellie, I’m a shareholder, but even if I dumped all of my stock tomorrow, it wouldn’t hurt Wyeth that much.”

“Oh, I know that. But you’re what they call a player; you have influence-”

Vernon tried out a self-deprecating laugh, but she didn’t break stride.

“-in the market.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Vernon held up one protesting hand. “You mean you want me to manipulate this company’s financial picture-”

She nodded. “They’re the only ones who produce this stuff.”

“Oh. Do you want me to put British Telecom out of business at the same time?”

She just gave him a look.

Vernon sat back. “Even if I could do this, which I certainly doubt”-(but the prospect of such a trick excited him, that is, would, if such a manipulation was not illegal, which it was; he was doing this in a vacuum, or doing it theoretically. But it wasn’t theoretical, that was the trouble-“even if I could, you do realize that the drug wouldn’t be the only thing that you could say good-bye to. We’d be saying good-bye to God knows how many jobs.”

Nell looked away from him and out the window to the lightening sky. Not light but its adumbration in the faint lines of buildings showing through the darkness. “I know.”

“But you don’t care?”

She turned back to look at him. “No.” She held up the folder. “Listen to me, Vern. Listen: the foals are slaughtered since there’s no use for them, to keep women more comfortable during menopause. To help avoid hot flashes, Vernon. What in the bloody hell is the matter with us?”

She was relentless. He frowned. She could even be ruthless.

Nell smiled. “This is something you could do; you’re reckless, Vernon.”

Actually, he wasn’t; he only appeared to be because he would undertake tasks that would find most people running for cover.

“I’m sorry to lay all this at your doorstep. You haven’t been living with it for nearly two years like I have. If you had done, if you had had all that time to think about it…” Her tone was rueful. “I’m sorry.”

“Not on my account.” He looked at the window, at the frosty light and the spire of St. Paul’s spiking the early-morning mist that shrouded it. “I’ll give this some thought. In the meantime-” He drank off his whiskey and made a face. “Why doesn’t this stuff taste as good at six a.m. as if does at six p.m.? Come on, your room’s at the end of the hall.”

She got up. He put his hands on her shoulders; they felt fragile, despite her being a girl toughened by sun and wind and hard work. It was that look of hers, a look at once solid and ethereal. He was for a moment afraid. You couldn’t keep jumping through hoops of fire without getting burned. But the fear subsided when she yawned like any ordinary up-all-night child.

Only Nell wasn’t ordinary, despite these glimpses of that other girl, the one he had seen before in that swift two seconds.

And who was she?

THIRTY-SEVEN

The house looked marble cold and cavernous, more the crumbling remains of a house of banished royalty than a home. She lived alone, or that was the impression Jury had gotten when he talked to her on the telephone.

The raised voice Jury heard on the other side of a partly open window appeared to be remonstrating with something not human-a dog or cat. If it was a cat, the cat would remain unregenerate. Used to the cat Cyril in DCS Racer’s office, Jury knew as much as anyone about the persistence of cats. He rang and heard footsteps.

Sara Hunt blushed, whether from having to deal with a stranger and a policeman or because she’d been caught red-handed lecturing a cat, Jury didn’t know. Over her shoulder he could see the big ginger-colored cat who paused in his blameless paw washing long enough to fix his eyes on Jury. The cat had exceptionally green eyes (rather the color of Melrose Plant’s) and a precarious seat on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. One could tell the cat was hopelessly its own master and would get through any talking down with no other feeling than boredom.

Sara Hunt said immediately after she opened the door, as if in defense of her remonstrating with her cat, “He’s just made a mess of my papers. He’s shoved them on the floor and they