The Language of the Dead

by Stephen Kelly

  Vera picked up the drawing of the spider web spun across the black oval that Peter had dropped on the hill by the tree behind the summerhouse.

  “Tell me again what you think this might be,” she said.

  “I don’t know. A hole or void of some kind? I thought it might even represent a grave—perhaps Thomas’s grave.”

  Vera stared at the drawing for several minutes, turning it in her hands and squinting at it. “I wonder if it’s supposed to be a knot,” she said finally. “The hole, I mean.”

  “A what?

  “A knot—like a knot in a tree. They’re oval-shaped, from where the branches have fallen off. I wonder if a spider has spun a web across a knot in a tree that Peter knows. Maybe the spider is real and not meant to represent something else. And maybe the hole also is real.”

  She laid the drawing next to the note Lamb had found in Will Blackwell’s pocket: in the nut. “I wonder if that was what the old man was trying to say, too,” she said. “Not ‘nut,’ but ‘knot,’ and he misspelled it.”

  Lamb recalled the photo of the tree on Peter’s wall—how, on his last visit, he’d found it hanging crookedly on the wall, the only thing out of place in Peter’s well-ordered cottage. And he remembered now that Peter had placed the photo between his exhibits of butterflies and spiders, as if between his ideas of safety and ruination. And he had dropped the drawing for Lamb beneath the tree. Lamb wondered how he could have been so dense. The boy had practically sketched him a bloody map.

  “My God,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “I think you’re right—I think you’re absolutely right. The tree. It makes perfect sense. Whatever it is, he’s hidden it in the bloody tree. And Thomas is beneath the blue butterfly.”

  Lamb thought he now knew what Peter had hidden in the tree, and the idea chilled him to the core.

  “Which tree?” Vera asked. “And which butterfly?”

  “I don’t have time to explain,” Lamb said. He clasped her shoulders, as if beholding her anew after a long and trying period of separation. “But you’re right, Vera. You’ve done it. I have to go now, but when I see you again, I’ll explain everything.”

  He stood and kissed her on the cheek. “First, though, I must use that official telephone of yours.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  LAMB CALLED THE CONSTABULARY AND INSTRUCTED EVERS, THE desk sergeant, to track down Wallace and Rivers and to tell them to meet him as soon as they could at Brookings. They should not go to the front door but should come around to the back of the house and head toward the sea.

  “There’s a summerhouse back there, down a path in a break in the hedge,” Lamb said. “As soon as they can. Have you got that?”

  “Right, guv.”

  Lamb reached Brookings in darkness. He drove slowly up the drive before pulling off near the place where he had pulled off two days earlier. He eased the Wolseley a bit deeper into the wood so that it could not be seen from the drive.

  He took a torch from the glove box, stuck it in his belt, and set out along the same route he’d followed previously, past the east side of the house and the vegetable gardens, down the hedge and along the cliff edge until he reached the path that led from the lawn to Peter’s cottage. He relied on the moon to light his way until he reached the back of the summerhouse and was well out of sight from the main house. The night was warm and unusually muggy and Lamb perspired heavily. The cottage was deserted and dark.

  At the top of the hill, the dead tree stood out against the moonlit sky, its long leafless branches reaching out like black, bony fingers. Lamb turned on the torch and headed up the path, the beam bouncing just ahead of him. He reached the base of the tree and played the light on the trunk. Its dry gray bark was scarred, pitted, peeling.

  He walked around the tree, playing the torch along its trunk, until he found an oval knot of roughly a foot in diameter at just about the height of his chest. He played the light on the knot; it appeared hollow. He peered into the hole. A brown spider with an abdomen the size of a marble sat motionless at the precise center of a web it had spun across the opening. The mummified husks of a half dozen of its victims formed a dark clump just beneath it.

  Lamb destroyed the web with a stick; the spider shot somewhere into the blackness of the hollowed trunk. He reached into the hole and found that he was able to get his entire hand into the opening before his knuckles scraped its innermost side. He moved his hand down, his fingers sinking into soft, coarse, slightly moist detritus a few inches below the knot’s bottom rim. He winced, in part from what he feared his hand might land upon. He imagined, lurking within, a swarming, slithering horde of tiny monsters.

