The Grave Maurice

they end up.”

They were walking by the disconcerting statue of the woman draped in folds of granite cloth. One could see nothing of the figure but an arm extended.

“Why did the sculptor hide all of her body except for that arm? Why is she so totally draped?” Jury asked.

“I don’t know. My parents-or grandparents-put her there.”

“Why do we assume the figure is a woman?”

“Yes, you’re right. But no one has ever thought that it wasn’t.”

“It could as easily be, oh, Judas, suffering from the remorse of betrayal.”

For a minute she was silent, watching the statue as if she expected the figure to turn its face to her and explain. “Perhaps it’s because it’s hard to imagine a man in that state.”

“Come on! Are you suggesting men don’t suffer that much?”

“It’s been my experience they don’t.”

They were walking again, this time to the rear of the house. “Your experience, then, must be limited to rather shallow men.”

She nodded. “I think that might be the case.”

“Was your husband?”

They were walking around the ruins of the old garden, now primula-sick and celandine-choked. The garden had once been meticulously laid out, paths crossing and bisecting the plants and trees. He could see the blueprint.

“It isn’t,” she said, “Sissinghurst, is it?”

“Oh, but that’s such an institutional garden. In the spring when those ‘boys from town’ come, after that it will be much prettier because it’s more private. I’ve never really been bowled over by those stately home gardens.”

“My father tried to start a vineyard, if you can imagine. Like the marquess of Bute? It didn’t work. Something about the soil’s lacking lime, or loam. I don’t know. But I have a hard time imagining Welsh wine, don’t you?”

He laughed. “Yes. I wonder what he’d have called it.”

They came round again in sight of the statue, which could be seen from their point on the path. “What would make you that unhappy?” said Sara.

He looked at the heavily draped figure. The burden of statuesque grief disturbed him and he looked away. He said, “Same thing that made her, I’d say.”

High above them, from the bare branches of a hazelnut, a crow careened off, circled once, then again before it wheeled away through the darkening sky.

Jury asked, “Do you ever feel a presence-I don’t know how else to say it-in this house?”

“Ghosts, you mean?”

“I don’t know what I mean.”

“Let me tell you something: my parents were very much interested in the spirit world. They called in a medium, a rather famous and well-respected one. When she fell into her trance, she remarked on a presence-yes, that was her word-and she described it as being full of longing, of yearning. As she was leaving, my mother and father asked about this presence or ghost. They said they’d never seen it or felt it. I was standing there as she drew on a black cape. She smiled ever so slightly and answered, ‘You wouldn’t.’ ”

“Ah! I like that story.”

“You can imagine how much attention I paid to her.” Jury paused. “Maybe you should have.”

Her look, when he said this, was not at him, but behind him. She smiled and said, “Because of the presence.”

“And other things.”

They were walking now down some stone steps to what looked like a sunken garden. “I’ve often wondered,” Jury said, stopping to look directly at her, “about the roots of obsession.”

“And I am supposed to tell you? You think I know?”

“Possibly, yes.”

The strained smile did not leave her lips. “Why on earth do you think that? Tell me, for I’d really like to know.”

“Say a hunch.”

“A hunch. Is that the way you solve your cases, Superintendent?”

At this point Jury felt he knew her well enough to let her drift away onto another topic.

“I’m confused,” she said. “Just what exactly are you investigating? The murder of the woman found at Ryder Stud?”

The question was merely a cover for anxiety or even panic. He didn’t answer.

He cupped her elbow with his hand and said, “Let’s walk.”

“But you’re not here officially. It’s not your case, you said.”

“That’s right.”

“Then why, good Lord, are you here?”

“Because it disturbs me. Greatly. Not knowing if the girl’s dead or alive.”

“I should think that of course she’s dead. She’s been missing for nearly two years.”

She had pulled a cigarette out from a pack in her coat pocket and Jury stopped to light it. They were standing by a small formal garden and a square pool, dry, as was everything else. The garden backed up against a limestone retaining wall.

“This must have been beautiful once,” Jury said. He looked off beyond the pool, where a dark wooden doorway stood at the end of a path lined with beeches. “What’s behind the door?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’ve never tried it?”

“I tried it, but it’s hopelessly stuck. That doesn’t bother me, though. It adds a bit of mystery to the place.” She looked at him. “Oh, go on and try it; it won’t budge, but I can see you want to. It’s your job, after all, to clear up mysteries.”

He left her standing by the pool and walked down the path. The door was very heavy and black with age, the handle and hinges rusted nearly through. They didn’t look as if they could hold anything together. Jury put his shoulder to the door, but there wasn’t so much as a micro-inch moved. Nothing gave, nothing cracked. He tried again, twice.

She called to him, “Didn’t I tell you?”

He made his way back to where she stood. She said, “It would take a battering ram to unhinge that door.”

“It’s already unhinged. It’s not the hinges that are holding it.”

“Then what?”

Jury shrugged. He watched her grind out her cigarette on one of the pond’s abutments and put the stub in her pocket.

“You’re determined to leave this place as it is, aren’t you?”

“That sounds like an accusation. Why do you say that?”