Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

In the better light, Lynley took a moment to evaluate Mrs. Spence as they crossed the courtyard and walked round the gabled east wing of the Hall. She was blinking rapidly as if in an effort to free her eyes of soot, but the cowl-neck of her pullover showed how the muscles of her neck were straining. He realised that she was trying not to cry.

The worst part of policework lay buried in the effort it took not to empathise. An investigation required a heart that attached itself to the victim alone or to a crime whose commission called out for justice. While Lynley’s sergeant had mastered the ability to wear emotional blinkers when it came to a case, Lynley found himself, more often than not, torn in a dozen unlikely directions as he gathered information and came to know the facts and the principals involved. They were rarely black or white, he had come to find. It was, inconveniently, not a black-or-white world.

He paused on the terrace outside the east wing. The paving stones here were cracked and clotted with winter-dead weeds and the view was of a frost-coated hillside. This sloped down to a pond beyond which another hillside rose steeply, its summit hidden by the mist.

He said, “You’ve had trouble here, as I understand. Work disrupted. That sort of thing. It sounds as if someone doesn’t want the newlyweds to take over the Hall.”

She seemed to misunderstand his intentions in speaking, seeing it as another attempt at accusation rather than as an opportunity for a moment’s reprieve. She cleared her throat and rebounded from whatever distress she was feeling. “Maggie used it less than half a dozen times. That’s all.”

He briefly toyed with the idea of reassuring her about the nature of his comments. He rejected it, and followed her lead. “How did she get in?”

“Nick — her boyfriend — loosened a board covering one of the windows in the west wing.

I’ve nailed it shut since. Unfortunately, that hasn’t put a stop to the mischief.”

“You didn’t know at once that Maggie and her friend were using the Hall? You couldn’t tell someone had been prowling round?”

“I was referring to someone prowling round the cottage, Inspector Lynley. Surely you yourself would be aware if some sort of intruder had been in your own home.”

“If he conducted a search or took something, yes. Otherwise, I’m not certain.”

“Believe me, I am.”

With the toe of her boot, she dislodged a tangle of flowerless dandelions from between two of the terrace stones. She picked up the weed, examined several rosettes of the scratchy, toothed leaves, and hurled it aside.

“But you’ve never managed to catch the prankster here? He — or she — has never made a sound to attract your attention, never stumbled into your garden by mistake?”

“No.”

“You’ve never heard a car or a motorbike?”

“I haven’t.”

“And your rounds have been varied enough that someone bent on mischief wouldn’t be able to predict when you’d be likely to take another turn round the grounds?”

Impatiently, she shoved her hair behind her ears. “That’s correct, Inspector. May I ask what this has to do with what happened to Mr. Sage?”

He smiled affably. “I’m not entirely sure.” She looked in the direction of the pond at the base of the hill, her intention clear. But he found that he wasn’t quite ready to move on. He gave his attention to the east wing of the house. Its lower bay windows were boarded over. Two of the upper ones bore seamlike cracks. “It looks as if it’s stood vacant for years.”

“It’s never been lived in, aside from three months shortly after it was built.”

“Why not?”

“It’s haunted.”

“By whom?”

“The sister-in-law of Mr. Townley-Young’s great-grandfather. What does that make her? His great-grandaunt?” She didn’t wait for reply. “She killed herself here. They thought she’d gone out for a walk. When she didn’t return by evening, they began a search. It was five days before they thought of searching the

house.”

“And?”

“She’d hanged herself from a beam in the luggage room. Next to the garret. It was summer. The servants were tracking down the smell.”

“Her husband couldn’t face continuing life here?”

“A romantic thought, but he was dead already. He’d been killed on their wedding trip. They said it was a hunting accident, but no one was ever particularly forthcoming about how it happened. His wife returned alone, so everyone thought. They didn’t know at first she brought syphilis with her, his gift to their marriage, evidently.” She smiled without humour, not at him but at the house. “According to legend, she walks the upper corridor, weeping. The Townley-Youngs like to think it’s with remorse for having killed her husband. I like to think it’s with regret for having married the man in the first place. It was 1853 after all. There was no easy cure.”

“For syphilis.”

“Or for marriage.”

She strode off the terrace in the direction of the pond. He watched her for a moment. She took long steps despite her heavy boots. Her hair lifted with her movement, in two greying arcs sweeping back from her face.

The slope he followed her down was icy, its grass long defeated by purslane and furze. At its base, the pond lay in the shape of a kidney bean. It was thickly overgrown, resembling a marsh, with water that was murky and, no doubt in the summer, a breeding ground for everything from insects to disease. Unkempt reeds and denuded weeds grew waist-tall round it. The latter sent out tendrils to grasp at clothes. But Mrs. Spence seemed oblivious of this. She waded into their midst and brushed the clinging bits of them aside.

She stopped less than a yard from the water’s edge. “Here,” she said.

As far as Lynley could tell, the vegetation she indicated was indistinguishable from the vegetation everywhere else. In the spring or summer, perhaps, flowers or fruit might give an indication of the genera — if not the species — that now appeared to be little more than skeletal shrubs and brambles. He recognised nettle easily enough because its toothed leaves still clung to the stem of the plant. And reeds were the same in shape and size from season to season. But as for the rest, he was mystifi ed.

She apparently saw this, for she said, “Part of it is knowing where the plants grow when they’re in season, Inspector. If you’re looking for roots, they’re still in the ground even when the stems, leaves, and flowers are gone.” She pointed to her left where an oblong of ground resembled nothing more than a mat of dead leaves from which a spindly bush grew. “Meadowsweet and wolfbane grow there in the summer. Farther up there’s a fine patch of chamomile.” She bent and rooted through the weeds at her feet, saying, “And if you’re in doubt, the leaves of the plant don’t go much farther than the ground beneath it. They disintegrate ultimately, but the process takes ages and in the meantime, you’ve got your source of identifi cation right here.” She extended her hand. In it she held the remains of a feathery leaf not unlike parsley in appearance. “This tells you where to dig,” she said.

“Show me.”

She did so. No trowel or hoe was necessary. The earth was damp. It was simple enough for her to uproot a plant by pulling on the crown and the stems that remained of it above the ground. She knocked the root stock sharply against her knee to dislodge the clods of earth that were still clinging to it, and both of them stared, without speaking, at the result. She was holding a thickened stock of the plant from which a bundle of tubers grew. She dropped it immediately, as if, without even being ingested, it still had the power to kill.

“Tell me about Mr. Sage,” Lynley said.