Martha Grimes - The Grave Maurice

Trevor nodded. “You talking about those walls that went across the fields? For me, they weren’t all that bad. I’ve seen worse at Cheltenham. But with that horse, that Aqueduct, those walls were nothing. It was that easy, it really was. He’s one hell of a horse.”

Greene went on. “Why did Valerie Hobbs agree to have Nell Ryder there? That puts the Hobbs woman squarely in the middle of a conspiracy.”

Trevor shrugged. “Don’t know, guv. But I’ll tell you what I think: it’s that Roy Diamond had something on her, just like he had on me. That’s how he works. I tol’ you.” Here Trevor’s hand crept toward Greene’s pack of Marlboros. Greene told him, sure, go ahead. Then he glanced over at Jury, raising his eyebrows in an invitation to ask questions.

Jury said, “Maurice, Trevor. Tell me what he had to do with all this.”

“Poor kid. I swear I’d hate to think-”

Trevor flushed with something Jury imagined was shame-as well he might. But for all of the man’s bad judgment, weakness, selfishness or whatever, that rush of blood to his face set him apart from Roy Diamond. Jury said to him, “Afraid you’ll have to think it, Trevor, hate to or not. I’m almost certain Maurice’s being the delivery boy, in a manner of speaking, had a lot to do with his death. It certainly had everything to do with his guilt. He loved Nell Ryder. He’d never have done anything to harm her. There’s only one person he’d have done something like this for-his father.”

Trevor nodded, took another deep drag of his cigarette. “You’re right there. I told the lad it’s his father that wanted to see Nell, but it couldn’t be there, not at his own place.”

“The thing is, no one knew Dan Ryder was still alive.”

“Roy knew it.”

Jury pulled out a chair and sat down, leaning forward, elbows on knees. “Go on.”

Trevor said, “Let me correct that: it was either Dan or his twin.”

“What was?”

“In the snapshot. An American friend of Roy’s sent him a couple dozen snapshots taken at a racecourse in the States. Florida, Hialeah Park it was. Three of them showed Dan standing at the fence, watching.”

Jury sat back. “A picture can be taken anytime.” “Yeah, right, except Danny’d never been to Florida. But that’s not it; the picture’s dated clear as a pane of glass.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was the race itself, see. You know what a walkover is?”

“I’ve heard of it.”

Trevor seemed by now to have forgotten the fix he was in and was enjoying educating these two cloth-eared coppers in the ways of the racing world. “A walkover is a one-horse race. It only happens when a horse is considered unbeatable by the trainers, so no other horses compete.” Trevor smiled broadly. “Now, how often do you bug-I mean, you police detectives-”

(Jury preferred “buggers.”)

“-think that happens? Not bloody often, I can tell you. But it did a little less than two years ago at Hialeah, with a horse called Affirmation. Probably wanted to make the punters think of Affirmed, and I guess it did. It must have been something to see.” Trevor’s eyes actually filmed over. “A real thrill, that would be. Better than a flying finish. To see a horse that good go round the track by itself with all of that crowd cheering. Anyway, that was the race. First walkover I heard of since Spectacular Bid, back in the eighties. That’s what dated the snapshot; that race was run three months after Danny was supposed to have died.”

“And Roy Diamond knew all of this, that’s what you’re saying? He knew about it for two years and did nothing?”

“What’s to do that would work to Roy’s benefit? Report it to you lot? Sooner tell it to me old gran. No, he had a bargaining point in those pictures.”

“You showed one to Maurice.”

“Two of them. Roy wouldn’t let all three out of his hands. It was just a few days before I took the girl. Early morning, Maurice is at the training track; he always had a gallop after dawn, Roy said. I showed up, watched for a while through my binoculars. He was up on that great horse Samarkand. I wish I’d been around to ride him a decade ago. When Maurice stopped and dismounted and came over to the fence, I told him his father needed to see Nell. Of course, he didn’t believe me, thought I was bonkers. He got pretty mad until I showed him the snapshots.”

“He believed you?”

“Well, he would’ve done, wouldn’t he? He wanted to believe me. There were the snapshots that showed the horse going round the Hialeah course and there was his dad, right by the fence.”

Yes, Jury thought, standing now in the stable, Maurice would have wanted to believe Trevor Gwyne. And when Nell disappeared that night, Maurice knew that something had gone horribly wrong and it could be down to him. The next few days must have been agonizing. For all he knew, Nell might be dead.

Jury remained standing by Criminal Type’s stall, stroking the black face. Blacker than black. Probably the way Maurice had felt. Was Maurice one of those people who feed on guilt, like some mythological prince forced to eat his own heart?

For some reason, Jury thought then of the boy on the train from Cardiff. The winter angel. Maurice’s polar opposite, who could wrap his music round his shoulders like a cloak.

Jury reached into his coat pocket where a few sugar cubes remained from the Little Chef raid. He unwrapped them and held them out to the horse. Criminal Type was not as polite as Aggrieved. He nearly got Jury’s hand into the bargain. But that was the way when you were mobbed up: eat first, ask questions later. Jury smiled and left the stables.

Vernon had gathered thirty of the mares in the meadow and stood watching them, leaning against a post-and-rail fence, his foot hooked on the bottom rail.

He said, when Jury came up to him, “I thought I’d have to round them up, cowboy style, but they just seemed willing to follow one another out to the field.” He pointed at one. “That’s Daisy and Daisy’s foal. Nellie said”-he stopped and cleared his throat-“Nell said that Daisy was a kind of leader. But look at them. They just stand there.” He turned to look at Jury. “Do you think it’s from being tethered in those narrow stalls for so long? But shouldn’t they remember their lives before…?”

His voice trailed off.

The mares were standing in a crescent, a head occasionally bent to look for graze, or a mother nudging at a foal-there were three foals now-but aside from that they stood quite still in that strange half-circle as if indeed they had been lined up there and tied.

“Probably they need a little time to get used to freedom,” said Vernon.

He appeared to Jury to be almost desperate to explain their eerie stillness. Jury said, “Freedom can be hard to get used to, you’re right.”

“And the sky,” said Vernon, looking upward, “is so blue.”

As if the day were a perfect setting for the horses to break away for a gallop, or perhaps as if nature had broken a bargain.

They stood side by side in silence for a long time, not speaking. Then Jury saw one of the foals leave the line and run for several yards, then another foal, and then one of the mares. And after that it was like an ice slide, ice calving, glaciers tumbling into the sea.

At least it seemed to Jury as extraordinary as that. As if someone had actually waved a wand and broken the spell and raised them from their sad and anxious sleep; first one, then another and another of the mares were running, manes and tails flying, running for what was surely joy, pushing the race to its limits.

There would always be a filly like Go for Wand, thought Jury; there would always be a girl to ride her.

Together, they would wire the field.