The Language of the Dead

by Stephen Kelly

  The question stunned Wallace; he’d thought he’d managed to hide his drinking from Lamb. That morning had been particularly good in that he’d even managed to arrive to work early, despite the mess with Delilah. He recovered quickly enough to say, “What do you mean, sir?”

  “Damn you, David.” Lamb’s eyes were fierce. “I’m in no bloody mood for your games. I intend to pull your arse out of this latest mess you’ve made, but I won’t lift a bloody goddamned finger on your behalf if you lie to me. Is that clear?”

  Wallace blinked. “Yes.”

  “So answer my bloody goddamned question.”

  “No, sir,” Wallace said without looking at Lamb. “Only the occasional pint in the pub. Same as anyone else.”

  “Nothing at all, then?” Lamb said, the sarcasm evident in his voice. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed—the lateness and the occasional foul-ups and now this.”

  “It’s a woman,” Wallace said. He thought it a good excuse. It explained everything and was partly true.

  “Well, you better bloody well get John Thomas under control, then.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t you see what you’re doing? If you lose your warrant card, you’re going straight into the thick of it. And don’t think you’ll get by on your bloody charm. I spent a bit of time in the Army in the last war. They’ll chew you up and spit you out. No one there gives a damn about your well-cut suits and your dazzling smile. Being at the front is like swallowing a bucket of shit every day, over and over again. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  Lamb wondered if he did.

  “Then pull yourself together and stop being a bloody damned fool. I can’t help you otherwise. And if I find out you’ve lied to me, I’ll have your arse.”

  Wallace looked straight ahead. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  He pushed the button again and, to his relief, the car started.

  The road narrowed as they entered Lipscombe.

  A moment later, they were through the square and on the eastern side of the village, where they came to a row of small stone houses with tiny front lawns and gardens. The third of these was the one in which Emily Fordham had lived with her mother. Wallace stopped the car.

  “Be prepared if she collapses,” Lamb told Wallace as they exited the car. “Get her off her feet and into a chair as quickly as possible.”

  They walked along a flagstone path flanked by pink roses to a green door with a small brass knocker. The morning sun shone on them. Wallace lifted the knocker and rapped on the door. Lamb removed his hat.

  A few seconds later, a small woman, her shoulders wrapped in a red cotton shawl, opened the door. Lamb recognized the woman from the photo he’d found in Emily’s wallet. He guessed that she could not be more than forty-five, though the shawl and the way her shoulders slumped beneath it made her seem older. She appeared ready to speak; her mouth began to form a question. But she stopped and blinked, as if trying to bring the two strangers standing at her door into better focus.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Fordham,” Lamb said. “I am Chief Inspector Thomas Lamb of the Hampshire Constabulary, and this is Detective Sergeant David Wallace. May we come in?”

  Elizabeth Fordham blinked again but did not answer. She did not seem to understand.

  Lamb moved slightly closer to the door. There was nothing for it but to plunge ahead. “It’s about your daughter, Emily,” he said.

  Mrs. Fordham did not move. “Emily?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Lamb said. “I’m afraid we’ve some bad news.” He put his hand gently on her right elbow and began guiding her into the house.

  “What do you mean?” Elizabeth asked. “What has happened to Emily?”

  “Why don’t we sit down,” Lamb said and led her toward the sitting room.

  “Why is the news bad?” she asked. Lamb could feel her body beginning to stir, almost as if she had been asleep and only now was waking. “What do you mean?”

  Lamb maneuvered her onto a yellow sofa that backed against a window that faced the street. Once Elizabeth was seated, her countenance rapidly changed. She glared at Lamb and said “I demand to know what happened to my daughter.” Lamb understood this sudden metamorphosis as the initial stirrings of grief. His and Wallace’s sudden arrival at her door, her daughter’s name on their lips, their solicitousness, had communicated to Elizabeth’s deepest instincts all she needed to know. She now must struggle with the nearly impossible job of accepting a hideous, unalterable truth.

  “I’m sorry to tell you that your daughter is dead,” Lamb said. “She was found murdered this morning about two miles from the village. I’m very sorry. Very, very sorry.”

