Missing Joseph

  “I don’t think I gave any time at all,” Deborah replied, in some confusion. “Our plane didn’t land until—”

  “No matter,” the girl said. “You’re here now, aren’t you? And there’s plenty of time before dinner.” She glanced at the misty lower windows of the inn, behind which an amorphous shape was moving under the distinctive bright lights of a kitchen. “A word to the wise is in order. Skip the beef bourguignon. It’s the cook’s name for stew. Come on. This way.”

  She began lugging the suitcase towards a rear door. With it in one hand and St. James’ crutches under her arm, she walked with a peculiar, hobbling gait, her Wellingtons alternately squishing and slapping against the cobbles. There seemed to be nothing to do but follow, and St. James and Deborah did so, trailing the girl across the car park, up a set of back stairs, and through the rear door of the inn. This gave way to a corridor off of which opened a room whose door was marked with a hand-lettered sign saying Residents’ Lounge.

  The girl thumped the suitcase onto the carpet and leaned the crutches against it with their tips pressing onto a faded Axminster rose. “There,” she announced and brushed her hands together in an I’ve-done-my-part gesture. “Will you tell Mum that Josie was waiting for you outside? Josie. That’s me.” This last she said stabbing a thumb to her chest. “It’d be a favour, actually. I’ll pay you back.”

  St. James wondered how. The girl watched them earnestly.

  “Okay,” she said. “I can see what you’re thinking. To be honest, she’s ‘had it with me,’ if you know what I mean. It’s nothing that I did. I mean, it’s lots of stupid stuff. But mostly it’s my hair. I mean, it doesn’t generally look like this. Except it will for a while. I s’pose.”

  St. James couldn’t decide if she was talking about the style or the colour, both of which were dreadful. The former was an ostensible attempt at a wedge which seemed to have been rendered by someone’s nail scissors and someone else’s electric razor. It made her look remarkably like Henry V as depicted in the National Portrait Gallery. The latter was an unfortunate shade of salmon that did battle with the neon jacket she wore. It suggested a dye job applied with more enthusiasm than expertise.

  “Mousse,” she said apropos of nothing.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Mousse. You know. The stuff for your hair. It was s’posed to just give me red highlights, but it didn’t actually work.” She drove her hands into the pockets of her jacket. “I got just about everything going against me, see. Try finding a fourth form bloke my height sometime. So I thought if I made my hair look better, I’d get some notice from a fifth or lower sixth bloke. Stupid. I know. You don’t have to tell me. Mum’s been doing that for the last three days. ‘What am I go’n’ to do with you, Josie?’ Josie. That’s me. Mum and Mr. Wragg own the inn. Your hair’s awful pretty, by the way.” This last was addressed to Deborah whom Josie was inspecting with no little interest. “And you’re tall as well. But I expect you’ve stopped growing.”

  “I think I have. Yes.”

  “I haven’t. The doctor says I’ll be over six feet. A throwback to the Vikings, he says and he laughs and pats me on the shoulder like I ought to get the joke. Well, what the H were the Vikings doing in Lancashire, that’s what I want to know.”

  “And your mother, no doubt, wants to know what you were doing by the river,” St. James noted.

  Josie looked flustered and waved her hands. “It’s not the river, exactly. And it’s nothing bad. Really. And it’s only a favour. Just a mention of my name. ‘Young girl met us in the car park, Mrs. Wragg. Tall. Bit gawky. Said her name was Josie. Quite pleasant she was.’ If you’d drop it like that, Mum might unknot her knickers for a bit.”

  “Jo-se-phine!” A woman’s voice shouted somewhere in the inn. “Jo-se-phine Eugenia Wragg!”

  Josie winced. “I hate it when she does that. It reminds me of school. ‘Josephine Eugene. She looks like a bean.’”

  She didn’t, actually. But she was tall, and she moved with the clumsiness of a young teenager who has suddenly become aware of her body before she’s got used to it. St. James thought of his own sister at this very same age, cursed by height, by the aquiline features into which she hadn’t yet grown, and by a wretchedly androgynous name. Sidney, she would introduce herself sardonically, the last of the St. James boys. She’d borne the brunt of her schoolmates’ teasing for years.

