Missing Joseph

by Elizabeth George

  “But once they knew he’d been to dinner at the cottage? Why didn’t they step in?”

  “According to Hawkins—who frankly was a bit more forthcoming when I was standing before him, warrant card in hand, than when I had him on the phone—three factors influenced the decision: the involvement of Shepherd’s father in the constable’s investigation, what Hawkins honestly assumed to be the pure coincidence of Shepherd’s visit to the cottage on the night Sage died, and some additional input from forensic.”

  “The visit wasn’t a coincidence?” St. James asked. “Shepherd wasn’t making rounds?”

  “Mrs. Spence phoned him to come to her,” Lynley replied. “She told me she wanted to testify as much for the coroner’s jury at the inquest, but Shepherd insisted on claiming he’d just dropped by on his rounds. She said he lied because he wanted to protect her from local gossip and unfriendly speculation after the verdict was in.”

  “That doesn’t seem to have worked, if the other night in the pub is any indication.”

  “Quite. But here’s what I find intriguing, St. James: She was perfectly willing to admit to the truth of phoning Shepherd when I spoke to her this morning. Why bother to do that? Why didn’t she stick with the story they’d agreed on, one that was generally accepted and believed, even if the villagers aren’t particularly in love with it?”

  “Perhaps she never agreed to Shepherd’s story in the first place,” St. James offered. “If he testified before she did at the inquest, I doubt she would have wanted to perjure him by telling the truth.”

  “But why not agree to the story? Her daughter wasn’t home. If only the two of them—she and Shepherd—knew that she’d phoned him, what possible reason could she have now for telling me a different story, even if it’s the truth? She’s damning herself by the admission.”

  “You won’t think I’m guilty if I admit I’m guilty,” Deborah murmured.

  “Christ, but that’s a dangerous game to play.”

  “It worked on Shepherd,” St. James said. “Why not on you? She fixed in his mind the image of her vomiting. He believed her and he took her part.”

  “That was the third factor that influenced Hawkins’ decision to call off the CID. The sickness. According to forensic…” Lynley set down his glass, put on his spectacles, and picked up the report. He scanned the first page, the second, and found what he was looking for on the third, saying, “Ah, here it is. ‘Prognosis for recovering from hemlock poisoning is good if vomition can be obtained.’ So the fact that she was sick supports Shepherd’s contention that she ate some of the hemlock accidentally.”

  “Purposely. Or, what’s more likely, not at all.” St. James took up his pint of Harp. “Obtained is the operative word, Tommy. It indicates that vomition isn’t a natural by-product of ingestion. It must be induced. So she’d have had to take a purgative of some sort. Which means she would have had to know that she’d ingested poison in the first place. And if that’s the case, why didn’t she phone Sage to warn him or send someone out looking for him?”

  “Could she have known something was wrong with her but not that it was hemlock? Could she have assumed it was something else? Some milk gone bad? A bad piece of meat?”

  “She could have assumed anything, if she’s innocent. We can’t get away from that.”

  Lynley sailed the report back to the coffee table, removed his spectacles, ran his hand through his hair. “Then we’re nowhere, essentially. It’s a case of yes-you-did, no-I-didn’t unless there’s a motive somewhere. Can I hope the bishop gave you one in Bradford?”

  “Robin Sage was married,” St. James said.

  “He wanted to talk to his fellow priests about the woman taken in adultery,” Deborah added.

  Lynley leaned forward in his chair. “No one’s said…”

  “Which seems to mean no one knew.”

  “What happened to the wife? Was Sage divorced? That would be an odd thing for a priest, surely.”

  “She died some ten or fifteen years ago. A boating accident in Cornwall.”

  “What sort?”

  “Glennaven—he’s Bradford’s bishop—didn’t know. I phoned Truro but couldn’t get through to the bishop there. And his secretary wasn’t forthcoming with anything other than the basic fact: a boating accident. He wasn’t free to give out information on the telephone, he said. What sort of boat it was, what the circumstances were, where the accident occurred, what the weather was like, if Sage was with her when it happened…nothing.”

