The Language of the Dead

by Stephen Kelly

  Lamb produced the small drawing of the spider he’d found in Emily’s purse. “I’m certain that Peter drew this, just as he drew the sketch I found in Blackwell’s shed,” he said. “Do you agree?”

  Pembroke looked at the drawing. “Yes, this is Peter’s work.”

  “I found the drawing in Emily Fordham’s purse,” Lamb said. “Do you know why Peter might have sent her such a drawing?”

  Pembroke’s brow furrowed. “I’m afraid I don’t. Peter liked Emily. He, too, might even have fallen in love with her—in his own way, of course.”

  “Emily had told several people in recent days that she was worried about Peter in some way, though she didn’t say specifically what that worry was. Do you know what might have upset Peter?”

  “As I said, Chief Inspector, Peter is very private—a conundrum, really. I’m not sure that anyone, myself included, can say with any certainty what he might actually be feeling.”

  Lamb nodded at the drawing. “Is it possible that Peter might have become jealous of the fact that Emily had a man in her life, someone whose presence made it obvious to Peter that she didn’t love him in the way that he might have imagined she did?”

  “I suppose it’s possible. He’s no longer a child, after all.” Pembroke looked again at the drawing. “I suppose the spider might have been his way of telling Emily that he was angry with her. As I think I said last time, he doesn’t like spiders.”

  Lamb produced the photograph of the boy that Lydia Blackwell had identified as Thomas and laid it next to Peter’s drawing. “Do you recognize this boy?”

  Lamb saw surprise briefly flash in Pembroke’s eyes. “Where did you get this?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say at the moment.”

  Pembroke nodded at the photo. “That is Thomas Bennett. He is one of the boys who spent summers here before the war.”

  “Had you had any trouble with Thomas Bennett?”

  “Yes, we had a bit of trouble with him last summer, though the matter worked itself out in the end.”

  “What sort of trouble?”

  “He ran away. The boys had been here only a month or so at the time.”

  “And you didn’t think to call the police?”

  “I didn’t consider it necessary. We’ve had boys run off before, but they always return. I hope you won’t take this in the wrong way, Chief Inspector, but many of the boys who come to us have had negative experiences with the police, who tend to see them as vagrants and troublemakers. When we’ve had trouble with the boys who come here, we’ve tended to handle it ourselves. Most of our boys are frightened of the police, frankly, and I saw no reason to frighten them further.”

  “What prompted Thomas to run away?”

  “Well, he had a bit of trouble with Donald Fordham, to be honest. Donald caught Thomas stealing melons from the garden—or so Donald claimed. Donald said that he’d caught Thomas throwing the melons into a stream that runs through the estate and that, when he’d confronted Thomas about it, that Thomas at first denied stealing the melons; Thomas said that he’d merely found them near the stream. When Donald said he doubted that, Thomas basically told him to sod off.”

  Pembroke retrieved his smoldering cigarette and took another drag from it. “Admittedly, Thomas was a difficult boy,” he continued. “Donald was the leader of Thomas’s group, and Thomas challenged his authority from the beginning. That said, I thought that Donald’s punishment of Thomas for the melon business was harsh: he confined Thomas to barracks alone for an entire day. I didn’t intervene, however, though I wish now that I had. I wanted Donald to handle it. I considered the thing a learning experience for both of them. But in the end, Donald handled it badly. He overreacted.”

  “And so Thomas ran away?”

  “Yes. We searched the estate but didn’t find him. It turned out that he’d gone to Manscome Hill and that Will Blackwell had found him. Somehow Blackwell persuaded Thomas to come with him to his cottage and then contacted me. I went to Quimby and retrieved Thomas from Blackwell. The director of the orphanage then came down and took Thomas back to Basingstoke with him.”

  “And so Thomas did not return to Brookings that summer?”

  Pembroke exhaled. “No. We thought it best he not return.”

  “So he stayed in Basingstoke, at the orphanage?”

