Hushed in Death

Lamb rang off and headed upstairs to dress. As he passed the closed door of Vera’s bedroom, his first thought was to let her sleep. But he knew that she would not forgive him for excluding her and seeming to coddle her in the bargain. He knocked gently on her door, then pushed it open.

  “Vera,” he said. She stirred in bed. “Vera. Wake up, dear.”

  She sat up slowly. “What is it, dad?”

  “Get dressed. We’re going to Marbury.”

  They picked up Rivers at the nick and arrived in Marbury less than an hour later, only to find that the pub itself was not aflame, only a small storage shed behind it. By then, a good many people in the village had left their beds to help extinguish the fire, among them Arthur Brandt, who, as air raid warden, had sounded the fire alarm and organized the response.

  Lamb, Rivers, and Vera found Brandt standing in the midst of a knot of people in front of a smoldering shed behind the Watchman. He was wearing a dark cotton cardigan sweater over his pajamas and a Home Guard helmet. The people with him—who, Lamb noticed, included Janet Lockhart wrapped in a light blue bathrobe—stood back from the shed, some still holding buckets. Its roof and three of its four walls had collapsed; the ground surrounding it was sodden. Only the western-facing wall continued to stand, though it, too, appeared ready to fall at the slightest breath. The place smelled of burned wood as smoke lazily rose from the charred remains of the shed, which appeared to have mostly held old furniture and garden implements.

  “Chief Inspector,” Brandt said, noticing Lamb. “How did you know to come?”

  “I received a telephone call from a woman who refused to give her name. What happened here, Mr. Brandt?”

  “This shed burned. I also received a call from a woman who said the pub was burning. I got up and ran down here and saw that it was not the pub, but the shed. I rang the fire bell by the church and we soon had enough people to start a bucket brigade. We kept dumping water on the thing until we got the better of it.”

  “Did the woman who called you identify herself?”

  “No, and I thought that curious. But I didn’t think about it much in the moment, to be honest.”

  Lamb glanced round the scene. “Is Theresa Hitchens here?”

  “You know, I hadn’t noticed,” Brandt said.

  “And Horace Hitchens?”

  “Yes, he was filling the buckets in the pub’s kitchen.”

  “Does the shed belong to him?”

  “Yes.”

  Lamb turned to Rivers. “See if you can find Hitchens and his daughter, please,” he said.

  “Right.”

  “What about Alan Fox?” Lamb asked Brandt.

  “I’ve not seen him, either.”

  A distant sound caught Lamb’s ear—a sound that, though faint, he instantly recognized. He had not heard the sound in nearly two years.

  Vera heard it, too, and recognized it.

  “That’s an air raid siren,” she said.

  “It must be coming from somewhere nearer to Southampton,” Lamb said.

  Gradually, others began to hear the sound as well and for several seconds the crowd milling by the shed went quiet. Then someone said, “Bleeding hell. Have the Germans come back?”

  “Maybe it’s a drill,” someone else said.

  “It’s no bloody drill. Why would they have a drill? The damned Germans haven’t dropped a bomb here in two bloody years.”

  Brandt did not need to hear more. He made for the High Street as quickly as he could, running first to his cottage, where he telephoned a contact in Southampton who confirmed the raid. He then retrieved the hand-operated air raid alarm the government had issued Marbury in the summer of 1939 and a pair of ear muffs. He hurried with the alarm to the front of the church, where he found a good dozen or more people already awaiting him. He put the device down on its legs and began to crank it; gradually, it began to emit a loud high- pitched wail.

  Vera had served as an air raid warden in the Hampshire village of Quimby in the summer of 1940, when the German bombers had come nearly every day. As Brandt began to crank the siren, she shouted at him, “What can I do to help?”

  Brandt handed her the ear muffs and said, “Keep cranking this for another five minutes or so. I’ve got to unlock the shelter.”

