Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

“A jewel. A real catch, in other words,” Dominic said. He didn’t seem overly pleased with the thought.

“It’s odd to think a man like that would suddenly be satisfied, living the life of a village cleric,” St. James said.

“That was Michael’s thought exactly. He hated to lose him, but he let him go. It was Sage’s request. He went to Boscastle for his fi rst posting.”

“Why?”

The bishop wiped his hands on the rag and folded it. “Perhaps he’d been to the village on holiday.”

“But why the sudden change? Why the desire to go from a position of power and influence to one of relative obscurity? That’s hardly the norm. Even for a priest, I dare say.”

“He’d travelled on a personal road to Damascus a short time before, evidently. He’d lost his wife.”

“His wife?”

“Killed in a boating accident. According to Michael, he was never the same afterwards. He saw her death as a punishment from God for his temporal interests, and he decided to eschew them.”

St. James looked at Deborah across the room. He could tell she was thinking his very same thought. They’d all of them made an uninformed assumption based upon limited information. They had assumed the vicar hadn’t been married because no one in Win-slough had mentioned a wife. He could see from Deborah’s thoughtful expression that she was reflecting upon the day in November when she’d had her only conversation with the man.

“So I assume that his passion for success was replaced with a passion to make up for his past in some way,” St. James said to the bishop.

“But the problem was that the latter passion didn’t translate as well as the former had. He went through nine placements.”

“In what period of time?”

The bishop looked at his secretary. “Some ten to fifteen years, wasn’t it?” Dominic nodded.

“With no success anywhere? A man with his talents?”

“As I said, the passion didn’t translate well. He became the zealot we spoke of earlier, vehement about everything from the decline in church attendance to what he called the secularisation of the clergy. He lived the Sermon on the Mount, and he wasn’t accepting of a fellow clergyman or even a parishioner who failed to do the same. If that wasn’t enough to cause him problems, he firmly believed that God shows His will through what happens to people in their lives. Frankly, that’s a difficult draught of medicine to swallow if you’re the victim of a senseless tragedy.”

“Which he himself was.”

“And which he believed to be his just deserts.”

“‘I was self-centred,’ he’d say,” the deacon intoned. “‘I cared only for my own need for glory. God’s hand moved to change me. You can change as well.’”

“Unfortunately, true though his words may have been, they didn’t constitute a recipe for success,” the bishop said.

“And when you heard that he was dead, did you think there was a connection?”

“I couldn’t avoid considering it,” the bishop replied. “That’s why Dominic went to the inquest.”

“The man had inner demons,” Dominic said. “He chose to wrestle them in a public forum. The only way he could make expiation for his own worldliness was to castigate everyone he met for theirs. Is that a motive for murder?” He snapped closed the bishop’s appointment diary. It was clear that their interview was at an end. “I suppose it depends upon how one reacts when confronted with a man who seemed to feel that his was the only correct way to live.”

“I’ve never been good at this, Simon. You know that.” They’d finally stopped for a rest in Downham, on the other side of the Forest of Pendle. They parked by the post offi ce and walked down the sloping lane. They circled round a storm-stricken oak that had been reduced to trunk and truncated branches and headed back towards the narrow stone bridge they’d just crossed in the car. Pendle Hill’s grey-green slopes hulked in the distance with fingers of frost curling down from the summit, but they were not intent upon a hike towards this. Rather they had spied a small green on the near side of the bridge, where a stream cut a scythe’s curve along the lane and flowed behind a neat line of cottages. Here a worn bench backed up to a drystone wall, and perhaps two dozen mallards quacked happily on the grass, explored the roadside, and paddled in the water.

“Don’t worry about it. This isn’t a contest. Remember what you can. The rest will come when it comes.”

“Why are you so obnoxiously undemanding?”

He smiled. “I’ve always thought it was part of my charm.”

The ducks came to greet them with the expectation of food on their minds. They quacked and set about examining footwear, investigating and rejecting Deborah’s boots, moving on to St. James’ shoelaces. These caused a flurry of interest, as did the metal crosspiece of his brace. However, when none of this produced the tiniest, edible morsel, the ducks fluffed and resettled their feathers reproachfully and from that moment displayed a disappointed aloofness to the human presence altogether.

Deborah sat on the bench. She nodded a hello to a parka-clad woman who trudged by them in red Wellingtons with an energetic black terrier on a lead. Then she rested her chin on her fist. St. James joined her. He touched his fingers to the ridge that she was creating between her eyebrows.

“I’m thinking,” she said. “I’m trying to remember.”

“So I noticed.” He put up the collar of his coat. “I’m merely wondering if it’s a requirement of the process that it be conducted in temperatures falling below ten degrees.”

“What a baby you are. It’s not even that cold.”

“Tell that to your lips. They’re turning blue.”

“Pooh. I’m not shivering.”

“I’m not surprised. You’ve gone far beyond that. You’re in the final stages of hypothermia and you don’t even know it. Let’s go back to that pub. There’s smoke coming from the chimney.”

“Too many distractions.”

“Deborah, it’s cold. Doesn’t brandy sound comforting?”

“I’m thinking.”

St. James shoved his hands into his overcoat pockets and gloomily gave his refrigerated attention to the ducks. They seemed oblivious of the cold. But then, they’d had a whole summer and autumn to fatten themselves up in preparation for it. Besides, they were naturally insulated with down, weren’t they? Lucky little devils.

“St. Joseph,” Deborah fi nally announced. “That’s what I remember. Simon, he was devoted to St. Joseph.”

St. James raised a doubtful eyebrow and hunched further into his coat. “It’s a start, I suppose.” He tried to sound encouraging.

“No, really. It’s important. It must be.” Deborah went on to explain her meeting with the vicar in Room 7 of the National Gallery. “I was admiring the da Vinci — Simon, why is it that you’ve never taken me to see it before?”

“Because you hate museums. I tried when you were nine. Don’t you recall? You preferred to go rowing on the Serpentine and became quite unruly when I took you to the British Museum instead.”

“But those were mummies. Simon, you wanted me to look at the mummies. I had nightmares for weeks.”

“So did I.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have let a little bit of temper defeat you so easily.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for the future. Back to Sage.”

She used the sleeves of her coat as a muff, tucking her hands inside. “He pointed out that the da Vinci cartoon didn’t have St. Joseph in it. He said that St. Joseph hardly ever was in a painting with the Virgin and wasn’t that sad? Or something like that.”

“Well, Joseph was just the breadwinner, after all. The good old bloke, the right-hand man.”