Missing Joseph

by Elizabeth George

  She moved past him towards the door of the greenhouse. The space was confined. Her arm brushed against him as she passed, and it would have taken little enough effort to detain her, but he chose not to do so. He followed her out. Before he could ask another question, she spoke.

  “I’d gone to the root cellar. There were only two left. I needed more. That’s the extent of it.”

  “Show me, if you will.”

  She led him across the garden to the cottage where she opened the door to what appeared to be the kitchen and removed a key from a hook just inside. Not ten feet away, she unfastened the padlock on the sloping cellar door and lifted it.

  “A moment,” he said. He lowered and lifted it for himself. Like the gate in the wall, it moved easily enough. And like the gate, it moved without noise. He nodded and she descended the steps.

  There was no electricity in the root cellar. Light was supplied from the doorway and from a single small window at the level of the ground. This was the size of a shoe carton and partially obstructed by the straw which covered the plants outside. The result was a chamber of moisture and shadow, comprising perhaps an eight-foot square. Its walls were an unfinished mixture of stone and earth. Its floor was the same, although some effort had been expended at one time to make it even.

  Mrs. Spence gestured towards one of four roughly hewn shelves bolted to the wall that was farthest from the light. Aside from a neat stack of bushel baskets, the shelves were all the room contained save what they themselves held. On the top three sat rows of canning jars, their labels indecipherable in the gloom. On the bottom stood five small wire bins. Potatoes, carrots, and onions filled three. The other two held nothing.

  Lynley said, “You’ve not replenished your supply.”

  “I don’t think much of eating parsnips any longer. And certainly not wild ones.”

  He touched the rim of one of the empty bins. He moved his hand to the shelf that held it. There was no sign of either dust or disuse.

  He said, “Why do you keep the cellar door locked? Have you always done?”

  When she didn’t reply at once, he turned from the shelves to look at her. Her back was to the muted light of morning that shone through the door, so he couldn’t read her expression.

  “Mrs. Spence?”

  “I’ve kept it locked since October last.”

  “Why?”

  “It has nothing to do with any of this.”

  “I’d appreciate an answer nonetheless.”

  “I’ve just given one.”

  “Mrs. Spence, shall we pause to look at the facts? A man is dead at your hands. You’ve a relationship with the police official who investigated the death. If either of you thinks—”

  “All right. Because of Maggie, Inspector. I wanted to give her one less place to have sex with her boyfriend. She’d already used the Hall. I’d put a stop to that. I was trying to eliminate the rest of the possibilities. This seemed to be one of them, so I locked it up. Not that it mattered, as I’ve since discovered.”

  “But you kept the key on a hook in the kitchen?”

  “Yes.”

  “In plain sight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where she could get to it?”

  “Where I could get to it quickly as well.” She ran an impatient hand back through her hair. “Inspector, please. You don’t know my daughter. Maggie tries to be good. She thought she’d been wicked enough already. She gave me her word that she wouldn’t have sex with Nick Ware again, and I told her I’d help her keep the promise. The lock itself was sufficient to keep her out.”

  “I wasn’t thinking about Maggie and sex,” Lynley said. He saw her glance move from his face to the shelves behind him. He knew what she was looking at largely because she didn’t allow her eyes to rest upon it longer than an instant. “When you go out, do you lock your doors?”

  “Yes.”

  “When you’re in the greenhouse? When you make your rounds of the Hall? When you leave to look for wild parsnips?”

  “No. But then I’m not out for long. And I’d know if someone were prowling round.”

  “Do you take your handbag? Your car keys? The keys to the cottage? The cellar key?”

  “No.”

  “So you didn’t lock up when you went out to look for parsnips on the day that Mr. Sage died?”

  “No. But I know where you’re heading and it isn’t going to work. People can’t come and go here without my knowing. That simply doesn’t happen. It’s like a sixth sense. Whenever Maggie met with Nick, I knew.”

  “Yes,” Lynley said. “Quite. Please show me where you found the water hemlock, Mrs. Spence.”