  Marbury’s air raid shelter was in the church cellar, a dank place that smelled of mildew. Brandt ran there to find that the vicar already had unlocked the cellar door and, with the help of Lamb and Rivers and two local Home Guard men, who had appeared in their roundish Great War–era helmets and toting first-aid kits and electric torches, already were leading people into the shelter and helping them to be seated inside. All round the little village, its residents were heading for the shelter. All the while the siren emitted its eerie sound as Vera continued to crank it.

  Brandt took his place by the door, helping to shepherd residents into the damp basement, which, though it had not been used as a shelter in nearly two years, Brandt had kept stocked with benches and chairs, food, water, blankets, and other provisions. He eventually returned to Vera to tell her that she could cease the cranking and then led her to the shelter’s door where they settled in with the others to wait out the raid.

  “I should think we’re safe enough here,” Brandt said, adding that if the Germans had indeed returned after such a long absence it was probably to bomb the Supermarine factory in Southampton, which produced Spitfire fighter planes.

  Lamb looked for Janet Lockhart and found her sitting with a group of young mothers who chatted as they watched over their children.

  But he also noticed that at least three residents of Marbury were not present—Horace and Theresa Hitchens and Alan Fox.

  “Have you any idea where they might be?” he asked Brandt.

  “No. As I said, the last time I saw Horace he was filling buckets from the kitchen tap and I have no idea where Theresa has gotten to. As for Alan, I haven’t seen him in more than a week.”

  “What are the provisions at Elton House for an air raid?”

  “They shelter in the cellar. It’s actually safer there than here.”

  Those in the shelter began to hear, from the southwest, the rumble of bombs bursting in the far distance.

  The Germans were hitting Southampton.

  Slightly less than an hour after they had first noticed the distant air raid siren, those gathered in the church cellar in Marbury heard the sirens along the coast begin to wail the “all clear” signal.

  Brandt stood and announced, “Ladies and gentleman, the Germans have gone. Hopefully they won’t return for at least another two years. You can now go back to your homes. Thank you for your patience and cooperation.”

  With that he opened the shelter door; the Home Guard men took up their positions to help the frail and the young children find their way, for it was still dark, though the people of Marbury, veterans of the summer of 1940, already knew the drill.

  Meanwhile, to keep the proceedings official, Brandt briefly cranked out the all clear on the portable siren.

  Lamb begged the vicar’s indulgence to use his telephone. He called Marjorie and was relieved when she answered the phone on the ninth ring. She had herself just returned home from the shelter. She was fine; the bombers had come nowhere near Winchester.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Lamb said.

  “Don’t be silly. How is Vera?”

  “She’s fine. No damage here. We’ll be home as soon as we can.”

  Having assured himself that Marjorie was not hurt, he took Rivers in tow and went to see if they could track down the Hitchenses and Alan Fox. Vera was to stay with Brandt and assist him in his duties.

  Lamb and Rivers could find no sign of Horace Hitchens or his daughter in or near the pub. Lamb suspected that one—or both—of the Hitchenses had set fire to the shed, perhaps for the purpose of collecting on the insurance.

  From the beginning he’d considered the possibility that Horace Hitchens might have killed Lee to keep Lee from harassing Theresa. But
he wondered, too, whether Lee’s assertion that he possessed damning evidence about something in Alan Fox’s past also had frightened Hitchens. Perhaps Lee had not been so wrong to suspect that Alan Fox was linked sexually with Theresa Hitchens. And perhaps something had come of that relationship that Hitchens, as well as Fox, could not allow to become public.

  Lamb and Rivers now made for Fox’s cottage, where Lamb once again banged on the front door to no avail. He and Rivers went round to the rear garden and tried the French doors that opened onto the house and found these were also locked. Lamb banged on the door, hoping that Fox might merely have become drunk and slept through the air raid.

  “Alan Fox!” Lamb yelled. “It’s the Hampshire police. Open up!”

  But the response from within was silence.

  He turned to the garden-shed-cum-painting-studio and found the door open. He stepped inside with Rivers on his heels, found the light switch, flicked it on, and went to the painting lying upon the easel.

  “That’s bloody peculiar,” Rivers said, looking at the painting.

