The Wages of Desire (31 page)

As Lamb flipped through the slips of paper he saw a name he recognized:
Markham
. The note said that a woman named Sylvia Markham, in Lower Promise, possessed “information regarding the O'Hares, Ned Horton, and missing boy from Cornwall. Wife of former PC John Markham of Lower Promise, now deceased.”

According to Ned Horton's file, John Markham had been the first police officer on the scene of Claire O'Hare's hanging, Lamb recalled. Lower Promise was just over the hill, to the east of Winstead. Lamb had intended to track John Markham down and question him about the events of twenty years earlier, if Markham remained alive. Now it appeared that John Markham indeed was dead, but his widow was eager to talk.

Lamb dialed the number for Sylvia Markham, who answered.

“Hello, Mrs. Markham. This is Chief Inspector Thomas Lamb. I'd like to speak with you about the information you have regarding the O'Hares and Ned Horton.”

“When I read in the
Mail
this morning about your finding a boy with a clubfoot in the Tigues' basement, I had to call,” Sylvia said. She sounded elderly. She was silent for a few seconds, then added, “We've kept quiet about it, John and I. Kept quiet for too long.”

“Do you mean your husband, John, the former bobby in Winstead?”

“Yes.”

“Are you saying that you believe you know the identity of the child with the clubfoot?”

“I'd rather speak with you about it personally, if you don't mind,” she said. Her voice quavered.

“Yes, of course,” Lamb said. “I understand. Can you meet me this morning?”

“I can meet you right now.”

“I can be there in ten minutes,” Lamb said. “I have your address.”

“All right, Chief Inspector. I'm in the last cottage past the church as you come up from the village green.”

“Thank you, madam,” he said.

After he rang off, Lamb looked again at the note from Mrs. Markham's initial call that the constable who answered that call had made.

… the O'Hares, Ned Horton, and missing boy from Cornwall …

The juxtaposition of those names made him shudder internally.

TWENTY-SEVEN

WALLACE AND VERA ARRIVED AT THE CEMETERY AND STOOD BY
the black fence for a moment. Wallace surveyed the space for a likely spot in which Ruth Aisquith might have hidden something.

“We haven't come very far have we, David?” Vera said, as she stood by him.

Wallace turned to her. “What do you mean?”

“In the inquiry. We don't seem to know much more than we did when we started.”

“There's a lot to sort out. Rivers is in London looking into the Aisquith woman's background; hopefully he'll find something useful.” He smiled at Vera. “Besides, I've confidence in your father, even though he makes me bloody nervous sometimes. He seems to
know
things, almost by instinct.”

Vera laughed. “Try being his daughter. You can't get away with anything—not because he
knows
, necessarily, knows in the actual way, I mean—but because he knows, as you said. I've sometimes thought that he can tell that you're guilty of something just by looking into your eyes.”

Wallace found Vera incredibly fetching in her ridiculous uniform. She seemed to him innocent—if that was the word he sought; he wasn't entirely sure—and young, and he felt slightly ashamed of himself for feeling so attracted to her. Then, too, she seemed to possess some of her father's wisdom and patience. Despite her age, she radiated a kind of quiet self-confidence that he was not used to looking for in women. During all of his adult life, he'd found it easy to attract women. Perhaps, though, he'd avoided the difficult ones, those who were unwilling to be summoned. He was sure that Vera was not the easy type, which only kindled his attraction to her. He realized that he was willing to tell her things about himself that he would not normally tell a woman for fear that she might conclude that he was weak.

“I was thinking about what we were talking about a few days ago,” Wallace said. “About deferments and nepotism and the rest of it. I'm leaning toward quitting the police and joining up.”

This news alarmed Vera—and she found herself surprised at her alarm. Had her feelings for David advanced so quickly? A mere two days ago, such news would have left her feeling concerned for David but not worried that his call-up might separate them for a long period or, perhaps, in the worst scenario, forever. She thought of how much longer she might remain her father's driver. She hadn't fancied taking a job she knew to be the result of nepotism. But now she didn't want to lose that job—not yet. Not before she had a chance to say something to David that she wanted to say. But what did she want to say, exactly?

“But you're needed here.” She sounded almost as if she were protesting his decision and felt guilty at having done so. She had no right to keep David from doing what he believed to be necessary. And yet she was certain—she did
not
want him to go.

“I know that,” he said. “And yet I can't help feeling as if I'm ducking something.” Hoping to make her understand, he told Vera the story of his cousin, Alan. “He bloody went, and here I am, safe and sound.”

Alan's story touched Vera, though it also moved something harder within her. She was sorry for Alan, but he was dead. She saw no reason why David should, out of guilt, sacrifice himself on the same altar. She did not want him to go to war. But if he did go, he should do so for the right reasons and with a clear conscience that his work as a policeman had not constituted a way of avoiding his rightful duty.

Before she fully understood what she was doing, Vera kissed Wallace on the cheek, quickly.
This
, she thought, is what she had wanted to say. And now she had said it.

Wallace instinctively put his hand on the place she had kissed, as if checking to see if he could be certain about what he believed had just happened. “What was that for?” he asked, feeling clumsy. With most other women, he would not be clumsy, he thought.

