by Iona Whishaw
“Good man,” said Darling. “So quick on the uptake.” They started back to the station and Darling filled him in. “I was able to glean more from Mrs. Castle, who didn’t know whether she should be relieved or more frightened. She seems very confident that her son would not go off somewhere and start a new life. It began, I think, to dawn on her as she spoke that he had started to change in small ways. He’d always been docile, but of late had begun to talk about himself as the man of the house. Apparently, a couple of days ago he said something like, ‘Father wouldn’t have put up with that.’ She said she was surprised and maybe even a little frightened. Her husband was abusive to both of them, apparently.”
“You mentioned that she had no idea who H is. Perhaps he, or she, is behind it.”
“Maybe. How about you get into that bag and we’ll have a look, and then you can catalogue it while I go home and put my feet up. It’s been a long day.”
“Sir,” said Ames, half smiling. He’d never known the inspector to go home before him, and he knew he wouldn’t now.
It was still light, though in mid-July the sun was already setting a little closer to nine than ten. Lane decided to avoid the slight melancholy that always came over her as the sky began its turn toward night by going over to the Armstrongs’. She hoped they had eaten so it didn’t look as though she was coming over to mooch. She had dined on bread and cheese but felt a slight envy at what she assumed must be the proper dinners Eleanor prepared for the two of them. They’d certainly been good the few times Lane had been over for an evening meal. Usually it was lunch or tea when she visited.
“Come in!” cried Kenny, swinging open the screen door enthusiastically. He was holding a tea towel.
“Doing the washing up?” she asked.
“Someone has to while Madam lounges with the papers.”
Inside, Eleanor Armstrong had put her nursing bag on the table and was beginning to pull things out of it. “I’m not lounging, I’m taking stock. If we’re going to be flooded with injuries, I thought I’d better have a good look.”
Kenny, putting a plate up on the sunny green open shelves next to the sink, said, “I wouldn’t call one person a flood, would you?” He winked at Lane and bobbed his head toward her favourite chair.
“Not yet,” Eleanor said. “But none of us is getting any younger. Robin could keel over off that tractor any day and run himself over. Gladys could impale herself with a trowel. One ought to be prepared. The nearest doctor is that old coot at the hot springs, Dr. Whatshisname.”
“Truscott,” said Lane. “He’s all right. But after what I’ve seen today, if I cut myself chopping kindling, I’ll be very comforted knowing you are nearby with your little kit. Weren’t you amazed at your wife’s display of sang-froid today?”
“Ha!” Kenny heartily exclaimed. “She’s full of surprises. Surprised me right from the start by falling for me. You come to expect just about anything from a woman who can do that.”
This is why I come over, Lane thought. To be enveloped in the affection between these two.
“I saw the picture of you in the other room, with the other nursing sisters at the front. I never thought much about it till you pulled out your bag of tricks this morning. I don’t think you’ve ever mentioned it.”
Eleanor looked up and smiled. “It doesn’t do to talk about it, does it, dear? You know that. But it can be useful. I ought to be prepared. I mean, it’s been over thirty years, but I can still slap a dressing on a wound till proper help gets here. What I’m wondering is, ought I to go into town and get some more things from the drugstore? Mercurochrome, iodine, some bandages. Make it a sort of first aid kit. I honestly can’t believe I haven’t needed it much before now.”
“I think it’s a splendid idea! I’ll drive you, and I’ll take you to lunch at Lorenzo’s. It’s the least you deserve after today’s heroics!” Lane accepted a cup of hot cocoa from Kenny, who’d been preparing it before Lane arrived. “Tell me, if it’s not being too nosey, how did you two meet?”
“We met first in 1910, I think it was,” said Kenny. “John and I were absolute savages. We were made to put on good clothes and go along to some gawd-help-us church bazaar up the lake to please Mother, and there was Eleanor. She’d come over to visit an aunt. She was drinking tea and chatting with a little west highland terrier. Someone introduced us and I shuffled about like a yokel. I knew she’d never be interested in a rough specimen like me.”
