weren’t all that organized to begin with.” Vexed, she looked at Jury. “I’m sorry. You’re Superintendent Jury?”
“New Scotland Yard.” He held out his ID.
Apparently she thought she was supposed to appropriate it for she didn’t return it after taking a good look. She held the door wider and said, “They’ve come for you, Henry! Hear that, Henry?” She flung this over her shoulder. The cat went on washing. She turned back to Jury. “Hopeless. Oh, do come in.” He followed her through the large entrance hall. The cat jumped off the newel post and made its way, haughtily, toward the rear of the house.
Sara Hunt stood aside as Jury entered a living room, which would also have been cold had it not been for the fire burning in the grate. Above the fireplace were framed etchings, probably of the area, if not of these actual grounds, a great many moss- and ivy-clad crumbling walls, romantic and fantastic. Out of an enormous Gothic window, its view partly obscured by a huge oak, he could see just such a wall.
“Here,” she said, “let me take your coat.”
“I will if you give it back.” He nodded at the ID still clutched in her hand.
“What?”
“I’ll need that. How else will I know who I am?” He smiled.
So did she and her smile was broad. “I’m sorry.” She handed it back. “Do you really need to prove it? Wouldn’t anybody let you in? Any woman, anyway?”
“Thanks.” He did not respond to this flirty attempt to ingratiate herself to the police. He sat down in the armchair she indicated, covered like the sofa and other chairs in an Oriental print- birds, green stems, bamboo-much faded. He felt the need to restore, or right, the balance between them.
She seemed extremely composed and was probably one of those witnesses who could take over an interrogation and wind up doing most of it. Yet she didn’t really seem to see herself in that role as she sat with her hands neatly folded on her knees, smiling slightly, waiting. He was, after all, trained to take over; unfortunately, she seemed just as well trained to derail any conversation she did not like. He intuited this.
“You’d make,” he said, “a hell of a good double agent.”
Her eyes widened and he saw they were a soft, ambiguous brown. Why “ambiguous”? He didn’t know.
“I would?”
“Oh, definitely.”
Her hair was a sort of toffee color, a tarnished gold, as if it were waiting for the light now streaking the window behind her to provide the highlights.
“I’m taking that as a compliment.”
Jury laughed. “Why? Agents are deceitful and slippery.”
“Because that’s the way you meant it. They’re also very clever. That’s something I’m not. I’ve always lacked that-cleverness.”
“Why do I doubt that?”
“No, but it’s true.” She smiled again. “So you’ve come to recruit me for an undercover job.” The smile broadened as if she really meant it.
Jury couldn’t tell. He was almost relieved to see the upper two teeth just a shade crooked, but then he thought there was something of childhood in that crookedness and that, too, might be deceptive. “Actually, I’ve come to ask you some questions.”
“About what?” She settled back in her chair.
“You knew Dan Ryder, the jockey?”
At that moment, a presence up to this point absent, something veiled and ghostlike, entered the room, and Jury sat forward and just resisted the impulse to reach out for it. Yet her expression hadn’t changed. That was the problem, wasn’t it? Something had entered to change it, and it hadn’t changed at all.
“I didn’t really know Dan Ryder; I met him a few times. It was at-” She looked at the mantel, Jury presumed at the silver-framed pictures sitting there between two old brass candleholders. She rose and crossed to it and picked one picture up, which she handed to Jury. “That was Newmarket races. He’s up on Criminal Type-or at least that’s what I thought-and that’s Arthur Ryder holding the reins. And the trainer, I forget his name. I’m in the background, there.” She tapped the glass.
“Who introduced you?”
“Arthur did. I’m a very distant relation. Then I saw him-Dan Ryder, I mean-again when he won again. It was Cheltenham Racecourse, then again at Doncaster. The Derby at Epsom was brilliant. Lucky Me won carrying 129 pounds. Halfway round he slammed into the fence and I was sure Danny was going down. But he righted himself and won by three lengths in 1:11:36. Yes, he was quite something.”
She smiled. “Isn’t it enough for you?”
Definitely a derailer. “For me, possibly. As for you, it depends.”
“On what? I’m in the dark, Superintendent. Why are you asking about Dan Ryder? He’s dead. He died somewhere else, not in the UK. France, it might have been. A racing accident.”
“Auteuil racetrack, near Paris.”
She turned her look to the room, and Jury had a most unnerving response to it. He could have sworn she was looking at somebody or something he couldn’t see. The feeling passed, but left him disturbed.
She said, “This must have something to do with Arthur Ryder’s granddaughter. Her disappearance.”
Jury nodded. “It does. Did you know her?”
“No. Wales is a long way from Cambridgeshire. I’m one of the Ryders merely by dint of an aunt once removed. I’m some kind of stepcousin.”
“Obviously, you like racing.”
“Yes. I go whenever I get the chance. A friend invited me to the Cheltenham Gold Cup.”
He thought for a moment. “Then you didn’t have any interaction with Dan Ryder? That seems strange given you know these races so well.”
She laughed. “That’s the point: I went to see the Derby, not Dan Ryder. I recall it so well because it was so dramatic. I didn’t know Dan, as I said before. Twice.”
Jury smiled. “Sorry.”
She made to rise. “Would you like some coffee, Superintendent?”
“I would. Thanks.” It was less a desire for coffee than it was to have her leave the room so he could look around.
The room’s emanations-oh, surely, that had been his imagination?- coupled perhaps with the size of the house and its empty lower rooms-disturbed him. Or perhaps she did. Well, he knew she did, that was the pathetic truth. But what had her eyes been trained on during that look over his shoulder? He crossed to the sofa and sat where she had sat. There was nothing behind his now-imaginary shoulder but the high Gothic window, out of which he could see a figure draped in cloth, the stone folds of which hid her almost entirely. He went to this window and looked out on a sadly neglected garden, which no amount of nurturing sun or rain would restore to what it had been.
Houses such as this troubled Jury. Not because of their being neglected, but because of the presence of the past. What must it be like to be the last member of a family who had once lived here? Why did she live here alone? Wales was always touted as a land of great natural beauty. Why, then, did the distant mountains, the rocky land, the deserted garden strike Jury as harrowed and precipitate? Whoever found beauty here must like her beauty dangerous. He was still looking out at the mountains beyond and the blank day when he heard her footsteps advancing, and, turning, almost expected to see not Sara, but someone else.
Over the tray with the coffee service, she gave him a fleeting smile, one
