The Language of the Dead

by Stephen Kelly

  “Emily?” Lilly put her hand to her mouth.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so.”

  “But why?”

  “That’s what we’re endeavoring to find out. I’m sorry to tell you that she was murdered—she was struck a blow to the head.”

  Lilly’s eyes began to well with tears. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I just saw her yesterday morning.”

  Lamb leaned toward her. “I know it’s difficult, Miss Schmidt. But if you believe you’re up to it, we’d like to ask you a few questions about Emily that might help us to understand what happened to her.”

  Lilly put her hand over her eyes in an attempt to stanch her welling tears. “All right,” she said.

  “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Emily—someone she might have argued or fought with?”

  “No. Emily had no enemies. Everyone loved her.”

  “How about a boyfriend? Was she sweet on anyone?”

  Lilly looked away and put her hand to her mouth again.

  Lamb touched her other hand, which was resting on the small blue table. “There can be no secrets, Miss Schmidt,” he said gently. “We must know what you know if we are to find who did this to Emily.”

  Lilly turned to Lamb. Her lips quivered slightly. “Charles,” she said.

  Lamb put the photo of the pilot on the table. “Is this Charles?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long has Emily known him?”

  “They met last fall when she began helping at the infirmary near Cloverton airfield. They met in a pub in the village near there.” She looked down for a second, then back at Lamb. “I think Emily was looking for a pilot—that’s why she volunteered at Cloverton. She found them romantic, you know. Heroic. And, sure enough, she found one. He’s Canadian. She used to see him two or three times a week before the Germans started coming. She hasn’t seen him much since, though. She told me yesterday morning that she was going to see him. She’d spent part of the previous night waiting for him after the airfield was attacked. She told me that she was certain he’d survived.”

  “Do you know Charles’s last name?”

  “Graham. Charles Graham.”

  “Would you say that Emily was in love with Charles Graham?” Wallace asked.

  “Oh, yes.” She glanced away for just a second. “At least she was in love with the idea of him.”

  “Was he in love with her?”

  Lilly looked at the photo of Graham lying on the table. “I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Emily thought he was.”

  “But you had your doubts?” Wallace persisted.

  Lilly shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. She pressed her fingers against her eyes again.

  “Is there something about Charles Graham you’re not telling us, Miss Schmidt?” Wallace asked. “Something we should know?”

  Lilly wiped her eyes, then pushed Graham’s photo toward Lamb. “She was carrying Charles’s baby,” she said. “She found out a couple of weeks ago. She’s been waking up sick in the mornings.”

  The news surprised Lamb—then again, it didn’t. Winston-Sheed was right. The war had encouraged a kind of throwing off of the usual cautions and the notion that patience, waiting, usually produced a greater reward.

  “Did she tell Charles Graham that she was pregnant?” Wallace asked.

  “She didn’t want to worry him with it. She said that he’d spoken to her of marriage.”

  “Did she tell anyone else of this?”

  “Her brother.”

  “Donald?”

  “Yes. They were close. They kept a kind of alliance against their mother, who’s mad and has been since Emily’s father died more than a dozen years ago. Mad with grief, I always said. Donald’s letters to Emily come here, to the shop. Emily couldn’t allow her mother to know that she was writing to Donald. His letters come here; I gave them to Emily.”

  “No one else knew of the pregnancy, then?” Lamb asked.

  “Not that Emily said.” Lilly looked at the floor. “She certainly wouldn’t have said anything to her mother.”

  Lamb put the photo of the boy on the table. “Do you recognize this boy? We found this photo in Emily’s wallet, along with the photo of Charles Graham.”

  Emily studied the photo for several seconds. “I suppose he could be one of those children Emily knew from working on Lord Pembroke’s estate. One of them had sent her some letter or something recently that concerned her.”

  “Did Emily say that this correspondence came from a boy named Peter?” Lamb asked.

  “Yes, Peter. Emily felt responsible for him. I told her she wasn’t—that she couldn’t help the fact that he was daft.”

  “What do you mean when you say she felt responsible for him?” Wallace asked.

  “She was worried that she might have sent him the wrong message somehow—that he might be in love with her when she had never been anything more to him than a friend. She took pity on him, though she admired his talent. She said he is quite a good artist. Brilliant, even. She told me that she wasn’t going to go back to the estate this summer, even if the children came, because she was moving on from all that. She was working on getting out of here, away from her mother. She was worried that Peter might have felt as if she’d abandoned him.”

