The Wages of Desire (11 page)

LAMB AND HIS TEAM MET THE FOLLOWING MORNING AT THE NICK
in Winchester. He lit a cigarette and called the meeting to order.

Police Superintendent Anthony Harding stood next to Lamb, looking vaguely dissatisfied. Before the meeting, Lamb had briefed the super on the events of the previous day, and Harding had not been pleased by Lamb's assertion that he didn't trust the vicar of Winstead.

“He found the body and had opportunity,” Lamb had told Harding. “And when he called here to report finding the body he told Wallace a different story than he told the Home Guard man who acts as the village constable and that he later told me. He told me that his hearing the shot alerted him to the trouble, but he said nothing of this to Wallace. He claimed that he forgot to mention the shot to Wallace because finding the body confounded him, but he didn't seem in the least upset when I spoke to him. And he owns an infantry officer's Webley but claims that it was stolen a week ago. On top of that, he never reported the theft.”

“Yes, but what's his motive?” Harding asked.

“I'm working on that,” Lamb said.

Harding sniffed and shook his head as if to show that he was less than awestruck by Lamb's progress thus far.

Wallace, Rivers, and Larkin also gathered for the briefing, along with Vera, who sat in a corner of the room in her ill-fitting uniform.

Larkin began by reporting that the soles of Wilhemina and Gerald Wimberly's shoes matched the plaster casts of the prints he'd taken at the cemetery and that he'd officially identified the slug they'd found at the scene as being a .455 caliber. Lawrence Tigue had voluntarily surrendered his .455-caliber Webley Mark VI to Rivers, and Larkin had sent it and the slug to Scotland Yard to be checked for ballistics.

Rivers reported that the door-to-door canvass of Winstead had turned up no one who had seen Ruth Aisquith in the village on the previous morning, though several people said they had seen her about the village in the past.

“The construction of the prison camp has meant there's been more than the usual number of strange faces in Winstead of late,” Rivers said. “It's been a bit of a boon to the shops and the pub. Everyone we spoke to claimed not to have known her. We also spoke to a woman named Doris White, who is the vicar's housekeeper. She confirmed that Wimberly takes a regular walk in the mornings but said that she had not gone to work at the vicarage yesterday because of all the trouble, though she claimed to have popped up later in the morning to see for herself what was going on. As for Mary Forrest, she had a son, Roger, who left the village more than forty years ago, but no one we spoke to knew for certain if he'd ever married or had children, or even if he was still alive. No one had any familiarity at all with the name Aisquith.”

Wallace took the floor to report on what he'd found in Ruth Aisquith's personnel file, among the personal belongings she'd kept in the footlocker at the end of her cot, and his conversations with others at the prison camp.

Ruth Aisquith had been born in Haworth, West Yorkshire, and was thirty-six and unmarried. The latter information, he said, seemed to nullify the notion that Roger Forrest might have been her father—and therefore that Mary Forrest might be her grandmother—“unless she lied about having never been married or changed her surname to Aisquith from Forrest for some reason.”

She had been living in Haworth when she was conscripted into the fire service and refused service on the grounds that acceding to military conscription did not comport with her personal religious beliefs, though she was not a Quaker and her file did not list a specific religious affiliation. A military service tribunal heard her case and rejected it, after which she was ordered to report for duty with the Manchester fire brigade. She refused and was sent to prison in Manchester. A few months later she'd renounced her objection, enrolled for conscription, and asked that she be spared fire brigade work. This time she'd said that fire frightened her and that she doubted she would be much good at fighting it. The tribunal honored her request and sent her to work at the prison camp outside Winstead.

