by Iona Whishaw
“All right, all right. Keep your fur on. Here’s your beloved Miss Winslow.”
The puppy wiggled ecstatically in Lane’s arms and licked her face. “I ought to get one,” Lane said. “They could play together so happily.”
“Yes, you could. When you’ve finished messing about come round and tell me about the phone man. Kenny saw him, but he’s driven off to Balfour with the truck, so I haven’t had a report. And I’ve got a letter from Scotland for you. And a parcel! From France.”
Lane took the puppy outside and put him down on the grass. A parcel from France? It could only be from Yvonne. She heard the post office window slam down and walked around to the kitchen door. Alexandra raced between her legs up the step and bolted into the kitchen, stopping at her water bowl, where she lapped up some water and then bounded, dripping, back to Lane.
Inside, when Alexandra had finally settled, Lane said, “I shouldn’t be so suspicious. Just because the phone man put me off and two other people felt the same way, I’m assuming he doesn’t know his job. It’s not scientific, is it, forming a view simply because a couple of other people agree with a prejudice one has developed oneself.”
“Quite. But what matters in the end is, will the phones work?”
“Oh, dear. Speaking of phones. The inspector called, and that poor man has died.”
Eleanor sat silently, looking down at Alexandra, who had gone to sleep. She shook her head sadly. “If I’m honest, I don’t know how he survived this long. Do they know who he is yet?”
“No. But I can’t shake the idea that the whole business is connected to Mrs. Castle, the egg woman.”
“You think Mrs. Castle might have shot him?” Eleanor asked. “That would be a surprising turn of events.”
“No, maybe not that, though she is a very unhappy and bitter woman. No, I think it’s just that her son, Carl, disappeared the day before we found the man in the boat. I wonder if he might have been involved or knew the man. Maybe they got into a drunken fight that went too far, and Carl is trying to disappear.”
“You know, I must say, he didn’t smell as though he’d been drinking,” Eleanor said. “But I see what you mean. One man gets shot, another disappears. It’s hard not to want to connect them. Now then. I can see that you want to open that exciting looking parcel at home. Will you call me and tell me what’s in it? It’ll be a good way to test the phones as well.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At home Lane put the parcel and the letter on her table. It was like Christmas. A letter from her grandparents and a parcel. Brown paper and string. There ought to be some ceremony to it. A cup of tea and a biscuit. But she took up the letter first. The parcel was a complete surprise, so it must be left to last. Her grandmother wrote newsily and affectionately about her garden, and how the new black doctor was getting along in the village. “He is the sweetest man, so kind. And he doesn’t seem to mind in the least how badly some are behaving. ‘They will get over it,’ he says. He’s been an absolute tonic for your poor Gamph with his sore knees. People are disgraceful.” Lane smiled as she got to the end of the letter, bathed in her gran’s effusive protestations of love. Now the parcel. She folded the letter and put it back into the envelope and then, after only a second of thought about whether she ought to attempt to undo the knot and save the string, she took up her bread knife and cut it.
There was a note inside the box on top of something wrapped in tissue paper.
“Ma cherie, I had so hoped that I might come out to see you, perhaps in the fall, but I have met someone. No, stop! I can see your face now, full of smiles.” Lane’s face was full of smiles. Like, it seemed to her, most women, Yvonne had had her share of unfortunate love affairs, and she had become exceedingly cautious. If she said she had met someone, then it was big news. “It is too early to drink champagne, my dear. But I like him. He understands horses. He is not too bossy. One will see. But now, you wonder about the package. Don’t ask how I got it! I was owed a favour. It is from one of the minor fashion houses and it is from the spring show. I saw it and I thought of you instantly! You will say you have no place to wear such a thing, but you wait; once you have this an occasion will materialize—poof! Like that! It will be something nice to hang next to your wool lumber jackets or whatever you have to wear out there.”
Lane put the letter down and pulled the pink tissue paper open, her heart pounding. She knew already that whatever it was would be completely impractical, but at that moment she felt like a young girl again, about to see something beautiful. She gasped. A black satin blouse with a mandarin collar and exquisite cloth-covered buttons lay in the box. She pulled it out and saw that it was tightly fitted at the waist and had perfect cap sleeves. But it was what was under the blouse that took her breath away. A long silk skirt, black, with deep yellow and red oriental designs running up one side. She held it up and then pulled it to herself, feeling tears well up. How extravagant of Yvonne! And of course, she would never be able to wear it. She spread the skirt across the sofa and placed the blouse at the top of it. She had never seen anything like it in her life. The evening gowns from the war were so different. Beautiful, certainly, with their beading and gathered fabric. But this! Sleek, modern.
She ought to get a longer mirror than the one on her dressing table, she thought. She held up her hair and imagined herself at a ball wearing this, her arm linked through Darling’s. “Rubbish,” she said aloud and dropped her hair. She looked at her watch. She would be late for tea if she didn’t step on it. As if it could hear her thoughts, the phone rang. It was Gwen, as promised.
“I can hear you, can you hear me?” Gwen was talking loudly, as if the phone might still be broken.
