The Language of the Dead (24 page)

“Quite sure. We found your photograph in her wallet.” Lamb produced Graham's photo and handed it to him. “Did you give this to her?”

Graham stared at the photo for several seconds. He looked at Lamb, his eyes filled with an emotion that Lamb thought was genuine shock.

“Did you have a romantic relationship with her?” Lamb asked. “You signed the photo, ‘Love, Charles.'”

Graham hesitated for a second before answering. “Yes.” He glanced at the floor.

“How long had you been lovers?”

Graham did not answer immediately. “Lieutenant Graham?” Lamb prompted him.

Graham looked at Lamb as if he'd temporarily forgotten that Lamb was sitting next to him. “I'm sorry, Chief Inspector,” he said. “It's just that I can't believe it.”

“How long were you lovers?” Lamb repeated.

“It started last Christmas. We used to meet at the pub in the village—in Cloverton.”

“Do you know Lilly Schmidt?”

“Emily's friend from the village? Emily spoke of her, though I've never met her.”

“She claims that Emily was pregnant. I've asked the medical examiner to check for certain, though I find Miss Schmidt's claims credible.”

Graham opened his mouth, as if intending to speak, but said nothing. He looked away. Then he said, at a near whisper, “She said nothing to me of being pregnant.”

“Have you any reason to believe that you were not the baby's father?”

Graham still was looking away. He shook his head absently. “No,” he said quietly.

“When did you last see Emily?”

“Yesterday.” He put his face in his hands.

“When, exactly?”

Graham looked at Lamb. “I'm sorry,” he said. He seemed not to have heard the question.

“When did you last see Emily, exactly?” Lamb repeated.

“In the early evening.”

“What did you do?”

“I'm sorry, Chief Inspector. It's just that I didn't… .” He looked at the ground again and shook his head.

“I understand that this news must come as a shock to you, Lieutenant,” he said. “But I must ask these questions.”

Graham looked up. “Yes, of course. I'm sorry.” He sat up. “We sat by the pub and talked.”

“Did Emily speak to you yesterday of anything that might have been troubling her?”

“No. We had only a half hour or so.”

“Had she spoken to you recently of anything that was troubling her?”

“Only her mother. She made Emily's life difficult.”

“Did you ever meet her brother, Donald?”

“No. He was gone into the Navy by the time we met. She told me a bit about him; they were close, she said.”

Lamb produced the photo of the boy. “Do you know this boy?”

Graham looked at the photo. “No. Should I?”

“We found this photograph in Emily's wallet.”

Graham shook his head again. “I suppose he might have been one of the children she worked with on the estate.”

“Lord Pembroke's estate?”

“Yes. She worked there in the summers, helping the orphans—disadvantaged children. She was quite proud of that; I thought it quite noble of her. But she was like that—generous.” He shook his head and looked away again.

“Did she ever mention a boy she knew from the estate named Peter?”

“Once or twice. She thought he might be in love with her. She laughed about it some, but I think it troubled her.”

“Had she spoken to you recently of any trouble she might have been having with Peter?”

“No.”

Lamb showed Graham the drawing of the spider. “Did she ever show you this?”

Graham studied the drawing for a few seconds. “No. What is it?”

“I don't know. But I'm sure that this boy, Peter, drew it and believe that he gave it to her in the hope of communicating something to her, perhaps even to frighten her.”

Graham shook his head. “I don't know, Chief Inspector. I'm sorry.”

“Had she ever shown you anything else that she'd received from Peter?”

“No.”

“What time did Emily leave you last night?”

“I suppose it was close to eight.”

“What did you do once she left?”

“I came back here and slept.”

That would be easy enough to check. He found Graham's reaction to Emily's death convincing. He now took a shot in the dark. “Did Emily ever mention to you a man by the name of Will Blackwell?”

Graham shook his head. “No.”

“Very good, Lieutenant,” Lamb said. “Thank you for your time.”

He stood; Graham and Wallace did the same. Graham nodded. “You're welcome, Chief Inspector,” he said. “I wonder if you'll please let me know if you find out anything.”

Lamb smiled but promised nothing.

Before he left, Lamb checked Graham's alibi with Bruegel. Except for the time that he claimed to have met Emily at the pub, Charles Graham had been present and accounted for all the previous evening. That said, men were known to go absent without leave or to creep away for a bit and ask their comrades to cover for them.

“It might have been easy for him to have slipped away for a couple of hours in the middle of the night among all the confusion and upset from the German attack,” Wallace said as they drove off the base.

“Yes, but what was his motive?”

“He didn't want to be tied down to a wife and child.”

“But he claims he didn't know about the child.”

Wallace shrugged. “He's lying.”

Lamb shook his head. “He doesn't strike me as the type.”

“Why, because he's an RAF bloke? They haven't charmed you, too, have they, sir?” Wallace smiled. He thought of how, a few hours ago, Lamb had been chewing him out and threatening to tie his arse in a sling. Now they were chatting away. Lamb was very hard to figure. But he was no bastard. He would rather work for Lamb than anyone else he'd ever known who outranked him. He half considered asking Lamb what Rivers was on about. Perhaps he could be Lamb's ally in that, though he didn't want to seem as if he was kissing arse.

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, sir?” Wallace asked.

“That depends on the question.”

“What has Rivers got against you?”

Lamb took a couple of seconds to consider the question. He didn't want to jaw on about Rivers.

“It goes back to the war,” Lamb said. “He holds me responsible for the death of the man who was his best mate.”