  “Yes. Frankly, I left the decision on the matter up to the discretion of the director. We would have welcomed Thomas back, but the director thought it best to forego a return.”

  “And what is the name of the director of the orphanage, sir?”

  “Gerald Pirie. A good man. He and I have worked together for years. He’s a Baptist, you see, and the orphanage is run by the Baptists. The Resurrection Home for Boys.”

  “Do you know where Emily might have gotten this photograph of Thomas?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t. I suppose it’s possible that she got it from Donald. It’s also very possible that Thomas himself might have given it to her. As I said, the boys here all were in love with Emily.”

  “Is it possible that Peter gave her the photo—that he might have sent it to her with the drawing?”

  “I don’t see how, unless Thomas gave it to him,” he said. “But the two of them never were close, from what I saw.”

  “Why did you fail to mention the incident with Thomas when I spoke to you before? I asked you then if you knew Blackwell and you said that you didn’t, really.”

  “I suppose I felt that the incident with Thomas was irrelevant, if I thought of it at all. Surely Thomas had nothing to do with Blackwell’s killing. He’s just a boy.”

  “You paid Will Blackwell one hundred seventy-five pounds for returning Thomas. It seems an unusually large amount.”

  “I was very grateful to Blackwell for having done us the favor,” he said. “As I think I told you before, what I’d written in my book had hurt him and I hadn’t meant for that to happen. I believed I owed him something—perhaps you’d call it restitution of a kind. His finding Thomas and contacting us turned out to be an invaluable help to Mr. Pirie and me and everyone connected with the program we run here. He did us an inestimable favor, when he might just have washed his hands of the matter. And frankly, Chief Inspector—you’ll excuse me if this sounds wrong somehow—but one hundred seventy-five pounds is not a large sum of money to me. I’ve plenty of money. Much more than I need. I give away large sums of it every year.”

  “I’d like to try to speak with Peter again,” Lamb said.

  “I’d rather you didn’t, if that’s possible,” Pembroke said. “The last time frightened him more than I imagined it would. He didn’t come home at all that night and when he did return on the following morning, he wouldn’t let me near him. I understand why you feel you must speak to him. However, I’m sorry to say that, in any case, he’s not around. He’s gone off on one of his butterfly explorations.”

  “Does Peter know what has happened to Emily?”

  “I don’t know for certain. He’s been gone for the last two days. I plan to tell him when the time seems right. I expect the news will be a blow to him.”

  “I wonder if I might have another look around the summerhouse,” Lamb asked.

  “Well, I suppose it will be all right, if you think it will be worth your while,” Pembroke said. “But you mustn’t enter the cottage, as I’m sure I made clear the last time.”

  “Of course.”

  “Very well, then. I’ll let Parkinson know to expect you back in a little while. He’ll show you out, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.” Lamb stood. “Thank you again for your time.”

  “It’s my pleasure to be of assistance,” Pembroke said. “Hopefully, your luck will improve.”

  “I’m counting on it.”

  Lamb made his way down the cliff path to Peter’s cottage.

  He went to the front window but found it shrouded by blackout curtains. The front door was locked. He walked to the back and stood in the middle of the small s
pace between the cottage and the base of the hill. He looked up the path along which Peter had fled from him and at the lonely tree at the hill’s crest. He turned toward the house and peered into the back window but again found his view blocked by curtains.

  Peter seemed to have left no sign of himself—of his habitation or habits—outside the cottage. With the exception of his drawings, he seemed to prefer invisibility.

  Lamb tried to imagine a scenario in which Emily Fordham might have upset the delicate psychological and emotional balance of Peter’s ordered existence. Had she done so, she likely hadn’t meant to frighten or anger him. Then again, perhaps she possessed a cruel streak. Perhaps she’d told Peter that she intended never to return to Brookings. Maybe she’d even told him of her RAF pilot. Perhaps Peter saw Emily as the spider and himself as the butterfly. Maybe, too, Will Blackwell had rejected or upset Peter.

