The Wages of Desire (44 page)

Tigue paused for a second, as if trying to picture something in his mind, then continued.

“I would have liked to have seen the expression on Algernon's face when you produced the General Grant and connected it to the Napoleon that he so proudly displayed in his rooms. In his penchant for underestimating me, Algernon did not guess that the Napoleon I gave him was
the
Napoleon—the one from Tim's set—and that I might therefore possess the other figures in the set as well. After Oscar Strand sold the farm to the government, I knew that it was only a matter of time before the house was torn down and the foundation dug up and the bodies of Algernon's victims found. And so I gave him the Napoleon. I knew that his vanity would insist that he display the toy as a kind of souvenir of his handiwork, even though he believed my story that I'd found the figure in a London shop. But when you produced the Grant and told him where you'd found it, Algernon came to understand that I had trumped him. He came to the O'Hare house that very night, looking to see if I had left others in the set in the house or near the place where Albert Clemmons was murdered. But there were no other figures to find. I had possessed them all and had deployed them for my benefit.”

Lawrence then described for Lamb how, after searching the O'Hare house and the wood, Algernon had come to his cottage and confronted him.

“Once he knew the truth, he flew into a rage,” Lawrence said. “But I had anticipated his reaction and was ready for him. Even as he came at me, intending to kill me with his bare hands, as he had those little boys, he underestimated me—believed that I, too, was a little boy who would weakly yield to him. Instead, I shot him in the head.”

“Which one of you killed Albert Clemmons, then?”

“Algernon. When Strand sold the farm to the government, he began to worry that the bodies would come to light, which I found uncharacteristic of him. But I think he had begun to understand even then that the situation no longer was in his complete control, as Mother and Horton were long out of the picture and could no longer protect him. We both knew, of course, that the only living people besides ourselves who knew the truth of what lay within the foundation of the farmhouse were Horton and Albert. My brother wasn't worried about me—at least not at first—and he certainly wasn't worried about Horton, who he knew would never talk. But he wasn't as certain about Clemmons. And of course, Flora Wheatley made the mistake of telling Algernon that Albert had returned to Winstead, which proved fatal for Albert. I bore Albert no ill will. But as I told you, Chief Inspector, Flora Wheatley finds it impossible to keep her bloody trap shut.”

Lawrence Tigue shrugged. “And there you have the story.” To Lamb's surprise, he then asked Lamb for a cigarette.

“I hadn't realized that you smoked, Mr. Tigue.”

“I don't. But I've decided to start.” A brief smile crossed Tigue's face. “Isn't that always a condemned man's final request?” he asked. “A cigarette?”

FORTY

ON THE DAY AFTER THE EVENTS AT THE O'HARE HOUSE, LAMB
and Vera arrived at the nick an hour or so after lunch. Lamb expected that he would put in a light afternoon completing the paperwork he'd neglected during the previous days, and then return home for an enjoyable dinner with Marjorie and Vera. He had convinced himself that he'd earned that, as had Vera.

However, as soon as they entered the nick, Harding met them to say that thirty minutes earlier, Rivers had taken a call from Samuel Built, the civil defense man in Winstead, who reported that a local man had gone by the vicarage that morning and found the vicar's wife bound and gagged in the sitting room. The man had untied Mrs. Wimberly, given her water, made her comfortable, and then called Built, who sat with Wilhemina to await the arrival of the police.

Rivers had called in an ambulance and gone to Winstead with Larkin and Sergeant Cashen. Lamb and Vera immediately headed once again to the vexed little village, where they met Rivers at the vicarage.

By then, the ambulance had taken Wilhemina Wimberly to the hospital in Southampton. Rivers reported that she was exhausted, dehydrated, and probably in shock, but that she appeared to be otherwise unhurt. She had confessed to him something he'd found extraordinary:
She'd
shot Maureen Tigue to death in the cemetery to “cause trouble” for her husband. She claimed that Wimberly had cheated on her with Doris White and numerous other women throughout their marriage and treated her despicably in other ways. She had seen Maureen in the cemetery on several occasions in the early morning and had come to believe that Maureen was meeting Gerald for trysts.

“I wanted to see how the vicar of Winstead would explain a dead woman in his cemetery,” Wilhemina had told Rivers. She'd added that Doris White had seen her shoot Maureen Tigue and sought to blackmail Gerald and her with this knowledge. Doris hadn't wanted money, Wilhemina had said. She wanted Gerald. Gerald had planned to rid them of Doris but, on the previous night, Doris had turned the tables on them.

