Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

“But your sister believed in the myth.”

“She did. And it killed her, Inspector.”

IT’S THE NASTY LITTLE FACT that he kept misidentifying bodies,” Lynley said. He nodded to the offi cer on duty at the kiosk, flashed his identification, and descended the ramp into the underground car park of New Scotland Yard. “Why keep saying defi nitively that each one was his wife? Why not say he wasn’t certain? It didn’t matter, after all. A postmortem would have been performed on the bodies in any case. And he must have known that.”

“It sounds like shades of Max de Winter to me,” Helen replied.

Lynley pulled into a space conveniently close to the lift now that the day was long over and the vast clerical staff was gone. He thought about the idea. “We’re meant to believe she deserved to die,” he mused.

“Susanna Sage?”

He got out of the car and opened her door. “Rebecca,” he said. “She was evil, lewd, lubricious, lascivious—”

“Just the sort of person one longs to have at a dinner party to liven things up.”

“—and she pushed him into killing her by telling him a lie.”

“Did she? I can’t remember the whole story.”

Lynley took her arm and led her towards the lift. He rang for it. They waited as the machinery creaked and groaned. “She had cancer. She wanted to commit suicide, but she lacked the courage to kill herself. So, because she hated him, she pushed him into doing it for her, destroying him and herself at the same time. And when the deed was done and he’d sunk her boat in the Manderley cove, he had to wait until a female body washed ashore somewhere along the coast so that he could identify it as Rebecca, gone missing in a storm.”

“Poor thing.”

“Which one?”

Lady Helen tapped her cheek. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? We’re meant to feel compassion for someone, but it does leave one a bit tarnished, doesn’t it, to be siding with the murderer?”

“Rebecca was wanton, entirely without conscience. We’re meant to think it was justifi able homicide.”

“And was it? Is it ever?”

“That’s the question,” he said.

They took the lift in silence. The rain had begun falling in earnest on his drive back into the city. A snarl of traffic in Blackheath had made him despair of ever getting back across the Thames. But he’d managed to reach Onslow Square by seven, they’d made it to Green’s for dinner by a quarter past eight, and now at twenty minutes before eleven, they were heading up to his office for a look at whatever Sergeant Havers had managed to fax from Truro.

They were operating under an undeclared ceasefire. They’d discussed the weather, his sister’s decision to sell her land and her sheep in West Yorkshire and return to the south to be near his mother, a curious revival of Heartbreak House that Shavians were denouncing and critics were beatifying, and a Winslow Homer exhibition that was coming to London. He could sense her need to hold him at a distance, and he cooperated without much liking it. Helen’s timeline for opening her heart to him wasn’t what he would like it to be. But he knew that he stood a better chance of winning her confidence through patience rather than confrontation.

The lift doors slid open. Even in CID, the night staff was significantly smaller than the day, so the floor seemed deserted. But two of Lynley’s fellow DI’s were standing in the doorway to one of their offices, drinking from plastic cups, smoking, and talking about the latest government minister to get caught with his trousers down behind King’s Cross Station.

“There he was, poking some tart while the country goes to hell,” Phillip Hale was remarking blackly. “What is it with these blokes, I ask you?”

John Stewart flicked cigarette ash onto the fl oor. “Stuffing some dolly in a leather skirt’s more immediately gratifying than solving a fiscal crisis, I’d guess.”

“But this wasn’t a call girl. This was a ten-quid whore. Good Christ, you saw her.”

“I’ve also seen his wife.”

The two men laughed. Lynley glanced at Helen. Her face was unreadable. He guided her past his colleagues with a nod.

“Aren’t you on holiday?” Hale called after them.

“We’re in Greece,” Lynley said.

In his office, he waited for her reaction as he took off his coat and hung it on the back of the door. But she said nothing about the brief exchange they’d heard. Instead, she went back to their previous topic, although, when he evaluated it, he realised that she wasn’t digressing too far thematically from her central concern.

“Do you think Robin Sage killed her, Tommy?”

“It was night, a rough crossing. There were no witnesses who saw his wife throw herself from the ferry, nor was there anyone who came forward to support his claim of going to the bar for a drink when he left the lounge.”

“But a priest? Not only to do it in the fi rst place but then to manage carrying on with his ministry afterwards?”

“He didn’t carry on, exactly. He left his position in Truro directly she died. He took up a different sort of ministry as well. And he took it up in places where he wasn’t known to the congregation.”

“So if he had something to hide from them, they wouldn’t necessarily recognise that fact from a changed behaviour since they didn’t know him in the fi rst place?”

“Possibly.”

“But why kill her? What would have been his motive? Jealousy? Anger? Revenge? An inheritance?”

Lynley reached for the telephone. “There seem to be three possibilities. They’d lost their only child six months before.”

“But you said it was a cot death.”

“He may have held her responsible. Or he may have been involved with another woman and knew as a priest he couldn’t divorce and expect his career to go anywhere.”

“Or she may have been involved with another man and he found out about it and acted in rage?”

“Or the final alternative: The truth is what it appears to be, a suicide combined with an honest mistake made by a grieving widower in misidentifying bodies. But no conjecture satisfactorily explains why he went to see Susanna’s sister in October. And where in the maze does Juliet Spence fit?” He picked up the phone. “You know where the fax is, don’t you, Helen? Would you see if Havers sent the newspaper articles?”

She left to do so, and he phoned Crofters Inn.

“I left a message with Denton,” St. James told him when Dora Wragg rang through to their room. “He said he hadn’t seen a hair of you all day and hadn’t expected to. I imagine about now he’s phoning every hospital between London and Manchester, thinking you’ve had a crash somewhere.”

“I’ll check in. How was Aspatria?”

St. James gave him the facts they’d managed to gather during their day in Cumbria, where, he informed Lynley, the snow had begun falling at noon and followed them all the way back to Lancashire.

Prior to moving to Winslough, Juliet Spence had been employed as a caretaker at Sewart House, a large estate some four miles outside of Aspatria. Like Cotes Hall, it was in an isolated location and, at the time, inhabited only during August when the son of the owner came up from London with his family for an extended holiday.

“Was she sacked for some reason?” Lynley asked.

Not at all, St. James told him. The house was deeded over to the National Trust when the owner died. The Trust asked Juliet Spence to stay on once they’d opened the grounds and the buildings for public viewing. She moved on to Winslough instead.

“Any problems while she was in Aspatria?”

“None. I spoke to the owner’s son, and he had nothing but unqualified praise for her and great affection for Maggie.”