“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.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
OBVIOUSLY, NO BOOK IS SOLELY THE WORK OF THE AUTHOR. FOR that reason, I’d like to express a heartfelt thanks to two people who have been instrumental in making this book and its precursor, The Language of the Dead, a reality—my agent, Joelle Delbourgo, of Joelle Delbourgo Associates, Inc., and my editor at Pegasus Books, Maia Larson. Thanks for believing in Inspector Lamb, and in me.
As always, I also want to thank my wife, Cindy, for her bottomless supply of love and support, which sustains not only me, but also the family that we have together created.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Language of the Dead
THE WAGES OF DESIRE
Pegasus Books LLC
148 W 37th Street, 13th Floor
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2016 by Stephen Kelly
First Pegasus Books cloth edition August 2016
Interior design by Maria Fernandez
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-68177-149-6
ISBN: 978-1-68177-190-8 (e-book)
Distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
The Wages of Desire Page 31