  Lamb placed the cryptic drawing on the table. “Is this the sort of thing she said she had received from Peter?”

  Lilly’s face registered surprise at the drawing. “I don’t know,” she said after a couple of seconds. “I never saw it. She only said that she was worried that Peter was upset about something. That he was trying to tell her that he was upset.”

  “Do you have any notion of what this sketch might mean—what he might have been trying to tell Emily?” Wallace asked.

  “That he was frightened, or angry? It’s very ugly and beautiful at the same time. I think Emily was trying to help Peter, but he took everything in the wrong way.”

  “Did Emily ever mention any of the other children from the estate—perhaps one who could be the boy in the photograph?” Lamb asked.

  “No.” She paused, as if considering the question more thoroughly, then added, “There was some trouble last summer with one of the boys, though. One of them ran away for a day or so. But he turned up eventually. The boy was one of those who Donald supervised. Donald also worked for Lord Pembroke in the summers. The boy apparently clashed with Donald, though I’m not sure how.”

  “Do you know if she wrote to Donald of her concerns about Peter?”

  “I suppose she must have. They spoke about everything.”

  “Have you received any recent letters from Donald?” Lamb asked.

  “No. I think it’s hard for him to find the time to write.”

  The bell above the door jangled and an elderly couple entered the shop. Lamb smiled at Lilly. “Thank you for your time, Miss Schmidt,” he said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  Lilly’s eyes welled. “I don’t understand it,” she said. “Why would anyone want to hurt Emily?”

  Lamb and Wallace returned to Winchester, where they each grabbed a cheese-and-pickle sandwich and a cup of tea. Wallace thought of Delilah, had been thinking of her all morning and of what he might do to the man who’d beaten her. He realized that he was willing to risk trouble for Delilah’s sake, even with Lamb’s warning still ringing in his ears.

  Lamb wanted to have another crack at communicating with Peter Wilkins, and had fresh questions for Lord Pembroke about Emily and Donald Fordham and the boy in the photo they’d found in Emily’s wallet.

  He called Leonard Parkinson and requested another meeting with Pembroke. Parkinson said that Pembroke had gone to London and planned to return on the following morning. He offered to arrange a meeting for eleven the next morning.

  Lamb then called Winston-Sheed’s office and left a message that Emily Fordham allegedly had been pregnant and would the doctor kindly confirm that as soon as he was able.

  Larkin appeared at the d
oor to Lamb’s office. He handed Lamb a brief report on his analysis of the tin box Rivers had found in the mill ruins. Abbott’s and Lydia Blackwell’s fingerprints were all over the box. “I apologize for the incident this morning with the seagulls, sir,” Larkin said, standing in Lamb’s doorway.

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “No, but I suppose I approved of it. At least I did at the time.”

  “Forget about it,” Lamb said. “Find me something to use in this latest mess.”

  He finished his sandwich and drained his tea. It sated his hunger—the empty feeling in his stomach—but nothing else. Even though he must eventually tell Harding that Larkin had found Abbott’s prints on the tin box, he had nothing to say to the superintendent at the moment and so stayed away from Harding’s office. Harding had been out of line dismissing the doctor’s stunt and threatening the men. In any case, Harding seemed to be avoiding him as well. They would have to steer clear of each other for a while, until the emotions attendant to the morning’s events subsided.

  Wallace had begun to busy himself by typing up a report of their interviews with Elizabeth Fordham and Lilly Schmidt. He started by typing “Elizabeth Fordham is bloody fucking crazy.” He stared at what he’d written and began to laugh—he didn’t know why. The woman had lost her daughter in the most terrible of ways. It was nothing to laugh at.

  Still.

  He typed “And spider boy can’t fucking talk!” He laughed so hard at this that he spit some of his tepid tea onto the keys of his typewriter. He looked around the incident room and noticed Lamb heading for his desk. He ripped the paper from the machine, balled it, and tossed it into the basket next to his desk.

  “Let’s go have a talk with Charles Graham,” Lamb said.

  Wallace choked back a final smile and wiped moisture from his eyes. He put his hat on his head. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  At Cloverton, they showed their warrant cards to the guard at the roadblock, who waved them through. Wallace wondered where the energetic young Lt. Glendon had got to; likely kicking someone’s oversized arse and screaming at them to get a bloody move on.

