Twenty months later
Melrose Plant looked around the rather grim environs of the Grave Maurice and wondered if it was patronized by the staff of the Royal London Hospital across the street. Apparently it did serve as some sort of stopping-off point for them, for Melrose recognized one of the doctors standing at the farther end of the long bar.
As Melrose stood there inside the door, the doctor emptied his half-pint, gathered up his coat and turned to leave. He passed Melrose on his way out of the pub and gave him a distracted nod and a vague smile, as if he were trying to place him.
Melrose stepped up to the place the doctor had left, filling the vacuum. He was looking at the woman close by, one of surpassing beauty-glossy, dark hair, high cheek-bones, eyes whose color he couldn’t see without staring but which were large and widely spaced. She was talking to another woman, hair a darkish blond, whose back was turned to Melrose and who drank a pale drink, probably a Chardonnay, whose ubiquity, together with the wine bars that loved to serve it up, Melrose couldn’t understand. The dark-haired one was drinking stout. Good for her. The bartender, a bearded Indian, posed an indecipherable query that Melrose could only suppose was a variant of “What will it be, mate?” The operative term was either “grog” or “dog,” as in “Want a bit o’ grog?” or “Walkin’ yer dog?” Having no dog, Melrose ordered an Old Peculier.
The Grave Maurice had its foot in the door of “hovel-like.” Melrose looked all around and made his assessment, pleased. For some reason, he could always appreciate a hovel; he felt quite at home. The incomprehensible barman, the patched window, the broken table leg, the streaked mirror, the clientele. The two women near him were a cut above the other customers. They were well dressed, the dark-haired one quite fashionably, in a well-cut black suit and understated jewelry. The blond one, whose profile Melrose glimpsed, appeared to know the barman (even to understand the barman) with his raffishly wound turban. After he returned, smilingly, with the refills and Melrose’s fresh drink and then took himself off, the dark-haired woman picked up their conversation again. The blonde was doing the listening.
They were talking about someone named Ryder, which immediately made Melrose prick up his ears, as this was the name of the doctor who had just departed and whom, he supposed, the one woman must have recognized. But he was rather surprised to hear him further referred to as “poor sod.” The second woman, whose voice was distinct while at the same time being low and unobtrusive, asked the dark-haired one what she meant.
Melrose waited for the answer.
Unfortunately, the details were getting lost in the woman’s lowered voice, but he did catch the word “disappeared.” The dark-haired woman dipped her head to her glass and said something else that Melrose couldn’t catch.
But then he heard, “His daughter. It was in the papers.”
The blonde seemed appalled. “When was that?”
“Nearly two years ago, but it doesn’t get any-”
Melrose lost the rest of the comment.
The one who had made it shrugged slightly, not a dismissive shrug, but a weary one. Weary, perhaps, of misfortune. If she was a doctor too, Melrose could understand the weariness.
Then she said, “… brother was my… killed…”
The blonde made a sound of sympathy and said, “How awful. Did-”
If only they’d stop talking clearly on the one hand and whispering on the other! Melrose, who kept telling himself he couldn’t help overhearing this conversation, could, of course, have taken his beer to a table, and he supposed he would if his presence so close beside them got to be a little too noticeable. But he wanted to hear whatever he could about this doctor’s daughter; it sounded fascinating. He thought the phrase “poor sod” suggested some unhappy tale and he was always up for one of those. Sort of thing that makes you glad you’re you and not them. How morbid.
He then heard something about insurance and the dark-haired woman was going on about South America and a warmer climate.
She appeared to be planning a trip. He didn’t care about this; he wanted to hear more about the person who had disappeared. The blonde occasionally turned to retrieve her cigarette, and then Melrose could pick up the drift.
“-this doctor’s daughter?”
The woman facing Melrose nodded. “So it never ends for him… closure.”
“I hate that word,” said the blonde, with a little laugh. (Melrose was ready to marry her on the spot. Inwardly, he applauded. He hated the word, too.)
“All it means is that something’s unended, unfinished. Why not just say that?”
The blonde was not in the mood for a semantic argument. “There never is, anyway,” she said, slipping from the stool.
“What?” The dark-haired woman was puzzled.
“Closure. Everything remains unfinished.”
The dark-haired woman sighed. “Perhaps. Poor Roger.”
Roger Ryder, thought Melrose. When the blonde caught Melrose looking and listening, she gave him a rueful half smile. He pretended not to notice, though it would be difficult not to notice that mouth, that hair. Melrose paid for his beer and slid off the stool.
His daughter. Two years ago something had happened to her, and it hadn’t been death. Death would have closed it. The girl had disappeared. Had something happened in South America? No, he thought that must be another story altogether. On the other hand, Ryder’s daughter’s disappearance-that had been in the papers. But Melrose wouldn’t have to search the Times.
Roger Ryder was Richard Jury’s surgeon.
Melrose had spent more time in Jury’s hospital room than out of it in the past week. For thirty-six hours, Jury had lain in a coma, which he dropped into just after Melrose had found him lying on that dock, as if able to relax his own efforts to hold on to life, now that someone else could do it for him. Melrose and Benny had found him. Melrose and Benny and the dog Sparky. Most definitely Sparky. For it was Sparky (one could say) who had found him and had saved Jury’s life. Sparky was the dog of the hour, a dog’s dog, a hero’s hero. Had Benny not been searching for Sparky along the Victoria Embankment, Richard Jury would be dead.
“No question of that,” Dr. Ryder had said. “Another twenty minutes-?” The doctor had shrugged away the outcome.
Jury’s nurse, Nurse Bell, had said (more than once), “Lucky, you are, my lad,” as she’d strong-armed Jury away from the pillows behind him so that she could plump them.
Which was, as far as Melrose was concerned, all she was good for. Melrose couldn’t abide that “lucky” response to disaster. Had his limbs been blown to smithereens and only one arm left-no, no, make that one stump of arm left, Nurse Bell would say, “Lucky you, at least you’ve got your stump. Could’ve been worse.”
As soon as she’d whisked herself off in a crackle of starched uniform, Melrose went over to the bed and messed the pillows about.
Crossly, Jury said, “What in hell are you doing? Isn’t it enough to have that simpering nurse about?”
“I’m just unplumping them. There.”
A sanguine Sergeant Wiggins said from his chair, “She’ll just be back and plump them again.”
“Rats,” said Melrose, returning to his folding chair. Wiggins had the only chair with armrests, and he was making the most of this find as he raked through a basket of fruit sent by some well-wishers in Victoria Street.
“What,” asked Jury, “are you in such bad humor about? You didn’t get shot.”
Melrose was looking out of the window. “Your nurse puts me in mind of one of my nannies.”
“So you’re reverting to nanny behavior. Well, that’s grown-up, that is.”
Wiggins’s rather condescending air was prompted by his having been in hospital himself not long ago (although certainly not from stopping a fusillade of bullets). Right now he was handing over a paperback book to Jury. “It was Mr. Plant himself who brought me this when I was in the Royal Chelsea.” He made it sound like an heirloom. “I think you might like it; it more or less deals with our predicament.”
Our? wondered Jury, who thanked Wiggins. “The Daughter of Time,” Jury said. “Josephine Tey.” He studied the cover. He wondered how this dealt with “our” predicament. “You know, you two are getting more mileage out of my hospital stay than I am.” He fixed first on Melrose. “You get to work out your childhood aggressions, and you”-he turned to Wiggins-“get to relive your hospital adventure in South Ken.”
“Now, now-” Nurse Bell was back already. “We mustn’t get excited and upset.” She handed Jury a plastic cup with a straw. “This will make you feel ever-so-much-better.”
“I already feel ever-so-much-better.” He made a face at the cup.
“I had a cup just like that,” said Melrose, “when I was three. Only I could drink without a straw.”
“And here your friends have come to see you-”
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.”
“I can understand why. What about… Could you hand me some water? My mouth keeps drying up.”
“A reaction to the medication. It’ll soon go away.”
“What about her mother? Where was she?”
“Her mother’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.” Jury hesitated. “You’re quite sure your daughter didn’t leave voluntarily?”
“She didn’t run off, no.” Roger rubbed his hand over his cheek, a nervous gesture. “I know any parent would say that, but Nell was a very contented child. Unlike Maurice-that’s Danny’s son-who never got over his mother’s walking out. But why shouldn’t Nell be happy, given the life she led? For kids a stud farm would be, well, idyllic.”
Idylls, thought Jury, have a bad way of banging up against reality, if, indeed, they were idylls in the first place. Roger Ryder struck Jury as a doctor who took nothing at face value, but as a parent, probably everything. Such parents, well meaning and loving, weren’t unusual. And actually could hardly be blamed for not knowing what was in their kids’ minds and hearts.
Roger got up and walked over to the window, where he leaned his arm against the frame and bent his head toward the glass as if he hoped to extract some bit of knowledge from his reflection, but he said nothing.
“How did Nell react to her mother’s death?”
“She was quite accepting of it, quite cool.”
No she wasn’t. She only appeared to be.
“Your brother’s wife walked out.”
Roger nodded. “Marybeth’s leaving didn’t really surprise me. I don’t think it surprised Danny, either, to tell the truth. I think she was a token wife-you know, one more beautiful thing that sticks around for the winner’s circle, accepts some flowers, takes a bow and then departs. Danny always had plenty of women around. He had some sort of charisma that attracted women. He was flamboyant, probably trying to fill the emptiness most of us fill with food, booze, cigarettes. A jockey has to give all of that up, every habit in the book. Danny was always trying to lose that extra pound. It’s a hell of a life, so I guess you make up for it in other ways. Marybeth seemed totally indifferent to Maurice, who was and still is a very sweet boy. Just awfully sad. So much so it can be irritating.”
Jury thought he heard an undertone of something alien to sweetness and much more aligned to “irritating.” It could be jealousy or envy or even a well-tamped-down rage. His own child, Nell, was gone while his flamboyant, quixotic brother’s child was here. All of these feelings were darkly cloaked in shame or guilt. “Your daughter lived with her grandfather?”
“At his prompting. He could think of nothing better than having the grandchildren around. Danny lived in Chiswick, but Maurice spent nearly all of his time at the farm. The thing was that both of us had the kind of careers that just didn’t allow us to be home enough and the farm is such a wonderful environment.”
“What about you?”
Roger shook his head. “I have to live in London because of my work. But I go to the farm nearly every weekend.” Roger smiled. “ ‘Lucky you,’ as Vernon says.”
“Vernon?”
“Stepbrother.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“That Dad was taking over his sons’ responsibilities. Not that he really meant it.” Unoffended, Roger smiled and looked out the window again. “Vernon came as part of the package when Dad married again. Felicity Rice, an extremely nice but oddly colorless woman. Our mother had been quite beautiful. I never understood Felicity and Dad. Except I can say for Dad, it was no midlife crisis. Felicity wasn’t exactly one of your blond bombshells. She’s dead now, too.”
“You’re smiling, though. Why?” Jury saw the adolescent kid peering out from behind the doctor’s mask.
“Not about Felicity. About Vernon. He can say things without cutting you down, if you know what I mean. Vernon’s very smart, very ambitious and very rich. He lives in a classy penthouse in Docklands. And he’s generous. Dad got a loan from him a while back. We were-well, Dad was-assuming he had a buyer for one of the yearlings, a colt he was supposed to get one and a half million for and the buyer backed out. He knew he’d find another buyer, but he needed some money to tide him over-”
Jury interrupted. “One and a half million for a horse that hasn’t proved himself yet?”