“Perfectly well. The proof will be if the phone doesn’t cut out.”
“Mother’s ready to pour, so you’d better come up,” Gwen said. Lane thanked her, and as she was about to hang up she heard Gwen mutter, “Well, it seems all right to me,” as she disconnected at her end. Lane’s shorts and white cotton blouse would be more than adequate for tea. Clean white socks and her plimsolls—as formal as it got in her wilderness life, besides the suit she wore to church.
Lane decided to walk up to the Hughes’ by the road. The path from the post office was shorter, but she rather liked the grassy rutted road, and Gladys had recently bought a milk cow that she had placed in the fenced field along the edge of it. She spotted the cow munching grass and called out, “Hello, lovely.” The cow looked up and watched Lane, and then to her delight sauntered over for a closer look. “Aren’t you a treat? What do they call you?” The cow continued to grind on a mouthful of the long dried grass that was the result of what seemed like weeks of no rain.
“What a lovely creature your cow is!” Lane exclaimed to Mabel, who was setting a small tea table under a maple tree. “What do you call her? Hello, you two,” she added to the two cocker spaniels that, after a perfunctory “woof,” were now sniffing at her shoes.
“Rhoda. Not my idea. Gwen thought it was a dignified name for a cow. I would have gone with Bessie.”
“It’s a lovely name. What can I do?”
“Sit. Mother’s on her way out with the bread and jam and Gwennie’s got the tea.”
The tea poured and the bread and jam on little blue plates, the three women looked expectantly at Lane.
“The new root cellar looks splendid,” she said, “as if it’s always been there.” The old cellar had been collapsed and covered over with wildflowers, and a small cherry tree had been planted on the site to commemorate the child who had been buried there. The new root cellar had been placed on the other side of the garage, and though the roof was covered with new and growing grass, which the Hughes women were obviously watering, it blended in nicely because of the trees shading it from behind.
“Enough about the root cellar,” Gladys said. “What’s going on with that fellow you found on the beach?�
��
Lane put her cup down. “He died, unfortunately.” She could see from their expressions that they already knew that.
“But have you made any progress figuring out who he is, how he got there, and who shot him?” Gwen asked.
Lane laughed. “That’s a job for the police.”
The ladies let that sit, though Gladys emitted the tiniest snort. “He could have lived along the lake. Do you know there are coves up and down the lake? Some of them are along side creeks, and prospectors have set up looking for gold in them. They build little cabins, and grow long beards, and eventually die, having wasted their lives. But some are still there. You can only get to them from the water, some of ’em,” Gladys said.
“You think he could have come from one of those? He didn’t look like a prospector. Or maybe he was new and hadn’t had time to grow the beard. No, wait. Inspector Darling said that, from the state of his hands, it looked like he was working the logging camps.”
“Or he could have got like that felling trees for his cabin,” Gwen said.
“What if someone tried to steal the gold he’d found, and he tried to fight off the robber and he got shot?” Mabel suggested.
Lane smiled. There’s a whole story, already made up to explain the end of the poor man’s life. Still. Based on the little they knew, it was as good a story as any. “It’s like something from one of those Boy’s Own magazines: ‘Tales of the Dark Wilderness,’” she said. “But, given what we have, it could well have been just like that. Oh, except that they think he was a logger, not a miner.”
“You mark my words,” Gladys said. “It will be a bad business involving someone with a beard. They lose all sense of civilization, those men, living alone like that in the bush!”
“Do have another slosh of tea,” Mabel said happily. Her mother only snorted again, swigging the remainder of her cup down as if she were drinking whisky.
That night, Lane started a new category of notes—“Theories”—and wrote down Mabel’s gold-robbery theory. She sat back with her Scotch and an unopened book, and suddenly remembered that Reg Mather had a rowboat. She knew about it because she’d had an appalling morning on a fishing trip with his son Sandy when she had first arrived. She still shuddered at the memory of what she’d naively let herself in for. Well, Sandy was in the penitentiary out on the coast and would be for some time. What she wondered now was, did Reg Mather also have an outboard motor for it? I mean, she thought, what would be the harm in a little trip up the lake? Her last thoughts, as she dropped off to sleep, were of herself in Yvonne’s chinois evening gown. It was too bad no one would ever get to see it.
Ames sat at the edge of the lake. It was just after six in the morning. He had left home early because he wanted time to clear his head. He’d had a bad night, a circumstance so unusual for him that he had left before his mother was up to make him breakfast. He had woken early, at 3:30, and instead of falling right back to sleep as he usually did, he had been tormented by anxiety. He worried first about the trip to Vancouver and the sergeant’s course, and ultimately the exam he had to take. He found himself muddled about whether he was anxious because he wanted to be a sergeant and failing the exam would kill his promotion, or because failing it would mean disappointing Darling. His thoughts about these unresolvable issues were strong enough to wipe away any more positive view of his being very likely to pass, then moved on to Violet, with whom he had had a rather stormy evening.
