The Language of the Dead

by Stephen Kelly

  “You don’t have to stand for it, Delilah.”

  “You don’t understand, David.”

  He put down the ice pack and took Delilah’s hand. “What don’t I understand?”

  She looked away. Wallace touched her cheek. “What don’t I understand?” he repeated.

  When she turned back to face him, she was crying. “I deserve it.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Did he beat you, too?”

  “No,” she said softly. She looked at Wallace. “I was pregnant with his child; that’s why we married.” She looked at the floor. “I miscarried. I know it sounds terrible, but a part of me was glad. I wasn’t ready for a child. And yet losing it devastated me. He blamed me. He stopped coming home—started spending more time with his mates. That was a year ago. I was actually relieved when he was called up, and I hate myself for feeling that way. It’s not right.”

  He touched her cheek again. “Delilah.”

  “No, David,” she said, touching his hand. “Nothing you can say will help.”

  She looked at him with pleading in her eyes. “You must promise me you won’t go after them.” She put her hand gently against his shoulder, encouraging him to lie back.

  “You should sleep now,” she said.

  In the moonlight, Peter crept down the hill to the summerhouse.

  The policeman had gone into the house; he’d seen the policeman. No one could see him now; no one was watching. Everyone was sleeping. He found the kerosene lantern, lit it.

  Everything was as he had left it except for his drawings. He could see that the policeman had looked through his drawings.

  A barn spider had spun its web across the knot in the tree. He went to the photograph of the tree and moved it so that it was off center. Then he went to his desk and began to draw—first the dark oval, then the spider and its web.

  He worked quickly.

  He left the photograph as it was, off-center. Then he returned to the darkness.

  TWENTY

  THE NEXT MORNING, WALLACE AWAKENED ALONE ON DELILAH’S SOFA.

  His head and neck ached. He sat up gently and decided that he was in good enough shape to go to work; he couldn’t afford to give Harding an excuse to kick him about. He looked at the clock; he had just enough time to make it if he didn’t tarry.

  He went to the tiny loo at the rear of the house and studied himself in the mirror. His right eye was black and swollen and his collar, shirt, and tie bloodstained. He looked at his trousers; they were muddy and torn at the cuff and right knee. He realized that he must go home to bathe and change, which would make him late for work. But he had his story ready for Lamb—he’d been beaten and robbed.

  He mounted the stairs to Delilah’s room. He expected to find her curled into herself, sleeping. But her bed was empty. A note lay on the pillow.

  David,

  I think it would be best if we didn’t see each other for a while. It will be safer that way. I’m sorry for what happened to you; I feel as if I might never forgive myself for it. I’ve acted a fool and don’t want to hurt you anymore, or see you hurt. I’ve made my bed and must lie in it. I truly hope that you are feeling better and I’m dreadfully sorry I’m not there to comfort you.

  Delilah

  Wallace stared at the note for nearly a minute before he dropped it on the bed and left.

  On the previous night, Lamb and Marjorie also had spent nearly an hour in a shelter waiting out the air raid that never came. They worried more about Vera than themselves, but when the planes failed to show, their worry lessened. To their surprise, Vera had called them later that night from Quimby wanting to know if they were all right; she’d heard that the sirens had gone off in Winchester.

  In the morning, Lamb obtained a warrant to see the adoption records of Thomas Bennett on the grounds that the boy might have information that was material to the inquiry into Emily Fordham’s murder.

  On the previous day, Rivers and the constables had managed to knock on roughly half the doors in Lipscombe but turned up nothing useful on Emily Fordham. Before setting out for Basingstoke, Lamb sent them back to Lipscombe to finish the job.

  Wallace was just arriving, a half hour late. He didn’t bother trying on his smile with Lamb. “I’m sorry I’m late, sir,” he said. He stood before Lamb, vaguely at attention.

  Wallace’s battered face shocked Lamb. His first thought was: He’s done it; he’s gone over an edge. “What in bloody hell happened to you, David?”

  “A couple of blokes jumped me last night, took my cash. I fought back—stupid, I know.”

