Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

It’s no crime to feel this way, she kept telling herself. You’ve been under someone’s thumb for thirty-three years. What else would you expect to feel when the pressure’s gone? What do prisoners feel when they’re let out of gaol? How about liberated, she answered herself, how about like dancing in the street, like having their hair worked over by one of those posh hairdressers in Knightsbridge who have their windows all draped in black to show off blowup snaps of gorgeous women with geometric haircuts that never grow out scraggly or get blown by the wind.

Anyone else in her position, she decided, would probably be brimming with plans, working feverishly to get this house in shape to sell so that she could start a new life which, no doubt, would begin with a wardrobe change, a body make-over courtesy of a personal trainer who looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger with better teeth, a sudden interest in make-up, and a telephone answering machine to keep track of the messages from a score of admirers all waiting to entwine their lives with hers.

But Barbara had always been a bit more practical than that. She knew change came slowly if it came at all. So right now, the move to Chalk Farm represented nothing more than unknown shops to get used to, unknown streets to navigate, unknown neighbours to meet. All of it would be done on her own, with no voice to hear in the morning save her own, no friendly noise of someone puttering about, and especially no sympathetic companion both ready and eager to listen to her assessment of how things had gone on a given day.

Of course, she’d never had a sympathetic companion involved in her life in the past, only her parents who awaited her nightly arrival, not to engage her in avid conversation but to wolf down supper and get back to the telly where they watched a succession of American melodramas.

Still, her parents had been a human presence in her life for thirty-three long and unbroken years. While they hadn’t exactly filled her life with joy and a sense that the future was an unwritten slate, they had been there, needing her. And now no one did.

She realised that she wasn’t so much afraid of being alone as she was of becoming one of the nation’s invisibles, a woman whose presence in anyone’s life had no particular importance. This house in Acton — especially if she brought her mother back to it — would eliminate the chance of her discovering that she was an unnecessary fixture in the world, eating, sleeping, bathing, and eliminating like the rest of mankind, but otherwise expendable. Locking the door, handing over the key to the estate agent, and going on her way meant risking the revelation of her own unimportance. She wanted to avoid that as long as she could.

She crushed out her cigarette, got to her feet, and stretched. Eating Greek food sounded better than did stripping and waxing the kitchen floor. Lamb souvlakia on rice, dolmades , and a half-bottle of Aristide’s marginally drinkable wine. But first the rubbish bag.

It was where she had left it, outside the back door. Barbara was grateful to see that its contents hadn’t managed to climb the evolutionary scale from mould and algae to anything with legs. She hoisted it up and trudged along the weed-sprung path to the rubbish bins. She lowered the bag inside just as the telephone began to ring.

“What d’you know, my date for next New Year’s,” she muttered. And then, “All right, I’m coming,” as if the caller were telegraphing impatience.

She caught it on the eighth double ring, picking it up to hear a man say, “Ah. Good. You’re there. I thought I might have missed you.”

“You mean you don’t miss me?” Barbara asked. “And here I was worried you’d be incapable of sleeping with the two of us so many miles apart.”

Lynley chuckled. “How goes the holiday, Sergeant?”

“In fi ts and starts.”

“You need a change of scenery to take your mind off things.”

“Could be. But why do I think this is heading in a direction I might learn to regret?”

“If the direction’s Cornwall?”

“That doesn’t sound half bad. Who’s buying?”

“I am.”

“You’re on, Inspector. When do I leave?”

IT WAS A QUARTER TO FIVE when Lynley and St. James walked up the short drive to the vicarage. No car was parked there, but a light burned in what appeared to be the kitchen. Another shone behind the curtains from a fi rst-fl oor room, making a tawny glow against which they could see a figure moving in silhouette, distorted Quasimodo-like from the way the material hung behind the glass. Next to the front door, a collection of rubbish waited to be carted away. It seemed to consist mostly of newspapers, empty containers for household cleaning agents, and dirty rags. These last gave off the distinct and eye-watering smell of ammonia, as if testifying to the victory of antisepsis in whatever war of cleanliness had been waged inside the house.

Lynley rang the bell. St. James looked across the street and frowned thoughtfully at the church. He said, “My guess is that she’ll probably have to dig through the local newspapers to get some sort of account of the death, Tommy. I can’t think the Bishop of Truro will tell Barbara anything more than his secretary told me. And that’s counting on her ability to get in to see him in the first place. He could put her off for days, especially if there is something to hide and if Glennaven reported our visit.”

“Havers’ll deal with it in one fashion or another. I certainly wouldn’t put strong-arming a bishop past her. That sort of thing is her stock in trade.” Lynley rang the bell again.

“But as to Truro’s admitting to any nasty proclivities on the part of Sage…”

“That’s a problem. But nasty proclivities are only one possibility. We’ve already seen there are dozens of others, some applying to Sage, some to Mrs. Spence. If Havers uncovers anything questionable, no matter what it is, at least we’ll have more to work with than we have at the moment.” Lynley peered through the kitchen window. The light that was on came from a small bulb above the cooker. The room was empty. “Ben Wragg said there was a housekeeper at work here, didn’t he?” He rang the bell a third time.

A voice finally responded from behind the door, hesitant and low. “Who’s there, please?”

“Scotland Yard CID,” Lynley replied. “I’ve identification if you’d like to see it.”

The door cracked open, then closed quickly once Lynley had passed the warrant card through. Nearly a minute passed. A tractor rumbled by in the street. A school bus disgorged six uniformed pupils at the edge of the car park in front of St. John the Baptist Church before trundling up the incline with its indicator flashing for the Trough of Bowland.

The door opened again. A woman stood in the entry. She was holding the warrant card mostly enclosed in one fist while her other hand grabbed at the crew neck of her pullover and bunched it up as if she were concerned that it might not be covering her suffi ciently. Her hair — a long crinkly mass that looked electrically charged — hid more than half of her face. The shadows hid the rest.

“Vicar’s dead, you know,” she said in not much more than a mumble. “Died last month. Constable found him on the footpath. He ate something bad. It was an accident.”

She was stating what she must have known they’d already been told, as if she had no idea at all that New Scotland Yard had been prowling round the village for the last twenty-four hours on the trail of this death. It was diffi cult to believe that she wouldn’t have heard of their presence before this, especially, Lynley realised as he studied her, since she certainly had been sitting in the pub with a male companion on the previous night when St. John Townley-Young had paid his call. Townley-Young had accosted the man with her, in fact.