Missing Joseph

by Elizabeth George

Again the buzzing, that insidious alarm. Lynley observed the girl carefully, trying to read behind every word she was uttering, wondering how much she was leaving unsaid. “Where did you have these conversations, Maggie?”

  “In the vicarage. Polly’d make tea and bring it into the study. We’d eat Jaffa Cakes and talk.”

  “Alone?”

  She nodded. “Polly didn’t much like to talk about the Bible. She doesn’t go to church. Course, we don’t either.”

  “But he talked about the Bible with you.”

  “Mostly because we were friends. You can talk about stuff with your friends, he said. You can tell who your friends are because they listen.”

  “You listened to him. He listened to you. You were special to each other.”

  “We were mates.” She smiled. “Josie said the vicar liked me better’n anyone in the parish and I didn’t even go to church. She was miffed at that, was Josie. She said why does he want you for tea and for walks on the moors, Miss Maggie Spence? I said he was lonely and I was his friend.”

  “Did he tell you he was lonely?”

  “He didn’t have to. I knew. He was always glad to see me. He always gave me a hug when I left. He was good at hugs.”

  “You liked them.”

  “Yes.”

  He let a moment pass as he considered how best to approach the subject without frightening her off. Mr. Sage had been her friend, her trusted companion. Whatever they had shared had been sacred to the girl.

  “It’s nice to be hugged,” he said musingly. “Few things are nicer, if you ask me.” He could tell she was watching him, and he wondered if she sensed his hesitation. This type of interview wasn’t his forte. It required the surgical skill of a psychologist, touching as it did upon fear and taboo. He was feeling his way forward on precarious ground and not particularly happy about being there. “Friends have secrets sometimes, Maggie, things they know about each other, things they say, things they do together. Sometimes it’s the secrets and the promise of keeping them that make them friends in the first place. Was that how it was between you and Mr. Sage?”

  She was silent. He saw that she had gone back to sucking on the inside of her lower lip. A wedge of mud had fallen to the floor from between the heel and the sole of one of her shoes. In her restless movement on the chair, she had crushed the mud to brown shards on the Axminster carpet. Mrs. Crone wouldn’t be pleased with that.

  “Were they a worry to your mum, Maggie? The promises perhaps? The secrets?”

  “He liked me better’n anyone,” she said.

  “Did your mum know that?”

  “He wanted me to be in the social club. He said he’d speak with her so she would let me join. They were going to take an excursion to London. He asked me special did I want to go. They were going to have a Christmas party as well. He said surely Mummy would let me come to that. They talked on the phone.”

  “The day he died?”

  It was too quick a question. She blinked rapidly and said, “Mummy didn’t do anything. Mummy wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “Did she ask him for dinner that night, Maggie?”

  The girl shook her head. “Mummy didn’t say.”

  “She didn’t invite him?”

  “She didn’t say she asked him.”

  “But she told you he was coming.”

  Maggie weighed an answer. He could see her doing so, the action evident from the manner in which her eyes lowered to the level of his chest. He needed no additional reply.

  “How did you know he was coming if she didn’t tell you?”

  “He phoned. I heard.”

  “What?”

  “It was about the social club, the party, like I said. Mummy sounded cross. ‘I have no intention of letting her go. There’s no point in discussing this any further.’ That’s what she said. Then he said something. He went on and on. And she said he could come for dinner and they’d talk about it then. But I didn’t think she was going to change her mind.”

  “That very night?”

  “Mr. Sage always said one had to strike while the poker could get to the wood.” She frowned thoughtfully. “Or something like that. He never took a first no to mean an always no. He knew I wanted to be in the club. He thought it was important.”

  “Who directs the club?”

  “No one. Not now that Mr. Sage’s dead.”

  “Who was in it?”

  “Pam and Josie. Girls from the village. Some from the farms.”

  “No boys?”

  “Just two.” She wrinkled her nose. “The boys were being stubborn about joining. ‘But we shall win them over in the end,’ Mr. Sage said. ‘We shall put our heads together and develop a plan.’ That’s part of the reason why he wanted me in the club, you see.”

