Missing Joseph

by Elizabeth George

  “What was his name?”

  Maggie shrugged.

  “You don’t know because he didn’t have a name. Or maybe she didn’t know it. Because you’re a bastard.”

  “Pam!” Josie took a quick step forward, with the eyeliner bottle closed in her fist.

  “What?”

  “Watch your mouth.”

  Pam flipped back her hair with a languid movement of her hand. “Oh, stop the drama, Josie. You can’t tell me that you believe all this rot about race car drivers and mummies running off and daddies out looking for their darling little girls for the next thirteen years.”

  Maggie felt the room growing larger about her, felt herself shrinking with a hollowness inside. She looked at Josie but couldn’t quite see her because she seemed to be standing in a mist.

  “If they were married at all,” Pam was continuing conversationally, “she probably gave him his cards along with some parsnip at dinner one night.”

  “Pam!”

  Maggie pushed herself against the door and from there to her feet. She said, “I have to be going, I think. Mummy will be wondering—”

  “God knows we wouldn’t want that,” Pam said.

  Their coats were in a pile on the floor. Maggie pulled hers out but could not make her fingers and hands work well enough to get it on. It didn’t matter. She was feeling rather hot.

  She threw open the door and hurried down the stairs. She heard Pam saying with a laugh, “Nick Ware better watch he doesn’t cross Maggie’s mum.”

  And Josie responding, “Oh, shove it, won’t you?” before she came clattering down the stairs herself. “Maggie!” she called.

  Out on the street it was dark. A cold breeze from the west funnelled down the road from north Yorkshire and turned into a gust at the centre of the village where Crofters Inn and Pam’s house stood. Maggie blinked and wiped the wet from beneath her eyes as she thrust one arm into her coat and started walking.

  “Maggie!” Josie caught her up less than ten steps from Pam’s front door. “It’s not what you think. I mean it is, but it isn’t. I didn’t know you good then. Pam and I talked. I told her about your dad, it’s true, but that’s all I ever told her. I swear it.”

  “It was wrong of you to tell.”

  Josie dragged her to a halt. “It was. Yes, yes. But I didn’t tell her in fun. I wasn’t making fun. I told her ’cause it made us alike, you and me.”

  “We aren’t alike. Mr. Wragg’s your father, and you know it, Josie.”

  “Oh, maybe he is. That would be my luck, wouldn’t it? Mum running off with Paddy Lewis and me stuck in Winslough with Mr. Wragg. But that’s not what I mean. I mean we dream. We’re different. We think bigger thoughts. We got our sights set on stuff bigger than this village. I used you as a point of illustration, see? I said, I’m not the only one, Pamela Bammela. Maggie has thoughts about her dad too. And she wanted to know what your thoughts were and I told her and I shouldn’t have. But I wasn’t making fun.”

  “She knows about Nick.”

  “Never! Not from me. I never said a word and I never will.”

  “Then why does she ask?”

  “Because she thinks she knows something. She keeps hoping she can make you say.”

  Maggie scrutinised her friend. There wasn’t much light, but in what little shed itself upon Josie’s face from a single street lamp that stood at the drive of the Crofters Inn car park across the road, she looked earnest enough. She looked a little odd as well. The eyeliner hadn’t dried thoroughly when she opened her eyes after having applied it, so her eyelids were streaked in the way ink runs when water pours over it.

  “I didn’t tell her about Nick,” Josie said again. “That’s between me and you. Always. I promise.”

  Maggie looked down at her shoes. They were scuffed. Above them her navy tights were speckled with mud.

  “Maggie. It’s true. Really.”

  “He came over last night. We…It happened again. Mummy knows.”

  “No!” Josie grasped her arm and led her across the street and into the car park. They side-stepped a glossy silver Bentley and headed down the path that led to the river. “You never said.”

  “I wanted to tell you. I was waiting all day to tell you. But she kept hanging about.”

  “That Pam,” Josie said as they went through the gate. “She’s just like a bloodhound when it comes to gossip.”

