The Grave Maurice

by Martha Grimes

  It was this wall, the fourth, that had stopped Criminal Type (but he wasn’t a jumper, anyway) and it seemed suddenly to rise up before him. He had lifted himself above the saddle, with his head nearly on the bridle, and then Aqueduct was flying, sailing through the sharp midnight air. That was, at least, the feeling as the horse surged over the top of the wall, but on the descent, Aqueduct’s hind leg got caught in a stone outcrop and they came down like a thunderclap.

  In a flash, Maurice knew, as he was thrown at lightning-bolt velocity against the wall, Maurice knew he would not have to feel it any longer: the betrayer betrayed.

  FIFTY-TWO

  When Jury got back from Cambridge, Carole-anne was glittering around his flat in midthigh black sequins, doing several nursey things, or at least what she imagined nurses must do-plumping pillows, lining up shoes, making tea, a steaming cup of which was sitting on the small table beside Jury’s chair.

  It did not disturb Jury that she was in his flat when he wasn’t there; sometimes he wished she’d be in it more when he was there. He marveled that the three of them (with Stan Keeler making an often-absent fourth) were still here together. Mrs. Wasserman, of course, couldn’t be pried free of her “garden” flat (basement, in other words) for love or money. But it did surprise him that Carole-anne had remained stationary for all of these years. He didn’t wonder about her love life-well, not often-because it struck him as intrusive even to think about-

  Put a sock in it, man.

  – it, although he certainly watched whenever she was in Stan’s presence.

  “What?”

  Carole-anne was in her hands-on-hips posture, a stance he really liked because it was very hippy and tonight had sequins on it. “Just wondering about the dress. Where’re you going? To another rally of the public-footpath people?” Jury was taking off his shoes, feeling his tired feet had been to the rally themselves.

  Doubtfully, she smoothed her hands down over the short black dress. “What’s wrong with it, then? Stan likes it.”

  “I’m sure Stone likes it, too, but that doesn’t mean you have to lead it around on a leash.”

  Puzzlement. “What’s that mean?”

  Jury had no idea. He just said it. “There’s nothing wrong with it, nothing, believe me. Oh-ho and mmmmmm nothing. If you walked down a public footpath in that there’d be no argument from Lord Stickywicket about whether the footpath was his or yours.”

  Carole-anne gave him a look. “Super, why does it always take you forever to say something?”

  Jury smiled. It was exactly what he’d said to Melrose Plant.

  She merely flapped her hand at him, saying, “Oh, never mind.” She began rearranging magazines on the cherry coffee table.

  “Carole-anne, those magazines are ten years old; they don’t care anymore.”

  “I’m going to the Nine-One-Nine.” She sighed and shook her head. “Too bad you’re recuperating or you could come, too.”

  In high-pitched mimicry, Jury repeated, “ ‘Too bad you’re recuperating or you could come, too.’ I’m perfectly capable of going to the Nine-One-Nine. It’s only”-he checked his watch-“ten o’clock.”

  “You really are behaving peculiar. I don’t know what’s got into you lately.”

  He smiled. “Just three bullets.” He lost no opportunity to play the bullet card. Shameful.

  Carole-anne went properly remorseful, put her hand on his forehead to check his temperature (or possibly to feel for brains) and left. He then poured himself another cup of tea and reseated himself. It was not because he was tired or “recuperating” that he hadn’t gone with her, but because he wanted only to think. He closed his eyes, leaned his head back. His thoughts were a blur.

  Valerie Hobbs. She was a stubborn woman. Stubborn and seriously misled. He hadn’t really hoped for more than he’d gotten. Valerie had her impulses under control, so that her laugh and her “you haven’t a clue” response to the picture of Dan Ryder told him that he was wrong about Valerie. But that didn’t mean he was wrong about Sara Hunt.

  Sara Hunt. Sara did not have as much to lose. Both of them would clearly go to the mat for a man they loved. Did women like danger? Did they find it romantic?

  Suddenly, Jury thought of Maurice and sat up. Maurice needed to tell someone the truth about what he’d done.

  With the receiver cradled between ear and shoulder, Jury hurriedly went through his address book, found the Ryder number and punched it in. The phone rang several times before someone got to it.

  The voice, Jury was fairly certain, was Vernon Rice’s.

  “It’s Richard Jury. Sorry, it’s a little late, but it’s important. I just wanted a word with Maurice, if he’s around.”

  On Rice’s end, dead silence.

  “Vernon?”

  “Yes, I’m here. Sorry.” He cleared his throat as if that might get his voice working again. “I’m afraid this is…”

  The voice just trailed off. Something must be seriously wrong. “Nell. Has something happened to her?”

  “No. It’s not Nell.” Vernon tried again to clear his throat. “It’s Maurice. There was an accident. Maurice is dead.”

  The words hit Jury one two three, as if he’d been clubbed. He got up, felt dizzy, sat down again. He could think of nothing to say as he shook and shook his head as if Vernon Rice could see he was reacting to this news. He couldn’t find his voice to ask what had happened. He sat staring at the listing picture of the horses gathered at the white fence.

  Vernon inferred that Jury was having trouble and told him briefly what had happened. “Maurice was out earlier jumping Aqueduct over those walls-you know, Hadrian’s walls-and Aqueduct, well, who knows exactly what happened? Maurice was thrown, must have vaulted against the stone. Nell started looking for Aqueduct when she found the stall empty. She found the horse, unharmed. Then she found Maurice.”

