The Wages of Desire (15 page)

Lilly shrugged. “Boring.”

“What about the other girls in the village? There must be other girls.”

“There are, but they're all so—I don't know.
Silly
, you know? At least the ones my age are. They only want to talk about this and that boy or how hard it is now to get decent shoes with any sense of fashion to them. I don't care about those things.”

Vera smiled. “You don't like boys, then? I'm not sure I believe that.” She thought she saw Lilly smile briefly.

“I don't hate
all
boys, of course. But I've no intention of hanging my happiness on the whims and wants of some boy.”

“That's smart—and very grown-up of you,” Vera said. “But it doesn't have to be either or, you know. There are some real rotters out there, I'll grant you. But there are nice ones, too. Decent ones.”

“I suppose.”

“Who looks after you at night, then?” Vera said. Though the answer was none of her business, she couldn't help but ask the question.

“Nobody,” Lilly said. “I'm old enough to take care of myself and do.”

“That's very brave.”

“Not really. It's not that hard.” She glanced at the ground for an instant, then added, “Sometimes, when I get bored or can't sleep, I go out and walk around the village.” She looked at Vera. “I thought at first that I might be scared of the dark, but it's really not scary at all. Besides, I know the village so well.”

“You go out in the middle of the night, you mean?”

“Yes. It helps me to sleep sometimes. I started after Dad left and Mum started working at night. I felt restless, I suppose.” She glanced down the street, toward the heart of the village. “Sometimes I see things. It's why I'm so convinced that so many people around here are loony. You'd be surprised how many people in this village are up and about in the middle of the night. Miss Wheatley, for one.”

“Miss Wheatley?”

“Yes. Only two nights ago I saw her sneak into Mr. Tigue's henhouse, well after midnight, and steal eggs. I followed her to her cottage.”

Vera thought of the house she'd passed with the henhouse that was next to the path that led to Miss Wheatley's cottage; that must have been Mr. Tigue's place. She could very easily envision Miss Wheatley stealing eggs from Mr. Tigue's henhouse. The woman's head seemed to be utterly addled when it came to questions of birds and eggs and Lawrence Tigue.

“Is Mr. Tigue's the place by the path, with the red door, then?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know that Miss Wheatley stole his eggs?”

“I don't think so. But he's a queer bird, too.”

“What do you mean?”

Lilly hesitated for a couple of seconds, then asked, “Can you keep a secret?”

“I suppose, yes.”

Lilly looked directly at Vera.

“I've seen and heard other things, too—besides Miss Wheatley stealing Mr. Tigue's eggs, I mean. I've heard Mr. Tigue and his wife arguing, and now his wife has gone off to Chesterfield to live with her sister—or so Mr. Tigue says. He's telling everyone that she left to get away from the bombing, to spend the duration in a safer spot, but there hasn't been any regular bombing down here in more than a year. They don't like each other, the Tigues—not at all.”

Vera wondered if Lilly really had heard or seen such things or merely was saying so as a way of gaining attention. That was another reason to be cheeky—people noticed you for it. And Vera could see how Lilly, given her situation, likely needed more than the usual amount of attention.

“Maybe the bombing last summer frightened her,” Vera said.

“But if that's the case, why wait a year to move?”

“There might be all sorts of reasons why she waited.”

“Yes, but she didn't say goodbye to anyone in the village. She just left.”

“Well, that does sound strange, I grant you. But you can't possibly know, really, if she said goodbye to no one in the village. Maybe she was in a hurry for some reason.”

“I think she has left him—or she tried to leave him,” Lilly says. “Mr. Tigue, I mean. At least I did think that anyway, until last night.”

“What happened last night?”

“Last night I was out along the trail and I saw Mr. Tigue. I followed him, though he didn't know it; I thought it would be good training for me, to see how you followed someone without their knowing it—for my training as a detective novelist, I mean. Anyhow, I followed him up to the old O'Hare place; he was carrying something in a sack, which he left in the house. It's a ruin, a spooky place.”

“I think I saw it on my walk today; is it the place by the road, near Miss Wheatley's?”

“Yes, that's it. That's where Claire O'Hare hanged herself after her husband abandoned her.”

“That's terrible,” Vera said.

Lilly shrugged. “It was more than twenty years ago. They say that if you go into the house and look into the room where it happened, you're cursed. But I saw Mr. Tigue go into the room last night. He only stayed a minute, though he left the sack in the house somewhere.”

Vera didn't want to encourage Lilly if Lilly was merely gossiping. But something in the way Lilly spoke—something in her character—struck Vera as authentic. She probably
had
seen some of what she claimed to have seen, but might be exaggerating parts of it, tarting it up the way a detective novelist would. “What do you think was in the sack?” she asked.

Lilly looked at Vera, her eyes afire. “I don't know, but I've an idea.”

“What's your idea?”

Lilly looked around, as if to make sure no one was near enough to hear. “I think it might be his wife—or bits of her,” she whispered. “I mean, if he wanted to get rid of something why do it at the O'Hare place and why in the middle of the night, unless it was something he needed to hide? Something terrible.”

Vera laughed—briefly and uncomfortably. “Oh my, you
have
read too many detective novels, Lilly.”

