The Language of the Dead (36 page)

The fires in Quimby did not burn themselves out until mid-morning the following day.

The mill burned to its stone foundation and became something beyond even a ruin. The bombs had turned the houses to rubble. Among the casualties was Natalie Bradford's sole toy, a rag doll she'd named Laura, after her dead mother. No one could find any trace of George Abbott's sheep, except for the crows, which discovered bits of them among the branches of the trees surrounding the meadow.

Marjorie and Lamb had stayed the night with Vera in her billet; they and the rest of the village finally had gone to bed in the early morning, with the fires still smoldering. Vera managed to scare up a pair of blankets for them. She tried to give her cot to her mother, but Marjorie wouldn't hear of it. Marjorie and Lamb slept on the narrow wooden floor in their clothes.

A couple of hours later, Lamb awakened with a sore neck and the feeling that he hadn't really slept. Daylight streamed in through the lone window of Vera's cramped billet. He found Vera and Marjorie sitting in the small back courtyard drinking tea and looking as he felt, emotionally and physically drained. Lamb hadn't even heard the kettle whistle as he slept. For their breakfast, Vera sliced what was left of the bread in her box and served it with marmalade, along with what was left of her egg ration for the month, which she fried.

Lamb and Marjorie stayed a while that morning to help with the cleanup effort. The sight of the blackened ruins of the Lear
farm called up tears within Vera, but she stifled them.
Keep your head, my girl
.

She was genuinely sorry for Arthur. He had been troubled and violent and dealt a bad hand in life—and might, in the end, have killed her. But she could not bring herself to believe that he deserved to die in the way he had. And in thinking of Arthur, she thought of Peter, and wondered if she ever would see him again.

Lamb and Marjorie returned to Winchester at midday. Before they left, Lamb promised to return to Quimby later that evening with a loaf of bread and a half dozen eggs, to replenish Vera's empty larder. Once home, he and Marjorie went to bed, exhausted.

At a little before five
P.M.
, the telephone in the hall jangled and Lamb rose from his slumber, still bleary, to answer it. It was Harding, who reported that Gerald Pirie had been found dead with a .22-caliber bullet in his brain, an apparent suicide.

“He was found floating facedown in a stream south of Basingstoke, off the main road to Winchester,” Harding said. “The pistol was lying on the bank.”

Lamb's first thought was to beg off. Vera's near miss in Quimby had frightened and drained him more than he had known. At the moment he didn't bloody care that Gerald Pirie was dead.

“Can Wallace or Rivers handle it?” he asked.

Harding didn't answer at first; Lamb understood that the superintendent was silently signaling his disapproval. “Are you certain Wallace is up to it?” Harding asked. The super had no intention of handing Rivers a plum after the detective inspector's public display of insubordination on the previous day.

“I'm certain of it,” Lamb said. “I've spoken to him about his conduct. He understands that he has no choice but to straighten out. He's a good man at bottom. And he knows the case.”

“Yes, but what about this bloody black eye and the rest of it? He's been up to something.”

“He says he was beaten in a robbery and I believe him. Besides, a black eye isn't going to impede him.”

Harding was silent again for a few seconds. More disapproval. “All right, Tom,” he said finally.

Lamb rang off, put the kettle on the boil, and retrieved the day's post, which included a plain envelope addressed to him, with a return address in Lipscombe. The envelope contained two notes. The first, dated the previous day, was from Lilly Schmidt, the girl who had been Emily Fordham's best friend.

Chief Inspector Lamb,

The enclosed letter from Donald Fordham to Emily came in the post today. I believe it's his response to the last letter she sent him. I thought you should see it. I'm certain that Donald wouldn't mind under the circumstances
.

Sincerely yours,

Lilly Schmidt

Lamb unfolded the letter from Donald Fordham.

Emily,

I received your note of the fifteenth and was glad to receive it, though it worried me. Please, whatever you do, do not confide in P. He is not what he seems. I should have told you this before but didn't want to sully your experience at the estate. I know you loved it there, as I once did. Still and all, you must believe me that P. is no good.

I am worried about you and sorry that I cannot be there to comfort you. Please do not let any of this mess with the sketch and the photograph weigh too much on your mind. In the end, it is probably nothing. Please, please take care of yourself. I'm sorry that we must be so far apart.

I'm also sorry that this letter is so short but my time is limited tonight and I wanted to write some response to your last letter as soon as I could. I promise that I will send a longer letter soon
.

Your loving brother,

Donald

Lamb thought that “P” could be Pembroke, though it also could be Pirie, or even Peter. Donald likely had used “P” to get the letter past the censors, who might have stuck at any mention of Lord Jeffrey Pembroke, who was known to publicly hold a pacifist, dissenting view of the war with Germany. Lamb believed now that Pembroke definitely had been involved in the events of the past days, though he did not yet know how or how deeply. He did not know if Emily or Donald Fordham had known Pirie. Pirie might have killed Emily and Will Blackwell. He might even have killed Michael Bradford. In any case, Lamb also felt certain now that Peter knew something that he wasn't meant to know—something about Thomas Bennett—that he'd tried to communicate to Emily and might have communicated to Will Blackwell and now was trying to communicate to him.