  Lamb thought, You were drunk and got into some bloody row. Still, the sight of Wallace’s swollen face filled him with a strange pity. “Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked.

  Wallace straightened. “It’s just a black eye. I’ve had my share.”

  “I don’t suppose you got a good look at the men who jumped you?”

  “No. It was black as pitch out.”

  “Do you want to file a report?”

  “I don’t see the need. They only took me for a few quid. Drunken kids.”

  Lamb was silent for a couple of seconds; Wallace felt as if Lamb was looking directly into his soul.

  “You’re certain you’re all right, then?” Lamb repeated.

  “I’m fine, sir.”

  “All right, then.” He held up the warrant. “We’re going to Basingstoke.”

  The small football pitch was empty as Lamb brought the Wolseley to a stop by the door of The Resurrection Home for Boys.

  Mrs. Langdon looked up from her desk as Lamb and Wallace entered. “Back with us so soon?”

  “Yes,” Lamb said. “I wonder if I might speak with Mr. Pirie?”

  “Well, you could, I suppose, except that he’s not here.” As Wallace stepped out from behind Lamb, she noticed Wallace’s eye. “My goodness, Sergeant. What happened to you?”

  Wallace smiled. “A bad fall, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh my. I do hope you’re all right.”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “Mr. Pirie is not in?” Lamb asked.

  “No. I’m afraid he’s running late.”

  “Do you expect him soon?”

  “Well, I don’t know, really. He hasn’t called, which is unlike him. But it’s possible he’s been detained on some business or another. He’s often called away.”

  Lamb produced the warrant. “I have here a warrant authorizing Sergeant Wallace and myself to see the adoption file of Thomas Bennett. I’m going to have to request that you produce it for us.”

  Mrs. Langdon read the warrant. “Oh, dear,” she muttered. “I don’t think I understand.”

  “What don’t you understand, madam?” Lamb asked.

  “Well, we have a file on Thomas Bennett, of course. But we have no adoption file.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Well, Thomas has never been adopted, Chief Inspector. You see, he never returned to us after he went to Lord Pembroke’s last summer. Mr. Pirie told me that he’d had some trouble at Brookings and that he and Lord Pembroke had arranged to have Thomas transferred to another orphanage—St. Christopher’s, in Norwich. Mr. Pirie came to an arrangement with the director there. Thomas was a troubled boy—we had our troubles with him, too, you see. And we’ve taken in other boys who found it hard to adjust to other institutions.”

  “Mr. Pirie told us yesterday that Thomas had been adopted by a family in Glasgow,” Wallace said.

  Mrs. Langdon’s face clouded. “Oh, dear,” she repeated. “I’m sorry, Sergeant, but I don’t know why he would have said that. He must have confused Thomas with someone else.”

  “May we see Thomas’s file, please?” Lamb asked.

  “Of course.” She rose from her chair and went to a pair of wooden filing cabinets that stood against the left-hand wall. She spent a few seconds flipping through the files before turning back to Lamb with a look of confusion and worry on her face.

  “I’m afraid the file isn�
�t here, Chief Inspector, but for the life of me I can’t say why.” She looked back at the cabinets. “I keep the files in good order.”

  “Did you handle the paperwork related to Thomas’s transfer, Mrs. Langdon?” Lamb asked.

  She looked at him. “No. Mr. Pirie handled it personally because he considered it delicate.”

  “Do you have a telephone number for St. Christopher’s?”

  “Yes, we do, of course.” She opened a metal filing box on her desk that was full of index cards and found the one pertaining to St. Christopher’s, which she gave to Lamb. “The director’s name is Hoskins, as you can see there on the card.”

  “Thank you,” Lamb said. “Do you have a telephone that I can use privately?”

  Mrs. Langdon glanced at Pirie’s office. “I suppose Mr. Pirie wouldn’t mind if you used his,” she said tentatively.

  “Thank you.”

  Lamb went into Pirie’s office with Wallace. On the telephone, Mr. Hoskins emphatically denied that any boy named Thomas Bennett ever had been transferred to St. Christopher’s from The Resurrection Home for Boys.

