The Language of the Dead

by Stephen Kelly

  “Here!” Lamb said. He looked at Peter, expecting him to run. Instead, Peter abruptly sat on the ground, crossed his legs, and closed his eyes.

  The detectives, Cashen, and the constables arrived, panting. Rivers played his torch on Lamb. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “He’s tied my hands.”

  Rivers pulled a folding knife from the pocket of his jacket and cut the rope binding Lamb’s wrists. “What happened?” he asked.

  Lamb touched his stinging wrists and grimaced. “Pembroke was going to kill me—push me from the edge.” He nodded at Peter. “Peter saved me. There was a struggle and Pembroke fell.”

  Rivers moved to the cliff edge and looked down.

  “He did it—all of it,” Lamb said. “I found the evidence in a tree behind Peter’s cottage—more photos, like the ones we found in Pirie’s drawer. Dozens of them. Peter stole the album and hid it. Pembroke knocked me cold as I was looking at it. I don’t know what he did with the damned thing. He probably destroyed it.”

  “I know,” Peter said. He sat cross-legged in the grass, his eyes still closed.

  Lamb turned to Peter. “What do you know, Peter?” he asked.

  “I know.”

  “Where the photos are?”

  Peter opened his eyes. “I know.”

  “Will you take us to them?”

  Peter stood. He nodded, wrung his hands.

  Lamb turned his attention briefly to Cashen and the constables. “Get up to the house and call Harding,” he instructed Cashen. “We’ll need a sling of some kind and some ropes and ladders and at least a half dozen more people to retrieve the body. We’ve got to get it before the tide takes it. If anyone at the house tries to impede you, arrest them on my authority.”

  “Right,” Cashen said. He and the constables retreated up the cliff path toward the main house.

  “You two stay with me,” Lamb said to Rivers and Wallace. He looked at Wallace and smiled. Relief was flooding him and he realized how happy he was to see Wallace and Rivers. “Ready to get your trousers dirty, David?” he asked.

  “As dirty as it takes,” Wallace said.

  “Good.”

  He turned back to Peter. “May we go now, Peter?”

  Peter abruptly stood and began to walk in the direction of the cottage. Lamb, Rivers, and Wallace followed him past the house, up the hill and past the scarred tree, into the meadow just beyond it, and thence into the dark wood on the other side. They moved along a narrow path that led into the heart of the wood. Peter walked just ahead of them, a singular purpose in his stride. He seemed to know every rut, protruding root, hole, and fallen branch in the trail. They moved for perhaps fifty meters before Peter turned off the trail to the right and stopped in front of the fallen trunk of a red cedar. Rivers played his torch on the trunk. It lay half buried in the detritus of the forest floor and was spotted with a white fungus that grew from it like ears.

  “Is it under the tree?” Lamb asked Peter.

  Peter nodded. “I saw him.”

  “You saw him bury the book beneath the tree?”

  “I saw him.” He stood as if at attention and wrung his hands again.

  “Help me lift it,” Lamb said to Rivers. They bent together and lifted the trunk near its center. Pieces of the dead tree came apart in their hands. Rivers shone his torch on the loam beneath the trunk. It was mounded slightly, like a small, freshly covered grave.

  Lamb knelt next to the mound and began to dig into it with his hands. He moved away a foot of the rich, dark soil before he saw the dirtied pillowcase. He dug around the edges of the album and lifted it out.

  Lamb stood and handed the album to Rivers. He turned to Peter, who continued standing by them like a sentry.

  “Now, Peter,” Lamb said. “I saw the drawing you left for me and the one you gave my daughter, Vera, in Quimby. I know that Thomas is buried beneath the blue butterfly in Lord Pembroke’s garden.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THEY LIFTED PEMBROKE’S SHATTERED BODY FROM THE BEACH below the cliffs and, on the following day, dug up the round stone terrace in his Alice-in-Wonderland garden and the beautiful blue mosaic butterfly at its center. Beneath it they found the decayed remains of Thomas Bennett wrapped in a dirty white sheet.

  That same day, Lamb sat with Peter at the drawing table in Peter’s cottage and attempted to tease from him the story of how he had come to steal Pembroke’s photo album. Peter scribbled a few drawings and words on paper but did not speak, and Lamb had found himself unable to fully decipher what Peter was trying to say, though he believed he understood the story’s rough outline.

  Then he thought of Vera.

  He fetched her and brought her with him to the cottage. A change came over Peter almost immediately. He smiled when he saw Vera. Lamb again thought of Emily Fordham—how she must have sat with Peter, talking with him, paying him attention. Peter began to sketch furiously for Vera and spoke to her with a coherence and fluency that Lamb had not believed he possessed.

  “Did the planes hurt you?” Peter asked.

  “No,” Vera said.

  “The boy hurt you.”

