The Grave Maurice

“The guilt. Imagine knowing he was responsible for Nell’s abduction.”

“You’re dreaming, friend.”

Jury didn’t say the rest: why else would Maurice take such a chance as to jump those impossible walls at night? It would take someone with a hell of a lot of practice to make that trip after dark. The sort of person who abducted Nell. A jump jockey.

“You did go to Valerie Hobbs’s place?”

“Yeah, I went there, but not more than a half dozen times in the months I’ve been here.”

“You went to see her, then?”

Danny nodded.

Sara asked again, “Who is this woman?”

Jury held up the shot of Valerie Hobbs, but said nothing.

Sara left her seat on the sofa beside Danny and moved to the fireplace, her back turned. In a way, Jury felt sorry for her; here she was, thinking she had the man all to herself, at last. Danny, he noticed, at least had the grace to look a little concerned.

Jury watched Dan Ryder sitting there in silence-his relaxed posture, leaning back into the softness of the cushions, one foot braced against the edge of the coffee table, dressed in flannels and a black cashmere sweater. Jury bet the sweater was a gift from Sara. There were a lot of gifts from Sara: her house, her bed, her unswerving loyalty, threatened now only by the chance of another woman. Danny’s charm was a gift from whatever god had a sense of humor. His manner was disarming. Even Jury felt a liking for him, or some sort of empathy, which had kept him from telling the news of his son’s death. There was a back-stage persona, something else going on in Danny Ryder that had nothing to do with hiding things; Jury was sure the man was hiding all sorts of things, but things not germane to the abduction of Nell Ryder or the murder of Simone.

“Then who took Nell, Danny? It would probably go a long way in reducing your sentence if I tell the police that you helped in this investigation.”

“You’re so sure I’ll be tossed into the nick?”

“Yes.”

Danny laughed as if this possibility concerned him not at all. “On whose say-so? You going to tell them you were around here for a deco and look who turned up? The jockey. The dead one.”

“That’s pretty much the way I’d say it, yes.”

Danny reached out and picked up the gun, braced it in both hands and pointed.

Sara whirled around. “Danny!”

Jury said, “You won’t shoot me, Danny. You’re devious as hell, but you’re not a killer. What you told me happened in Paris? I’ve no trouble believing it. You’re emotionally lazy; not even the danger of being exposed would prompt you to kill anyone. You live by chance, Danny. Chance is almost a religion with you. The only thing you don’t leave to chance is the course.”

For some reason, this seemed to dig at Danny more than anything. “You think I don’t take chances in a race?”

“Of course you do, you have to. But that’s not what I mean. You know every hoofbeat pounding around that course; you know exactly what your horse is doing and can do and will do. Horses are what you don’t take chances with. Your women are chance women, met by chance, bedded by chance and maybe even married by chance.” He was looking straight at Danny, but Jury detected Sara stirring from her gloomy dream. Quickly she moved toward Jury and dashed the rest of her whiskey in his face.

Danny laughed as he put the gun back on the table.

Sara’s face was splotchy with fury.

Jury pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his face. “Shame to waste it.”

Danny laughed again. She looked daggers at him. “How can you let him go on that way? Maybe to you all this is bloody funny, but not to me!” In a second she’d put her hand on the gun, pulled it from the table and pointed it at Jury.

“No,” said Jury, “I can see it’s not funny to you at all.”

Danny threw up his hands. “Easy, love. He’s having you on; he’s doing it on purpose; he wants to get you riled, girl; he might learn something.”

Which he had.

“You,” he said to Sara, “on the other hand, might just shoot me. You’re more likely to do it than Danny, certainly. Because you are anything but emotionally lazy. Your emotions are incendiary.”

The room fell quiet. “How did you get Simone to the Ryder stables?”

Danny looked at her, eyebrows raised in what Jury took to be genuine surprise. “Sara? What the hell-?”

Her expression didn’t so much change as resettle into that look she had just turned on Danny, now leveled at Jury. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jury didn’t bother speaking to that denial. He said, “It could have been Valerie Hobbs who shot Simone-even more likely since she’s so close to the Ryder farm-but I don’t think Ms. Hobbs is murderously jealous. Just jealous. No one thought-no one would have-that the murder of his wife had to do with Danny himself because Danny was dead. But you traveled all the way from here to Cambridgeshire to kill her. I can’t get that part of it right in my mind. You didn’t know her; it’s a puzzle as to how you might have done all of this.”

Danny appeared more fascinated than anything else. He got up and took the gun from Sara’s hand.

Jury went on talking. “Did you even know his wife was here? Did he even tell you it was Simone who was collecting the insurance money? Anyway, it would be a total waste of time to shoot me because I couldn’t prove a thing.” He looked from one to the other, then reached over and slid his photos together and took them from the table.

“Too bad about the insurance money, Danny, too bad Simone didn’t live to collect it. But I wonder if not getting it is better than getting it, after all. You could never have reentered the only life that means anything to you. Is it so great a hurdle-the racing commission, the Jockey Club? You’re clever; you could surely concoct some story about Simone’s having the idea in the first place, that you were driven into exile… whatever. After all, she alone talked to the insurance adjusters. But I really can’t imagine you never racing again. No, I can’t imagine that.”

At the sound of an approaching car, tires on gravel, they all looked toward the front window.

“Never mind about that,” said Jury. “It isn’t the police; that’s just my cab. I told him to come back in an hour’s time.” Jury tucked the pictures into his pocket and rose. “Well, I’m off. I’ll leave you two to sort it.”

FIFTY-FIVE

“Wales?” said an astonished Melrose Plant before Jury had shed his coat and Ruthven had taken it. “Actually, it is part of the UK, if I remember correctly.” Melrose shrugged as if he would need more convincing than that.

Mindy preceded them into the drawing room, where she collapsed in front of the fire.