  “Why didn’t he cock up some sort of phony adoption papers?” Wallace asked after Lamb hung up.

  “What good would it do him? Something like that can’t be faked; it’s too bloody easy to check. His only hope was that he’d never be questioned on it.”

  “So demanding the warrant was to give him enough time to do a runner?”

  “That’s the way it looks.”

  “What’s happened to the boy, then?”

  “I’ve a terrible feeling he’s dead.”

  They returned to the outer office and asked for Pirie’s address, which the helpful Mrs. Langdon supplied to them. “I do hope there’s nothing wrong.”

  Wallace smiled. “Nothing at all.”

  Lamb then briefly returned to Pirie’s office, from which he called Harding and requested that the superintendent send Larkin and a half dozen constables to Basingstoke, along with a warrant to search Pirie’s house.

  “What’s this bloody man Pirie done?” Harding asked.

  “I think he might have killed Thomas Bennett, the boy I mentioned to you yesterday.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right, I’ll call the railways and request that their people be on the lookout for Pirie,” he said. Lamb gave Harding a brief description of Pirie and then rang off.

  Lamb instructed Wallace to wait at the orphanage on the off chance that Pirie might risk a return to the orphanage to pick up something of value. He then went to Pirie’s small detached house on the east side of Basingstoke. When no one answered his knock, he kicked in the door and stepped into the foyer.

  The living room was to Lamb’s right; to the left a narrow flight of stairs led to the second floor. A hall led through the center of the house to the kitchen. Lamb peeked into the living room but found it empty, the blackout curtains drawn. He moved down the hall to the kitchen but found that empty also. He went back down the hall and mounted the steps to the second floor, where he found two rooms. The first was a kind of study. A desk was pushed against the window on the wall opposite the door; the other walls were lined with books in shelves, with the exception of a small space by the desk in which sat a file cabinet. Piles of papers and files lay on the floor near the desk. Lamb entered the room and looked through the papers but found nothing related to Thomas Bennett.

  The second room was Pirie’s bedroom. It contained a dresser, a single bed against the far wall, which was unmade, and a night table next to the left side of the bed.

  Lamb carefully picked through the drawers of the dresser but found only socks and underwear, along with several wool sweaters and cotton shirts. The bottom drawer contained a blanket. He checked the closet and also found nothing but clothes—trousers, shirts, jackets, a pair of dark suits—and three identical pairs of well-shined black shoes. He checked the pockets of the trousers and the jackets but found nothing, not even lint. He pulled back the covers on the bed but found nothing beneath them. He got onto his hands and knees and looked beneath the bed, where he also came up empty. He saw no sign of the presence of a woman in the house; Gerald Pirie appeared to be a bachelor.

  He stood and looked around the room. He glanced at the nightstand; its top contained nothing save an alarm clock that had wound down. He pulled open the drawer and found that it contained several religious-themed books and a volume of Wilfred Owen’s Great War poetry. He leafed through the books but found nothing in them.

  A leather portfolio lay at the bottom of the drawer. Lamb tossed the books on Pirie’s bed and picked up the portfolio. It contained a sheet of plain white paper lying atop a photograph. Lamb removed the sheet and found beneath it a photograph of a dark-haired boy of about ten, who stood facing the camera utterly naked in what appeared to Lamb to be a kind of white-walled cell. The boy stood with his hands on his hips, his eyes brimming with fear and confusion. The boy was standing on a white sheet and in front of a second white sheet that appeared to have been pinned to the wall behind him.

  The boy was Thomas Bennett.

  The emotions that Thomas’s face betrayed pierced Lamb to his soul; the child was a prisoner, held against his will. He was small and weak and had no recourse but to obey whatever power dominated and threatened him. His neck and chest were bruised in several places.

