Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

He eased the door closed and tramped through the mud to the lodge. Leo trotted out of the wood, a picture of complete dog bliss with his coat hung with small clods of humus and his ears decorated with blackened, dead leaves. This was a day to be celebrated for the dog: a hike up the fell, a bit of run-and-chase, a chance to get thoroughly filthy in the wood. Forget retrieving when he could root round the oaks like a pig after truffl es.

“Stay,” Colin said to him, pointing to a beaten-down patch of weeds by the door. He knocked and hoped the day would be one of celebration for himself as well.

He heard her before she opened the door. The sound of her footsteps rumbled on the floor. The sound of her wheezing accompanied her action of unfastening bolts. Then she stood before him like a walrus on ice, one hand spread out on her massive chest as if its pressure could relieve her breathing. He could see that he had interrupted her in the process of painting her nails. Two were aquamarine, three were uncoloured. All were inhumanly long.

She said, “By the stars and sun, if it a’nt Mr. C. Shepherd hisself,” and she looked him over from head to foot, her eyes lingering longest upon his groin. Under her gaze, he felt the oddest sensation of heat throbbing in his testicles. As if she knew this, Rita Yarkin smiled and emitted a sigh of what appeared to be pleasure. “So. What’re you about, Mr. C. Shepherd? You here as the hopeful answer to a maiden’s prayers? Myself being the maiden, of course. Wouldn’t want you to misapprehend my meaning.”

“I’d like to come in, if that’s all right,” he said.

“Would you now?” She shifted her bulk against the door-jamb. The wood groaned. She reached out — at least a dozen bangles rattling like manacles round her wrist — and ran her fingers over his hair. He did his best not to cringe. “Cobwebs,” she said. “Mmmmm. Here’s another. Where you been putting this pretty head, luv?”

“May I come inside, Mrs. Yarkin?”

“Rita.” She looked him over. “I s’pose it depends on what you mean by ‘come inside.’ Now there’s lots of women would welcome you coming wherever you want and just about whenever the fancy takes you. But me? Well, I’m just a bit p’rticular about my toy boys. Always have been.”

“Is Polly here?”

“It’s Polly you’re after, is it, Mr. C. Shepherd? Now I wonder why? Is she good enough for you, all of a sudden? Did you get thrown over by her up the lane?”

“Look, Rita, I don’t want a row with you. Are you going to let me in or shall I come back later?”

She played with one of the three necklaces she wore. It was beads and feathers with the wooden head of a goat as its pendant. “I can’t think we got anything here as will interest you.”

“Perhaps. When did you come this year?” He saw his error in vocabulary from the way her mouth twitched in response. He headed her off by saying, “When did you arrive in Winslough?”

“Twenty-fourth of December. Same as always.”

“After the vicar’s death.”

“Yeah. Never got to meet the bloke. From the way Polly talked about him and everything that happened, I would’ve liked to read his palm.” She reached for Colin’s hand. “Have yours done, luv?” And when he freed himself from her grip, “Scared to know the future, are you? So’s most people. Let’s have a look. The news is good, you pay. The news is bad, I keep my mug tight shut. Sound like a deal?”

“If you’ll let me in.”

She smiled and waddled back from the door. “Have at me, luv. Have you ever poked a woman weighing twenty stone? I got more places you can stick it than you got time to explore.”

“Right,” Colin said. He squeezed past her. She was wearing enough perfume to permeate the entire lodge. It came off her in waves, like heat from a coal fire. He tried not to breathe.

They stood in a narrow entrance that did duty as a service porch. He untied his muddy boots and left them among the Wellingtons, umbrellas, and mackintoshes. He took his time about this process of untying and removing, using the activity as a means of observing what the porch held. He made particular note of what stood next to a rubbish bin of mouldy brussels sprouts, mutton bones, four empty packets for Custard Cremes, the remains of a breakfast of fried bread and bacon, and a broken lamp without its shade. This was a basket, and it contained potatoes, carrots, marrows, and a head of lettuce.

“Polly’s done the shopping?” he asked.

“That’s day before yesterday’s. Brought it by at noon, she did.”

“Does she bring you parsnips for dinner occasionally?”

“Sure. ’Long with everything else. Why?”

“Because one doesn’t need to buy them. They grow wild hereabouts. Did you know that?”

Rita’s talon nail was tracing the pendant-head of the goat. She played with one horn, then the other. She gave a sensual stroke to the beard. She regarded Colin thoughtfully. “And what if I do?”

“Did you tell Polly, I wonder. It would be a waste of money to have her buy from the greengrocer what she could dig up herself.”

“True. But my Polly’s not much for rooting, Mr. Constable. We like the natural life, make no mistake there, but Polly’s a girl who draws the line at grubbing round the wood on her hands and knees. Unlike some as I could name, she’s got better things to do, does Polly.”

“But she knows her plants. It’s part of the Craft. You have to know all the different woods for burning. You’d have to recognise your herbs as well. Doesn’t the ritual call for their use?”

Rita’s face became blank. “Ritual calls for the use of more’n you know or understand, Mr. C. Shepherd. And none of it I’ll be likely to share with you.”

“But there’s magic in herbs?”

“There’s magic in lots of things. But all of it springs from the will of the Goddess, praised be Her name, whether you’re using the moon, the stars, the earth, or the sun.”

“Or the plants.”

“Or water or fire or anything. It’s the mind of the petitioner and the will of the Goddess that make the magic. It’s not to be found in mixing potions and drinking’m down.” She lumbered through the far doorway and into the kitchen where she went to the tap and held a kettle beneath a dismal trickle of water.

Colin took the opportunity to complete his examination of the service porch. It held a bizarre variety of Yarkin possessions, everything from two bicycle wheels minus their tyres to a rusty anchor with one prong missing. A basket for a long-departed cat occupied one corner, and it was heaped with a mound of tattered paperback books whose covers appeared to feature women of impressive bosom caught up in the arms of men on the verge of ravishing them. Love’s Savage Desperation blazed across one cover. Passion’s Lost Child adorned another. If a set of handtools were secreted in the porch among the cardboard cartons of old clothes, the antique Hoover, and the ironing board, it would take a thirteenth labour of Heracles in order to fi nd them.

Colin joined Rita in the kitchen. She’d gone to the table where, among the remains of her mid-morning coffee and crumpets, she had returned to painting her nails. The scent of the polish was making a valiant effort to dominate both her perfume and the smell of bacon grease that seemed to be crackling in a frying pan on the cooker. Colin switched the pan’s place with the kettle of water. Rita gestured her thanks with the nail-polish brush, and he wondered what had inspired her choice of colour and where she had managed to purchase it in the fi rst place.

He said by way of edging cagily towards the purpose of his visit, “I came in the back way.”

“So I noticed, sweet face.”