Roger laughed. “Oh, hell, that’s nothing. Thoroughbred racing is a lucrative business. And the colt was one of Beautiful Dreamer’s. Ever heard of him? You would if you knew anything about racing. There was never much doubt this colt would perform.”
“It sounds like one hell of a gamble.”
“It always is. It’s a risky business. But one with huge rewards.”
“Your brother Vernon. What does he do, then?” Roger smiled broadly. “Money.”
“A taped interview with Dr. Ryder,” said Jury, sliding the file Wiggins had brought him onto his tray table. “Interview conducted by DCI Gerard, Cambridgeshire constabulary. Gist of it is that Nell Ryder, fifteen years old, was abducted from Ryder Stud Farm on the night of May 12, 1994. Twenty months ago, that would be. The girl was sleeping in the same horse stall as a horse named Aqueduct. He was sick, feverish and Nell Ryder often spent the night in the stables to keep an eye on a sick horse.
DCI GERARD: You’re a wealthy man are you, Dr. Ryder?
RYDER: No, I’m comfortable.
DCI GERARD: Ryder Stud then. Your father is quite wealthy.
RYDER: Intrinsically? Yes. Depends on how you look at it. In terms of liquidity, I mean money lying around, no. In terms of the stock-the Thoroughbreds-very.
DCI GERARD: Could money be raised fairly easily?
RYDER: I don’t know. Probably. I know his stepson’s got a lot of money, and he’d certainly help.
DCI GERARD: We can expect a ransom demand.
“Questions follow relative to the doctor’s whereabouts; he was asleep, no witnesses. He’s incensed, naturally, to be taken as a suspect. Questions about Nell’s mother. She’s dead. About his brother, Danny Ryder, also dead.
DCI GERARD: Your brother was the famous jockey, wasn’t he?
RYDER: Yes. One of the best. He rode Ryder Thoroughbreds in every important race in this country and in Europe and the States. He was a great jockey.
DCI GERARD: He died-
RYDER: In France, a racing course near Paris. Auteuil. Thrown from his horse.
DCI GERARD: Hell of a life, it is. It seems to explode all over the place or thinking about food food food. Lester Piggot lived on champagne and a lettuce leaf. [Pause] Well, pardon me, Dr. Ryder. I get carried away sometimes.
Jury looked up, smiling. “ ‘Carried away.’ I like that. Apparently, Gerard has a cousin who’s a jockey. I like the description. Questions about the Ryders’ wives. The doctor’s is dead, her name being Charlotte. The jockey’s-Marybeth-is living somewhere in America. His first wife, that is. He married again after he went to Paris. Woman who lives in Paris but as none of the Ryders have met her, Ryder doesn’t know if she’s a Parisian or possibly an Englishwoman.” Jury closed the file and sat back against his pillows.
Melrose asked, “What about ransom? What happened there?” He had captured the one decent chair, leaving Wiggins to arrange himself on the unforgiving wooden one.
“Never was one, it seems.”
“What?”
“They just took her. End of story. I mean, insofar as Cambridgeshire police knew. Oh, they didn’t stint in looking for her; it’s just that nothing else turned up. And, of course, in the absence of any ransom demand, it would be treated as an abduction rather than a kidnapping.”
“Then maybe,” said Melrose, “it was the horse. What’s the name?”
“Aqueduct. Quite valuable, especially for breeding purposes. I wondered about that, too. I expect when you find an animal missing along with a human, you assume the target was the human.”
“They didn’t expect to find a girl along with the horse. Do you suppose they had to take her to keep her quiet?”
“Very possibly.” Jury looked again at the report from Cambridgeshire police. “A number of valuable Thoroughbreds: Beautiful Dreamer, Criminal Type-”
“Criminal Type, I like that name. Odd for a horse.”
“So is Seabiscuit,” Wiggins said. “Do you know how that name came about? Seabiscuit, I mean?”
Trust Wiggins to know the derivation of anything with biscuit in it. He was sitting there eating one right now.
“There was a horse named Hard Tack, which is what sailors are often left with to eat. See? Hard Tack/sailor.”
Both Jury and Melrose looked at him. Neither spoke. “Sea relating to sailor; biscuit meaning a lesser version of hard tack. It’s rather clever.”
Jury and Melrose still looked at him, neither commenting.
Wiggins was leafing up pages in his notebook. “Ryder Stud Farm has diminished somewhat since Nell Ryder disappeared. It’s almost as if she were the heart of the place. Perhaps she really was, to her grandfather. Then there was also Danny Ryder. Not only was that a personal loss, but a real financial hit. When he was up on this Samarkand, they were virtually unbeatable.”
“What’s the chief source of income? The purses?”
“No. Breeding. Ryder has a stable full of Thoroughbreds retired from racing, but worth a lot in breeding.”
“Owners take their mares to Ryder Stud and pay for the pleasure?”
“Pay a lot for the pleasure for a stud such as Samarkand. It’s the practice, I heard, to sell shares. An owner pays, say, anywhere from a hundred thousand to a quarter million for the privilege of bringing one of his mares one time a year.”
Melrose sat up. “A quarter million? For that price I’d do it myself.”
“Who’d pay that much for you?” asked Jury. “So a return on the stallions set to stud in a given year could be how much?”
Wiggins again thumbed the pages of his notebook, said, “In ’92, for instance, over five million.”
Jury sat up. “What? And that’s just the breeding part of it?”
Wiggins nodded. “Just from breeding, yes.”
“How much from the purses?”
“From Samarkand alone-this would be a decade ago-1.8 million.”
“No wonder they call it the sport of kings,” said Melrose.
“Of course, looking at the other side of the ledger,” said Wiggins, “it’s an exceptionally pricey operation. The people you need working for you, many of whom are highly trained-jockeys, vets, trainers, grooms-do not come cheap. Arthur Ryder wanted the best of them. His trainer alone got a quarter million a year, and that’s low for a trainer. It’s expensive and it’s very dicey, as much as farming is, and farmers don’t have to carry insurance on each cow and plot of swede. Insurance on Samarkand alone was two million. But Arthur Ryder hasn’t been in tip-top shape since first his son Danny and then his granddaughter Nell went. Financial reverses, accidents with the horses, troubles seemed to heap themselves on Arthur Ryder’s head.”
Jury lay back, closed his eyes. “ ‘Not single spies but in battalions.’ ”
“Sir?”
“Trouble coming. Claudius.”
As if to bear out Claudius, Nurse Bell entered the room. But only single spies, Jury thought. A blessing.
“I’d say you two”-here she crossed her arms and glared at Melrose and Wiggins-“have visited quite enough for one day. And I warned you he”-she smiled ungraciously at Jury, it was more of a sneer-“shouldn’t be listening to police business. He’s supposed to be resting, not listening to you two. You don’t seem to appreciate he was at death’s door, and though we snatched him back once, we mightn’t be so lucky again.”
If she once more told him how close he’d come to death, Jury swore he’d hit her. Having been saved by so slight a margin, the unfortunate patient would feel that margin vanish in a moment. “Not out of the woods yet, my lad. So you’d better say an extra prayer tonight.”
Melrose said, “That’s ridiculous. He’s never looked healthier. It looks as if he’d hardly got shot at all. It’s your brilliant care of him.”
That put Nurse Bell on the horns of a dilemma. She certainly did not want her role diminished. “Even the best of care can’t guarantee a patient will make it.”
Jury, Melrose and Wiggins sighed.
Vernon Rice “did” money all right. He had his own investment firm in the City and moved a lot of money around, both for himself and his clients. He liked start-ups; however, he would warn his clients away from volatile-looking ones, but they didn’t always take his advice. It astonished him how reckless people were with their money, how eager to part with it at first sniff of something that looked promising (but probably wasn’t), like hounds on the trail of a fox.
Vernon’s days (and a lot of his nights) revolved around money. His primary moneymaker was his small investment firm in the City, a “boutique” firm, he supposed it would be called, consisting of himself, his receptionist, Samantha, and his two young assistants, Daphne and Bobby. They watched the daily financials for him, let him know how the market was operating and did some day trading on their own. He had hired both of them more or less off the streets and had never regretted it.
Daphne had appeared to be disoriented when Vernon came across her one day, standing on the corner of Thread-needle and Old Broad Street, just by the Stock Exchange. What he noticed about her was that she just stood there, not joining the foot traffic that crossed one street or crossed the other. She had dark hair, ringlets poking out from underneath a gray wool cap, which fit her head tightly and had two little gray ears sticking up in front. Her curls, her smooth oval face, wide brown eyes and-of course-the ears, put her, in Vernon’s estimation, at anywhere between twelve and thirty-two.
Probably she would think he was putting moves on her, but he took the chance, unable to resist both her apparent predicament and the ears on the wool cap. “Pardon me, don’t think I’m trying to pick you up or anything, but you seem to be having, well, a difficult time moving. I mean, more than the usual ‘which-street-is-it-I-want?’ challenge, and more of a ‘what-city-is-this-I’m-in?’ quandary. I thought perhaps I could assist you.” Vernon went on in this fashion, unable to stop explaining both her difficulty and his proffered role in it. Finally, he just wound down while she stood and stared and the foot soldiers coming from London Bridge flowed all over the place, too many of them, or at least T. S. Eliot thought so.
He even threw T. S. Eliot into the frying pan before he stopped.
She waited, squinting up at him. Then she said, “You’re finished, are you? You’re done? This is it for you? Through? Ended? Over? Fini? It’s a wrap?”
He nodded, started to say something and stopped when she held up her hand. “No, it’s the rest of the world’s turn. Around ten miles back you asked me, or I think you asked me, why I didn’t go one way or the other. The answer is: one way is like the other, and I don’t see the point in choosing. So I can’t cross over. It’s some existential turning point. I can’t go either way.”
“Um.” He wondered if he could say something now. Since she hadn’t pushed him in the way of an oncoming double-decker when he’d made the um sound, he thought perhaps he could. “How about not crossing either street?”
“How about-?” Again she squinted at him, as if finding him harder to believe than a saint’s vision. “Excuse me, but that’s just what I’ve spent the lunch hour explaining.”
“No, no. What I mean is, why not just go back?” Vernon looked over his shoulder. “Back along this pavement you’re already on. There’s a coffee bar a few doors back and I’d be happy to buy us an espresso or latte‘.”
She considered. “I hate those drinks. But I could do with some regular coffee.”
“Let’s go.”
They sat at the counter drinking plain coffee, hers with (he counted) five sugars, and Vernon asked Daphne where she lived. “Disneyland?”
“Clapham. Same thing.”
“Where do you work?”
“Nowhere. You know that ‘resting between plays’ that actors do? I’m resting between tending bar in the George and clerking at Debenham’s.”
“Do you know anything about the stock market at all?”
“Of course. My portfolio’s split fifteen different ways.”
“Is it the poor-little-matchstick-girl life you lead that makes you so sarcastic?”
Daphne appeared to like that image; she laughed the way some people sneeze, an ah-ha-ah-ha-ah-ha that segued into a brief explosion.
“The reason I ask is that I might be able to use you.”
“I doubt it.” She drank her coffee and stared at the phony turn-of-the-century signs.
Vernon ignored this reply. “If you have, say, a head for numbers?” Only, looking at the head with its two little ears, he doubted it.