  Nell had to be the one to find him. Jury shut his eyes.

  “Do you want to talk to her?”

  “No, not now. Maybe tomorrow. That poor lad.”

  “Yes. He went just the way his dad went. God.”

  Jury held the dead receiver for a long time before he put it back, got up and went over to the picture and set it straight. He didn’t think he would ever be able to tell himself why. Where had he got it, this gentle scene? A hand on each side of the picture, as if either to imprison or protect it, he leaned against the wall and looked at the water-color of the horses at the fence. As far back as he could remember, he’d had it. He leaned his head against a fisted hand and his face so close to the glass he could make out only an amorphous white, brown, black. He wondered why he’d never paid any attention to it until the other night, and felt as people will feel a sense of loss that comes from neglect-the call you didn’t make, the book you didn’t read, the woman you didn’t kiss. Why did he feel that place, that pasture so infinitely desirable but inaccessible? Freedom, was that it?

  Maurice, unless he’d known there at the end, would never know.

  Jury turned and looked at the table near the window where sat his old turntable and records and felt himself spinning out of control. He could feel himself sobbing, but as if the sobs were those of another person, the arm another’s arm that shot out and swept the magazines, the keys, the heavy ashtray off the table. He retrieved the ashtray and hurled it against the bookshelves, where it landed and bounced onto the rug.

  The door flew open.

  “Super!”

  Carole-anne rushed in and up to him and threw her arms around him as if to contain the fury. Then she pushed him down on the sofa, keeping her arm around his shoulders as if afraid to take away this support, fearful he might erupt.

  Stone sat at his feet and whimpered. For Stone, that was out of control. Jury put his hand on the Lab’s head. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Oh, Stone don’t mind. All the times he’s put up with Stan raging around.”

  Stan Keeler raging?

  “I should have gone with you. I could use
a few lashings of his guitar.”

  “Well, right now what you need’s a lashing of tea.” But she hesitated, not wanting to take her arm away. She moved her face back, frowned in question.

  “I’m okay.”

  She patted his shoulder and went toward the kitchen, stopping first at the record player and looking through the records. She took one from its sleeve, put it on and continued to the kitchen as the twangy voice of Willie Nelson sang of all the girls he loved before.

  Pots and pans were rattling around and suggested more than tea was being prepared. Soon he heard the spit of something hitting grease.

  Willie Nelson. Now he remembered where he’d gotten that recording. It was Carole-anne who’d walked in with it when Jury’s old fiancée, Susan, had been in the flat. Carole-anne had put it on and told Susan it was “their” song. Carole-anne in a Chinese red silk dress with “their” song was a force to be reckoned with, and Susan lost the reckoning. He listened to the sounds coming from the kitchen and the voice singing along with Willie Nelson.

  She came out of the kitchen holding a plate and a cup. “Why’re you laughing?” A ton of relief was in her voice.

  My God, he had been, hadn’t he? “I was remembering my old fiancée, Susan.”

  “You don’t want to go wasting your time on old girl-friends. Here drink this”-she handed him a mug of tea-“and eat this.” She handed him a plate of fried eggs, sausages and a wedge of fried bread.

  Carole-anne sat down across from him in his armchair and smiled.

  Jury noticed that she had asked why he was laughing, but would not ask why he was crying. He knew she would love to hear why, but she would not ask.

  Jury lifted his plate as if to toast her and said, “Shades of Little Chef.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  “He died just like his dad,” said Nell, seated limply in one of Vernon Rice’s metal-spoked, punishing-looking chairs as if she needed some hard and abrasive punishment because she hadn’t stopped Maurice from trying to jump those walls.

  Vernon handed Nell a glass of mineral water and Jury a whiskey. He said to her, “Does that-” and he stopped.

  Nell’s look implored him to say the right thing. “What?”

  As if there were any right thing, thought Jury.

  They all looked down into their glasses. No one spoke. After a full minute of silence, Jury asked Nell what he supposed Vernon had meant to ask but drew back from because it sounded insensitive. “Does that bother you? The similarity? Maurice certainly knew he shouldn’t have been jumping walls after dark. Not only putting himself in danger, but also the horse.”

  “Of course it bothers me. And Maurice knew better than to do what he 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, fortuna
tely, 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. Thus she had to come nearer, and she did.

  “Do you know her?”

  Sara let out a breath, relief, probably, for here was safe ground.

  “No, I don’t. Why?”

  “You’re sure?”

  Her glance flicked from the picture to Jury. “Yes, I’m sure.” Again she asked why.

  “Only because”-he pulled out the enlarged snapshot of Dan Ryder-“both of you seem to know him.”

  She took a step back. “How-where-did you get that?”

  “Dishonestly, but that’s hardly the point-”

  “It’s my point.” Quickly, she moved to the writing table and turned the tasseled key in the little drawer under the top. After her eyes and fingers did a brief search, she turned to him.

  He could almost smell the fury mixed with fear. She seemed unable to frame whatever invective she was looking for and settled for the rather Victorian “How dare you?” She paused. “You have to have a search warrant, don’t you, to do that?” She slapped the drawer shut.