  Lamb didn’t answer. He was squinting at the stern of the departing ship to see if its name was there. He could just make out, etched in faint white paint, the name of one of the Blue Star Line ships on which Joseph Lee had served as a cabin steward.

  Algiers.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  BECAUSE OF THE LATE HOUR IN WHICH THEY WERE FORCED TO stay in Marbury on the previous night, Lamb, Rivers, and Vera got a late start on the following day. By the time they arrived at the nick, lunchtime had come and gone.

  Larkin, though, had been busy. He had been on the telephone that morning with the man from the Blue Star Line and obtained some of the information Lamb had asked for.

  “Joseph Lee served on the Algiers from 1922 to 1927,” the forensics man told Lamb. “Believe it or not, sir, he was part of three separate voyages during that time in which a passenger jumped into the sea. Apparently, it wasn’t that uncommon on some of the lesser lines and during the longer voyages for those of a certain melancholy mind-set to give into despair and end it all in the briny. The voyages in question were in April 1922, June 1925, and then again in April 1926. All were on the ship’s usual route from Malta to Southampton, with stops in Gibraltar and Belfast. As you probably remember from what I told you yesterday, Lady Catherine Elton went to Malta and married a man there.”

  “Yes,” Lamb said. “Did he have the names of the passengers who committed suicide?”

  “No, but he promised me he’s working on that, as it will take some digging into another set of files. I told him that it was vital we get the information as soon as possible and he promised the send it up by courier.”

  “All right,” Lamb said. “Keep at him, and let me know as soon as you have the names.”

  Feeling as if the pace of the inquiry had quickened very suddenly over the past twelve hours, and now threatened to outpace him, Lamb set off again for Marbury with Wallace and Rivers to see what had become of Horace and Theresa Hitchens and Alan Fox. He worried that one or more of them might have done a runner.

  At the Watchman the detectives dispensed with the front door and went round the back, where they found the utility shed still smoldering and the door to the kitchen wide open. The kitchen was in a shambles, with pots and pans strewn about and the floor still slick from water that had sloshed from the buckets used to douse the fire.

  Lamb called out for Horace and Theresa Hitchens, and when neither answered, the trio moved into the pub. Here, Lamb nearly stumbled over Horace, whom they found lying passed out on the floor, reeking of whiskey and lying in a pool of vomit. Lamb knelt next to Hitchens and tried to rouse him, but to no avail; still, he could see that Hitchens was breathing. Wallace fetched a glass of water from the kitchen, which Lamb threw into the publican’s face. Hitchens sputtered awake and briefly opened his eyes. But he was so drunk that he was able to muster no other response save groaning, rolling over, and curling himself into a fetal position.

  “Help me sit him up, please,” Lamb said; Wallace and Rivers helped the chief inspector haul Hitchens into a sitting position with his back against the bar and his eyes shut.

  Lamb squatted in front of him and put his hands on Hitchens’s shoulders.

  “Where is your daughter?” he asked Hitchens, shaking him a bit.

  But Hitchens merely mumbled something incomprehensible and his head lolled onto his left shoulder.

  “He’s absolutely off his bloody trolley,” Wallace said.

  Lamb stood. “All right, David, stay with him and see if you can’t sober him up. Harry and I are going to see if Alan Fox is home.”

  Vera was leaning against the Wolseley as Lamb and Rivers passed on their way up the hill. Lamb asked her to hike up the path toward Elton House and search the wood just below the pond for any sign of the fireplace poker they reckoned was missing from Lee’s lodgings. Though Larkin had searched the area on the morning they’d found Lee’s body, and found no likely murder weapon, Lamb wanted to give the area a second run-through. He believed that Vera could handle the assignment and having her do so was preferable to asking her yet again to wait by the Wolseley with nothing worthwhile to do.

  “Do you have a handkerchief?” Lamb asked her.

  Vera produced one from her pants pocket.

  “Good,” Lamb said. “Should you find anything pick it up with that and bring it immediately back here.”

  For Rivers’s sake, Vera addressed her father as if she were a police underling and not his beloved daughter, the one person in the world whom he could not stand losing.

  “Right away, sir,” she said and headed in the direction of the footpath.