  Moving his hand to the right, he touched something solid that seemed to be wrapped in cloth. He found that he could get his fingers around what felt like the spine of a book. He lifted it from the hole—the thing was heavy and nearly slipped from his fingers. As he pulled it free of the tree, he saw that it was indeed a book, wrapped in a stained and tattered white cotton pillowcase.

  He placed the book on the ground at the base of the tree and carefully removed it from its covering. He played the torch on the leather-bound cover, which was trimmed in gold filigree. The book seemed to be a photo album or, perhaps, one of Peter’s sketchbooks. He knelt on one knee and opened the book with his right hand, as he held the torch in his left.

  The first page contained a photo of a younger Peter facing the camera, naked, his hands on his hips, standing in the same white cell-like room in which a naked, frightened Thomas stood in the photo he’d found in Pirie’s night-table drawer. The photo was glued to the thick, sturdy page. Peter appeared to be no more than nine. Like Thomas’s, his eyes brimmed with terror and confusion; like Thomas, he was a prisoner, humiliated, powerless, and afraid.

  Lamb’s heart flooded with revulsion and fear. The thought of what the book must contain sickened him.

  He turned the page and found a photo of a boy he didn’t know, posed in an identical fashion, utterly naked and facing the camera, an identical terror in his eyes. This boy also appeared to be about ten. He had dark hair and a small cut on his right cheek.

  Lamb forced himself to turn the rest of the pages. They contained photos of nineteen boys, all posed in identical fashion. One of the pages was blank, though it contained a place in its center, spotted with dry glue, from which the photo had been removed. Lamb understood that the page had contained the photo of a naked Thomas he’d found in Pirie’s room.

  The final page contained a photo of a boy lying on a cot face-down in the frightening white room. He couldn’t see the boy’s face. But he clearly saw the smiling face of the naked man who sat atop the boy, straddling him, dominating and humiliating him.

  It was Sir Jeffrey Pembroke.

  Brimming with despair and rage, Lamb closed the book.

  He heard the sound of movement behind him.

  Then his world turned black.

  He awakened in the meadow between the tree and the wood, his head throbbing.

  Whoever had struck him had dragged him away from the tree. As he tried to stand, he realized that his wrists were tied behind his back and that his ankles also were bound, with a thin, sturdy rope. He felt the toe of a boot in his right side and heard Pembroke say “Sit up.”

  Lamb struggled to raise himself into a sitting position. Pembroke stood a few feet away, leveling a .22-caliber pistol at Lamb’s face.

  “You look ridiculous, Chief Inspector,” he said. “Your torch gave you away, you know. I knew that Peter would never muck about down here with a torch. Not very intelligent of you, I must say.”

  “This is all a waste of time,” Lamb said. “I know; Peter knows.”

  Pembroke smiled. “Yes, but neither of you will live through the night.”

  “You won’t catch Peter. Had you been able to, you’d have done so by now.”

  “Oh, come now—you’re not that dim, Lamb. I couldn’t kill Peter without raising your suspicions. But once
you are out of the way, I’ll have a free hand.”

  “The others know.” He was hoping to stall Pembroke as long as possible. “My men.”

  Pembroke sneered. “Know what, exactly?” he asked. “And based on what evidence? Peter stole the photo album from me—which, I’ll admit, surprised me—and you found it, conveniently enough. I’ve been looking for it for nearly two weeks. Now it will disappear. Despite what your colleagues might say, I’m quite certain I can convince an inquest that I had nothing to do with any of this. Indeed, I’m in London at the moment with a rather expensive young woman who calls herself Crimson; she’s ready to swear to it. The culprit was Peter, you see. Everyone knows that he’s volatile and unpredictable. He killed Blackwell because he feared the old man was a witch and Emily because she rejected him. I’ll testify that, after Peter sent Emily his strange little note, she came to me to say that she was frightened of what Peter might do to her. You then came snooping around here in search of Blackwell’s and Emily’s killer and so Peter panicked and killed you. You’ll be found with some of his drawings in your pocket. Then Peter will hang himself—from guilt and fear, you see. He feared jail—feared being trapped and cut off from his beloved insects.” He smiled. “I’ll explain everything. After all, no one knows Peter better than I.”