  “I’ve told you I thought it was—”

  “Indeed. Wild parsnip.”

  She hesitated, one hand lifted as if there was a point she wanted to make. She dropped both, saying, “This way,” quietly.

  They went out through the gate. Across the courtyard, three of the workers were having morning coffee in the bed of the open-back lorry. Their Thermos jugs were lined up on one stack of lumber. Another they used as their chairs. They watched Lynley and Mrs. Spence with undisguised curiosity. It was clear that this visit was going to be fuel for the fires of gossip by the end of the day.

  In the better light, Lynley took a moment to evaluate Mrs. Spence as they crossed the courtyard and walked round the gabled east wing of the Hall. She was blinking rapidly as if in an effort to free her eyes of soot, but the cowl-neck of her pullover showed how the muscles of her neck were straining. He realised that she was trying not to cry.

  The worst part of policework lay buried in the effort it took not to empathise. An investigation required a heart that attached itself to the victim alone or to a crime whose commission called out for justice. While Lynley’s sergeant had mastered the ability to wear emotional blinkers when it came to a case, Lynley found himself, more often than not, torn in a dozen unlikely directions as he gathered information and came to know the facts and the principals involved. They were rarely black or white, he had come to find. It was, inconveniently, not a black-or-white world.

  He paused on the terrace outside the east wing. The paving stones here were cracked and clotted with winter-dead weeds and the view was of a frost-coated hillside. This sloped down to a pond beyond which another hillside rose steeply, its summit hidden by the mist.

  He said, “You’ve had trouble here, as I understand. Work disrupted. That sort of thing. It sounds as if someone doesn’t want the newlyweds to take over the Hall.”

  She seemed to misunderstand his intentions in speaking, seeing it as another attempt at accusation rather than as an opportunity for a moment’s reprieve. She cleared her throat and rebounded from whatever distress she was feeling. “Maggie used it less than half a dozen times. That’s all.”

  He briefly toyed with the idea of reassuring her about the nature of his comments. He rejected it, and followed her lead. “How did she get in?”

  “Nick—her boyfriend—loosened a board covering one of the windows in the west wing. I’ve nailed it shut since. Unfortunately, that hasn’t put a stop to the mischief.”

  “You didn’t know at once that Maggie and her friend were using the Hall? You couldn’t tell someone had been prowling round?”

  “I was referring to someone prowling round the cottage, Inspector Lynley. Surely you yourself would be aware if some sort of intruder had been in your own home.”

  “If he conducted a search or took something, yes. Otherwise, I’m not certain.”

  “Believe me, I am.”

  With the toe of her boot, she dislodged a tangle of flowerless dandelions from between two of the terrace stones. She picked up the weed, examined several rosettes of the scratchy, toothed leaves, and hurled it aside.

  “But you’ve never managed to catch the prankster here? He—or she—has never made a sound to attract your attention, never stumbled into your garden by mistake?”

  “No.”

  “You’ve never heard a
car or a motorbike?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “And your rounds have been varied enough that someone bent on mischief wouldn’t be able to predict when you’d be likely to take another turn round the grounds?”

  Impatiently, she shoved her hair behind her ears. “That’s correct, Inspector. May I ask what this has to do with what happened to Mr. Sage?”

  He smiled affably. “I’m not entirely sure.” She looked in the direction of the pond at the base of the hill, her intention clear. But he found that he wasn’t quite ready to move on. He gave his attention to the east wing of the house. Its lower bay windows were boarded over. Two of the upper ones bore seamlike cracks. “It looks as if it’s stood vacant for years.”

  “It’s never been lived in, aside from three months shortly after it was built.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s haunted.”

  “By whom?”

  “The sister-in-law of Mr. Townley-Young’s great-grandfather. What does that make her? His great-grandaunt?” She didn’t wait for reply. “She killed herself here. They thought she’d gone out for a walk. When she didn’t return by evening, they began a search. It was five days before they thought of searching the house.”

