The Wages of Desire (14 page)

By the time Miss Wheatley reached the low chicken wire fence that marked the border of her property, she was nearly out of breath. “Miss Lamb, what a pleasant surprise,” she said, briefly putting her hand to her heart. “What brings you this way?”

Vera smiled. “Just out for a walk.”

“I say, I wonder if you've had a chance to tell your captain about the nuthatches,” Miss Wheatley asked. “We must do something soon, you know, otherwise the nuthatches here about will be wiped out.”

“Yes, I told him,” Vera said. She left it at that.

“Oh, thank you, my dear. Perhaps now someone finally will do something about this problem before it's too late. I've put up a number of nesting boxes, but I'm afraid they've only made it easier for the thieves to steal the eggs. But I had to put up the boxes, you see, because the starlings also are cavity nesters and they push the nuthatches out of the natural nesting spots. The starlings are a much more aggressive species than the nuthatch. That's why there are so bloody many of them. Rats of the air, I call them.”

“I think I just passed one of your boxes in the meadow,” Vera said. She didn't want to engage Miss Wheatley in an extended conversation, but she was curious about the box.

Miss Wheatley gazed in the direction of the meadow. “Yes, they prefer to nest near meadows. Of course, you can't place the boxes too close together because they each need their own bit of territory, and they have a hard enough time coping with the starlings. Then, of course, too, you have predators—not the least of which, these days, is the human variety, Lawrence Tigue being the biggest culprit, as I told you yesterday. He has chickens, you know, and supplies eggs to the people at the prison camp, and I'm certain he's been padding his supply with nuthatch eggs. They represent pure profit to him.”

Vera began to think of a way in which she might politely extract herself from the conversation.

“I've taken care of the natural predators in any case,” Miss Wheatley continued. She smiled. “The barbed wire around the trunks of the nesting boxes keeps out the snakes. Horrible things. I don't like snakes—never have. When I find them around the cottage I chop their heads off; a single whack with a sharpened hoe is all it takes. Anyhow, without the barbed wire they slither right up the post and into the nest.”

“Yes,” Vera said, slightly taken aback by the blunt way in which Miss Wheatley described her method of dispatching snakes—and by the sudden and unwanted image of a serpent slithering up a pole to invade a nest of newborn innocents.

“The same goes for the starlings,” Miss Wheatley said. “I can't tell you how often I find that a pair of the evil things have taken up residence in one of my boxes, thereby pushing out the nuthatch.” She patted the gun lying in her arm. “I try to kill as many of the adults as I can with this. I keep it near the front door, in case I see one in the yard. I was just going out on a bit of a hunting expedition as you passed. Sometimes one must take the bull by the horns, as they say.”

“Yes, well, I must be getting back,” Vera said. “The captain will be waiting for me.” She glanced down the trail in the direction of the village.

“I take the eggs, of course,” Miss Wheatley continued. “Of the starlings, I mean—if I find the eggs in the nesting boxes in the place of the nuthatch's. Or, if the starling eggs have hatched I dispose of the hatchlings.”

This last assertion surprised and troubled Vera. How did one “dispose” of baby birds, she thought. “What do you mean?” She couldn't help but ask.

“Just that. I dispose of them; twist their necks until they break. They're filthy birds, and their numbers have become madly out of control. As I said, they're more like rats than birds. If someone doesn't stop them, they'll ruin the nuthatch.”

Vera tried to manage a smile but found she couldn't. “Goodbye, Miss Wheatley,” she said. She didn't wait for a reply, turning toward the little wood.

Miss Wheatley waved at Vera's back. “Goodbye, my dear,” she said. “Please come by again if you've the chance. We'll have tea.”

No, we won't
, Vera thought.

As she passed the barbed-wired nesting box on her way back to the village, she heard Miss Wheatley's bird gun explode somewhere on the other side of the little wood.

Doris White cleaned the chapel after Lila Tutin's funeral.

Not that she had much to do, really. Hardly anyone had come to bid old Miss Tutin farewell, which Doris found sad in part because she once had worried that her own funeral would be the same sort of lonely, empty affair. But she needn't worry about that any longer. She blew out the candles and put them in her bag.

Once upon a time, Gerald had come to her in the night, leaving Wilhemina lying alone in their marital bed. On those few occasions, she had lit her cottage with candles she'd stolen from the chapel, which Gerald had found romantic.

She left the chapel and walked to the vicarage. She did not bother to knock on the door. She entered the foyer and listened. No one seemed to be about. She concluded that the cow likely was upstairs sleeping—Wilhemina often slept during the day—and that Gerald was out, probably walking. He normally found excuses to leave the vicarage during the day because he couldn't stand being with his wife. Doris knew that Gerald was weak and strong all at once. His wickedness made him that way. She had lost her grip on him for a time. But the woman's murder had changed that.

The police—Lamb and the other detective—had only just left the vicarage a half-hour or so earlier, after having interviewed Gerald and Wilhemina. She wondered what the silly cow had told the policemen, especially Lamb, who was smart, a man to be careful with. She found that she liked Lamb. He was handsome and self-possessed, almost steely. She had noticed that about him right away.