  A narrow path angled away from the inn and descended towards the river. Josie led the way. Some thirty yards along, an old ice-house stood, built into the bank where the river plunged sharply through a fall of limestone, sending up a spray that kept the air cool on the hottest days of summer. It was fashioned from the same stone used in the rest of the village, and like the rest of the village its roof was slate. But it had no windows, just a door whose lock Josie had long ago broken, turning the ice-house into her lair.

  She shouldered her way inside. “Just a sec,” she said, ducking beneath the lintel. She fumbled about, bumped into something, said, “Holy hell on wheels,” and struck a match. Light flared a moment later. Maggie entered.

  A lantern stood atop an old nail barrel, sending out an arc of hissing yellow light. This fell upon a patchwork of carpet—worn through here and there to its straw-coloured backing—two three-legged milking stools, a cot covered by a purple eiderdown, and an up-ended crate overhung by a mirror. This last made do for a dressing table, and into it Josie placed the bottle of eyeliner, new companion to her contraband mascara, blusher, lipstick, nail polish, and assorted hair-goo.

  She hustled up a bottle of toilet water and sprayed it liberally on walls and floor like a libation offered to the goddess of cosmetics. It served to mask the odours of must and mildew that hung in the air.

  “Want a smoke?” she asked, once she made sure the door was closed snugly upon them.

  Maggie shook her head. She shivered. It was clear why the ice-house had been built in this spot.

  Josie lit a Gauloise from a packet she took from among her cosmetics. She flopped onto the cot and said, “What’d your mum say? How’d she find out?”

  Maggie pulled one of the two stools closer to the lantern. It gave off a substantial amount of heat. “She just knew. Like before.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t care what she thinks. I won’t stop. I love him.”

  “Well, she can’t follow you everywhere, can she?” Josie lay on her back, one arm behind her head. She raised her bony knees, crossed one leg over the other, and bounced her foot. “God, you’re so lucky.” She sighed. The tip of her cigarette glowed fire-red. “Is he…well, you know…like they say? Does he…fulfill you?”

  “I don’t know. It goes sort of fast.”

  “Oh. But is he…you know what I mean. Like Pam wanted to know.”

  “Yes.”

  “God. No wonder you don’t want to stop.” She squirmed deeper into the eiderdown and held out her arms to an imaginary lover. “Come ’n’ get me, baby,” she said past the cigarette that bobbed in her lips. “It’s waiting right here and it’s all—for—you.” And then squirming on her side, “You’re taking precautions, aren’t you?”

  “Not really.”

  Her eyes became saucers. “Maggie! I never! You got to take precautions. Or he does at least. Does he wear a rubber?”

  Maggie cocked her head at the oddity of the question. A rubber? What on earth…. “I don’t think so. Where would he…? I mean, he may have one in his pocket from school.”

  Josie bit her lip but didn’t quite manage to catch the grin. “Not that kind of rubber. Don’t you know what it is?”

  Maggie stirred uneasily on the stool. “I know. Of course I do. I know.”

  “Right. Look, it’s like this squishy plastic stuff he puts on his Thing. Before he puts it in you. So you don’t get pregnant. Is he using that?”

  “Oh.” Maggie twisted a lock of her hair. “That. No. I don’t want him to use it.”

  “Don’t want…Are you crazy? He ha
s to use one.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if he doesn’t, you’ll have a baby.”

  “But you said before that a woman needs to be—”

  “Forget what I said. There are always exceptions. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m Mr. Wragg’s, aren’t I? Mum was panting and moaning with this bloke Paddy Lewis, but I came along when she was cold as ice. That’s pretty much proof that anything can happen no matter if you get fulfilled or not.”

  Maggie thought this over, running her finger round and round the last button on her coat. “Good then,” she said.

  “Good? Maggie, bleeding saints on the altar, you can’t—”

  “I want a baby,” she said. “I want Nick’s baby. If he tries to use a rubber, I won’t even let him.”

  Josie goggled at her. “You’re not yet fourteen.”

  “So?”

  “So you can’t be a mummy when you haven’t finished school.”

  “Why not?”

  “What would you do with a baby? Where would you go?”

  “Nick and I would get married. Then we’d have the baby. Then we’d be a family.”

