The Wages of Desire (4 page)

Had Ruth Aisquith indeed been an innocent?

And was Gerald Wimberly genuinely a man of God?

FIVE

LARKIN REMAINED IN THE CEMETERY TO CHECK THE KILLING
site for evidence, while Lamb sent Rivers into Winstead with a pair of constables to begin a door-to-door canvass of the village. He instructed Rivers to see what he could find out about Mary Forrest, the woman whose name was inscribed on the gravestone next to which Ruth Aisquith had fallen, and to ask if anyone had met Ruth Aisquith or knew of anyone in the village who possessed that surname.

Wallace reported that his search of the gravestones found that none contained the surname of Aisquith. That question settled, Lamb put the detective sergeant and a constable to the task of finding the bullet that had killed the woman. As Winston-Sheed had said, most likely the slug was lying somewhere in the luxuriant grass between the rear fence of the cemetery and the footpath that led into the village. Lamb then headed to the vicarage to speak with the Rev. Gerald Wimberly.

Vera patiently had waited by the car and not sought to get closer to the body. Nor had she taken any active role in helping keep the gawkers at bay. She had, as she had told Lamb she would, merely watched and observed. In the few days during which she'd acted as her father's driver she had done nothing resembling actual police work, nor was she meant to. She held no illusion that her job amounted to anything other than being a replacement for her father's sprained ankle. Still, she didn't mind the job, in part because it allowed her to be with her father; she'd always been curious about the mysteries and occasional dangers that seemed to fill his days. (She knew nothing of the paperwork and bureaucratic drudgery that the job also entailed.) And the pay was fair—five pounds for the week. Even so, she was glad the job was temporary. She didn't like the fact that her father had gotten her the job through obvious nepotism—and that everyone knew it—though its transitory nature softened the injustice of that. In any case, she didn't want people concluding that she got along in life thanks to her daddy.

She
had
wanted to see the dead woman and, as she had watched her father and the others enter the cemetery to begin the inquiry, she had contemplated why that was true. She decided that the human desire to confront the fact of death was natural, given that everyone had to die eventually, and that this probably became especially true during wartime, with death seeming to hover so much nearer than it normally did—though since the Germans had given up their bombing of southern England nearly a year earlier, she had not felt directly threatened by the violence and killing the war had wrought. She told herself that she should count herself lucky that she and her parents were so far from the actual war—the war as it was being fought in Russia and North Africa, and as it had been fought in Poland, France, Belgium, and Yugoslavia. And yet she did not feel lucky, exactly, but troubled that she remained protected when so many others were not.

After her father disappeared around the side of the church and headed to the vicarage, Vera eyed Wallace discreetly. She found him very good-looking and possessed of a kind of rugged charm, despite the fact that he tended a bit toward the peacock with his well-cut suits and shined black patent leather shoes. But she'd found him to be approachable and funny, too, and seemed genuine of heart. And she detected something else in him, something buried that, she thought, he endeavored to hide from the world—a kind of vulnerability and even a hint of anguish.

She contemplated lighting a cigarette from the packet she kept in her inner jacket pocket. She didn't
need
a cigarette exactly, but she felt that the time somehow was right for one. She had begun to smoke only a week earlier, mostly as an experiment to see if she liked it, a question she had not yet decided upon an answer to. In any case, neither of her parents knew that she smoked, and she was not prepared to tell them that she did until she
had
decided. She knew that her father hated his own smoking and that he had tried often to quit but always found that his normally resilient will failed him when it came to tobacco. In the end, she quashed the notion of a smoke for the moment, on the chance that her father might suddenly return and catch her with a fag dangling from her lips.

At that moment, two women and a girl approached the cemetery along the High Street, coming from the direction of the center of the village. Since the constables had dispersed the initial lot of onlookers, several people had come and gone in ones and twos—stopped and peered into the cemetery and gone on their way. Some of the children who'd earlier been climbing on the fence and been shooed away had returned, stolen another look, and run again when the constable shooed them a second time. Now, though, the constable had gone into the village with Rivers to knock on doors and Vera found herself the lone police presence by the front gate of the cemetery, a fact made all the more obvious by her ill-fitting uniform.

Because she had parked the car perhaps thirty meters to the west of the front gate, the three approaching women did not see her at first. They slowed as they passed the cemetery. One of the women was quite large—fat, really. She was dressed in a kind of countrywoman's getup of simple blue cotton frock and Wellingtons, her gray hair piled in a bun beneath a massive straw hat. The other woman was younger, perhaps thirty. She wore simple brown cotton slacks and a white blouse. Her hair was cut short, and she appeared to be wearing little or no makeup. She was quite pretty in an unadorned way, Vera thought. The girl was dressed in a simple tan blouse, blue shorts, and black plimsole shoes.

As they neared the cemetery, the older woman went to the fence and stared at the proceedings within. At that moment, Winston-Sheed was readying the body to be transported to Winchester for autopsy. The woman got onto the tips of her toes to better see the corpse. The other two stayed back a bit from the fence. The older woman turned to them and said, “But I can't see a thing! Not really!” She turned again toward the cemetery, as if hoping that the view might suddenly have improved in the instant during which she'd turned away from it.

