Missing Joseph

by Elizabeth George

“You’ve made excellent time,” St. James said as Lynley offered his hand in greeting and then brushed a kiss against Deborah’s cheek.

  “The wind at my back.”

  “And no trouble getting away from the Yard?”

  “You’ve forgotten. I’m on holiday. I’d just gone into the office to clear off my desk.”

  “And we’ve taken you from your holiday?” Deborah asked. “Simon! That’s dreadful.”

  Lynley smiled. “A mercy, Deb.”

  “But surely you and Helen had plans.”

  “We did. She changed her mind. I was at a loose end. It was either a drive to Lancashire or a prolonged rattle round my house in London. Lancashire seemed to hold infinitely more promise. It’s a diversion, at least.”

  Deborah shrewdly assessed the final statement. “Does Helen know you’ve come?”

  “I’ll phone her tonight.”

  “Tommy…”

  “I know. I’ve not behaved well. I’ve picked up my marbles and run away.”

  He dropped into the seat next to Deborah and picked up a shortbread still left on the plate. He poured some tea for himself into her empty cup and stirred in sugar as he munched. He looked about. The door to the restaurant was shut. The lights behind the bar were switched off. The office door was open a crack, but no movement came from within, and while a third door—set at an angle behind the bar—was open far enough to emit a lance of light that pierced the labels of the spirit bottles that hung upside down awaiting use, no sound came from beyond it.

  “No one’s here?” Lynley asked.

  “They’re about somewhere. There’s a bell on the bar.”

  He nodded but made no move to go to it.

  “They know you’re the Yard, Tommy.”

  Lynley raised an eyebrow. “How?”

  “You had a phone message during lunch. It was the talk of the pub.”

  “So much for incognito.”

  “It probably wouldn’t have served us well, anyway.”

  “Who knows?”

  “That you’re CID?” St. James leaned back and let his glance wander, as if trying to remember who had been in the pub when the call came through. “The owners, certainly. Six or seven locals. A group of hikers who’re no doubt long gone.”

  “You’re certain about the locals?”

  “Ben Wragg—he’s the owner—was chatting some of them up at the bar when his wife brought the news from the office. The rest got the information with their lunches. At least Deborah and I did.”

  “I hope the Wraggs charged extra.”

  St. James smiled. “They didn’t, that. But they did give us the message. They gave everyone the message. Sergeant Dick Hawkins, Clitheroe Police, phoning for Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley.”

  “‘I asked him where this Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley was from, I did,’” Deborah added in her best Lancashire accent. “‘And wouldn’t you know’—with a wonderfully dramatic pause, Tommy—‘he’s from New Scotland Yard! Staying right here at the inn, he’ll be. He booked a room hisself not three hours past. I took the call. Now what you s’pose he’s come to look into?’” Deborah’s nose wrinkled with her smile. “You’re the week’s excitement. You’ve turned Winslough into St. Mary Mead.”

  Lynley chuckled. St. James said pensively, “Clitheroe’s not the regional constabulary for Winslough, is it? And this Hawkins said nothing about being attached to anyone’s CID, because if he had, we surely would have heard that bit of news along with everything else.”

  “Clitheroe’s just the divisional police centre,” Lynley said. “Hawkins is the local constable’s superior officer. I spoke to him this morning.”

  “But he’s not CID?”

  “No. And you were right in your conclusions about that, St. James. When I spoke to Hawkins earlier, he affirmed the fact that Clitheroe’s CID did nothing more than photograph the body, examine the crime scene, collect physical evidence, and arrange for autopsy. Shepherd himself did the rest: investigation and interviews. But he didn’t do them alone.”

  “Who assisted?”

  “His father.”

  “That’s deucedly odd.”

  “Odd and irregular but not illegal. From what Sergeant Hawkins told me earlier, Shepherd’s father was Detective Chief Inspector at the regional constabulary in Hutton-Preston at the time. Evidently he pulled rank on Sergeant Hawkins and gave the order how things would be.”

  “Was Detective Chief Inspector?”

