“Superintendent, I’m happy to see you’ve returned.” He was helping Jury remove his coat.
“Tell me about Nell Ryder,” said Melrose. “What happened?”
“If you’ll just let me get this other sleeve off, ah, thank you, Ruthven.”
Ruthven bowed slightly and asked, or started to, “Would you care for tea, Superintendent?”
“I would, yes.” Jury claimed the sofa. “In case I want a bit of a lie-down.” He sank back against the soft cushions. “First, though, I talked to Barry-Chief Inspector?-Greene. Seems the dead woman was Ryder’s second wife.”
Melrose raised his eyebrows. “What do you make of that?”
“I don’t; I haven’t, yet.”
Melrose sat on the edge of his wing chair. “Well, go on, go on about Nell Ryder. You said she turned up at Rice’s office. Out of the blue.”
“Out of the blue indeed.”
Then Jury began and went on telling Melrose, over the lighting of Melrose’s cigarette, over the appearance of the tea, about Nell Ryder’s reappearance.
Melrose didn’t speak, but sat back and marveled at this story that should have begun, Melrose said, with “Once upon a time.”
“Maurice?” Melrose said, aghast. “But why would he have-he’s been, or seemed, so heartbroken by Nell’s disappearance-”
“Even more reason to be utterly miserable, if he had anything at all to do with her abduction.”
“But what?”
Jury shook his head.
Melrose grabbed a tiny sandwich from a plate that Agatha was not here to ravage. “For nearly two years he’d have kept it to himself?” Melrose shook his head and poured out more tea. “Uh-uh, I can’t buy that.”
“After a while, it would get even more difficult to tell anyone, more and more, because he’d have let everyone flounder for a week, month, then six months, then a year…” Jury shrugged, sipped his tea and took a bite of smoked salmon sandwich. He felt starved. “What’s for dinner?”
“I don’t know. A slab of cow or a dead duck?”
Jury smiled and they sat in silence for a moment. Then Jury asked, “Can you imagine the patience it took for Nell Ryder to do what she did? Not to mention courage.”
“ ‘Patience’ isn’t exactly the word, is it? ‘Determination,’ I’d say. No, ‘focus’ might be even nearer the mark. Those mares. They were the only thing that came within her line of vision. Everything else disappeared; everything else she just hacked down to clear the path. If her mind was trained on a distant light, she’d swim through a river of crocodiles to get to it. Someone like that”-Melrose shook his head-“is stepping to the beat of her own drummer, that’s certain.”
Dinner was, forensically speaking, a dead duck, but more specifically, a duck sautéed in a fig and marsala vinegar. Sour and sweet played off each other in a delicious and syrupy essence, not to mention the alcohol-laden one. With it were French green beans in a walnut vinaigrette and bourbon mashed sweet potatoes.
“Aren’t you interested in Wales?” asked Jury.
“Wales? No, should I be? Oh, yes, I forgot with so much else going on. What happened?”
Jury told him about Sara Hunt.
“You think she’s obsessed with Dan Ryder? Or was?”
“Still is. No, that flame has not gone out.”
They ate and drank in silence for a few minutes. Then Melrose looked at Jury. “What are you sniggering about?”
“Wondering how an alcoholic would deal with these soused dishes. Vernon Rice has one of those dotcom things called SayWhen.”
“What does it do?”
Jury speared a bite of marsala-soaked duck. “Nothing, really. It mostly commiserates.”
“What does he sell, then?” asked Melrose.
“ ‘With-a-Twist.’ ”
“Pardon?”
“It’s the newsletter that’s sold,” said Jury. “That’s what it’s called-‘With-a-Twist.’ It does some sort of riff on personal experiences. I’m not sure what. But the site is meant to give people incentive to stay off the booze.”
“Wouldn’t you think a grown man, a grown broker, a grown venture capitalist and day trader-wouldn’t you think he’d have better things to do with his time?”