  When Vera was out of earshot, Rivers said, “Are you worried about them, then?”

  Lamb was surprised to hear Rivers speak in this way. For one, Rivers never had been one to pry. But for another, Lamb had not realized that Rivers had even caught on to what had been happening between Wallace and Vera.

  “How much do you know?” Lamb answered cryptically.

  “Enough. It’s fairly obvious. At least at times.”

  This distressed Lamb. He hadn’t believed it to have been obvious. “Do the others know?”

  “I’m not sure about Larkin or the uniformed men, but I think Cashen knows. But he’s too gentle and discreet to speak of it to anyone and far too loyal to you.”

  Lamb looked at Rivers. “Do you think Harding has caught on?”

  “No. His head’s too far up his arse.”

  “In that case, then yes, I am worried just a bit, but I’m trying not to be. Vera’s old enough now to make up her own mind about these things.”

  “Prince Charming isn’t a half bad lad. She might do worse.”

  Lamb was about to agree, when he glanced up the hill and saw Arthur Brandt moving toward them at a trot from the vicinity of Fox’s cottage—a sight that brought their conversation to an abrupt halt. Brandt reached the detectives in a clear state of agitation, his breathing labored and his face flushed red.

  “Chief Inspector, thank goodness you’re here,” Brandt said. “I was just on my way back to my cottage to call you. I’ve just come from Alan Fox’s house.”

  “What is it?” Lamb asked.

  Brandt looked away for an instant as he endeavored to catch his breath. Then he looked at Lamb and said, “He’d dead, Chief Inspector. Alan Fox is dead.”

  Alan Fox lay on his back on the floor of his studio by the small table that held the phonograph, his feet facing the door. His head lay upon his right shoulder in a pool of blood; inches from his left hand lay a small revolver.

  Lamb saw an obvious gunshot wound in Fox’s left temple—a small, red, oozing hole—that clearly had come from point-blank range. He also noticed that a single sheet of paper, folded in half, lay upon the phonograph’s turntable.

  The detectives squatted next to the body as Arthur Brandt waited for them out beyond the gate that led into Fox’s rear courtyard.

  “It co
uld be suicide,” Rivers said. He gestured toward the phonograph. “It appears he might have left a note.”

  “Yes.”

  Rivers pushed Fox’s head to the left, revealing a large jagged exit wound on the right side of Brandt’s head. “Was he left-handed, do you know?”

  “I think so. He painted and smoked with his left hand.”

  Rivers sniffed the fingers of Fox’s left hand. “I don’t smell anything, though,” he said. “If he did shoot himself then that pistol must give off almost no discharge.”

  The pistol appeared to be about a .32 caliber, Lamb thought.

  Rivers dug through the pockets of Fox’s jacket and found a half-full packet of the French cigarettes Fox favored and a box of matches but nothing else. “His body is beginning to stiffen,” he said.

  Lamb stood and withdrew a handkerchief from his pocket, which he used to pick up the folded paper from the phonograph. He found that it was indeed a note, written in blue ink. He read it to Rivers:

  This note is for the world, but also for Lamb. I don’t intend to hang for the sake of Joseph Lee and so have taken my own life. My departure was past due in any case, as my best years were well behind me. All I ever accomplished came a very long time ago; since, I have merely rotted, from the inside out. Now I’ve had enough.

  Alan Fox

  Rivers stood and looked at the note; he noticed, as Lamb had, the same cartoonish drawing of a fox face they’d found on one of the bills they’d retrieved from Lee’s cottage and which also was on Fox’s mailbox.

  “Who doodles on a bloody suicide note?” the inspector wondered aloud.

  Lamb was wondering the same thing. But something else caught his attention. Fox’s easel was empty; the painting of the drowning woman and the departing liner was no longer perched upon it.

  Lamb went to the easel and searched its surroundings for the painting, but did not find it.

  “Maybe he’s finished it,” Rivers said, moving next to Lamb.

  “Yes,” Lamb said.

  “I’ll go back to the pub and call Winston-Sheed and get Larkin and Cashen and a squad of men out here.”