Now, bleary eyed but relieved that morning had come, he sat looking across at Elephant Mountain, where the golden light of the early sun was stealing along the upper reaches. Ames took a deep breath and relished the cool morning air, fragrant with the smell of trees and water. In a couple of hours the heat would settle in. He hoped that whatever lay in store for the day would take place away from the office. He picked up a pebble and tossed it into the lake. It made a “sploosh” sound and the little waves moved outward in an ever-growing circle. He should not have ignored how he had been feeling on the subject of Violet.
“How long are you planning to keep this up?” she had said. They had been walking along Baker Street, just before climbing Cedar Street toward her house, but now she stopped.
Ames remembered looking around nervously, but no one else was in the street. It was after nine, and the sun had long since vanished, leaving a warm grey evening.
“Cat got your tongue?” she’d continued. “I’ll spell it out for you. We’ve been going out for the better part of a year, and it doesn’t seem like you’re going to pop the question, does it?”
“I’m . . . I’m not sure I’m ready,” he’d managed to stammer.
“You’re twenty-five years old. I’m not about to become an old maid because you ‘aren’t ready.’ You better tell me now, is there someone else?”
“No, of course not! The sergeant’s exam . . .” He hadn’t been able to state the truth: that he did not think they were suited, that their beliefs about what mattered were too different, that he hadn’t liked, at a deep and surprising level, what she’d said about the boy caught stealing. Somehow he’d known that saying he didn’t believe in beating children would not have sounded convincing to her.
He listened now to the quiet lapping of the tiny waves against the shore. Traffic above him in town was beginning to pick up. He remembered the absolute steel in Violet’s voice when she had said, “You’re lying,” and had turned up Cedar and walked away from him. It came to him clearly, suddenly. It mattered what she thought about the boy, and no doubt there were many other things that would begin to emerge about which her views diverged from his, but more importantly, it was her. She had been angry and hard like that with him a few times, but he had put it down to her fiery temper, something he had admired, if the truth be known, at the beginning. Now he felt he recognized it for what it was: a lack of kindness. He tried to imagine himself talking to her in that way, and he couldn’t.
He looked at his watch. The café would be open, and he could use some coffee to wipe the bleariness from his brain, if not his eyes. His jacket slung over his shoulder, he made his way back up the hill, wondering what his world was going to be like now.
“Thought I’d find you in here malingering,” Darling said, throwing himself down next to Ames. “We’re going to have to go up the north arm and visit the logging outfits along there. Joseph P., according to Gilly, has recent splinters. God, you look awful!”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Drinking last night?”
Ames looked at him. “Have you met Violet, sir? One beer and that’s it. She doesn’t hold with drinking.”
“I get the feeling she doesn’t hold with much,” Darling said, raising his hand to get the attention of April behind the counter. “Still, she’s sharp.”
“As a whip,” said Ames glumly.
“You ought to have stuck with this one,” Darling said in an unnecessary stage whisper indicating April, who was pouring their coffee at the end of the counter.
Ames ignored his boss’s comments on his woeful personal life and said, “We could save a whole lot of time going straight to the watering holes in Kaslo. Where do loggers and miners all go at the end of the day, the lucky bastards? To the bars. If he was working any of those camps, someone will know him.”
“The usual, please, thanks, April,” Darling said.
“And should I stiff Ames with the bill, as usual?” she said, winking.
“No, not today. I’m in a generous mood, and he’s just said something clever.” Darling waited till April had gone back to talk to the man at the grill. “See, that’s the sort of thing the exam won’t pick up, smart insights like that.” He lifted his coffee mug in a salute and then glanced at his watch. “I don’t guess the staff will be in the bars till about eleven, so let’s head out at ten. Oh. Blast. The inquest. We’ll have to stay for that. It’s at eleven.” Still, as inconvenie
nt as it was, it would mean seeing Lane, who would have to testify. He would try not to let Ames see how smug he was feeling.
Ames, cheered by the unusual praise and the fact that between the inquest and the trip up the lake they would be out of the office most of the day, attacked his breakfast with renewed vigour. Knowing Darling was picking up the tab made it taste even better.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The inquest was held in the legion hall. Lane, who would have to testify along with Kenny and Eleanor Armstrong, was seated in the front row with them. The coroner took his place and adjusted his glasses to better see his notebook in a space that, with its narrow windows set high in the tall brick walls, was gloomy on even the brightest day. Lane turned to see who was coming in to sit in the gallery rows behind them. She was surprised that only a few seats were empty. She hadn’t read the papers when the young man had finally died, but the story must have been somewhat sensational to garner this number of people on a Thursday morning. She caught sight of the reporter she’d seen at a previous inquest, and of a number of ladies dressed in suits and hats as if they were going to church. Perhaps it was similar, she thought. Attendance on the dead had a religious feel to it. The ladies sat with their handbags on their laps, whispering or staring silently at the coroner and the witnesses, fearful and hopeful that they would hear something gruesome. A couple of men leaned on the wall by the door smoking. One of them, to Lane’s disgust, dropped his cigarette butt on the floor and ground it out with his shoe. He looked familiar. It was a small town. When she came in for supplies, she was beginning to see more and more people she recognized.