She was holding her cup with both hands, frowning slightly. “Actually, I’m good with that. I took a first in maths at university.”
“Which one?”
“Oxford.”
Vernon’s eyebrows shot nearly up to his hairline. “Oxford? You?”
She turned her head to give him her signature squint. “Do you think I’m dumb just because my cap has ears?”
Vernon offered her a job on the spot. On the spot, she declined.
Finally, he talked her around to coming to work for him, aware that she could be a disaster, and she would probably try to sell his shares of British Telecom if the market took a tiny dip. But he found her caustic sense of humor bracing. And he couldn’t resist that damned cap.
Bobby, now, was a whole different thing.
Bobby (who might also be anywhere from twelve to thirty-two) ran into him on a skateboard. Bobby said he was “messengering” a document to someone in Vernon’s building. (He held up a manila envelope as if it were proof of legitimacy.) He’d knocked Vernon down in the lobby, given him a hand up and rattled off a stream of apologies. An apology dialectic, you could say, laying the groundwork for future apologies, if need be.
“You belong to a messenger service that uses skateboards?”
“No. But my bike got in an accident and I’ll use this until it’s fixed. Don’t tell them.”
“Me? They could put hot pokers in my eyes and I’d never tell.”
Then Bobby asked him what firm he worked at. When Vernon told him it was his own investment firm, Bobby asked him to recommend a good hedge fund and what did he think about this new company Sea ’n’ Sand?
“How do you even know about Sea ’n’ Sand?” This was a brand-new travel business dealing exclusively in cruises and coastal vacations. Why it was becoming so popular Vernon put down to a masterly PR and ad department because it offered nothing new by way of destinations or service.
Bobby shrugged. “Same way as you do, I guess. I think it’ll tank, myself.”
And Bobby went on. He pointed out to Vernon that the Dow was really no barometer; it didn’t call any shots. It was too heavy with industrials. “I mean, where’s Yahoo!? Where’s Macintosh? Where’s any of the high techs?” Bobby was a day trader who “always checked the financials. Always.” He paid no attention to financial gurus such as Hortense Stud (her name arming her competitors with endless sobriquets), who, he said, was a Michelin tire with a serious leak.
While the news in the manila envelope grew whiskers, Bobby talked. He asked Vernon what he thought about SayAgain, a purportedly hot new firm in the cellular war that was marketing phones for the almost-deaf. It was supposed to merge with CallBack-“You know about that, don’t you? Even hush-hush as it is?” Not only did Vernon not know about it, he wished to hell he’d thought of it. Damn. Bobby said he was going to short the stock if the merger took place because a little down the road Call-Back’s image manipulators were going to have trouble with ads picturing old geezers plying these phones. “Remember,” said Bobby, “Planet Hollywood?” And he set his hand on a downward spiral.
“Bummer,” said Vernon.
Bobby, clutching his skateboard and envelope, just went on and on. He was every bit as bad as Vernon on the day Vernon had met Daphne. So Vernon offered him a job on the spot. Unlike Daphne, Bobby accepted on the spot.
Vernon could easily have supplied each of them with an office, but they insisted on staying together. He called her Daffy; she called him Booby. They argued about everything-penny stocks, IPOs, short selling. Actually, they brawled a lot of the time. So what? Vernon said to Samantha. Let them brawl; they’re brilliant.
And they, in turn, thought Vernon walked on water. He had saved them from running people down on skateboards and standing indefinitely on street corners.
Vernon lived alone in a penthouse condo overlooking the Thames with white walls and three fireplaces, filled with angular, streamlined furniture by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and other seriously Swedish or German designers. He had never married. He was thirty-six years old. He did enjoy the company of women, two of them, one named Janet, a good-looking brunette who thought marriage for them was in the cards or the stars. Why she thought this he couldn’t imagine as he had never suggested it and never would. The other woman was a high-class whore named Taffy, whom he actually preferred to Janet, certainly on the sexual front-as well he should, when he was paying five hundred quid for two hours of her time. Taffy looked like her name-smooth and golden-tasted like it, stretched like it. She was inventive (but then, again, for that price, she ought to be).
Vernon loved his life. He loved coming home to the white walls and slick furniture, the polished floors, the aquarium he had paid thirty thousand pounds to have installed in one wall, flanked by paintings by Pollock and Hockney. His cat oversaw this arrangement. He knew Barney’s seemingly relaxed position-tail encircling torso, paws curled into chest-masked a busy mind trying to work out how he could get in there. He had found Barney wandering along by the river near the Town of Ramsgate pub. Probably the cat remembered better times, when alleys were full of dumps and jellied eels was the plate du jour. He admired cats’ self-sufficiency; they weren’t always barking at him to be let out. Barney’s “out” was the patio, where he could look at the Thames and the night. The patio was utterly glamorous and exotic. There were palm trees and hibiscus and fruit trees. He was not a gardener but he did take very good care of everything and the plants and trees flourished. He bet it was the London rain, which more often was thick mist or drizzle, so that his plants were fanned with water, not beaten with it.
Janet didn’t like cats; she felt they were sneaky. “On the contrary,” Vernon said, “they’re perfectly open about flouting rules or stealing shrimp from your plate.”
“You know what I mean.”
Actually, he didn’t. It irritated him to death that she really thought “you-know-what-I-mean” was an answer.
At this point in his evening return he always made a pitcher of Manhattans if he was feeling really Art Deco, or martinis, if he was feeling like a drink. Now he was finishing stirring their ten-to-oneness. He tapped the stirrer against the pitcher and poured the drink into a stemmed glass to which a paper-thin peel of lemon had been added. He sipped. It was cold and quick, knife-edged.
In the last couple of weeks, when he drank this home-coming martini he had thought up his new dotcom start-up. He had been to a number of AA meetings, not for his own sake, but to see what they were selling, and for God’s sake, were they ever selling! No wonder this organization was so successful. What they had on offer was: one, salvation; two, friends for you everywhere-in every city, every country on the globe; and three, childhood’s return. At the very least these three things and a whole lot of others. Members probably stopped drinking because they couldn’t fit it in.
Now, would he give up his two-martini predinner evening to have someone make his decisions? No, he wouldn’t, but a lot of people would. AA offered that, in addition to endless evenings of acceptance, no one trying to punch your clock or do you one better or go for you. And you had Dad back again in the form of a sponsor, an absolutely blood-chilling prospect to Vernon, not because he didn’t want his dad back, but because he didn’t want a sponsor.
He found it interesting that any alcoholic, if asked What do you want most in the world? would gaily cry, “A drink!” But this was self-delusion, for they wanted something else even more: salvation, Dad, acceptance no matter what-one or all of these things, and Vernon supposed they blended together like Stoly and dry vermouth.
He was calling his start-up SayWhen.
Money gave Vernon the same rush he knew Arthur Ryder got out of watching Aqueduct win the Gold Cup at Cheltenham, not once, but twice, the second time carrying twenty-three pounds. Yet he could not get Art to see how the stud fees would quadruple if he incorporated Ryder Stud and made an initial public offering by selling seasons for, say, Beautiful Dreamer and Samarkand. “It would bring in millions, Art.”
“Vernon, I don’t want millions.”
Vernon was much too kind to point out that his stepfather had certainly wanted at least one near million two months before.
“But listen, Art. Look what they did in the U.S. with horses like Seattle Slew. Just for one breeding season they pulled in three quarters of a million. Multiply that by the number of stallion slots for one horse like Aqueduct. Then multiply again by the stallions you have at stud.”
Arthur continued his round of evening stables, Vernon walking with him. He shook his head and said, “Vernon, this is what you do for a living? Why not just play poker?”
“Because this is more fun. And I’m trying to help you out, you know. How about foal sharing? That’s getting popular.”
“Foal sharing? Jesus.” Arthur just shook his head.
It was true that Vernon wanted to help; he very much wanted to lessen his stepfather’s money concerns. But in addition, of course, it would be fun to trade some of the Ryder Stud horses on the exchange. In the last twenty months, there had been a more compelling motive: Vernon wanted to get Arthur’s mind off Nell, if only for a few moments at a time.
For he had never seen Arthur Ryder stopped dead in his tracks before. Not even the death of his son Danny had done this-turned him to stone, unable to act. Roger, too, despite the fact he dealt with death every day, and often in the most shocking way, could not work Nell’s disappearance into the equation. The two of them, Arthur and Roger, had stared too long into the same space. Perhaps, Vernon thought, sharing the same space might be some comfort to them.
Vernon had tried to handle things. “Things” included the bulk of police questioning, at the outset, Arthur and Roger having been unable to answer anything beyond yes, no and possibly. He also hired the best private investigator in London, a man named Leon Stone, known for his chameleonlike ability to melt into the background. Nineteen months before, they were sitting in Vernon’s flat, as Vernon related the story. He told Stone, “It must not be money they want. It’s been nearly a month now.”
“Not necessarily,” Leon Stone had said. “Ransom might have been the reason originally, and then something happened to change their minds.”
Vernon leaned forward, toward Stone, who was occupying the deep leather chair on the other side of the glass-and-mahogany coffee table. He said, “So we have to factor into this search all of the circumstances that might have surrounded their change of plans. Bloody hell. That’s impossible.”
Stone held up his hand. “I should have added that it’s unlikely they changed their minds. If they haven’t asked for money, they probably don’t want money, as you said.” He asked Vernon if there was any reason to believe the little girl’s father or grandfather might be responsible for this.
Vernon was appalled, possibly because he had thought about it. “You mean could they have staged it? Of course not!”
“It does happen.” Stone shrugged.
Over the last year and a half, Leon Stone had been thorough, no question of that. He’d earned his hefty fee. He’d visited every stud farm in Cambridgeshire and others elsewhere. Cambridgeshire, though, was the heart and soul of racing and breeding.
“Why do you think this villain might have a stud farm?”
“Proximity, for one reason. Knowledge of Arthur Ryder’s household for another. And for another, it’s possible there might be some bad feeling between Ryder and other owners. Mr. Rice, let’s look at the picture: one or more villains go to Ryder Stud in the night-no, let me change that-they might have been there during the day or sometime in the recent past to take in the situation before acting. Or the person might already have been there in the capacity of an employee-stable lads, exercise boys, trainers. There’s the vet, too. I have a list of those people.
“Next: let’s go back to the incident. Someone comes to the stables, for what reason we don’t actually know-”
“You mean the object might not have been Nellie?”
“It’s possible. The thing is, if the target was the girl, the person must have known Nell’s habit of sleeping in stables if a horse was sick. That would certainly limit the suspects to family, friends and employees, wouldn’t it?
“That’s one possibility,” Stone continued. “The other is that the villains were there for another reason altogether and Nell got in their way. Because she saw something, and they had to take her with them because she presented a threat.”
“You think they came for the horse?”
Leon Stone shrugged again. “That’s also possible. And not necessarily to take the horse, but to do something to the horse or horses. There are extremely valuable stallions there.”
“Besides Samarkand there’s Beautiful Dreamer, Criminal Type, Aqueduct and Fool’s Money.” (The last having been named in honor of Vernon, according to Arthur.) “No car or trailer seen, but I guess they had transport.”
“I’m thinking one person, and he didn’t need a car or van.”
“He had to have something.”
“He had Aqueduct.” Stone smiled thinly. “Obviously.”