“Wilhemina believes that the pair of them might have left Winstead together,” Rivers told Lamb. “But she said that if Gerald did leave with Doris, he did so only to save his own skin and likely would kill her the first chance he got. He apparently meant to poison her last night with a bottle of wine he'd spiked with strychnine. I was just about to check her cottage.”

And so the three of them—Lamb, Rivers, and Vera—descended the path by the cemetery to Doris White's cottage.

On the previous evening, slightly more than an hour before Lamb began his showdown with Lawrence Tigue, Doris White had quietly brought to a close her plan for what she believed was the correct ending to the story that she and Gerald Wimberly had together written.

At her bidding, Gerald had tied up and gagged Wilhemina. Then she and Gerald had gone down the hill to Doris's cottage, Doris walking slightly behind Gerald with Gerald's Webley pointed at his back and Gerald carrying—also at Doris's bidding—the poisoned bottle of wine.

A few minutes later, Gerald sat alone on the couch in Doris's cottage, her prisoner, the feeling of being weak and trapped he so despised threatening to consume him. The bottle of wine sat on the table next to the couch, along with two glasses and a corkscrew that Doris had placed next to the bottle. Doris had lit the cottage's interior with the candles she'd stolen from the chapel. Despite his growing sense of panic, Gerald's mind worked frantically to devise a way by which he could regain control of his fate and kill Doris White.

“We're still going away aren't we, my love?” he'd asked Doris. “The two of us together?”

“Yes,” Doris said. She stood behind him, leveled the pistol at the back of his head, and ordered him to uncork the wine and pour them each a glass.

Fear flooded Gerald.

His hand shook as he poured, which caused him to spill some of the wine on the table.

Doris moved toward the table and picked up one of the glasses. “We're going to the bedroom now,” she said. She followed Gerald into the room and commanded him to lie on the bed.

“
Please
, Doris,” Gerald pleaded. “We can still be together.”

“Lie on the bed, Gerald,” she said evenly. A pair of pillows lay propped against the headboard. “I've made a nice comfortable spot for you.”

Gerald lay on the bed with his head on the pillows. He tried with all of his will not to give into despair. But something—the hard, unyielding remorselessness that was the key to his character—seemed to have broken and fallen away inside him and all that remained was a whimpering, frightened boy.

“Now,” Doris said, raising her glass. “I'd like to propose a toast: To
us.
” She raised her glass.

“I beg of you!” Gerald blubbered. Tears began to stream down his face.

She aimed the gun at his face. “You really are a coward and quite despicable in nearly every way,” she said. “But unfortunately, I love you all the same.”

A final instinct of survival bubbled to the surface within Gerald Wimberly. He threw the wine at Doris, yelped like an animal in its death throes, and leapt at her. Doris stepped back and pulled the trigger. The bullet hit Gerald between the eyes.

Doris looked at Gerald. He lay sprawled on the bed, a dark bloody hole in the middle of his face. Her chest heaved and her heart raced and she realized that she had begun to perspire heavily. She looked at the floor and saw the glass she had dropped as Gerald lunged at her.

Empty
, she thought.

She dropped the pistol and picked up the glass. She went back to the coffee table, where she filled the glass with sherry. A fragile warmth emanated from the candles.

She returned to the bedroom and put the glass of sherry on the night table, then opened the table's drawer and removed from it the small blue bottle of perfume Gerald had given her three years earlier, when she had been his mistress. She had wanted to throw the perfume away many times—just as Gerald had thrown her away—but found that she hadn't been able to. She opened the bottle, tipped a drop of the perfume onto her finger, then daubed it behind her ears. The scent filled her, leaving her contented.

She picked up the glass and lay upon the bed. She put the glass to her lips and quickly drained the sherry—all of it. She then turned toward Gerald and threw her arm across his body.

Lamb rapped on the cottage door. “Miss White?” he said. “Police. Open up, please.”

He gave Doris White thirty seconds to respond, then tried the knob. The door was unlocked. He stepped inside, followed by Rivers and Vera. His eyes immediately went to an uncorked, partially full bottle of sherry on the coffee table. The many candles about the room had burned to stubs and gone cold.

“Miss White?” he said.

They moved into the tiny cottage; Lamb noticed that the bedroom door was closed. “Miss White?” he repeated.

He went to the bedroom door and pushed it open. His first impression upon entering the room was the faint scent of a cheap French perfume that came in a small blue bottle labeled
Desire.

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