  Vera reddened slightly and looked at her father, who couldn’t help but register surprise at what Peter had said. Which boy? Arthur? And how had he hurt Vera? Or was Peter mistaken? But now was not the time in which to seek an answer to those questions from Vera. He would ask later. And he hoped that she would tell him.

  “No,” Vera said. “I’m all right, Peter.”

  Over the next two hours, Peter told Vera and Lamb, in a matter-of-fact fashion, a tale of horror, abuse, humiliation, and fear. He managed to get across to them that Emily Fordham had taken the photo of the tree and given it to him as a present. When he finished, Peter smiled at Vera. Lamb wondered how well Peter understood the connection between his stealing of Pembroke’s photo album and the killings that followed it—that his standing up to Pembroke had led to Pembroke’s murder spree. He moved next to Peter and said, quietly, “Nothing is your fault. Do you understand that, Peter?”

  Although Peter nodded, Lamb wasn’t certain he understood.

  Later in the day, Lamb related the story to Harding, Wallace, Rivers, and Larkin.

  When Peter had first come to Brookings, Pembroke had molested and photographed him, as he did the others. Pembroke had told Pirie that he admired Peter’s talent and believed it needed nurturing and so Pirie had agreed to let Pembroke take possession of Peter. At the time, it was possible that Pirie did not know of Pembroke’s perversions, though he eventually did learn of them, Lamb said.

  Even after Pembroke tired of Peter, he continued to force Peter to look at his book of photographs each time he added to it.

  “He controlled Peter in that way,” Lamb said, adding that Pembroke had kept the album in plain view on a shelf in his library. “Pembroke also kept a photo album for public consumption that contained head shots of all the boys who had visited Brookings, along with photos of their visits, some of which were taken last summer, innocently enough, by Emily Fordham. Peter knew about that album also and took from it the photo of Thomas he sent to Emily.

  “When Thomas ran away, Peter suspected that Pembroke had hurt him in some way. Then Blackwell found Thomas on Manscome Hill and handed him back to Pembroke, who killed the boy to keep him quiet. On the night following Thomas’s return to Brookings, Peter watched the main house, certain that Pembroke would do something; he knew Pembroke as well as Pembroke knew him—a fact that Pembroke, in his narcissism and arrogance, didn’t fathom. And sure enough, Peter saw Pembroke bury Thomas in the butterfly garden. A few days later, workers came and built the terrace and the tile mosaic of the blue butterfly over Thomas’s grave. Pembroke told everyone else connected with Brookings that Thomas had gone back to the orphanage, a lie that Pirie agreed to help him keep, apparently for the basest of motives: money. Also, Pembroke obviously had removed the photograph of Thomas standing naked in front of the sheet from the album before Peter stole the album. M
y only guess is that Pembroke must have decided sometime earlier, perhaps last summer, after he killed Thomas, that he might need to use the photo to throw suspicion on Pirie, which, of course, he eventually did.

  “For nearly a year, Peter said nothing about what he knew. He feared Pembroke. But then, when the boys failed to return this year, something in him changed and he decided upon the idea of stealing Pembroke’s album and writing to Emily about his concerns. He felt he must do something; felt morally responsible, if you will. He told Blackwell about the album and where he’d hidden it and Blackwell made a note to himself about the location, which we found in his pocket. Peter intended to show the album to Emily, but she never contacted him. Instead, she took her concerns to Pembroke, whom she trusted. That mistake proved to be fatal. Although Emily might never have known of the existence of Pembroke’s photo album, Pembroke believed he could take no chances with her. Peter obviously was trying very hard to communicate with her, and he worried that Peter might eventually get his message across. He had to kill everyone who knew—or might come to know—of the photos, including, eventually, Peter himself. But as he told me, he could not kill Peter outright without casting suspicion on himself. He counted on Peter staying quiet thanks to his fear of strangers, and he was mostly right in that. Peter refused to speak to me or to Vera, though he did leave us the drawings as a kind of substitute. In the end, though, Peter finally found the courage within himself to act when he saw Pembroke and me by the cliff. Pembroke intended to hang Peter and make it appear that Peter had committed suicide out of guilt for committing the other killings and fear that he would spend the rest of his life in jail. Although Pirie conspired with Pembroke in covering up Thomas’s death, once we began to get close, Pembroke decided that Pirie also had to go.”

  Lamb had checked Pirie’s and Pembroke’s bank accounts and discovered that Pembroke had paid Pirie nearly ten thousand pounds over the past three years. “After he spoke to me, Mike Bradford told his father—probably under the threat of violence—that the man he’d actually seen on the hill shortly before Blackwell’s murder was Pembroke and not Peter, as Mike had told me. Stupidly, Bradford attempted to blackmail Pembroke and so Pembroke killed him too. I believe that he and Pembroke met at the mill yard after dark to discuss the matter and that Pembroke brought along a bottle of gin, waited for Bradford to become drunk, then killed him and shoved his body into the race.” Lamb paused, then said, “Bradford would probably still be alive had I not managed to get his son to tell me that he’d seen a man on Manscome Hill on the day Blackwell was killed.