  “And?”

  “She’d hanged herself from a beam in the luggage room. Next to the garret. It was summer. The servants were tracking down the smell.”

  “Her husband couldn’t face continuing life here?”

  “A romantic thought, but he was dead already. He’d been killed on their wedding trip. They said it was a hunting accident, but no one was ever particularly forthcoming about how it happened. His wife returned alone, so everyone thought. They didn’t know at first she brought syphilis with her, his gift to their marriage, evidently.” She smiled without humour, not at him but at the house. “According to legend, she walks the upper corridor, weeping. The Townley-Youngs like to think it’s with remorse for having killed her husband. I like to think it’s with regret for having married the man in the first place. It was 1853 after all. There was no easy cure.”

  “For syphilis.”

  “Or for marriage.”

  She strode off the terrace in the direction of the pond. He watched her for a moment. She took long steps despite her heavy boots. Her hair lifted with her movement, in two greying arcs sweeping back from her face.

  The slope he followed her down was icy, its grass long defeated by purslane and furze. At its base, the pond lay in the shape of a kidney bean. It was thickly overgrown, resembling a marsh, with water that was murky and, no doubt in the summer, a breeding ground for everything from insects to disease. Unkempt reeds and denuded weeds grew waist-tall round it. The latter sent out tendrils to grasp at clothes. But Mrs. Spence seemed oblivious of this. She waded into their midst and brushed the clinging bits of them aside.

  She stopped less than a yard from the water’s edge. “Here,” she said.

  As far as Lynley could tell, the vegetation she indicated was indistinguishable from the vegetation everywhere else. In the spring or summer, perhaps, flowers or fruit might give an indication of the genera—if not the species—that now appeared to be little more than skeletal shrubs and brambles. He recognised nettle easily enough because its toothed leaves still clung to the stem of the plant. And reeds were the same in shape and size from season to season. But as for the rest, he was mystified.

  She apparently saw this, for she said, “Part of it is knowing where the plants grow when they’re in season, Inspector. If you’re looking for roots, they’re still in the ground even when the stems, leaves, and flowers are gone.” She pointed to her left where an oblong of ground resembled nothing more than a mat of dead leaves from which a spindly bush grew. “Meadowsweet and wolfbane grow there in the summer. Farther up there’s a fine patch of chamomile.” She bent and rooted through the weeds at her feet, saying, “And if you’re in doubt, the leaves of the plant don’t go much farther than the ground beneath it. They disintegrate ultimately, but the process takes ages and in the meantime, you’ve got your source of identification right here.” She extended her hand. In it she held the remains of a feathery leaf not unlike parsley in appearance. “This tells you where to dig,” she said.

  “Show me.”

  She did so. No trowel or hoe was necessary. The earth was damp. It was simple enough for her to uproot a plant by pulling on the crown and the stems that remained of it above the ground. She knocked the root stock sharply against her knee to dislodge the clods of earth that were still clinging to it, and both of them stared, without speaking, at the result. She was holding a thickened stock of the plant from which a bundle of tubers grew. She dropped it immediately, as if, without even being ingested, it still had the power to kill.

  “Tell me about Mr. Sage,” Lynley said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  HER EYES COULDN’T SEEM TO MOVE from the hemlock she had dropped. “Surely I would have seen the multiple tubers,” she said. “I would have known. Even now, I’d remember.”

  “Were you distracted? Did someone see you? Did someone call out to you while you were digging?”

  Still she didn’t look at him. “I was in a rush. I came down the slope, made for this spot, cleared away the snow, and found the parsnip.”

  “The hemlock, Mrs. Spence. Just as you did now.”

  “It had to have been a single root. I would have seen otherwise. I would have known.”

  “Tell me about Mr. Sage,” he repeated.

  She raised her head. Her expression seemed bleak. “He came to the cottage several times. He wanted to talk about the Church. And Maggie.”

  “Why Maggie?”

