The Grave Maurice

Jury poured. “First, there’s staff. Now, for someone who can’t fire a hermit, I’d say this alone would make the venture hopeless.”

“You could do the firing. So that’s one problem sorted.”

Jury braced his hands against the bar, preparatory to delivering his feelings about all this. “You are hopelessly naive, do you know that? A restaurateur takes on fixed expenses, rent, equipment, maintenance-the linen alone would sink most so-called entrepreneurs-and has to deal with a volatile, transient, undertrained or overtrained, temperamental staff; a perishable inventory-my Lord, the list goes on and on. And do you know what percentage of these establishments succeed? Maybe thirty percent.”

“How is it you know so much about it?”

Jury took a drink of the rarefied wine. “Danny Wu.” “Who’s he?”

“One of the restaurateurs of whom I speak. He owns a restaurant called Ruiyi in Soho. He also does other things as a sideline. At least Racer is convinced of that.”

“Is his place successful?”

“Incredibly. You almost have to be a copper to get in.”

“Well, there you are.”

“No, there I’m not and neither are you. I know you see yourself swanning round the dining room recommending a wine to accompany braised llama and acorn saute. You’d be out a fortune just after opening night.”

“There’s always another fortune.”

“You know what your problem is? You’ve got too much money.”

“I do?”

Jury shook his head.

“Anyway, you were just doing the food part. What about the room part? That shouldn’t be difficult.”

Jury clapped his hand to his forehead. “You have no idea how much work is involved in this venture.”

“Work? Good God, I don’t intend to work. That’s what we’d be paying all of those volatile undertrained people for. Work?” Melrose made a pfffffff-ing sound, indicating his total abjuration of work. He pulled over one of the yellowing cocktail napkins, which Jury had slapped down on the bar, and took out his pen. “First, these napkins would probably have to be replaced, don’t you think?”

Jury just drank his wine and shut his eyes. The wine was even better when he didn’t have to look at Melrose. He wished he had Door Jam and a headset. Then he took the envelope from his inside pocket and found a pencil stub in a cup underneath the counter. “Let’s say the food for a month would cost a hundred thou.” Jury wrote it on the envelope. Underneath that he jotted in another hundred thou for pots and pans. As he turned the envelope for Melrose to see the absurdly fabricated sum, the snapshots fell out.

“What are these?”

“Our suspects.”

“This is definitely Simone Ryder,” said Melrose. “Or at least the dead woman I saw in the morgue. Who’re the ones-?” Melrose stopped and pulled over the pictures of Valerie Hobbs and Sara Hunt. He looked at the one of Sara Hunt for some moments as he lit a cigarette. “You said you didn’t have anything to connect this Sara Hunt to Simone Ryder?”

“Right. Not a shred of evidence.”

Melrose smiled. “Well, now you have.”

FIFTY-SIX

Melrose. held up the snapshot. “The woman in the Melrose held up the snapshot. “The woman in the Grave Maurice. The other woman. The one Simone Ryder was talking to.” Jury took the picture out of Melrose’s hand. “Sara Hunt. I’ll be damned.”

“I wasn’t paying any attention to her. She was, for the most part, the listener. Simone Ryder was the one telling the story.”

“And talking about her deceased husband?”

“I assume so. She was saying something about Roger’s brother. Then ‘insurance’ and then-well, she must have been referring to herself going to a warmer climate, like South America. Ironic, isn’t it? The very woman she’s talking to knows Dan Ryder is still alive.”

“But now,” said Jury, “Sara was becoming more and more convinced she’d be seeing the last of Dan Ryder. He’d be in South America with this woman in the pub. I wonder what Ryder told her about his wife.”

“But how in heaven’s name did Sara Hunt and Simone wind up at Ryder Stud?”

“Simone might have been going there herself for some reason. Some unfinished business. But whatever it was, Simone and Arthur Ryder had never met, or that’s what he said. But he had met Sara. Vernon drove her to the Ryder place. Beyond that I can’t sort it.”

“Could Sara have followed her?”

“Could have gone with her, for all we know. Sara is a very determined woman, count on it.” Jury plugged the cork back in the bottle.

“Sacrilege to waste this wine.”

“Who’s wasting? We’re taking it with us. Come on; I need to call Cambridge.”

They pulled their coats on, Melrose settling the bottle in his oversized pocket. He patted it like a baby.

As they went through the door of the pub, shoving the piece of wood back under the door to brace it, Jury said, “You’ll be needed as a witness, you know, if she’s indicted.”

“I expect so. Only, is there evidence enough to make an arrest?”

“Maybe, maybe not. I’ll let Barry Greene know-he’s the DCI in Cambridge-and he can get in touch with the police in Cardiff. I honestly don’t know. At least before we didn’t have a blind chance of arresting Sara Hunt. Now we do.”

After Jury had made his call and they’d toasted progress with another glass of wine, they decided to go out again, and Melrose told Martha to hold dinner. This time the Jack and Hammer was the destination of choice. “As long,” said Melrose, “as you feel ready for vocal confusion.”

“I’m ready. And it occurs to me there might be a way of handling the Bramwell crisis.”

“No, he’s not going with us.”

“I’m thinking we might pop in to see Theo Wrenn Browne.” Jury smiled thinly.

When it came to Richard Jury, Theo Wrenn Browne was, at best, ambivalent, at worst, wretchedly jealous. How he coveted the admiring glances slewed Jury’s way! Yes, he was jealous of Jury in the same way he was jealous of Melrose Plant: both had everything Theo wanted. Although Jury didn’t have a fortune to throw around (as did Plant), he easily made up for this in his job of detective superintendent at New Scotland Yard, and having all of that power over life and death. He could point a finger and nests of vipers would disappear. (This image sent a pleasant little shudder up and down his wiry body, the roots of which frisson Theo wasn’t eager to investigate.)

“Mr. Jury, how nice to see you again! And is this visit business or pleasure?”

“Both. You have an employee here named Bramwell? Frederick Edward