Missing Joseph

by Elizabeth George

  “I’ve been saying it like a litany since half past one. He phoned her and told her what his decision would be. She protested. She said she wouldn’t give her up. She asked him to come to the cottage that night to talk about the situation. She went out to where she knew the water hemlock grew. She dug up a root stock. She fed it to him for dinner. She sent him on his way. She knew he would die. She knew how he would die.”

  St. James added the rest. “She took a purgative to make herself look ill. Then she phoned the constable and implicated him.”

  “So why in God’s name can I forgive her?” Lynley asked. “She murdered a man. Why do I want to turn a blind eye to the fact that she’s a killer?”

  “Because of Maggie. She was a victim once in her life and she’s about to become a victim of a different sort again. At your hands this time.”

  Lynley said nothing. In the pub next door, a man’s voice rose momentarily. A babble of conversation ensued.

  St. James said, “What’s next?”

  Lynley crumpled his linen napkin on the table top. “I have a WPC driving out from Clitheroe.”

  “For Maggie.”

  “She’ll need to take the child when we take the mother.” He glanced at his pocket watch. “She wasn’t on duty when I stopped by the station. They were tracking her down. She’s to meet me at Shepherd’s.”

  “He doesn’t know yet?”

  “I’m heading there now.”

  “Shall I come with you?” When Lynley glanced back at the door through which Deborah had disappeared, St. James said, “It’s all right.”

  “Then I’ll be glad of your company.”

  The crowd in the pub was a large one this night. It appeared to consist mostly of farmers who had come by foot, by tractor, and by Land Rover to outshout one another on the subject of the weather. Smoke from their cigarettes and pipes hung heavily on the air as they each recounted the effect that the continuing snowfall was having on their sheep, the roads, their wives, and their work. Because of a respite from noon until six o’clock that evening, they hadn’t yet been snowed in. But flakes had begun to fall again steadily round half past six, and the farmers seemed to be fortifying themselves against a long siege.

  They weren’t the only ones. The village teenagers were spread out at the far end of the pub, playing the fruit machine and watching Pam Rice carry on with her boyfriend much as she had done on the night of the St. Jameses’ arrival in Winslough. Brendan Power was sitting near the fire, looking up hopefully each time the door opened. It did this with fair regularity as more villagers arrived, stamping snow from their boots and shaking it from their clothes and their hair.

  “We’re in for it, Ben,” a man called over the din.

  Pulling the taps behind the bar, Ben Wragg couldn’t have looked more delighted. Custom in winter was hard enough to come by. If the weather turned rough enough, half of these blokes would be looking for beds.

  St. James left Lynley long enough to go upstairs for his overcoat and gloves. Deborah was sitting on the bed with all the pillows piled up behind her. Her head was back, her eyes were closed, and her hands were balled in her lap. She was still fully dressed.

  She said as he closed the door, “I lied. But you knew that, didn’t you?”

  “I knew you weren’t tired, if that’s what you mean.”

  “You aren’t angry?”

  “Should I be?”

  “I’m not a good wife.”

  “Because you didn’t want to hear anything more about Juliet Spence? I’m not sure that’s an accurate measurement of your loyalties.” He took his coat from the cupboard and put it on, fishing in the pockets for his gloves.

  “You’re going with him, then. To finish things.”

  “I’ll rest easier if he doesn’t have to do it alone. I brought him into this, after all.”

  “You’re a good friend to him, Simon.”

  “As he is to me.”

  “You’re a good friend to me as well.”

  He went to the bed and sat down on the edge. He closed his hand over the fist hers made. The fist turned, the fingers opened. He felt something pressed between his palm and hers. It was a stone, he saw, with two rings painted on it in bright pink enamel.

  She said, “I found it sitting on Annie Shepherd’s grave. It reminded me of marriage—the rings and how they’re painted. I’ve been carrying it round ever since. I’ve thought it might help me be better for you than I have been.”

  “I have no complaints, Deborah.” He closed her fingers round the stone and kissed her forehead.