  He went to the back door of the cottage and tried the knob. To his surprise, he found the door unlocked. He decided that he must see inside the cottage, despite Pembroke’s objections. He was not yet convinced either of Peter’s guilt or innocence in the deaths of Will Blackwell and Emily Fordham. But he was certain of Peter’s involvement in the events of the past few days. And yet his chances of speaking to Peter seemed dim. Believing that he had no choice but to act, he pushed open the door to the summerhouse. A fly seeking sunlight buzzed past his head into the summer air and a musty smell assailed him. Moving by the light that filtered in through the open door, Lamb went to the window and parted the heavy, black curtains. Sunlight spilled into the cottage’s single, small room.

  An unmade wooden cot, piled with a crumpled white sheet and feather pillow, lay along the far wall. To the right of this was a sink with a water pump; a metal bucket sat empty in the sink. The rest of the interior consisted of an array of shelves and small tables and a pair of wooden chairs. Some of the shelves were built into the walls, while others were freestanding. All were stuffed with illustrated guidebooks to the flora and fauna of England, along with notebooks and sheaves of paper. The wall opposite the one that held Peter’s cot was dominated by a table of about six feet wide on which was spread an array of paints and brushes and pens and pencils and boxes of pastel crayons. Sketchpads of various grades of paper were stacked near the right edge of the table; several small blank canvases leaned against its legs.

  The wall above the desk was filled with a dozen framed exhibits of bugs stuck to black felt backgrounds with straight pins—butterflies, beetles, bees, wasps, hornets, spiders. None were labeled. Lamb estimated that the exhibits contained several hundred specimens. Peter had arranged the exhibits in three neat rows of four each. The only anomaly was a framed photograph of the dead tree that stood at the top of the hill. The photo was centered beneath the second and third exhibit—butterflies and spiders—of the bottom row. The photograph had been taken from the bottom of the hill on a cloudy day. The barren branches of the tree stood out against the gray sky like the black, crooked legs of an insect.

  Lamb spent several minutes searching the cottage’s corners and crannies for something with which Peter might have hit Emily Fordham and Will Blackwell in the head, but found nothing.

  He returned to the desk and gently searched the mess of papers, portfolios, books, and paints, making sure that he replaced everything in the way it had been. He opened a leather-bound portfolio and found that it contained a dozen crayon sketches of butterflies. Each was beautifully and richly rendered down to the tiniest markings and variation in color.

  He heard a scraping noise by the window. He went to the window and peered into the yard but saw nothing amiss. He stood still and listened. The back door stood open. His first thought was that Pembroke had come down the path and caught him rummaging through Peter’s things. He heard what he thought sounded like someone moving from the cottage up the hill. He went to the door but saw no one.

  “Peter?” he said.

  No one answered.

  NINETEEN

  WALLACE HAD SPENT THE PAST TWO HOURS LABORIOUSLY HUNTING and pecking away at the reports on the Blackwell and Fordham killings for Harding, hating every minute. He was nearly finished when he realized suddenly that Lamb was standing by his desk. He immediately moved to hand to Lamb what he’d thus far typed, as proof that he hadn’t dawdled away the morning.

  “I was just about to deliver this bloody mess to you,” he said, smiling.

  Lamb glanced at the papers for a couple of seconds, then handed them back to Wallace. “I’ll read them later,” he said, to Wallace’s consternation.

  Lamb had just finished reading Winston-Sheed’s report on Emily Fordham’s autopsy, which he’d found on his desk when he’d returned to the nick from Brookings. She had been struck on the head and knocked cold with a blunt object. The killer then had bludgeoned her in the head until she was dead. She showed no sign of other injury or sexual violation. And she indeed had been pregnant—seven weeks.

  Even though he still had very little to go on, he could sense cracks opening.

  He told Wallace that Pembroke had confirmed Lydia Blackwell’s identification of the boy in the photo as Thomas Bennett, that Thomas had quarreled with Donald Fordham, and that Pembroke had sent the boy back to Basingstoke at the suggestion of the orphanage’s director.

