The Wages of Desire (27 page)

They were just about to move when they heard from behind them the sound of someone moving through the brush from the main trail. In the next instant, Lilly Martin stepped onto the hard-worn path.

“Lilly,” Vera said.

Lilly pretended to be surprised to see them, though in fact she had been following Vera since shortly after Vera had left the Martin house. She was sure that the man Vera had met by the school must be Vera's father, the detective. When the two had driven away, Lilly had followed on her bicycle at a discreet distance and found the Wolseley parked in the lay-by. She had read that morning's
Mail
and knew of all that had happened in and around Winstead in the past few days. She had not been friendly with the tramp—indeed she had mostly sought to avoid him, finding him smelly and a bit creepy—though she had seen him around the village now and again and knew that he had lived in a lean-to in the wood behind Miss Wheatley's cottage and that he sometimes went to Miss Wheatley's door for a handout.

Once, about a month earlier, she had been walking down the trail at twilight when she had encountered the tramp loitering by the ramshackle chicken wire fence that marked the front of Miss Wheatley's property. He had gestured to her then and said, “Hello,” and when she had said hello back, he had suggested that she follow him into the wood, as he had something “interesting” there to show her. But she'd been able to see clearly that he was drunk and didn't trust him. “I'm going to tell my father that you've been speaking to me,” she'd said to him—to scare him off—though her father was gone by then. She'd backed away and moved quickly down the trail, and the tramp hadn't spoken to or bothered her again.

She knew the story of the O'Hares well enough; everyone in the village knew something of the story, after all. Since the spring, when she had become so enamored of detective stories and murder mysteries, Lilly had begun to think a bit more about the O'Hare case and even quizzed her mother on it, who had been reluctant to say much in detail about the matter, except to seriously understate the obvious in calling it “unfortunate.” Then, too, there was the matter of Lawrence Tigue and his suddenly absent wife and his nocturnal visit to the O'Hare place. So much of interest was happening in the village, and yet she mostly was being left out of it—all of it. That's why she had followed Vera—to see if she could see what Vera saw. Now that Vera and her father were snooping about the O'Hare place, she'd felt as if she couldn't merely hide in the weeds and watch.

“Hello,” Lilly said.

“What are you doing here, Lilly?” Vera asked.

“I was looking for you,” Lilly said. It was partly true—in a way. But now that she'd said it she had to think of a reason why that sounded plausible. She immediately invented one. “I wanted to apologize for not taking tea with you and going into the kitchen like that straightaway and eating. It was rude of me, I know, and my mum said that I should find you and apologize.”

Vera introduced her father as Chief Inspector Thomas Lamb.

“Are you a detective?” Lilly asked.

“I am,” Lamb said, offering Lilly his hand. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Martin.”

“Thank you,” Lilly said. She nodded at the window that Lamb and Vera had just been peering in and found herself saying things she hadn't planned to say. “I suppose you're looking for the place where Claire O'Hare hung herself. Well, you've found it. It was right in there—from the rafter across the ceiling. I can show you the quickest way in if you want. We dare each other to go in. I've been in.”

“All right, Lilly, thank you,” Lamb said. “Please do show us how to get in.”

“It's through the back door,” Lilly said.

She led them to a rear corner of the house, which was near an oak tree from which hung an old rubber tire attached to a rope. The ground beneath the swing was barren, from where children had scuffed it while playing on the swing.

“That swing is haunted,” Lilly said. “It's been there more than twenty years, since the O'Hares lived here.”

“Oh,
Lilly,
” Vera said.

“Well, that's what everyone says.”

They stood next to two rotted wooden steps that led onto a narrow wooden porch that ran the length of the rear of the house.

“You go in through there,” Lilly told Lamb, pointing at the door in the rear wall that opened into the hall. “You'll come to a small mudroom first, then the hall. The first room on the left is where it happened.”

Lamb carefully mounted the steps, which creaked beneath his weight. He tried the door and found that it opened easily, emitting a strident creaking noise that sounded, he couldn't help but notice, just like the groaning doors in haunted house films.

With Vera and Lilly following him, Lamb stepped into the mudroom carefully and tested the wooden floor, which seemed solid enough. He was aware that Vera and Lilly were following him but decided that there was no harm in that.

He stepped into the musty room in which Claire O'Hare had committed suicide. In the low light, he could not discern much detail. He moved beneath the central beam and looked up at it but saw nothing that would suggest that someone had tied a rope to the beam and swung from it. Then again, twenty years had passed and the light was poor. A general odor of decay was very strong in the room.

“They say she was hanging right in the middle of the room, swinging like a pendulum,” Lilly whispered. She and Vera had squeezed into the room behind Lamb.

Lamb walked a slow circuit of the room but saw nothing interesting. He stopped at the jagged-toothed window, where the light was better. His foot came down on something small and solid. He lifted his foot and saw beneath it a small, dark, human-like figure. He instantly knew what it was—a toy soldier. He squatted and lit a match so that he could see it more clearly. The brief light illuminated a lead figurine of a man Lamb recognized from his youthful history studies as the Prussian Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg, arrayed in an ornate uniform of crimson, blue, and gold. He recalled Rivers saying that the set of generals included Hindenburg. He picked up the figure. Its size was identical to that of the Grant he'd found among Albert Clemmons's belongings and the Napoleon he'd seen on Algernon Tigue's desk.

“What did you find, Dad?” Vera asked.

“A toy soldier.”

Lilly moved close to Vera. Lamb held up the figure in the light coming through the window.

“Do you recognize this, Lilly?” he asked. “Is there a boy in the village who plays often with toy soldiers or who keeps a collection of them?”

“I should think that they all do,” she said. “But I can't think of anybody specifically.”