He was given to anxiety attacks that overtook him when he was outside, standing on ground no longer firm or familiar. When this happened, Maurice would take out a horse, any horse that seemed eager for a gallop or just a walk up and down the cinder paths that wound around for miles through the farm.
After Samarkand, Maurice’s choice was Beautiful Dreamer, an elegant stallion who would shake out his mane and raise his head as if divesting himself of Maurice or anyone except Nell. The horses loved Nell.
Beautiful Dreamer had always felt doomed to race around some mile-and-a-half course as if this were all he was good for, and only tolerated the winner’s circle in which he often found himself. Though he rather liked the flowers, armfuls of roses thrown about his neck, and smiles and gold glinting about him. No more than he deserved. It had happened so often he wondered if there was anything left worth winning.
Now, it was this boy again, who was better than some who rode him. He actually liked the boy. But he knew what would happen, and it did after they’d walked the paths for fifteen minutes. Yes, he felt a shift in the boy’s position, body stretched out, head on Dreamer’s neck, arms dangling. At least his feet were still in the stirrups, which would hold him in place a little.
Asleep again. Dreamer would have to be careful not to walk under any overhanging branches. Better get off the path and onto the road, which is what he’d wanted to do anyway.
Why was it that whenever the boy got up on Dreamer, he fell asleep, yet didn’t seem to know it? If he did know it, he wouldn’t try to ride Dreamer. Or maybe he would; yes, maybe he would, if he wanted to escape once in a while. The boy was just lucky he was up on Dreamer and not Criminal Type, who’d do anything.
The old road. Beautiful Dreamer walked a while careful to move out of the way of branches, to where the path went parallel to a road that nobody used anymore. It was scarcely more than a single lane, two if the cars were small. No cars, not even one of the Ryder Stud farm’s cars drove along it anymore. Once the hedgerows had been so tall you couldn’t see over them, so straight they could have taken a plumb line, and so tidy a yardstick would have fit neatly against the bottom. But now large parts of dried-up hedge crumbled like brick too long stressed.
Beautiful Dreamer walked on, careful and quiet. Walked, but yearned to break into a trot, then a canter, then a gallop. He saw a winter landscape, small clumps of snow bearding roots of hazels and oaks, ice gloving their high branches, dripping water, but he passed through spring-clouds of daisies, mists of cowslip, wild rose, pennyroyal, violets. Beautiful Dreamer did not so much have memories as he did comings and goings, entrances and exits, other places becoming these places. The past was like the path he had left, which wound around and sometimes turned back on itself, crossing the present.
He heard the lads at stables calling out time: time for feeding, time for grooming, for morning stables and evening stables, time for this, time for that, time after time. It meant nothing, yet they needed it. Memory was time. He still heard the raised voices under the vaulted sky; he still stormed around that rough three-quarter-mile turn; he still won or still lost; he still smelled the collar of roses.
Beautiful Dreamer loved to walk down this road but only when the boy was riding him, sleeping. When one of the exercise lads or anyone else came on it by accident, he reared up and refused to go.
“What’s this? I never knew ya t’go skittish on me. You afraid a sumppin, then?” And the lad would squint, peer through the shadows of the road and its banks and point out that not only was there nothing to fear, “But there ain’t hardly nuffin there. Just that old barn and shed and overgrown ring.”
Say what he would, Beautiful Dreamer refused to budge.
He came within sight of the barn and thought perhaps he should shake the boy awake, then thought, no too painful or at least the boy might think so. No, the boy would have to wake up himself and confront it.
Beautiful Dreamer had seen her the day he was born. It was her hands, besides the vet’s, that caught him and helped him out. He could see her now. He could hear her now, singing a breathy song, half words, half humming “Beautiful Dreamer.”
That song was why he’d been given his name. That song, and her singing. That was why. Beautiful Dreamer listened for a while and then headed home.
Vernon lay in bed in the moonless dark, hands clasped behind his head as usual when he was reviewing his day before going to sleep.
He had acquired that very afternoon a tiny religious publishing house that was turning over a small but steady revenue. He added this to the other two companies he’d bought named WeightLess and QuestCo, all showing income which he could list as SayWhen’s assets. In the next month or two he’d offer stock on the open market, SayWhen’s initial IPO selling at twenty-five pounds per share. The fact that SayWhen hadn’t yet brought in any money of its own didn’t bother Vernon at all, though it might bother the Securities and Investment Board.
The companies loved him for he had insisted they remain autonomous. QuestCo was a company specializing in acquiring companies. It had not come up with anything especially brilliant thus far, though it was engaged in investigating a company called NuBru, an old wine refinery, whose chief chemist had come up with a drink made out of grapes that tasted like the real thing, and-more important-had the effect of the real thing. QuestCo was having a problem finding the site and the company for although the NuBru talked about people it employed, it didn’t have an actual address.
“Located somewhere in California,” QuestCo’s CEO had told Vernon.
“It’s wine-sort of-so where else?” Vernon said.
He had considered having SayWhen actually work for its twenty-five pounds per share. He had of course put the twelve-step program on the home page, with snappy little drawings illustrating the steps-and their lack thereof. All sorts of falling-down drunk men and women, white, black, Asian, young and old, plus tipsy cats and tanked dogs, even a mouse with its stiff little legs up in the air and a minuscule bottle by its side, and a general air of flagrant abuse (although a couple of the dogs looked pretty happy). There were also links to other Web sites remotely connected with alcoholism and its curse.
Don’t tell SayWhen there’s no cure for alcoholism! Who’d want to take the high road to sobriety on club soda and San Pellegrino if he thought he’d never be cured?
Get real, Big Book.
The thing was this: the idea would have to hit the ground running because it wouldn’t be long before some wet-behind-the-ears dotcomer would refine Vernon’s original idea and improve upon it. Company start-ups were dicey things, not for the weak at heart, or (possibly) the sound of mind.
“Vernon, has it occurred to you this NuBru company is actually producing wine? I mean, if you can’t tell the difference, then how do you know?”
“Of course, it’s occurred to me. Anyway, I didn’t particularly like the name, NuBru-sounds like beer, doesn’t it?” He was sitting on a hay bale, watching Arthur, who was inspecting Fool’s Money’s ankles, which Arthur said were hot. “So I got them to change it to WineDesign.”
Arthur just looked at him and shook his head.
“What? What?”
“Nothing.”
“Their product could perfectly well be what they say it is. They’ve done tests to show its lack of toxicity. An inconsequential effect on the liver and other organs-”
Arthur gave him another look. “That’s meaningless. What’s ‘inconsequential’? What, indeed, is ‘effect’ here?”
Vernon didn’t answer directly because he didn’t know the answer. “Someone’s going to work it out sometime, Art, how to produce a nonalcoholic drink you can get high on.”
“Well, just tell your SayWhen clickers to have themselves frozen when they die.”
“Come on, Art, we’re at a point in history where we can do practically anything.”
“That’s scary, if you’re in on it.”
“How droll.”
Arthur tried not to smile. “Felicity always said you were like this even as a kid. You’d try anything if you saw profit in it. You used to break pencils in half, sharpen them and sell each part for a penny more than a regular pencil, except for the half with the eraser. That, you charged two pence for.”
“I was that cynical when I was a kid?”
“Pretty much. You could never convince Nell of it, though.”
Vernon suddenly leaned back. Anytime she was brought into a conversation abruptly, like that, out of the clear blue, as just now, he always felt he’d been punched suddenly in the chest. In the stall, perhaps everywhere, came a sudden stillness as if everything were holding its breath.
Vernon certainly was.
Nell.
Even at fifteen she’d been brilliant. When he’d first seen her, she was in Samarkand’s stall, rubbing him down after a ride. She was bent over. Her remarkably fair hair was long and covered her face, almost reaching the ground when she was bent over that way. She was quietly singing. It was a song he couldn’t make out but thought he knew.
“Hey,” he’d said, “what’s up?”
She straightened, surprised. Then she drew her hair back from a face that had seemed to him translucent. Nothing was hiding; everything was in it-how she cared for the horse and expected a lot more from it than she did from Vernon.
The “Hey, what’s up?” sounded more like the banal introduction of a kid, not a thirty-four-year-old adult, which he had been. “I’m Vernon Rice.”
“Hello.” She wiped her hand down the leg of her jeans and held it out.
He clasped it and thought whimsically of an iron butterfly, soft but very strong. It seemed to curl within his own hand. He was not given to metaphors usually.
“This,” she said, “is Samarkand. Sam, for short.”
He had lumps of sugar in his pocket that he’d picked up from the restaurant he’d stopped at for coffee. He was going, after all, to a stud farm. He liked to be prepared. Prepared? Was he going to offer a hedge fund to a horse? Now he pulled two of the cubes out of his pocket and held them out (rather timidly) toward the horse.
Samarkand looked at him, turned around in the stall (making Nell press against the wall) and presented his backside to Vernon.
“He’s not that easy,” Nellie said. She couldn’t help laughing.
He was ashamed of himself for blushing. My God. “That was pretty stupid of me, with the sugar, I mean.”
“Not at all. The important thing is you thought ahead, you came prepared. You know how many people manage to do that?” She made a circle with her thumb and forefinger. “Zilch.”
Now, he was as stupidly glad he’d brought the sugar as a moment ago he’d been stupidly ashamed.
Nimbly, she changed the subject, as if she’d had a lot of practice putting people at their ease, saying, “You’re down from London, aren’t you?”
“That’s right. I know I should have come before to meet the family. I was living in Europe for a little while, now-” He shrugged. “It was rude of me not to come the minute I got back.” He felt chastised without her saying anything; he realized he was chastising himself.
She had turned Samarkand back around without seeming to have touched him. She said, “It certainly wasn’t as rude as their going off to a registry office and not inviting us.” That she was not really annoyed by this “elopement” of his mother and her grandfather was clear. She had said it to let him know they were both on the same side. “I like Felicity; she’s really nice.”
“Excuse me for getting personal, but are you really fifteen?”
His expression made her laugh. “That’s all, sorry to say.”
“You seem so much older.”
She stopped the curry comb and looked off somewhere. “It’s from being around horses all my life, I think. I think it gives a person poise.” She had finished with the brushing and returned the brush to a shelf and picked up a bucket.
He was afraid she was going, and he wanted to keep her there. “What was that song you were singing?”
Color rose slowly up her neck and across her face. He’d seen sunrises that couldn’t hold a candle. “ ‘Love Walked In.’ ”
He remembered the song. “ ‘And drove the shadows away.’ ” He smiled.
So did she. “One of my favorites. Do you know all the words?”
“No. Some, but not all. Your voice is very pretty.” She shrugged that away.
“You don’t want anyone to hear you.”
“It’s embarrassing to be caught singing to horses. You know.”
She said this, to Vernon’s intense surprise, as if he must. Yet he did know, didn’t he? He remembered being fifteen and how hard it was, falling in love with girls you couldn’t have.
“What’s wrong? Did I spook you?” She swung the bucket a little.
His look now was quite serious. “You could say that.” She smiled and walked off, the bucket swinging from her gloved hand, trim and neat, hair nearly lost in the sun’s dazzle. Vernon watched her out of sight, thinking she was the most together person he’d ever known.
The day she went missing was the worst day of Vernon Rice’s life.
“Who was she?” asked Jury. Melrose Plant had the latest fruit basket on his lap, checking its contents. He looked up. “She? Your questions more and more seem to be coming out of some continuing conversation with yourself.”
