Missing Joseph (21 page)

“So Shepherd's lying?”

“Not necessarily. She's a herbalist. Josie told us that last night.”

“And you told me this morning. It was largely the reason why you had me tearing up the motorway like Nemesis on wheels. But I don't see what—”

“Herbs are just like drugs, Tommy, and they act like drugs. They're circulatory stimulants, cardioactives, relaxants, expectorants…Their functions run the virtual gamut of what a chemist supplies under a doctor's prescription.”

“You're proposing she took something to make herself ill?”

“Something to induce fever. Something to induce vomiting.”

“But isn't it possible that she ate some of the hemlock thinking it was wild parsnip, began to feel ill once the vicar left, and mixed herself a purgative to relieve her discomfort, without connecting her discomfort to what she thought was wild parsnip? That would account for the constant vomiting. And couldn't the constant vomiting have raised her temperature?”

“It's possible, yes. Marginally so. But if that's the case—and frankly, I wouldn't lay money on it, Tommy, considering how quickly water hemlock works on the system—wouldn't she have told the constable that she'd drunk a purgative after eating something that didn't agree with her? And wouldn't the constable have passed that message on to us today?”

Lynley raised his head once again to the prints on the wall. There was Alice Nutter as before, maintaining her obdurate silence, her complexion becoming more perfect gallows with every moment she refused to speak. A woman of secrets, she carried all of them to her grave. If it was an outlawed Roman Catholicism which held her tongue, if it was pride, if it was the angry knowledge that she had been framed by a magistrate with whom she had quarrelled, no one knew. But in an isolated village, there was always an aura of mystery about a woman with secrets who was unwilling to share them. There was always a pernicious little need to smoke the creature out in an unrelated fashion and make her pay for what she kept to herself.

“One way or another, something's not right here,” St. James was saying. “I tend to think Juliet Spence dug up the water hemlock, knew exactly what it was, and cooked it up for the vicar. For whatever reason.”

“And if she had no reason?” Lynley asked.

“Then someone else surely did.”

After Polly had gone, Colin Shepherd drank the first of the whiskies. Got to get the hands to stop shaking, he thought. He gulped the initial shot down. It raced fire through his gullet. But when he set the glass upon the side table, it chattered like a woodpecker knocking bark for its food. Another, he decided. The decanter shivered against the glass.

The next he drank to make himself think of it. The Great Stone of Fourstones, then Back End Barn. The Great Stone was a hulking oblong of granite, an unexplained country oddity sitting on the rough grassland of Loftshaw Moss a number of miles to the north of Winslough. There they had gone for their picnic on that fine spring day when the harsh moor's wind blew only as a breeze and the sky was brilliant with its fleece of clouds and its blue forever. Back End Barn was the object of their walk when the meal was eaten and the wine was drunk. Hiking had been Polly's suggestion. But he'd chosen the direction, and he knew what was there. He, who had walked on these moors since his childhood. He, who recognised every spring and rivulet, knew the name of every hill, and could find the location of each pile of stones. He'd led them directly towards Back End Barn, and he'd been the one to suggest they have a look inside.

The third whisky he drank to bring all of it back. The feel of a splinter piercing his shoulder as he pushed open the weather-pitted door. The strong scent of sheep and the feathery tufts of wool clinging to the mortar between the stones that made up the walls. The two shafts of light that fell from gaps in the old slate roof, making a perfect
V
at whose point Polly had gone to stand with a laugh, saying, “Looks like a spotlight, doesn't it, Colin?”

When he shut the door, the rest of the barn seemed to recede with the dimming of the light. With the barn, receded the world so that all that was left were those two, simple, yellow-gold shafts provided by the sun, and at their juncture Polly.

She looked from him to the door he'd closed. Then she ran her hands down the sides of her skirt and said, “Like a secret place, isn't it? With the door shut and all. D'you and Annie come here? I mean, did you come here? Before. You know.”

He shook his head. She must have taken his quiet for a reminder of the anguish that waited for him back in Winslough. She said impulsively, “I've brought the stones. Let me cast them for you.”

Before he could reply, she dropped to her knees and from her skirt pocket she brought forth a little black velvet bag embroidered with red and silver stars. She unloosed its drawstrings and poured the eight rune stones into her hand.

“I don't believe in that,” he said.

“That's because you don't understand it.” She settled onto her heels and patted the floor at her side. It was stone, uneven, rutted, and pock-marked from the hooves of ten thousand sheep. It was utterly filthy. He knelt to join her. “What d'you want to know?”

He made no reply. Her hair was all ablaze in the light. Her cheeks were flushed.

“Come on with you, Colin,” she said. “There must be something.”

“There's nothing.”

“There must be.”

“Well, there isn't.”

“Then I shall cast them for myself.” She shook the stones like dice in her hand and closed her eyes, head cocked to one side. “Now. What shall I ask?” The stones clicked and rattled. Finally she said in a rush, “If I stay in Winslough, shall I meet my true love?” And then to Colin with an impish smile, “'Cause if he's there, he's being a bit skittish about introducing himself.” With a snap of her wrist, she threw the stones away from her. They clattered and skipped across the floor. Three stones showed their decorated sides. Polly leaned forward to see them and clasped her hands at her bosom in delight. “You see,” she said, “the omens are good. Here's the ring stone farthest. That's for love and marriage. And the Lucky stone next. See how it looks like an ear of corn? That means wealth. And the three birds in flight nearest to me. That means sudden change.”

“So you'll have a sudden marriage to someone with money? That sounds like you're heading for Townley-Young.”

