The Grave Maurice (21 page)

“If the odds were like that, old fish,” said Trueblood, “hardly anyone would bet on him and who'd do the payout?”

“Whoever is used to doing it. I don't know; I've never been much of a gambler. I mean except in the London clubs, such as they are.” She shrugged and sat back. “What you could do then is join the National Hunt.”

“No, I could not. I don't ride—” Recalling what he felt had been a very encouraging canter, well, almost a canter that morning, he added, “I mean I don't ride that
well
. . .”

Trueblood leaned forward. “But it'd be a great follow-up to this!” Trueblood tapped his knuckles on the paper. “I mean, it'd drive Agatha mad and the other so-called animal-rights person, that snake, Theo Wrenn Browne.”

“Him?” said Vivian, surprised. “Since when has he ever liked animals at all? He's always kicking at Ada Crisp's dog and if anyone in the village tries to go into that bookshop with his pet, Theo drives them out. He hates animals.” Then to Melrose: “How's Richard? Is he better?”

“He is indeed.”

“Ah! Richard Jury!” said Diane. “Is he recovered?”

“Recovered, at least enough to leave the hospital tomorrow. He's coming here to rest up.”

Diane actually spilled a few drops of her drink, bringing the glass down on the table in martini applause. “Wonderful!”

“He said he might have to spend a night in Islington to give his two doting neighbors a chance to take care of him.”

“Everybody wants a piece of him,” said Trueblood, signaling to Dick Scroggs for refills.

“How true,” said Diane.

“You'd devour him where he stands,” said Trueblood.

“He's highly devourable,” said Diane.

E
ven had she not taken an oath to succor her fellow-man, Chrissie King would have done it anyway, and she stood in the door to Jury's room wishing she could.

“Chrissie, would you mind pounding some life into these pillows?”

“Oh . . . of course! Sorry, I was . . . my mind was wandering . . .” She rushed to the bed as if he'd called for artificial respiration. (Didn't she just wish!) She pulled and padded and resettled the pillows.

“Thanks, Chrissie. You pulled duty tonight instead of Miss Brown?”

She nodded. Actually, she bought the duty for twenty pounds in addition to picking up Sara Brown's duty tomorrow afternoon with a churlish patient Nurse Brown especially disliked.

“Can't say I'm sorry. I expect it must be a waste of time for you to have to tend to someone like me who's really okay now.”

Chrissie's words rushed out as if in advance of the voice to utter them. “Oh, but you're not all that okay. I mean it's not you're really sick or anything. But with what you've been through . . .” Her head tilted nearly to her own shoulder as she looked at him.

Jury hid a smile. Chrissie wanted him unrecovered, too, just as Hannibal did, for wholly different reasons. “Dr. Ryder seems to think I am; he needs the bed. God knows, he needs this private room. So he's tossing me out tomorrow afternoon. I hope I'm not spoiling an evening out for you. You must have boyfriends to spare.”

What,
Chrissie wondered,
were they? Boyfriends?

She had a way of shaking and nodding her head at the same time that intrigued Jury. “No? Yes?” He tried to mimic the head shaking by way of keeping her company. He wasn't flirting with her; at least, he didn't mean to be. Rather, he was attuning himself to her. It was a way he had—born with it or developed it—from years of questioning suspects, in those cases to discomfit them, in Chrissie's case to comfort.

Jury was aware that he insinuated himself into the lives of witnesses and suspects, but that really was the only way of going about it. It was the only way to see the skull beneath the skin. He had to admit he encouraged the attachment people had to him. It might have been something like transference, that psychiatric tool. But the psychiatrist was trained to remain uninvolved, like a target transfixed to a spot while the rifle sought to pick him out of the shadows.

That image of gunplay brought the whole awful incident on the dock back to him. Poor Mickey.

“Is something wrong?” asked Chrissie. “Shall I get Dr. Ryder?”

“No, no. I'm just tired, a little.”

“Then I'll leave,” she said sadly.

“No, don't. It's me I'm tired of. All of this self-involvement. I'm not tired of you. Listen: pull up a chair, will you? Tell me about yourself.”