“The woman in the pub.”
Melrose cocked his head, trying to tune in on Jury’s wavelength. The penny dropped. “Oh! In the Grave Maurice.”
Jury nodded. “The one who seemed to know Dr. Ryder.” Melrose pried a banana out of the basket.
“Don’t take that. Wiggins is Banana Man and has already spoken for it.”
“I’m not taking anything. I hope I’ve better things to do than rummage through fruit baskets.”
“You will in a while. This woman-”
“The entire hospital knew about that kidnapping. It wouldn’t mean the woman I overheard was any more important than the others.”
“I’m just casting about.”
Silence while Jury looked out of the window upon the blank face of the sky, and Melrose tried to decide between a plum and a pear. Why not have both?
Melrose said, his tone not very hopeful, “You were kidding?”
Jury frowned. “About what?”
“That I should go to Ryder Stud to buy a horse.”
“Yes.”
Melrose exhaled pent-up breath. “That’s a relief.” “What in hell would you do with a horse?”
“Exactly!”
“You can just negotiate.”
Melrose sat up. “Negotiate?”
“For the horse. You don’t actually buy it. Negotiating would allow you to go back, maybe more than once.”
Melrose slumped down in the chair. “Richard, I don’t want to know about horses; I’m still stuffed to the gills with hacheonela and Rumbrim grasses. With box parterres and… stuff.” He flapped his hand in Jury’s direction.
“You didn’t want to be a gardener, either, but you did a bang-up job. As always.” Jury smiled brightly, the smile quick to fade when Nurse Bell entered the room.
Seeing Melrose, she braced her legs, dug her fists into plump hips and said, “It isn’t visiting hours!”
“I’m not visiting; I live here.”
She waggled a finger in the air. “I’ve spoken to you before about this, Mr. Plant. You cannot take these liberties-”
Melrose stood up, digging one of his old cards from his tweed pocket. “It’s Lord Ardry, actually, Earl of Caverness, Baron of Ross and Cromarty, et cetera.” He handed her the shabby card.
She looked at it. “Well…” She smiled at him coyly, displaying teeth that could use a dentist or a crane. “Still, we’ve got to be careful about maintaining proper hours.” Her finger wagged again, but in a more friendly fashion. “We’ve got to see our patients get their rest.” She had drawn out a thermometer, shaken it and now shoved it into Jury’s mouth. She talked all the while she took his pulse. “Things could so easily turn against them, I mean the patients. Just last week there was an elderly gentleman who’d come in with a bad heart. Fit as a fiddle, he looked”-she checked her watch and chuckled-“and then wouldn’t you know it, he slumped over in his wheelchair when the attendant was wheeling him toward the visitors’ room. His daughter and grandchildren were waiting for him and just as he raised his hand to wave-that’s enough,” said the nurse to Jury as she yanked the thermometer from his mouth (as if it were a lollipop he’d been licking) “-and as the little grandson was rushing toward the old man, he went down like this!” She snapped two fingers. “Never got to say good-bye, he didn’t. Then there was the poor little girl that came in with her appendix-”
Said Melrose, “I always travel with mine, too.”
Nurse Bell paid him no mind. “-and died on the operating table. Heart, can you believe it? Poor little Dory. Had a heart arrhythmia and nobody knew it. Doctor”-here she looked at Jury just to let him know not all of Dr. Ryder’s patients walked out under their own steam-“blamed himself. Then there was old Willie, that was getting on perfectly well until he choked to death on coffee from the dispensing machine.”
God! But the woman was a ghoul. “How could a patient choke to death surrounded by nurses?”
She didn’t answer, only looked at the thermometer ruefully. “Oh, I don’t like this, Mr. Jury. Temperature’s up. I’ll have to tell doctor, won’t I?”
Melrose hated it when “doctor” was used almost like a first name. Like God, for instance.
Nurse Bell turned to go and then turned back. “And you”-here came a frenzy of finger waggling-“five more minutes and then out. Five minutes!” She left, her heavy rump swaying and her uniform bristling with starch.
“What in hell was it? Your temperature, I mean.”
“Who knows-517, probably. Let’s get back to the horse-trading plan.”
“Let’s not.” Melrose threw himself into a fit of mock weeping.
“Oh, don’t be so childish. Look-”
Melrose raised his untearstained face to see Jury holding The Daughter of Time. “I’ve got several more days in this place, being ministered to by-” He nodded meaningfully toward the door. “I need something to think about, something to chew on, and I find this girl’s disappearance very interesting.”
“You’ve got her father right here. Chew on him.”
“Come on, he’s hardly objective.”
Melrose sighed. He knew he’d do it and Jury knew he knew it. “So I tell this Ryder chap I’m interested in buying some horseflesh.”
“For God’s sake, don’t call it ‘horseflesh.’ ”
“Gary Cooper always did.” The actor was one of Melrose’s all-time favorites. That badge he threw down in the dust at the end of High Noon!
“No, he didn’t. What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“It looked as if you threw something. Anyway, pay attention. What would be even more convincing”-here Jury sat forward, pushing the tray table out of his way-“would be to go after a particular horse, or find out what horses he had there and read up on them. Do what Diane Demorney does: learn a lot about one horse instead of a little about all of them.” Jury thought for a moment. “Red Rum, that’s a good horse. He won the Grand National, and more than once, I think.”
“I’d have to know general things; I can’t see me going back and back, knowing only Red Rum.”
“The one Wiggins was talking about-”
“Seabiscuit?”
“Of course not Seabiscuit. Seabiscuit’s an American horse. He’s also dead. You’ve really got your work cut out for you, don’t you? No-Samarkand, his name is. He’s a famous horse.”
“Then he wouldn’t be for sale.”
“No, but now it occurs to me that you’d have to know something about him; I mean if you’re knowledgeable about horses and racing. You could easily get information about the stud farm from, you know, sources…” Jury shrugged.
Melrose got up and leaned over the bed to shake Jury’s hand. “Thanks! Sources! That’s really helpful.” He stood there. “I expect I should get started right away.” Melrose checked his watch. “Good God! I’ve been here more than the five minutes!”
Jury leaned back, looking rather smug. “You going back to Northants? You really should start this investigation as soon as possible.”
Melrose just stared at him. “Talk about nerve! Not only isn’t this an investigation-one of your cases-I’m not an investigator.”
“Sure you are. Stop complaining and I’ll tell you something about Nurse Bell.”
“What? She works nights outside a club in Soho? She’s pregnant by the hospital’s CEO? What?”
“Her first name is-ready?-Hannah.”
It took a moment for the penny to drop.
Then they both smiled meanly.
“That book,” said Agatha, craning her neck to see what Melrose was reading, “has horses on the cover.” She righted herself on the drawing-room sofa and inspected the cake plate.
“That’s because it’s about horses.” Melrose took another sip of his tea and wondered if the buffeting about of the morning light-rhomboids along the Oriental carpet, spandrel along an archway-was making up for Agatha’s unilluminating presence, the light in sympathy with him. A pathetic fallacy, but Melrose would take his pathos where he found it.
Agatha continued: “Why on earth would you be reading about horses? You don’t have one; you don’t even ride.” Having pinched another muffin-they were smallish-from the plate, she eyed it with suspicion. “What is this?”
“A muffin?”
“You know what I mean! It’s green. What did Martha do to it?”
“It’s a creme de menthe muffin.” This had been Melrose’s idea. He had told his cook Martha to add a bit of food coloring to the muffins, which he now had christened with the names of various liqueurs. He had also directed Martha to keep back the scones and tea bread. Ruthven (Melrose’s butler and Martha’s husband) had tittered.
“Oh, but won’t she make a fuss, sir?” said Martha, smiling broadly.
“That’s the idea,” Melrose had answered, matching the smile.
Unfortunately, not liking did not mean not eating and not staying. If nothing else was available for her tea, she would start in on the fruits of the Della Robbia jug he had brought back from Florence to give to someone, anyone, perhaps even Agatha. He was not fond of it.
Returning the green muffin to the riotous muffin plate, she took the most muffinish-looking muffin there. This was the color of the latte‘ served in Latte‘ at the Library.
“Creme de cacao, that one is.”
Gingerly unwrapping its furled little skirt, Agatha said, “I honestly think Martha’s getting senile, serving up this sort of rubbish.”
“I’ll tell her from now on to serve the rubbish you’re used to.” Melrose turned back to his book. He was reading about Red Rum, the horse Jury had mentioned, a three-time Derby winner of old who had the distinction, when he died, of being buried in the winner’s circle at Aintree. This was a fellow he’d have to remember. On the marquetry table beside his chair lay a small black leather notebook in which he set down this information.
Half of her light-brown muffin gone, Agatha said, “You’ve been writing in that thingamajig”-here she discounted the little notebook’s usefulness with a gesture, waving it to its thingamajiggish grave-“ever since I came. It’s quite rude of you, also, Melrose, but then you never were one to observe the social niceties.”
“I didn’t know that’s what we were doing.” He smiled down at Red Rum, making another note. He was really drawing Red Rum’s tail, since his doing anything in the notebook irritated her so much. The recording of things to which she was not privy bothered her. Melrose had an actual insight there. He blinked. Perhaps Agatha deserved some sympathy if she was one of those people who were afraid that life would come crashing down if they didn’t know everything that was going on around them. It was as if all sorts of rascally things might be taking place. (Just look at those muffins!)
“You’re not, I hope, thinking of buying one?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact. Indeed, I think I’ll have that old stable brushed up and put in a riding ring and perhaps a racing course-”
“Good God!” The muffin half fell from her hand. “Surely you can’t be seriously thinking of ruining these beautiful grounds!”
“They’re not all that beautiful, as it happens. Momaday does nothing.” Mr. Momaday had been taken on as a gardener, and he called himself a “groundskeeper.” He did precious little of either, spending most of his time tramping around Ardry End’s hundred acres, looking for something to shoot. Acres and acres of grass, weeds, wildflowers, deciduous trees, a few crumbling marble statues and a gone-to-ruin hermit’s hut. Melrose could not imagine his father countenancing that. What he said was, “I’m also thinking of hiring a hermit for that hermitage out there-yonder.” He loved this word.
“Are you talking about that old broken-down stone thing? Hire a hermit, indeed!”
“That’s what people did in the nineteenth century. It was fashionable to have a hermit on one’s grounds. I believe the Romantics went in for it.”
“You’re making it up, as usual.” She poked a piece of muffin into her mouth.
“I swear it’s true!” It was, too. He clamped a hand over his heart. “Hermits got to be collectors’ items.”
“I can tell you this: if a hermit comes, I go.”
Melrose studied the ceiling.
She went on. “As to this horse business, I can just see you trotting around the village as if you were Master of Foxhounds.”
Melrose tuned her out. Having squeezed whatever mileage he could out of horse and hermit, he went back to his book. It was one of several he had taken from the library. Ah! This was interesting. A Thoroughbred named Shergar had been kidnapped by the IRA and held for ransom. The ransom wasn’t paid; the horse was never seen again, at least not in the UK. This was a strange little story, showing how much England valued its horses, or how little, depending on the way you looked at it.
Delighted to have found this entrée into horses and lost girls, Melrose snapped the book shut, gulped down his cold tea and stood. “I’m off, Agatha. Stay as long as you like.”
“Off to where?”
