The Wages of Desire

by Stephen Kelly

  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.”

  “What did you do after Algernon Tigue left in his motorcar?” Lamb asked.

  “We went home. I told her that we could vouch for each other.”

  “Are you sure that Lilly went home?”

  “Quite sure.”

  “Now I must ask you, Miss Wheatley, why you were out and about so late last night?”

  “Well, I couldn’t sleep, you see, and I’d just gone out for a second for a breath of air, when I saw Mr. Tigue pass; I saw his torch light. And then I noticed that Lilly was not far behind him. I could tell it was her by her size.”

  “So you hadn’t gone out to pilfer Mr. Tigue’s eggs a second time, then?”

  “No, Captain. I swear to it. I told you that I was finished with that.” She raised her chin proudly. “I’m a woman of my word.”

  Miss Wheatley clearly was a terrible liar, and Lamb didn’t believe her explanation of why she’d been out in the night. He believed that she likely had been spying on Mr. Tigue, as Lilly had been. Perhaps they had done so together. He would have to look into that, particularly on Lilly’s account. He continued to find it disturbing that Lilly was spending so much time outside in the dead of night and apparently without her mother’s knowledge. That said, he believed that the balance of Miss Wheatley’s tale possessed the ring of truth and counseled himself not to dismiss it. Indeed, the story seemed to confirm his suspicions regarding Ruth Aisquith and someone in the village—in this case Lawrence Tigue—having formed some manner of illicit partnership that profited both parties. If his guess about that was correct, then the mysterious “they” mentioned by the man Tigue had met on the previous night might be an organized gang trafficking on the black market in stolen or counterfeit goods.

  Although he was all but convinced that Lawrence Tigue had done a runner, he was nonetheless concerned that, on the chance that Tigue had not yet run, Miss Wheatley might confront Tigue with her suspicions, thereby spooking him for good and all and perhaps even putting herself and Lilly in some danger.

  “Thank
you for the information, Miss Wheatley,” he said. “It’s very valuable. But I must ask that you not confront Mr. Tigue with your knowledge or suspicions, or speak to him, or anyone else, of them in any way. That could turn out to be very dangerous to you and Lilly. For those reasons, it is absolutely crucial that we keep this knowledge to ourselves.”

  Miss Wheatley’s eyes widened. “Of course, Captain. I promise.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ON THE PREVIOUS AFTERNOON, RIVERS HAD CALLED THE MINISTRY of Labour and National Service in London and been given over to a pleasant, youngish-sounding army officer with an upper-class accent—a Captain Willis—who had said that of course Rivers could see the records of the female conscientious objectors and that he would see that Ruth Aisquith’s file was ready for Rivers when he arrived on the following morning.

  “Obviously, we haven’t many female conchis, given that conscription of women is so new,” Willis had said. “They’re still a rare species.”

  Rivers had left for London that morning and arrived at the ministry a bit after ten; Willis met Rivers in the ministry’s foyer with a smile and handshake. Willis walked with the aid of a cane and what Rivers took to be a permanent limp, since he wore no bandages or other evidence that his disability was recent.

  “Glad to see you could make it,” Willis said. “Sounds as if you’ve a frightful mess down there in Winstead.”

  Rivers didn’t like toffs as a rule but Willis’s genuine, open friendliness won him over. “Yes, well, we’re trying to clear it up,” he said.

  Willis led Rivers up a flight of stairs and down a hallway that bustled with busy-seeming people moving to and fro, to his small office, which had a single window that featured a view of the brick wall of a neighboring building. Willis bid Rivers to sit in one of two wooden chairs that faced his desk, which was wedged into the office’s far corner, with the window to Willis’s left. He handed Rivers the file on Ruth Aisquith that he’d pulled that morning, then moved around the desk and sat in the chair behind it. “Sounds rather a tragic case—the matter with the Aisquith woman,” Willis said as he settled himself into his chair.

  “Yes,” Rivers said absently. He’d explained the situation regarding Ruth Aisquith to Willis on the previous day.

  The file was in a cardboard portfolio bound with string. Its contents surprised Rivers as soon as he opened it. The file contained roughly two dozen pages that included Ruth Aisquith’s personal information, copies of correspondence between her and the Labour Board regarding her call-up to the fire-watching service, the written decision of the tribunal for the northwest of England denying her application to be excused from the requirements of the National Service Act of 1941 for reasons of conscience, her appeal of that decision and its denial, and the papers related to her subsequent imprisonment in Manchester for willfully failing to comply with the provisions of the act in the wake of the tribunal’s denial of her appeal.

  Her photo—a standard mug shot—was attached to the upper right-hand corner of the first page with a paper clip. But the unsmiling woman in the photo clearly was not the woman whom Rivers had seen lying dead in the cemetery of Saint Michael’s Church. This woman’s face was entirely different—round, while the victim’s was angular. This woman’s hair was light, even blond, whereas the victim’s was black. The woman they’d found lying in the cemetery had a dark, Latin aspect to her features, while the woman in the photo was positively Nordic. They weren’t even close.

  Rivers looked again at the name on the file: Ruth Aisquith. He flipped through some of the documents in which he saw the name repeated again and again. The page to which the mug shot was clipped contained a summary of Ruth Aisquith’s personal information, each bit neatly typed into its appropriate box beneath the appropriate heading: name, age, height, weight, race, eye color, hair color, date and place of birth, last known permanent address, and the date of her confinement to prison. And here Rivers found something that stunned him further. According to the file, Ruth Aisquith had died in prison two months earlier of “sudden cardiac arrest.” She had been thirty-six years old.

