Missing Joseph

  God and Goddess up above

  Bring me Colin in full love

  and She remembered how three months before Annie Shepherd’s death, her friend Polly Yarkin—with sublime powers that came only from being a child conceived of a witch, conceived within the magic circle itself when the moon was full in Libra and its light cast a radiance on the altar stone at the top of Cotes Fell—had stopped performing the Rite of the Sun and had switched to Saturn. Burning oak, wearing black, breathing hyacinth incense, Polly had prayed for Annie’s death. She had told herself that death wasn’t to be feared, that the ending of a life could come as a blessing when the suffering endured had been profound. And that is how she had justified the evil, all the time knowing that the Goddess would not let evil go unpunished.

  Everything until today had been a prelude to the descent of Her wrath. And She had exacted Her retribution in a form that exactly matched the evil committed, delivering Colin to Polly not in love but in lust and violence, turning the magic three-fold against its maker. How stupid ever ever to think that Juliet Spence—not to mention the knowledge of Colin’s attentions to her—was the punishment that the Goddess intended. The sight of them together and the realisation of what they were to each other had merely acted to lay the foundation for the real mortification to come.

  It was over now. Nothing worse could happen, except her own death. And since she was more than half dead now, even that didn’t seem so terrible.

  “Polly? Luv-doll? What’re you doin’?”

  Polly opened her eyes and rose in the water so quickly that it sloshed over the side of the tub. She watched the bathroom door. Behind it, she could hear her mother’s wheezing. Rita generally climbed the stairs only once a day—to go to bed—and since she never made that climb until after midnight, Polly had assumed she would be safe when she’d first called out that she’d be wanting no dinner as she entered the lodge, hurried up to the bathroom, and shut herself in. She didn’t reply. She reached for a towel. The water sloshed again.

  “Polly! You still taking a bath, girl? Didn’t I hear the water running long before dinner?”

  “I just started, Rita.”

  “Just started? I heard the water running directly you got home. More’n two hours back. So what’s up, luv-doll?” Rita scratched her nails against the door. “Polly?”

  “Nothing.” Polly wrapped herself in the towel as she stepped from the tub. She grimaced with the effort of lifting each leg.

  “Nothing my eye. Cleanliness is next to whatever, I know, but this is taking it to extremes. Wha’s the story? You fancying yourself up for some toy boy to climb through your window tonight? You meetin’ someone? You want a spray of my Giorgio?”

  “I’m just tired. I’m going to bed. You go on back down to the telly, all right?”

  “All wrong.” She tapped again. “Wha’s going on? You feeling queer?”

  Polly tucked the towel round her to make a wrap. Water ran in rivulets down her legs to the stained green bath rug on the floor. “Fine, Rita.” She tried to say it as normally as possible, sifting through her memories of how she and her mother interacted to come up with an appropriate tone of voice. Would she be irritated with Rita by now? Should her voice reflect impatience? She couldn’t remember. She settled for friendly. “You go on back down. Isn’t your police programme on about now? Why don’t you cut yourself a piece of that cake. Cut me one as well and leave it on the work top.” She waited for the answer, the lumber and huff of Rita’s departure, but no sound came from the other side of the door. Polly watched it, warily. She felt chilled where her skin was wet and exposed, but she couldn’t face unwrapping the towel, uncovering her body for drying, and having to look at it again just yet.

  “Cake?” Rita said.

  “I might have a piece.”

  The door knob rattled. Rita’s voice was sharp. “Open up, girl. You a’nt had a piece of cake in fifteen years. Somethin’s wrong and I mean to know what.”

  “Rita…”

  “We a’nt playing here, luv-doll. And unless you intend to climb out the window, you may as well open this door straightaway ’cause I mean to be here whenever you get round to it.”

  “Please. It’s nothing.”

  The door knob rattled louder. The door itself thumped. “Am I going to need the help of our local constabulary?” her mother asked. “I c’n phone him, you know. Why is it I expect you’d rather I didn’t?”