“A number of places, including the library.”
“Just an excuse to go to the Jack and Hammer.”
Melrose raised his eyebrows in mock astonishment. “Since when did I need an excuse to go to the Jack and Hammer?”
His first stop really was the library, where he dropped off his books and went back to the shelves to look for fresh material. The horse books seemed geared largely to prepubescent girls, involving matters such as jumping and dressage. Nothing here on Thoroughbreds or racecourses.
On his way out, he stopped and said hello to Miss Twinny and asked her if she’d like to have a coffee with him, but she declined. “Oh, so nice of you, Mr. Plant, but I’ve got to get some books sorted before noon. Were these of any help?” She indicated the ones he’d left on the returns area of the front desk.
“Absolutely. I thought I might stop by the Wrenn’s Nest and see if Mr. Browne has anything I could use.” Melrose could have kicked himself when he saw the expression on Miss Twinny’s face. Theo Wrenn Browne had tried to shut down the library, which would have cost Miss Twinny her job. It was Marshall Trueblood who had saved both library and librarian by talking her into setting up an espresso bar.
Melrose changed the subject by nodding toward that little café now. “Still going great guns, isn’t it?”
She smiled. “It’s quite wonderful, Mr. Plant. Do you know there are people coming over from Sidbury? Why, there are never enough tables to go around. I just might have to expand!” Delighted, she laughed.
“Horses? You want something on horses?” Theo Wrenn Browne looked as if he’d been broadsided.
Melrose was standing in the Wrenn’s Nest Bookshop, stupefying its owner. Why did everyone find Melrose’s interest in this animal so problematic?
“Yes” was all he answered.
“May I ask why?”
“You just have.”
Silence while Theo Wrenn Browne tried to work this out.
Melrose started off. “Don’t discommode yourself, Mr. Browne. I’ll just wander through the stacks.”
Theo quickly came out from his station by the money drawer and followed on Melrose’s heels. “Mr. Plant, I’d be only too happy to help you.”
The trouble with Theo Wrenn Browne was his capacity for being a sycophant on the one hand and, on the other, for sneering superiority. He was disliked by all of Melrose’s circle-except Agatha, who found in Theo Wrenn Browne a compatriot, a fellow-traveler in malice. They had collaborated on the Chamber Pot Caper a few years before, in an attempt to close poor Miss Ada Crisp’s secondhand furniture shop next door to the Wrenn’s Nest. Following this had been the attempt to drive the library out of business. Marshall Trueblood’s solution of opening the latte‘ and espresso bar had turned the library absolutely trendy. It had become a hot spot. That was Theo Wrenn Browne, a snake at worst, a weasel at best, as today he was weaseling after Melrose.
To demonstrate his interest in the hunt, Melrose pulled down a volume, largely of photographs of self-congratulation, to judge from the rubicund faces of the hunt members. The dogs were quite handsome, as were the horses; it took only a few humans to ruin the overall effect. The one with hounds churning at his feet was the master of hounds. He and the whipper-in were all wearing pink coats; all the others were in black coats or tweeds. Melrose smiled because (again except for horses and hounds) they all looked remarkably silly. He handed this book to Browne and pulled out another titled Thoroughbred Racing: From Churchill Downs to Saratoga Springs. These places were in the United States, but wouldn’t a horse be a horse most any old where? And it would be good, too, letting the Ryder person know that he wasn’t a dunce when it came to American racing, either. The book fell open at a two-page spread of the wondrous Secretariat. Even Melrose had heard of Secretariat. No wonder people loved to watch it, but imagine what it must be like to do it! Looking at the photographs of Secretariat racing round the course, Melrose thought it must be, for the jockey, a Eureka! Like Manet putting the last touch of light to a field of flowers, or Keats upon seeing that Grecian urn or Lou Reed attacking his guitar.
“What are you doing, Mr. Plant?” Browne broke into Melrose’s fantasy life.
“What? Oh, just practicing the cello. I was thinking it’s easy to understand why everyone loves horse racing.”
Browne, finding an opportunity to rain on Melrose’s parade, said, “Well, now, not everyone, Mr. Plant, not by a long chalk.”
“Oh?”
“Indeed not. Not your animal activists, no. And they’re getting more and more prevalent. There’s a group over in Sidbury who’ve done most unpleasant things. If you’re planning on drawing any of your horsey friends from there, best be advised. There’s a hunt tomorrow; you can go and see for yourself.”
Melrose had no friends in Sidbury, horsey or otherwise. “There’s an even bigger group in Northampton. They’re really organized, they are. You’ll be harassed-don’t think you won’t. They’ll hound you right into the ground.” Theo covered his mouth with his hand, snorting with laughter. “Oh, that’s rich, now isn’t it?” When Melrose didn’t respond, he said it again: “Hound you,” and he laughed. “If you organize a hunt, they’ll be certain to picket; they’ll stand by the sidelines and jeer.”
“Jeering isn’t a particularly efficient way to put paid to anything. At least it wouldn’t be for me; with me they’d have to get physical-pull me off my horse.”
“I certainly wouldn’t put it past them, me.”
The rhythm of Theo’s speech often wound up back in North London if he didn’t keep an eye on it.
“Then what I need is a Glock, not a book.”
On their way from the shelves to the front of the store, they passed a window embrasure where three little children were sitting, unsmiling and silent. Two of them Melrose recognized as the Finch children, Bub and Sally, and although they must be a year or two older than when Melrose had last seen them in the bookshop, they still looked three and six. The third child he couldn’t recall seeing around the village, but he probably weighed in at some age between Bub and his sister. This child had a face so crowded with freckles it looked as though some of them had fallen on his faded T-shirt and made spots. The three smiled at Melrose, rather pathetically. It was clear they were all hugely unhappy tots and were perhaps thinking that Melrose (their hero), having delivered them once from the dreaded bookseller, might be counted on to do it again. Melrose returned their smiles and noticed that the three were holding hands, as if for a comfort none could sustain if the hands were separated.
“Hello, there. It’s Sally and Bub, isn’t it? And could this be Patrick the Painted Pig?” He said this to the third child, another fallen into the clutches of Mr. Browne.
Theo immediately took the floor. “These kiddies, Mr. Plant, were back there defacing my books. They’ve been directed to sit right there until the book police come!” Roundly, Theo gave him an exaggerated wink, as if his clever fabrication would charm Melrose, who might form part of this conspiracy against the children.
Was the man crazy? Melrose had bailed both Sally and later Bub out of trouble. “Well, now, Sally and Bub and Patrick-” Here the second little boy blushed, but still looked pleased.
Sally chimed in, “He ain’t Patrick. His name’s Regis.”
“Regis? Now there’s a kingly name. Now, tell me what this is all about.”
All three spoke up at once. No, all four did. Theo was the first one in with a version of “events.” “They were tearing, tearing that book apart! Just malicious is what they are. I’ve a call in to Mrs. Finch but she hasn’t returned it.”
“Ah, then is Mrs. Finch with the book police?” Giggles all round.
Melrose asked, “What happened?”
Sally burst out: “Me and Regis found this book and we both wanted it, so he was pulling on it and so was I.” This was delivered in one spurt of breath.
Regis frowned mightily. “No, that ain’t right. Me, I wasn’t doing nuffin’. I was only holding on to the book.”
Sally stuck out her tongue at Regis and whined, “Bub, here, though, he wasn’t even near the old book!”
Melrose liked this standing up for her brother. He thought it quite noble in the circumstances. “All right, it’s clear enough. You should be banished from Mr. Browne’s shop.” He turned to Theo. “Banishment is the only answer.”
Banishment obviously appealed to the kiddies; they stood and dropped hands, ready to be banished. The hero had spoken.
“What they will have to do after this, if they want a book, is to go to the library.”
The kids looked as if they’d be willing to march into hell, if it meant escaping from Theo Wrenn Browne.
But Theo was not at all happy with this solution, which was a perfectly logical one. Melrose knew he wouldn’t be, of course, since he derived too much pleasure from abusing children. “Well, that’s all well and good, but what about my book? Cost sixteen quid, that did, and someone’s-” He stopped when he saw Melrose smile.
“Of course someone has to pay for it.” He removed his money clip from his pocket and peeled off a twenty. “You can make the four-pound deduction from my books here.” He patted them. “Now, you three must remember to tell Miss Twinny you’ll be perfectly quiet in the library and will bring books back on time.” He peeled a five-pound note from the wad and handed it to Sally, who gaped at it. “Give this to the lady in the café and tell her you’re being treated to a lemonade or hot chocolate or whatever they have. You might tell her to keep the change for the next time.”
Now all three were gaping. Not only were they not being punished for their behavior, they were actually being rewarded!
“Now, run along, and no more fighting over books.”
They were off and out the door before Melrose had come to the end of his edict.
The Jack and Hammer was directly opposite the Wrenn’s Nest. Melrose crossed the street after bidding good morning to Ada Crisp, who sometimes sat outside her secondhand furniture shop, sometimes with her Jack Russell terrier, but more often not, as the terrier’s travel agenda took him all over the village. Miss Crisp sat among her china bowls and chamber pots, in a revenant light left over from autumn, rocking and waving at Melrose.
January and February, Melrose had decided, were the two most luckless and lackluster months on the calendar. It was difficult to get inspired (if one’s bent was inspiration) by the ragged hem of a blown climbing rose around the Jack and Hammer’s windows, or the faded turquoise coat of the Jack up on the beam, simulating bangs with his mallet to count the hours.
The inside, however, still retained a bit of New Year’s cheer, largely because Dick Scroggs hadn’t as yet taken down the lines of colored lights around the door or from the big mirror behind the bar. Melrose got Scroggs’s attention-difficult, if Dick was buried in the paper-made a sign that he wanted a drink and walked through to where his comrades were seated round their table in the window. It was Trueblood’s turn to get the seat with cushions, and there he comfortably sat, to the left of Joanna Lewes.
Diane Demorney blew out a thin stream of smoke and said, “We saw you coming out of Theo’s. You know we said we were banning the place because of that library business.”
Melrose sat down. “Did we? I thought we were already banning it just on general principles.”
“We were going to make up placards and stand in front of the shop, I thought.”
“Speaking of banning,” said Melrose, “did you know there was a hunt in Sidbury?”
“For what?” asked Diane.
“A fox,” said Trueblood, firing up a match to light a small cigar. “They organized it a year or two ago. Probably to protest the protest. You know, all of these country folk are scared to death their privilege will be taken away.”
“According to Theo, there are a lot of animal-rights activists in Sidbury.”
“Oh,” said Diane, “those people who spray-paint fur coats. They sprayed my sable once, in front of Selfridge’s.”
“You’re kidding! What did you do?” asked Joanna.
“Bought another one.”
“I doubt,” said Melrose, “that’s how these people would want to be identified.”
Joanna looked thoughtful. “Or maybe they would.” Joanna was the author of some two dozen romance novels, which she had advised them all to steer clear of. (“Such drivel.”) She went on: “Maybe their need for publicity is what motivates them, not animal rights.”
Diane stepped in here. “If my cat had any more rights I’d be the one watching the bung hole nights and she’d be inside with brandy and a book.” She turned to Joanna. “Your latest is quite good, Joanna.” Upon Joanna’s telling them all they’d be wasting their time with her books, Diane had started reading them.
“Thank you. I just don’t think those are the rights they’re defending, or say they are.”