  “You’ve wanted to talk. I haven’t. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve wanted to preach,” he said, “which is different from talking. You can’t be blamed for displaying an unwillingness to listen to my sermons.” He stood, pulling on his gloves. He took his scarf from the chest of drawers. “I don’t know how long this will take.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I’ll wait.” She was placing the stone on the bedside table as he left the room.

  He found Lynley waiting for him outside the pub, sheltered within the porch and watching the snow continue to come down in silent undulations lit by the street lamps and by the lights from the terrace houses lining the Clitheroe Road.

  He said, “She’d only been married once, Simon. Just to Yanapapoulis.” They headed towards the car park where he’d left the Range Rover he’d hired in Manchester. “I’ve been trying to understand the process Robin Sage went through to make his decision, and it comes down to that. She’s not a bad person, after all, she loves her children, and she’s only been married once, despite her life-style prior to and following that marriage.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Yanapapoulis? He gave her Linus—the fourth son—and then evidently took up with a twenty-year-old boy fresh in London from Delphi.”

  “Bearing a message from the oracle?”

  Lynley smiled. “I dare say that’s better than gifts.”

  “Did she tell you about the rest?”

  “Obliquely. She said she had a weakness for dark foreign men: Greeks, Italians, Iranians, Pakistanis, Nigerians. She said, ‘They just crook their fingers and I come up pregnant. I can’t think how.’ Only Maggie’s father was English, she said, and look what sort of bloke he was, Mister Inspector person.”

  “Do you believe her story? About how Maggie came to have the injuries?”

  “What difference does it make what I believe at this point? Robin Sage believed her. That’s why he’s dead.”

  They climbed inside the Range Rover, and the engine caught. Lynley reversed it. They inched past a tractor and threaded through the maze of cars to the street.

  “He’d decided on that which is moral,” St. James noted. “He threw himself behind the lawful position. What would you have done, Tommy?”

  “I’d have checked into the story, just as he did.”

  “And when you found out the truth?”

  Lynley sighed and turned south down the Clitheroe Road. “God help me, Simon. I just don’t know. I don’t have the kind of moral certitude Sage seems to have garnered. There’s no black or white for me in what happened. Grey stretches forever, despite the law and my professional obligations to it.”

  “But if you had to decide.”

  “Then I suppose it would all come down to crime and punishment.”

  “Juliet Spence’s crime against Sheelah Cotton?”

  “No. Sheelah’s crime against the baby: leaving her alone with the father so that he had the opportunity to injure her in the first place, leaving her alone in the car at night only four months later so that someone could take her. I suppose I’d ask myself if the punishment of losing her for thirteen years—or forever—fit or exceeded the crimes committed against her.”

  “And then what?”

  Lynley glanced his way. “Then I’d be in Gethsemane, praying for someone else to drink from the cup. Which is, I imagine, what Sage himself did.”

  Colin Shepherd ha
d seen her at noon, but she wouldn’t let him into the cottage. Maggie wasn’t well, she told him. A persistent fever, chills, a bad stomach. Running off with Nick Ware and dossing down in a farm building—even if only for part of the night—had taken its toll. She’d had a second bad night, but she was sleeping now. Juliet didn’t want anything to waken her.

  She came outside to tell him, shutting the door behind her and shivering in the cold. The first seemed a deliberate effort to keep him out of the cottage. The second seemed designed to send him on his way. If he loved her, her quaking body declared, he wouldn’t want her standing out in the cold having a chat with him.

  Her body language was clear enough: arms crossed tightly, fingers digging into the sleeves of her flannel shirt, posture rigid. But he told himself it was merely the cold, and he tried to read beneath her words for an underlying message. He gazed at her face and looked into her eyes. Courtesy and distance were what he read. Her daughter needed her and wasn’t he being rather selfish to expect her either to want or accept a distraction from that need?

  He said, “Juliet, when will we have a chance to talk?” but she looked up at Maggie’s bedroom window and answered with “I need to sit with her. She’s been having bad dreams. I’ll phone you later, all right?” And she slipped back into the cottage and shut the door soundlessly. He heard the key turning in its lock.

