Elizabeth George - Missing Joseph

A door slammed with an echo that bounded across the street. They turned at the sound of hurried footsteps. Colin Shepherd was opening the door to his Land Rover, but he hesitated when he caught sight of them.

“And the constable, of course,” Lynley murmured and moved to intercept Shepherd before he left.

At first, St. James remained where he was at the end of the drive, a few yards away. He saw Lynley pause fractionally at the edge of the cone of light cast by the interior of the Rover. He saw him remove his hands from his pockets, and he noted, with some uneasy confusion, that his right hand was balled. St. James knew his friend well enough to realise that it might be wise to join them.

Lynley was saying in a chillingly pleasant tone, “You’ve apparently had an accident, Constable?”

“No,” Shepherd said.

“Your face?”

St. James reached the edge of the light. The constable’s face was abraded on both the forehead and the cheeks. Shepherd’s fingers touched one of the scratches. “This? Roughhousing with the dog. Up on Cotes Fell. You were there yourself today.”

“I? On Cotes Fell?”

“At the Hall. You can see it from the fell. Anyone up there can see anything, in fact. The Hall, the cottage, the garden. Anything. Do you know that, Inspector? Anyone who chooses can see anything below.”

“I prefer less indirection in my conversations, Constable. Are you trying to tell me something, aside from what happened to your face, of course?”

“You can see anyone’s movements, the comings and goings, whether the cottage is locked, who’s working at the Hall.”

“And, no doubt,” Lynley finished for him, “when the cottage is vacant and where the key to the root cellar is kept. Which is, I take it, the point you’re trying to make, however obliquely. Have you an accusation you’d like to share?”

Shepherd was carrying a torch. He threw it into the front seat of the Rover. “Why don’t you start asking what the summit is used for? Why don’t you ask who goes hiking up the fell?”

“You do yourself, by your own admission. And it’s a rather damning one, wouldn’t you say?” The constable made a sound of disdain and began to climb into the car. Lynley stopped him by noting, “You seem to have eschewed the accident theory you were espousing yesterday. Might I know why? Has something caused you to decide your initial investigation was incomplete?”

“Those are your words, not mine. You’re here at your own desire, no one else’s. I’ll thank you to remember that.” He put his hand on the steering wheel, a prefatory movement to entering the car.

“Did you look into his trip to London?” Lynley asked.

Shepherd hesitated, his expression guarded. “Whose?”

“Mr. Sage went to London in the days before he died. Did you know that?”

“No.”

“Polly Yarkin didn’t tell you? Did you interview Polly? She was his housekeeper, after all. She’d know more about the vicar than anyone else. She’d be the one who—”

“I spoke to Polly. But I didn’t interview her. Not offi cially.”

“Then unofficially? And recently, perhaps? Today?”

The questions hung between them. In the silence, Shepherd removed his spectacles. The mist that was falling had sheened them lightly. He rubbed them against the front of his jacket.

“You’ve broken your glasses as well,” Lynley noted. They were, St. James saw, held together across the bridge by a small piece of tape. “That’s quite a bit of rough-housing with the dog. Up on Cotes Fell.”

Shepherd replaced them. He dug in his pocket and brought out a set of keys. He faced Lynley squarely. “Maggie Spence has run off,” he said. “So if there’s nothing else you’d care to remark on, Inspector, Juliet’s expecting me. She’s a bit upset. Evidently you didn’t tell her you’d be going by the school to talk to Maggie. Headmistress thought otherwise, as I understand. And you spoke with the girl alone. Is that how the Yard operates these days?”

Touché , St. James thought. The constable wasn’t about to be intimidated. He had weapons of his own and the nerve to use them.

“Did you look for a connection between them, Mr. Shepherd? Did you ever dig for a less salubrious truth than the one you came up with?”

“My investigation stood firm on its own,” he said. “Clitheroe saw it that way. Coroner saw it that way. Whatever connection I may have failed to see, I’ll put money on its linking someone else to his death, not Juliet Spence. Now if you’ll excuse me…” He swung himself into the car and jammed the key into the ignition. The engine roared. The headlamps flared. He ground the gears as he shifted to reverse.

Lynley leaned into the car for another few words, which St. James couldn’t hear beyond “…this with you…” as he pressed something into Shepherd’s hand. Then the car slid down the driveway to the street, the gears ground another time, and the constable soared off.

Lynley watched him go. St. James watched Lynley. His face was grim. “I’m not enough like my father,” Lynley said. “He would have dragged him bodily into the street, stepped on his face, and probably broken six or eight of his fingers. He did that once, you know, outside a pub in St. Just. He was twenty-two. Someone had made fast and loose with Augusta’s affections and he took care of the situation. ‘No one breaks my sister’s heart,’ he said.”

“That doesn’t solve much.”

“No.” Lynley sighed. “But I’ve always thought it would feel so damn good.”

“Anything atavistic generally does, for the moment. It’s what follows that causes complications.”

They went back down the drive where Lynley picked up the odd bits carton. Perhaps a quarter of a mile down the road, they could see the tail lights of the Land Rover gleaming. Shepherd had pulled to the verge for some reason. His headlamps illuminated the gnarled form of a hedgerow. They watched for a moment to see if he would drive on. When he didn’t, they began their walk back to the inn.

“What next?” St. James asked.

“London,” Lynley said. “It’s the only direction I can think of at the moment, as strong-arming suspects doesn’t appear to be something that’s going to have any appreciable effect.”

“Will you use Havers?”

“Speaking of strong-arming.” Lynley chuckled. “No, I’ll have to see to it myself. Since I’ve sent her to Truro on my credit cards, I don’t imagine she’ll be hell-bent on getting down there and back in the customary twenty-four police hours. I’d say three days… with first-class accommodations all the way, no doubt. So I’ll handle London.”

“What can we do to help?”

“Enjoy your holiday. Take Deborah on a drive. Cumbria, perhaps.”

“The lakes?”

“That’s a thought. But I understand Aspatria’s quite nice in January.”

St. James smiled. “That’s going to be one hell of a day trip. We’ll have to be up by fi ve. You’ll owe me for this. And if there’s nothing to be uncovered about the Spence woman there, you’ll owe me in spades.”

“As always.”

Ahead of them, a black cat slinked out from between two buildings, something grey and limp between its jaws. This the animal deposited on the pavement and began tapping gently in the mindlessly cruel way of all cats, hoping for more tormenting play before a fi nal pounce ended the captive’s fruitless hope for survival. As they approached, the animal froze, hunched over its prize, fur bristling, waiting. St. James glanced down to see a small rat blinking hopelessly from between the cat’s paws. He thought about frightening the cat away. The game of death it played was unnecessarily heartless. But rats, he knew, were breeders of disease. It was best — if not most merciful — to let the cat continue.