  Polly reached for the bathrobe on its hook and slid the lock back. She draped the bathrobe round her and was in the act of tying its belt when her mother swung the door open. Hastily, Polly turned away, unfastening her hair from its elastic binding to let it fall forward.

  “He was here today, was Mr. C. Shepherd,” Rita said. “He cooked up some story ’bout looking for tools to fix our shed door. What an agreeable bloke, our local policeman. You know anything about that, luv-doll?”

  Polly shook her head and fumbled with the knot she’d made in the belt of the robe. She watched her fingers pick at it and waited for her mother to give up the effort at communication and leave. Rita wasn’t going anywhere, however.

  “You’d best tell me ’bout it, girl.”

  “What?”

  “What happened.” She lumbered into the bathroom and seemed to fill it with her size, her scent, and, above all, her power. Polly tried to summon her own as a defence, but her will was weak.

  She heard the clank-jangle of bracelets as Rita’s arm raised behind her. She didn’t cringe—she knew her mother had no intention of striking her—but she waited in dread for Rita to respond to what she didn’t feel emanating like a palpable wave from Polly’s body.

  “You got no aura,” Rita said. “And you got no heat. Turn round here.”

  “Rita, come on. I’m just tired. I’ve been working all day and I want to go to bed.”

  “Don’t you mess me about. I said turn. I mean turn.”

  Polly made the belt’s knot double. She shook her head to gain further protection from her hair. She pivoted slowly, saying, “I’m only tired. A bit sore. I slipped on the vicarage drive this morning and banged up my face. It hurts. I pulled a muscle or something in my back as well. I thought a hot soak would—”

  “Raise your head. Now.”

  She could feel the power behind the command. It overcame whatever feeble resistance she might have been able to muster. She lifted her chin, although she kept her eyes lowered. She was inches from the goat’s head that served as pendant on her mother’s necklace. She bent her thoughts to the goat, his head, and how it resembled the naked witch standing in the pentagram position, from which the Rites began and petitions were made.

  “Move your hair off your face.”

  Polly’s hand did her mother’s bidding.

  “Look at me.”

  Her eyes did the same.

  Rita’s breath whistled between her teeth as she sucked in air, face to face with her daughter. Her pupils expanded rapidly across the surface of her irises, and then retracted to pinpricks of black. She raised her hand and moved her fingers along the welt that scythe-cut its path of angry skin from Polly’s eye to her mouth. She didn’t make actual contact, but Polly could feel the touch of her fingers as if she did. They hovered above the eye that was swollen. They tapped their way from her cheek to her mouth. Finally, they slid into her hair, both hands on either side of her head, this time an actual touch that seemed to vibrate through her skull.

  “What else is there?” Rita asked.

  Polly felt the fingers tighten and catch at her hair, but still she said, “Nothing. I fell. A bit sore,” although her voice sounded faint and lacking in conviction.

  “Open that robe.”

  “Rita.”

  Rita’s hands pressed in, not a punishing grip but one that spread warmth outward, like circles in a pond when a pebble hits its surface. “Open the robe.”

  Polly untied the first knot, but found she couldn’t manage the second. Her mother did it, picking at the ti
e with her long, blue fingernails and with hands that were as unsteady as her breath. She pushed the robe from her daughter’s body and took a step back as it fell to the floor.

  “Great Mother,” she said and reached for the goat’s head pendant. Her chest rapidly rose and fell under her kaftan.

  Polly dropped her head.

  “It was him,” Rita said. “Wasn’t it him did this to you, Polly. After he was here.”

  “Let it be,” Polly said.

  “Let it…?” Rita’s voice was incredulous.

  “I didn’t do right by him. I wasn’t pure in my wanting. I lied to the Goddess. She heard and She punished. It wasn’t him. He was in Her hands.”

  Rita took her arm and swung her towards the mirror above the basin. It was still opaque from steam, and Rita vigorously ran her hand up and down it and wiped her palm on the side of her kaftan. “You look here, Polly,” she said. “You look at this right and you look at it good. Do it. Now.”