  “Murdered?” Elizabeth asked. Her eyes widened, as if she were on the verge of panic. She seemed to be coming to consciousness in stages, Lamb thought. “That can’t be!”

  “I’m afraid it is,” Lamb said gently. He girded for an eruption.

  Elizabeth began to move in the chair as if she’d suddenly grown very uncomfortable. Lamb thought she was going to stand. He prepared himself to grab and restrain her. But she looked at the floor. The fierceness she had shown only seconds earlier suddenly seemed to drain from her. “How?” she asked quietly.

  “We believe that she was assaulted as she was riding home last night on her bicycle. She was struck on the head. Her body was found near the road, about three quarters of a mile from the village.”

  Elizabeth wrapped her arms and the shawl about herself tightly. Her behavior surprised Lamb. She seemed to have moved from defiance to despair in the blink of an eye. Although he had seen the transition occur in the opposite manner—first the slumping, then the rage—he had never seen it occur so quickly. He sat next to her.

  “Perhaps Sergeant Wallace can make us some tea,” he said.

  She looked at Lamb. “Tea?”

  “Yes. Perhaps some tea would help.”

  He felt ridiculous. Nothing would help. The life of the woman sitting before him suddenly and irrevocably had entered a kind of final phase and he could do nothing to stop this. Death had joined them in the little sitting room. For the moment, he could only sit next to her on her yellow couch and suggest she take some tea. She had not collapsed, as he had suspected she might, but retreated into a stupor. His job now was to entice her from that refuge long enough to extract some information from her that he might use to track down her daughter’s killer. Wallace went into the kitchen to brew a pot of tea. Lamb moved in, hoping to catch Elizabeth before she locked herself away completely.

  “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to harm your daughter?” he asked.

  She looked at him, bewildered. “Harm Emily?”

  “Did she have any relationships with men, for example—with someone who might have become jealous or angry at her for some reason?”

  “Men?” She blinked.

  “Yes. A boyfriend, perhaps? A sweetheart?”

  Something in that word—sweetheart—seemed to resonate with Elizabeth. Lamb expected her to say something about the pilot whose photo he’d found in Emily’s wallet. Instead, Elizabeth paused for a few seconds and then, strangely, smiled. “No,” she said. “No sweethearts. At least not since she was five. She was sweet on one of the boys then. Brian Hall. He was a cute little boy, always smiling.” She turned to Lamb. “He’s dead now, of course. Drowned in the bath, years ago. I can’t remember how many. He slipped and hit his head, you see.”

  She stopped for a moment, as if to think. The shock she’d registered seconds before seemed already to have worn off. The act of remembering Emily as a girl seemed to have occasioned this metamorphosis. She smiled again.

  “Yes, five,” she said. “Emily was a very pretty girl even then.” She sat up suddenly, as if ready for her tea.

  “Was there anyone more recent than Brian Hall?” Lamb asked gently.

  “Not really,” she said. She stopped speaking and looked at the floor. Lamb felt her retreating again. He realized he’d made
a mistake in shifting the subject of their conversation away from Emily’s childhood.

  “But they were cute, the two of them, when they were children—Emily and Brian?” he asked.

  “Oh, yes. They were very cute. And then Brian died.”

  Elizabeth suddenly put her face into her hands, bent forward, and began to weep.

  Lamb let her cry for several minutes. She sobbed loudly, her shoulders heaving. Several times she cried aloud, “Oh, God,” or “Please God, no!” Eventually, Lamb ventured to touch her shoulder. In response, Elizabeth put her right hand over her mouth for a second and then pressed her index finger and thumb against her eyes.

  “She’s dead,” she said, as if she were informing Lamb of this fact. “Emily is dead.”

  “Yes,” Lamb said. “I’m sorry.”

  Elizabeth drew in several quick breaths and sniffed. Her eyes, though red-rimmed, filled again with a kind of fierceness. Lamb thought that he had never met anyone like Elizabeth Fordham. Emotions seemed to course through her like unpredictable winds through a canyon. And yet he sensed that, despite this, she possessed some control over her moods. She pushed her hands along her thighs, wiping the moisture from her hands.

