Missing Joseph (32 page)

The second possibility was that there had been no handtools in the first place, that the long-departed Mr. Yarkin had removed them along with himself upon his hasty flight from Winslough more than twenty-five years ago. They would have made an odd addition to his baggage, to be sure, but perhaps he'd wanted them for his work. What had it been? Colin tried to recall. Was it carpentry? Then why leave the saw, if that was the case?

He carried his developing scenario further. If there were no handtools here at the lodge, she would have known where to borrow what she needed. She would have known when to do the borrowing since she could have waited for the moment from her perch on Cotes Fell. For that matter, she could even have watched for her moment from the lodge. It sat on the edge of the estate grounds, after all. She would have heard any car pass, and a quick trip to the window would have told her who was driving.

That made the most sense. Even if she had her own tools, why would she run the risk of using them when she could use Juliet's and replace them in the greenhouse with no one's being the wiser? She'd have to go into the garden anyway, in order to get to the cellar. Yes. That was it. She had motive, means, and opportunity, and although Colin felt certainty quicken his pulse, he knew he couldn't afford to proceed along this line of suspicion without making solid a few more facts.

He eased the door closed and tramped through the mud to the lodge. Leo trotted out of the wood, a picture of complete dog bliss with his coat hung with small clods of humus and his ears decorated with blackened, dead leaves. This was a day to be celebrated for the dog: a hike up the fell, a bit of run-and-chase, a chance to get thoroughly filthy in the wood. Forget retrieving when he could root round the oaks like a pig after truffles.

“Stay,” Colin said to him, pointing to a beaten-down patch of weeds by the door. He knocked and hoped the day would be one of celebration for himself as well.

He heard her before she opened the door. The sound of her footsteps rumbled on the floor. The sound of her wheezing accompanied her action of unfastening bolts. Then she stood before him like a walrus on ice, one hand spread out on her massive chest as if its pressure could relieve her breathing. He could see that he had interrupted her in the process of painting her nails. Two were aquamarine, three were uncoloured. All were inhumanly long.

She said, “By the stars and sun, if it a'nt Mr. C. Shepherd hisself,” and she looked him over from head to foot, her eyes lingering longest upon his groin. Under her gaze, he felt the oddest sensation of heat throbbing in his testicles. As if she knew this, Rita Yarkin smiled and emitted a sigh of what appeared to be pleasure. “So. What're you about, Mr. C. Shepherd? You here as the hopeful answer to a maiden's prayers? Myself being the maiden, of course. Wouldn't want you to misapprehend my meaning.”

“I'd like to come in, if that's all right,” he said.

“Would you now?” She shifted her bulk against the door-jamb. The wood groaned. She reached out—at least a dozen bangles rattling like manacles round her wrist—and ran her fingers over his hair. He did his best not to cringe. “Cobwebs,” she said. “Mmmmm. Here's another. Where you been putting this pretty head, luv?”

“May I come inside, Mrs. Yarkin?”

“Rita.” She looked him over. “I s'pose it depends on what you mean by ‘come inside.' Now there's lots of women would welcome you coming wherever you want and just about whenever the fancy takes you. But me? Well, I'm just a bit p'rticular about my toy boys. Always have been.”

“Is Polly here?”

“It's Polly you're after, is it, Mr. C. Shepherd? Now I wonder why? Is she good enough for you, all of a sudden? Did you get thrown over by her up the lane?”

“Look, Rita, I don't want a row with you. Are you going to let me in or shall I come back later?”

She played with one of the three necklaces she wore. It was beads and feathers with the wooden head of a goat as its pendant. “I can't think we got anything here as will interest you.”

“Perhaps. When did you come this year?” He saw his error in vocabulary from the way her mouth twitched in response. He headed her off by saying, “When did you arrive in Winslough?”

“Twenty-fourth of December. Same as always.”

“After the vicar's death.”

“Yeah. Never got to meet the bloke. From the way Polly talked about him and everything that happened, I would've liked to read his palm.” She reached for Colin's hand. “Have yours done, luv?” And when he freed himself from her grip, “Scared to know the future, are you? So's most people. Let's have a look. The news is good, you pay. The news is bad, I keep my mug tight shut. Sound like a deal?”

