Lilly began to cry. Instinctively—for she hardly knew what she was doing at the moment—Vera opened her arms and Lilly flew into them. They embraced, and in that instant Vera understood that she could not leave Lilly in the incident room—that as soon as she left, Lilly would follow, silently and undercover. She could waste no more time arguing with Lilly.
Lilly roughly wiped the tears from her eyes. “I know the house better than anyone there,” she said. “You need me.”
“All right. But you must do as I say.”
Their pact thus sealed, they made their way quickly toward the church, where Lilly said she could lead them to the main path through the wood and therefore avoid the constable who was guarding the path by Lawrence Tigue’s cottage. They did just that, passing the place where Albert Clemmons had been killed, and soon were on the path heading from Miss Wheatley’s place toward the O’Hare house, where they moved into the verge. From where Vera and Lilly positioned themselves, neither Rivers nor Cashen could see them, and so did not know that the pair had arrived.
The image that Vera saw in the dimly lit window of the O’Hare house shocked her. Her father stood with his back to the window, his hands in the air, his fedora-topped silhouette unmistakable. Still, he was alive. She saw no sign of David or Rivers or Cashen and could only guess at where they had gone, but figured that they must be somewhere near. She tried to think in the way she believed her father would in such a situation—strategically. She recalled how he had first ascertained Taney’s position by the truck before moving to capture him. She turned to Lilly.
“Don’t move,” she whispered. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to see if I can find out what is happening in that room.”
She moved through the verge to within five meters of the window. She could hear the murmur of a voice coming from within the room. The voice was that of a man’s, though she did not recognize its tone or cadence, and so she guessed that it must be Lawrence Tigue’s.
She strained to see if David also was in the room, but the dark outline of her father’s figure blocked her view. She crawled to within a meter of the window and knelt there. This allowed her to see just past her father’s left side; and there she saw David standing in the corner with his hands up. She saw a portion of a woman’s dress and her knees near the floor. Miss Wheatley.
She heard the alien voice say, “Do exactly as I say or I’ll blow the old woman’s brains out.” She watched as David emptied the chamber of his pistol and tossed the gun away—and in that instant a plan made itself clear to her. She moved back to Lilly.
“Do you know where Miss Wheatley keeps her gun? The big one?” she asked Lilly.
“Yes.”
“Show me.”
Lilly led the way back along the trail to Miss Wheatley’s cottage. The front door was open. The two-barreled .20-gauge shotgun lay on the kitchen table near the box of cartridges. Miss Wheatley must have taken the gun down from its rack on the wall by the door earlier in the day to shoot starlings and not returned it to its perch by the time Lawrence Tigue had burst into the cottage and taken her hostage. Vera picked up the bulky gun. She had never fired, or even handled, any sort of gun, and Miss Wheatley’s shotgun felt alien and heavy in her hands. Her first instinct was to lay it back on the table and walk away from it. But she understood with an almost perfect clarity that she could not do that. She must overcome her trepidation—her fear—for the sake of her father and David.
“Do you know how it works?” she asked Lilly.
Lilly also knew very little about guns. But since she and Miss Wheatley had formed their partnership, she had seen Miss Wheatley load the gun. “You have to open the barrels to load it.”
Vera carefully laid the gun again on the table. “Show me,” she said.
Lilly pointed out the lever at the bottom of the barrels, which allowed them to open. “You push that to open it,” she said. She lifted the gun from the table and pushed the lever. The barrels cracked open.
“You slide the cartridges into the barrels and then close the gun,” Lilly said. “Then it’s ready to fire. There’s a little lever on the side. If that’s on, then you can’t fire the gun. It’s called the safety. You have to push it so that it’s off.”
Lilly picked up one of the cartridges and showed Vera how to slide it into the barrel. “You put them in with the metal end up,” she said. Vera loaded two cartridges, then snapped the barrel shut and put on the safety.
“Let’s go,” Vera said.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know yet.”
They made their way back to the O’Hare house. Her father continued to stand at the window with his hands raised. “Is there another way into the house other than the back door?” Vera asked Lilly. “Other windows?”