“That's all right,” the younger woman said. “Lilly and I will be getting off home now anyway.”

The older woman left the fence and rejoined the other two. “But we must find out what happened,” she insisted.

“We'll find out soon enough, Flora,” the other woman said.

The older woman caught sight of Vera. “Oh, here's someone,” she said and began moving very quickly toward Vera. The other two followed, though not as quickly. The woman in the lead waved at Vera. “I say, are you with the police?” Before Vera could answer the woman was in front of her.

“My word—a
girl
policeman,” the woman said. She stared at Vera for a second. “You
are
a girl, my dear, aren't you?” Vera found the question rude. She hadn't thought her uniform
that
baggy and unflattering.

“Yes,” she said without enthusiasm.

The woman smiled. “I say,” she said. “
Good
for you, my dear. I've never seen a girl policeman—though it's about time. But that's what the war has done, hasn't it? Opened up things for us.”

Vera forced a smile. “Yes, ma'am,” she said.

The other two caught up and stood behind the woman named Flora. The young girl caught Vera's eye and ostentatiously whirled her right forefinger around her ear, signaling to Vera not to be alarmed—as if to say that the woman who stood in front of her was loony and that everyone knew it. The younger woman gently swatted at the girl's hand, but without vehemence or true censure. Vera did her best to suppress a smile.

“My name is Flora Wheatley,” the older woman said, offering Vera a pudgy hand.

“I'm Vera Lamb.” Miss Wheatley shook Vera's proffered hand with what Vera thought was needless vigor, as if Miss Wheatley was working a recalcitrant water pump. She realized that she had no rank to put in front of her name—only the baggy uniform.

“I say, my dear, can you tell us what's happened?” Miss Wheatley asked. “We only know that some unfortunate woman has been shot to death in our cemetery.”

“I'm afraid that I don't know any more than that myself.”

“Oh, but you must!” Miss Wheatley said. “You're with the police, aren't you?”

“I am, but …”

The younger woman stepped closer. “It's all right, Flora,” she said, putting her hand on Miss Wheatley's shoulder. “I'm sure Miss Lamb would not be at liberty to discuss the case with us even if she did know anything.” The younger woman smiled at Vera.

“Yes, that's right,” Vera said, though she wasn't certain that it was. “Even so, I really
do
know nothing. I'm only just a driver, you see. It's a temporary job.”

“I should think it would be a nice job to have,” the girl said. “Exciting.”

Vera smiled at the girl. “It's not bad. But to be truthful, it's mostly standing around waiting.”

“Still, you get to go to the scene of the crime,” the girl insisted.

“That's true.”

“I'm afraid Lilly's on a bit of kick when it comes to detective novels at the moment,” the younger woman said. She offered Vera her hand. “My name is Julia Martin, by the way, and this is my daughter, Lilly.”

“I say, my dear, is your captain about?” Miss Wheatley interjected.

“Chief inspector, madam. And no, I'm afraid he's busy at the moment.”

“Well, I wonder if you'll give him a message from me. I'm afraid we've a crime spree going on here in the village and have had for some time now.”

Vera saw Lilly roll her eyes.

“A crime spree?” Vera asked.

“Yes, very much so. I've long said that the police should have been involved, but no one else in the village seems to care about the problem outside of me.” She leaned a little closer to Vera and whirled her finger around her ear, just as Lilly had done. “Some in the village will tell you that I'm crazy, my dear, but I don't care. Those people have their
heads
in the sand. They don't want to hear the truth because the truth so often hurts. I'm speaking of the case of the nuthatch hereabout. The poor creatures are rare enough as it is, but with people stealing their eggs the poor things will never survive the war. They're cavity nesters you see, but they can't compete with the blasted starlings, which are so much more aggressive; I've built nesting boxes for them all around the village. But people steal their eggs from the boxes—and for
food
no less. And the worst of the offenders is our own chairman of the village parish council, Lawrence Tigue.”

Julia touched Miss Wheatley's shoulder. “Now, you shouldn't say such things, Flora. You've no proof of that.”

“Of course I have proof! He's in the egg-selling business isn't he? Besides, I've seen him.”

Vera didn't quite know what to say. She didn't think she minded people taking birds eggs for food under the present circumstances.

“We must be vigilant,” Miss Wheatley said. “But no one wants to hear it, least of all our very own local officials. They're all in it together, the lot of them.”

Vera stole a glance at Julia, who raised her eyebrows slightly.

“Well I'm sure everyone is doing what they can,” Vera said.

“Don't you believe it, my dear! Either way, I beg of you to inform your captain. He may call on me anytime he wishes.” She nodded toward the wood beyond the cemetery. “I live just the other side of that wood. You can't miss my cottage; it's just off the trail.”

“I promise that I'll mention it to him,” Vera said. “He's my father, actually.” She immediately wondered why she had felt the need to mention that. Was it from guilt that her father had obtained her position for her?

“All the better, then!” Miss Wheatley said. She looked at the sky, then back at Vera. “Well, it's getting on to midday, and I've duties to attend to.”