  “This Sage affair was his last police case. He retired shortly after the inquest.”

  “So Colin Shepherd must have arranged with his father to keep Clitheroe’s CID out of it,” Deborah said.

  “Or his father wanted it that way.”

  “But why?” St. James mused.

  “I dare say that’s what we’re here to find out.”

  They walked down the Clitheroe Road together, in the direction of the church, past the front of terraced houses whose white, transomed windows were edged by a hundred years of grime that no mere washing could ever remove.

  They found Colin Shepherd’s house next to the vicarage, just across the street from St. John the Baptist Church. Here, they separated, Deborah crossing to the church itself with a quiet “I haven’t seen it yet anyway,” leaving St. James and Lynley to conduct their interview with the constable on their own.

  Two cars stood on the drive in front of the sorrel brick building, a muddy Land Rover at least ten years old and a splattered Golf that looked relatively new. No car stood on the neighbouring drive, but as they skirted past the Rover and the Golf on their way to Colin Shepherd’s door, a woman came to one of the front windows in the vicarage, and she watched their progress with no attempt to hide herself from view. One hand was freeing kinky, carrot-coloured hair from a scarf that bound it at the base of her neck. The other was buttoning a navy coat. She didn’t move from the window even when it was obvious that Lynley and St. James had seen her.

  A narrow, rectangular sign jutted from the side of Colin Shepherd’s house. Blue and white, it was printed with the single word POLICE. As was the case in most villages, the local constable’s home was also the business centre of his policing area. Lynley wondered idly if Shepherd had brought the Spence woman here to do his questioning of her.

  A dog began to bark in answer to their ringing of the bell. It was a sound that started at one end of the house, rapidly approached the front door, and took up a raucous position behind it. A large dog by the sound of it, and none too friendly.

  A man’s voice said, “Quiet, Leo. Sit,” and the barking ceased at once. The porch light flicked on—although it wasn’t yet completely dark—and the door swung open.

  With a large black retriever sitting at attention at his side, Colin Shepherd looked them over. His face reflected neither the anticipation attendant to greeting a request for his professional services nor the general curiosity attached to finding strangers at one’s door. His words explained why. He said them with a quick, formal nod. “Scotland Yard CID. Sergeant Hawkins said you might pay me a call today.”

  Lynley produced his warrant card and introduced St. James, to whom Shepherd said after an evaluative glance, “You’re staying at the inn, aren’t you? I saw you last night.”

  “My wife and I came to see Mr. Sage.”

  “The red-headed woman. She was out by the reservoir this morning.”

  “She’d gone there to walk on the moor.”

  “The mist comes down fast in these parts. It’s no place for a walk if you don’t know the land.”

  “I’ll tell her.”

  Shepherd stepped back from the door. The dog rose in response, a rumbling in his throat. Shepherd said, “Be quiet. Go back to the fire,” and the dog trotted obediently into another room.

  “Use him for your work?” Lynley asked.

  “No. Just for hunting.”

  Shepherd nodded to a coat rack that stood at one end of the elongated entry. Beneath it, three pairs of gumboots lined up, two
of them smeared with fresh mud on the sides. Next to these, a metal milk basket stood, with an empty cocoon of some long-departed insect dangling by a thread from one of its bars. Shepherd waited while Lynley and St. James hung up their coats. Then he led the way down the corridor in the direction the retriever had taken.

  They went into a sitting room where a fire burned and an older man was laying a small log on top of the flames. Despite the years that separated them in age, it was obvious that this was Colin Shepherd’s father. They shared many similarities: the height, the muscular chest, the narrow hips. Their hair was different, thinning in the father and fading to the colour of sand in the way that blonds do as they move towards grey. And the long fingers, sensitivity, and sureness of the hands in the son had in the father become large knuckles and split nails with age.

  The latter man slapped his palms together briskly as if to rid them of wood dust. He offered his hand in greeting. “Kenneth Shepherd,” he said. “Detective Chief Inspector, retired. Hutton-Preston CID. But I expect you know that already, don’t you?”