“If you'll let me in.”

She smiled and waddled back from the door. “Have at me, luv. Have you ever poked a woman weighing twenty stone? I got more places you can stick it than you got time to explore.”

“Right,” Colin said. He squeezed past her. She was wearing enough perfume to permeate the entire lodge. It came off her in waves, like heat from a coal fire. He tried not to breathe.

They stood in a narrow entrance that did duty as a service porch. He untied his muddy boots and left them among the Wellingtons, umbrellas, and mackintoshes. He took his time about this process of untying and removing, using the activity as a means of observing what the porch held. He made particular note of what stood next to a rubbish bin of mouldy brussels sprouts, mutton bones, four empty packets for Custard Cremes, the remains of a breakfast of fried bread and bacon, and a broken lamp without its shade. This was a basket, and it contained potatoes, carrots, marrows, and a head of lettuce.

“Polly's done the shopping?” he asked.

“That's day before yesterday's. Brought it by at noon, she did.”

“Does she bring you parsnips for dinner occasionally?”

“Sure. 'Long with everything else. Why?”

“Because one doesn't need to buy them. They grow wild hereabouts. Did you know that?”

Rita's talon nail was tracing the pendant-head of the goat. She played with one horn, then the other. She gave a sensual stroke to the beard. She regarded Colin thoughtfully. “And what if I do?”

“Did you tell Polly, I wonder. It would be a waste of money to have her buy from the greengrocer what she could dig up herself.”

“True. But my Polly's not much for rooting, Mr. Constable. We like the natural life, make no mistake there, but Polly's a girl who draws the line at grubbing round the wood on her hands and knees. Unlike some as I could name, she's got better things to do, does Polly.”

“But she knows her plants. It's part of the Craft. You have to know all the different woods for burning. You'd have to recognise your herbs as well. Doesn't the ritual call for their use?”

Rita's face became blank. “Ritual calls for the use of more'n you know or understand, Mr. C. Shepherd. And none of it I'll be likely to share with you.”

“But there's magic in herbs?”

“There's magic in lots of things. But all of it springs from the will of the Goddess, praised be Her name, whether you're using the moon, the stars, the earth, or the sun.”

“Or the plants.”

“Or water or fire or anything. It's the mind of the petitioner and the will of the Goddess that make the magic. It's not to be found in mixing potions and drinking'm down.” She lumbered through the far doorway and into the kitchen where she went to the tap and held a kettle beneath a dismal trickle of water.

Colin took the opportunity to complete his examination of the service porch. It held a bizarre variety of Yarkin possessions, everything from two bicycle wheels minus their tyres to a rusty anchor with one prong missing. A basket for a long-departed cat occupied one corner, and it was heaped with a mound of tattered paperback books whose covers appeared to feature women of impressive bosom caught up in the arms of men on the verge of ravishing them.
Love's Savage Desperation
blazed across one cover.
Passion's Lost Child
adorned another. If a set of handtools were secreted in the porch among the cardboard cartons of old clothes, the antique Hoover, and the ironing board, it would take a thirteenth labour of Heracles in order to find them.

Colin joined Rita in the kitchen. She'd gone to the table where, among the remains of her mid-morning coffee and crumpets, she had returned to painting her nails. The scent of the polish was making a valiant effort to dominate both her perfume and the smell of bacon grease that seemed to be crackling in a frying pan on the cooker. Colin switched the pan's place with the kettle of water. Rita gestured her thanks with the nail-polish brush, and he wondered what had inspired her choice of colour and where she had managed to purchase it in the first place.

He said by way of edging cagily towards the purpose of his visit, “I came in the back way.”

“So I noticed, sweet face.”

“I mean through the garden. I had a look at your shed. It's in bad shape, Rita. The door's come off its hinges. Shall I fix it for you?”

“Why, that's a first-rate, bang-on idea, Mr. Constable.”

“Have you any tools?”

“Must have. Somewhere.” She examined her right hand, languidly holding it out at arm's length.

“Where?”

“Don't know, sweet.”

