Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

Cecily found this an interesting twist in the morning’s events. It held out the tantalising promise of diversion. If she had to endure this day somehow in the name of the family and with one eye fixed on her uncle’s will, she decided she might as well do something to enjoy her act of sufferance. So she said, “Who?”

Mrs. Townley-Young said, “Cecily,” in a pleasant but determined-to-discipline voice.

But Cecily’s question had been enough. “Polly Yarkin.” Rebecca said the name through her teeth. “That miserable little sow at the vicarage.”

“Vicar’s housekeeper?” Cecily asked. This was a twist to be explored at length. Another woman already? All things considered, she couldn’t blame poor old Brendan, but she did think he might have set his sights a bit low. She continued the game. “Gosh, what’s she got to do with anything, Becky?”

“Cecily, dear.” Mrs. Townley-Young’s voice had a less pleasant ring.

“She pushes those dugs into every man’s face and just waits for him to react to the sight,” Rebecca said. “And he wants her. He does. He can’t hide it from me.”

“Brendan loves you, darling,” Mrs. Townley-Young said. “He’s marrying you.”

“He had a drink with her at Crofters Inn last week. Just a quick stop before he headed back to Clitheroe, he said. He didn’t even know she’d be there, he said. He couldn’t exactly pretend he didn’t recognise her, he said. It’s a village, after all. He couldn’t act like she was a stranger.”

“Darling, you’re working yourself up over nothing at all.”

“You think he’s in love with the vicar’s housekeeper?” Cecily asked, widening her eyes to wear the guise of naiveté. “But, Becky, then why is he marrying you?”

“Cecily!” her aunt hissed.

“He isn’t marrying me!” Rebecca cried out. “He isn’t marrying anyone! We haven’t got a vicar!”

Beyond them, a hush fell over the church. The organ had stopped playing for a moment, and Rebecca’s words seemed to echo from wall to wall. The organist quickly resumed, choosing “Crown with Love, Lord, This Glad Day.”

“Mercy,” Mrs. Townley-Young breathed.

Sharp footsteps sounded against the stone floor beyond them and a gloved hand shoved the red curtain aside. Rebecca’s father ducked through the gate.

“Nowhere.” He slapped the snow from his coat and shook it from his hat. “Not in the village. Not at the river. Not on the common. Nowhere. I’ll have his job for this.”

His wife reached out to him but didn’t make contact. “St. John, good Lord, what’ll we do? All these people. All that food at the house. And Rebecca’s condi—”

“I know the bloody details. I don’t need reminding.” Townley-Young flipped the curtain to one side and gazed into the church. “We’re going to be the butt of every joke for the next decade.” He looked back at the women, at his daughter particularly. “You got yourself into this, Rebecca, and I damn well ought to let you get yourself out.”

“Daddy!” She said his name as a wail.

“Really, St. John…”

Cecily decided this was the moment to be helpful. Her father would no doubt be rumbling down the aisle to join them at any time — emotional disturbances were a special source of delectation to him — and if that was the case, her own purposes would best be served by demonstrating her ability to be at the forefront of solving a family crisis. He was, after all, still temporising on her request to spend the spring in Crete.

She said, “Perhaps we ought to phone someone, Uncle St. John. There must be another vicar not far.”

“I’ve spoken to the constable,” Townley-Young said.

“But he can’t marry them, St. John,” his wife protested. “We need to get a vicar. We need to have the wedding. The food’s waiting to be eaten. The guests are getting hungry. The—”

“I want Sage,” he said. “I want him here. I want him now. And if I have to drag that low church twit up to the altar myself, I’ll do it.”

“But if he’s been called out somewhere…” Mrs. Townley-Young was clearly trying to sound like the voice of perfect reason.

“He hasn’t. That Yarkin creature caught me up in the village. His bed hadn’t been slept in last night, she said. But his car’s in the garage. So he’s somewhere nearby. And I’ve no doubt at all as to what he’s been up to.”

“The vicar? ” Cecily asked, achieving horror while feeling all the delight of an unfolding drama. A shotgun wedding performed by a fornicating vicar, featuring a reluctant bridegroom in love with the vicar’s housekeeper and a frothing bride hellbent on revenge. It was almost worth having to be chief bridesmaid just to be in the know. “No, Uncle St. John. Surely not the vicar. Heavens, what a scandal.”

Her uncle glanced her way sharply. He pointed a finger at her and was beginning to speak when the curtain was drawn to one side once more. They turned as one to see the local constable, his heavy jacket flaked with snow, his tortoiseshell spectacles spotted with moisture. He wasn’t wearing a hat, and his ginger hair wore a cap of white crystals. He shook them off, running a hand back over his head.

“Well?” Townley-Young demanded. “Have you found him, Shepherd?”

“I have,” the other man replied. “But he’s not going to be marrying anyone this morning.”

WHAT DID THAT SIGN SAY? did you see it, Simon? It was some sort of placard at the edge of the road.” Deborah St. James slowed the car and looked back. They’d already rounded a bend, and the thick lattice of bare branches from the oaks and horse chestnuts hid both the road itself and the lichenous limestone wall that had been edging it. Where they were now, the roadside’s demarcation consisted of a skeletal hedge, denuded by winter and blackened by twilight. “It wasn’t a sign for the hotel, was it? Did you see a drive?”

Her husband shook off the reverie in which he’d spent much of the long drive from Manchester airport, half-admiring the winter landscape of Lancashire with its subdued blend of moorland russets and farmland sage, half-brooding over the possible identifi cation of the tool which had cut a thick electrical wire prior to its being used to bind together the hands and the feet of a female body found last week in Surrey.

“A drive?” he asked. “There might have been one. I didn’t notice. But the sign was for palm reading and a psychic in residence.”

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not. Is that a feature of the hotel you’ve not told me about?”

“Not that I know.” She peered through the windscreen. The road began to slope upwards, and the lights from a village shimmered in the distance, perhaps a mile farther on. “I suppose we haven’t gone far enough.”

“What’s the place called?”

“Crofters Inn.”

“Decidedly, then, the sign didn’t say that. It must be an advertisement for someone’s line of employment. This is Lancashire, after all. I’m surprised the hotel isn’t called The Cauldron.”

“We wouldn’t have come had it been, my love. I’m becoming superstitious in my advancing years.”

“I see.” He smiled in the growing darkness. Her advancing years . She was only twenty-fi ve. She had all the energy and the promise of her youth.

Still, she looked tired — he knew she hadn’t been sleeping well — and her face was wan. A few days in the country, long walks, and rest were what she needed. She’d been working too much in the past several months, working more than he, keeping late hours in the darkroom and going out far too early on assignments only marginally connected to her interests in the first place. I’m trying to broaden my horizons, she would say. Landscapes and portraits aren’t enough, Simon. I need to do more. I’m thinking of a multimedia approach, perhaps a new show of my work in the summer. I can’t get it ready if I don’t get out there and see what’s what and try new things and stretch myself and make some more contacts and… He didn’t argue or try to hold her back. He just waited for the crisis to pass. They’d weathered several during the first two years of their marriage. He always tried to remember that fact when he began to despair of their weathering this.