Conflicted, Vera looked at him. She felt embarrassed by what she'd done and yet she was sure that she was right to have done it. “I don't know,” she said. “Like I said yesterday, you've no reason to be ashamed of yourself. I'm not ashamed of you.”

Wallace put his hand on hers; unmistakable electricity crackled between them. He looked into her eyes. “You're a beautiful girl, Vera, and I like you very much.” He smiled, crookedly, which she liked. “But I don't know what to do about that.”

“Neither do I.”

“Maybe we shouldn't do anything.”

Vera moved her fingers so that they became intertwined with Wallace's. “I'd hate that,” she said. She pressed her fingers more securely between his.

“I suppose it's not fair that you kissed me and I haven't kissed you back.” This was his usual way; he was turning on the charm now. He did not want Vera to slip away. He wished that he could summon a more direct and honest way to communicate to her how he felt. But for the moment he did not know another way.

“It
would
be unfair,” she said. She smiled, easing a bit of the emotional and sexual tension that was building between them. “I don't kiss people every day, you know.”

“What about your father?”

“He'll have to adjust.”

“That's easy for you to say.”

“Yes,” she said. “It is.” She looked directly into Wallace's eyes.

In the next instant they kissed, moving in unison toward each other. For all that, the kiss was brief and even chaste, a product of their shared anxiety that Lamb might appear at any minute and catch them out. Vera squeezed Wallace's hand a final time, then let it go.

She smiled and said, “We should get back to looking for this hiding place.” In that moment, Wallace began to reconsider the wisdom of voluntarily signing up to have his arse shot off. Why should he go to war and leave something as seemingly rare and good as Vera Lamb behind?

Feeling now more than ever that he must be in too many places at once—and that he could use more men—Lamb set out to speak with Mrs. Markham in Lower Promise. He decided to make the short drive over the hill alone, so that Vera could continue to search the cemetery with Wallace, and to test his tender ankle on the car's pedals. Soon his ankle would be healed, and he would have to decide whether Vera should remain his driver.

He was about to head to the Wolseley when Miss Wheatley burst into the incident room. She was nearly out of breath, as if she had been hurrying.

“Captain,” she said to Lamb. “I'm so glad I caught you; I saw your car. I've important news!”

Lamb offered her a seat. “Come in, Miss Wheatley,” he said, gently guiding her toward the chair.

She sat. “Thank you.” She looked at Lamb. “I've news of Lawrence Tigue. He came past my cottage last night and I followed him. He met with someone by the road, at the end of the trail. Then Algernon Tigue suddenly appeared and began snooping around the O'Hare house and Albert's campsite.”

Lamb was uncertain how to react to this news, given Miss Wheatley's inclination to lay all of what she considered the worst of Winstead's ills and crimes at Lawrence Tigue's door. But he also had grown more suspicious of Lawrence and Algernon Tigue.

“What time was this?” Lamb asked.

“Well past midnight,” Miss Wheatley said. “Lawrence Tigue came up the path from his cottage and met someone—another man—at the end of the path. I've long suspected that he's up to something, as I've told you, and now I'm certain of it.”

“Did you recognize this other man?”

“No, it was far too dark and I was hidden in the brush. But he was tall.”

“Are you sure the man you saw coming up the path was Lawrence Tigue?”

“Oh, quite sure!”

“Could you hear what they said?”

“Oh, yes! The other man asked Mr. Tigue for ‘them,' and Mr. Tigue took something from him in return—a packet of something. The other man kept talking about how ‘they' couldn't do something for Mr. Tigue that Tigue said they had promised they would do because everything had become ‘too hot,' as he put it.” She nodded at Lamb. “He meant you and your men being around the village, Captain. Mr. Tigue protested vociferously, saying that he expected this third party to keep its promise to him, but the other man basically told him that there was nothing to be done and that, besides, ‘they' might hurt Mr. Tigue if he didn't mind his business. The other man also all but accused Mr. Tigue of killing the Aisquith woman. He's up to something, Captain, mark my words. And he has a co-conspirator!” She touched Lamb's arm. “And I have an additional witness. Lilly Martin.”

“Lilly?”

“Yes. She also followed Tigue along the trail—or, rather, I followed the two of them. Once Tigue finished with his rendezvous with this man I approached her—I'm afraid I startled her a bit. I wanted to follow Lawrence Tigue back to his cottage, but Lilly was reluctant. I believe she was a bit scared to follow him, given what we saw and heard. But then Algernon appeared and we hid in the brush and watched him go about his business.”

“And what did he do, exactly?”

Miss Wheatley delivered to Lamb a detailed account of Algernon's movements. “He seemed to be looking for something,” she said.

“And did he find it?”

“I don't know. At any rate, he seemed to be carrying nothing with him when he returned to his car.”

“Did it not surprise you that Lilly Martin was out and about last night?” Lamb asked.

“Of course!” Miss Wheatley said. “But you had told me that someone had seen me nick the eggs from Mr. Tigue's henhouse. And when I encountered Lilly last night, I put two and two together, you see, and figured that it must have been her. I think the girl is quite distressed, with her father gone and her mother working. She's left alone in the house, you see. I'm not surprised that she's taken to wandering around on her own.”