“Would Polly?”

She waggled her hand.

“Does she use them, Rita?”

“Could be. Could not. But it's not like we're dead interested in home improvement, is it?”

“That's typical, I'd think. When women don't have a man in the house for a long period of time, they—”

“I didn't mean me and Polly,” she said. “I mean me and you. Or is that part of your job these days, popping through back gardens and checking on sheds and offering to fix them for helpless ladies?”

“We're old friends. I'm happy to be of help.”

She sputtered with a laugh. “I bet you are. Happy as a ram at the rut, Mr. Constable, just being helpful. Bet if I ask Polly, she'll tell me you been stopping by once or twice a week for years, ready to help her out with her chores.” She laid her left hand on the table and reached for her polish.

The kettle began to boil. He fetched it from the cooker. She had already prepared two thick mugs for the water. A glittering heap of what appeared to be instant coffee crystals lay at the bottom of each. One mug had already been used, if the ring of red lipstick was any indication. The other—printed with the word
Pisces
above which a silvery green fish swam in a current of cracked azure glaze—apparently was intended for him. He hesitated fractionally before pouring the water, tilting the mug towards him as surreptitiously as possible for examination.

Rita eyed him and gave him a wink. “G'on, luv-bunny. Take a little chance. We all got to go sometime, don't we?” She chuckled and bent her head to the work of painting her nails.

He poured the water. There was only one teaspoon on the table, already used by the look of it. His stomach felt queasy at the thought of putting it into his mug, but considering the boiling water as a steriliser, he dipped it in quickly and made a few rapid, conciliatory revolutions. He drank. It was definitely coffee.

He said, “I'll have a look for those tools now,” and took the mug with him to the dining room, where he placed it on the table and intended to forget it.

“You have a look for whatever you like,” Rita called after him. “We got nothing much to hide but what's under our skirts. Let me know if you want a look there.”

Her shriek of laughter followed him from the dining room, where a hasty exploration through a dresser disclosed a set of dishes and several tablecloths redolent of moth balls. At the foot of the stairs, a battle-weary Canterbury held yellowing copies of a London tabloid. A quick glance proved that one of the Yarkins had saved only the more delectable issues, featuring two-headed babies, corpses giving birth inside coffins, wolf-children of the circus, and the authorised account of extra-terrestrial visitations to a convent in Southend-on-Sea. He pulled out the single drawer and found himself fingering through small chunks of wood. He recognised the scent of cedar and pine. A leaf was still attached to the laurel. The others he would have been hard pressed to name. But Polly and her mother would have no trouble with the identification. They would know by the colour, the density, the scent.

He climbed the stairs, moving quickly, knowing that Rita was bound to put an end to his search as soon as she'd discovered its limit in amusement value. He looked right and left, assessing the possibilities presented by a bath and two bedrooms. Immediately in front of him stood a leatherbound chest upon which sat an unappealing squat bronze of someone male, priapic, and horned. Across the passage from this a cupboard gaped open, spilling forth linens and assorted jumble. Fourteenth labour of Heracles, he thought. He went for the first bedroom as Rita called his name.

He ignored her, stood in the doorway, and cursed. The woman was a sloth. She'd been in the lodge for more than a month, and she was still living from her mammoth suitcase. What wasn't oozing from this was lying on the floor, on the backs of two chairs, and at the foot of the unmade bed. A dressing table next to the window looked as if it had once been a set-piece in a criminal investigation. Cosmetics and a colour wheel of nail-polish bottles crowded its surface, with an impressive patina of face powder dashed across everything, much like fingerprint dust. Necklaces hung from the door knob and from one of the posters of the bed. Scarves snaked on the floor through discarded shoes. And every inch of the room seemed to emanate Rita's characteristic scent: part ripe fruit on the verge of going bad, part ageing woman in need of a bath.

He made a cursory check of the chest of drawers. He moved on to the wardrobe and then knelt to examine the space beneath the bed. His sole discovery was that the latter served as repository for an extensive array of slut's wool as well as one stuffed black cat with its back arched, its fur at the bristle, and
Rita Knows And Sees
printed on a banner that extended from its tail.