“Don’t be so holier than thou.” Jury sniggered again. “I just wish he’d start up one on smoking. I could use some commiseration there.”
“But you stopped smoking two years ago!”
Jury gave him a look and shook his head. “Is today your ‘I’m a Simpleton’ day? For God’s sake, smoking is a complex matter. How many packs a day do you go through?”
“Only one. I limit myself to just the one so I won’t get addicted.”
Ruthven entered.
“Let’s have some more incredibly soused potatoes and another bottle of whatever.”
“The Hermitage?”
“That’s the ticket.”
Ruthven retreated.
Melrose asked, “Where was the place she was taken to?” “About two miles from Ryder’s, to the north. She was that close.”
“Weren’t they afraid she might be recognized?”
“Apparently not.” Jury thought about the walls. “If you were a good horseman, it’s more direct to jump those walls. And this person was apparently a very good horseman. Nell thinks he could easily have been a jockey.”
Ruthven returned with the wine and the potatoes. “These damn things are making me drunk,” said Melrose while Ruthven spooned up the potatoes for him.
“It wouldn’t be the whole bottle of wine, right?”
Ruthven tittered as he served Jury.
“No, it wouldn’t. That’s what I usually have and I’m sober as a judge.”
Ruthven said, “Will you be ready for dessert in fifteen minutes? The soufflé will be out of the oven then.”
“Yes, thanks.”
Ruthven made his exit with tray and server.
“Soufflé. What kind?”
“Chocolate. With fairy cakes.”
“Do those things really exist?”
“Of course. Fairies exist, after all. It’s a child’s confection, a cupcake with wings.”
They had cleaned their plates and Jury sat back with a sigh. “God, this is so nice. Waited on hand and foot, whiskey, wine, duck.”
“Is it?”
“You don’t think so?”
“I’m used to it. Mind if I smoke?”
“It’s bad manners to smoke between courses.” Melrose plucked a cigarette from a porcelain box, lit it with his Zippo. “And nor do I know why the second Mrs. Ryder was done in on a training course.”
Jury sat back. Then he said, “Possibly a joke.”
“Oh, how droll. ‘I saw the funniest thing the other day, a dead body on a racecourse.’ ”
“Not that kind of a joke. Or joke’s the wrong word.”
“Well, whoever did it is no doubt pleased to see all the trouble they’ve caused.”
“Yes. That’s the other part-”
Ruthven had returned with the soufflé, served with a raspberry confit in a delicate tracery of red.
“Delicious looking. Martha’s really outdone herself.”
They ate in silence for a while, savoring the mingling of chocolate and raspberry.
Jury looked up suddenly, holding his fork like a little spear. “Unless-”
“Yes? Unless what-”
Jury shook his head. “Nothing. It’s a bit far-fetched-”
“At Ardry End, you’re in the land of the far-fetched, believe me.”
“I was going to say, it reminds me of the way he died.
Dan Ryder. Thrown from his horse.”
“Hm. Interesting. What about this woman, then? This second wife. Your Cambridge detective-did he fill you in on anything?”
“Simone Ryder. She was here, apparently, to talk to an insurance adjuster.”
“But that accident occurred-when? Over two years ago, didn’t it? She hasn’t collected the insurance yet?
”
“No. The thing is, there’s a double indemnity clause in the policy.”
“Ah-ha! Shades of Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray.”
“What?”
“Surely you’ve seen that classic noir film. Double Indemnity. They murder her husband after taking out insurance with one of those clauses. If the death is caused by accident, pay up twice the face amount.”
Jury looked up from the design he was making in the raspberry sauce with his fork. “Wouldn’t it be a bit difficult for Mrs. Ryder and her boyfriend to kill her husband by means of a fall from a horse?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I imagine you could plot a murder any old way.”
“So, she makes sure the indemnity clause is intact and then Ryder’s wife and her lover somehow orchestrate this riding accident. With the horse’s cooperation. Hm.”
“Then Edward G. Robinson starts smelling something fishy.”