  “You killed Thomas,” Lamb said. “He resisted you by running away—his defiance frightened and surprised you because none of the others had defied you—and you killed him and Peter knows. Pirie helped you cover up what you’d done with his story about Thomas returning to the orphanage. Blackwell had no idea of the kind of hell he was returning Thomas to.”

  “A lovely tale, Lamb. But you haven’t a scrap of evidence to back it up and you’ll soon be dead in any case. As for Gerald Pirie, he shot himself after you found that horrid photo of Thomas in his night-table drawer and discovered that he’d faked the boy’s transfer to cover his crimes.”

  “Donald Fordham knows the truth about you.”

  Pembroke laughed. “Donald Fordham dislikes me, but otherwise knows nothing. In any case, no one will take his word over mine.”

  Pembroke waved the pistol in front of Lamb’s face. “I’m finished talking,” he said. He pulled a small knife from his pocket and cut the ropes binding Lamb’s ankles. “Stand up,” he ordered.

  Lamb got to his feet slowly. He looked for the photo album but didn’t see it. Pembroke produced Lamb’s torch and turned it on.

  “What did you do with the album?” Lamb asked.

  “Shut up and turn around.” Pembroke pushed Lamb from behind. “Start walking toward the sea. Defy me and I’ll kill you.”

  “Is that what you told Thomas and the rest of them?”

  “I said to shut up,” Pembroke said evenly.

  He put the tip of the pistol’s barrel against Lamb’s head and said, “Walk. If you speak again, I’ll put a bullet into the back of your head.”

  “Like you did Pirie’s?”

  Pembroke laughed. “I almost like you, Lamb. You’re quite funny, really.”

  They made their way down the trail to Peter’s summerhouse and then around it toward the cliffs. Lamb heard the surf pounding the rocks and smelled the sea. He decided that, if it came to it, he would die fighting; he would not allow Pembroke to push him to his death. He would have one opportunity and would have to pick his moment carefully. First, though, he must throw Pembroke off balance by rattling his poise, making him angry.

  “Peter won’t listen to you any longer,” Lamb said. “He knows what you’ve done.”

  Pembroke said nothing. The cliff edge loomed less than ten feet ahead.

  “You molested him, like you did the others, believing that he could never reveal your secret. You tired of him eventually, but there were so many others—a steady supply of them. But you never worried about Peter. He was like a loyal dog. But then you killed Thomas and something changed in Peter. He also defied you.”

  “I told you to shut up, Lamb.”

  “You said that Peter stealing your photo album surprised you, but that hardly describes what you actually felt. It shocked you. In his sudden and unexpected defiance you saw your entire rotting façade crumbling and began to panic. You knew that he might have hidden the album anywhere on the estate. Then you discovered that he’d contacted Emily. So you had to act. But the entire thing has spun out of your control. You control nothing now. Peter is no longer your faithful dog.”

  Pembroke pushed Lamb violently, causing Lamb to stumble and fall. Lamb managed to twist his body so that he struck the ground on his left shoulder. The rope bit into his wrists.

  But Pembroke had pushed Lamb with such force that it caused him also to stumble forward. Lamb saw Pembroke fall to one knee and drop the pistol. Here was his chance.

  He scrambled to his knees as Pembroke reached for the pistol. Lamb hurled himself at Pembroke’s doubled-over figure; his face hit Pembroke’s back and they fell together. Lamb rolled over Pembroke, the ropes biting again into his chafed wrists.

  Pembroke pushed Lamb away, then crawled like a spider toward the pistol. He retrieved it as Lamb rolled onto his back. Pembroke got to his feet and stood over Lamb, breathing hard. “Get up,” he ordered. He pointed the pistol at Lamb’s face.

  Lamb got to his feet. He’d had his opportunity and failed. He searched the ground for something he might use as a weapon but could see nothing in the darkness; he fought a rising sense of panic.

  “Move,” Pembroke said.

  Lamb turned slowly toward the cliffs.

