The Grave Maurice

wasn’t following instructions. So would Wiggins. So would Carole-anne. He’d be thrice thrashed, a pleasant little tongue-twister. He made sure the cheese salad sandwich was in his coat pocket. It might fend her off for a little while.

A very little while. Carole-anne, dressed in emerald green, had deposited the sandwich wrapper in the trash can and was now picking crumbs from her gorgeous green bosom.

“Are you saying you went all the way to Wales-?”

“And back. Twice, and lived to tell about it.”

The eyes that leveled on him would have been cold had they not been so goddamned turquoise. Flashing turquoise, to boot. There she went now, hands on hips:

“Super! You know you promised that doctor that you wouldn’t exert yourself in any way, that you wouldn’t go out pub-crawling, that you’d stay in bed as much as possible-”

“I lied.”

Well that flummoxed her. She was gathering up her argument, getting it into full gear, which of course demanded a fellow arguer, and Jury wasn’t doing it. He smiled.

Carole-anne had to search around for another arguable topic.

Ah! The consideration card!

“It’s just not very considerate, that’s all, I mean to me and Mrs. W, as all we do is worry, wondering where you are and if you’re okay. Not dead in a ditch somewhere. Like Wales.”

“But you thought I was in Northamptonshire with Melrose Plant.”

“Well, but you weren’t! You were in Wales!”

That she saw no flaw in this argument was one of the things he loved about her. Jury rose, walked over and embraced her. “Sorry.”

Her words were muffled by her head’s burrowing against his chest.

Jury thought of the rain-swept, snow-swept garden, of its oddly aromatic winter scent. Carole-anne gave off that scent somehow. He released her. She went back to the sofa, argument momentarily suspended. “Then why’d you go to Wales, anyway? Nobody I know goes there.” She uncapped her nail polish.

“Apparently nobody anybody knows goes there. Except me.”

“What’s she look like, this person?”

“You asked me that before.”

“I know. I guess I just wasn’t paying attention.”

Not bloody likely. Jury thought he would doll up the description and ran the faces of several film stars by his mind’s eye, discarding each of them in turn as perhaps not beautiful enough to fan the fires of jealousy. Would Judi Dench or Helen Mirren capture her imagination? (They captured his.) No. Right now she was tapping her foot, which didn’t register very high on the impatience scale since she hadn’t any shoes on.

“Well, if it takes you this long to describe what she looks like,” she said, drawing her unpainted toenails back to rest on the edge of the table-“then she mustn’t have made much of an impression.”

“Juliette Binoche,” he said, a woman so far from resembling Sara Hunt it began to worry even him.

“Oh, her.” Unmoved, Carole-anne dipped the tiny brush in the neon- bright pink polish and let it hover over her foot as if sizing it up for the glass slipper.

“Am I to understand you do not think Ms. Binoche has the most alluring complexion in the whole world? No-the whole universe? Her skin is absolutely luminous.” Though luminosity in another when he had Carole-anne right in front of him was definitely coals to Newcastle.

Carole-anne’s chin was on her up-drawn knee, as she dabbed the nail polish on her little toe. “She’s French.”

Jury had always taken a secret delight in Carole-anne’s non sequiturs, but this one puzzled him. “She’s French. That removes her completely from our purview, does it?”

“I guess it removes you. She lives in France.”

Ah! That was it. Juliette was inaccessible! And in Carole-anne’s seamless accounting, Wales merely took off where Paris began. “Yes, she probably does live in France, but a man could easily have a lover there, what with the Chunnel making it so convenient.”

“You’re claustrophobic.”

Was she splurging on non sequiturs tonight? “I am?” She nodded. “You wouldn’t last five minutes in the Chunnel.” Down went that foot, up came the other.

“Oh, for God’s sake, that’s ridiculous. Whatever gave you that impression?”

“Suit yourself.” Her entire self rejected his argument as the work of a fool. Even her toes shrugged.

“I get on elevators; I get on planes.”

“I’m only talking about the Chunnel. You’d only be claustrophobic there. You don’t have all-over claustrophobia.”

“Then I’ll fly!”

“You can’t afford it. Between here and Paris it costs a fortune.”

“So I have Chunnel claustrophobia. How interesting. All I can say is, either way, Juliette Binoche would be worth it.”

“If you want to chance it.”

By the time she was wriggling her toes to dry them, Jury was sure he was in love with Juliette Binoche.

Damn, but did she have to live in Paris?

FORTY-EIGHT

“Ardry End has seen the last of him!” exclaimed Melrose, in answer to Jury’s question about Mr.

Bramwell. “Let’s drink to that!” Melrose raised his teacup.

“So you managed to fire him?” said Jury.

“Not exactly. It was more of a job transfer.”

“What’s that?”

“He’s gone to the Wrenn’s Nest.”

“What?” Jury laughed. “How in hell did you foist him off on Theo Browne?”

“By making it known that Trueblood intended to hire Bramwell. You know that if Browne could take away anything Trueblood has-a basket of vipers, a dram of strychnine-he’d do it. Makes no difference that the result would be poisonous to Theo, at least it would be poison Trueblood couldn’t have.”

“Who thought this up?”

“Trueblood.”

“That figures.” Jury laughed again, and finished his tea.