The Wages of Desire

by Stephen Kelly

  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.”

  “And you are back at your duties today, then?” Lamb asked.

  Doris counseled herself to be careful with Lamb. “Yes. My first job will be to clean up after the funeral.”

  “I see,” Lamb said. “Do you also clean the vicar’s study?”

  “Yes. Once a week.”

  “Have you ever seen a Webley pistol in the study or anywhere else in the vicarage?”

  “Yes,” she said. She must be very careful now. Still, she saw no reason to deny knowledge of the pistol, given that Gerald long had displayed it in his study.

  “When and where did you last see it?”

  “Well
, I must have seen it in the study, where the vicar keeps it. I’m sorry. I tend not to look at such things when I’m cleaning. I don’t approve of pistols.”

  Lamb smiled again. “All the same, I wonder if you can think back. It might help immensely if you could tell me exactly when you last saw the pistol.”

  Doris glanced at the sky, as if she were giving the question her fullest consideration. She did not yet know the nature of the lie that Gerald had told Lamb to explain the pistol’s absence, only that he certainly had lied to Lamb. “I don’t think so,” she said, treading as carefully as she dared. She paused, as if thinking again, then added, in a tone designed to impart the idea that she just couldn’t remember, “I can’t say for sure, because, you see, I simply don’t otherwise notice it.”

  “Very good, then,” Lamb said. “Thank you, Miss White.” He tipped his hat. “I’m sorry to have kept you from your work.”

  She smiled a third time. “No trouble at all,” she said. As she watched Rivers and Lamb walk toward the vicarage, she wondered how long Gerald would be able to fend off Lamb successfully and thought that, in the meantime, she must not dawdle.

  ELEVEN

  LAMB AND RIVERS FOUND WILHEMINA WIMBERLY AWAITING them in the neat sitting room of the vicarage. She sat on a red sofa with her hands in her lap. Someone had set out things for tea on the table in front of the sofa. Gerald, who answered Lamb’s knock, ushered them toward a pair of chairs that faced the sofa. Lamb felt as if Gerald was orchestrating the encounter, and that he had been orchestrating his and his wife’s movements since the previous day.

  Wilhemina briefly smiled at Lamb. She wore a blue dress adorned with white flowers and shoes that were similar to those that Gerald had turned over to Lamb on the previous day. Gerald had shed his vestments for a pair of brown corduroy trousers and his priest’s shirt and collar. Lamb introduced himself and Rivers to Wilhemina.

  She stood and gestured them to sit in chairs. “Would you like tea?” Wilhemina asked.

  “Yes, please,” Lamb said. “Thank you.”

  “Detective Inspector?” Wilhemina said to Rivers.

  “No, thank you.”

  Gerald sat on the sofa as Wilhemina served Lamb tea. When she finished, Wilhemina sat next to Gerald.

  “Thank you for agreeing to speak to us,” Lamb said to Wilhemina. “I understand that yesterday’s events gave you a shock.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Very much so, I’m afraid.”

  On the previous day, Lamb had come away from his interview with Wimberly believing that the vicar had sought to shield his wife from being interviewed, perhaps because she had received a shock—but also perhaps because he had wanted to have time to rehearse a story with her. Lamb intended to unbalance the pair of them and see what that produced. As part of that strategy, Rivers would conduct the interview, or at least its opening stage. Rivers made a show of retrieving a pencil and notebook from his pocket, leaned forward, and addressed Wilhemina. He and Lamb had discussed the first question he would ask.

  “How often do you tend to your garden, madam?”

  Wilhemina and Gerald looked at Rivers. Lamb saw that the question had befuddled them, as he hoped it would.

  “I’m sorry,” Wilhemina said. “How often do I tend my garden?”

  “Yes, madam,” Rivers said without emotion. “Especially given that at this time of year it can get quite hot, especially in the afternoon, thereby making mornings a more comfortable time to work out of doors.”

  Wilhemina glanced again at Gerald. Neither of them seemed to understand Rivers’s question. As Lamb had guessed he might, Gerald immediately seemed to smell a trap and attempted to shield his wife from falling into it.

  “I’m sorry, Detective Inspector,” he said. “I don’t understand the question.”

  “The question was directed at your wife, sir,” Rivers said, his expression placid.

  Wilhemina looked at Lamb, as if expecting him to explain, but Lamb merely smiled at her scantly. She smoothed her dress and turned back to Rivers.

  “I’m sorry, Detective Inspector, but I’m afraid I don’t understand, either.”

  “I was merely wondering if you occasionally rise early in the morning to garden, especially given that yesterday morning was a good one for gardening.”