  “I also put Peter’s life in danger by showing the drawings he left for me to Pembroke, who realized that Peter was becoming more aggressive in trying to communicate with Emily and with me than he’d known or imagined.”

  “How did Pembroke know that the boy had told Blackwell about the photos?” Harding asked.

  “He might not have known for certain that Peter had confided in Blackwell, but he knew that Peter communicated with Blackwell—that he felt comfortable with Blackwell—and therefore could take no chances. He might also have been worried that Thomas had said something to Blackwell about the abuse, which is why, I believe, he gave Blackwell the one hundred seventy-five pounds. He hoped that Blackwell would take the money and keep his mouth shut, which Blackwell did. But after Peter stole the photo album, Pembroke decided that Blackwell had to be silenced for good and all. So he killed him in a way that he hoped would lead us down the wrong path.”

  “And the altar and slaughtered chicken?”

  “Something Pembroke added after killing Blackwell, for good measure,” Lamb said. “Peter obviously was watching Pembroke more closely then Pembroke knew. And so after Pembroke left the slaughtered chicken in the shed, Peter entered the shed and left the drawing of the spider and the bird by the altar. Of Lord Jeffrey Pembroke and Will Blackwell.”

  Harding shook his head. “Mad,” he said.

  Two days later, Lamb stood atop Manscome Hill looking over the valley in which Quimby nestled. The Valley of Death, he thought.

  He’d returned Myths and Legends of the Supernatural in Hampshire to Harris, told Harris to thank his wife again for loaning him the book, and thanked Harris for his work. “All’s well that ends well, as they say, sir,” Harris had said, rising on his toes a bit with his hands behind his back. Lamb thought that Harris might one day rise to a high rank in the police services—that is, if the war didn’t take him.

  He’d thought of looking in on Vera, but decided not to trouble her while she was on duty. He and Marjorie would surprise her on Saturday with a bottle of wine and a beef sausage and a loaf of decent white bread. Maybe then the three of them would discuss “the boy”—Arthur Lear. But that would be Vera’s choice.

  He descended the hill to the village, passing the bomb crater in Abbott’s meadow, where the sheep had grazed. As he walked beneath the ancient, barren-branched sycamore by the bridge over Mills Run, the crows that roosted in the tree set up a racket. Lamb looked up at them. They were well fed, their plumage shiny.

  “You lot go to hell,” he said.

  He looked forward to an easy afternoon. He’d buy a racing form and maybe place a bet on one of the following day’s races at Paulsgrove. He’d still yet to buy a new tin of butterscotch. He took the cigarette he was smoking and dropped it into the moist mud of the path and willed himself not to light another.

  At that moment, more than a hundred German bombers were forming up over Calais preparing to fly up the Thames estuary for the first daylight raid on London. Hermann Seitz’s remains lay among the ash of the Lears’ farmhouse, along with those of Arthur and Noel Lear.

  When Lamb reached Will Blackwell’s cottage, he found Rivers leaning against his Wolseley, waiting for him.

  “Harding wants us in Portsmouth,” Rivers said. “The head of a freight warehouse down there called this morning to report the theft of a hundred cases of overcoats meant for frontline troops. American-made. Someone stole them right off the bloody boat in the night.”

  “How did you know I was here?” he asked Rivers.

  “Guessed.”

  Lamb smiled slightly. “Well, you were right then, weren’t you?”

  Rivers lifted his chin. “I suppose so,” he said.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I COULDN’T HAVE WRITTEN THIS BOOK WITHOUT THE ASSISTANCE and guidance of many people, chief among them my beautiful and loving wife, Cindy, who has supported me without complaint or qualification in everything, and my generous best friend of many decades, Bryan Denson, the first person who ever told me that my wanting to be a writer wasn’t a stupid idea. For their help along the way, I also owe a debt of gratitude to: Maria Archangelo, Avi Azrieli, Lloyd Batzler, Carrie Brown, John Gregory Brown, Elizabeth Eck, Mark Hertsgaard, the late David Kelly, Michael Kelly, Paul Milton, Jean Moon, Dave Stewart, Karen Webster, and Ken Weiss.

  THE LANGUAGE OF THE DEAD

  ISBN: 978-1-605-98696-8

  ISBN: 978-1-605-98754-5 (e-book)

  Pegasus Books LLC

  80 Broad Street, 5th Floor

  New York, NY 10004

  Copyright © 2015 by Stephen Kelly

  First Pegasus Books cloth edition April 2015

  Interior design by Maria Fernandez

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

  Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

 

 

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