  “You can’t want that.”

  Maggie smiled with real pleasure. “Oh yes I can.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  LYNLEY MURMURED, “GOOD GOD,” AT the sudden drop in temperature when he crossed the threshold between the pub and the dining room of Crofters Inn. In the pub, the large fireplace had managed to disperse enough heat to create pools of at least moderate warmth in its farthest corners, but the weak central heating of the dining room did little more than provide the uncertain promise that the side of one’s body closest to the wall heater would not go numb. He joined Deborah and St. James at their corner table, ducking his head each time he passed beneath one of the low ceiling’s great oak beams. At the table, an additional electric fire had been thoughtfully provided by the Wraggs, and from it semisubstantial waves of heat lapped against their ankles and floated towards their knees.

  Enough tables were laid with white linen, silverware, and inexpensive crystal to accommodate at least thirty diners. But it appeared that the three of them would be sharing the room only with its unusual display of artwork. This consisted of a series of gilt-framed prints which depicted Lancashire’s most prominent claim to fame: the Good Friday gathering at Malkin Tower and the charges of witchcraft that both preceded and followed it. The artist had depicted the principals in an admirably subjective fashion. Roger Nowell, the magistrate, looked suitably grim and barrel-chested, with wrath, vengeance, and the power of Christian Justice incised upon his features. Chattox looked appropriately decrepit: wizened, bent, and dressed in rags. Elizabeth Davies, with her rolling eyes uncontrolled by ocular muscles, looked deformed enough to have sold herself for the devil’s kiss. The rest of them comprised a leering group of demon-lovers, with the exception of Alice Nutter who stood apart, eyes lowered, ostensibly maintaining the silence she had taken with her to her grave, the only convicted witch among them who had sprung from the upper class.

  “Ah,” Lynley said in acknowledgement of the prints as he shook out his table napkin, “Lancashire’s celebrities. Dinner and the prospect of disputation. Did they or didn’t they? Were they or weren’t they?”

  “More likely the prospect of loss of appetite,” St. James said. He poured a glass of fumé blanc for his friend.

  “There’s truth in that, I suppose. Hanging half-witted girls and helpless old women on the strength of a single man’s apopleptic seizure does give one pause, doesn’t it? How can we eat, drink, and be merry when dying’s as close as the dining room wall?”

  “Who are they exactly?” Deborah asked as Lynley took an appreciative sip of the wine and reached for one of the rolls which Josie Wragg had only moments before deposited on the table. “I know they’re the witches, but do you recognise them, Tommy?”

  “Only because they’re in caricature. I doubt I’d know them if the artist had done a less Hogarthian job of it.” Lynley gestured with his butter knife. “You have the God-fearing magistrate and those he brought to justice. Demdike and Chattox—they’re the shrivelled ones, I should think. Then Alizon and Elizabeth Davies, the mother-daughter team. The others I’ve forgotten, save Alice Nutter. She’s the one who looks so decidedly out of place.”

  “Frankly, I thought she looked like your aunt Augusta.”

  Lynley paused in buttering a portion of roll. He gave the print of Alice Nutter a fair examination. “There’s something in that. They have the same nose.” He grinned. “I’ll have to think twice about dining at aunt’s next Christmas Eve. God knows what she’ll serve in disguise for wassail.”

  “Is that what they did? Mix some sort of potion? Cast a spell on someone? Make it rain toads?”

  “That last sounds vaguely Australian,” Lynley said. He looked the other prints over as he munched on his roll and sifted through his memory for the details. One of his papers at Oxford had touched upon the seventeenth-century hue and cry over witchcraft. He remembered the lecturer vividly—twenty-six years old and a strident feminist who was as beautiful a woman as he had ever seen and approximately as approachable as a feeding shark.

  “We’d call it the domino effect today,” he said. “One of them burgled Malkin Tower, the home of one of the others, and then had the audacity to wear in public something she’d stolen. When she was brought before the magistrate, she defended herself by accusing the Malkin Tower family of witchcraft. The magistrate might have concluded that this was a ridiculous stab at deflecting culpability, but a few days later, Alizon Davies of that same tower cursed a man who within minutes was stricken with an apopleptic seizure. From that point on, the hunt for witches was on.”

