Missing Joseph (55 page)

Lynley glanced at his pocket watch. It was half past one. He would fly to Manchester and hire a Range Rover. That would get him to Winslough sometime in the evening.

He picked up the car phone and punched in Helen's number. She heard it all when he said her name.

“Shall I come with you?” she asked.

“No. I'm not fit company now. I won't be later.”

“That doesn't matter, Tommy.”

“It does. To me.”

“I want to help in some way.”

“Then be here for me when I get back.”

“How?”

“I want to come home and have home mean you.”

Her hesitation was prolonged. He thought he could hear her breathing but knew it was impossible, considering the connection. He was probably only listening to himself.

“What will we do?” she asked.

“We'll love each other. Marry. Have children. Hope for the best. God, I don't know any longer, Helen.”

“You sound horrible.” Her own voice was bereft. “What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to love you.”

“I don't mean here. I mean Winslough. What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to wish to be Solomon and be Nemesis instead.”

“Oh, Tommy.”

“Say it. You've got to say it sometime. It might as well be now.”

“I'll be here. Always. When it's over. You know that.”

Slowly, with great care, he replaced the phone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

W
AS HE LOOKING FOR HER, TOMMY?” Deborah asked. “D'you think he never believed she drowned in the first place? Is that why he moved from parish to parish? Is that why he came to Winslough?”

St. James stirred another spoonful of sugar into his cup and regarded his wife thoughtfully. She had poured their coffee but added nothing to her own. She was playing the small cream jug between her hands. She didn't look up as she waited for Lynley's answer. It was the first time she had spoken.

“I think it was pure chance.” Lynley forked up a portion of his veal. He'd arrived at Crofters Inn as St. James and Deborah were finishing dinner. Although they hadn't had the dining room to themselves this night, the two other couples who had been enjoying beef Wellington and rack of lamb had moved to the residents' lounge for their coffee. So between Josie Wragg's appearances in the dining room to serve one portion of Lynley's late meal or another, he had told them the story of Sheelah Cotton Yanapapoulis, Katherine Gitterman, and Susanna Sage.

“Consider the facts,” he went on. “She didn't go to church; she lived in the North while he remained in the South; she kept on the move; she chose isolated locations. When the locations promised to become less isolated, she merely moved on.”

“Except this last time,” St. James noted.

Lynley reached for his wine-glass. “Yes. It's odd that she didn't move at the end of her two years here.”

“Perhaps Maggie's at the root of that,” St. James said. “She's a teenager now. Her boyfriend's here and according to what Josie was disclosing last night with her usual passion for detail, that's a fairly serious relationship. She may have found it difficult—as we all do—to walk away from someone she loves. Perhaps she refused to go.”

“That's a reasonable possibility. But isolation was still essential to her mother.”

Deborah's head darted up at that. She began to speak, but she appeared to stop herself.

Lynley was continuing. “It seems odd that Juliet—or Susanna, if you will—didn't do something to force the issue. After all, their isolation at Cotes Hall was due to end any time. When the renovation was complete, Brendan Power and his wife—” He paused in the act of spearing up a piece of new potato. “Of course,” he said.

“She was the mischief-maker at the Hall,” St. James said.

“She must have been. Once it was occupied, she increased her chances of being seen. Not necessarily by people from the village, who would have seen her occasionally already, but by guests coming to call. And with a new baby, Brendan Power and his wife would have had guests: family, friends, out-of-town visitors.”

“Not to mention the vicar.”

“She wouldn't have wanted to take the risk.”

“Still, she must have heard the name of the new vicar long before she saw him,” St. James said. “It's odd that she didn't invent some sort of crisis and run for it then.”

“Perhaps she tried. But it was autumn when the vicar arrived in Winslough. Maggie was already in school. If indeed her mother had rashly agreed to stay on in the village for Maggie's happiness, she'd be hard-pressed to come up with an excuse to leave.”

Deborah released her hold on the cream jug and pushed it away. “Tommy,” she said in a voice so carefully controlled that it sounded strung, “I don't see how you can be sure of all this.” When Lynley looked at her, she went on quickly. “Perhaps she didn't even need to run. What sort of proof do you actually have that Maggie isn't her real daughter in the first place? She could be hers, couldn't she?”

“That's unlikely, Deborah.”

“But you're drawing conclusions without having all the facts.”

“What more facts do I need?”

“What if—” Deborah grabbed her spoon and clutched it as if she would use it to strike the table while she made a point. Then she dropped it, saying in a dispirited voice, “I suppose she…I don't know.”

“My guess is that an X-ray of Maggie's leg will show it was once broken and that DNA testing will tell the rest of the tale,” Lynley told her.

She got to her feet in response, shoving her hair away from her face. “Yes. Well. Look, I'm…Sorry, but I'm a bit tired. I think I'll go up. I'll…No, please stay, Simon. No doubt you and Tommy have lots to discuss. I'll just say good night.”

She was out of the room before they could respond. Lynley stared after her, saying to St. James, “Did I say something?”

“It's nothing.” Pensively, St. James watched the door, thinking Deborah might reconsider and return. When she didn't after a moment, he turned back to his friend. Their reasons for questioning Lynley were disparate, he knew, but Deborah had a point, if not the one she was intending to make. “Why didn't she brazen it out?” he asked. “Why didn't she claim Maggie was her own child, the product of an affair?”

“I wondered about that myself initially. It seemed the logical way to go. But Sage had met Maggie first, remember. I imagine he knew how old she was, the same age as their son Joseph would have been. So Juliet had no choice. She knew she couldn't pull the wool over his eyes. She could only tell him the truth and hope for the best.”

“And did she? Tell him the truth, that is?”

“I expect so. The truth was bad enough, after all: unmarried teenagers with an infant who'd already suffered a fractured skull and a broken leg. I've no doubt she saw herself as Maggie's saviour.”

“She might have been.”

“I know. That's the hell of it. She might have been. And I imagine Robin Sage knew that as well. He had visited Sheelah Yanapapoulis the adult. He couldn't have known what she would have been like as a fifteen-year-old girl in possession of an infant. He could make surmises based upon her other children: how they were turning out, what she said about them and their upbringing, how she acted round them. But he couldn't know for certain what it would have been like for Maggie had she grown up with Sheelah instead of Juliet Spence for a mother.” Lynley poured himself another glass of wine and smiled bleakly. “I'm only glad I'm not in the position Sage was. His decision was agonising. Mine is only devastating. And even then, it's not going to be devastating to me.”

“You're not responsible,” St. James pointed out. “A crime's been committed.”

“And I serve the cause of justice. I know that, Simon. But, frankly, it gives me no pleasure.” He drank deeply of the wine, poured more, drank again. He placed the glass on the table. The wine shimmered in the light. He said, “I've been trying to keep my mind off Maggie all day. I've been trying to keep it focussed on the crime. I keep thinking that if I continue to re-examine what Juliet did—all those years ago and this past December as well—I might forget about why she did it. Because the why of it isn't important. It can't be.”

“Then let the rest of it go.”

“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.”