“Most of them are blocked by things. And they have little shards of broken glass sticking from them. Mr. Tigue would hear you.”
“Is there nothing else, no other opening?”
Lilly thought on the matter for a couple of seconds. “There’s the coal chute. It’s in the back wall, where the kitchen was. The chute itself has been ripped out but there’s a hole there, an opening. It’s narrow, though.”
“Could I fit through it?”
“You might just.”
“Where is it?”
“At the rear of the house—to the right of the back door. I can show you.”
“No—I can find it.” She looked directly at Lilly. “I couldn’t forgive myself if I let anything happen to you.”
“I can take care of myself,” Lilly protested. “I don’t need your pity.”
“You’re right,” Vera said. “I’m sorry. But there’s no need in two of us going. The more people creeping about the back of the house, the more likely Tigue will hear us.”
“All right,” Lilly said. “But please be careful.”
“I will,” Vera promised. Her heart had begun to pound.
Carrying the gun across her chest, like a soldier on the march, Vera moved through the verge to a spot by the tire swing. The gun was heavy. She thought of Rivers and the rest of them and hoped they were near and organizing a plan of rescue. And indeed at that moment Superintendent Harding was arriving at the incident room in the village with an additional six men and Cyril Larkin.
Twenty meters to Vera’s left, dim light leaked from the window of the parlor blocked partially by the dark figure of her father with his hands up. She couldn’t wait—mustn’t. She moved into the rear yard and along the porch, keeping parallel to it, toward the other side of the house, where Lilly had said the coal chute was.
Rivers and Cashen, who were huddled behind what remained of a long-dead pear tree about twenty meters from the rear door, saw Vera’s dark figure move by the porch. They did not recognize her in the darkness.
“What in hell?” Cashen whispered hoarsely. “Who is that?”
Rivers stared intently into the gloom. “I don’t know,” he said, believing that the mysterious figure threatened to ruin the plan. He considered calling out to the figure to stop but knew that this would only alert Tigue. And so he watched and readied himself to move if necessary.
Vera reached the end of the house, just to the right of the back door, and there turned toward the opening in the wall that once had contained the coal chute. She crouched by the opening for a couple of seconds to catch her breath, clutching the cumbersome shotgun and trying her best to ward off a rising sense of fear. Her heart thumped so heavily and loudly that she worried that Tigue might hear it.
The opening was just at the level of Vera’s chest and perhaps eighteen inches square. She reckoned that she could just squeeze through it, though she would have to ease the shotgun in separately. She slid the gun into the opening barrels first, playing its length through her hands until she felt the tips of the barrels touch the floor. She moved the gun as far to the right of the opening as she could and managed to lean i
t, stock up, against the interior wall.
To compress her body as much as possible, Vera exhaled and held her breath. Going into the opening would be like diving underwater, she thought, with the main difference being that once she reached bottom she could open her lungs again. She moved the upper half of her body into the opening, plunging herself into a darkness that was more dense than the one she had been maneuvering through. The smell of rot filled her nostrils. She moved into the opening up to her hips with relative ease, the sides of the opening scraping only a bit against the outside of her shoulders. She found the floor and placed her hands against it; the floor was so dirty that she felt as if she was placing her hands in a kind of loam. She began to move the rest of her body through the opening, inching forward across the floor with her hands. Her rump became stuck in the tight space, though it took her only a couple of seconds and a bit of extra effort to free it, after which she carefully eased the rest of her body through the hole.
A sense of relief swept over Vera once she was in the house—and yet, too, she felt exhausted. She turned herself to sit on the floor for a second and regain her bearings. She reached for the place on the wall where she had leaned the gun. She stood, picked up the gun, and turned toward the door of what had once been the kitchen, which gave onto the short, narrow, junk-strewn hall. Just across that hall was the room in which Lawrence Tigue was holding David, Miss Wheatley, and her father. She still did not know, exactly, what she intended to do and decided that the only thing for it was to do as the good guys invariably did to the bad in the movies. She would jump into the room and surprise Tigue—demand as loudly as she could for him to drop his gun and put up his hands. She was not sure what she would do, though, if Tigue refused that order—was not certain if she could bring herself to fire a gun at a living soul.