  Polly saw reflected what she had already seen. The vicious impression of his teeth on her breast, the bruises, the oblong marks of the blows. She closed her eyes but felt tears still trying to seep past her lashes.

  “You think this is how She punishes, girl? You think She sends some bastard with rape on his mind?”

  “The wish comes back three-fold on the wisher, whatever it is. You know that. I didn’t wish pure. I wanted Colin, but he belonged to Annie.”

  “No one belongs to no one!” Rita said. “And She doesn’t use sex—the very power of creation—to punish Her priestess. Your thinking’s gone off. You’re looking at yourself like those sodding Christian saints would have you do: ‘The food of worms…a vile dung-hill. She is the gate by which the devil enters…she is what the sting of the scorpion is…’ That’s how you’re seeing yourself now, isn’t it? Something to be trampled. Something no good.”

  “I did wrong by Colin. I cast the circle—”

  Rita turned her and grabbed her arms firmly. “And you’ll cast it again, right now, with me. To Mars. Like I said you should’ve been doing all along.”

  “I cast to Mars like you said the other night. I gave the ashes to Annie. I put the ring stone with them. But I wasn’t pure.”

  “Polly!” Rita shook her. “You didn’t do wrong.”

  “I wanted her to die. I can’t take back that wanting.”

  “An’ you think she didn’t want to die as well? Her insides were eaten with cancer, luv. It went from her ovaries to her stomach and her liver. You couldn’t have saved her. No one could have saved her.”

  “The Goddess could. If I’d asked right. But I didn’t. So She punished.”

  “Don’t be simple-minded. This isn’t punishment, what happened to you. This is evil, his evil. And we got to see that he pays for doing it.”

  Polly loosened her mother’s hands from her arms. “You can’t use magic against Colin. I won’t let you.”

  “Believe me, girl, I don’t mean to use magic,” Rita said. “I mean to use the police.” She lurched round and headed for the door.

  “No.” Polly shuddered against the pain as she bent and retrieved the robe from the floor. “You’ll be bringing them out on a fool’s errand. I won’t talk to them. I won’t say a word.”

  Rita swung back. “You listen to me…”

  “No. You listen, Mum. It doesn’t matter, what he did.”

  “Doesn’t…That’s like saying you don’t matter.”

  Polly tied the robe firmly until it, and her answer, were both in place. “Yes. I know that,” she said.

  “So the Social Services connection made Tommy feel even more certain that, whatever her reasons might have been for being rid of the vicar, they’re probably connected to Maggie.”

  “And what do you think?”

  St. James opened the door of their room and locked it behind them. “I don’t know. Something still niggles.”

  Deborah kicked off her shoes and sank onto the bed, drawing her legs up Indian fashion and rubbing her feet. She sighed. “My feet feel twenty years older than I do. I think women’s shoes are designed by sadists. They ought to be shot.”

  “The shoes?”

  “Those too.” She pulled a tortoiseshell comb from her hair and pitched it onto the chest of drawers. She was wearing a green wool dress the same colour as her eyes, and it billowed round her like a mantle.

  “Your feet may feel forty-five,” St. James noted, “but you look fifteen.”

  “It’s the lighting, Simon. Nicely subdued. Get used to it, won’t you? You’ll be seeing it more and more at home in the coming years.”

  He chuckled, shedding his jacket. He removed his watch and placed it on the bedside table beneath a lamp whose tasselled shade was going decidedly frizzy on the ends. He joined her on the bed, shifting his bad leg to accommodate his position of half-sit and half-slouch, resting on his elbows. “I’m glad of it,” he said.

  “Why? You’ve developed a fancy for subdued lighting?”

  “No. But I’ve a definite fancy for the coming years. That we’ll be having them, I mean.”

  “You thought we might not?”

  “I never know quite what to think with you, frankly.”

  She raised her knees and rested her chin on them, pulling her dress close round her legs. Her gaze was on the bathroom door. She said, “Please don’t ever think that, my love. Don’t let who I am—or what I do—make you think we’ll drift apart. I’m difficult, I know—”

  “You were ever that.”