Even had there been screams for her attention all up and down the corridor beyond the door, Chrissie King would have pulled up a chair.

T
he next day, Jury was dressed and packed and sitting with Wiggins waiting for his doctor.

“Hannibal,” said Wiggins, “has given me this list of medications and instructions and what to do if certain things occur, you know, like falling off a cliff or running from stampeding elephants.”

Jury laughed. Wiggins seldom made jokes in this way. Roger Ryder walked in with, unfortunately, Hannibal, who for some reason attached herself to Wiggins.

Dr. Ryder said, “Superintendent, you're good as new. How do you feel?”

“Better than as good as.”

“All you need to do is watch that bandage—” He pointed to Jury's midsection. “And don't do any rowing, will you?”

“I'll make an effort to resist.”

Ryder smiled. “Don't make an effort, either.”

Laughter? They looked over to see Hannibal in a near fit of laughter. What was it, Jury wondered, about Sergeant Wiggins that had this effect on others? He was hardly a bon vivant. But he seemed to reverse a natural inclination in others—turn sour sweet, make water run backward, find some hidden spring. Jury smiled. Wiggins would have made a swell dowser.

Jury took Ryder's arm and led him out of earshot. “There's something I really would like to do. I'd like to look for your daughter.”

Ryder looked at him, too stunned to speak.

“I've been thinking about her, her disappearance, ever since you told me about it. In hospital, you've little to do but think. I know it's been nearly two years and you might rather not have this wound reopened—” Jury hated the cliché, but it didn't bother Roger Ryder.

“It's never closed, Mr. Jury.” He paused. “You think there's some hope Nell is still alive, then?”

Hope was certainly reborn in the father, to judge from his expression. “I think so. The facts here just don't make it sound like the kidnapping or abduction we're used to seeing. I'd need to talk to people—to your father, to the others at the stud farm. If you could let him know I'm coming . . .”

“Absolutely. When do you think you'd feel like it?”

“Right now.”

Roger Ryder rocked back on his heels. “Oh, no, Superintendent, I couldn't let you. I couldn't agree to spending your first day out of hospital—”

“I'm fine, Doctor.”

“But . . . this sort of thing, it's exhausting, you know.”

Jury didn't know if he was talking about an inquiry or being in hospital. “It's no exertion, really. My sergeant could simply drive me and I'd ask a few questions.”

“But—”

“Look, I could go back to my flat straightaway and spend the entire afternoon having to answer a lot of questions about the way I feel, and be visited every fifteen minutes to make sure I really
do
feel all right. Or I could go to your farm and ask a few questions. Now, which of those alternatives sounds more likely to promote a quick recovery?”

“But—”

But Roger was smiling.

 

“Waterloo Bridge,” said Jury.

“Waterloo Bridge?”

“Wiggins, can't I say anything without you saying it back?”

Wiggins actually looked as if he were considering this. Jury shook his head, and again said, “Waterloo Bridge. It's right down there.” He pointed in an indeterminate direction. “If we leave right now, we may be able to get away from the curb by dinnertime.”

Clearly against his better judgment, Wiggins pulled away from the curb with a lot of engine noise and a jerk that pulled Jury forward in his seat. “Is it that lad you want to see?”

“Benny Keegan. Yes.”

“Why's that, sir?” The car idled at a zebra crossing, waiting on several pensioners tottering across it with their string and plastic bags full of groceries. One in particular was finding it hard going. “It's that zimmer bar holding her back,” complained Wiggins.

“I'd be happy to wait while you kick it out from under her.”

Wiggins slid Jury a look.

“Why do I want to see Benny? Because he saved my life. Isn't that enough?”

“Strictly speaking,” said Wiggins, bringing the car to rapid life again, “it was Mr. Plant that did that. He's the one that got the ambulance.”

Jury was flabbergasted by this literalness. “Strictly
speaking,
it was Sparky who saved me. If the dog hadn't gone there, Benny could hardly have followed him, which would have meant that Mr. Plant wouldn't have followed Benny.”

“Well, yes, if you look at it that way. The truth of it is”—Wiggins kept plowing the rescue theme—“it was just a colossal piece of luck and a big coincidence.”