“Do any of the boys in the village come into this house on a regular basis?”

“Not that I know of. Most of the children in Winstead believe this house is haunted.” She hesitated a second, then added, “I don't, of course. I'm too old to believe that sort of rubbish.”

“Of course,” Lamb said. He smiled at her. “Thank you, Lilly.”

“Is it a clue?” Lilly asked.

“No,” Lamb lied. “I'm merely curious.” He looked toward the door. “Well, I guess we can go now.” When Lilly and Vera turned toward the door, Lamb slipped the figure into his pocket.

He followed them onto the porch. When he looked in the direction of the oak tree he noticed that the tire swing was swaying ever so slightly.

TWENTY-FOUR

HAVING FINISHED THEIR SEARCH OF THE O'HARE HOUSE, LAMB AND
Vera made the short drive to the prison camp. There, they stood on the edge of the farmhouse foundation with Harding, Captain Walton, and Wallace, who had just returned from interviewing Oscar Strand, the man who had sold the farm to the government. Lamb nodded brief greetings to each, including Walton, who stood slightly apart from the rest. Lamb had begun to wonder if the slackness he'd noticed in Walton on his first visit to the camp wasn't purposeful—if the slackness might in some way have served Walton's purposes, along with, perhaps, those of Taney.

Larkin and the police surgeon, Winston-Sheed, had nearly finished exhuming what amounted to a full skeleton to match the skull that Charlie Kinkaid had found. But in doing so, the forensics man had unearthed yet another conundrum, as Harding promptly informed Lamb: the skeleton appeared to be that of a very young child, perhaps no older than two or three at the outside. However, in digging up this skeleton Larkin had found another child's remains, just nine inches above the head of the first skeleton. This second child appeared to be older, in the range of five or six. In addition, the first skeleton clearly showed that the child had a clubfoot. Lamb thought of the O'Hare twins. They had been five years old when they had disappeared, though he remembered hearing nothing of either of them having had a clubfoot, nor had Horton's file contained any mention of either of the O'Hare boys as being clubfooted.

Lamb removed his hat and handed it to Wallace, then moved to the edge of the foundation and eased himself into the burial site. Winston-Sheed rose to meet him and shook his hand. The doctor's temples were moist with perspiration. He dug into the inner pocket of his jacket, removed his cigarette case, and offered one to Lamb, who accepted, then took one for himself.

“Do we know the sex?” Lamb asked the doctor. He took a pull from his cigarette, which calmed him.

“A boy. The skeleton looks complete and apparently the body was buried naked, as we've found no sign of clothing in the grave. The man who found it took off the tip of its left index finger with the point of his shovel—that was the first bone he found. On the following day he grazed the top of the skull. He marked the site for us almost perfectly.”

“Do we know how the first child died?”

“Strangled, probably. The hyoid bone is broken. It wouldn't have been difficult. Of course there might be other signs of abuse or trauma on the bones. And there's the clubfoot.”

“What about the other skeleton?”

“Larkin has uncovered the feet and a portion of the legs so far, as you can see. The child was wearing black shoes—boy's shoes by the look of it—white socks, and tan short trousers. Preliminarily, I'd say that this second child is older than the first by a couple of years.”

“So who is this younger child, then?” Lamb said. He was thinking aloud, more than conversing. He had expected the first skeleton to be that of one of the O'Hare twins and reasoned that the other twin was also probably buried there. Now, Larkin had found two skeletons, but one appeared to be too young to belong to either of the twins.

“Have you found any sign of a third skeleton?” Lamb asked the doctor.

“No.”

“What are you thinking, Tom?” Harding asked from the edge of the foundation.

Lamb said that he was now assuming that the second skeleton could very well be one of the O'Hare boys. The child seemed to be the right age and had been found with black shoes. “The description that Albert Clemmons gave Ned Horton of what he saw the boys wearing on the morning of their disappearance included black shoes, white socks, and tan short trousers for both of them. One of them was wearing a green shirt, while the other was wearing a blue shirt.”

Lamb looked at the larger skeleton—the second one Larkin had found. “If Mr. Larkin uncovers either a blue or green shirt with these remains, then I'd have to say that we've found one of the O'Hare boys, and that if we've found one, we are likely to find the other. As for the other child, I'm stumped.”

“It's obvious we have a child killer on our hands here,” Harding said. “I've already put some men to the job of rooting around in the records to see if any children other than the O'Hares have gone missing in this area in the past twenty years. We've only two more days to figure it out—and to find out what else, if anything, is buried here. Then it's back to work on the bloody prison camp.”

“I should think the army could see its way to giving us an extension based on what we've found here,” Winston-Sheed said.

“Don't bet your wages on it, Doctor,” Harding said. “Life is rather cheap these days, in case you hadn't noticed. As Taney said, they've a boatload of Italians due, and they've got to put them somewhere.”

Lamb climbed out of the hole and rejoined Harding, Vera, and Wallace. During the time that Lamb had been in the foundation, Captain Walton had returned to his tent. Lamb had not yet had time to bring Harding up to the mark on his interviews with the Tigue brothers. He now told the super about the toy generals he'd found in Clemmons's campsite, on Algernon Tigue's desk, and in the O'Hare house. He added that Algernon Tigue had said that Lawrence had given him the Napoleon and had possessed a collection of toy soldiers as a boy.

“But I sensed, too, that the brothers are rivals—or that Algernon sees them in that way, at any rate,” Lamb said. “He also claimed that Lawrence Tigue's wife has not gone to wait out the war with her sister in Chesterfield, as Lawrence claims, but that his wife has left Lawrence for another man. He seemed pleased by this and spoke of his brother in a way that made it clear that he feels no sympathy for him.”