  “Successfully, it seems,” Deborah said, gazing at the prints herself.

  “Quite. Women began confessing to all sorts of ludicrous misbehaviours once they were brought before the magistrate: having familiars in the form of cats, dogs, and bears; making clay dolls in the persons of their enemies and stabbing thorns into them; killing off cows; making milk go bad; ruining good ale—”

  “Now there’s crime worthy of punishment,” St. James noted.

  “Was there proof?” Deborah asked.

  “If an old woman mumbling to her cat is proof. If a curse overheard by a villager is proof.”

  “But then why did they confess? Why would anyone confess?”

  “Social pressure. Fear. They were uneducated women brought before a magistrate from another class. They were taught to bow before their betters—if only metaphorically. What more effective way to do it than to agree with what their betters were suggesting?”

  “Even though it meant their death?”

  “Even though.”

  “But they could have denied it. They could have kept silent.”

  “Alice Nutter did. They hanged her anyway.”

  Deborah frowned. “What an odd thing to celebrate with prints on the walls.”

  “Tourism,” Lynley said. “Don’t people pay to see the Queen of Scots’ death mask?”

  “Not to mention some of the grimmer spots in the Tower of London,” St. James said. “The Chapel Royal, Wakefield Tower.”

  “Why bother with the Crown Jewels when you can see the chopping block?” Lynley added. “Crime doesn’t pay, but death brings them running to part with a few quid.”

  “Is this irony from the man who’s made at least five pilgrimages to Bosworth Field on the twenty-second of August?” Deborah asked blithely. “An old cow pasture in the back of beyond where you drink from the well and swear to Richard’s ghost you would have fought for the Yorks?”

  “That’s not death,” Lynley said with some dignity, lifting his glass to salute her. “That’s history, my girl. Someone’s got to be willing to set the record straight.”

  The door that led to the kitchen swung open, and Josie Wragg presented them with their starters, muttering, “Smoked salmon here, pâté here, prawn cocktail here,” as she set each item on the tabl
e, after which she hid both the tray and her hands behind her back. “Enough rolls?” She asked the question of everyone in general, but she made a poor job of surreptitiously examining Lynley.

  “Fine,” St. James said.

  “Get you more butter?”

  “I don’t think so. Thanks.”

  “Wine okay? Mr. Wragg’s got a cellarful if that’s gone off. Wine does that sometimes, you know. You got to be careful. If you don’t store it right, the cork gets all dried up and shrivelled and the air gets in and the wine turns salty. Or something.”

  “The wine’s fine, Josie. We’re looking forward to the bordeaux as well.”

  “Mr. Wragg, he’s a connoisseur of wine.” She pronounced it con-NOY-ser and bent to scratch her ankle, from which activity she looked up at Lynley. “You’re not here on holiday, are you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  She straightened up, reclasping the tray behind her. “That’s what I thought. Mum said you were a detective from London and I thought at first you’d come to tell her something about Paddy Lewis which she, of course, wouldn’t be likely to share with me for fear I’d spread it to Mr. Wragg which, of course, I would definitely not do even if it meant she was to run off with him—Paddy, that is—and leave me here with Mr. Wragg. I know what true love’s about, after all. But you’re not that kind of detective, are you?”

  “What kind is that?”

  “You know. Like on the telly. Someone you hire.”

  “A private detective? No.”

  “I thought that’s what you were at first. Then I heard you talking on the phone just now. I wasn’t exactly eavesdropping. Only, your door was open a crack and I was taking fresh towels to the rooms and I happened to hear.” Her fingers scratched against the tray as she grasped it more tightly behind her before going on. “She’s my best friend’s mum, you see. She didn’t mean any harm. It’s like if someone is making preserves and they put in the wrong stuff and a bunch of people get ill. Say they buy the preserves at a church fête even. Strawberry or blackberry. Well, they might do that, huh? And then they take them home and spread them on their toast the next morning. Or on their scones at tea. Then they get sick. And everyone knows it was an accident. See?”