Martha Grimes - The Grave Maurice

Diane had always been, generally speaking, a master of vagueness. Melrose said, “It’s the activists I think Joanna is talking about.”

Instead of an answer, Diane held out a cigarette for someone to light-God, if no one else was available. Trueblood lit it. She blew a narrow veil of smoke toward them and reflected on this reporting. It was rather restful watching Diane’s mind at work. One never had to venture far and there were a lot of lay-bys along the way. “I suppose I could do.” But her nose wrinkled at the thought as though a displeasing odor had wafted through the room.

“Do what?” asked Trueblood.

Diane heaved a sigh. “Go to a hunt. Haven’t you been listening at all? Where is it?” she asked Melrose. “When is it?”

Melrose looked at his book jacket bearing the image of an American Thorougbred named Spectacular Bid. What a name! “According to Theo, there’s one tomorrow. Why don’t we all go?”

“Excellent!” said Trueblood. “It’s one of my half days, so I’ll just close the shop.”

“One of? How many half days do you allow yourself? There’s only supposed to be one a week,” said Melrose.

“Depends. This week it’ll be three. Well, I’ve got a life to live, haven’t I?”

They all looked at him.

“Very funny, very funny. So why don’t we all go?”

Joanna said, “I’d love to, but I’ve got fifteen pages to write because I didn’t do today’s ten. I only did half.”

“Your self-discipline is awesome,” said Melrose.

“My self-discipline is no more nor less than my Barclays account. That’s awesome.”

This statement was made without a hint of conceit; indeed her implication was that her royalties were so far from being deserved it was pathetic.

“Okay, when shall we meet? Where?” said Melrose.

Trueblood said, “As to the when, I’d say eightish-” “Eight is not an hour, it’s pirate’s treasure,” said Diane.

“They start fairly early in the morning,” said Trueblood.

Diane’s smile was humorless. “They do; I don’t.”

“Nine, then.”

Given Diane’s expression, nine was only marginally better, but she agreed.

“And where? We can’t do it here because it’s closed till eleven. We’ll meet next door. How’s that?”

“Fine. Only what about this half-day business. If you leave at nine, that’s more like a full day,” said Melrose.

“Then I’ll make up for it by staying all day the next day, as the next day is only a half day, too.”

“That makes sense.”

“We should have signs,” said Melrose, casting his eye over the courtyard of the country hotel appropriately named the Horse and Hounds. There was quite a crowd, an eclectic-looking bunch, from hunters in their pink coats and black hats to a rather seedy-looking elderly man with a piece of white posterboard hanging from a string around his neck that announced BEWARE THE HOUR DRAWS NIGH! Melrose wondered what it had to do with the hunt, or, indeed, the antihunt. Probably nothing, or no more than it had to do with the price of a pint in the Horse and Hounds. The hunt participants were up on horses, the restless hounds milling about, snuffling the brick and pebble-dashed courtyard as if they were looking for heroin, and the master was sniffily regarding the cup being handed him by one of the hotel staff.

Watching the cup being handed around, Melrose said, “It’s rather like communion, isn’t it? Passing the goblet down the line of the faithful at the altar. In any event, it’s certainly ritual, no doubt of it.”

“Of course,” said Trueblood. “That’s mostly what it’s all about. Ritual, tradition, class. Always class these things turn out to be. A class war. You don’t honestly think these people with their signs and slogans are interested in the fox’s welfare?”

“I imagine they think they are. You can’t generalize that way.” Melrose thought the women looked haggard with their rough clothes and flyaway hair; the men looked better, more convivial, owing, perhaps, to one more round in the Horse and Hounds.

“We stick out like a sore thumb,” said Marshall Trueblood.

“We do?” Melrose observed two of the protesters wearing fox kit and masks that covered the upper half of their faces, thus leaving their mouths free to hector the riders. LET’S RIP THE HUNT TO PIECES THE WAY YOU DO US read one of the placards. He felt that could have been better put.

Taken all in all, hounds and horses were definitely the best-looking gathered there. Diane, who was rooting about in a big black leather bag, said, “That’s a spiffy-looking Master of Foxhounds, I’d say.”

Trueblood said, “MFHs are always spiffy. I’d be spiffy, too, in one of those pink coats and up on that bay he’s riding. It’s all sex, anyway, isn’t it? Sex, class, politics.”

“Marshall, it’s almost as if you’d given the matter some thought,” said Diane in a God-forbid tone.

Hounds, horses, hunters set off down the road for some faraway field and everyone else more or less followed. When Melrose and Trueblood started off, Diane said, “Good Lord, you two. We’re not going to follow on foot. We’ll take the car.”

Melrose was puzzled. “But, Diane, we won’t be able to follow in a car unless there’s a road that runs beside their route all the way. We’ll lose them.”

“No, we won’t. You drive, Marshall.” She handed him the keys to her car. “You drive so I’ll be free to do this.” She patted the leather bag slung over her shoulder.

“Do what? What is that?”

“Camcorder.” She eased herself into the passenger’s seat of the BMW. “You said I should do some investigative reporting, didn’t you? Well, I’ll need pictures.”

They shrugged and got in the car, Melrose in the backseat.

“Just go straight down to the bottom of this road and then turn left.”

Trueblood turned the key in the ignition and the motor purred into that sort of latent life reserved for BMWs, Jaguars, Porsches and Bentleys. Trueblood accelerated and its purr was a trifle louder, but still a purr. “Nice car, Diane.”

“You should get one.” They drove down the road, turned left and Diane directed, “A little way on and bear to the right-here.”

Melrose leaned on the back of the passenger seat, and said, “Diane, you seem to know where we’re going.”

“Of course. Do you think I’d be out here driving aimlessly if I could be inside the saloon bar at the Horse and Hounds? Here-” She handed Melrose a smallish roll of paper.

He unrolled it to find a nicely detailed map of the route the hunt was taking, showing the local roads that ran near it, the places that one could get out of the car and see it. “This is terrific, Diane. But wouldn’t the hunt be all over the map? Can you predict where the fox will go? Where’d you get it?”

“From Eugenie St. Cyr-Jones. She seems to think the route is fairly predictable.”

“St. Cyr-Jones? Do we know her?”

“No. She’s the local organizer against FOX. That’s Friends of Xavier.”

“Who’s that? A saint? A cult figure?”

“It’s the fox.”

“Xavier? No,” said Melrose, “the fox is called Reynard.”

“Well, you can’t have FOR as your slogan. People wouldn’t know what it referred to. We’ll see Eugenie St. Cyr-Jones at”-Diane took back the map, ran a red fingernail over the route and stopped-“here, at the low stone wall.”

It put Melrose more in mind of Cluedo than an actual place. Go to the low stone wall. “But why are we meeting this St. Cyr-Jones woman?”

“For the interview. I thought it would best be done in the field. That way you see the hunt run by behind her. Or something like that.”