  “Ask me your questions,” she said to Lamb. She had become erect and forthright. “I know that you must ask me questions if you are to find who did this to Emily.”

  Wallace arrived with a tray containing a pot of tea, three cups, a small cup of milk, and a bowl of sugar. He put the tray on the table in front of the sofa. Elizabeth poured each of them a cup of tea, then abruptly stopped. Wallace quietly withdrew his notebook and a pencil from his jacket pocket.

  “I understand she volunteered at the infirmary near the RAF base in Cloverton,” Lamb said. “What did she do there?”

  “Whatever was needed. She was a helper. She helped with bandages and made tea. She was always a helpful girl.”

  “Did she have a job?”

  “No. I wouldn’t allow it. Not with the war on. I didn’t want her mixed up in things. She wanted to join the WAAFs, but I wouldn’t allow it.”

  She poured a bit of milk into her tea and sipped it.

  Lamb sensed that she was again growing calm. “Do you know of anyone else who might have wanted to hurt Emily?” he asked.

  “No.” She shook her head and looked away from Lamb. “Who would want to hurt Emily?” She said this almost as if she were speaking to herself.

  “Oh, Emily!” she exclaimed. She was looking at the far wall. “Why must you be so difficult?” The tempest in her was rising again.

  “Who else did she know?” Lamb asked. “Where did she spend her time?”

  Elizabeth daubed at her eyes with her fingers. She thrust out her chin, again seeming to bring herself under control. “She wanted to join the WAAFs, but I wouldn’t allow it,” she said again.

  “Yes,” Lamb said. He realized that he had made another mistake. Elizabeth had wanted to explain her reasons for prohibiting Emily from joining the WAAFs and he had tried to guide her away from that.

  “She got the idea from Lilly, her friend,” Elizabeth said. “We argued about it, but I didn’t want her mixed up with it. We argued about it.” She hesitated for a second, then turned to face Lamb. “Do you have children, Chief Inspector?”

  “Yes. I have a daughter who is about Emily’s age.”

  “Well, then, you know how difficult they can be.”

  “Yes.”

  “Emily always has been a difficult child. And she defied me.”

  Lamb nodded.

  “When I forbade Emily from joining the WAAFs, she went instead to volunteer at the infirmary. She came in here one afternoon and announced that she’d done it.” She looked again toward the far wall. “I didn’t fight it. I was tired of fighting.”

  “What is Lilly’s last name?” Wallace asked.

  “What?” She was looking at Wallace but also looking past him.

  “What is Lilly’s last name, madam?”

  “Schmidt—it’s a German name. I hadn’t really noticed until the war started, but Lilly has a German surname.”

  “Can you tell us where we might find Miss Schmidt?”

  “She’s a waitress in the tea room in the village.”

  Lamb produced the photo of the RAF pilot they’d found in Emily’s wallet. He braced himself for another shift in Elizabeth’s emotions. “Do you recognize this man?” he asked.

  Elizabeth took the photo and stared at it. Lamb saw surprise in her eyes.

  “No,” she said. “I’ve never seen him before. Why are you showing me this?”

  “We found the photograph in Emily’s wallet.”

  Elizabeth threw the photo onto the coffee table.

  “This is the man who killed her, then?” she asked. “This is her killer?”

  “We don’t know,” Lamb said. “We hoped you might identify him.”

  She seemed to recoil from the photo, pressing herself against the couch.

  “No. This is a mistake. Emily wouldn’t have that man’s photograph in her wallet. She would have told me if she knew this man. Someone has put that photograph in her wallet.” Her eyes widened. “I wouldn’t doubt that Lilly gave her the photo. She’s still trying to persuade Emily to join the WAAFs, despite my having forbidden it.”

  Lamb decided not to press the matter.

  “She’d have told me if she knew this man,” Elizabeth repeated.

  “Yes, of course,” Lamb said.

  He produced the drawing of the spider attacking the butterfly and the small photo of the boy. “We also found these in Emily’s wallet,” he said. “Do they mean anything to you?”

