Martha Grimes: The Grave Maurice

Swiftly, Jury looked around the room. “Where, where?”

Nurse Bell had another go at the pillows. “You do mess your pillows about, don’t you?” She left.

For Wiggins, his head lost-but unbeheaded-in the Tower of London, the last five minutes might not have happened at all. He was back there with Josephine Tey and The Daughter of Time. “You’ll be wanting something to chew on while you’re in here; you’ll want to keep your mind busy-”

“Why would I want to do that? It never was busy before.”

Ignoring this, Wiggins went on. “What it is, is the detective inspector in this book is laid up in hospital and a friend brings him some books, one of them about Richard the Third and the princes in the Tower. You remember all of them?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. It’s quite a popular tale.”

“ This detective”-he pointed to the book-“reads about it and at some point decides the whole tale of Richard’s killing the princes is codswallop. So he does more and more research, getting his girlfriend to bring him books and finally comes up with a totally different solution. Clever idea, I think.”

“If I had a girlfriend, maybe I would, too.” He riffled the last pages. “How does it end?” Jury did not like detective stories, especially those starring royalty, so he cut to the chase.

Wiggins, however, wouldn’t follow. “You’ll just have to read it, won’t you?” Wiggins laughed as one might at an intractable, bedridden child. “What I thought was, I could bring you information about one of our cases and you could chew on that.”

“Ah,” said Melrose, tilting his chair back against the wall and crossing his arms over his chest. “Why don’t you chew on this ?”

Maurice was always up early, up at first light, when the world was waking. Cold as it was, rime on the panes, old snow still crusted at the roots of trees, stiff grass more like ice shards than pasture-still he loved it. Although he had to admit one of the reasons for this early hour was that he wouldn’t have to see or talk to, or be seen or talked to by, anyone. It was even too early for his uncle, Roger, who occasionally stayed over. When he did, he liked to come down to the track and watch Maurice exercise the horses.

A couple of nights ago, at dinner, Roger had said, “I’ve an interesting patient, a police superintendent. Scotland Yard, no less. Well… I was just thinking” -his laugh was artificial- “I might tell him the story. Of course he might already have heard… and it’s been almost two years-”

“Tell him,” Maurice interrupted, “the story.”

You can’t give up, Maurice thought now. You can’t give up trying. “Right, Sam?” He tossed the blanket over the horse, then the bridal and saddle. Samarkand nudged his shoulder as if to say Let’s go and Maurice led him out of the stall. This walk from stable to track was just about the best part of Maurice’s day-except, of course, for the ride itself.

No school because it was still the Christmas holiday, but that would end soon. He didn’t really mind school; he had always had a capacity for discipline. He thought it came from caring for the horses, from watching George Davison, the trainer, from watching exercise lads and jockeys, from watching his father, his father up on Samarkand years ago. That horse and Dan Ryder-this was what the sportswriters called the “racing dream team.”

He thought about his father. In no other way was Danny Ryder a “dream.” Too bad he ain’t a horse-it’s the only thing he’s good with, he’d heard the exercise boys say. No wonder she left. Maurice spent a fair amount of time trying not to hate his mum. She had not been a weak woman; she could stand up to his father when she wanted to. She had been-Maurice searched for a word-vague. Vague, yes. She had never seemed certain of what she wanted. It was, he thought, a peculiar flaw in character, maybe even a dangerous one. His mother had been small, pretty and American. She had been as indecisive about having a child as she had been about leaving New York or choosing a restaurant or a dress. Marybeth was definitely a wait-and-see person, lazy rather than careful. Certainly not reckless. No, recklessness was his father’s style.

It would appear she had left without a qualm. It was as if he were no more than a bad climate she wanted to get away from. He had heard a good bit of this from conversations between his granddad and his uncle. Maurice could sympathize with Roger. He was nice. Distant, but nice. And God knows the distance of these last twenty months was understandable. Maurice himself felt at a distance from everyone. And because guilt weighed so heavily on him, too, there had been no one to go to for consolation when Nell disappeared.

“Kind of queer, Dr. Ryder. Why was your girl sleeping out here?”

The skin around Roger’s mouth was very white, papery and pinched, and his indrawn breath sounded more like a gasp, as if he’d lost his source of oxygen.

Maurice had followed his uncle Roger and the detectives out to the stables. He had stood back by the door, in the shadows, listening, wanting to hear her name, as if its mention were hortatory and would call her back.

In the night his grandfather sat with Roger, an arm draped over his son’s shoulder.

Maurice hung back, sitting on the stairs and looking through the rails, listening for her name.

“You’re looking remarkably well this morning, Superintendent.” Dr. Roger Ryder looked at Jury’s chart again and smiled. “You’ve got real stamina.” “Good,” said Jury, “but now aren’t you going to tell me I’m lucky to be alive? Nurse Bell reminds me of that a dozen times a day.”

Ryder laughed. “No, somehow I don’t equate three bullet wounds with good luck. You’re feeling okay, are you? I mean emotionally as well as physically?”

“Absolutely. When will you throw me back into the cesspool of police work?”

“Ah. As far as releasing you is concerned, I think another two or three days ought to do it. But as far as police work goes, uh-uh.” Dr. Ryder held up an admonitory finger. “Have to wait several weeks for that. Are you bored?”

Jury held up The Daughter of Time. “I’ve this to entertain me; it’s a policeman in hospital working on the historical case of Richard the Third. Unfortunately, as he solves it, it doesn’t leave me anything to do.” Dr. Ryder, Jury thought, was hesitating over something. He kept looking at the door and not leaving. “Something wrong?”

“I just wondered,” Ryder smiled, trying to contain his anxiety, “if you’d like a real case to think about. Fact, not fiction.” Ryder moved over to the one good chair and placed his chart on the floor.

“Of course I would. Tell me.”

“It’s about my daughter. You might have read or heard about some of this. It happened nearly two years ago. She vanished.”

For a second, Jury shut his eyes. Even though Melrose Plant had told him the story overheard in the pub, he was still unprepared. Vanished. Was there a word in any tongue, any language that was more affecting than that one? It chilled him. “My God. How old is she?” He would try to keep the girl in the present.

“Now she’d be seventeen. Then she was fifteen. And Nell didn’t run away.” Ryder, in a voice that Jury imagined would be forever tremulous when he talked about her, gave Jury an accounting of what had happened. “It was bad enough before, but it got to be worse when there was no demand for ransom. That threw us completely.”