Missing Joseph

“You don’t know she can’t.”

“Let me finish. Please. This once. And listen.” She waited for a moment, perhaps to bring herself under control. She held her hands out towards him, cupped together, as if she would give him the information. “I killed a man, Colin. I can’t stay here in Winslough any longer. And I won’t let you leave this place you love.”

“The police have come,” he said in answer. “From London.”

At once, she dropped her hands to her sides. Her face altered, as if she were drawing a mask into place. He could feel the distance it created between them. She was invulnerable and unreachable, her armour secure. When she spoke, her voice was utterly calm.

“From London. What do they want?”

“To find out who killed Robin Sage.”

“But who…? How…?”

“It doesn’t matter who phoned them. Or why. It only matters that they’re here. They want the truth.”

She lifted her chin fractionally. “Then I’ll tell it. This time.”

“Don’t make yourself look guilty. There isn’t any need.”

“I said what you wanted me to say before. I won’t do that again.”

“You’re not hearing me, Juliet. There isn’t any need for self-sacrifice in this. You’re no more guilty than I am.”

“I…killed…this…man.”

“You fed him wild parsnip.”

“What I thought was wild parsnip. Which I myself dug up.”

“You can’t know that for sure.”

“Of course I know it for sure. I dug it up that very day.”

“All of it?”

“All…? What are you asking?”

“Juliet, did you take some parsnip from the root cellar that evening? Was it part of what you cooked?”

She took a step backwards, as if to distance herself from what his words implied. The action cast her into deeper shadow. “Yes.”

“Don’t you see what that means?”

“It means nothing. There were only two roots left when I checked the cellar that morning. That’s why I went out for more. I…”

He could hear her swallow as she began to understand. He went to her. “So you see, don’t you?”

“Colin…”

“You’ve taken the blame without cause.”

“No. I haven’t. I didn’t. You can’t believe that. You mustn’t.”

He smoothed his thumb along her cheekbone, ran his fingers round the curve of her jaw. God, she was like an infusion of life. “You don’t see it, do you? That’s the goodness of you. You don’t even want to see it.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t Robin Sage at all. It was never Robin Sage. Juliet, how can you be responsible for the vicar’s death when you were the one who was meant to die?”

Her eyes grew wide. She began to speak. He stopped her words — and the fear which he knew lay behind them — with his kiss.

They were scarcely out of the dining room, making their way through the pub to the residents’ lounge, when the older man accosted them. He gave Deborah a cursory glance that took in everything from her hair — always somewhere in the evolutionary cycle between haphazardly disarrayed and absolutely dishevelled — to the splotchy stains of ageing on her grey suede shoes. Then he moved his attention to St. James and Lynley, both of whom he scrutinised with the sort of care one generally gives to assessing a stranger’s potential for committing a felony.

“Scotland Yard?” he asked. His tone was peremptory. It managed to suggest that only a hand-wringing, obsequious response to the question would do. At the same time it implied, “I know your sort,” “Walk two steps to the rear,” and “Pull at your forelock.” It was a lord-of-the-manor voice, the sort that Lynley himself had spent years trying to shed, and thus it was guaranteed to raise his hackles the moment he heard it. Which it did.

St. James said quietly, “I’m having a brandy. You, Deborah? Tommy?”

“Yes. Thank you.” Lynley allowed his gaze to follow St. James and Deborah to the bar.

The pub appeared to be serving its regulars, none of whom seemed to be paying much attention to the older man who stood before Lynley waiting for a response. Yet everyone seemed at the same time to be aware of him. Their effort to ignore his presence was too studied, their eyes darting towards him then just as quickly fl itting away.

Lynley looked him over. He was tall and spare, with thinning grey hair and a fair complexion made ruddy round the cheeks through an exposure to the out-of-doors. But this was a hunting-and-fi shing exposure, for there was nothing about the man to suggest that the time he spent exposed to the elements was anything other than leisure’s employment. He wore good tweeds; his hands looked manicured; his air was sure. And from the expression of distaste he cast in the direction of Ben Wragg who was slapping the bar and laughing heartily at a joke he himself had just told St. James, it was clear that coming to Crofters Inn constituted something of a descent from on high.

“Look here,” the man said. “I asked a question. I want an answer. Now. Is that clear? Which of you is from the Yard?”

Lynley took the brandy that St. James brought him. “I am,” he said. “Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley. And something tells me that you’re Townley-Young.”

He loathed himself even as he did it. The man would have had no way of determining a thing about him or about his background from a simple examination of his clothes because he hadn’t bothered much about dressing for dinner. He wore a burgundy pullover over his pin-striped shirt, a pair of grey wool trousers, and shoes that still had a thin crease of mud along the seam. So until Lynley spoke — until he made the decision to employ the Voice whose every inflection shouted public school educated, blue blood born, and bred to possess a series of cumbersome, useless titles — Townley-Young would have had no way of knowing that he was addressing his questions to a belted earl. He still didn’t, exactly. No one was whispering Eighth Earl of Asherton into his ear. No one was listing the accoutrements of fortune, class, and birth: the town house in London, the estate in Cornwall, a seat in the House of Lords if he wished to take it, which he decidedly did not.

Into Townley-Young’s startled silence, Lynley introduced the St. Jameses. Then he sipped his brandy and observed Townley-Young over the rim of his glass.

The man was undergoing a major adjustment in attitude. The nostrils were unpinching, and the spine was loosening. It was clear that he wanted to ask half a dozen questions absolutely verboten in the situation and that he was attempting to look as if he’d known from the first that Lynley was less them and more us than Townley-Young himself would ever be.

“May I speak to you privately?” he said and then added hastily with a glance at the St. Jameses, “I mean out of the pub. I should hope your friends would join us.” He managed the request with considerable dignity. He may have been surprised to discover that more than one class of individual could rest at ease beneath the title of Detective Inspector, but he wasn’t about to go all Uriah Heepish in an effort to mitigate the scorn with which he’d fi rst spoken.

Lynley nodded towards the door to the residents’ lounge at the far side of the pub. Townley-Young led the way. The lounge was, if anything, colder than the dining room had been and without the extra electric fi res placed strategically to cut the chill.

Deborah switched on a lamp, straightened its shade, and did the same to another. St. James removed an unfolded newspaper from one of the armchairs, tossed it to the sideboard on which Crofters Inn kept its supply of other reading material — mostly ancient copies of Country Life that looked as if they’d crumble if opened precipitately — and sat in one of the armchairs. Deborah chose a nearby ottoman for her own seat.

Lynley noted that Townley-Young glanced once at St. James’ disability, a swift look of curiosity that moved quickly on its way to fi nd a place for himself in the room. He chose the sofa above which hung a dismal reproduction of The Potato Eaters.