“How cynical,” said Trueblood.
Joanna turned to Diane. “You should do a bit of investigative reporting there, Diane. You work for the Sidbury paper.”
Diane “working” was an oxymoron. She was languor’s home, ennui’s back garden, apathy’s arbor. However, she did indeed pen the astrology column for that paper-the daily horoscope. Diane was impeded by only two things: she couldn’t write and she knew nothing about the stars. People loved the horoscope, though, for they believed it to be a tongue-in-cheek parody. Diane didn’t know any more about parody than she did about writing or the stars. “You mean go to one of those things and say what they’re doing?”
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.”
“You’ve a finely developed aesthetic sense, Diane.”
“Thanks. But actually, I just wanted to get one of these maps out of her, so I had to tell her I’d interview her. Who knows? It might be amusing.”
Diane’s highest priority. “Diane, you surprise me. You’re shifty. Devious.”
“I’ve always been devious.”
“There they are! View hal-looooo! Isn’t that what they yell?” Trueblood pulled the car over and they got out.
Hounds, and behind them horses were pouring over a stone wall, almost as one. Melrose could understand how country people could come all over John Peel-ish at the sight. He had forgotten what a visceral thrill the sight of pink coats and sleek horses could give one.
Diane didn’t get the camcorder going until they were a field away, whereupon they all got back in the car and followed the hunt for another quarter mile. Melrose yelled, “We just passed a group of people by a low stone wall.”
“Back up, Marshall.”
Trueblood reversed and stopped.
“That’s Eugenie,” said Diane, climbing out of the car. Then she turned back and dropped the leather bag from her shoulder and handed it to Trueblood.
“I’ve never worked one of these things.”
“It’s simple.” She removed it from the bag and pointed to a couple of buttons. “You just press this, then this. It just keeps rolling until you stop it, here.”
Trueblood shrugged, then put the camcorder on his shoulder and walked a little away. He began to feel quite the investigative photographer.
Eugenie St. Cyr-Jones was a large, stout woman in her early seventies. She was wearing a gray worsted suit of good cut, partially hidden by the white placard hanging around her neck, shouting its ambiguous message: HUNT IN, GOVERNMENT OUT! The woman beside her was introduced as Clarice St. John-Sims, and she was Eugenie St. Cyr-Jones’s diminutive opposite. She seemed to be there to take up the slack. Of what, Melrose couldn’t say. It must have been the names that provided the attraction between them, for he could see nothing else to explain it. Diane might have been the only person around who could have introduced the two of them (“Eugenie St. Cyr-Jones and Clarice St. John-Sims”) without even blinking. Diane was good at things like that, bits of useless-but accurately reported-information.
Eugenie St. Cyr-Jones looked as if she spent most of her days in a state of high dudgeon, which probably made her a good candidate for protesting the protest. Diane had a tape recorder going and up to Eugenie’s stormy face, a face that told the tale of many past protests.
While Trueblood moved the camcorder around to take in the scene, Diane suggested that Miss St. Cyr-Jones say a few words about her purpose in being here.
Eugenie St. Cyr-Jones had many more than a few words to say. “Should our government make the criminal error of trying to ban foxhunting they should be aware they’ll have a real battle on their hands. To pass such a bill would be to threaten the very livelihood of the country. People fail to see beyond the spectacle itself to the repercussions of such government interference. The antihunting contingent-” Here she waved her arm around a group that was steadily forming, hoping no doubt (as were hounds) that blood would be let before the morning was over.
The antihunting contingent stepped in, in the person of a boisterous middle-aged woman. “Spectacle! That’s all ’tis, just a bunch of country clowns huntin’ a poor animal to its bloody end.” Her hair looked fried in a pan, flat on top, frizzled on the sides.
Trueblood positioned his camera close up and then back to take in the entire group before his attention was caught by the promise of a melee out in the field. He moved in that direction.
The woman with the fried hair addressed Diane. “You ast’er this, ast’er ’ow she’d feel gettin’ tore up by a pack o’ them ’ounds! Ast’er!”
Diane smiled. “As you already have-” and looked at Eugenie St. Cyr-Jones.
Eugenie was clearly revolted by this person. “That’s so clearly a loaded argument. Listen to me: in Sidbury there’s a saddlery that employs a number of the local townspeople. It’s the way they earn their living. Now, how long would that business last-and that’s but one example-if the hunt was banned?”
Several of the onlookers exchanged words that Trueblood was hoping would turn into blows, but for the moment quieted down. He heard another commotion in the field, or the same one exacerbated. He turned to see that hounds were swarming. Had they homed in on the benighted Xavier? No, no, a horse must have caught its leg flying over the stone wall and gone down. Several black coats dismounted. Trueblood hoped the horse was all right; he didn’t care much about the rider. The horse rose and shook itself and wandered away, unattended by the rider for the rider and another hunt member seemed to be shouting. Trueblood pointed the camera in that direction. Now the pink-coated MFH unhorsed himself and moved quickly to this little nucleus of persons, ostensibly to quell the fight.
Horses, the most sensible of the lot, left to their own devices moved about in search of some tasty grazing place.
Trueblood loved it! There were the hounds roving off, snuffling the ground, mixing in and out between legs of horses and hunters, all of them having a rave-up, hounds and hunters alike. The horses quite sensibly ignored them.
How often had this sort of thing happened during a hunt? Never, he bet. It was a scoop! Behind him-and now he turned the camcorder back to the protesters-a well-dressed, sensible-looking man interrupted the woman with the fried hair.
“Naturally, one doesn’t enjoy the spectacle of a fox thrown to hounds, but what sticks in my throat is the sheer hypocrisy of some of your hunting-ban travelers. Some of them aren’t even charities, though they want you to believe they are.”
A theoretical argument. Who cares? Trueblood turned the camera off toward the right. Wonderful! Fists were flying! The master appeared now to be acting as referee. Oh, good! Someone in the group actually pushed him! Shouting! The rest of the hunt had dismounted now-their steeds making for the spot where their fellow horses were nibbling the frosty grass.
Hearing raised voices at his back, Trueblood turned around to get a look at the civilians, who appeared to be sheering off and scattering. Diane and Melrose were waving him toward the car.
“I got it all! Did you see it? The melee?”
“What melee in particular?” asked Melrose as he got in the car. “There seemed to be so many melees. But that bit was interesting, wasn’t it, about some of these groups’ advertising themselves as charities when they were really moneymaking concerns?”
“A documentary!” said Trueblood, starting the car. “I’m entering it for the BAFTA awards.”
Diane stabbed a cigarette into her black holder. “They’re so tiresome, aren’t they, these do-gooders, these protesters?” She sighed and turned so that Melrose could light the cigarette. Then she said, “It’s all a bit of a shambles, isn’t it?”
“Causes,” said Melrose. “There’s something really off-putting about causes.”
Trueblood nodded. “There’s something absolutely absurd about this marching and meeting and arguing and brawling.”
“If things start going wrong,” said Diane, “I agree with that writer-what’s his name? Raymond… Hammett? No, Dash something-”
“Dashiell Chandler?” offered Melrose. “Or it could be Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett? Anyway, you agree with what one of the three said. What was that?”
“Bring in a man with a gun.”
Mauricle had thought about her disappearance until Maurice had thought about her disappearance until thought seemed to liquefy and then evaporate, as if his brain could take only so much. He was sitting at Arthur Ryder’s big desk in the library, moving the leather swivel chair a half circle one way, a half circle the other. In his hand was the silver-framed photo of Nell, posed beside Samarkand. It was taken just before she disappeared. Fifteen years old. Was she as carefree as she looked in this picture? Was he?
He did not know his grandfather had entered the room until he spoke: “Maurice.”
“Oh, hi, Granddad.” Maurice set the silver frame back on his grandfather’s desk.
“You never stop, do you, son?” Arthur’s voice was as quiet as moths beating against a blind and his expression just as futile.
To Maurice, his grandfather sounded very tired. He said so. “You should slow down.”
Arthur Ryder slumped into the big leather chair beside his desk and gave a short laugh. “Maurice, if I slowed down any more I’d be in a coma.”
“Oh, sure. Right.”
“It’s all this whittling.” Arthur smiled and put his pocket-knife on the desk along with the small piece of wood he’d been working on.
Maurice picked it up, turned it. “What is it?” “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That’s what I aim for.”
Maurice ran his thumb over the side. “But it’s such a good nothing. The design is good.”
Arthur laughed more heartily than he had before. “Maurice, I swear you’re the only sixteen-year-old diplomat I know.” Then Arthur thought, truly bloody kind, Maurice is. But kindness has a price; it makes a person thin skinned, empathy does.
“It’s just nerves,” said Arthur, inclining his head toward the bit of wood. “Just a nervous habit.” Not quite true. It gave him something to look at other than the eyes of the person he was talking to. He found it difficult to look people in the eyes. Not Maurice, of course, and not Vernon. But others. It’s like cats, isn’t it? If they look you in the eyes and blink, doesn’t it mean they trust you? Arthur did very little blinking; he just whittled away, blew the sawdust and tiny bits off the knife and the wood.
The phone rang and he picked it up, listened and said to Maurice, “Give me that stud book; it’s on that first shelf. Thanks.” Arthur flipped to the last page on which were written names and dates, and said, “If it’s just the one time, you can have On Your Mark,… that’s a hundred thousand, one-twenty-five if you want a guaranteed foal… No. Samarkand? Of course not, Colin. He needs a rest.” Arthur chuckled. “Maybe you and I don’t, but then we didn’t spend ten years of our lives in the winner’s circle, did we?… No, I don’t mean you’d get On Your Mark for just the one time; of course you can try two or three times. Like taking your coffee back for a refill… Hell, Colin, of course it’s a lot of money; you talk as if you’d never done this before. I know it’s a lot of money, you also know On Your Mark won the 2000, the St. Leger, the Derby and a lot of other races here and in France.” This was said without a trace of rancor. After a few more exchanges, Arthur rang off.
“Colin Biers would have all of the stallions in my stables lined up for a crack at his mare to make sure he got another Honorbound.” He leaned his head against the back of the chair and studied the ceiling. “I wonder what it would take to make another one.” Arthur thought of that wondrous horse who not only had won every high-stakes race he’d been entered in, but who also had one of the mildest temperaments imaginable. Everyone loved Honorbound. The horse stood at Cavalier Farm, whose trainer, Keegan, would complain loudly to Charlie Davison that Truitt (who owned Cavalier) was making money hand over fist from Honorbound’s seasons. “Works the horse to bloody death, the bastard” is what Keegan had said to Arthur many times. He was getting two hundred thousand per season and selling seasons to more than eighty or ninety applicants. The man was raking in millions. “The greedy bastard,” said Keegan. “One of the greatest Thoroughbreds to run the course and that bastard has him mating with eighty mares a season. That horse,” said Keegan, “could tell me anything I wanted to know about handling him right. Maybe he was training me, instead of my training him. He was a regular horse whisperer. All I had to do was keep my ears open.” Keegan had kept asking Arthur Ryder to talk to Truitt, get him to see reason, to cut back on Honorbound’s seasons.
“You did,” said Maurice. “How?”