“Edward G. Robinson?”
“He was in charge of claims,” said Melrose. “One of those terrier types who get their teeth into possible fraud and won’t let go.”
“How was Stanwyck’s husband supposed to have died in this film?”
“Train. Fell off the back; that’s when you could go out onto the platform for a smoke on American trains.” Melrose looked at his own cigarette and considered. “Why was she in the Grave Maurice? It isn’t exactly a pub one would seek out. Or a place where a woman like that would choose to meet someone. So I assume it was simply handy, and that would be because she’d been to the hospital, or was going to it. I don’t see how she could have been going to meet Roger Ryder, as he was there when I came in. Left just a moment after.”
“But she wouldn’t have recognized him. I doubt she was carrying a snapshot of the good doctor around. Remember, the Ryders had never met this woman.”
“So they say.”
“So they say, yes.”
They drank their coffee and were silent.
Jury asked, “What sort of racing do they have in Wales? Is there much of it?”
“Point to point. There’s a lot of that. Are you thinking of Dan Ryder’s going there because of this woman Sara Hunt? Point to point is mostly amateur stuff, but certainly professionals ride in it.”
Jury nodded. “I’m thinking of them, yes. Wondering how easily they could have seen each other.”
“You’re convinced she was.”
“Absolutely. You should have seen her reaction when I asked her about him. She had to leave the room.” Jury thought about Sara alone in that magnificent, desolate house in its setting of ruined gardens and broken statuary and felt a kind of longing he could not attach to any particular place in his own experience. Whatever it was, he felt a pull to go back. What seduced him? The woman? The house? The past?
Melrose went on. “From what we know about him, any halfway decent-looking woman who’d admit to so much as an acquaintance with Dan Ryder might as well go whole hog and admit to an affair.”
“That’s what I think.”
“Perhaps she didn’t want to be thought of as one among many.”
“Unless-”
“Unless what? There you go again.”
Jury picked up his fork again and ran the tines through the slightly congealed raspberry confit. “There I go, yes.” He put down the fork. “I think perhaps I need to make another trip to Cardiff tomorrow.”
“Wales again?” Melrose sighed. “That means you’ll have to go to London. I’ll drive you.”
“Thanks.”
FORTY-SIX
Jury felt, when he’d sat down in the same seat he’d occupied on his return trip to London two days ago, that he might have found the answer to time travel, that he really was going back in time, but that to be able to do that was a sentimental fantasy; to want to do it was a failure of nerve, although he could not say expressly how or why. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be getting into one of those dreary discussions with himself that usually ended with part of him irritated and part of him smug and all of him losing.
He wondered about the lad with the CD player and earphones and when the train pulled into the station where the boy had got off, Jury looked for him on the platform. He wanted to repeat the process without knowing why and wondered if it was no more (and no less, of course) than that desire to have the past back again, which plagued him generally.
Yet, in this case, the meeting was not past-or at least not yet-but in the future. But he felt far more ambivalent this time than he had in his previous encounter with Sara Hunt. And he felt the future could be a wrenching disappointment.
Jury lay his head back against the seat and wished for the return of the lad with the earphones and Door Jam.
When she opened the door this time, she seemed more at ease, thinking (Jury supposed) anything bad that might happen would have happened in their first meeting. He wondered why, since the police generally didn’t have to come around twice unless there was a problem.
“I guess I feel flattered that you think I’m worth seeing again.”
“Oh, I think you’re worth seeing many agains.”
“Many agains.” She laughed. “I like that.”
They were standing in the large, square black-and-white marble entryway. She looked, he thought, quite beautiful in her plain skirt and sweater, the skirt long and black, the sweater cropped and a little boxy, a dusty blue, cashmere, probably. Brown eyes, toffee-colored hair, a color you felt you had to touch as well as see to know for certain. He restrained himself.
“I hope I’m not being too intrusive.”
“In seeing me? Lord, no, you can imagine the number of visitors I get out here.”