“I was smitten straight away,” said Eleanor, “because he ignored me and crouched down to play with the dog. I knew there was a lot of good in a man like that. It took some work, but I got him to propose before I was scheduled to ship back. I spent the whole war engaged to him. I never told my aunt, and Kenny never told his mother. But the minute it was over I came back. A much sadder time. John died in France and Robin was missing.”
“Mother was pretty cut up about John, you know. I was down in the dumps as well, because I felt guilty that I hadn’t signed up. It should have been me, I always thought.” Kenny took a deep breath and opened the stove to poke at the burning wood. “Anyway, much to my amazement Eleanor came shooting back after the war, apparently still determined to marry me. Can you beat that?”
“Secretly engaged all that time! But I understand her perfectly,” Lane said, smiling. “But what a difficult time for you.” She’d seen the silver-framed picture of Kenny’s brother John, looking resplendent in uniform, in pride of place in the sitting room.
Kenny looked at his wife and shook his head, smiling at her. “She cheered Mother up, I can tell you. Mum had lost any hope for me and was sure no woman of good sense would come back just for me. I think it helped that Eleanor was able to talk about the war. It helped Mum get through it. You go on, don’t you? At first I felt like he was here every day, and finally she persuaded me that we should let the poor boy go to his peaceful reward.”
There was a long silence. The fire crackled and Eleanor’s cup clinked softly against the saucer as she picked it up.
“Do you know, I’ve had a call from that Mrs. Enderby up at the mansion. They’ve got a new litter,” she said.
“Oh, lovely,” cried Lane. “Will you get a puppy? I’ve been thinking of getting one myself. I need something small enough to sit in my lap and big enough to annoy Robin.”
“I’ve seen that look in Eleanor’s eyes before,” sighed Kenny. “I’m guessing we’re getting a new puppy. You’ll want something a little bigger if you want to annoy Robin. We should keep our eyes peeled.”
Robin, Kenny’s curmudgeonly cousin, lived down near the turnoff from the Nelson road and had land and orchards adjacent to Lane’s. He seemed, she often thought, to live in constant irritated anticipation that she’d one day get a dog that would stray onto his land.
“Have you heard anything about that poor man?” asked Eleanor, surveying her kit, now laid out in two rows. Vials of something, brown packets of bandages, scissors, a tourniquet, a couple of slings, and a little palm-sized and well-thumbed book of medical terms.
Lane wanted to ask what was in the vials but instead looked at her watch. “Goodness. I should get back. I sometimes get a call around now.” She could feel herself blushing. Of course, they might have guessed that things were on a different footing with the inspector, but she hadn’t talked about it. “I haven’t heard about the young man, but perhaps I’ll get word. He didn’t look too well, did he? But I bet if he’s still alive, it’s down to you.”
“Of course,” said Eleanor. “That nice inspector. I’m glad. Though I’m afraid my little bandage would not have kept that poor man from death’s door. I fear only Providence can help him. In any case, do let us know. We don’t go to bed till after ten thirty. I’ll feel better knowing.”
Promising to call no matter what, Lane sped back across the gully and through the little glade of birch trees that separated her white Victo
rian house, once that of Kenny’s mother, Lady Armstrong, from the post office. The phone began to ring as soon as she came through the door. As if he knew, she thought. She pulled the receiver off its hook and prayed it would not conk out on her. “KC 431, Lane Winslow speaking,” she said into the horn.
“Hello, darling,” said Darling, his voice soft. “Why do you sound out of breath?”
“I’ve just dashed over from the Armstrongs’. Eleanor was showing me the contents of her nursing kit. I feel much safer now, I can tell you. She knows how to use everything in it. She wonders how the young man is.”
“Clinging to life. We found something very interesting in his kit bag. But you left a message at the station about something you saw in the boat.”
Lane leaned against the wall feeling slightly guilty that she was so happy to be talking to Darling when some poor man lay close to death. “I don’t think it was much. Only a gouge in the rim, as though someone had hit it with something sharp or heavy, like a hammer, or, as seems more likely, that heavy revolver. It may be nothing, but it looked new.”
“Well, nothing is what we have a lot of right now. The young man did not belong to the woman with the missing son, and nothing in his bag indicated who he is.”