Wallace knew he was risking Lamb's ire in seeking more, though he sensed Lamb was willing to talk. “Were you—responsible, I mean?”

Lamb glanced at Wallace. “Yes, I was, in the sense that I was the man's commanding officer and ordered him to perform the duty that led to his death.”

“But that doesn't count, does it? Someone must give the orders in war.”

“It's a long story,” Lamb said, though it wasn't, really.

Wallace took the hint and ended his interrogation.

When they returned to the constabulary, Evers, the duty sergeant at the desk, told Lamb to report to Harding immediately. “Guv's orders.” Evers shrugged, as if in sympathy.

Harding stood as Lamb entered his office. He seemed in a great rush.

“Rivers found them—both of them—in bloody Portsmouth, just as you said,” Harding said. “Abbott
and
the bloody niece. They've been
holed up in a doss house down there flushing the uncle's money down the loo at the bloody track.” Harding clapped his right hand on Lamb's shoulder. “Nice work, Tom. Larkin told me about the prints on the tin box.” The super's irritation of the morning seemed to have disappeared utterly. He smiled. “We've broken the bloody thing open.”

Lamb wasn't as certain of that. If Abbott and Lydia Blackwell had been holed up in Portsmouth, then they couldn't have killed Emily Fordham. He believed that the connections between the two killings were too numerous to be dismissed as coincidence. Still, he was eager to talk to Abbott and Lydia Blackwell.

Lamb found Rivers in the incident room receiving congratulations on the arrest from Wallace. Lamb approached and offered Rivers his hand. To Lamb's surprise, Rivers took it with what seemed genuine civility.

“Good work,” Lamb said.

“They'd blown fifty quid already; the niece admitted that much,” Rivers said. “All they had left was two bloody pound. I think she's ready to talk; she feels as if Abbott has double-crossed her.”

“All right,” Lamb said. “We'll talk to her first. Then we'll put the screws to him.”

Rivers thought of how he had been in Hampshire only a few days and already was on the verge of cracking a murder inquiry. As much as he disliked admitting it, part of his success was down to Lamb. Even so,
he'd
done the actual work. Lamb merely had pointed him down the right path, which, after all, was Lamb's job. His cock-up in Warwickshire was starting to feel like a bad, distant dream.

At noon, Vera called Southampton and Portsmouth.

The telephone lines remained open, the saboteurs and fifth columnists at bay. That done, she set out on another lunchtime stroll up the hill to clear her mind. She hoped that she might encounter Peter again and perhaps speak to him. She'd spent part of the morning
examining the drawing that Peter had dropped on the hill the previous evening. She found its detail and artistry exquisite, despite the disturbing nature of its subject. In the meantime, the events of the previous evening had vexed her; she seemed to have glimpsed Arthur as he really was—callous and frightened. She had hated the way in which he'd tried to bully her and to bully Peter.

She ascended Manscome Hill along the sheep trail, by the wood that marked the western edge of Brookings. The day was hot but overcast, the first cloudy day they'd had in more than a week. She walked to the place where she'd first encountered Peter and stopped. She looked around but saw no sign of him. She sat in the grass by the path and waited. The meadow was dotted with thistle and wildflower and alive in the midday heat with grasshoppers, darting birds, and butterflies.

A large blue butterfly alighted on a clover blossom near her. She did not know butterflies, really, and so did not know that the creature was called an Adonis Blue. She found it beautiful; its delicate wings were indigo and edged in concentric rings of black and white. She'd never really taken the time to closely examine a butterfly. She could easily see how their prettiness and grace might catch the fancy of a boy like Peter—or of a boy like the one she imagined Peter to be. She wondered what motivated him, what his thoughts consisted of. She thought that he must be lonely and frightened.

She moved to touch the butterfly with the tip of her finger, but it sensed her movement and flew away.

She sat in the meadow for twenty minutes, but Peter did not show. The clouds parted and moved to the south, toward the Solent, opening the sky again to the Germans. Disappointed that Peter had not shown himself, she began to walk down the path toward Quimby.

As she neared the place where the path ended near the cottage, she saw lying in the path, about twenty meters ahead, a sheet of paper like the one Peter had left on the hill on the previous night. She knew immediately what it was. She looked around but still saw no sign of Peter.

She jogged to the paper and picked it up; it was a stout sheet of watercolor paper on which Peter had quickly sketched, in pencil and pastel, the same type of blue butterfly she'd seen on the flower. She recognized the color of its wings and their black and white bands. Peter had been watching her.

Despite the haste with which he'd obviously drawn it, the sketch breathed life, animation. The butterfly seemed poised to rise from the page and, she thought, to possess a soul. Beneath the drawing, Peter had written something; the letters were rendered in pencil, in a crude hand, like that of a very small child who was just learning to write:

tommss ded

She had no idea what the words meant. She called toward the wood. “Peter. Come out. I won't hurt you. I want to meet you.” She held his drawing above her head, as if it were a flag of truce. “Your drawings are beautiful. But I don't know what sort of butterfly this is. Can you tell me, please?”

She stood on the path and waited for several minutes before she gave up and returned to her post. From the wood, Peter watched her leave.

When she returned to the Parish Council room, Vera found Arthur waiting for her by the hand-cranked siren. Her heart dropped. She had hoped he'd stay away, though she'd known he wouldn't.

“I've come to apologize,” he said. He stood between her and the stair that led to the door of the Council room. She didn't want to speak with him. She clutched Peter's drawing in her right hand.

“You've no need to apologize,” she said.

“But I've upset you.” His voice had the pleading tone that, she now believed, Arthur used to manipulate her emotionally.