Another Diane nugget.
“I can sympathize with greed, but why anyone would want to engage in a thing that needs management, I can’t imagine.” She seemed to be brooding over her drink.
Vivian asked, “But where are you going to race him, Melrose?”
“Well…” He should have given this more thought. Newmarket? That was in Cambridgeshire. “Newmarket, possibly. I’m going to have to get advice from the Ryder trainer.”
“You know, Melrose,” Diane said, screwing another cigarette into her black holder, “you could have a nice little horse enterprise yourself with all of that land of yours.”
“I could plant cotton, too, but I’m not going to.”
“Don’t be a stick. Imagine what fun it would be for all of us. You’ve enough land there for an honest-to-God racecourse.”
“And put up stands and have a few turf accountants around and a full bar?”
“Certainly, a bar. The rest is optional.”
“Diane,” said Vivian, “if I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were serious.”
“Of course I’m serious.” She returned her look to Melrose. “Or-”
“ ‘Or’?”
“Is-what’d you say your horse’s name is?”
“Aggrieved.”
“You can rename it. Thunderbolt-there’s a good name.”
“Why on earth would I do that? Aggrieved is a high-stakes winner.”
She waggled her cigarette holder at him. “For heaven’s sake, Melrose, you don’t want people knowing that; you don’t want to give the whole bloody thing away. The idea is to get odds of say fifty to one and make a packet of money.”
“If the odds were like that, old fish,” said Trueblood, “hardly anyone would bet on him and who’d do the payout?”
“Whoever is used to doing it. I don’t know; I’ve never been much of a gambler. I mean except in the London clubs, such as they are.” She shrugged and sat back. “What you could do then is join the National Hunt.”
“No, I could not. I don’t ride-” Recalling what he felt had been a very encouraging canter, well, almost a canter that morning, he added, “I mean I don’t ride that well…”
Trueblood leaned forward. “But it’d be a great follow-up to this!” Trueblood tapped his knuckles on the paper. “I mean, it’d drive Agatha mad and the other so-called animal-rights person, that snake, Theo Wrenn Browne.”
“Him?” said Vivian, surprised. “Since when has he ever liked animals at all? He’s always kicking at Ada Crisp’s dog and if anyone in the village tries to go into that bookshop with his pet, Theo drives them out. He hates animals.” Then to Melrose: “How’s Richard? Is he better?”
“He is indeed.”
“Ah! Richard Jury!” said Diane. “Is he recovered?”
“Recovered, at least enough to leave the hospital tomorrow. He’s coming here to rest up.”
Diane actually spilled a few drops of her drink, bringing the glass down on the table in martini applause. “Wonderful!”
“He said he might have to spend a night in Islington to give his two doting neighbors a chance to take care of him.”
“Everybody wants a piece of him,” said Trueblood, signaling to Dick Scroggs for refills.
“How true,” said Diane.
“You’d devour him where he stands,” said Trueblood.
“He’s highly devourable,” said Diane.
TWENTY-SIX
Even had she not taken an oath to succor her fellow-man, Chrissie King would have done it anyway, and she stood in the door to Jury’s room wishing she could.
“Chrissie, would you mind pounding some life into these pillows?”
“Oh… of course! Sorry, I was… my mind was wandering…” She rushed to the bed as if he’d called for artificial respiration. (Didn’t she just wish!) She pulled and padded and resettled the pillows.
“Thanks, Chrissie. You pulled duty tonight instead of Miss Brown?”
She nodded. Actually, she bought the duty for twenty pounds in addition to picking up Sara Brown’s duty tomorrow afternoon with a churlish patient Nurse Brown especially disliked.
“Can’t say I’m sorry. I expect it must be a waste of time for you to have to tend to someone like me who’s really okay now.”
Chrissie’s words rushed out as if in advance of the voice to utter them. “Oh, but you’re not all that okay. I mean it’s not you’re really sick or anything. But with what you’ve been through…” Her head tilted nearly to her own shoulder as she looked at him.
Jury hid a smile. Chrissie wanted him unrecovered, too, just as Hannibal did, for wholly different reasons. “Dr. Ryder seems to think I am; he needs the bed. God knows, he needs this private room. So he’s tossing me out tomorrow afternoon. I hope I’m not spoiling an evening out for you. You must have boyfriends to spare.”
What, Chrissie wondered, were they? Boyfriends?
She had a way of shaking and nodding her head at the same time that intrigued Jury. “No? Yes?” He tried to mimic the head shaking by way of keeping her company. He wasn’t flirting with her; at least, he didn’t mean to be. Rather, he was attuning himself to her. It was a way he had-born with it or developed it-from years of questioning suspects, in those cases to discomfit them, in Chrissie’s case to comfort.
Jury was aware that he insinuated himself into the lives of witnesses and suspects, but that really was the only way of going about it. It was the only way to see the skull beneath the skin. He had to admit he encouraged the attachment people had to him. It might have been something like transference, that psychiatric tool. But the psychiatrist was trained to remain uninvolved, like a target transfixed to a spot while the rifle sought to pick him out of the shadows.
That image of gunplay brought the whole awful incident on the dock back to him. Poor Mickey.
“Is something wrong?” asked Chrissie. “Shall I get Dr. Ryder?”
“No, no. I’m just tired, a little.”
“Then I’ll leave,” she said sadly.
“No, don’t. It’s me I’m tired of. All of this self-involvement. I’m not tired of you. Listen: pull up a chair, will you? Tell me about yourself.”
Even had there been screams for her attention all up and down the corridor beyond the door, Chrissie King would have pulled up a chair.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The next day, Jury was dressed and packed and sitting with Wiggins waiting for his doctor.
“Hannibal,” said Wiggins, “has given me this list of medications and instructions and what to do if certain things occur, you know, like falling off a cliff or running from stampeding elephants.”
Jury laughed. Wiggins seldom made jokes in this way. Roger Ryder walked in with, unfortunately, Hannibal, who for some reason attached herself to Wiggins.
Dr. Ryder said, “Superintendent, you’re good as new. How do you feel?”
“Better than as good as.”
“All you need to do is watch that bandage-” He pointed to Jury’s midsection. “And don’t do any rowing, will you?”
“I’ll make an effort to resist.”
Ryder smiled. “Don’t make an effort, either.”
Laughter? They looked over to see Hannibal in a near fit of laughter. What was it, Jury wondered, about Sergeant Wiggins that had this effect on others? He was hardly a bon vivant. But he seemed to reverse a natural inclination in others-turn sour sweet, make water run backward, find some hidden spring. Jury smiled. Wiggins would have made a swell dowser.
Jury took Ryder’s arm and led him out of earshot. “There’s something I really would like to do. I’d like to look for your daughter.”