  He wanted to shout, “You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? I’ve my own key. I can still get in. I can make you talk. I can make you listen.” But instead he stared long and hard at the door, counting its bolts, waiting for his heart to stop pounding so angrily.

  He’d gone back to work, making his rounds, seeing to three cars that had misjudged the icy roads, herding five sheep back over a disintegrating wall near Skelshaw Farm, replacing its stones, rounding up a rogue dog that had finally been cornered in a barn just outside the village. It was routine business, nothing to occupy his mind. And as the hours passed, he found himself more and more needing something to keep his thoughts in order.

  Later had come, and she did not phone. He moved about his house restlessly as he waited. He looked out the window at the snow that lay unblemished in the graveyard of St. John the Baptist Church and, beyond it, upon the pasture land and the slopes of Cotes Fell. He built a fire and let Leo bask in front of it as day drew towards evening. He cleaned three of his shotguns. He made a cup of tea, added whisky to it, forgot about drinking it. He picked the phone up twice to make certain it was still in working order. The snow, after all, could have downed some lines. But he listened to the dialling tone’s heartless buzz telling him something was very wrong.

  He tried not to believe it. She was concerned about Maggie, he told himself. She was rightfully concerned. It was no more than that.

  At four o’clock he could stand the waiting no longer, so he did the phoning. Her line was engaged, and engaged at a quarter past, and engaged at half past, and every quarter hour after that until half past five when he understood that she had taken the phone off the hook so that its ringing would not disturb her daughter.

  He willed her to phone from half past five to six. After six, he began to pace. He went over every brief conversation they’d had in the two days since Maggie had returned from her short-lived experience of running away. He heard Juliet’s tone as she had sounded on the phone—resigned, somehow, to something he did not want to understand—and he felt a growing desperation.

  When the phone rang at eight, he leapt to answer it, hearing a terse voice ask:

  “Where the hell have you been all day, boy-o?”

  Colin felt his teeth set and made an effort to relax. “I’ve been working, Pa. That’s what I usually do.”

  “Don’t get a mouth with me. He’s asked for a wopsie, and she’s on her way. Do you know that, boy-o? Are you up on the news?”

  The telephone was on a lengthy cord. Colin cradled the receiver against his ear and walked to the kitchen window. He could see the light from the vicarage porch, but everything else was shape and shadow, curtained off by the snow that was falling as if disgorged in an explosion from the clouds.

  “Who’s asked for a wopsie? What’re you talking about?”

  “That blighter from the Yard.”

  Colin turned from the window. He looked at the clock. The cat’s eyes moved rhythmically, its tail ticked and tocked. He said, “How do you know?”

  “Some of us maintain our ties, boy-o. Some of us have mates that’re loyal to the death. Some of us do favours so that when we need one, we can call it in. I’ve been telling you that from day one, haven’t I? But you don’t want to learn. You’ve been so bloody stupid, so flaming sure…”

  Colin heard a glass clink against the receiver at his father’s end. He heard the rattle of ice. “What is it?” he asked. “You having gin or whisky tonight?”

  The glass crashed against something: the wall, a piece of furniture, the cooker, the sink. “God damn you ignorant piece of filth. I’m trying to help you.”

  “I don’t need your help.”

  “Bugger that for a lark. You’re in so deep you can’t smell the shit. That ponce was locked up with Hawkins, boy-o, for nearly an hour. He called in forensic and the DC who came up there when you first found the body. I don’t know what he told them, but the end result was that they phoned for a wopsie and whatever that bloke from the Yard has up his sleeve to do next, it’s with Clitheroe’s blessing. You got that, boy-o? And Hawkins didn’t phone and put you in the picture, did he? Did he?”

  Colin didn’t reply. He saw that he’d left a pot on the AGA at lunchtime. Luckily, it had held only salted water which had long since boiled away. The bottom of the pot, however, was crusted with sediment.