“According to the file she has no living relatives,” Wallace said. “Before the war she made her living as a seamstress in Haworth.” He paused, then added, “Funny thing, though. One of the women I spoke to at the camp said that she doubted that story—that Ruth didn't strike her as the ‘seamstress type.' Those were her words. She seems to have been hardworking but aloof. When she had leave, she usually went into Winstead; most people were under the impression that she went there to lay flowers at her grandmother's grave, though if her grandmother
is
buried in the village we don't yet know the woman's name. None of the people at the camp had heard Ruth ever mention her grandmother's name. At night she often sat in her bunk and read until lights out. Her personal effects included a few books and toiletries and the like, rather Spartan. No one would admit to disliking her because she was a conchi, though most of them said they didn't agree with her. Men and women are kept segregated, and of the half-dozen or so men I was able to speak with, all claimed to have rarely seen her outside the camp mess.”

“Obviously, we've got some work to do on her background,” Harding said.

“Yes,” Lamb agreed. He then handed out the day's assignments. Wallace was to return to the prison camp with a constable to finish taking statements from the male workers, while he, along with Vera, Rivers, and a trio of constables returned to Winstead. Lamb intended for him and Rivers to interview Wilhemina Wimberly and had devised a plan for doing so that he would discuss with Rivers in detail as they rode to the village. First, though, he wanted to attend the funeral of Lila Tutin, the woman for whom the empty grave in the cemetery was reserved. During the funeral, he intended to study Gerald Wimberly more closely.

When the group arrived in Winstead, Lamb sent the three constables into the village with instructions to continue the house-to-house canvass. He and Rivers then went into the church to await the funeral, while Vera cooled her heels outside, leaning against the Wolseley.

Saint Michael's was a small, mid-nineteenth-century Anglican church of cut stone, stained glass, and polished wood. A faint light illuminated its interior, which smelled of lingering smoke and a kind of mustiness that emanated from its hard-to-reach corners. Miss Tutin's closed casket sat in front of the altar. Candles in gleaming brass candlesticks burned at either end of it. Three elderly people—two women and one man—sat in the pews, though apart from one another. One of the women bent over and coughed violently.

Lamb and Rivers sat in the rear pew, Lamb closest to the aisle. As they waited for the funeral service to begin, Lamb looked for a moment at the wooden Christ that hung from a crucifix at the back of the altar. Images of Christ, and especially those of three dimensions, made him uncomfortable. They never conjured in him the belief that, although life equaled suffering, peace and redemption waited at life's end. Instead, the paintings, statues, and icons tended to remind him of the reasons for the suffering and the necessity of redemption in the first place—of ancient human fears and passions, those aspects of humanity that had failed to evolve from their dark, primitive beginnings and never would.

No other mourners entered the church. A few minutes later, Gerald Wimberly, dressed in priestly robes, appeared and stepped onto the altar. He stood silently behind Lila Tutin's casket for perhaps a full minute, whispering prayers over it, before he launched into a brief service. He spent a few minutes extolling the kindness and selflessness of Miss Tutin in a manner that Lamb found bluntly stock; he wondered if Wimberly had even known the old woman. Then again, few people in Winstead seemed to care that Lila Tutin was dead, or that she had lived.

As the service neared its end, a quartet of men in ill-fitting suits entered the church and stood silently along the rear wall with their hands clasped in front of them. Lamb stole a glance at them. Each seemed to be trying his best to observe a solemnity imposed upon them by the setting that each understood was necessary but otherwise found alien. He concluded that they were village men who had volunteered to bear Miss Tutin's casket to its resting place. Perhaps they were the same men who had dug her grave. Lamb imagined them gathered in the cemetery on the previous Sunday afternoon, sweating beneath a warm late August sun and sharing a bottle of cider and the local gossip as they worked.

Wimberly gestured to the quartet, who moved to the front of the church and took their places on either side of the casket. On a second signal from Wimberly, they lifted the casket and began to carry it up the aisle. Wimberly followed, swinging a silver incense burner in their wake. As Wimberly passed them, the three elderly mourners in the pews each stood stiffly and followed, the man steadying himself on the edges of the pews. Wimberly did not look at Lamb as he passed.

