Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

“I mean through the garden. I had a look at your shed. It’s in bad shape, Rita. The door’s come off its hinges. Shall I fix it for you?”

“Why, that’s a first-rate, bang-on idea, Mr. Constable.”

“Have you any tools?”

“Must have. Somewhere.” She examined her right hand, languidly holding it out at arm’s length.

“Where?”

“Don’t know, sweet.”

“Would Polly?”

She waggled her hand.

“Does she use them, Rita?”

“Could be. Could not. But it’s not like we’re dead interested in home improvement, is it?”

“That’s typical, I’d think. When women don’t have a man in the house for a long period of time, they—”

“I didn’t mean me and Polly,” she said. “I mean me and you. Or is that part of your job these days, popping through back gardens and checking on sheds and offering to fix them for helpless ladies?”

“We’re old friends. I’m happy to be of help.”

She sputtered with a laugh. “I bet you are. Happy as a ram at the rut, Mr. Constable, just being helpful. Bet if I ask Polly, she’ll tell me you been stopping by once or twice a week for years, ready to help her out with her chores.” She laid her left hand on the table and reached for her polish.

The kettle began to boil. He fetched it from the cooker. She had already prepared two thick mugs for the water. A glittering heap of what appeared to be instant coffee crystals lay at the bottom of each. One mug had already been used, if the ring of red lipstick was any indication. The other — printed with the word Pisces above which a silvery green fi sh swam in a current of cracked azure glaze — apparently was intended for him. He hesitated fractionally before pouring the water, tilting the mug towards him as surreptitiously as possible for examination.

Rita eyed him and gave him a wink. “G’on, luv-bunny. Take a little chance. We all got to go sometime, don’t we?” She chuckled and bent her head to the work of painting her nails.

He poured the water. There was only one teaspoon on the table, already used by the look of it. His stomach felt queasy at the thought of putting it into his mug, but considering the boiling water as a steriliser, he dipped it in quickly and made a few rapid, conciliatory revolutions. He drank. It was defi nitely coffee.

He said, “I’ll have a look for those tools now,” and took the mug with him to the dining room, where he placed it on the table and intended to forget it.

“You have a look for whatever you like,” Rita called after him. “We got nothing much to hide but what’s under our skirts. Let me know if you want a look there.”

Her shriek of laughter followed him from the dining room, where a hasty exploration through a dresser disclosed a set of dishes and several tablecloths redolent of moth balls. At the foot of the stairs, a battle-weary Canter-bury held yellowing copies of a London tabloid. A quick glance proved that one of the Yarkins had saved only the more delectable issues, featuring two-headed babies, corpses giving birth inside coffi ns, wolf-children of the circus, and the authorised account of extra-terrestrial visitations to a convent in Southend-on-Sea. He pulled out the single drawer and found himself fi ngering through small chunks of wood. He recognised the scent of cedar and pine. A leaf was still attached to the laurel. The others he would have been hard pressed to name. But Polly and her mother would have no trouble with the identification. They would know by the colour, the density, the scent.

He climbed the stairs, moving quickly, knowing that Rita was bound to put an end to his search as soon as she’d discovered its limit in amusement value. He looked right and left, assessing the possibilities presented by a bath and two bedrooms. Immediately in front of him stood a leatherbound chest upon which sat an unappealing squat bronze of someone male, priapic, and horned. Across the passage from this a cupboard gaped open, spilling forth linens and assorted jumble. Fourteenth labour of Heracles, he thought. He went for the first bedroom as Rita called his name.

He ignored her, stood in the doorway, and cursed. The woman was a sloth. She’d been in the lodge for more than a month, and she was still living from her mammoth suitcase. What wasn’t oozing from this was lying on the fl oor, on the backs of two chairs, and at the foot of the unmade bed. A dressing table next to the window looked as if it had once been a set-piece in a criminal investigation. Cosmetics and a colour wheel of nail-polish bottles crowded its surface, with an impressive patina of face powder dashed across everything, much like fingerprint dust. Necklaces hung from the door knob and from one of the posters of the bed. Scarves snaked on the fl oor through discarded shoes. And every inch of the room seemed to emanate Rita’s characteristic scent: part ripe fruit on the verge of going bad, part ageing woman in need of a bath.

He made a cursory check of the chest of drawers. He moved on to the wardrobe and then knelt to examine the space beneath the bed. His sole discovery was that the latter served as repository for an extensive array of slut’s wool as well as one stuffed black cat with its back arched, its fur at the bristle, and Rita Knows And Sees printed on a banner that extended from its tail.

He went to the bath. Rita called his name a second time. He made no reply. He shoved his hands through to the rear of a stack of towels that sat on one of the recessed shelves along with cleanser, scrubbing rags, two kinds of disinfectant, a half-torn print of some Lady Godiva type standing in a clam shell — covering her privates and looking coy — and a pottery toad.

Somewhere in the lodge there had to be something. He felt the fact’s certainty just as solidly as he felt the lumpy green linoleum beneath his feet. And if it wasn’t the tools, whatever else it might be, he would be able to recognise its signifi cance.

He slid open the mirror of the medicine chest and rooted through aspirin, mouth wash, toothpaste, and laxatives. He went through the pockets of a terry bathrobe that hung limply on the back of the door. He picked up a stack of paperback books on the top of the toilet’s cistern, fl ipped through them, and set them on the edge of the tub. And then he found it.

The colour caught his eye first: a streak of lavender against the yellow bathroom wall, wedged behind the cistern to keep it out of sight. A book, not large, perhaps five by nine inches, and thin, with its title worn from the spine. He used a toothbrush from the medicine chest to force the book upwards. It flopped onto the floor face up, next to a balled-up washing flannel, and for a moment he merely read its title, savouring the sensation of having his suspicions vindicated.

Alchemical Magic: Herbs, Spices, and Plants .

Why had he thought the proof might be a trowel, a three-pronged cultivator, or a box of tools? Had she used any of those, had she even owned them in the first place, what a simple thing it would have been to dispose of them somewhere. Dig a hole on the estate grounds, bury them in the wood. But this slim volume of incrimination spoke to the truth of what had happened.

He flipped the book open haphazardly, reading chapter titles and feeling each moment ever more sure. “The Harvest’s Magic Potential,” “Planets and Plants,” “Magical Attribution and Application.” His eye fell upon descriptions of use. He read the warnings appended as well.

“Hemlock, hemlock,” he murmured and riffled through the pages. His hunger for information grew, and facts about hemlock leapt out as if they’d only been waiting for the opportunity to sate him. He read, turned more pages, read again. The words flew up at him, glowed as if rendered in neon against a night sky. And finally the phrase when the moon is full stopped him.