“It wasn’t hard; it was simple, really. I told him he’d be flooding the market with Honorbound foals. We’d already seen some of the best, like Lillywhite, and all winners of stakes races, two of them won the Derby. Honorbound’s worth his weight in gold. I expect he’s smart to have that stall fitted out with a smoke detector, a fire detector and that thing that measures a rise in heat. To say nothing of the sprinkler system. Most elaborate I’ve ever seen. The stud fee went up to a quarter million. Vernon has talked about it enough, the money in selling seasons and shares. Reason tells you that the fewer foals, the more valuable each is; the more, the less valuable. It’s supply and demand, that’s all. Money’s the only language Truitt understands.” Arthur smiled. “Vern wanted to do it himself; he loves talking about money.”
“You don’t think Vernon’s like that, do you?”
Arthur laughed. “Oh, God, no.”
“Did Dad ever ride Honorbound?” He knew the answer; he just liked to talk about his father.
“Rode him at Ainslee. Truitt always tried to get Danny away from me, the twerp. Even though Danny was my own son. Truitt and Anderson, two of a kind.”
“What was Dad’s favorite ride?”
Arthur thought for a moment. “I think it depended on the race. Beautiful Dreamer, when he rode him in the 2000. Then Aqueduct in the Grand National. I’ll never forget that race. There’s never been a horse more relentless than Aqueduct. Watching him over those hurdles was like watching lava pour over rocks.”
Maurice had propped his chin in his hands, listening. Ordinarily, his grandfather was a taciturn man, but that was because of Danny’s death and Nell’s disappearance.
Out of the blue, Arthur said, “Did you know Vernon hired a private investigator to look for Nell?”
“No.” Maurice frowned.
Arthur nodded. “Vern’s kept him at it for a year and a half. As far as I know, he’s still at it. The man talked to people at every horse farm in Cambridgeshire, I think. Didn’t get a hell of a lot of cooperation, but he tried. At Anderson’s he had to palm himself off as an insurance investigator so he could get a look at the stables.”
Maurice was thoughtful for a while, then said, “I’m going to London to see Vernon.” He stood up.
“You mean now?”
“Yes, I think I will.”
“It’s been nearly two years, Maurice-don’t forget.”
“How could I forget, Granddad?”
It took only an hour from Cambridge to Paddington and another three quarters of an hour on the Circle Line to the City. He could have driven one of the farm’s cars. His granddad never gave him a hard time about that and, consequently, Maurice didn’t feel he had to prove he was capable of driving in London. He wasn’t. A lot of people felt incapable of driving in London.
Vernon Rice worked in the City. Vernon probably wouldn’t call it work, not what he did. “I sit around making things up. Daydreaming, you could call it.”
“What sorts of things?”
“New companies. I look around and see what isn’t and then bring it into being.”
“Sounds like God.”
They both laughed. This made Maurice feel exceptionally good-that he could make Vernon laugh so hard-because he thought Vernon was really cool, and he liked the idea he could provoke such laughter.
He liked the office. It had a clean, uncluttered look, a lot of chrome, a lot of glass, Eames chairs and tables, an unburdened place.
Maurice liked the receptionist, too. Or secretary, he wasn’t sure which. She was good-looking and sleek like the office. He had little experience of designer clothes, but he bet the dark-gray suit didn’t come from Debenhams. She had smooth dark hair, an ivory complexion and didn’t bother with costume jewelry; the only piece she wore was her watch, a thin curve that seemed to float on her wrist. He did not mind sitting here and looking at her and at this anteroom until Vernon was off the telephone. He sighed. It looked like a glamorous life he led. Maurice would have envied him like hell if there had been horses in it. But as there weren’t, Maurice didn’t think Vernon all that fortunate. Glamorous, maybe, but, in this one way, unfortunate. Maurice couldn’t imagine life without Samarkand and Criminal Type and Beautiful Dreamer. He supposed that was what some people meant by something’s being in your blood.
“He’s off the phone,” said Samantha, smiling.
But before she could get up to show Maurice in, Vernon had opened the door to his office. “Maurice! For God’s sake, what are you doing in this horseless city? Come on in.”
Maurice blushed a little. He usually did in the first few moments of meeting Vernon. It was probably because he felt somewhat clumsy and awkward.
“When was the last time you were ever in London? You don’t like the place-go on, sit down.” Vernon indicated one of the chrome and leather chairs. “Can you stay for dinner? My favorite restaurant’s in South Ken. Ever been to Aubergine?”
Maurice smiled and shook his head. It was like Vernon to treat him as a crony, not as some kid of sixteen. As if he, Maurice, were a fellow traveler in the seeking out of three-star restaurants. “The only one I’ve been to is the Angus Steakhouse. Don’t go.”
“Glad you dropped me the tip. Speaking of tips, I can put you into a great fund that’s paying eighteen and a half percent and is going public anytime now.” Vernon checked his watch in case that time might be passing before his eyes and out the door. “Better still, and more up your alley, you can buy five or ten percent of a syndicate for a great horse-”
Maurice held up his hands, palms out as if backing away. “You’re kidding, aren’t you, Vern? You know I don’t have any money.”
Vernon gave him a disbelieving look. “Money? Who said money? You buy short and wait-”
He was interrupted by Bobby, who came in, said hello to Maurice, dropped a paper onto Vernon’s desk, said good-bye and walked out.
Vernon said, “Bobby’s only twenty-two, he’s been here since he was eighteen and he’s already made himself a small fortune. If you ever need a break from the horses…”
“Can you imagine me doing this?” Then he was worried he might be insulting Vernon and his offer. “What I mean is-”
“Can you imagine him”-Vernon nodded toward the door through which Bobby had lately gone-“who ran into me when he was on a skateboard? He started talking about hedge funds and mergers. He talked about stock in a new company I hadn’t even got reports on. I hired him.”
Maurice was surprised at his own reaction to this talk about Bobby. He was jealous. He must see Vernon as an older brother, which he was-a stepbrother. But that didn’t count as much as Vernon hadn’t come on the scene until he was thirty-two or -three. Maybe Vernon had always thought of Maurice as a younger brother. Still, it was odd that Vernon, a relative stranger, coming in from the outside, and in so few years, could lay claim to family feeling. Maurice realized now how rich his life had been before his father’s death, before Nell’s disappearance.
“Why is it I get the impression you’re not thinking about syndicating your horses?”
“Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about Dad. And-” Maurice looked at his shoes; they seemed to be falling apart.
“Nell,” said Vernon.
Maurice looked up quickly. “How’d you know?”
“What else is there to think about?”
If Maurice hadn’t known about Leon Stone, he would have been surprised by this statement and by Vernon’s intensity. “You’re really serious about finding her. Granddad told me about the private detective you had looking for her.”
Vernon nodded. He seemed to have lost his earlier buoyancy; he looked older by several years.
“You really care about Nell.”
Again, Vernon nodded. “I do.” He smiled. “Come on, let’s have dinner. You can stay the night at my place. I’ll tell the girls to go.”
“Not all of them, I hope.” Maurice was back to feeling comfortable now. And he wondered why Vernon had never married.
Did he always tell the girls to go?
“She’s not dead,” said Vernon, after a considering silence, in answer to Maurice’s question.
“Why are you so sure?”
Over a plate of his favorite duck in Aubergine, Vernon studied him, or seemed to; he could as well be studying the banquette behind Maurice or the air around him. “Because it doesn’t feel like it. Does it to you?”
Maurice did not know how to answer this. He seemed at the moment to be out of touch with his feelings, as if they had retreated at Vernon’s question. “Well… I can’t believe it. I can’t believe she’s gone forever, if that’s what you mean.”
“Not exactly.” Vernon speared a bite of roast potato.
“Hard to explain.”
Maurice smiled. “It just sounds kind of mystical, I mean, coming from you.”
“Me, the chaser of the almighty pound, dollar, yen and deutsche mark?”
Maurice colored slightly. “No, no. Well… only in a way. You seem so grounded, so, ah, practical.”
“Money’s a by-product, Maury. Not that I’m indifferent to it, God, no. Without money I couldn’t eat here every week. But it’s not what keeps me going back to the table. What attracts me to the market is its craziness, its unpredictability. The whole thing’s a game where you can win big or lose your shirt. All of these market analysts-if they were sure of their own predictions, why in hell would they be telling people? They’d be out there, buying and selling themselves. No, if I wasn’t in this business, I’d be a compulsive gambler.”
“As in poker? Remember those games we played? Nell always won.”
“She’s got a winning mind.”
The waiter came to pour more wine. The service here was so perfect that the diner was only partly aware of the waiters’ presence, as if they drifted in and out like dream images.
“This Leon Stone, Vernon, what does he think happened? I mean, didn’t he come up with some kind of answer to how whoever did it knew Nell would be in the stable?”
“Not really.” Vernon shrugged. “He did wonder if there’d be reason for someone in the family to stage this abduction. But what could possibly be the motive? Even assuming someone could be that cold-blooded, the motive wasn’t money, obviously. No. Stone thinks that whoever came didn’t know Nell would be there. Stone thinks he-for he’s pretty certain there was only one person-came to take one or more of the horses: Samarkand, Beautiful Dreamer or Aqueduct. Nell woke up and heard him, then saw him. She was a danger to him, so he took her with him.”
“He thinks the person came for the horse?”
Vernon nodded. He shoved back his empty plate and crossed his arms on the table. “Listen, Maury: in what I do, you have to be able to imagine very strange things. Take what I mentioned earlier: you think the stock of some given company is going down, down, down. You sell short, meaning you borrow shares from another account, believing you’ll make money when the stock plummets and you’ll be able to replace the borrowed shares with the ones you bought at a lower price. That’s strange, isn’t it? Hard to imagine? You’re not even using your own money. It’s all on paper.”
“So what you’re saying is you have to think of weird possibilities.”
“I can suggest one: she wants to stay at this place.”
Maurice’s mouth dropped open. “Wants to stay? Wants to? How could she possibly-”
“Think something was more important than you?” Maurice colored deeply. “I don’t mean-”
“Why not? You’re her best friend, after all. Anything that would keep Nellie away from the stud farm would have to be powerful.”
Maurice poked his steak around, still smarting from Vernon’s idea. “Next you’re going to say she fell in love with her captors.”
Vernon spread his arms. “The Stockholm syndrome. You’re catching on.”
Irritated, Maurice stabbed at his steak. “You mean kidnap victims have actually done that?”
Vernon nodded. “It’s happened.”
“Come on, Vernon. Why not go with the most logical, reasonable answer? She’s dead.” He looked across the table. Of course he didn’t want Vernon to accept that answer. He wanted Vernon to convince him there was another answer. Any other answer. Any other.
“The thing is, Maury, people don’t respond logically or reasonably most of the time. I mean it. Hell, look at what I do for a living-”
But Maurice was following his former train of thought. “Don’t tell me that in a year and a half, she couldn’t have escaped.” He felt angry now, angry not so much at Vernon as at Nell.
“I’m not telling you. That’s what I’ve been saying: maybe she didn’t want to.”
“But why?”
“I don’t know. Only, remember, they had Aqueduct.”
“You’re not saying she’d stay on account of a horse?”
“I don’t know, Maurice. Nellie had an incredibly strong bond with those horses.”
There was a silence.
“The last time I saw her, she was fifteen,” said Vernon. “She’s seventeen now and, damn it, I want to see her again.”
“We may never see her again.”
Vernon shook his head. “No. She’ll walk in someday. You’ll turn around and she’ll be there.” He reached across the table and put his hand on Maurice’s arm. “You’ll see. She’ll just walk in.”