  “What d’you think that means?” his father was demanding. “Can you put it together or do I have to spell it out?”

  Colin forced himself to sound indifferent. “Bringing in a wopsie’s fine with me, Pa. You’re in a state over nothing.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I missed some things. The case needs to be re-opened.”

  “You damn fool! Don’t you know what it means to botch a murder investigation?”

  Colin could picture the veins in his father’s arms standing out. He said, “I’m not making history. This won’t be the first time a case has been re-opened.”

  “Simpleton. Ass,” his father hissed. “You gave evidence for her. You took the oath. You’ve been playing in her knickers. No one’s likely to forget that when it comes time to—”

  “I’ve some new information, and it’s nothing to do with Juliet. I’m ready to hand it over to that bloke from the Yard. It’s just as well he’s going to have a female PC with him because he’ll be wanting her.”

  “What’re you saying?”

  “That I’ve found the killer.”

  Silence. In it, he could hear the fire crackling in the sitting room. Leo was chewing industriously on a ham bone. He had it locked in his paws against the floor, and the sound resembled someone planing wood.

  “You’re sure.” His father’s voice was wary. “You’ve evidence?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because if you cock this up any further, you’re done for, boy-o. And when that happens—”

  “It’s not going to happen.”

  “—I don’t want you crying to me for help. I’m through covering your arse with Hutton-Preston’s CC. You got that?”

  “I’ve got it, Pa. Thanks for having confidence.”

  “Don’t you give me your bloody—”

  Colin hung up the phone. It began ringing again within ten seconds. He let it ring. It jangled for a full three minutes while he watched it and pictured his father at the other end. He’d be cursing steadily, he’d be aching to batter someone into pulp. But unless one of his pieces of sweet female flesh was there to oblige him, he was going to have to face his furies alone.

  When the phone stopped ringing, Colin poured himself a tumbler of whisky, ret
urned to the kitchen, and punched Juliet’s number. The line was still engaged.

  He carried his drink to the second bedroom that served as his study and sat down at the desk. From its bottom drawer, he took the slim volume. Alchemical Magic: Herbs, Spices, and Plants. He set it next to a yellow legal pad and began to write his report. It flowed easily enough, line after line, piecing fact and conjecture into an overall pattern of guilt. He had no choice, he told himself. If Lynley was asking for a female PC, he meant to start trouble for Juliet. There was only one way to stop him.

  He had just completed his writing, revised it, and typed it when he heard the car doors slam. Leo began to bark. He got up from the desk and went to the door before they had a chance to ring the bell. They would find him neither unprepared nor unaware.

  “I’m glad you’ve come,” he said to them. He sounded a mixture of sure and expansive, and he felt good about the sound. He swung the door home behind them and led them into the sitting room.

  The blond—Lynley—took off his coat, his scarf, and his gloves and brushed the snow from his hair as if he intended to stay for a while. The other—St. James—loosened his scarf and a few buttons of his coat, but the only things he removed were his gloves. These he held and played through his fingers while the snowflakes melted into his hair.

  “I’ve a WPC coming up from Clitheroe,” Lynley said.

  Colin poured them both a whisky and handed the glasses over, uncaring of whether they chose to drink or not. Not was the case. St. James nodded and set his on the side table next to the sofa. Lynley said thank you and placed his on the floor when he sat, unbidden, in one of the armchairs. He beckoned Colin to do likewise. His face was grave.

  “Yes, I know she’s on her way,” Colin answered easily. “You’ve got second sight among your other gifts, Inspector. I was twelve hours away from phoning Sergeant Hawkins for one myself.” He handed over the slender book first. “You’ll be wanting this, I expect.”

  Lynley took it and turned it over in his hands, putting on his spectacles to read the cover first and then the descriptive copy on the back. He opened the book and ran his glance over the table of contents. Pages were folded down at the corners—the result of Colin’s own perusal of the book—and he read these next. On the floor by the fire, Leo returned to gnawing his ham bone. His tail thumped happily.