  Gravely, he said, “Thank you for waiting in the car park, Josie. It’s always nice to be met when one gets where one’s going.”

  The girl’s face lit. “Ta. Oh, ta,” she said and headed for the door through which they’d come. “I’ll pay you back. You’ll see.”

  “I’ve no doubt of that.”

  “Just go on through the pub. Someone’ll meet you there.” She waved them in the general direction of another door across the room. “I’ve got to get out of these Wellies quick.” And with another querying look at them, “You won’t mention the Wellies, will you? They’re Mr. Wragg’s.”

  Which went a long way to explain why she’d been flopping about like a swimmer wearing flippers. “My lips are sealed,” St. James said. “Deborah?”

  “The very same.”

  Josie grinned in response and slipped through the door.

  Deborah picked up St. James’ crutches and looked about at the L-shaped room that served as the lounge. Its collection of overstuffed furniture was tatty, and several lampshades were askew. But a breakfront sideboard held an array of magazines for guests to peruse, and a bookcase was crammed with a good fifty volumes. Above pine wainscotting the wallpaper appeared recently hung—poppies and roses twining together—and the air bore the decided fragrance of potpourri. She turned to St. James. He was smiling at her.

  “What?” she said.

  “Just like home,” he replied.

  “Someone’s, at least.” She led the way into the pub.

  They had arrived, apparently, during off-hours, for no one was present behind the mahogany bar or at any of the matching pub-issue tables which beer mats dotted in small round splodges of orange and beige. They dodged their way past these and their accompanying stools and chairs, under a ceiling that was low, its heavy timbers blackened by generations of smoke and decorated with a display of intricate horse brasses. In the fireplace, the remains of an afternoon’s blaze was still glowing, giving an occasional snap as final pockets of resin burst.

  “Where’d she get off to, that blasted girl?” a woman was demanding. She spoke from what was apparently an office. Its door stood open to the left of the bar. Immediately next to it, a stairway rose, with steps oddly slanted as if strained from bearing weight. The woman came out, yelled “Jo-se-phine!” up the stairs, and then caught sight of St. James and his wife. Like Josie, she started. Like Josie, she was tall and thin, and her elbows were pointed like arrow heads. She raised one self-conscious hand to her hair and removed a plastic barrette of pink rosebuds which held it haphazardly off her cheeks. She lowered the other to the front of her skirt and brushed aimlessly at a snowfall of lint. “Towels,” she said in apparent explanation of the latter activity. “She was supposed to fold them. She didn’t. I had to. That sums up life with a fourteen-year-old girl.”

  “I think we just met her,” St. James said. “In the car park.”

  “She was waiting for us,” Deborah added cooperatively. “She helped us in with our things.”

  “Did she?” The woman’s eyes went from them to their suitcase. “You must be Mr. and Mrs. St. James. Welcome. We’ve given you Skylight.”

  “Skylight?”

  “The room. It’s our best. A bit cold, I’m afraid, at this time of year, but we’ve put in an extra heater for you.”

  Cold didn’t really do justice to the condition of the room to which she led them, two flights up, at the very top of the hotel. Although the free-standing electric heater was ticking away, sending out palpable streams of warmth, the room’s three windows and two additional skylights acted like transmi
tters for the cold outside. Two feet in any direction from them, one walked into a shield of ice.

  Mrs. Wragg drew the curtains. “Dinner’s from half past seven till nine. Will you be wanting anything prior to that? Have you had your tea? Josie can pop up with a pot, if you like.”

  “Nothing for me,” St. James said. “Deborah?”

  “No.”

  Mrs. Wragg nodded. She rubbed her hands up the sides of her arms. “Well,” she said. She bent to pick a length of white thread from the carpet. She wound it round her finger. “Bath’s through that door. Mind your head, though. The lintel’s a bit low. But then all of them are. It’s the building. It’s old. You know the sort of thing.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  She went to the chest of drawers between the two front windows and made minute adjustments to a cheval mirror and more adjustments to the lace doily beneath it. She opened the clothes cupboard, saying, “Extra blankets here,” and she patted the chintz upholstery of the room’s only chair. When it became apparent that there was nothing more to be done, she said, “London, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” St. James said.

