The Grave Maurice

many inches to spare.

“Keep going!” yelled Nell.

Aqueduct seemed to want to keep Nell in view and slowed a little, but his what-the-hell? instincts sped him up again. It certainly wasn’t Vernon’s guidance that had the horse leaping four feet above the ground and sailing over the second wall. Vernon reined him in, thinking it was obvious Aqueduct had only just gotten started and aimed like an arrow at the third, even higher wall.

“Come on, Vern. You can do it. You’re on Aqueduct,” she yelled, coming up on the third wall.

“You can do it, you mean. You’ve done it!”

“Of course I haven’t. Where’d you get that-oh, you mean my vanishing act over Hadrian’s walls? You don’t think my kidnapper would trust me with the reins, do you?”

“I thought that might have been one reason he took you. Because you’re such a good horsewoman.”

She smiled. “Thanks very much, but I have a lot of trouble with a couple of those walls.”

“Then he must have been good.”

“I expect he was.” Nell thought for a moment. “He might have been a jockey.” She closed her eyes. “He felt like the right size for it. I think sometimes I could recognize everything by touch.” Her eyes opened. “Don’t you?”

Vernon glanced at her and bent to rub Aqueduct’s neck. He thought for a moment, then asked, “Do you have a cell phone? I forgot mine.” First time in his life, probably.

“Vern, do I look as if I had a cell phone?”

Still up on Aqueduct, Vernon craned his neck, looking around as if he expected to find a public call box on the land.

Nell asked, “Why? Who are you so eager to call?”

“Richard Jury.” He ran his thumb across his bottom lip, abstracted.

“Who’s Richard Jury?”

“Sorry, I meant to tell you about him. He’s a detective, a superintendent, Scotland Yard.”

“That’s pretty high up, isn’t it? For him to be taking an interest in where I am? I mean, especially after all this time?”

“It’s not official; I mean, he’s not doing it in any official capacity. He was in hospital and your dad’s patient. Roger talked about you-well, seeing who he was, I can understand.” He looked around again. “Look, I’d like to get back to London-”

Nell brought Lili’s head around; the horse was looking at a particularly attractive patch of vegetation. “Seeing as there are no telephones anywhere else.”

“You’re coming with me.”

Her eyebrows raised. “That’s an order?”

“Uh-huh. Are you going to do anything else with the mares?”

“Just bring them out for a walk round.”

While she went to tend to the horses, Vernon rode Aqueduct to the old horse ring. He was glad he’d come to the farm occasionally to ride. He began at a gentle gallop, went around once at a canter and then he got the horse up to speed.

They blitzed the hard-packed earth. It was utterly exhilarating. He thought of nothing but speed and wind. Nothing else, not even money, not even Nell.

FORTY-ONE

Melrose was standing by the horse stall, presently horseless, wondering what Momaday was doing with Aggrieved. He was doing something, certainly, un-caring of Melrose’s explicit instruction that he was not to take the horse out. Momaday’s very touch put a blight on a thing.

I’m going to fire him, Melrose thought. Then he thought, No. I’ll get Ruthven to fire him. He knows how to do these things. Who was he kidding? No one ever got fired at Ardry End. His father, of course, left “all of that domestic nonsense” up to Melrose’s mother, who couldn’t even fire a mouse. Indeed, Melrose had come upon her one day, kneeling by a hole in the study baseboard, shoving something into the hole. Embarrassed she’d been caught out, she blushed and said, “It’s just a bit of cheese. I don’t think they eat properly.”

As Melrose had been six at the time, and already thought his mother a glorious person, her glory was thus made even more manifest. He grabbed her hand and told her she was nice and he’d never tell. Momaday was her polar opposite.

Melrose tramped over sodden ground to the hermitage to see how his new employee was doing. He had hired Bramwell to occupy the hermitage because he thought it might be a way to thwart Agatha, who had taken to spending some time tramping to the horse stall and participating in close colloquy with Momaday (who, heretofore, she wouldn’t give the time of day to) about the care and feeding of the horse. If he couldn’t bar her from the house, he at least wanted her off the land. God knows what the two of them would think up with regard to the fate of Aggrieved.

The hermitage was left over probably from the last couple of centuries and as it was a distance from the house and pretty much hidden by trees, he had forgotten its existence. How he could have forgotten it for two minutes running, he couldn’t imagine, not with a skull and MEMENTO MORI carved on the lintel. He could hardly wait to show Richard Jury! A great place to stuff a body and he was close to stuffing Mr. Bramwell’s into it.

Right now, Mr. Bramwell, hermit-in-residence, was out of his den-a substantial grotto, made of stones, tree limbs and moss, surprisingly warm and snug in winter, though Bramwell was constantly complaining about the lack of heat and light and had been since his arrival several days ago.

All of this hermit business had come about when he’d been talking about the eighteenth-century notion of hermits living on one’s property. Landowners, wanting to be thought both richer and more worldly-wise than they actually were, and certainly more fashionable, often were on the lookout for a hermit. There were, of course, rules to be followed: never set foot off the property, never shave or cut the beard.

“You should get one-an ornamental hermit,” Diane had said. “That’s a marvelous idea. I daresay one would put Agatha off her feed.” She waved her empty martini glass toward the bar and Dick Scroggs. He took his time.

“Withersby!” said Trueblood. “A perfect candidate.”

“She’s a woman: hermits were men,” said Melrose. “Hired by the landed gentry to give the impression of bucolic idleness, or whatever.”

Scroggs came with his small and ice-cold jug of vodka and an eye blink of vermouth and poured this into Diane’s glass, popping in an olive on a toothpick. “You know, I could find you one,” said Diane. “Put an ad in my paper.” “Her” paper because she wrote the astrology column, to everyone’s great amusement “That’s what they did back then. Advertised.”

“Why do I find this proposal hard to believe?” said Vivian.

Diane shrugged. “Lack of imagination?”

Trueblood said, “It’s a great idea. Diane and I can interview the applicants.” He nodded from Melrose to Diane. “I think it would be great fun.”

“Oh, really?” said Vivian, swirling her sherry round in her glass. “Perhaps