Lamb and Rivers stood and followed the procession out of the church. They did not enter the cemetery for the burial, as the others did. Instead, they stood by the fence along the front of the cemetery and watched. At Lamb's feet were the two pairs of shoes he'd taken from Gerald Wimberly on the previous day.

The four men placed Miss Tutin's casket next to the open grave, then stood back. The elderly trio made their way to the edge of the grave; the woman who had coughed placed her hand against the other woman's shoulder and began to softly cry. Wimberly stood at the head of the casket and began to read from the Bible the usual verses beseeching God's forgiveness of human wickedness. Lamb wondered if Miss Tutin had ever been wicked. Even elderly spinsters could brim with dark, unrelenting urges.

As they waited for the funeral to end, Lamb noticed a woman walking up the road from the village. She came to the fence and stood by it, a few meters away, watching, as Lamb and Rivers were watching. Rivers also saw her and whispered to Lamb that she was the vicar's housekeeper, Doris White. Doris turned toward Lamb and Rivers and smiled.

Wimberly finished reading the Scripture and signaled for the quartet of men to begin lowering the casket into the ground. As they did so, he made the sign of the cross over the grave. The woman who had coughed wiped her eyes roughly.

The funeral was finished. As the men from the village removed their jackets, loosened their ties, and took up shovels, Wimberly escorted the mourners to the front gate of the cemetery, speaking quietly to them as they walked. He now looked directly at Lamb for the first time—a glance only. He shook the hands of each of the mourners, then moved to Lamb and Rivers and bade them good morning. “You're here to speak to my wife,” he said.

“Yes,” Lamb said.

“Well, I think she's up to it this morning—though I'd appreciate it if you'd allow me to be present when you speak with her.”

“Of course,” Lamb said. “We'll give you some time to change out of your vestments and then we'll be over to the vicarage shortly.”

“Yes, that would be fine,” Wimberly said, adding, “I see that you've brought back our shoes.”

“Yes.”

“And what did you find, if I might ask?”

“Yours and your wife's shoes match the prints that we found in the cemetery,” Lamb said.

“Yes, well,” Wimberly replied. “We were there together, as I said.”

“Yes,” Lamb said. He handed Wimberly the shoes.

Doris hovered in the background, watching and listening. Wimberly nodded to her but did not otherwise acknowledge her.

“I'll spend a few minutes speaking to Miss White now,” Lamb said. “I won't keep her long, as I suspect she has some duties to perform around the vicarage. Oh, and I should tell you, too, sir, that we found the bullet that killed Miss Aisquith. It passed through her body and landed by the rear fence of the cemetery.”

Wimberly thought that this piece of “evidence” was of no real consequence given that Lamb would never find the pistol that had fired the incriminating slug. “That's good news,” he said. He nodded. “Well, I shall see you in a few minutes then, Chief Inspector.” He turned toward the vicarage and went on his way.

Doris moved down the fence toward Lamb and Rivers. She was curious to know how much the police had discovered about the murder in the cemetery. She smiled at them again. “Good morning, Sergeant,” she said to Rivers, deflating his rank.

“Good morning, miss,” Rivers said. He turned toward Lamb. “This is Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Lamb, Miss White,” he said. “He'd like a word if you don't mind.”

“Not at all,” Doris said.

Lamb bowed a little. “Pleased to meet you, Miss White,” he said. “I wonder if I might ask you a couple of questions.”

“Certainly,” Doris said.

“Where were you yesterday morning between half-past six and half-past seven?”

“I was home, just as I told the sergeant when he interviewed me yesterday. I heard from one of my neighbors that someone had been found murdered in the village. I didn't believe him at first, but when I called the vicar he told me that it was true and that I needn't come in, though I did come up later to see for myself what all the fuss was about. I really couldn't quite believe it, you see. No one has ever been murdered in Winstead, at least not in my memory.”