  “We don’t get lots here from London.”

  “It’s quite a distance, after all.”

  “No. It’s not that. Londoners head south. Dorset or Cornwall. Everyone does.” She went to the wall behind the chair and fussed with one of two prints hanging there, a copy of Renoir’s Two Girls at the Piano, mounted on a white mat going yellow at the edges. “There’s not a lot likes the cold,” she added.

  “There’s some truth in that.”

  “Northerners move to London as well. Chasing dreams, I think. Like Josie does. Did she…I wonder did she ask about London?”

  St. James glanced at his wife. Deborah had unlocked the suitcase and opened it on the bed. But at the question, she slowed what she was doing and stood, a single feathery grey scarf in her hands.

  “No,” Deborah said. “She didn’t mention London.”

  Mrs. Wragg nodded, then flashed a quick smile. “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Because that girl’s got a mind for mischief when it comes to anything that’ll take her from Winslough.” She brushed her hands together and balled them at her waist and said, “So then. You’ve come for country air and good walks. And we’ve plenty of both. On the moors. Through the fields. Up into the hills. We had snow last month—first time it’s snowed in these parts in ages—but we’ve only frost now. ‘Fool’s snow,’ my mum called it. Makes things muddy, but I expect you’ve brought your Wellies.”

  “We have.”

  “Good. You ask my Ben—that’s Mr. Wragg—where’s the best place to walk. No one knows the lay of the land like my Ben.”

  “Thank you,” Deborah said. “We’ll do that. We’re looking forward to some walks. And to seeing the vicar as well.”

  “The vicar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mr. Sage?”

  “Yes.”

  Mrs. Wragg’s right hand slithered from her waist to the collar of her blouse.

  “What is it?” Deborah asked. She and St. James exchanged a glance. “Mr. Sage’s still in the parish, isn’t he?”

  “No. He’s…” Mrs. Wragg pressed her fingers into her neck and completed her thought in a rush. “I suppose he’s gone to Cornwall himself. Like everyone else. In a manner of speaking.”

  “What’s that?” St. James asked.

  “It’s…” She gulped. “It’s where he was buried.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  POLLY YARKIN RAN A DAMP CLOTH across the work top and folded it neatly at the edge of the sink. It was a needless endeavour. No one had used the vicar’s kitchen in the last four weeks, and from the looks of things no one was likely to use it for several weeks more. But she still came daily to the vicarage as she had been doing for the last six years, seeing to things now just as she had seen to things for Mr. Sage and his two youthful predecessors who had both given precisely three years to the village before moving on to grander vistas. If there was such a creature as a grander vista in the C of E.

  Polly dried her hands on a chequered tea towel and hung this on its rack above the sink. She’d waxed the linoleum floor that morning, and she was pleased to note that when she looked down, she could see her reflection on its pristine surface. Not a perfect reflection, naturally. A floor isn’t a mirror. But she could see well enough the shadowy crinkles of carrot hair that escaped the tight binding of scarf at the back of her neck. And she could see—far too well—her body’s silhouette, slope-shouldered with the weight of her watermelon breasts.

  Her lower back ached as it always ached, and her shoulders stung where the overfull bra pulled its dead weight against the straps. She prised her index finger under one of these and winced as the resulting release of pressure from one shoulder only made the other feel that much worse. You’re so lucky, Poll, her mates had cooed enviously as undeveloped girls, lads go all woozy at the thought of you. And her mother had said, Conceived in the circle, blessed by the Goddess, in her typical crypto-maternal fashion, and she swatted Polly’s bum the first and final time the girl had spoken about having surgery to reduce the burden dangling like lead from her chest.

  She dug her fists into the small of her back and looked at the wall clock above the kitchen table. It was half past six. No one was going to come to the vicarage this late in the day. There was no reason to linger.