  “She’d grown fond of him. He’d taken an interest in her.”

  “What sort of interest?”

  “He knew she and I were having our troubles. What mother and daughter don’t? He wanted to intercede.”

  “Did you object to this?”

  “I didn’t particularly enjoy feeling inadequate as a mother, if that’s what you mean. But I let him come. And I let him talk. Maggie wanted me to see him. I wanted to make Maggie happy.”

  “And the night he died? What happened then?”

  “Nothing more than had happened before. He wanted to counsel me.”

  “About religion? About Maggie?”

  “About both, actually. He wanted me to join the Church, and he wanted me to let Maggie do the same.”

  “That was the extent of it?”

  “Not exactly.” She wiped her hands on the faded bandana which she took from the pocket of her jeans. She balled it up, tucked it into the sleeve of her sweater to join her mittens, and shivered. Her pullover was heavy, but it would not be enough protection against the cold. Seeing this, Lynley decided to continue the interview right where they were. Her uprooting of the water hemlock had given him the whip hand, if only momentarily. He was determined to use it and to strengthen it by whatever means were available. Cold was one of them.

  “Then what?” he asked.

  “He wanted to talk to me about parenthood, Inspector. He felt I was keeping too tight a rein on my daughter. It was his belief that the more I insisted upon chastity from Maggie, the more I’d drive her away. He felt if she was having sex, she should be taking precautions against pregnancy. I felt she shouldn’t be having sex at all, precautions or not. She’s thirteen years old. She’s little more than a child.”

  “Did you argue about her?”

  “Did I poison him because he disagreed with how I was bringing her up?” She was trembling, but not from distress, he thought. Aside from the earlier tears which she had managed to control within moments of being tested by them, she didn’t really appear to be the sort of woman who would allow herself an overt display of anxiety in the presence of the police. “He didn’t have children. He wasn’t even married. It’s one thing to express an opinion growing out of a mutual experience. It’s quite another to offer advice having no basis in anything but reading psychology texts
and possessing a glorified ideal of family life. How could I possibly take his concerns to heart?”

  “Despite this, you didn’t argue with him.”

  “No. As I said, I was willing to hear him out. I did that much for Maggie because she was fond of him. And that’s the extent of it. I had my beliefs. He had his. He wanted Maggie to use contraceptives. I wanted her to stop complicating her life by having sex in the first place. I didn’t think she was ready for it. He thought it was too late to turn her behaviour around. We chose to disagree.”

  “And Maggie?”

  “What?”

  “Where did she stand in this disagreement?”

  “We didn’t discuss it.”

  “Did she discuss it with Sage?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “But they were close.”

  “She was fond of him.”

  “Did she see him often?”

  “Now and again.”

  “With your knowledge and approval?”

  She lowered her head. Her right foot dug at the weeds in a spasmodic, kicking motion. “We’ve always been close, Maggie and I, until this business with Nick. So I knew about it when she saw the vicar.”

  The nature of the answer said everything. Dread, love, and anxiety. He wondered if they went hand in hand with motherhood.

  “What did you serve him for dinner that night?”

  “Lamb. Mint jelly. Peas. Parsnips.”

  “What happened?”

  “We talked. He left shortly after nine.”

  “Was he feeling ill?”

  “He didn’t say. Only that he had a walk ahead of him and since it had been snowing, he ought to be off.”

  “You didn’t offer to drive him.”

  “I wasn’t feeling well. I thought it was flu. I was just as happy to have him leave, frankly.”

  “Could he have stopped somewhere along the way home?”

  Her eyes moved to the Hall on its crest of land, from there to the oak wood beyond it. She appeared to be evaluating this as a possibility, but then she said firmly, “No. There’s the lodge—his housekeeper lives there, Polly Yarkin—but that would have taken him out of his way, and I can’t see what reason he’d have to stop by and visit with Polly when he saw her every day at the vicarage. Beyond that, it’s easier to get back to the village on the footpath. And Colin found him on the footpath the next morning.”