“What are you doing?” said Melrose. “By the time we get to the Jack and Hammer it’ll be closed again. We don’t keep London hours here. Well, maybe we could, but Dick Scroggs won’t keep them.”
They started walking again. “I was just thinking about the first time I came here.”
“Few things are more dangerous than that.”
They were walking along Long Piddleton’s main street now. “What do you mean, dangerous?” asked Jury.
“We make these minute revisions, look at it from a slightly different angle: that pond, that bench there or not, whatever it was that made it more desirable, its loss more bitter. Memory’s plague causes unnecessary suffering.”
Jury stopped short. “What in hell are you talking about? When did you start finding memory so finely nuanced?”
Melrose pursed his lips. “Since I saw it might get us from the green to the Jack and Hammer without your stopping and gawking every two minutes. And”-he spread his arms-“here we are!”
And here they were, too, still having misgivings about Jury’s survival, so that to see him walk in was a real thrill.
“I quite liked that other case,” said Diane to Jury, “except, of course, for that shooting at the end of it. Anyway, I’m not one to talk. I hit Melrose’s vodka. His last bottle, I might add.”
Melrose asked Jury, “Can I tell them about the vanished girl?”
“Go ahead. It’s not a Scotland Yard matter. It isn’t really a case.”
“Okay.” He turned to an audience already turned to him as if he had brought a lifesaving draft. “This all happened when I was in the Grave Maurice-”
“Where’s that?” asked Trueblood.
“A pub across the street from the Royal London Hospital.”
“Ah, that’s where Superintendent Jury was,” said Diane. “I remember sending a wreath of roses.”
“Are you going to keep interrupting?”
No one spoke.
Melrose told them about the vanished girl.
At the end of this brief account, Vivian Rivington, with Agatha behind her, appeared in the sun-splashed doorway of the Jack and Hammer like a ray of hope, a thing Jury had given up on, lying on that dock in the dark. He could still see the stars in that implacable night sky. He smiled. It was hard to give up on Vivian. He wondered if her Italian count was gone for good.
“Richard!”
Her look was a mixture of wonder and relief. Perhaps she wouldn’t believe he was alive until she saw him. “Hello, Vivian.” He went to meet her and gave her a kiss on the cheek that she didn’t seem to know what to do with. Then, suddenly, she threw her arms around him. He returned this heartfelt hug.
Diana, seeing her glass was empty, handed it off to Dick for another.
Trueblood then raised his. “To your long and happy life, Superintendent.”
Diane said, “I could have warned you that night was fraught with danger.”
“Oh, it was fraught all right. So why didn’t you? Warn me, I mean?”
“You didn’t ask me, did you?”
Jury laughed. “I guess I didn’t.”
“The stars! The stars!” proclaimed Agatha, as if she were finished with their wastrel ways.
“How are you, Lady Ardry?” Jury reached his hand across the table to clasp hers.
Put out by Melrose’s adamant direction that she was not to turn up at Ardry End this morning, she waggled her finger at Jury. “You cheated me out of my morning coffee, Superintendent.”
“So here you are having your morning whiskey,” said Melrose.
She tried to numb him with a look and, as usual, failed.
Eagerly, Joanna said to Jury, “Tell us, tell us! This boy and his dog-”
Jury smiled. “It should be the dog and his boy. That’s one damned smart dog. I was lying there for what was probably only a few minutes, but felt a lifetime-”
Agatha butted in to stall the story, annoyed she hadn’t heard this account before the others over morning coffee. “And did your whole life pass before you?”
“No,” he lied, not wanting to talk about it.
Joanna leaned toward Jury. “What was it like, nearly dying?”
Jury wanted to say terrifying; he had wanted to be terrified. Instead, what he had felt was the lure of the dark. He wondered how it was that inconsequential things came back to one at such moments. Because, he reasoned, they weren’t inconsequential. He looked up to see five pairs of eyes, expectant.
“Terrified,” he said.
“This case you’re working on,” said Diane.
“It’s not a case. It’s not my case, certainly.”
“Never mind. I’ve got a theory.”
“Oh, good,” said Melrose. “Scotland Yard can go back to bed.”
Diane plowed on. “This girl that’s gone missing probably went off with her boyfriend, who’d told her they’d get married and when he just up and left her, she was too ashamed to go back home. It’s not the leaving that’s significant. It’s the not coming back.”
They all looked at her. Trueblood said, “Diane, that’s one of the most Victorian scenarios I’ve ever heard.”
“It sounds,” said Joanna, “like one of mine.”
“At this point,” said Jury, “it’s as good as any other.” He smiled at her.
“Then what’s your theory?” asked Diane. “White slavery?”
Trueblood said, “Aren’t we ignoring the most obvious explanation? She’s dead. It’s the only thing that makes sense. There was no ransom demand because she’s dead, maybe an accident, something the abductors didn’t intend-” He shrugged away the rest of the scene.
“She’s not dead.” Jury said it before he could stop himself.
Several pairs of eyes regarded him.
“How is it,” asked Melrose, “you’re so sure of that?” Jury picked up his beer. He didn’t answer.
“I like your idea of recuperating,” said Melrose.
“I’m not doing the driving. I’m just sitting here, enjoying the scenery.”
“We’re on the M1. There isn’t any scenery.”
Jury slid a few inches down in his seat. “I love this car.”
“You can’t have it.”
“While I’m talking to Vernon Rice, where are you going to be?”
“Oh, I’ll ‘hang’ as they say in the Grave Maurice. Unless you want me to come with you?” His tone was hopeful.
“No. You’ve already talked to him. Both of us would be intimidating. Anyway, he doesn’t know you know me.”
“Of course he does. He’s Roger Ryder’s stepbrother.”
“Yes, but he doesn’t know we have any working relationship. As far as Rice is concerned, you’re just some aristocratic oddball.”
“Thanks. Just remember, I had lunch with him. I mean we had quite a good conversation going.” He shook his head. “I just don’t get it that you don’t like him.”
“I didn’t say that. Did I say that?”
“Oh, don’t be as thick as two posts. You know you don’t like him. But there’s one thing you have in common.”
“What?”
“You don’t believe Nell Ryder’s dead.”
THIRTY-TWO
Jury sat on Vernon Rice’s sofa and understood what Melrose had meant. It was slimmed-down, pared-down luxury. The furniture was Italian or German or both, the colors muted, the lines clean. The chair he sat in, although its angles had looked forbidding, was superbly comfortable. He decided he preferred his own ramshackle flat with its Early Oxfam appointments, which was just as well, since he wasn’t getting this one.
Of course it overlooked the Thames, one of those breath-taking views estate agents were always advertising that usually turned out to be a small slice of the river if you held your head in a certain way. But this view answered all of the demands of “breathtaking.” Right now the descending sun turned the pocked surface of the Thames to hammered gold.