Lamb saw no reason to awaken Marjorie. He gathered up the loaf and the eggs he'd promised Vera and put them into a brown paper sack with a pound note, then put the sack in the back seat of the Wolseley. He slid behind the wheel, lit a fag—he hadn't yet had a chance to buy a new tin of butterscotch drops—and pushed the starter. The car coughed and came to life on the first try.

He stopped first at the nick to gather the bits of paper evidence he'd collected and put them in a cardboard portfolio. These included the three “spider” drawings—the one he'd found in Blackwell's shed and the nearly identical one he'd found in Emily's wallet, along with the third drawing, of the spider and the black oval that Peter had left for him the day before; the small photographic portrait of Thomas Bennett; the letter from Donald Fordham; and the brief cryptic note he'd found in Will Blackwell's pocket:
in the nut.

He hoped that he might sit down with the evidence later, when his head was clear, and sort through the entire bloody mess again.

He was in the incident room, about to leave the nick, when Rivers walked in, looking haggard and frustrated. They were alone in the room. Harding and the rest had gone home for the day or were clearing up the mess in Basingstoke. As punishment for Rivers's insubordination, Harding had put him on the phones that day, taking calls and tips, all
of which had struck Rivers as useless and many of which clearly had come from loonies who wanted attention. Rivers had been in the loo when Lamb arrived and now was returning. He flinched when he noticed Lamb standing on the other side of the room.

“Lamb,” he said.

“Harry.”

“I didn't see you there.”

“I didn't mean to startle you. I'm sorry.”

Rivers went to his desk.

Lamb put on his hat. “Good night, then, Harry,” he said. Rivers grunted a reply but did not look up from his desk.

Lamb was nearly out the door when Rivers said, “Lamb.”

Lamb stopped and looked at Rivers. They were close now, only feet apart. Lamb recalled the many hours he and Rivers had spent huddled near each other in the damp, stinking trenches. Rivers turned to face Lamb, who expected to see something of the anger that he normally saw in Rivers's eyes. But Lamb saw only exhaustion, and perhaps a hint of the old anguish that Rivers had carried with him since the Somme.

“I heard what happened in Quimby,” Rivers said. “Your daughter is all right, then?”

Lamb hadn't known that Rivers knew of Vera's posting in Quimby. “Yes, she's fine. Thanks for asking.”

“Good,” Rivers said. He nodded his head slightly. “That's good.”

Lamb did not quite know what to say in response beyond “thank you.” But Rivers spoke again before Lamb could. “I'm sorry to say that you've run ahead of me in this business and my response has been to act an arse,” he said. “It won't happen again.”

Lamb could not hide his surprise. He stood in silence and looked at Rivers for several seconds. He expected Rivers to add, “I'm sorry.” But Rivers merely turned again to the papers on his desk.

“Thank you, Harry,” Lamb said. Then he left.

LAMB FOUND VERA SITTING IN THE SMALL YARD BEHIND HER BILLET,
sipping tea. She also had slept into the afternoon and awakened only a few hours earlier.

“Relief,” Lamb said, handing her the bread and the eggs. He said nothing about the pound note.

“Thanks, dad,” she said. “I've eaten, though. Have you?”

He hadn't, but he'd already gobbled more than enough of her stores. “Yes.”

“Tea?”

“I wouldn't turn it down.”

She dragged a chair for him into the courtyard and they sat together for a time in the gathering twilight, not speaking. Then Lamb ventured a question. “How are you feeling?'

Vera shrugged. “All right.”

He knew that Vera had known and liked Arthur Lear, but nothing more—though he recalled the day on which he'd met Lear and suspected that the boy had Vera in his sights.

“Was it hard?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. She tried to smile. Instead, she shook her head, as if in disbelief. “I thought the bloody Germans were invading.”

A ripple of surprise shot through Lamb; he'd never heard Vera use “bloody,” had no idea that she employed it. He'd always been reasonably good about not cursing in her presence. Then, too, she didn't belong to him anymore—not in the way she once had, when she'd been his Doodle Doo.

In the brief silence that followed, Vera thought of telling her father about Arthur—of telling him the entire story. She wanted to tell someone. But something stopped her; she believed that her father wasn't ready to hear the story yet. The story of her having had a lover—and of a man who had menaced her.

“Fancy a walk?” she asked. She wanted to move, to clear her head, not to sit and talk and keep secrets from her father.

Lamb stood. “I could use one. My head's still muddled.”

They walked to the eastern edge of the village and back; Lamb smoked as they walked, lighting each fresh cigarette with the one he was finishing. He wondered about the Bradford children. By now, someone at Castle Malwood probably had told them that their father was dead. He wondered what would become of them and especially of Mike, who was old enough to understand, at least partially, the viciousness, cruelty, greed, and wretchedness that lay at the heart of his father's death and the other recent events in Quimby.

As they passed the place where the path that paralleled Lord Pembroke's wood snaked up the hill, Vera told her father the story of her encounters with Peter, the strange boy who so many in Quimby seemed to know
about
, but who nobody really seemed to
know
.

“He gave me two drawings,” she said. “They're really quite beautiful, though one of them is also a bit disturbing.” She did not know that her father considered Peter a potential key actor in the drama that
had unfolded in Quimby and Basingstoke and even a possible suspect in the murders of Will Blackwell and Emily Fordham. She and Lamb had not discussed the case.