He smiled. “Actually, I can’t.”
“My point exactly.” She hung his coat on the coatrack. They walked into the living room, grown no warmer in its outer reaches than before. A pool of warmth collected around the chairs and sofa in front of the fireplace, some invisible boundary around them.
“You’re timing’s perfect. I’ve just made tea.”
As he had on the train, he sat again in the chair he had sat in last time and she sat again on the sofa. While she poured the tea, his eye canvassed the room, took in its feeling of emptiness largely owing to the sparse furnishings and the huge cast-iron Gothic window, cheated again of light by the tree outside.
“It’s so large and so isolated,” he said, “you must get lonely at times.” Yes, that was properly banal.
Perhaps because of the banality, her look was a little condescending. Probably, he deserved it. “I don’t think loneliness has much to do with size and isolation, really.”
“Then what?”
“Oh, please, Superintendent. Not again. You’re baiting me.”
This surprised him, for he hadn’t been. He was saving his baiting for later. At the moment, he was perfectly serious. “Why would I do that?”
She set down her cup. “Because of something you’d seen or heard when you were here last. You want something; I don’t know what. Information, I expect.”
She sounded quite matter-of-fact and undisturbed by all of this; she sounded, in a word, innocent, unconnected to anything involving the Ryders. He heard a tiny sharp snap and looked up. She had bitten into a crisp biscuit and was smiling at him around its edge.
“Yes, I do want to tell you something. Two things. One is that the Ryder girl, Nell, is back.”
Sara looked wide-eyed and said, “But that’s wonderful! What happened? Did someone bring her back?”
Jury told her a pared-down version of Nell’s return, an edited version, for he did not know what did or didn’t apply to her, if anything.
“Her father must be ecstatic. I can’t imagine, I really can’t, having something like that happen to a child.” She plunked another lump of sugar in her tea, as if the sweetness of the girl’s return called for some additional sweetness on her part. “What’s the second thing?”
“The woman found dead on that training track has turned out to be Dan
Ryder’s second wife.”
She had raised her teacup, and it stopped and hovered at her mouth as her eyes widened. “But that’s-well, it’s damned strange, isn’t it? What did they think she was doing there? I mean-” She replaced the cup in the saucer, carefully. “It was one of the Ryders, then?”
“I don’t know.”
They drank their tea and looked at the fire in silence. Jury’s eye went to the silver-framed picture of the man who was probably her ex-husband. He rose, walked over to the kneehole desk and picked up the picture. “This your husband?”
“Ex-husband.”
“Then you didn’t part on such acrimonious terms after all. I mean-” He held it up.
She had turned her gaze to the big window and whatever she could see through the tree beyond it.
Nothing but a blank wall, thought Jury. “-to keep his photograph around?”
“I’ve always liked that picture.” She said, rising suddenly, “Let’s go for a walk in the dissolute gardens.” She held out her hand to him. He took it.
There had been snow over the last two days, but not much of it had stuck, only enough to make this landscape ghostly. Knots of snow lay in the stone hair and on the inner side of the elbow of the girl pouring from a jug, and in the open mouths of the fish waiting to receive the water. There was ice on the steps down to the path between the maples and on the path, too. It crusted the surface of the fountain. Skeletal flowers, brown and black, were adorned with pockets of snow and ice blisters that gave them an ethereal look, spiky, white-webbed plants on the pocked surface of some star up there that he could see faintly now in the half-light of a late afternoon.
“I love it in winter,” said Sara. “I shouldn’t say it, I guess, but I think I like it more now than in the spring or summer. It seems closer to the way things are. The truth, perhaps.”
“You think the truth is cold and colorless?”
“Well, I’ve usually found it to be not terribly warm and inviting.” She looked up at him. “In your line of work, I expect you think so, too.”
“Yes, but I have to begin with something cold and uninviting. Homicides generally are.”
“Still, I’d think you’d be more jaded than I am.”
The Grave Maurice Page 26