“What was in the bag? You said you had something interesting. Has poor Ames recovered from handling it?”
“Ames is no doubt being fussed over by his mother, or out with that sharpish girl of his, though things seem a bit wobbly there. The bag looked like a bag of shopping and provisions. Some new clothes, socks, underwear, a couple of shirts, a few cans of beans, and a wallet with five dollars in it, but nothing else, no identification. The interesting thing is the last page of a letter from the Red Cross. The key sentence is this: ‘The paperwork shows that Henry and Julia Fischer and two children were shipped to Poland on December fourth, 1940. We regret that the news could not have been better. Please accept our condolences.’ It was followed by an unreadable signature. We only know it’s from the Red Cross because of the logotype on the bottom of the paper.”
“Oh, God! I wonder if they were relatives and ended up in one of those hideous death camps? Were they Jewish? Fischer could, I suppose, be a Jewish name. That poor man!”
“And is he called Fischer? There must be thousands of people like him trying to find lost relations after that beastly war,” Darling said.
“If so, it is a circumstance that suggests the idea that he could have been trying to commit suicide. But I’m surprised at the shopping and no identity in the wallet. If he was distraught about the letter, why would he remove his identity? On the other hand, if he was attacked, the attacker could have decided that rather than trying to get rid of the body somehow, they would rid the body of its identity. The attacker could have thought he was dead. And,” she added, “is that awful letter related to what happened, or just another circumstance in a life gone awry?”
“Awry is right,” Darling said. “I have to go talk to the man who hired the missing boy, Carl Castle, but I’ll come out and have another look at the boat before it floats off, and we can get Ames to fingerprint the oar.”
“Oh. No, that’s all right. I moved the boat off the beach to under the base of the wharf, and the oar with it, but I held it by the paddle. Mind you, Kenny pulled the oar loose and put it on the beach, so there might be a couple of his prints.”
“I would like to kiss you,” Darling said.
“For that? I shall work even harder to keep my fingerprints off evidence from now on.”
“For that, and for agreeing to love me.”
“That I do,” Lane said. When she hung up, she rang through to Ken and Eleanor with the news that the boy was barely hanging on and that the contents of the kit bag were inconclusive, including the last page of the letter.
“The Red Cross?” asked Eleanor.
“Yes. Have you some thoughts about that?”
Eleanor was silent on the other end of the line for a moment. “I feel a bit melancholy at the thought of it, I suppose. The Red Cross was the chief way families searched for missing men. Some of the nursing sisters I worked with had beaux that went missing. More often than not a letter from the Red Cross had only bad news. I suppose in this war it was much the same. I wonder if he was searching for some family member? Poor fellow. Perhaps it drove him to suicide. Well, he’s not dead, so no need for despair yet.”
Lane felt Eleanor’s melancholy. She poured herself a small Scotch and put on her pyjamas. The window was up and the curtains were open. A warm night breeze lifted and furled them gently. She held the glass in her hands and looked out into the dark, trying to imagine what sort of troubles the young man had had before he became a nameless patient, clinging to life. He’s depressed and cannot face going on. He throws his bag and a gun—his, leftover from the war?—in the boat, and cuts the rope and rows into the lake where he shoots himself and then waits for death. But no . . . no one shoots themselves in the abdomen. The head most likely, or maybe the heart. Could he have tried and the gun slipped?
But what if he was attacked by someone else outside the boat? He’s shot and dumped in. He must have been near the boat to start with. Is it his boat? They, the murderer or murderers, think he’s dead. Do they push the boat off into the lake and an oar slips off?
The letter is completely relevant in one scenario and completely irrelevant in the second. She drank back the Scotch and thought how unsuitable scrutinizing the whole business was as a pre-sleep activity, and turned instead to her book. Lord Emsworth was being tormented with guests when all he wanted to do was spend time with his prize pig. Somewhat uplifted by the Wodehousian nonsense, Lane turned out her lamp and closed her eyes. But her last seconds before sleep were filled with the smell of the blood.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“One and only one,” admonished Kenny, standing by the ash pile with his shovel.