  Lamb drove into the partially ruined airfield, where they got a close look at the damage done by the marauding Stukas. The fuel depot and the area surrounding it for more than a hundred meters in all directions was a charred mess and the flat grass runway still was pocked with a half dozen bomb craters, though work crews, with the aid of a bulldozer, were rapidly filling them with dirt and gravel. The remnants of the six fighter planes the Germans had destroyed on the ground had been bulldozed to the edges of the field and were being carted away, piece by piece, in rumbling lorries. Miraculously, the Stukas had missed entirely the small command post and the barracks in which the pilots lived. Lamb again recalled the pilot he’d seen die. The boy had lived in a place just like it—perhaps he’d even been stationed at Cloverton and lived in that very building. His metal cot and footlocker almost certainly by now had been assigned to his replacement—some other boy whose job would be to risk his life two or even three times a day, every day, for the foreseeable future, until the Germans either smashed Britain or gave up trying.

  He parked the Wolseley in front of the small wooden command post and mounted the stair with Wallace at his heels. A uniformed clerk stood as Lamb entered. He was an older man, perhaps thirty.

  “May I help you, sir?” he asked politely.

  Lamb showed his warrant card. “I’d like to see the commander, if I may,” he said.

  The clerk took Lamb’s warrant card, looked at it closely, then returned it to Lamb with a tight smile. “Very good, Chief Inspector,” he said. “I’ll see if the wing commander can speak with you.”

  The clerk went to a door just to the left of his desk and knocked on it.

  A voice within said “Come.” The clerk opened the door and disappeared into the room, closing the door behind him. Thirty seconds later, he emerged.

  “Wing Commander Bruegel will see you now,” the clerk said.

  He motioned Lamb and Wallace into a small office with no windows that contained not much more than a desk, two chairs, and a pair of olive-colored metal filing cabinets along the left-hand wall. Bruegel stood to meet them; he was of medium height and build—not what Lamb would have called impressive. But Lamb immediately sensed Bruegel’s confidence of his place in the world, and his rank. And yet Bruegel couldn’t have been much older than his clerk; all of these RAF people seemed so young. But it was their youth, and youth’s hallmark sense of invincibility, that was responsible for their courage.

  Lamb and Wallace introduced themselves and showed Bruegel their identification; he in turn motioned for them to take the two metal chairs that faced his desk.

  “How may I help you, gentlemen?”

  “The name of a man under your command—Charles Graham—has come up in connection with a murder inquiry,” Lamb said. “I’d like to speak with him, if that’s possible.”

  “Am I allowed to know the details of this connection?”

  “His photograph was found in the wallet of a young woman named Emily Fordham, who was found murdered this morning near the village of Lipscombe.”

  Bruegel’s face clouded for a second, though he quickly regained his bearing. “How was she killed, if I might ask?”

  “She was attacked last night as she rode her bicycle along the road to Lipscombe. It appears that she stopped for some reason and was struck a blow to the head. We have reason to believe that she might have been returning from Cloverton at the time.”

  Bruegel called the clerk, who entered promptly. “Fetch Lieutenant Graham, please,” he said. When the clerk had left, Bruegel looked at Lamb. “You may use my office, Chief Inspector. Of course, if we are called to scramble, then we must cut the interview short.”

  “Thank you,” Lamb said.

  Charles Graham was tall and slender, with a boyish face and blue eyes. He appeared harmless, even benevolent, as he did in the photo Emily had hidden in her wallet—though, of course, he might be nothing of the kind, Lamb thought.

  Bruegel straightened as Graham entered and saluted. “This is Chief Inspector Thomas Lamb and Detective Sergeant David Wallace of the Hampshire Constabulary,” he said to Graham. “They are conducting an inquiry in which your name has come up. I expect you to give them your full cooperation.”

  Graham’s face betrayed no emotion. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “Very well, then,” Bruegel said. He nodded at Lamb and left the room.

  Lamb stood and allowed Graham to have his chair. He sat on the edge of Bruegel’s desk, facing Graham, with Wallace to his right. He wanted to see Graham’s immediate, unvarnished reaction to the news of Emily’s murder. It was likely Graham hadn’t yet heard of Emily’s death. Unless he’d killed her.

  “I’m investigating the murder of Emily Fordham,” Lamb said. “Her body was found this morning on the road near Lipscombe. Someone struck her a fatal blow to the back of the head.”

  Confusion clouded Graham’s blue eyes. “Emily? Are you sure?”

  “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?”