  Elizabeth stared at the drawing fleetingly. “No,” she said quickly and with obvious disdain. “I don’t know what this is. It makes no sense; it’s garish and ugly. Emily didn’t do this sort of thing.”

  “Do you recognize the boy?”

  “No. I have no idea who he is. I suppose he could be one of the children Lord Pembroke takes in over the summers. Emily and her brother, Donald, worked there a few summers.” She thrust out her chin again. “Lord Pembroke chooses several local young men and women of good character to help out with the children each summer. Donald applied first and was accepted, then Emily.”

  The news surprised Lamb. He hadn’t known that Pembroke hired young people from the villages to assist him with the orphans. Obviously, that was how Emily had known Peter.

  “Do you know of a boy named Peter Wilkins who also stays with Lord Pembroke?” Lamb asked. “We have reason to believe he might have drawn this picture.”

  “No. Why would you think that some boy connected with Lord Pembroke would have drawn this horrible thing?”

  “He likes to draw insects.”

  Elizabeth drew in her shoulders beneath her shawl, as if she’d caught a chill. “They’re terrible-looking things,” she said. “Frightening. I don’t know why he would have sent Emily such a thing unless it was to frighten her.”

  “Where is your son, Donald, stationed, Mrs. Fordham? We may want to speak to him.”

  Elizabeth looked away. Lamb sensed that she was shutting down again. “You can’t,” she said. “He’s too far away. He’s in the Royal Navy.”

  “Is he stationed on a ship, then?” Wallace interjected.

  Elizabeth looked at Wallace with an expression that seemed to say that she found his question idiotic. “Nothing like that,” she said. “He’s part of an anti-aircraft crew guarding Scapa Flow.” Her eyes flared. “Donald also defied me. I told him I didn’t want him to become mixed up in the war, but he defied me.”

  “Do you have the name of the unit to which he is attached?” Lamb asked.

  “No. I don’t concern myself with such things. Donald defied me.”

  Lamb decided he’d gotten all he could for the moment from Elizabeth Fordham. The woman seemed to have entirely lost touch with the true substance of her daughter’s life.

  “If you think of anything else, please call me,�
� Lamb said, handing Elizabeth a card with his telephone number on it. “I can only say once again that Sergeant Wallace and I are very sorry to bring you the news we have brought you and will do everything in our power to discover who did this to your daughter.”

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said, absently. “Thank you.” She sat again on the sofa with her hands in her lap, staring at the opposite wall.

  “Is there anyone whom you might want us to contact for you, Mrs. Fordham? Perhaps someone who might come and stay with you for a time?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “No.”

  She looked at her feet. “Emily,” she said quietly. “What am I going to do with you?”

  SIXTEEN

  THE EXCELSIOR TEA ROOM WAS IN THE LIPSCOMBE VILLAGE SQUARE. Lilly Schmidt was wiping cake crumbs from one of the shop’s four yellow tables as Lamb and Wallace entered. The shop was empty of customers. Lilly looked up when the bell over the door jingled.

  “Good morning, gentlemen,” she said. Lamb could see from her countenance that she did not yet know that her friend had been murdered. Normally, such news traveled very quickly in the little villages. Apparently, though, no one yet had gotten around to Lilly Schmidt.

  “Miss Schmidt?” Lamb said. The place smelled of cinnamon and coffee, which made him hungry. “Lilly Schmidt?”

  “Yes.”

  Lamb showed his warrant card and introduced himself and Wallace. “Do you have a minute or two to spare?”

  “Yes,” she said. She appeared suddenly confused. “Is something wrong?”

  They sat at the table that she had been cleaning. Lamb was glad that the shop was empty. It would allow them to speak frankly about Emily. If a customer came in, he might have to move Lilly outside. “Is anyone else here?” he asked.

  “Not at the moment. The owner, Mrs. Beltram, has gone out.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Schmidt,” Lamb said. “I just wanted to ensure that we could speak frankly without being overheard. I’m afraid that I have some bad news. Emily Fordham was found dead this morning off the main road north of the village.”