“But it's the only explanation that makes sense,” Lilly protested. “Have you ever heard of Dr. Crippen? He killed his wife thirty years ago. He was having an affair with a younger woman. He killed his wife and buried her in the basement. Except that he only buried bits of her there. They never found her head. He put it somewhere else, but never did say where. Hardly anyone goes into the O'Hare place these days. It's the perfect hiding place.”

“You're being morbid, Lilly. I'm sure Mrs. Tigue is in Chesterfield with her sister.”

“So
he
says. He could be doing it in his garage, you know. It's big enough. That's where he keeps his printing press and his car. Or he might even be doing it in his house.”

“Doing what?”

“Sorting out the bits, like Dr. Crippen.”

“You're being silly and you know it.”

“I just find it strange, that's all.”

“Well, it
is
strange—the skulking around in the middle of the night, I mean. But merely because it's strange doesn't mean that it's wicked. Some people might find your walking around at night strange, too, but that's not wicked.”

“Yes, but I'm not hiding anything in a spooky old abandoned house, am I?”

Vera conjured for Lilly her best serious, motherly expression, conscious of the fact that she was aping the expression that
her
mother used when she was about to address some weighty subject with her.

“Look, Lilly, I believe what you're saying about seeing Miss Wheatley steal the eggs and Mr. Tigue going to the O'Hare house. But I do think you're allowing your imagination to run away with you. You can't very well go around the village telling stories about thievery and murder. It's too macabre.”

“But I haven't told anyone else.”

“Yes, but these things have a way of getting out regardless and before you know it you've lost control of them. I really think you should discuss these things with your mother. It might ease your mind a bit.”

Lilly looked at the ground. She and Vera stood in silence for a moment.

“So,” Vera said. “Will you talk to your mother, then?”

“I don't know,” Lilly said. “I'll think about it.”

FOURTEEN

AT THE POW CAMP, CHARLIE KINKAID AND THE OTHER MEN IN
his group had resumed their job of clearing away what was left of the stone foundation of the farmhouse. On the previous evening, in the mess, Charlie had mentioned to Taney that he'd found a small bone amid the rubble. Taney had told Charlie to forget the bone—that it certainly belonged to an animal.

“God only knows how many rats and other bloody animals have scurried through that place in the past ten years,” Taney had said.

Taney had a point, Charlie thought. The old basement probably had attracted its share of rats, badgers, foxes, skunks, and the rest. But he wondered, too, how much, if anything, Taney knew of the case of the O'Hares.

Either way, Charlie had gone to work that morning feeling uneasy. He knew that if he tried to tell Taney the story of the O'Hares, the boss would only order him to forget it. Taney brooked no delays on the job. Not only that, but the news of Ruth Aisquith's death clearly had upset Taney. Indeed, news of the Aisquith woman's death had sent a rumble of unease through the prison camp generally and had been the main topic of conversation at tea on the previous night and at breakfast that morning, though neither he, nor any of the other male workers at the camp, had known Ruth Aisquith, really. She'd kept to herself.

As the morning wore on and he struck no more bones, Charlie felt better about his decision not to mention the O'Hare case to Taney. Then, too, he'd spent the morning helping to clear a different portion of the foundation than the one in which he'd found the bone on the day before. When he later moved to the place where he'd found the bone, Charlie had been digging only a minute when he felt the point of his spade bite into something hollow-feeling; he vaguely heard the thing crack as his shovel struck it. He eased his shovel from the ground and bent down to sort through the loose soil.

Wallace spent the morning taking statements from the workers at the camp whom he'd missed on the previous day. Nearly everyone told him roughly the same story about Ruth Aisquith: They hadn't known her well; she'd kept to herself; they'd known she was a conchi but didn't hold it against her, necessarily, though they found the idea distasteful under the present circumstances, with the Nazis marching over nearly all of Europe and North Africa.

Wallace essentially agreed with that point of view. On the previous night, he'd sat alone in his flat for an hour considering the question of whether he wanted to continue his occupational deferment. He'd found that speaking to Vera about the subject had eased his mind a bit on the subject; the fact that she also seemed to believe in the idea of him being “indispensable” to the war while remaining home had comforted him. He liked Vera. She was nice-looking and smart, and had a kind of hardiness and confidence that he found attractive. Still, he'd found his thoughts turning from her to his cousin, Alan, whom the Germans had killed on the beach at Dunkirk. He continued to believe that Alan had performed a duty that he himself was avoiding, and he did not want to live through the war and its aftermath troubled by a sense of self-imposed ignominy. If he could manage it without it seeming foolish or weak, he would endeavor to speak again with Vera on the subject.

Now, though, he was walking down the muddy “lane” between the tents, nearing the last of the tents on his left, when he heard someone say, “Sergeant!” He turned to his left and saw Nora, the small, quiet woman whom he'd met the previous day in the field, standing between the tents.

“Hello,” Wallace said. He smiled.

“May I speak with you?” Nora spoke in a near whisper.

As Wallace began to walk toward her, Nora turned and moved toward the rear of the line of tents. Wallace followed her there, where they were out of sight of the rest of the camp. He was glad to see that Marlene Suggs did not seem to be around. He hadn't liked Suggs and believed, as had Vera, that Suggs sought to control Nora through a veneer of “kindness” toward her. On the previous day, Nora had struck Wallace as uneasy and timid.