The Language of the Dead Read Free Page B

allowing herself to become so quickly involved with him.
    â€œWell, I’m glad you came,” Lamb said. “If I have time, I’ll stop by your billet.”
    She smiled. “No need, Dad. You’ve got a lot to do and I’m fine.”
    Lamb wondered if Vera planned on going back to her billet with Arthur Lear. “All right,” he said. He wanted to kiss her on the forehead—but that, too, would embarrass her. “I’ll give your love to your mother.” He turned toward Arthur. Arthur certainly had his eye on Vera, he decided. He felt bad that the boy had lost his arm, but he also understood how a lost arm might play to Arthur’s advantage.
    Vera nodded farewell to her father, then she and Arthur went back down the High Street toward her billet. As he watched her go, Lamb felt that Vera had moved to a point in her life in which she was all but out of his reach. Strangely, he hadn’t seen that moment coming, as he should have.
    He turned to Harris. “Let’s go, Constable,” he said.

    Lamb and Harris moved up Manscome Hill through an area bordered on their left by meadows and hedges and on their right by a small wood.
    The twilight air had grown cool and redolent of the fragrances of wildflowers and windblown grasses. Bees and butterflies busied themselves in the meadows, and the first bats appeared. Small birds occasionally darted from thickets to alight on sagging fences. The sun had eased its way down to a point just beneath the tops of the highest trees of the wood to their right, slanting shadows across the footpath.
    They soon passed a gate through which the path branched off and led to George Abbott’s farmhouse. Their passing frightened a flock of fat sheep that scuttled, bleating, off the path into a meadow.
    â€œYou were the first called to the scene?” Lamb asked Harris.
    â€œYes, sir. The body was discovered by Miss Blackwell and Mr. Abbott; seems Miss Blackwell missed her uncle when he failed to show for his tea. The deceased was, according to his niece, a man ofsingular habits who never missed his tea. So when he failed to show after Miss Blackwell had finished her own tea, she began to worry and came up the hill to fetch Mr. Abbott, who had hired the deceased to trim the hedges along one of his fields.”
    â€œSo they went in search of Mr. Blackwell together, then?” Lamb asked.
    â€œYes, sir. According to Miss Blackwell, Mr. Abbott went directly to the spot. Afterward, they called me from the pub—I live in Moresham—then went to Miss Blackwell’s cottage, where I met them. That was about half past six. When I arrived, Miss Blackwell was still very much in a state. They led me to the scene, after which I told Mr. Abbott to wait at his house. I escorted Miss Blackwell back to her cottage. I then telephoned the constabulary and spoke to Sergeant Wallace.”
    They passed beneath a massive, long-dead sycamore near a small wooden bridge that conveyed the path across Mills Run. From here, the creek moved into, through, and out the opposite side of the wood to their right, where it once had powered a grain mill, which had lain abandoned now for nearly fifty years and fallen into ruin.
    Once they were across the footbridge, Harris led Lamb off the path into the meadow on their left, where they began a gentle, sloping climb of about a hundred meters to the place where Will Blackwell’s body lay. Several people stood in a rough circle around the old man’s body. One of these was Wallace, who approached Lamb.
    â€œEvening, sir,” he said, touching the brim of his fedora. As usual, Wallace was dressed in a smart-looking dark suit. He wore a yellow silk tie and an expensive-looking pair of black patent leather shoes, which had become stained with mud.
    â€œWhat have we got?” Lamb asked.
    â€œA complicated scene, I’m afraid. We’ve photographed the body and the immediate surrounding area. We’re