Master of the Moor by Ruth Rendell

through Byss, having a newly upholstered chaise longue to deliver before he made the Jackley collection. His last call would be in Trinity Road, Hilderbridge, so he stopped at a confectioners and bought a box of fruit jellies. It was a day of white sky, ground mist, chilly, an expectant day, waiting for the sun to come through.
    The soft, thin mist gave to the foins a mysterious air. Their peaks seemed to float above the ground. Stephen drove south by the main road and as he came through Goughdale it occurred to him that the yellow Volkswagen might still be there. It was. He saw the spot of bright buttercup colour as he rounded the last curve before the crossroads. But the car was no longer the only vehicle parked there. It had gathered to itself, in the still white mist, on the verge of the Vale of Allen, half a dozen more cars and a large van. Stephen slowed down. Two of the cars were police cars, marked Police and with blue lamps. A man in a raincoat was standing by the rear of the Volkswagen while another was squatting down, peering underneath it.
    Stephen pulled in on the opposite side of the road. He got down from the cab. He could see now that there was a driver in each of the police cars. He went across the road. Immediately the standing man called out to him, ‘Nothing for you to bother about, sir, thank you very much. This is a police matter.’
    It was Detective Sergeant Troth. He appeared to recognize Stephen as quickly as Stephen recognized him, but the dark wedge face registered this only in a tightening of the mouth and a jerk of the chin. It was theother man, who rose now from his squatting position to be identified as Inspector Manciple, who spoke to him.
    ‘Good morning. It’s Mr Whalby, isn’t it?’
    Stephen nodded. ‘There hasn’t been another — any trouble, has there?’
    Troth said gruffly, ‘What d’you mean, trouble?’
    ‘To be frank with you,’ said Manciple, ‘there’s a young woman missing from Jackley. A married woman. This is her car.’
    ‘And you think …?’
    ‘We don’t think anything,’ said Troth in his flat Three Towns accent. His face, Stephen noticed, was badly marked with acne as if he were still in his teens, though he was years older than that. ‘Not yet we don’t,’ he said. ‘We don’t jump to conclusions.’
    ‘In the normal course of things we’d not treat such a disappearance seriously.’ Manciple sounded as if he were apologizing for the other man’s rudeness. He had a conciliatory air and he looked uneasy when Troth turned his back. ‘Only after what you found back in April, things aren’t normal. There’s a couple of search parties organized. I daresay you can make out one of them up across the Vale there.’
    Stephen got back into the van and drove down into Hilderbridge. At Sunningdale the same collection of old people, arranged in much the same order, was watching television in the day room. On the screen a woman with bright blonde hair and red-rimmed glasses was teaching her audience how to make profiteroles. One of the old men was reading the
Daily Mirror
, the knitter was knitting, Helena Naulls was asleep, her mouth open and her dentures slipped out of alignment. She was wearing a pink cotton dress which evidently belonged, not to her, but to the fattest resident, a mountain of a woman who was also asleep,whom Stephen had never seen other than asleep in all his visits.
    Mrs Naulls awoke as easily as she slept. The knitter pushed her shoulder and she sat up and opened her eyes. Stephen kissed her.
    ‘How’s tricks then, Grandmother?’
    ‘Just the same,’ said Mrs Naulls. ‘Have you brought me my jellies?’
    ‘What do you think?’ He put the box on her lap. ‘Whoa there, go easy!’ She grunted as her fingers scrabbled with the cellophane wrapping. ‘I reckon I’ll have one myself, I’m feeling a bit peckish, and what about this lady?’
    ‘Go on,’ said the knitter, ‘it’s a shame to tease her.’
    ‘Leonard was always a