She went into Gerald's study as easy as you please. She looked at the place on the bookshelf where he'd displayed the Webley in its box. Of course she'd seen it the last time she'd cleaned the study. Once again, she could only imagine what lie Gerald had told Lamb to explain its absence. Now, of course, Gerald had another secret that involved the pistol that would make him obedient to her.

She went to Gerald's desk and pulled from the top drawer a piece of his personal stationery, the one embossed with the words
The Rev. Gerald Wimberly, Vicar, St. Michael's Church, Winstead, Hampshire
. Gerald forbid anyone but himself to use the stationery, but she needn't worry about that now. Neither did she care if Wilhemina saw the note, because Wilhemina could do nothing about it. She would complain, of course, hector Gerald in her usual way, but that, too, meant nothing.

She sat at the desk, took up Gerald's pen, and wrote:

Gerald,

I will see you tonight at my cottage at nine. Don't be late. The detective asked me about the pistol today and I told him that I really didn't know if you had the pistol last week. Aren't you proud of me?

Lovingly,

Doris

Once upon a time, Gerald had forsaken her, as if she was of no more value or consequence to him than yesterday's rubbish. But she had a heart and mind and her own sense of dignity, and she knew things—secrets—that no one but she and Gerald knew.

THIRTEEN

WHEN SHE REACHED THE HIGH STREET, VERA DUG INTO THE TOP
pocket of her tunic and withdrew from it a packet of Player's Navy Cut cigarettes—the same brand her father smoked—lit one, and began to walk toward the church. She would have to smoke the fag quickly, before she reached the car, in case her father and Rivers had finished with the vicar and were waiting for her.

As she walked, she couldn't help but think of her encounter with Miss Wheatley and concluded that Lilly Martin was right—the woman was loony. She conjured, then banished, from her mind a brief image of Miss Wheatley twisting a slender, fragile infant starling's neck between her fat fingers.

As she neared the church, she saw that her father and Rivers were still gone. She took a final drag of the Player's then ground it out beneath the toe of her shoe. She heard the sound of someone pedaling a bicycle coming up behind her and turned to see Lilly making for her. Lilly pulled alongside Vera and got off her bike. Vera smiled and said hello.

“Hello,” Lilly said. “Back for more fun I see.”

“Well, I wouldn't call it fun.” Lilly seemed cheeky for her age, Vera thought. She wondered if
she
had seemed that cheeky to adults when she was Lilly's age.

“Everyone's talking about it now,” Lilly said. They began to walk together toward Lamb's Wolseley, Lilly pushing her bicycle.

“And what are they saying?” Vera asked.

“That it's all a great mystery.”

“And what do you think?”

“That the vicar did it, of course.”

They reached the car. “Why the vicar? I would think he'd be the last person you'd suspect.”

“Not if the killing takes place in a detective novel,” Lilly said. “In detective novels, the killer's always the person you least suspect.”

“Do you read a lot of detective novels, then?”

“Yes, I love them. I hope to become a detective novelist myself one day.”

“Do you? Some detective novels get a bit bloody, don't they?”

“I don't mind a little blood. I'm getting myself used to accepting the fact that some people can be quite wicked. You have to if you're going to write detective novels.”

Vera smiled. “I suppose you're right. You can't have a good detective novel without a bit of wickedness.”

“A lot of wickedness, actually.” Lilly gently laid her bike on the road. “I saw you come out of the path to Miss Wheatley's.”

“Yes.”

Lilly formed her fingers into claws, like a cat's, and pretended to scratch at Vera. “Did she get you, then? Try to put you in a pot and cook you?”

Vera laughed. She liked Lilly. “Yes, she very nearly did, as a matter of fact.”

“She's like that. She's eaten several children in the village. I've managed to escape her clutches, though. Mother says I shouldn't talk about her in that way, but I think she's a hypocritical old cow in addition to being a tremendous bore, going on as she does about this and that. Her latest obsession is the nuthatches.”

“So I gathered. I found one of her nesting boxes.”

“Yes, they're horrible things—a blight, if you ask me.” She shrugged. “Nearly the whole village is that way, though. They're all a bunch of loonies and hypocrites.”

“I don't know,” Vera said. “Your mother seemed all right.”

Lilly shrugged again. “Mum means well. But since Dad went to North Africa, she's become a little loony, too. She has a job now in Southampton, in a factory, making screwdrivers. She works nights and so I don't see her much now. And she nags too much.”

“Maybe that's because she's concerned about you.”

“That's what
he
says in his letters—Dad. He says Mum's under her own kind of pressure and that I shouldn't be cross with her.”

Vera thought she understood the source of Lilly's cheekiness a bit better now. Cheekiness was one way to mask emotional pain.

“Where is your dad, exactly?” Vera asked. With the war nearly two years on, the question no longer was considered to be prying.

“I don't know,
exactly
,” Lilly said with what Vera thought was a brave nonchalance. “His last letter said he was near Cairo, but that was weeks ago. He writes me separate letters, though, addressed to me and just for me. He tells me not to worry, but I know that he's only trying to make me feel better. I read the papers. I know what's going on there. The Germans are winning.”

“Which branch?”

“The infantry—the ones who get shot,” Lilly said.

Vera didn't quite know what to say to this young girl who seemed to have so much weighing on her shoulders. Lilly's problems made her own seem puny in comparison. “What's it like here in the summers, then?” she asked. She was changing the subject, and that was not very brave of her, she knew.