She laughed. “Wouldn't he be in a fright to know that, our Mr. St. John?” She scooped up the stones. “Your turn now.”

It didn't mean anything. He didn't believe. But he asked it anyway, the only question he wanted to ask. It was the one he asked each morning when he rose, each night when he finally made his way to bed. “Will Annie's new chemotherapy help her?”

Polly's brow furrowed. “Are you sure?”

“Throw the stones.”

“No. If it's your question, you throw them.”

He did so, casting them away as she had done, but looking to see that only one stone showed its decorated side, painted with a black
H
. Like the ring stone that Polly had thrown, this one lay farthest from him.

She gazed upon them. He saw her left hand begin to gather the material of her skirt. She reached forward as if to sweep the stones into a single pile. “You can't read only one stone, I'm afraid. You'll have to try again.”

He clasped her wrist to stop her. “That isn't the truth, is it? What's it mean?”

“Nothing. You can't read one stone.”

“Don't lie.”

“I'm not.”

“It says
no
, doesn't it? Only we didn't have to ask the question to know the answer.” He released her hand.

She picked up the stones one by one and replaced them in the bag until only the black one remained on the floor.

“What's it mean?” he asked once again.

“Grief.” Her voice was hushed. “Parting. Bereavement.”

“Yes. Well. Right.” He raised his head to gaze at the roof, trying to relieve the odd pressure behind his eyes, concentrating on how many slates it would take to obliterate the sunlight that streamed to the floor. One? Twenty? Could it even be done? If one stepped on the roof to repair the damage, wouldn't the entire structure collapse?

“I'm sorry,” Polly said. “It was stupid of me. I'm stupid like that. I don't think when I ought.”

“It's not your fault. She's dying. We both know it.”

“But I wanted today to be special for you. Just a few hours away from everything. So you wouldn't have to think about it for a while. And then I brought out the stones. I didn't think you'd ask…But what else
would
you ask. I'm so stupid. Stupid.”

“Stop it.”

“I made it worse.”

“It can't be any worse.”

“It can. I made it.”

“You didn't.”

“Oh, Col…”

He lowered his head. He was surprised to see his own pain reflected in her face. His eyes were hers, his tears were hers, the lines and shadows that betrayed his grief were etched on her skin and shaded onto her temples and along her jaw.

He thought, No I can't, even as he reached out to cup her face. He thought, No I won't, even as he began to kiss her. He thought, Annie Annie, as he pulled her to the floor, felt her hovering over him, felt his mouth seek the breasts that she freed for him—freed for him—even as his hands slid up her skirt, slipped off her panties, pulled down his own trousers, urged her down to him, down to him, needing her, wanting her, the heat, so soft, and that first night together what a wonder she was, not timid at all like he'd thought she'd be but open to him, loving him, gasping at first at the strangeness of it before she moved with his body and rose to meet him and caressed the length of his naked back and cradled his buttocks and forced him deeper inside her with each thrust deeper and all the time all the time her eyes on his liquid with happiness and love as all his energy gathered its force from the pleasure of her body from the heat from the wet from the silky prison that held him that wanted him even as he wanted and wanted and wanted, crying “Annie! Annie!” as he reached his orgasm inside the body of Annie's friend.

Colin drank a fourth whisky to try to forget. He wanted to blame her when he knew the responsibility was his. Slut, he'd thought, she didn't have the decency to be loyal to Annie. She was ready and willing, she didn't try to stop him, she even pulled off her blouse and took off her bra, and when she knew that he wanted inside, she let him without a murmur of protest or afterwards even a word of regret.

Except he'd seen her expression when he opened his eyes only moments after crying out Annie's name. He'd recognised the magnitude of the blow he had dealt her. And selfishly he'd considered it her just deserts for that afternoon's seduction of a married man. She brought the stones deliberately, he'd thought. She planned it all. No matter how they fell when he cast them to the floor, she would have interpreted them in such a way that fucking her would be the logical outcome. She was a witch, was Polly. Every moment, every day, she knew what she was doing. She had it all planned.

Colin knew that
I'm sorry
did nothing to mitigate his sins committed against Polly Yarkin on that spring afternoon in Back End Barn and every day since then. She had reached out to him with the hand of friendship—no matter how complicated it might have been by the fact of her love—and time and again, he had turned away, caught up in the need to punish her, because he lacked the courage to admit the worst that he was to himself.

And now she'd given up the ring stone, laying it and all her simple hopes for the future on Annie's grave. He knew she'd done it as yet another act of contrition, attempting to pay for a sin in which she'd played only a minor role. It wasn't right.

“Leo,” Colin said. By the fire, the dog perked up his head, expectant. “Come.”

He grabbed a torch and his heavy jacket from the entry. He went out into the night. Leo walked at his side, unleashed, his nose quivering with the scents of the icy winter air: woodsmoke, damp earth, the lingering exhaust fumes of a car that passed, a faint smell of frying fish. For him, a walk at night lacked the excitement of a walk in the day when there were birds to chase and the occasional ewe to startle with his bark. But still, it was a walk.

They crossed the road and entered the graveyard. They wound their way towards the chestnut tree, Colin directing them with the torch's cone of light, Leo snuffling along just ahead of him, to the right, out of its beam. The dog knew where they were going. They'd been there often enough before. So he reached Annie's grave before his master and he was sniffing round the marker—and sneezing—when Colin said, “Leo. No.”

He shone the light on the grave. And then all round it. He squatted to get a better look.