  Wilhemina glanced at Gerald and then back to Rivers. Her confusion was evident on her face.

  “Not often, no,” Wilhemina said.

  “Then you were in bed when Miss Aisquith was shot?”

  Wilhemina hesitated a hitch before answering. “Yes.”

  “Were you asleep or just resting?”

  “I suppose I was sleeping.”

  “So you did not hear the shot, then?”

  She glanced again at Gerald. “No.”

  “But you did hear your husband come into the house?”

  “Yes, I heard Gerald come in.”

  “According to your husband, he reached the house just as the shot was fired.” Rivers made another show of flipping through his notebook. He stopped at a page and read aloud. “Quote, I was returning from a walk when I heard the shot, end of quote.” He looked up from the notebook at Wilhemina. “That is what your husband told Chief Inspector Lamb yesterday, madam. He then said he went right to the cemetery and that you followed him there. So I was wondering, then, when exactly you woke up and what awakened you.”

  Lamb could sense Gerald Wimberly attempting to restrain himself from speaking.

  “I suppose I must have heard something outside,” Wilhemina said. “After all one doesn’t always necessarily know for certain what has awakened one.”

  “But you are certain that it was not a gunshot?”

  “I don’t think so. In any case, I don’t remember it as such.”

  “Do you normally wake up in the morning when your husband returns from his walk?”

  “Occasionally.”

  “Is your husband sometimes rather loud, then, when he returns from his morning walk?”

  “Is he loud?”

  “Yes, madam. Does he normally make a racket?”

  “I’m sorry, Detective, but I fail to see how such questions are relevant,” Gerald interjected.

  “I assure you that the questions are relevant,” Lamb said. “I wonder if you wouldn’t mind allowing your wife to answer, please.”

  Gerald Wimberly raised his chin in a small, almost unconscious gesture of defiance. “Of course, Chief Inspector. It’s just that I don’t see what my making noise in the morning has to do with anything.”

  Lamb ignored Gerald. “Mrs. Wimberly?” he said.

  “Well, I suppose he sometimes is noisy.”

  “Was he particularly noisy yesterday morning, then, madam?” Rivers asked. “Did he shout something or call out to you?”

  Wilhemina glanced a third time at Gerald. “No,” she said. “I simply heard something—something outside, I suppose. And it awakened me. Most of the rest of it is a blur, I’m afraid.”

  “So you’re certain, then, that the sound of the shot did not awaken you?”

  “As I’ve said twice before now, no. Or at least I don’t know that it did.” Wilhemina’s voice had become tinged with irritation. “I wasn’t sure what had happened.”

  “I see,” Rivers said. He paused, a slight look of apparent confusion on his face—a small, though subtle, gesture that impressed Lamb. Once again, Rivers made a show of searching his notebook. “Yes, here it is,” he said, stopping at a page. He read aloud: “Quote, Unfortunately, my wife came into the cemetery. I hadn’t even known that she’d followed me. She must have heard the shot, end of quote.”

  Gerald ran his fingers through his hair.

  “That was your husband’s statement to Chief Inspector Lamb yesterday, madam,” Rivers said. “I wonder why your husband believed you’d heard the shot? Had you told him that you had heard the shot?”

  “No,” Wilhemina said. “I suppose he assumed that I had heard the shot. Anyone might assume so, given the circumstan
ces.”

  “Yes, madam,” Rivers said. “But if you didn’t hear the shot, then why would you have thought it necessary to follow him to the cemetery? Indeed, why would you have thought it necessary to leave your bed and follow him at all, given that he makes a daily habit of coming and going in the mornings?”

  Wilhemina looked sternly at Rivers. Lamb saw that she could not entirely hide her anger. He could almost feel Wilhemina restraining herself from chastising Rivers for his impertinence. “I merely sensed that something was wrong,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, madam,” Rivers said. “You sensed that something was wrong?”

  “Yes, sensed,” she said. “Have you never heard of intuition, Detective Inspector? A woman’s intuition?”

  “Does that mean, madam, that you did not know for certain that your husband had left the house, but merely intuited that he had?”

  “No. I heard him come in and then go immediately out again. I got out of bed and went to the window and saw him heading toward the cemetery and so followed.”

  “I see,” Rivers said. “You saw him from the window, then, rather than merely intuiting that he had gone to the cemetery.”

  Internally, Gerald winced. Rivers was picking apart their story with ease. When he’d first seen the stolid, unimaginative-looking Rivers at his front door he had tabbed him as likely not bright. Obviously he was wrong. And he began to believe that he understood what Lamb was on about. Lamb intended to topple them both by pulling down the weakest of the pair first.

  “Yes, I saw him from the window,” Wilhemina said.