“Don’t be silly. We’re going to buy first aid supplies,” Eleanor said, pulling on her gloves and snapping open her handbag to make sure she had everything she needed. She was wearing a small, dark blue straw hat with a white flower on the side that had long ago surrendered any pretence of being a recognizable species. She’d pulled out her best pale green summer dress and had run a brush over her brown shoes before she laced them up.
Kenny shook his head, smiling at her retreating back. “God knows what those two will get up to,” he said out loud. He knew perfectly well that Eleanor would not be able to resist stopping at the mansion to have a look at the litter of west highlands, and the truth was, he was happy at the thought that she might bring one home.
“Those ashes won’t shovel themselves!” Eleanor said over her shoulder.
The morning was still and beautiful. It would be hot again, and Lane waited by her car, surveying her garden. She’d have to water when she got back and look into the matter of the pond under the weeping willow. It would be cooling and lovely to have a pond sparkling in the dappled light coming through the drapery of the willow. She could put her two deck chairs and a small table there and sit in the afternoon, reading. She smiled. She always leaped to the final scene of one of these garden-improvement schemes, where she was lounging about with a book and some lemonade, now with the addition of Darling. There’d be some work in between.
She turned when she heard Eleanor hallooing as she came across the footbridge. “You look lovely. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that hat. Hop in.” Lane herself wore a turquoise skirt and a white blouse, and a turquoise sweater on her shoulders. Her auburn hair was tied back with a yellow ribbon.
“This poor hat! It should never be seen, but one has to have something if one is going to luncheon. Kenny’s over there as envious as a schoolgirl! And you, my dear, look good enough to eat. Do you think we’ll see the inspector?”
“I’m sure he’s busy solving crime. Today we’re doing what you want to do.” Lane wo
uldn’t have minded seeing the inspector but could think of no excuse to stop by the police station.
“Well, I’ve never been in the station before, and I’d like to know how that boy is doing,” Eleanor said, very nearly winking. More seriously she added, “Would you mind awfully if we stopped at the mansion just outside of town? Mrs. Enderby—she’s the daughter of old Mrs. Franklin—is the one who called me about the litter. She said there’s a great deal of interest, but she’d make sure I got first pick. If I wanted one, that is.”
“Stop to look at puppies? I don’t know how this day could get any better! You bet.”
Lane pulled into the drive and stopped, gazing at the house. It was a mock Tudor confection set back on a sweep of lawn surrounded with a nearly perfect landscaping of trees and exotic bushes. “Wow. You know someone who lives here? They must have very expensive gardeners.”
“Mining interests,” said Eleanor. “Come along. No one need by wowed by Mrs. Enderby.” They walked up the driveway and around the back, where Eleanor knocked on a door that was ajar. “Halloo!”
A sturdy woman in her late forties, encased in a tweed skirt and wearing wellington boots, came to the door. “Dear Eleanor! Good for you! You’ve come right away. Hello, dear, I’m Graciela Enderby.” She moved a bucket from her right hand to her left so she could shake hands with Lane. “You’re even lovelier than I’d heard! Well, we’d best get a move on. Councillor Lorimer is already here nosing about in the kennels. It’s a grand batch of puppies”
Wondering how the energetic Mrs. Enderby had heard about her at all, Lane followed the two women along a gravelled path to the kennels, which proved to be adjacent to some stables. There was room for five horses, but only two watched them curiously over the gates as they walked past.
“How gorgeous!” Lane exclaimed. She would have liked to stop and nuzzle one of the horses, but Mrs. Enderby was striding on. Lane could already hear the little yips of the puppies. The three women turned into a barn-like structure and encountered the man Lane presumed was Councillor Lorimer. He was leaning over a wooden barrier, gazing at the family of terriers. Lane guessed he was in his mid-forties, and he had a moustache and thick brown hair swept back off his forehead. For the briefest moment it crossed her mind that he looked like someone pretending to be a grown-up, and then he straightened and favoured them with a charming smile. He was wearing a deep blue ascot. No wonder he’s in elected office, Lane thought, he must turn that multi-watt smile on everyone.