The Language of the Dead (4 page)

Larkin stepped forward, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He looked at Lamb and smiled, clearly pleased to be on the case. “It's not every day we get a case like this one,” he said with genuine enthusiasm.

“No,” Lamb replied. “It certainly isn't.”

As he spoke, the murder of crows roosting in the distant sycamore arose as one with a squawk and disappeared into the wood.

THE PROCESSION CARRYING WILL BLACKWELL'S BODY MOVED
slowly down Manscome Hill, along the old footpath.

Larkin had collected the murder weapons, though yanking them from the old man's body had required that he and Wallace work in tandem. They'd bundled the body into a canvas bag and put it on a stretcher. Four uniformed constables carried the stretcher down the hill, accompanied by the others. A knife-gash of light remained on the western horizon and the stars had become visible. Despite the blackout, Winston-Sheed led the way with a torch, its beam dancing along the path, the bright red tip of the cigarette between his lips keeping to the same rhythm.

Lamb halted the group when it reached the gate through which the path veered in a spur toward George Abbott's house. He instructed Winston-Sheed to go ahead with the body and Harris to inform Blackwell's niece that he would be down to speak with her shortly.

Lamb and Wallace moved through the gate and down the path toward Abbott's house, which nestled among a stand of oaks just beyond the meadow. The same flock of fat sheep that Lamb and Harris had frightened on their march up the hill earlier that evening noisily trotted away again, their white bodies partly dissolved in the gloom, giving them the character of clouds moving across a dark sky.

“What was the gist of what he told you when you interviewed him initially?” Lamb asked Wallace of Abbott. When Wallace had first arrived on the scene, he'd conducted brief interviews with Abbott and Will Blackwell's niece, Lydia.

“He hired the old man regularly for such work—or so he said,” Wallace said. “Made a point, in fact, of saying as how he didn't really have to give Blackwell any work—that half of it could just as well have waited or gone undone. But he knew Blackwell hadn't much else. He made it sound as if he were Blackwell's benefactor.”

Wallace nimbly hopped a pile of sheep droppings, saving his shoe and the cuff of his pants from being soiled. He'd been sober for more than two hours and felt free and clear for the moment.

“Abbott said the niece came to his door in the middle of his tea and told him that the old man had not returned for his,” Wallace continued. “Apparently the old fellow was as reliable as a clock when it came to his meals. So Abbott led the way up the hill to the hedge and the two of them found him there. The niece went to pieces, according to Abbott. He tried to restrain her but she broke free of his grasp. He said he tried to remove the pitchfork and the scythe in an effort to calm her. When he couldn't get them free, he thought better of touching anything—realized that he should leave well enough alone. Or so he told me. He managed to calm the girl and persuade her to walk back to the village with him. I had Larkin take his prints, which he grumbled about. He has the aspect of an embittered old country arsehole. But I got the impression he's no fool.”

They were nearly to the house.

“What about the niece?” Lamb asked.

“When the doc arrived, he had a look at her and gave her a sedative—though I think it was a bit of placebo. Salt tablets, perhaps. In any case, they seem to have done the trick in that she began to calm down once she swallowed them.”

“What was her story?”

“The same as Abbott's. She began to worry when old Mr. Blackwell didn't come home and so went to fetch Abbott. The two of them went up the hill to find Blackwell and she saw her uncle's body and the state it was in. As I was interviewing her, she began to cry—fell right apart—so I let it be for the moment.”

Here was the one thing in which Wallace feared he might have bollixed things before Lamb arrived. He'd gone soft when he shouldn't have. He turned to Lamb. “She seemed so upset that I thought it unlikely that she was going to give up much more of use at that point.”

Lamb would have preferred that Wallace had gotten as much as possible from the niece at the outset, before she'd had time to solidify her story. But he let the mistake go.

They reached the door of Abbott's house. A young PC whom Lamb didn't recognize answered Wallace's rap on the door.

“I take it our man hasn't flown the coop?” Wallace said to the constable.

“Not a chance, Sarge. He's in the kitchen, drinking tea. He offered me a cup, but I declined.” The constable smiled at Wallace. “Didn't want him to get the impression that I was in the mood to be friendly, like.”

“Very good, Pearson,” Wallace said. “You can return to the village now.”

“Yes, sir,” Pearson said. He headed toward the gate, sending the sheep bounding away again.

Abbott appeared in the parlor as Wallace and Lamb stepped inside. Wallace introduced Lamb to Abbott. “We'd like to ask you a few more questions,” Wallace told Abbott.

Abbott grunted; his big toes protruded through identical holes in his dirty green wool socks. “Can't sleep anyway,” he said, as if the
matter of his interrogation was up to him. “Not after seeing Will like that.”

Abbott was short, stocky, squared off at the shoulders. Despite his age—Lamb guessed that he was in his early sixties—he exuded an impression of physical strength. His manner, the way in which he stood, as if prepared to take a punch, put Lamb in mind of a boxer. Abbott had a head of thick, tousled, unwashed gray hair, deep-set dark eyes, and graying stubble on his chin. He held a cup of tea in his hand and a cigarette in his lips. Once again, Lamb reached for his tin of butterscotch.

Abbott turned and headed back into his small kitchen, which was dominated by a round wooden table at its center. An open bottle of whiskey sat on the table. Lamb could see no hint of a feminine presence in Abbott's life, and yet he could see how Abbott might hold sway over an apparently lonely and isolated spinster such as Lydia Blackwell.

Abbott sat at the table and poured some whiskey into his tea. He held the bottle aloft and waggled it in the direction of Lamb and Wallace.

“Care for a nip?” he asked. Wallace eyed the bottle. He would have loved a drink.

