Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

He saw that the dog had interrupted Power in the midst of a sit and a smoke, which explained why he hadn’t been using his torch. His pipe still glowed weakly, and what was left of the burning tobacco gave off the odour of cherries.

Bum-boy’s tobacco, Colin’s father would have called it with a scoff. If you’re going to smoke, boy-o, at least have the sense to choose something that makes you smell like a man.

“Quite all right,” Power said, extending his hand to let the dog sniff his fingers. “I was out for a walk. I like to get out in the evening if I can. Get in a bit of exercise after sitting behind a desk all day. Keep myself in shape. That sort of thing.” He sucked on the pipe and seemed to be waiting for Colin to make some sort of similar reply.

“Out to the Hall?”

“The Hall?” Power reached in his jacket and brought forth a pouch which he opened and sank the pipe into, packing it with fresh tobacco without having cleared the bowl of the old. Colin watched him curiously. “Yes. The Hall. Right. Checking things. The work and all. Becky’s getting anxious. Things haven’t gone well. But you know that already.”

“There’s been no more trouble since the weekend?”

“No. Nothing. But one can’t be too careful. She likes me to check. And I don’t mind the walk. Fresh air. Breeze. Good for the lungs.” He took a deep breath as if to prove his point. Then he tried to light the pipe with only a moment’s success. The tobacco caught, but the clogged bowl prevented the stem from drawing. He gave up the effort after two tries and replaced pipe, pouch, and matches in his jacket. He hopped off the wall. “Becky’ll be wondering where I’ve got off to. I suppose. Good evening, Constable.” He began to walk off.

“Mr. Power.”

The man turned abruptly. He kept himself clear of the light which Colin was directing his way. “Yes?”

Colin picked up the torch which still lay on the wall. “You’ve forgotten this.”

Power bared his teeth in what passed for a smile. He gave a short laugh. “Fresh air must have gone right to my head. Thanks.”

When he reached for the torch, Colin held on a moment longer than was absolutely necessary. Testing the waters because they needed to be tested, because New Scotland Yard would be doing its own testing soon enough, he said, “Do you know this is the spot where Mr. Sage died? Just on the other side of the stile?”

Power’s Adam’s apple seemed to travel the length of his neck. He said, “I say…”

“He did his best to make it over but he was having convulsions. Did you know? He hit his head on the lower step.”

Power’s glance shifted quickly from Colin to the wall. “I didn’t know. Only that he was found…that you found him somewhere on the footpath.”

“You saw him the morning before he died, didn’t you? You and Miss Townley-Young.”

“Yes. But you know that already. So—”

“That was you with Polly in the lane last night, wasn’t it? Outside the lodge?”

Power didn’t answer at once. He looked at Colin with some curiosity and when he replied, the answer came slowly, as if with some thought as to why the question had been asked in the fi rst place. He was, after all, a solicitor. “I was on my way out to the Hall. Polly was on her way home. We walked together. Is there a problem with that?”

“And the pub?”

“The pub?”

“Crofters. You’ve been there with her. Drinking in the evenings.”

“Once or twice, while I was out for a walk. When I stopped by the pub on my way home, Polly was there. I joined her.” He played the torch from one hand to the other. “What of it, anyway?”

“You met Polly before your marriage. You met her at the vicarage. Did she treat you well?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Did she seek you out? Ask you any favours?”

“No. Of course not. What are you getting at?”

“You’ve access to keys to the Hall, haven’t you? To the caretaker’s cottage as well? She never asked to borrow them? She never made any offer in return for the loan of them?”

“That’s some bloody cheek. What in hell are you trying to suggest? That Polly…?” As his words died, Power looked towards Cotes Fell. “What’s all this about? I thought it was over.”

“No,” Colin said. “Scotland Yard’s come to call.”

Power’s head turned. His gaze was even. “And you’re looking to misdirect them.”

“I’m looking for the truth.”

“I thought you did that already. I thought we heard it at the inquest.” Power removed his pipe from his jacket. He tapped the bowl against the heel of his shoe, dislodged the tobacco, and all the time kept his eyes on Colin. “You’re in hot water, aren’t you, Constable Shepherd? Well, let me make a suggestion. Don’t look to pour any of it on Polly Yarkin.” He strode off without another word, pausing some twenty yards away to repack and relight his pipe. The match fl ared, and from the glow that followed, it was clear that the tobacco had caught.

COLIN KEPT THE TORCH LIT for the rest of the walk to the cottage. Using darkness as a means of distraction was futile at this point. Brendan Power’s final words had made further avoidance impossible.

He was hedging his bets and he knew it, setting up a secondary set of possibilities, and arranging an unexamined point of departure. He was looking for a viable direction in which he could lead the London police.

Just in case, he told himself. Because the what if’s were increasing their restless murmur inside his skull, and he had to do something to quell them. He had to take an action that was well within his purview, called for under the circumstances, and guaranteed to set his mind at rest.

He hadn’t considered what that direction would be until he saw Brendan Power and realised — with a rush of intuition so powerful that he could feel its certainty in the hollow of his gut — what could have happened, what must have happened, and how Juliet was blaming herself for a death she had only indirectly caused.

Right from the start, he’d believed that the death was accidental because he couldn’t consider any other explanation and continue to look at himself in the mirror every morning. But now he saw how wrong he might have been and what an injustice he had done to Juliet in those dark and isolated moments when he — like everyone else in the village— wondered how she of all people could possibly have made such a fatal mistake. Now he saw how she might have been manipulated into believing that she had made a mistake in the first place. Now he saw how it all had been done.

That thought and the rising desire to avenge the wrong committed against her drove him forward at new speed along the footpath, with Leo happily loping ahead. They veered off into the oak wood a short distance beyond the lodge in which Polly Yarkin and her mother lived. How easy it was to slip from the lodge to Cotes Hall, Colin realised. One didn’t even need to walk along the gouged disaster of a lane to get there.

The path led him beneath the trees, across two footbridges whose wood was mossy and slowly rotting with each winter’s damp, and over a spongy drugget of leaves that lay in sodden decomposition under a delicate coating of frost. It ended where the trees made way for the rear garden of the cottage, and when Colin reached this point, he watched Leo bound through the piles of compost and the fallow earth to scratch at the base of the cottage door. He himself directed the torchlight here and there, assessing the details: the greenhouse to his immediate left, detached from the cottage, no lock on its door; the shed beyond it, four wooden walls and a tarpaper roof where she kept the tools which she used for her gardening and for the forays she made into the woods for her plants and roots; the cottage itself with the green cellar door — its thick paint fl aking away in large chips — that led to the dark, loam-scented cavity beneath the cottage where she stored her roots. He fixed the torchlight on this and kept it fixed steadily as he crossed the garden. He gazed down at the padlock that held the door closed. Leo joined him, bumping his head against Colin’s thigh. The dog walked across the sloping surface of the door. His nails scraped the wood, and a hinge creaked in answer.