  “Protecting one of their own?”

  “He didn’t know who I was, after all. And even if he did, I hardly have the right to the information. I’m not CID. And what we’re engaged in here is hardly an official endeavour, even if I were.”

  “But what do you think?”

  “About the idea that they’re protecting Sage?”

  “And through him the reputation of the Church.”

  “It’s a possibility. The connection to the woman taken in adultery is hard to ignore, isn’t it?”

  “If he killed her…” Lynley mused.

  “Someone else might have waited for an opportunity for revenge.”

  “Two people alone on a sailboat. A rough day. A sudden squall. The boom shifts in the wind, cracks the woman on the head, and she’s overboard in an instant.”

  “Could that sort of death be faked?” St. James asked.

  “A murder posing as an accident, you mean? No boom at all but a blow to the head? Of course.”

  “What poetic justice,” Deborah said. “A second murder posing as an accident. It’s symmetrical, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a perfect sort of vengeance,” Lynley said. “There’s truth to that.”

  “But then who is Mrs. Spence?” Deborah asked.

  St. James listed possibilities. “A former housekeeper who knew the truth, a neighbour, an old friend of the wife.”

  “The wife’s sister,” Deborah said. “His own sister even.”

  “Being urged back to the Church here in Winslough and finding him a hypocrite she couldn’t endure?”

  “Perhaps a cousin, Simon. Or someone who worked for the Bishop of Truro as well.”

  “Why not someone who was involved with Sage? Adultery cuts both ways, doesn’t it?”

  “He killed his wife to be with Mrs. Spence but once she discovered the truth, she wouldn’t have him? She ran off?”

  “The possibilities are endless. Her background’s the key.”

  Lynley turned his pint glass thoughtfully on the table. Concentric rings of moisture marked its every position. He’d been listening but felt disinclined to dismiss all his previous conjectures. He said, “Nothing else peculiar in his background, St. James? Alcohol, drugs, an unseemly interest in something disreputable, immoral, or illegal?”

  “He had a passion for Scripture, but that doesn’t seem out of character in a priest. What are you looking for?”

  “Something about children?”

  “Paedophilia?” When Lynley nodded, St. James went on. “Not a hint of that.”

  “But would there be a hint, if the Church was protecting him and saving its own reputation to boot? Can you see the bishop admitting to the fact that Robin Sage had a penchant for choirboys, that he had to be moved—”

  “And he moved continually, according to the Bishop of Bradford,” Deborah noted.

  “—because he couldn’t keep his hands to himself? They’d get him help, they’d insist upon that. But would they ever admit to the truth in public?”

  “I suppose it’s as likely as anything else. But it seems the least plausible of the explanations. Who are the choirboys here?”

  “Perhaps it wasn’t boys.”

  “You’re thinking of Maggie. And Mrs. Spence killing him to put an end to…what? Molestation? Seduction? If that’s the case, why wouldn’t she say?”

  “It’s still murder, St. James. She’s the girl’s only parent. Could she depend upon a jury seeing it her way, acquitting, and leaving h
er free to care for the child who depends upon her? Would she take that risk? Would anyone? Would you?”

  “Why not report him to the police? To the Church?”

  “It’s her word against his.”

  “But the daughter’s word…”

  “What if Maggie chose to protect the man? What if she wanted the involvement in the first place? What if she fancied herself in love with him? Or fancied he loved her?”

  St. James rubbed the back of his neck. Deborah sank her chin into the palm of her hand. Both of them sighed. Deborah said, “I feel like the Red Queen in Alice. We need to run twice as fast, and I’m already out of breath.”

  “It’s not looking good,” St. James agreed. “We need to know more, and all they need to do is hold their tongues to keep us permanently in the dark.”

  “Not necessarily,” Lynley said. “There’s still Truro to consider. We’ve plenty of room to manoeuvre there. We’ve got the wife’s death to dig into, as well as Robin Sage’s background.”

  “God, that’s a hike. Will you go there, Tommy?”