  “So that you could put your heads together?” Lynley asked blandly.

  She didn’t react. “So that Nick would join. ’Cause if Nick joined, the rest would follow. Mr. Sage knew that. Mr. Sage knew everything.”

  Rule One: Trust your intuition.

  Rule Two: Back it up with the facts.

  Rule Three: Make an arrest.

  Rule Four had something to do with where an officer of the law should relieve himself after consuming four pints of Guinness at the conclusion of a case, and Rule Five referred to the single activity most highly recommended as a form of celebration once the guilty party was brought to justice. Detective Inspector Angus MacPherson had handed out the rules, printed on garish hot-pink cards with suitable illustrations, during a divisional meeting at New Scotland Yard one day, and while the fourth and fifth rules had been the cause of general guffawing and lewd remarks, the first three Lynley had clipped from the rest during an idle moment while waiting on hold on the telephone. He used them for a bookmark. He considered them an addendum to the Judges’ Rules.

  The intuitive deduction that Maggie was central to Mr. Sage’s death had brought him to the Clitheroe grammar school in the first place. Nothing she had said during their conversation disabused him of that belief.

  A lonely, middle-aged man and a young girl poised on the brink of womanhood made for an uneasy combination, no matter the man’s ostensible rectitude and the girl’s overt naiveté. If sifting through the ashes of Robin Sage’s death disclosed a meticulous approach to the seduction of a child, Lynley would not be at all surprised. It wouldn’t be the first time molestation had worn the guise of friendship and sanctity. It wouldn’t be the last. The fact that the violation was perpetrated upon a child was part of its insidious allure. And in this case, because the child was already sexual, whatever guilt might otherwise stay the hand of captivation could be easily ignored.

  She was eager for friendship and approval. She yearned for the warmth of contact. What better fodder could possibly exist to satiate a man’s mere physical desire? It wouldn’t necessarily have been an issue of power with Robin Sage. Nor would it have naturally been a demonstration of his inability to forge or maintain an adult relationship. It could have been human temptation, pure and simple. He was good at hugs, as Maggie had said. She was a child who welcomed them. That she was actually far more than a child might have been something the vicar discovered to his own surprise.

  And what then, Lynley wondered. Arousal and Sage’s failure to master it? The itch in the palms to peel back clothing and expose bare flesh? Those two traitors to detachment—heat and blood—pulsing in the groin and demanding action? And that clever whisper in the back of the brain: What difference does it make, she’s already doing it, she’s nobody’s innocent, it’s not as if you’re seducing a virgin, if she doesn’t like it she can tell you to stop, just hug her close so she can feel you and know, graze her breasts quickly, glide a hand between her thighs, talk about how nice it is to be cuddled, just the two of us, Maggie, our special secret, my finest little mate…

  It all could have happened over a few short weeks. She was at odds with her mother. She needed a friend.

  Lynley pulled the Bentley into the street, d
rove to the corner, and made the turn to head back into the centre of the town. It was possible, he thought. But at this point so was anything else. He was running before his horse to market. Rule One was crucial. There was no doubting that. But it could not overshadow Rule Two.

  He began to look for a phone.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  HEAR THE SUMMIT OF COTES FELL, FROM above the standing stone they called Great North, Colin Shepherd gathered what he hadn’t previously added to his storehouse of facts surrounding the death of Robin Sage: When the mist dissipated or when the wind made it drift, one could see the grounds of Cotes Hall quite clearly, especially in winter when the trees bore no leaves. A few yards below, leaning against the stone for a smoke or a rest, one was limited to viewing the old mansion’s roof with its mishmash of chimney-pots, dormer windows, and weathervanes. But climb a bit higher to the summit and sit in the shelter of that limestone outcropping that curved like the punctuation of a question which no one would ask, and one could see everything, from the Hall itself in all its ghoulish decrepitude, to the courtyard it surrounded on three sides, from the grounds that crept out from it, reclaimed by nature, to the outbuildings intended to serve its needs. Among these last was the cottage, and it was to the cottage and into its garden that Colin had watched Inspector Lynley go.

