Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

“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 fi st 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.”