  “I said move, goddamn you!” Pembroke barked.

  Lamb moved to the cliff edge, his back to Pembroke. Below, the foamy surf broke on the rocks and the small beach. He became mildly dizzy and felt his bowels threatening to give way. He felt Pembroke shove something into the right pocket of his jacket. Peter’s drawings. He heard Pembroke’s labored breathing and told himself that his only chance now was to hurl himself again at Pembroke, no matter the consequence.

  “Turn around,” Pembroke said.

  Lamb did as Pembroke ordered. Pembroke stood before him, smiling in triumph. “It’s time for you to go away forever, Chief Inspector.”

  Lamb was on the verge of launching himself at Pembroke, when he caught sight of someone to his left moving quickly through the darkness straight at Pembroke. The figure hit Pembroke a savage blow, knocking him to the ground and sending the pistol spinning from his hand. He saw the figure land atop Pembroke and heard Pembroke yell in pain; he saw the pistol lying only a few feet from him in the grass at the cliff edge. He kicked it over the edge and then turned toward the struggling men just as Pembroke struck the other man. The man yelped and fell away, his long arms and legs flailing.

  It was Peter.

  Pembroke hefted himself to his feet, facing Peter. Peter stood, slightly crouched.

  “It’s all right, Peter,” Pembroke said in a low voice. “You’ve made a mistake, haven’t you?” He gestured toward Lamb. “You thought I was him and that he was threatening me. He is the one you must fear. He wants to put you in jail for the rest of your life. He believes that you killed Emily and your friend, Will Blackwell. He told me so.”

  Peter looked at Lamb.

  “It’s not true, Peter,” Lamb said. “You know the truth. You know what he’s done. You tried to tell me—and to tell my daughter, Vera, the girl from Quimby. You tried to tell us with your drawings and the photo of the tree and now I know. Thomas is dead beneath the blue butterfly.”

  Pembroke took a step toward Peter. “He’s lying, Peter; he’s trying to trick you.” He held out his hand to Peter. “You know me. I’ve always cared for you, given you everything you ever needed.”

  Peter tensed, as if readying to run.

  “He killed Thomas, Peter,” Lamb said. “He killed Emily and Will and Mike Bradford’s father. You know he did. You saw him kill Will. You’ve done a brave thing in standing up to him. He’ll never be able to hurt you or anyone else again. I promise you.”

 
“He wants to put you in jail forever,” Pembroke said. “He hates you and wants to hurt you.”

  Peter glanced at Lamb again, and in that instant Pembroke lunged at Peter, though Peter was quick enough to leap aside. Peter turned toward Pembroke, whose back was to the sea. “Come to me, Peter,” Pembroke said, gesturing with his hand. “You and I belong together.”

  Peter blinked and made a hesitant move in Pembroke’s direction.

  “He’ll kill you, Peter!” Lamb yelled.

  Pembroke smiled. “You belong to me, Peter. You always have.”

  The sound of Harry Rivers’s voice calling Lamb’s name, barely audible, came from the cliff path. A quintet of torch beams danced down the path like far-off fireflies.

  “Come here, Peter!” Pembroke hissed. “Now!”

  Peter took another step in Pembroke’s direction.

  “That’s right,” Pembroke said.

  In the next instant, Peter thrust out his long arms; his hands struck Pembroke’s chest, sending Pembroke stumbling backwards, onto his heels. For a second, the top half of Pembroke’s body hovered in the space above the crashing surf below. His eyes filled with shock. “No,” he cried in disbelief. Then he fell away and disappeared.

  Peter stood at the cliff edge and stared down at Lord Jeffrey Pembroke’s shattered body lying on the little beach.

  He then looked at Lamb, startled.

  “It’s all right,” Lamb said. “Let’s step back from the cliff now.”

  Lamb glanced down at Pembroke’s body, which lay like a discarded rag on the sandy spit, a dark stream of blood trickling from his head toward the surf. He had to step back as vertigo threatened to overwhelm him.

  Rivers, Wallace, Sergeant Cashen, and two uniformed constables, the beams of their torches bouncing before them, appeared from the direction of Peter’s cottage. “Lamb!” Rivers shouted.