  While Leo dashed from one point of canine interest to another at the summit of the fell, led by his nose into a happy exploration of scent, Colin followed Lynley’s movements across the garden and into the greenhouse, marvelling at the clear vista he had. From below, the mist had looked much like a solid wall, impedimentary to movement and impenetrable to vision. But here, what had seemed both impassable and opaque proved to have the substance of cobwebs. It was damp and cold but otherwise of little account.

  He watched everything, counting the minutes they spent inside the greenhouse, taking note of their exploration of the cellar. He filed away the fact that the kitchen door of the cottage had been left unlocked behind them when they made their way into the courtyard and across the grounds, just as it had been unlocked while Juliet worked in solitude in her greenhouse and when she opened it to fetch the cellar key. He saw them pause for conversation upon the terrace, and when Juliet gestured towards the pond, he could have predicted what would follow.

  Throughout it all, he could hear as well. Not their conversation, but the distinct sound of music. Even when a sudden gust of wind altered the density of the mist, he could still hear that spritely march playing.

  Anyone who took the trouble to climb Cotes Fell would know of the comings and goings at the Hall and at the cottage. It wasn’t even necessary to take the risk of trespassing on the Townley-Young land. The hike to the summit was a public footpath, after all. While the going was occasionally steep—especially the last stretch above Great North—it wasn’t enough to tax the endurance of anyone Lancashire born and bred. It was especially not enough to tax the endurance of a woman who made it a regular climb.

  When Lynley had reversed his monster of a car out of the courtyard in preparation for the return drive through the potholes and mud that kept most visitors away, Colin turned from the view and walked over to the question-mark limestone outcropping. He squatted in its shelter, thoughtfully scooped up a handful of shards and pebbles, and let them spill back onto the ground from his loosened fist. Leo joined him, giving the exterior of the outcropping a thorough olfactory examination and dislodging a miniature landslide of shale. From his jacket pocket, Colin removed a chewed-up tennis ball. He played it back and forth beneath Leo’s nose, hurled it into the mist, and watched the dog trot happily in pursuit. He moved with perfect sure-footed grace, did Leo. He knew his job and had no trouble doing it.

  A short distance from the outcropping, Colin could see a thin, earthen scar marking the hardy grass that was indigenous to the moors and the hillsides. It formed a circle approximately nine feet in diameter, its circumference delineated by stones that were spaced out evenly, perhaps twelve inches apart. At the circle’s centre lay an oblong of granite, and he didn’t need to approach and examine it to know it would bear the leavings of melted wax, the scratches made by a gypsy-pot, and the distinct etching of a five-pointed star.

  It was no secret to anyone in the village that the top of Cotes Fell was a sacred place. It was heralded by Great North, long reputed to be capable of giving psychic answers to questions if the questioner both asked and listened with a pure heart and a receptive mind. Its oddly shaped outcropping of limestone was seen by some as a fertility symbol, the stomach of a mother, swollen with life. And its finial of granite—so like an altar that the similarities could not be easily ignored—had been well-established as a geological oddity in the early decades of the last century. This, then, was a place of ancients where the old ways endured.

  The Yarkins had been chief practitioners of the Craft and worshippers of the Goddess for as long as Colin could remember. They had never made a secret of it. They went about the business of chants, rituals, candle or cord spells, and incantations with a devotion that had garnered them, if not respect, at least a higher degree of toleration than one would normally expect from villagers whose circumscribed lives and limited experience often promoted a conservative bias towards God, monarch, country, and nothing else. But in times of desperation, anyone’s influence with any Almighty was generally welcome. So if illness struck a beloved child, if a farmer’s sheep were dropping with disease, if a soldier was due to be posted in Northern Ireland, no one ever declined Rita or Polly Yarkin’s offer to cast the circle and petition the Goddess. Who really knew, after all, which Deity listened? Why not hedge one’s religious bets, cover every one of the supernatural bases, and hope for the best?