  “I won’t.”

  “Then who?”

  Lynley smiled. “Someone on holiday. Just like the rest of us.”

  In Acton, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers turned on the radio that sat on the top of the refrigerator, and interrupted Sting in the midst of warbling about his father’s hands. She said, “Yeah, baby. Sing it, you hunk,” and chuckled at herself. She liked listening to Sting. Lynley claimed her interest was rooted solely in the fact that Sting appeared to shave only once a fortnight, in a display of putative virility that was geared to attract a largely feminine following. Barbara pooh-poohed this. She argued that, for his part, Lynley was a musical snob, saying that if a piece had been composed within the last eighty years, he wouldn’t offend his aristocratic ears by exposing them to it. She herself had no real predilection for rock and roll, but given her preference, she always chose it over classical, jazz, blues, or what Constable Nkata referred to as “honky Grandma tunes” which usually featured something from the forties inoffensively rendered by a full orchestra with a heavy emphasis on the strings. Nkata himself was devoted to blues, although Havers knew he’d sell his soul in an instant—not to mention his growing collection of CD’s—for just five minutes alone with Tina Turner. “Never you mind she’s old enough to be my mum,” he’d say to his colleagues. “My mum look like that, I’d’a never left home.”

  Barbara turned up the volume and opened the refrigerator. She was hoping that the sight of something inside would stimulate her appetite. Instead the odour of five-day-old plaice made her retreat to the other side of the kitchen, saying, “Jesus bloody hell,” with some considerable reverence while she considered how best to be rid of the leaking package of fish without having to touch it. She wondered what other malodorous surprises were waiting for discovery, wrapped in foil, stored in plastic cases, or brought home in cartons for a hasty meal and long since forgotten. From her position of safety, she spied something green climbing the edges of one container. She wanted to believe it was leftover mushy peas. The colour seemed right, but the fibrous consistency suggested mould. Next to it, a new life-form seemed to be evolving from what once had been a plate of spaghetti. In fact, the entire refrigerator looked like an unsavoury experiment-in-progress, conducted by Alexander Fleming with another trip to Stockholm in mind.

  With her eyes fastened suspiciously on this mess and the back of one index finger pressed beneath her nose to breathe against shallowly, Barbara edged over to the kitchen sink. She rustled through cleansers, scrubbing pads, brushes, and a few stiffened lumps that had once been dish-cloths. She unearthed a carton of rubbish bags. Armed with one of these and a spatula, she advanced to do battle. The plaice went into the sack first, splatting against the floor and sending up a death howl in the form of an odour that made Barbara shudder. The mushy peas-cum-antibiotic went next, followed by the spaghetti, a wedge of double Gloucester that appeared to have grown some sort of interesting beard, a plate of petrified bangers and mash, and a carton of pizza which she could not get up the nerve to open. Leftover chow mein joined the mess, as did the spongy remains of half a tomato, three grapefruit halves, and a carton of milk she distinctly remembered having purchased last June.

  Once Barbara developed a rhythm to this catharsis of comestibles, she decided to carry it to its logical conclusion. Anything that wasn’t sealed in a jar, permanently and professionally pickled, or posing as a condiment unaffected by the passage of time—out with the mayonnaise, in with the ketchup—joined the plaice and its companions-in-decomposition. By the time she was done, the refrigerator shelves were bare of anything that made even the smallest promise of a meal, but she wasn’t a mourner for the edible loss. Whatever appetite she may have been trying to stimulate with her sentimental journey through the territory of ptomaine had long since disappeared.

  She slammed the door home and tied up the rubbish bag with its length of wire. She opened the back door, shoved the bag outside and waited for a moment to see if it would develop legs and slither off to join the rest of the household rubbish on its own. When it didn’t, she made a mental note to handle it later.

  She lit a cigarette. The scent of the match and of the burning tobacco did much to mask the residual foul odour of food gone bad. She lit a second match and then a third, while all the time she inhaled the smoke from the cigarette as deeply as she could.