She took a step toward the door, forgetting to flick the safety lever to “off.” As she did so, she heard Lawrence Tigue say, “I’ve finished talking.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
I’VE FINISHED TALKING …
The words chilled Lamb. He prepared to strike at Tigue—desperately, blindly, if necessary. He glanced at Wallace, whose eyes were fixed on Tigue’s dark figure. If the pair of them could strike together they might have an even chance of overpowering Tigue, though one of them might have to take a bullet in the effort.
“I know you didn’t kill Maureen,” Lamb said to Tigue, hoping to forestall Tigue into bringing down the curtain on the story of his victory over Algernon. “Taney did.” Lamb was flailing; he did not know who killed Maureen Tigue. “You can help me bring Taney down. He and Maureen used you. I can protect you from the Irish. They’ll be after you, given what you know.”
“I no longer care about any of that,” Tigue said. He looked at Lamb. He raised the pistol and pointed it toward Miss Wheatley. “You’ve just wasted a minute of your half-hour, Chief Inspector.”
Lamb was readying himself to leap at Tigue, come what may, when Vera appeared in the door holding the shotgun.
“Stop!” she yelled. Her appearance startled Tigue, who stood and pointed the pistol at Vera. In that instant Wallace threw himself with his full power and bulk at Tigue, propelling Tigue against the wall in the corner.
Tigue’s pistol fired; Wallace yelled and recoiled. The pistol clattered to the floor and Tigue slumped to the ground, delirious from Wallace having smashed his head against the wall. Wallace tumbled backward and struck the kerosene lamp by Miss Wheatley’s feet as he fell to the floor. The lamp broke and the floor surrounding it burst into flame as the burning wick dropped into a puddle of spilled kerosene.
Vera dropped the shotgun. “David!” she yelled.
“Rivers! Move!” Lamb yelled.
He turned toward Tigue, who lay crumpled and unconscious in the corner. Vera was kneeling by Wallace, cradling his head. Lamb went to them.
Wallace was conscious and his eyes were open, though filled with pain.
“Where are you hit?” Lamb asked.
“Left thigh.” Wallace winced.
The fire from the broken lamp was burning the dry, rotted floor and spreading quickly; it licked close to Wallace’s left leg and was moving toward Miss Wheatley. Lamb grabbed Vera’s shoulder. “Drag him out of here as best you can,” he said. “Get your hands into his armpits and pull him. He’s going to cry out but you must keep going, despite that.”
“All right,” Vera said.
Lamb helped Wallace into a sitting position. Wallace winced again and emitted a yip of pain—“Ah! Bloody Christ!” Vera got her hands under his arms and, with some difficulty, began to drag him toward the door. Wallace squeezed his eyes closed against the pain and did not cry out.
Then Lamb heard Rivers’s voice above him. “Lamb!” He looked up to see Rivers and Cashen crowding through the door. “Get her out of here and help Vera with Wallace,” Lamb said, gesturing toward Miss Wheatley. He felt the heat of the fire growing just behind him, and the room was filling with smoke that stung his eyes.
Rivers dragged the bound Miss Wheatley toward the door, while Cashen helped Vera with Wallace.
Lamb turned back to Tigue. Through the thickening smoke, he saw that Tigue, though unsteady, was attempting to stand. He’d retrieved the fallen pistol and was moving its barrel toward his mouth.
Lamb leapt through the flames and caught Tigue’s arm with his left hand, yanking the gun away. The pistol fired and, for a terrifying instant, Lamb expected to feel a sharp pain. But the bullet had missed him. An instant later Tigue pushed him away. Nearly losing his balance, Lamb grabbed for the wall and caught himself.
Vera and Cashen dragged Wallace into the rear yard. Wallace yelped again as they eased him onto the ground. Harding was there now, with the other constables and Larkin, who immediately went to Wallace to give him what medical attention he could. The others leapt onto the creaking back porch to help Rivers with Miss Wheatley.