  There was no real reason at all, in fact, for Polly’s continued presence in Mr. Sage’s home. Still, she came each morning and stayed beyond dark. She dusted, cleaned, and told the church wardens that it was important—indeed, it was crucial at this time of year—to keep up the house for Mr. Sage’s replacement. And all the time that she worked, she kept an eye watching for a movement from the vicar’s nearest neighbour.

  She’d been doing that daily since Mr. Sage’s death when Colin Shepherd had first come round with his constable’s pad and his constable’s questions, sifting through Mr. Sage’s belongings in his quiet, knowing constable’s way. He’d only glance at her when she answered the door to him each morning. He’d say Hullo Polly and slide his eyes away. He’d go to the study or to the vicar’s bedroom. Or sometimes he’d sit and sort through the post. He’d jot down notes and stare for long minutes at the vicar’s diary, as if an examination of Mr. Sage’s appointments somehow contained the key to his death.

  Talk to me, Colin, she wanted to say when he was there. Make it like it was. Come back. Be my friend.

  But she didn’t say anything. Instead, she offered tea. And when he refused—No thanks, Polly. I’ll be off in a moment.—she returned to her work, polishing mirrors, washing the insides of windows, scrubbing toilets, floors, basins, and tubs till her hands were raw and the whole house glowed. Whenever she could, she watched him, cataloguing the details designed to make her lot lighter to bear. Got too square of a chin, does Colin. His eyes are nice green but far too small. Wears his hair silly, tries to comb it straight back and it always parts in the middle and then flops forward so it covers his brow. He’s always messing it about, he is, raking his fingers through it in place of a comb.

  But the fingers generally stopped her dead, and there the useless catalogue ended. He had the most beautiful hands in the world.

  Because of those hands and the thought of them gliding their fingers across her skin, she’d always end up where she started from at first. Talk to me, Colin. Make it like it was.

  He never did, which was just as well. For she didn’t really want him to make it like it had been between them at all.

  Too soon for her liking, the investigation ended. Colin Shepherd, village constable, read out his findings in an untroubled voice at the coroner’s inquest. She’d gone because everyone in the village had done so, filling up the space in the great hall at the inn. But unlike everyone else, she’d gone only to see Colin and to hear him speak.

  “Death by misadventure,” the coroner announced. “Accidental poisoning.” The case was closed.

>   But closing the case didn’t put an end to the titillated whispers, the innuendoes, or the reality that in a village like Winslough poisoning and accidental constituted a sure invitation to gossip and an indisputable contradiction in terms. So Polly had stayed in her place at the vicarage, arriving at half past seven each morning, expecting, hoping day after day, that the case would reopen and that Colin would return.

  Wearily, she dropped onto one of the kitchen chairs and eased her feet into the work boots she’d left early that morning on the growing pile of newspapers. No one had thought to cancel Mr. Sage’s subscriptions yet. She’d been too caught up with thinking of Colin to do so herself. She’d do it tomorrow, she decided. It would be a reason to return once more.

  When she closed the front door, she spent a few moments on the vicarage steps to loosen her hair from the scarf that bound it. Freed, it crinkled like rusty steel wool round her face, and the night breeze shifted it the length of her back. She folded the scarf into a triangle, making sure the words Rita Read Me Like A Book In Blackpool! were hidden from view. She put it over her head and knotted its ends beneath her chin. Thus restrained, her hair scratched her cheeks and her neck. She knew it couldn’t possibly look attractive, but at least it wouldn’t fly about her head and catch in her mouth as she made the walk home. Besides, stopping on the steps beneath the porch light, which she always left burning once the sun went down, gave her the opportunity for an unimpeded look at the house next door. If the lights were on, if his car was in the drive…

  Neither was the case. As she trudged across the gravel and plunged into the road, Polly wondered what she would have done had Colin Shepherd actually been at home this evening.

  Knock on the door?

  Yes? Oh, hullo. What is it, Polly?

  Press her thumb against the bell?

  Is there something wrong?

  Cup her eyes to the windows?

  Are you needing the police?