  “Sergeant Hawkins passed the information on to me.”

  “As well he ought. It’s good to meet you both.” He shot a glance at his son. “Have you something to offer these good gentlemen, Col?”

  The constable’s face did not change its expression despite the affability of his father’s tone. Behind his tortoiseshell spectacles, his eyes remained guarded. “Beer,” he said. “Whisky. Brandy. I’ve a sherry here that’s been collecting dust for the last six years.”

  “Your Annie was a one for her sherry, wasn’t she?” the Chief Inspector said. “God rest her sweet soul. I’ll have a go with that. And you?” to the others.

  “Nothing,” said Lynley.

  “Nor for me,” St. James said.

  From a small fruitwood side table, Shepherd poured the drink for his father and something from a spirit decanter for himself. As he did so, Lynley glanced round the room.

  It was sparsely furnished, in the manner of a man who shops at jumble sales when a pressing need arises and doesn’t give much thought to the look of his possessions. The back of a beleaguered sofa was covered by a handknit blanket of multicoloured squares that managed to hide most of the large but mercifully faded pink anemones that decorated its fabric. Nothing beyond their own worn upholstery covered either of the two mismatched wing chairs, the arms of which were threadbare and the backs of which were permanently dented from serving as the resting place for generations of heads. Aside from a bentwood coffee table, a brass floor lamp, and the side table on which the liquor bottles stood, the only other item of interest hung on the wall. This was a cabinet that housed a collection of rifles and shotguns. They were the only things in the room that looked cared for, no doubt companion pieces to the retriever who had sunk onto an ancient, stained duvet in front of the fire. His paws, like the gumboots in the hall, were clotted with mud.

  “Game birds?” Lynley asked with a look at the guns.

  “Deer at one time as well. But I’ve given that up. The killing never lived up to the stalking.”

  “It seems that it should. But it never does, does it?”

  His sherry glass in hand, the Chief Inspector gestured towards the sofa and chairs. “Sit,” he said, sinking into the sofa. “We’ve just come in from a tramp ourselves and can do with taking a load off our feet. I’m off in about a quarter of an hour. I’ve got a sweet young thing of fifty-eight years waiting dinner for me at the pensioner’s flat. But there’s time enough for a natter first.”

  “You don’t live here in Winslough?” St. James asked.

  “Haven’t in years. I like a bit of action and a bit of willing, soft girl-flesh to go with it. There’s none of the first to be found in Winslough and what there is of the second’s long been tied up.”

  The constable took his drink to the fire, squatted down on his haunches, and ran his hand over the retriever’s head. In response, Leo opened his eyes and moved to rest his chin against Shepherd’s shoe. His tail skittered in contentment against the floor.

  “Got yourself in the mud,” Shepherd said, giving a gentle tug to the retriever’s ears. “A fine mess you are.”

  His father snorted. “Dogs. Christ. They get under your skin about as bad as do women.”

  It was an opening from which Lynley’s question rose naturally, although he was as certain the Chief Inspector hadn’t intended it to be used that way as he was certain the man’s visit to his son had little to do with an afternoon’s hike on the moors. “What can you tell us about Mrs. Spence and the death of Robin Sage?”

  “Not exactly a Yard concern, is it?” Although he said it in a friendly enough fashion, the Chief Inspector’s response came too quickly upon the heels of the question. It spoke of having been prepared in advance.

  “Formally? No.”

  “But informally?”

  “Surely you’re not blind to the irregularity of the investigation, Chief Inspector. No CID. Your son’s attachment to the perpetrator of the crime.”

  “Accident, not crime.” Colin Shepherd looked up from the dog, his glass clasped in an easy grip in his hand. He remained squatting next to the fire. A countryman born and bred, he could no doubt maintain the position for hours without the slightest discomfort.

  “An irregular decision, but not illegal,” the Chief Inspector said. “Colin felt he could handle it. I agreed. Handle it he did. I was with him through most of it, so if it’s the lack of CID input that’s got the Yard in a dither, CID was here all the time.”

