The Grave Maurice

did. He’d been really… morose, I guess you’d say. He wasn’t that way two years ago. The jumping had to do with his dad. He needed him. I mean, with his mum gone, he had no one except Granddad and me.”

“He was lucky there,” said Jury.

Vernon had been walking round the room, stopping by the window to stare out over the gray City, looking at noon as if it were dusk, with its misty rain and blue-shadowed streets. He said, “I remember Maurice’s unhappiness after Danny’s death. But he got over that, or at least as ‘over’ as one can get when a parent dies. This was something more-I’m not putting this right.”

Jury said, “Yes, you are. Isn’t he, Nell?”

She set her glass on the rug and raised her eyes to give Jury a questioning look. “This was something more?” She rubbed her hands on her blue-jeaned knees. “We used to be really close; we were so much in the same position. Once, we could talk for hours. But in the little time I’ve been back, Maurice seemed to have changed so much.”

“Did he ask you what had happened during those twenty months?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t seem to want to know. I mean Dad and Granddad just pestered me for details. They wanted to know everything. But Maurice didn’t want to know. I thought it must have been just too painful for him.”

“I’m sure it was.”

“I hadn’t changed about Maurice.”

“No, I’m sure you hadn’t,” said Jury.

“But you seem to think I was the cause.”

“I think Maurice felt responsible for what happened.”

“For me? That’s ridiculous. He wasn’t, not at all. Why would he feel that way?”

Jury leaned toward her. “Nell, how did this fellow who took you know you were out there in Aqueduct’s stall?”

She looked from Jury to Vernon, as if she’d been set a puzzle to work out. “He didn’t. It was just coincidence I was there.”

Jury shook his head. “He came for you, Nell.”

“What-? Why would anyone want me?”

Vernon nearly choked.

Someone had wanted her badly to go to her room a dozen times. But the sex, in and of itself, Jury intuited, wasn’t the reason. “How did he know that you’d be there?” He paused. She said nothing. “Didn’t you say that the horse didn’t seem sick to you? Still, you stayed.”

“Yes, well, but just in case. And Maurice is very good at reading signs of illness in the horses…” Her voice trailed off. She shook her head. “No. I know what you’re saying. Absolutely no. Maurice could never have done such a thing. Never. Nothing, no one on earth could make Maurice do that. No one.”

“I don’t think Maurice knew what was actually going to happen. But I do think he did it. Wouldn’t it explain his attitude toward you now?” Jury didn’t add, Wouldn’t it further explain his accident?

But Nell simply couldn’t bring herself to believe that Maurice really had done what Jury said. She said again, “Nothing could have made him do it.” She flashed Jury a challenging look. “What? Who?”

He turned away from that look, shaking his head. “I don’t know,” he said.

FIFTY-FOUR

But he did know. Late the next morning, Jury was back in a taxi, driving from Cardiff to Sara Hunt’s house. This time, he hadn’t given her any warning.

When she opened the door and saw him, she froze. “I didn’t know you were coming.” She recovered quickly and smiled.

“No. I thought I’d surprise you. Nice little car, there.” He looked at the red Aston-Martin parked in what he imagined could be called the backstretch of the circular driveway. “Yours?”

“My char’s, if you can believe it. They live high on the hog these days. Come on in.”

He tossed his coat over the banister and followed her into the living room.

“What can I get you? Coffee? A drink?”

“Not a thing. I’m not stopping here for long.”

She sat down in the wing chair-perched in it, really, sitting nearly on the edge. She looked like a child. He wondered what he had seen in her that attracted him sexually, that had made him feel such a yearning, and wasn’t happy with himself finding that longing abated.

“Is something wrong? You sound rather official-” Her smile was uncertain.

Jury merely watched her, looking directly at her for a few beats, and she did what he expected-looked away. And then back. He was still looking at her.

“For heaven’s sake, Richard, why are you looking at me that way?” Small movements of her hands-brushing hair back from her face, fingering the gold chain around her neck, turning a ring with her thumb-showed how nervous she was.

Jury sat with one ankle hooked over his knee. “You’re pretty. Isn’t that enough reason?”

She didn’t know how to take this, smiled and stopped smiling.

There was the sound of something heavy falling in the rooms above them. “Oh, God! I’ll have to see what she’s doing up there. I could kill her sometimes.”

Jury smiled. “I’ll wait.”

As she left, her laugh-not a laugh at all-cut off abruptly.

Jury leaned his head back against the chair, looking up as if above him were a glass ceiling and he could see as well as hear. The voices were indistinguishable, words melting in a pool. There wasn’t, fortunately, any killing going on.

Then Sara came down the stairs. “Not too much damage-”

“Speaking of damage-of course you would only have seen him at the races, if you saw him at all, but Maurice Ryder-Dan Ryder’s son?-is dead.”

“Oh, my God.” She clamped her hand over her mouth. Her eyes were barely visible above the hand and behind the tears. She rose uncertainly and walked to the window, clearly to get herself under control.

Jury said, “So you did know him? I’m surprised, given your fleeting association with the Ryders.” She had turned as he said this and he gave her a disingenuous, puzzled frown. “You did?”

It took her a moment to clear her throat. “Not well, no.”

Jury’s faux frown grew even more puzzled. “That’s quite a reaction you had for someone you didn’t know well.”

She still had not sat down, which was fine with Jury. He was quite comfortable. He rubbed the dark blue and gray diamond pattern of his silk sock, pulling it up a little, giving her a little room. But the brief hiatus wasn’t going to do her much good.

He said, “There’s something I’d like you to look at.” He pulled from an inside pocket the snapshot Nell had taken from Valerie Hobbs’s office, held it out, his arm extended toward her.