  Not a total loss, she thought, nothing for tea or supper, but look at it this way: another job’s done. All she had to do was scrub down the shelves and wash out the single drawer and the refrigerator would be ready to sell, a little old, a bit unreliable, but priced accordingly. She couldn’t take it with her when she moved to Chalk Farm—the studio was far too tiny to accommodate anything larger than munchkin size—so she was going to have to clean it out eventually, sooner or later…when she was ready to move…

  She went to the table and sat, her chair noisily scraping one bare metal foot against the sticky linoleum floor. She twirled the end of her cigarette between thumb and index finger and idly watched the progress of the paper burning, as the tobacco it held continued to smoulder. The occasion of having to deal with this refrigerated putrefaction had, she realised, informed against her. One more job done meant one more item ticked off the list, which put her one step closer to shutting the house, selling it, and taking herself off to an unknown new life.

  By alternate days she felt ready for the move and unaccountably terrified of the change it implied. She’d been to Chalk Farm half a dozen times already, she’d paid her deposit on the little studio, she’d talked to the landlord about different curtains and about the installation of the telephone. She’d even got a brief glimpse of one of her fellow tenants, sitting in a pleasant square of sun at the window of his lower ground-level flat. Yet even while that part of her life—marked FUTURE—drew her steadily onwards, the larger part—marked PAST—kept her standing in place. She knew that there was no turning back once this house in Acton was sold. One of the last ties to her mother would be severed.

  Barbara had spent the morning with her. They’d walked to the hawthorn-lined common in Greenford and sat on one of the benches that surrounded the play area, watching a young mother twirling a laughing toddler on a round-about.

  It had been one of her mother’s good days. She recognised Barbara, and although she slipped three times and called her Doris, she didn’t argue the point when Barbara gently reminded her that Auntie Doris had been dead and gone for nearly fifty years. She merely said with a wispy smile, “I forget, Barbie. But I’m good today. Shall I come home soon?”

  “Don’t you like it here?” Barbara asked. “Mrs. Flo likes you. And you get on well with Mrs. Pendlebury and Mrs. Salkild, don’t you?”

  Her mother scrabbled at the ground beneath her feet, then held her legs out straight, like a child. She said, “Like my new shoes, Barbie.”

  “I thought you might.” They were high-top trainers, lavender
with silver stripes on the side. Barbara had found them in a rainbow selection in Camden Lock Market. She’d bought a pair for herself in red and gold—snickering at the thought of Inspector Lynley’s horrified face when he saw them on her feet—and although they hadn’t had any in her mother’s size, she’d bought the lavender ones anyway because they were the most outrageous and consequently the most likely to please. She’d thrown in two pairs of purple-and-black argyle socks to fill up the space between her mother’s feet and the shoes, and she’d smiled at the pleasure Mrs. Havers had taken at unwrapping the package and fishing through the tissue for her “supprise.”

  Barbara had got into the habit of bringing a little something with her on these biweekly visits to Hawthorn Lodge where, for the past two months, her mother had been living with two other elderly women and Mrs. Florence Magentry—Mrs. Flo—who cared for them. Barbara told herself that she did it for the joy of seeing her mother’s face brighten at the sight of a gift. But she knew each package served as coin to purchase her freedom from guilt.

  She said again, “You like it here with Mrs. Flo, don’t you, Mum?”

  Mrs. Havers was watching the toddler in the round-about. She was swaying to some interior tune. “Mrs. Salkild messed her pants last night,” she said confidentially. “But Mrs. Flo didn’t even get crossed, Barbie. She said, ‘These things happen, dearie, as we get older so you mustn’t worry yourself to bits.’ I didn’t mess my pants.”

  “That’s good, Mum.”

  “I helped as well. I got the washing flannel and the plastic basin and I held it just so, so Mrs. Flo could clean her. Mrs. Salkild cried. She said, ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t know.’ I felt bad for her. I gave her some of my chocolates after. I didn’t mess my pants, Barbie.”

  “You’re a big help to Mrs. Flo, Mum. She probably couldn’t get along without you.”