  “You sat in on all the interviews?”

  “The ones that mattered.”

  “Chief Inspector, you know that’s more than irregular. I don’t need to tell you that when a crime’s been committed—”

  “But no crime was,” the constable said. He kept one hand on the dog, but his eyes were on Lynley. He didn’t move them. “The crime-scene team came out to crawl round the moors and overturn stones, and they saw the situation well enough in an hour. This wasn’t a crime. It was a clear-cut accident. I saw it that way. The coroner saw it that way. The jury saw it that way. End of story.”

  “You were certain of that from the first?”

  The dog stirred restlessly as the hand on him tightened. “Of course not.”

  “Yet aside from the initial presence of the crime-scene team, you made the decision not to involve your divisional CID, the very people who are trained to determine if a death is an accident, a suicide, or murder.”

  “I made the decision,” the Chief Inspector said.

  “Based upon?”

  “A phone call from me,” his son said.

  “You reported the death to your father? Not to the divisional headquarters in Clitheroe?”

  “I reported to both. I told Hawkins I would handle it. Pa confirmed. Everything seemed straightforward enough once I’d talked to Juliet…to Mrs. Spence.”

  “And Mr. Spence?” Lynley asked.

  “There is none.”

  “I see.”

  The constable dropped his eyes, swirled the liquor in his glass. “This has nothing to do with our relationship.”

  “But it adds a complication. I’m sure you see that.”

  “It wasn’t a murder.”

  St. James leaned forward in the wing chair he’d chosen. “What makes you so certain? What made you so certain a month ago, Constable?”

  “She had no motive. She didn’t know the man. It was only the third time they’d even met. He was after her to start going to church. And he wanted to talk about Maggie.”

  “Maggie?” Lynley asked.

  “Her daughter. Juliet had been having some trouble with her and the vicar got involved. He wanted to help. Mediate between them. Offer advice. That’s it. That’s their relationship in a nutshell. Should I have called in CID and had them read her the caution over that? Or would you have preferred a motive first?”

  “Means and opportunity are powerful indicators in themselves,” Lynley said.
/>   “That’s a lot of balls and you know it,” the Chief Inspector put in.

  “Pa…”

  Shepherd’s father waved him off with his sherry glass. “I have the means for murder every time I get behind the wheel of my car. I have opportunity when I step on the pedal. Is it murder, Inspector, if I hit someone who dodges into the path of my car? Do we need to call in CID for that, or can we deem it an accident?”

  “Pa…”

  “If that’s your argument—and I can’t deny its ten-ability at the moment—why involve CID in the person of yourself?”

  “Because he is involved with the woman, for God’s sake. He wanted me here to make sure he kept his mind clear. And he did. Every moment.”

  “Every moment you were here. And by your own admission, you weren’t here for each interview.”

  “I damn well didn’t need—”

  “Pa.” Shepherd’s voice was sharp. It altered to quiet reason when he went on. “Obviously it looked bad when Sage died. Juliet knows her plants, and it was hard to believe she could have mistaken water hemlock for wild parsnip. But that’s what happened.”

  “You’re certain of that?” St. James asked.

  “Of course I am. She got ill herself the night Mr. Sage died. She was burning with fever. She was sick four or five times, until two the next morning. Now you can’t tell me that without having a blessed motive in the world she’d knowingly eat a few bites of the deadliest natural poison there is in order to paint a murder an accident. Hemlock’s not like arsenic, Inspector Lynley. One doesn’t build up an immunity to it. If Juliet wanted to kill Mr. Sage, she bloody well wouldn’t have been such a fool as to deliberately eat part of the hemlock herself. She could have died. She was lucky she didn’t.”

  “You know for a fact she was ill?” Lynley asked.

  “I was there.”

  “At the dinner?”

  “Later. I stopped by.”

  “What time?”

  “Towards eleven. After I made my last patrol.”

  “Why?”

  Shepherd tossed back the rest of his drink and placed the glass on the floor. He took off his spectacles and spent a moment polishing the outer right lens against the sleeve of his flannel shirt.