Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

“But that’s fiction, Deborah. That’s not the binding. The stuff of life is the binding. This — between us now — this is the binding. And we’re the forever.” He held out his hand once again. This time she took it, although she remained where she was, those careful three feet away. “Come back to me,” he said. “Race up and down the stairs with your knapsack and your cameras. Clutter up the house with your photographs. Play music too loudly.

Leave your clothes on the floor. Talk to me and argue and be curious about everything. Be alive to your fingertips. I want you back.”

Her tears spilled over. “I’ve forgotten the way.”

“I don’t believe that. It’s all there inside you. But somehow — for some reason — the idea of a baby has taken its place. Why, Deborah?”

She lowered her head and shook it. Her fi ngers loosened in his. Their hands dropped to their sides. And he realised that, despite his intentions and all of his words, there was more to be said that his wife wasn’t saying.

IN BEST VICTORIAN FASHION, Cotes Hall was a structure that seemed to consist solely of weather-vanes, chimneys, and gables from which bay and oriel windows reflected the ashen morning sky. It was built of limestone, and the combination of neglect and exposure to weather had caused the exterior to grow unappealingly lichenous, with streaks of grey-green descending from the roof in a pattern that resembled a vertical alluvial fan. The land that immediately surrounded the Hall had been taken over by weeds, and while it commanded an impressive view of the forest and the hills to its west and its east, the bleak winter landscape in conjunction with the property’s general condition made the idea of living there more repellent than welcome.

Lynley eased the Bentley over the last of the ruts and into the courtyard round which the Hall loomed like the house of Usher. He gave a moment’s thought to St. John TownleyYoung’s appearance at Crofters Inn on the previous night. On the way out he’d encountered his son-in-law plainly having a drink with a woman who was not his wife, and from Townley-Young’s reaction it appeared that this was not the younger man’s first such transgression. At the time, Lynley had thought that they’d unwittingly stumbled upon the motive behind the pranks at the Hall as well as the identity of the prankster. A woman who was the third point of a love-triangle might go to extreme lengths to disrupt the tranquillity and the marriage of a man she wanted for herself. However, as he ran his eyes from the Hall’s rusting weathervanes to the great gaps in its rainpipes to the snarl of weeds and patches of damp where the base of the structure met the ground, Lynley was forced to admit that that had been a facile and largely chauvinistic conclusion. He, who didn’t even have to face it, shuddered at the thought of having to live here. No matter the renovation inside, the exterior of the Hall, as well as its gardens and park, would take years of devoted labour to turn round. He couldn’t blame anyone, wedded blissfully or otherwise, for trying to avoid it in whatever way he could.

He parked the car between an open-back lorry stacked high with lumber and a minivan with Crackwell and Sons, Plumbing, Ltd . emblazoned in orange letters on its side. From inside the house came the mixed sounds of hammer, saw, cursing, and “March of the Toreadors” at medium volume. In unconscious time to the music, an elderly man in rust-stained coveralls teetered out a rear door, balancing a roll of carpet on his shoulder. It appeared to be sodden. He dumped it along the side of the lorry, nodding at Lynley. He said, “Help you with something, mate?” and lit a cigarette while waiting for the answer.

“The caretaker’s cottage,” Lynley said. “I’m looking for Mrs. Spence.”

The man lifted his bristly chin in the direction of a carriage house across the courtyard. Abutting it was a smaller building, an architectural miniature of the Hall itself. But unlike the Hall, its limestone exterior had been scrubbed clean and there were curtains in the windows. Round the front door someone had planted winter irises. Their blooms made a bright screen of yellow and purple against the grey walls.

The door was closed. When Lynley knocked and no one answered, the man called out, “Try the garden. The greenhouse,” before he trudged back into the Hall.

The garden proved to be a plot of land behind the cottage, separated from the courtyard by a wall into which a green gate was recessed. This opened easily despite the rust on its hinges, and it gave way to what was clearly Juliet Spence’s demesne. Here the earth was ploughed and free of weeds. The air smelled of compost. In a flower bed along the side of the cottage, twigs crisscrossed over a covering of straw that protected the crowns of perennials from the frost. It was clear that Mrs. Spence was preparing to do some sort of planting at the far side of the garden, for a large vegetable patch had been marked out with boards pounded into the earth, and pine-wood stakes stood at the head and the foot of what would be rows of plants some six months from now.

The greenhouse was just beyond this. Its door was closed. Its glass panes were opaque. Behind these, Lynley could see the form of a woman moving, her arms extended to tend to some sort of plant that was hanging on a level with her head. He crossed the garden. His Wellingtons sank into damp soil that formed a path from the cottage to the greenhouse and ultimately into the wood beyond.

The door wasn’t latched. The pressure of a single, light tap swung it soundlessly open. Mrs. Spence apparently neither heard the tap nor immediately noticed the influx of cooler air, because she went on with her work, giving him the welcome opportunity to observe.

The hanging plants were fuchsias. They grew from wire baskets lined with some sort of moss. They’d been trimmed for the winter but not stripped of all their leaves, and it was these that Mrs. Spence appeared to be attending to. She was pumping a malodorous spray upon them, pausing to turn each basket so that she doused the plant thoroughly before moving on to the next one. She was saying, “Take that, you little bastards,” and working the pump swiftly.

She looked harmless enough, poking round the greenhouse among her plants. True, her choice of headgear was a little bit odd, but one couldn’t judge and condemn a woman for wearing a faded red bandana round her forehead. If anything, it made her look like an American Navajo. And it served its purpose, anchoring her hair away from her face. This bore smudges of dirt, which she further smeared by rubbing the back of her hand— protected by a frayed and fingerless mitten — across one cheek. She was middle-aged, but her activity had the concentration of youth, and watching her, Lynley found it difficult to call her murderess .

This marked hesitation made him uneasy. It forced him to consider not only the facts he already had but also those in the process of unveiling themselves as he stood in the doorway. The greenhouse was a hotchpotch of plants. They stood in both clay and plastic pots along a central table. They lined the two work tops that ran the length of the greenhouse sides. They came in all shapes and sizes, in every imaginable type of container, and as he worked his eyes through them, he wondered how much of Colin Shepherd’s investigating had gone on in here.

Juliet Spence turned from the last of the hanging baskets of fuchsias. She started when she saw him. Her right hand reached instinctively for the loose cowl-neck of her black pullover in an inherently female defensive manoeuvre. Her left hand still held the pump, however. Obviously, she had the presence of mind not to set it down when she could use it on him if necessary.