  He’d even done it himself, allowing Polly to climb this hill time and again for Annie’s sake. She wore a gold robe. She carried laurel branches in a basket. She burned them along with cloves for incense. With an alphabet he couldn’t read and didn’t truly believe was real, she carved her request into a thick orange candle and burned it down, asking for a miracle, telling him that anything was possible if the heart of the witch was pure. After all, hadn’t Nick Ware’s mum got her boy-child at last, and her all of forty-nine years old when she had him? Hadn’t Mr. Townley-Young seen fit to grant an unheard of pension to the men who worked his farms? Hadn’t Fork Reservoir been developed to provide new jobs for the county? These, Polly said, were the boons of the Goddess.

  She never permitted him to watch a ritual. He wasn’t a practitioner, after all. Nor was he an initiate. Some things, she said, couldn’t be allowed. So if the truth be faced, he never knew what she actually did when she reached the top of the fell. He had never once heard her make a request.

  But from the top of the fell, where from the wax drippings on the granite altar Colin knew she still was practising the Craft, Polly could see Cotes Hall. She would have been able to monitor movements in the courtyard, on the grounds, and in the cottage garden. No arrival or departure would have gone unnoticed, and even if someone headed from the cottage into the wood, she could see that from here.

  Colin stood and whistled for Leo. The dog came bounding out of the mist. He carried the tennis ball in his mouth and dropped it playfully at Colin’s feet, his snout a mere inch or two away, ready to snatch it back should his master reach for it. Colin entertained the retriever with the bit of tug-and-pull that he wanted, smiling at the artificiality of the dog’s protective growls. Finally, Leo released the ball, backed off a few steps, and waited for the throw. Colin hurled it down the hillside in the direction of the Hall and watched as the dog gambolled after it.

  Colin followed slowly, keeping to the footpath. He paused by Great North and put his hand against it, feeling the quick shock of cold that the ancients would have called the rock’s magical power.

  “Did she?” he asked and closed his eyes for the answer. He could feel it in his fingers. Yes…yes…

  The descent wasn’t consistently sharp. The walk was a cold one, but it w
asn’t impossible. So many feet had carved out the track over time that the grass, which was slippery with frost in other areas, was worn through to the earth and stones on the path. The resulting friction against the soles of one’s shoes eliminated much risk. Anyone could make the walk up Cotes Fell. One could walk it in the mist. One could walk it at night.

  It switched back on itself three times so that the vista it provided was continually changing. A view of the Hall became one of the dale with Skelshaw Farm in the distance. A moment later, the sight of Skelshaw Farm gave way to the church and cottages of Winslough. And finally, as the slope became pasture at the bottom of the fell, the footpath edged the grounds of Cotes Hall.

  Colin paused here. There was no stile in the drystone wall to allow a hiker easy access to the Hall. But like many areas of the countryside that have gone untended, the wall was in marginal disrepair. Brambles overgrew it in some sections. Others gaped open with small pyramids of rubble lying beneath them. It would take little effort to climb through the gap. He did it himself, whistling for the dog who followed.

  The land here dipped a second time, in a gradual slope that ended at the pond, some twenty yards away. Reaching this, Colin looked back the way he had come. He could make out Great North, but beyond it nothing. The mist and the sky were monochromatic, and the frost on the land provided no contrast. They hid without even appearing to hide. An observer couldn’t have asked for more.

  He skirted the pond with the dog at his heels, stopping to crouch and examine the root that Juliet had unearthed for Lynley. He rubbed its surface, disclosing the dirty-ivory flesh, and he pressed his thumbnail against the stem. A thin bleeding of oil the width of a needle oozed out. Yes…yes.

  He flung it into the middle of the pond and watched it sink. The water undulated in growing circles that lapped at the edges of the grimy ice. He said, “Leo. No,” when the dog’s instincts to fetch took him too close to the water’s edge. He took the tennis ball from him, threw it the distance to the terrace, and followed him after it.