  “—but the together of us is the most important thing in my life.” When he didn’t respond at once, she turned her head to him, still resting it against her knees. “Do you believe that?”

  “I want to.”

  “But?”

  He coiled a lock of her hair round his finger and examined how it caught the light. It was, in colour, somewhere on the scale between red, chestnut, and blonde. He couldn’t have named it. “Sometimes the business of life and its general messiness get in the way of together,” he settled on saying. “When that happens, it’s easy to lose sight of where you began, where you were heading, and why you took up with each other in the first place.”

  “I’ve never had a single problem with any of that,” she said. “You were always in my life and I always loved you.”

  “But?”

  She smiled and side-stepped with greater skill than he would have thought she possessed. “The night you first kissed me, you ceased being my childhood hero Mr. St. James and became the man I meant to marry. It was simple for me.”

  “It’s never simple, Deborah.”

  “I think it can be. If two minds are one.” She kissed him on the forehead, the bridge of his nose, his mouth. He shifted his hand from her hair to the back of her neck, but she hopped off the bed and unzipped her dress, yawning.

  “Did we waste our time going to Bradford, then?” She wandered to the clothes cupboard and fished for a hanger.

  He watched her, nonplussed, trying to make the connection. “Bradford?”

  “Robin Sage. Did you find nothing in the vicarage about his marriage? The woman taken in adultery? And what about St. Joseph?”

  He accepted her change in conversation, for the moment. It kept things easier, after all. “Nothing. But his things were packed away in cartons and there were dozens of those, so there may be something still to be uncovered. Tommy seems to think it unlikely, however. He thinks the truth’s in London. And he thinks it has to do with the relationship between Maggie and her mother.”

  Deborah pulled her dress over her head, saying in a voice muffled from within its folds, “Still, I don’t see why you’ve rejected the past. It seemed so compelling—a mysterious wife’s even more mysterious boating accident and all of that. He may have been phoning Social Services for reasons having nothing to do with the girl in the first place.”

  “True. But phoning Social Services in London? Why wouldn’t he have phoned a local branch if it was in reference to a local problem???
?

  “For that matter, even if his phoning had to do with Maggie, why would he phone London about her?”

  “He wouldn’t want her mother to know, I expect.”

  “He could have phoned Manchester or Liverpool, then. Couldn’t he? And if he didn’t, why didn’t he?”

  “That’s the question. One way or the other, we need to find the answer. Suppose he was telephoning with regard to something that Maggie had confided in him. If he was invading what Juliet Spence saw as her own patch—the upbringing of her daughter—and if he was invading it in a way that threatened her and if he revealed this invasion to her, perhaps to force her hand in some way, don’t you suppose she may have reacted to that?”

  “Yes,” Deborah said. “I tend to think she would have done.” She hung up her dress and straightened it on the hanger. She sounded thoughtful.

  “But you’re not convinced?”

  “It’s not that.” She reached for her dressing gown, donned it, and rejoined him on the bed. She sat on the edge, studying her feet. “It’s just that…” She frowned. “I mean…I think it more likely that, if Juliet Spence murdered him and if Maggie’s at the bottom of why she murdered him, she did it not because she herself was threatened, but because Maggie was. This is her child, after all. You can’t forget that. You can’t forget what it means.”

  St. James felt trepidation send its current of warning through the shorter hairs on the back of his neck. Her final statement, he knew, could lead to treacherous ground between them. He said nothing and waited for her to continue. She did so, dropping her hand to trace a pattern between them on the counterpane.

  “Here’s this creature that grew inside her for nine months, listening to her heartbeat, sharing the flow of her blood, kicking and moving in those final months to make her presence known. Maggie came from her body. She sucked milk from her breasts. Within weeks, she knew her face and her voice. I think—” Her fingers paused in their tracing. Her tone tried and ultimately failed to become practical. “A mother would do anything to safeguard her child. I mean…Wouldn’t she do anything to protect the life she created? And don’t you honestly think that’s what this killing’s all about?”