All of this occurred in what to Vera seemed like a single enflamed, kaleidoscopic instant. She smelled the smoke coming from the window of the twins’ room and realized that her father had yet to emerge from the fire.
She yelled, “Dad!” and plunged through the back door into the narrow, dark, smoke-filled hall. As she stepped into the room, she saw her father struggling with Tigue in the corner. The fire was beginning to lick up the rear wall. She heard the shot from Tigue’s pistol and saw that her father continued to stand. As she began to move toward her father, her right foot struck something heavy that nearly tripped her.
Miss Wheatley’s shotgun.
She picked it up and leveled it at Tigue. “Stop!” she yelled, but Tigue ignored her. She saw Tigue push her father away and point the pistol toward him. She had not been certain that she could use the gun if the moment required it. She had hoped only to frighten Tigue with the gun. But as she saw Tigue point the black pistol at her father, she forgot all of that and yanked on the double triggers.
But the triggers failed to give; the gun failed to fire.
The safety! She had forgotten to turn it. But there was no time to fumble with it. With all of the strength she could muster, she flung the shotgun at Tigue, as if throwing a spear. The gun struck Tigue in the left shoulder and staggered him. For a third time, Tigue’s pistol discharged.
Lamb heard the bullet embed itself harmlessly into the floor. In the next breath he tackled Tigue, and the two of them went to the floor. Lamb felt the heat of the flame against the side of his face. Then Rivers suddenly was there. He brought his right boot down squarely onto Tigue’s already damaged face, shattering Tigue’s nose. Tigue screamed in pain. Rivers roughly yanked Tigue to his feet and locked his arm around Tigue’s neck.
“Get the bloody hell out of here!” Rivers yelled to Lamb and Vera.
Lamb found the wall with his left hand and pulled himself to his feet. His head was spinning and he worried that the smoke was about to envelop him. He felt himself slipping. He turned toward the door and saw Vera making her way across the burning room to
ward him.
THIRTY-NINE
LAMB AND VERA STUMBLED FROM THE HOUSE INTO THE REAR yard, their arms about each other. Lilly ran toward them.
“Miss Lamb!”
“I’m all right, Lilly,” Vera said.
Harding ran to Lamb and helped Vera to hold him up. He ordered one of the constables to bring Lamb and Vera water, which they both drank greedily. Harding immediately began to try to convince Lamb to allow one of the men to drive him and Vera to the hospital, but Lamb waved the super off. “I’ll be all right,” he said. “It’s Miss Wheatley and Wallace who need tending.” Lamb looked at Vera and said, “Take her, too.” But Vera stood her ground. “I’m all right,” she said. Lamb hadn’t the heart, or the energy, to argue the point.
Harding relented, but he ordered Lamb and Vera to immediately return home and rest. An hour later, the pair returned to Marjorie in the wee hours, filthy, exhausted and stinking of burned kerosene. Marjorie made a fuss over them—prepared them tea and buttered bread—after which they slept, spent physically and emotionally.
The O’Hare house had burned to its foundation by the time a pumper arrived from Southampton later that evening. Julia Martin arrived and took Lilly home. Miss Wheatley was rushed to the hospital in Winchester, where she came awake in bed at six the following morning, confused but safe. Wallace also went to the hospital, where doctors discovered that the bullet that had entered his right thigh had shattered the tibia, which meant that his leg would be in a cast for months.
Lawrence Tigue was to spend several days in the hospital, healing from the blow to the head he’d received when Wallace had dived into him and from the broken nose that Rivers had inflicted upon him to go with his swollen eye. He was charged with treason for his part in the counterfeiting scheme and with murder in the killing of his younger brother. An autopsy revealed that Algernon Tigue had been shot in the forehead at point-blank range with the same .22-caliber pistol with which Lawrence Tigue had shot Wallace and nearly shot Miss Wheatley and Lamb. Taney also was charged with treason.
The Wages of Desire Page 29