  Willis saw the obvious look of consternation on Rivers’s face.

  “Is something wrong, old man?” he asked.

  “How many people have access to this file?”

  “Well, several, including me. However, the files are kept under lock.” He pulled a small knot of keys from his pocket. “I’ve the key right here.”

  “Who else has a key to the file?”

  “Several people, as I said. What’s wrong?”

  “The woman pictured here is not the woman who was shot to death in Winstead.”

  “Oh, dear,” Willis said. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Either someone has tampered with this file, or the woman whose background I’m investigating isn’t Ruth Aisquith. According to this file, Aisquith died of a heart attack in June.”

  Willis stood. “Let me see the file, please,” he said. Rivers handed it over. Willis looked over the file for several seconds. “What did the woman in Winstead look like?” he asked.

  Rivers described the woman he’d thought was Ruth Aisquith.

  “Only seven women have gone to prison for willfully defying the conscription act since it passed,” Willis said. He held up the key to the files. “I’d say it’s time we had another look at the dossiers.”

  Having heard her father tell David to get “onto his hands and knees” in searching the cemetery—which Wallace had not yet done—Vera decided to take the lead. She looked at the blackberry bramble that ran along the rear wrought iron fence of the cemetery of Saint Michael’s Church and decided that this was as good a place as any from which to begin her search. The bush was only a few meters from the place in which Ruth Aisquith’s body had been found. She carefully pushed away some of the thorny branches growing close to the ground and did her best to peer at the ground beneath the bush. A portion of the space, close to the fence, appeared to have been disturbed. Vera slowly worked her hand through the bramble, snagging her sleeve on thorns here and there, and began to feel around the area. The soil was loose and moist and she found that she was able to dig into it easily with her fingers. She clawed at the spot and found that she easily could clear several inches of soil. Someone seemed to have dug a shallow hole there, then filled it in, she thought. She stood and called to Wallace, who was searching the growth that lay just outside the fence farthest from the church.

  Wallace joined Vera at the spot by the rear fence. “What have you got?” he asked.

  “I think I found something. The soil here is very loose, as if someone has dug it up.”

  Wallace eased his hand through the thorns. “Yes,” he said, plunging his fingers into the crumbled dirt. He looked at Vera. “Yes, I think you’ve found it. Why else would someone be digging about beneath a bloody blackberry bramble, unless they wanted to put something there that others would normally steer clear of?”

  Wallace rooted a bit farther into the loose soil with his fingers and soon pulled a bit of coarse cloth from the ground, stood, and held it up. In the sunlight he instantly saw that it was a bit of gray canvas fabric that appeared to have torn loose from a bag or covering of some kind.

  Neither he nor Vera spoke for a second. Giving into spontaneity, he bent down and kissed her cheek. He held up the bit of cloth. “You’re a champ,” he said.

  Vera smiled. She was proud of herself and knew that her father would be, too. At least now she was earning her keep, nepotism or no, she thought. She considered kissing Wallace on the cheek in response when she heard the front gate of the cemetery creak. She looked there to see her father coming through the gate. Vera wondered if her father had seen what just had transpired between her and David. She decided that it was better that she not take the offensive in an effort to knock her father off the scent—that taking the offensive would only cause her father to smell a rat.

  In fact, Lamb had not seen the kiss. Even so, he sensed a kind of forced jauntines
s in the countenances of Vera and Wallace, which led him to believe that they’d been up to something they’d rather he remained ignorant of. He smiled at Vera. “Do you have good news?” he asked.

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” she said. Wallace held up the bit of cloth for Lamb to see, and Vera bent and pushed away the blackberry branches. “Someone clearly has been mucking about under this bush.”

  Lamb took the bit of cloth in his fingers and examined it, then stooped and reached beneath the bush to feel the loosened earth. He stood and smiled again at Vera. “Good work, Constable Lamb,” he said.

  Wallace smiled very briefly. Lamb noticed this but did not remark upon it.

  “Just earning my keep,” Vera said.

  “Yes,” Lamb said.

  He then told them of the events that had occurred since they had parted ways—of his call to Alba Tigue’s sister-in-law in Chesterfield, of the information that Miss Wheatley had delivered, and of his brief conversation with the widow of the man who had been the local constable at the time of the O’Hare case.

  Lamb had plotted out a plan of action in reaction to the information he’d received in the past hour. In addition to sending one of the uniformed constables who had been manning the incident room to stake out Lawrence Tigue’s cottage, Lamb wanted to catch up again with Algernon Tigue before he, too, became anxious and considered running—if he hadn’t already departed for unknown parts. He told Wallace and Vera that they should return to the incident room, where they would find Sergeant Cashen awaiting them with a car. Wallace and Cashen were to drive to the Everly School and request that Algernon Tigue accompany them to the nick for questioning. If Tigue refused, then Wallace was to threaten him with arrest on suspicion of murder.

  “Whose murder?” Wallace asked.

  “I’m still trying to figure that out,” Lamb said with neither irony nor humor. “But I’m betting on the fact that if you give him a choice between coming willingly or in handcuffs, he’ll choose the former. He’s smart and very cool. Just get him into the nick, where we can keep tabs on him until we begin to straighten out this bloody mess. If the Tigues are involved in any of this, then they’ve got to be feeling very nervous. We might already have lost Lawrence. I don’t want to lose Algernon, too.”