“Sergeant,” Lamb said and nodded at the tea. Wallace snatched Abbott's tea from the table and poured it into the sink. He then snatched away the bottle.

“My bloody tea!” Abbott protested.

Lamb cast a cold gaze at the farmer. “I'd prefer that you remain sober while I question you, Mr. Abbott,” he said.

“It ain't right of you to take my tea.”

Lamb ignored him and sat down. Wallace wiped his hands on a towel by the sink and also sat at the table.

“How long have you known Will Blackwell?” Lamb asked Abbott.

Abbott ground out the cigarette he had been smoking in a small ceramic bowl that was full of ground-out cigarettes. He pulled another from a pack on the table, placed it between his lips and, squinting,
lit it with a match he struck against the bottom of his shoe. He was stalling before answering—an act, Lamb knew, that was designed to show that he would not be intimidated, even if they could take his tea from him.

“All my life—like I told your man there when he questioned me earlier,” Abbott said, nodding in Wallace's direction.

“Were you friendly with him?”

“Aye—as much as a man could be a friend to Will.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Will kept to himself mostly. Didn't fancy people much, did he?”

“You hired Will to trim your hedge today?”

“Aye.”

“And when did he head out to the job?”

“I saw him coming up the hill from his cottage at about half past eleven. But I didn't keep an eye on him now, did I? Wasn't my brother's keeper. Just told him what needed done and he'd do it in his own time.”

“And Will brought his own tools to the job?”

Abbott blew smoke at the ceiling. “Aye.”

“And he used those tools on this job for which you hired him?”

“Aye, them were Will's tools.” He grunted. “Can I have my tea if I put nothing in it save milk and sugar?”

Lamb nodded at Wallace. “Get him some tea, please, Sergeant,” he said. He turned back to Abbott. “When Miss Blackwell came to your door, you led her directly to the body, is that right?” he asked.

“Aye.”

“How did you know that Will would be there?”

“Well, I sent him there myself, didn't I? Hired him to trim that very hedge.”

“But wouldn't he ordinarily have finished that job hours earlier? What made you believe he would still be there at nearly six o'clock in the evening?”

“Well, I didn't know. I guessed, didn't I? Used the common sense God gave me. I thought that maybe his heart had failed
him—that the exertion of the cutting might have done him in. So I went to the hedge. And when I seen them crows rise from him, I knew the truth.”

Wallace put a cup of tea in front of Abbott.

“Would you have liked to have seen Will die a natural death up there, Mr. Abbott?” Lamb asked. “You just said that you thought the work might kill him. And yet you sent him up there. Were you hoping he would die?”

Lamb was fishing. He expected Abbott to protest. Instead the farmer narrowed his eyes and asked, “What are you getting at?”

Lamb ignored the question. “So you saw Will only once today, when he was heading up the hill?”

“As I said.” He hunched closer to the table and encircled his cup of tea with his arms.

“You didn't go up the hill to check on him—to check on his work—during the day?”

“I'd no reason to. Will could take care of himself.”

“What is your relationship with Miss Blackwell?”

Abbott stared at his cup. “I have no relationship with the woman.”

“No?” Lamb asked. “You being a single man and she a single woman? And she living right down the hill? Nothing has ever passed between you? You've never looked on Miss Blackwell and thought to yourself, ‘I could use a bit of that'? And then one thing leads to another, as it naturally would?”

“No!” Abbott said in a tone that suggested that the question insulted him. “I've never laid a finger on the woman. Never had no cause nor desire to.”

“Oh, come now, Mr. Abbott,” Wallace interjected. “Nobody would blame you if you had. A younger, available woman and a lonely soul, such as yourself? Maybe she fancied you as well, eh? Maybe she offered herself to you? Any man in your position would say aye to that. As the inspector said, it's only natural now, isn't it?”

“I told you—I never touched her!” Abbott said. Although Abbott's eyes were full of fire, Lamb sensed that Abbott was attempting to
bring his anger under control, perhaps worried that it made him appear defensive and guilty. Smoldering, Abbott drew in a lung full of smoke, then exhaled it.

“Had you and Mr. Blackwell quarreled over anything recently?” Lamb asked.

“No,” Abbott said. He stared at the table.

“How much did you pay Will for these jobs for which you hired him?”

“Two bob or thereabouts. Sometimes more, sometimes less, depending on the job.”

“And how often did you hire him?”

“Whenever I needed the odd job done. A few times a month.”

“Did you hire Will for all of these odd jobs because you owed him something? A debt, perhaps?”

“Well, Will didn't have anything else, did he?” Abbott said. “He'd gotten too old to work as he used to. Nobody in the bloody village hired him for anything anymore. None of them gave a damn for Will. Had I not hired him, he would have had nothing.”

“And why is that?”

Abbott hesitated—then laughed. “You mean to say, then, that you don't know?”

“Why don't you fill me in?” Lamb said.

“Well, it's common knowledge that some in the village thought Will to be a witch.”

“What do you mean by that?” Lamb asked. “A witch?”

“Just as I said. A witch. You know—one of them that rides around on brooms and make potions out of toads' ears?” He slapped the table and laughed. “Toil, toil, bubble and boil, eh?”

“I haven't the time for your jokes, Mr. Abbott,” Lamb said. “In fact, I've half a mind to take you in right now and charge you with Will Blackwell's murder.”

Wallace tried to hide his surprise. Abbott appeared shocked.

“What are you on about?” Abbott asked. “I told you I never killed Will! I only tried to help him.”

“I've no doubt we'll find your fingerprints on the murder weapons,” Lamb said.

“Here!” Abbott said. “I tried to pull them out of Will. I was only trying to calm Lydia! When she seen her uncle, she went into hysterics.”