“Luck, maybe. But not coincidence. It was purposeful on their part; they didn't just happen to be strolling by that dock . . .” Why was he bothering?

They continued along the Embankment. Looking down the river, Jury could see the black prospect of Waterloo Bridge. In another three minutes, they were there.

Jury nodded his head toward the curb. “There's a spot. Pull over.”

“It's a double-yellow line. It's a loading zone.”

“What the hell difference does that make? You're the Filth. Pull over.” Wiggins did, and Jury slammed out of the car and crossed the street.

 

“Well, would'ya look who's here?” said Mags, in a surprisingly friendly way, considering Jury was, as he'd just told Wiggins, the Filth. Possibly this cool attitude toward police might have been owing to the benevolent overlooking by police of Mags's and the others' bit of London real estate—the wide concrete slab beneath this end of the bridge. By night, the little group, dispersed during the day to various begging and other posts (they had their routines just as structured as any CEO's), called this place home. The police allowed them to sleep rough here as long as they vacated the place during the day.

Mags collected old magazines (which were stacked about her feet now) for no reason other than that they were there. “You lookin' for young Benny, then?”

“I am. Is he around or is he across the river?”

“He was back early, then went—there's Sparky comin' along now!”

Jury looked upward to the Embankment walk, where a yellow balloon appeared to be sailing of its own volition above the wall and saw the white terrier, Sparky, walking, stopping, starting, stopping, with Benny following in his wake. Sparky was the busiest dog Jury had ever seen, and Benny the busiest lad. Benny was twelve and made deliveries for five tradespeople across the river in Southwark.

They disappeared from view and then were making their way down the steps.

“Mr. Jury!” Benny called.

When Sparky saw Jury, he broke out in a rousing chorus of barks and began hurling himself at the air as if the only thing holding him back from his object—Jury? the yellow balloon? the sun?—was gravity.

“Sparky, sit!” Sparky, an extremely well-trained dog, sat, but it was clearly a stretch of his bonds that he did so. “You okay, are you, Mr. Jury?” asked Benny, looking concerned. “Mebbe a bit wore out, but still like your old self? Of course, you'd be used to that kind o' thing—you know, gettin' shot at. Gettin' beat up, knives coming at you out of the fog, dark alleyways—”

It was clear that Benny hoped Jury was used to it. “You're right, but a funny thing is, it never gets any easier to take.”

“I expect not. Gemma and me and Sparky came to see you in hospital, but this slag of a nurse wouldn't let us in. Well, I knew they'd not allow Sparky, but he coulda just sat under a chair. And listen: they nearly called the Social on us, seein' we was two kids out and about without a grown-up.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't know, Benny. I'd've done something about it if I had.” It was laughable to think that these two children couldn't take care of themselves. Extremely laughable, considering what they'd been lately put through. “And how are you keeping?”

“Oh, I'm still doing the rounds, still puttin' up with old Gyp. But, listen: Mr. Tynedale told me I could live at the Lodge if I wanted. That was quite nice of him, I thought.”

“He's a nice man, Mr. Tynedale. And are you going to?”

“Nah. Anyway, Gemma was pretty prissy about it, tellin' me all the things I'd have to do, like be careful of my language and take a lot of baths and give Sparky baths all the time. And learn how to bow, and so forth.”

This litany of rules and regulations sounded to Jury extremely Gemma orchestrated.

Benny went on. “Do you think maybe Gemma's jealous, Mr. Jury? I mean, in one way Gemma'd like me to live there, but in another way, she wouldn't. The way I see it”—Benny stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels a few times—“is Gemma's been, you know, top dog for a time—”

Sparky, who'd been looking from Benny to Jury, barked.

Benny lowered his voice and said from behind his hand, “Sparky don't—doesn't—like dog comparisons, Mr. Jury.” In his normal voice he said, “Gemma's been kind of
primo doggereno,
” Benny winked, having put one over on Sparky, “and doesn't fancy any competition, anybody like me taking over. Like reading. She reads to old Mr. Tynedale and she knows I like books. I'm an excellent reader; also, I'm a lot older so I can read harder stuff, too. And I think Mr. Tyndale wants someone who'd look after Gemma, see.”