Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

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.

WAS 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 Win-slough?”

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 fi fteen-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.”