Free Missing Joseph by Elizabeth George

neck. She’d have chosen not to answer, but her mother’s power was becoming stronger every time she made a reply. She could feel it quite distinctly now, as if it were oozing from Rita’s fingers, slithering up the banister and through Polly’s palm.
    â€œVenus,” she said miserably and tore her eyes from Rita’s face. She waited for the mockery.
    It did not come. Instead Rita took her hand from the banister and studied her daughter thoughtfully. “Venus,” she said. “This i’n’t about making love potions, Polly.”
    â€œI know that.”
    â€œThen—”
    â€œBut it’s still about love. You don’t want me to feel it. I know that, Mum. But it’s there all the same and I can’t make it go away just because you’d have me. I love him. Don’t you think I’d stop it if only I could? Don’t you think I pray to feel nothing for him…or at least to feel for him nothing more’n what he feels for me? D’you think I
choose
to be tortured like this?”
    â€œI think we all choose our tortures.” Rita lumbered to an ancient rosewood Canterbury made lopsided by the absence of two of its wheels. It leaned against one of the walls in the entry beneath the stairs, and with a grunt to rock her weight to one side, Rita bent as much as her legs would allow and wrestled open its single drawer. She brought out two rectangles of wood. “Here,” she said. “Take ’em.”
    Without question or protest, Polly took the wood. She could smell its unmistakable odour, sharp but pleasant, a permeative scent.
    â€œCedar,” she said.
    â€œCorrect,” said Rita. “Burn it to Mars. Pray for strength, girl. Leave love to those who don’t have your gifts.”

CHAPTER THREE
    M RS. WRAGG LEFT THEM IMMEDIATELY after making her announcement about the vicar. To Deborah’s dismayed “But what happened? How on earth did he die?” she said guardedly, “I couldn’t quite say. A friend of his, are you?”
    No. Of course. They hadn’t been friends. They’d only shared a few minutes’ conversation in the National Gallery on a rainy, blowing November day. Still, the memory of Robin Sage’s kindness and his anxious concern made Deborah feel leaden—struck by a mixture of surprise and dismay—when she was told he was dead.
    â€œI’m sorry, my love,” St. James said when Mrs. Wragg closed the door upon her own departure. Deborah could see the worry darkening his eyes, and she knew he was reading her thoughts as only a man who had known her all her life could have possibly read them. He didn’t go on to say what she knew he wanted to say: It isn’t you, Deborah. You haven’t death’s touch, no matter what you think…Instead, he held her.
    They finally descended the stairs between the bar and the office at half past seven. The pub was apparently in the process of serving its regular evening crowd. Farmers leaned against the bar engaged in conversation. Housewives gathered at tables enjoying an evening out. Two ageing couples compared walking sticks while six noisy teenagers joked loudly in a corner and smoked cigarettes.
    From the midst of this latter group—among which, accompanied by the ribald comments of their mates, one couple necked heavily, with an occasional pause from the girl to nip at a flask and from the boy to drag deeply on a cigarette—Josie Wragg emerged. She’d changed for the evening into what appeared to be a work uniform. But part of her black skirt’s hem was falling out and her red bow tie was hopelessly askew, dribbling a long, unravelling string down the prairie expanse of her chest.
    She ducked behind the bar where she scooped up two menus, and she said formally, with a wary eye in the direction of the balding man who pulled the pub’s taps with the sort of authority that suggested he had to be Mr. Wragg the