“Jung probably would. Collective unconscious or something.”
“Meat loaf in the collective unconscious? Why doesn’t that sound right?” Just then Melrose realized he was speaking in very personal terms. To how many people had he ever confessed homesickness?
Was this Rice’s secret? Was he himself so honest and so engaging he made you want to come clean? In this way he reminded Melrose of Richard Jury. It was the gift. He thought about this and thought he’d like to see them together, outcharming each other. For it was charm, a whole vat of it. He smiled, thinking of James Joyce.
“Why are you smiling?”
“James Joyce and Samuel Beckett could sit in a room and say nothing to each other for endless periods. I’ve always thought that was as good as companionship gets.”
“I agree.” Vernon frowned, considering. “Want to try it?”
Melrose laughed out loud. “Do I want to try it? Sit here for a half an hour saying nothing? If I’d walked in with a guillotine, would you want to try that, too? And don’t pretend to think about it.”
Vernon laughed as the waiter, dressed in an olive drab T-shirt and black jeans, came to take their order. Grilled sea bass. Meat loaf and mashed potatoes.
“Tell me about your plans for Aggrieved. He’s a wonderful horse, incidentally.”
Sorry that the talk of the murder had made a detour back to the horse, Melrose said, “He was talking about the business end, syndicating one or two of his horses.”
“Right. It’s the best thing he could do, but he doesn’t want to. He seems to look at that as filthy lucre, you know.”
“Well, he also told me the idea of selling ‘seasons,’ which he apparently does.”
Vemon nodded. “He does, but not enough. Says he doesn’t want his stallions overtaxed.”
“An interesting way of putting it. Anyway, I thought perhaps you could help me do this for Aggrieved. Sell seasons.”
“Why? You don’t strike me as in need of capital. Not with what you paid for that horse.”
Melrose didn’t comment on his need, rightly assessed by Rice. “Aggrieved has a very famous bloodline. I should think it would be easy.”
Vernon shook his head. “Not really, not if you don’t have a working stud farm. See, when an owner buys what we call seasons, in this instance for Aggrieved, and if something happens to the horse, he’d expect to be switched to another equally valuable horse or have his money back. I think you’d be better off waiting. If you did it now, not understanding what’s involved, you’d just be buying yourself a headache. Believe me. Ryder’s business is a tricky one. Worse than farming in its unpredictability. When you acquire other horses, it would be best to stable them with a reliable stud farm and a reliable trainer. That’s what most owners do.”
Melrose opened his mouth to argue, as if he really were serious about this horse business, realized he wasn’t and closed his mouth. One could be convinced at times one’s lies were the truth.
The waiter was setting down their plates and Melrose bathed his face in the fragrant steam rising from his meat loaf. “I’ll give it some thought.” Then, as if suddenly recalling it, he said, “I got there just as the woman’s body was loaded into the ambulance. Murder has a way of making other subjects irrelevant.”
“Well, this one’s as peculiar as hell. Cambridge police want me up there this evening to have a look at the body, see if I know her. From Arthur’s description, she doesn’t sound familiar. I admit I’m curious as hell.” He shrugged. “But my car’s in the shop. I’ll rent a car, I suppose.”
Melrose could hardly believe his luck! “Cambridge isn’t far. I could easily run you there.”
Vernon laughed. “You kidding? That’s damned nice of you.”
“Not at all, not at all.” Melrose refilled their glasses with a very good Brunello, saying, “And I confess, like you, I’m curious. I’ve never been on the spot when somebody’s been murdered and that she was found lying in the middle of the racecourse was really, well, weird; it couldn’t have been an accident.”
“Hardly. When Arthur called to tell me, before the words ‘body on the course’ were spoken, I froze. I thought it might be Nellie.” Vernon stopped eating and stared out over the tables and the plants, transfixed.
“The granddaughter?”
Vernon looked at Melrose absently, as if trying to place him, and said, “Nearly two years ago she was kidnapped or abducted, according to the police.” He turned his eyes on his plate, but didn’t raise his fork.
“My God, but your family is not the luckiest around. Mr. Ryder told me a little about that kidnapping; he said there was never a ransom demand.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s a very strange story.”
Vernon nodded. “They also took one of Arthur’s great Thoroughbreds, a horse named Aqueduct. We assume Nellie saw or heard them-she was in the stable herself, you see, looking after a sick horse-and they took her to keep her quiet.”
“Why take this particular horse, Aqueduct?”
“Aqueduct’s a valuable ’chaser. But they couldn’t have raced him under some fictitious name, unless they’d gone to a lot of trouble to make sure he wasn’t recognized. Even then, George Davison-the trainer-would have known. George could have told from the horse’s performance. He’s amazing that way. Aqueduct could have been stolen for breeding purposes. His progeny have certainly measured up, won a lot of top races. But this wouldn’t explain it because they couldn’t put down Aqueduct as the sire.”
Vernon had given up all pretense of eating now and was sitting back with his wineglass in his hand. He kept raising it and replacing it on the table, untouched. He seemed to have given up the pretense of drinking, too. “So-?”
Melrose took his last bite of meat loaf, sorry to see it go, and pushed his clean-as-a-whistle plate away. “To do something to the whole stable? To all of the Thoroughbreds? Or to do something to your stepfather? The only person who saw what happened was the granddaughter. Everything else is speculation, an attempt at reconstruction. For all anyone knows they could have come for completely different reasons than you think.”
“I suppose you’re right. But you have to start somewhere, and we started with what went missing. Aqueduct. Nellie.”
“That’s reasonable.”
For the first time that afternoon, Vernon looked defeated. “She’s not dead.”
“Even after twenty months?”
“Even so. She’s not dead.”
“You seem so sure.”
“I am.” He returned to his cold plate then and cut off a bit of his cold fish, chewed it, swallowed. “I hardly knew her.”
That, thought Melrose, was the first indication of self-deception. He had known her, all right, just as Melrose felt he himself knew her after nothing but seeing her picture.
Vernon cut off another bite and chewed it. He looked as if he were eating ashes.
TWENTY-ONE
He had been sitting in the Bentley for twenty minutes parked on a double-yellow line, wondering how he could get a look at the body and how he could get past the policeman in reception. Not being a relative or a witness himself, it would be impossible. He had been there, though, in the aftermath, when the stretcher had come out of the woods. And he had been seen to be there by the detectives.
Melrose got out of the car and leaned against it, quietly smoking. He looked around for a call box and didn’t see one. Jury might have some ideas about all of this if he could get him on the telephone. By now, Hannibal surely must have returned his telephone privileges. Why did Jury put up with it?
There was a pub down the street and of course they’d have a telephone. He searched his person and then his car for paper to write on. All he salvaged from the glove compartment was a theater program for Cats. Cats? When in God’s name had he ever seen Cats? He wouldn’t see Cats if someone threatened to swing him like one. Then why was he looking at this theater program as if he had? He frowned. What was he thinking?