  Lamb’s mind raced with scenarios of what might have happened to Thomas and why. He thought that Thomas might have run from Pembroke’s to escape going back to Pirie. But then Pembroke had sent Thomas back to Basingstoke. Blackwell had assisted in that, if unwittingly. Thomas’s running had spooked Pirie, who was used to Thomas’s obedience. So Pirie had killed Thomas and concocted the fake transfer to cover the boy’s sudden absence. None of the boys who had gone to Pembroke’s the previous summer—nor, perhaps, Pembroke himself—had even known that Thomas was gone from the orphanage until the summer had ended and they’d returned to Basingstoke, when Pirie had told them that Thomas had been transferred to St. Christopher’s.

  He wondered how much of the truth Pembroke knew. And he wondered if, perhaps, Pirie knew something compromising about Pembroke that had compelled Pembroke to cover for him.

  In any case, Thomas’s disappearance had upset Peter, who then had tried to contact Emily, thereby unearthing events Pirie—and perhaps Pembroke—had sought to bury. Pirie might easily have killed Emily, driven from Basingstoke to Lipscombe and back in the space of two hours. Lamb was not yet certain how the killing of Will Blackwell fit this scenario, other than that Thomas might have said something to Blackwell about why he feared returning to Basingstoke. Again, Pirie had more than enough opportunity to drive to Quimby and kill Blackwell.

  Now the threads of Pirie’s elaborate deception were unraveling and he had gone on the run. But why hadn’t he destroyed the incriminating photo of Thomas, or taken it with him?

  He must speak again with Pembroke.

  He also must find Gerald Pirie and discover with certainty the fate of Thomas Bennett.

  TWENTY-ONE

  LAMB USED PIRIE’S HOME TELEPHONE TO CALL WALLACE AT THE orphanage.

  He described what he’d found in Pirie’s night table and told Wallace that he would await the arrival of the constables and the warrant at Pirie’s house, then return to the school with a constable who would take over the job of waiting for Pirie. Wallace then would take charge of the search of Pirie’s house while Lamb went to Brookings to speak with Pembroke.

  In slightly more than an hour, all was done and in place.

  At Brookings, the venerable Hatton answered the door. “May I help you, sir?”

  “I’d like to speak with Lord Pembroke, please.” The butler raised his eyebrows slightly and gestured for Lamb to follow him into the foyer. “If you’ll just wait here a moment, sir,” he said, then disappeared into the bowels of the house.

  Two minutes later, Leonard Parkinson appeared. “Chief Inspector,” he said, offering
his hand. “Very good to see you again. What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to speak with Lord Pembroke.”

  A cloud crossed Parkinson’s round face. “Oh, dear,” he said. “I’m afraid Lord Pembroke’s in London. I’m sorry.”

  “When do you expect him to return?”

  “Well, I’m afraid I don’t know exactly.”

  “Do you know where I might reach him in London? It’s rather important.”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know that exactly, either.”

  “Can you get a message to him?”

  “Yes—yes, of course. I expect he’ll call sometime today. What should I tell him?”

  “I have a question regarding Thomas Bennett’s disappearance that I’d like to discuss with him.”

  Concern creased Parkinson’s brow. “I don’t mean to pry, Chief Inspector, but is there something that Lord Pembroke—or perhaps I—should know?”

  “No,” Lamb said. He left it at that.

  “Yes—yes, I see,” Parkinson said. “Official business; I understand. Well, I’ll let Lord Pembroke know that you’re trying to reach him as soon as I am able.”

  “Thank you.”

  As he departed Brookings, Lamb drove about two hundred meters up the main drive, until he was out of sight of the house. There, he pulled the Wolseley off the road, next to a small wood. He exited the car and began to move through the wood until he reached the lawn that fronted the main house. The house was about eighty meters away, to his right. He moved across the lawn until he reached the east side of the house. Between him and the house lay the fallow vegetable gardens. He saw no one. With the exception of Hatton and Parkinson, Brookings seemed deserted.

  He moved along the east garden until he reached the high hedge that ran along the back lawn toward the cliffs and the sea. He followed the hedge, keeping to the side that was out of sight from the house, until he reckoned that he was near the place where the hedge opened onto the trail that led down the hill to Peter’s cottage. He peered through the hedge and saw the opening on the opposite side.