  “I think this boy knows something, just as Peter does,” Lamb said. “We need to speak with the director of the orphanage and, hopefully, with Thomas himself. I’m going there now and I want you to come with me.” He smiled. “Save you from your bloody typing.”

  “Does the director know we’re coming?” Wallace asked as he grabbed his jacket.

  Lamb popped a butterscotch into his mouth. “Of course not.”

  The Resurrection Home for Boys was housed in an ancient, somewhat decrepit manor house. Lamb and Wallace entered a wide, high-ceilinged foyer. In the middle of the foyer, a small sign atop a metal stand informed visitors that the office was to the right.

  The office was housed in what had been the sitting room. A wall had been constructed to divide the room into a small outer office and waiting room and a rather large inner office. As they entered the outer office, a middle-aged woman looked up at them from behind a small desk. She was a good-looking woman, Lamb thought. Her hair was blond streaked with a touch of gray, which showed her age. But she maintained the attributes of classic beauty: high cheeks, large eyes, and an aristocratically slender neck and shoulders.

  She smiled at Lamb and Wallace. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said. “May I help you?”

  Lamb introduced himself and Wallace. The woman smiled again and offered them her hand. “My name is Mrs. Langdon,” she said. Her gesture surprised Lamb; he wasn’t used to secretaries and clerks introducing themselves.

  “A pleasure, madam,” Lamb said, shaking her hand. “I wonder if we might have a word with Mr. Pirie?”

  “I’ll see,” Mrs. Langdon said brightly. She got up and disappeared into the inner office. A minute later, she returned. “Go right in,” she said.

  Gerald Pirie’s office comprised the better half of the former sitting room. Behind the wide mahogany desk at which Pirie sat, a trio of high windows looked onto what once had been the estate’s east lawn but now was a playing field on which a group of small boys were kicking about a football. Pirie was one of those men whose age Lamb found it difficult to gauge; he guessed that Pirie was in his mid-forties, though he might be older. He was of medium height and slightly overweight, with a round face, plump hands, and dark eyes that radiated melancholy. He wore a dark blue suit that had the look and quality of a railway conductor’s uniform; all it needed was brass buttons. He came out from behind his desk to greet them.

  “Good afternoon,” he said, offering them his hand. His accent was Scottish. “This is a surprise, I must say. I hope one of my boys isn’t in trouble.” He looked at Lamb with his chin slightly raised, expectant.

  “Nothing like that—though I would like to speak to one of your boys,” Lamb said
. “May we sit?”

  Pirie gestured for Lamb and Wallace to take the two chairs that faced his desk. He returned to his place behind his desk. “To which of the boys would you like to speak?”

  “Thomas Bennett,” Lamb said.

  “Thomas?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why Thomas, if I might ask?”

  “His name has come up in connection with a murder inquiry.”

  “A murder inquiry? Thomas?” Pirie hesitated for a couple of seconds, then placed his hands on his desk. “But I’m afraid Thomas is no longer with us, Chief Inspector.”

  Lamb waited for Pirie to elaborate. When Pirie didn’t, he asked, “Where is Thomas?”

  “He was adopted.”

  “When?”

  “Six or seven months ago. May I ask how Thomas is involved in your inquiry?”

  “His photograph was found in the wallet of a young woman named Emily Fordham, who was bludgeoned to death near the village of Lipscombe. Miss Fordham worked on Lord Jeffrey Pembroke’s estate in the summers with the boys from your institution. He told me that Thomas ran away from the estate last summer.”

  “That is true, yes.”

  “Did Lord Pembroke say why Thomas had run away from the estate?” He wanted to see if Pirie’s version of events matched Pembroke’s.

  “Thomas had gotten into some sort of trouble with one of the boys down there who work on the estate. I’m afraid I didn’t press Lord Pembroke on the matter; I merely took his word that he was satisfied with its resolution.”

  “And Thomas did not return to the estate?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was that because you forbade him?”

  “Yes. I didn’t think it wise to send him back.”