A Sorrowful Sanctuary

by Iona Whishaw

  “At the moment you’re animated by the fact that I know where Lazek lived and you don’t,” Lane pointed out.

  July 18

  Klaus walked down to the edge of the water, well away from the business of the dock. In the distance someone was shouting instructions, but the voice seemed to lift into the sky and become cloud. The envelope was in his pocket where he had put it when it had been pushed through the post office window at the dry goods store in Kaslo. He went to put his hand in his pocket to pull it out, and then stopped, fearful that his hand would shake and he would not be able to read it. Turning away from the water’s edge he sat on a stone. Because he’d brought his boat, he didn’t have to worry about getting a ride from Harry, as he did whenever he needed supplies. The Red Cross. After five long years. He felt a sick fear and almost debilitating hope as he thought about what might be in the letter.

  “Stop here,” Lane said. They were about ten feet away from the bridge. “I’m pretty certain I was looking at about this point on the road from behind those bushes. And that bridge was visible.” Ames parked the car on the shoulder and they got out. There was a laboured flapping of wings as a raven lifted off from the tree nearest the edge of the road and called out a warning. Lane recalled the Scottish myth that a lone raven is a harbinger of death, and then smiled. This one is warning its comrades about us, she thought.

  “This is exactly where we were,” Ames said.

  “You were looking for a house. You weren’t thinking that he might be living in a makeshift shed all the way down the hill near the beach. Let’s see. I think about here.” Lane had gone along the underbrush at the edge of the road and came to where someone could see, if they knew what to look for, that the bushes hid a slightly worn path across a patch of dried grass and then down into the trees.

  “Ames, collect your things and step lively,” Darling commanded. He turned to Lane. “Is it dusty?”

  “It’s a little bit of everything. You’re thinking of Ames’s nice shoes?”

  Darling smiled and Lane felt giddy for a moment. “You ought not to be so heartless. One day you’ll be hanging over the edge of a cliff with only Ames to save you, and then what will you do?”

  “Remind him where his paycheque comes from. Ready?” Ames, carrying his camera case, had pushed through the sturdy salal bushes.

  Darling stood up at the top of the now-clear descent toward the lake. The roar of the falls was becoming evident on his left. The path was distinct enough that he suspected it had been there long before Lazek decided to build his new home by the creek below. Gold seekers, perhaps from early in the century or late in the previous one, had probably made the path. It was wide enough to accommodate a small wagon drawn by a mule or a horse, but, as was evident from the growth on the path, it had barely been used in many years. They walked in silence, Lane leading, the sound of the waterfall becoming pronounced as the path skirted the canyon, and then receding as the descent became less steep and the path flattened gradually with a turn away from the creek and then back toward the beach.

  Lane led them to the fire circle where Lazek had evidently cooked his meals, and then across the rough boards that constituted the bridge over the creek to the cabin.

  “Miss Winslow, I’m going to ask you to come with me and give the cabin a quick look around and verify that it looks the same as when you saw it yesterday. As well I’ll need to know what you touched. Ames, stand by, ready to take snaps.”

  “Sir,” Ames said, which nearly prompted Lane to say it too.

  Darling pulled the door out and in this position Lane could see that the door had a hook on it that could secure it open against the wall. Darling saw this and, with his handkerchief, hooked the latch over the bent nail that had been driven into the outer wall.

  “Now, then.” He stood back and let Lane look over the room.

  It was the loneliness that struck her this time. How long would Lazek have continued squatting down by the creek had he not been shot and died? She saw the books, left where she had placed them, and wondered what companionship and society a German-speaking socialist would find so far from anything he must have been familiar with.

  “It is as I left it. I touched the door, of course, and I picked up the two books. That’s it, really. There’s a photo in one of the books that I handled as well.”

  “Thank you. Ames, you can step in and take some pictures. Miss Winslow will show me whatever else she found.”

  Ames nodded and prepared his camera, pushing some flashbulbs into his pockets. Both men had left their jackets in the car, and Ames had already rolled up his sleeves. The sun was full on the beach now, and the heat seemed to emanate even into the shady sections under the trees. Lane waited while Darling finished giving some quiet instructions to his constable, then turned and walked down toward the lake, with the inspector a step behind her. A light gust picked up, and the leaves on the trees shimmered.

  “It’s a lovely place, I’ll grant you that,” Darling said. “I suppose a self-sustaining sort of individual could fish and eat berries and whatnot.”

  “He may have done that, but there were the remains of cans around his fire. Perhaps he wasn’t used to roughing it. We know he sensibly brought his supplies in by boat, the distance to Kaslo not being too great. It would be a lot easier than carting heavy things down that hill. In fact, he was doing so that day, wasn’t he? All those cans and things in his rucksack. I don’t believe he tried to kill himself, however ill the news from the Red Cross was.”

  “Fair point,” Darling said.

  They stood at the edge of the water looking out across the lake. They could see to the south that the land across the lake jutted into the water and hid another great section of the lake behind it. They could just make out a smokestack tucked into the trees. They were not much more than a distant carpet of dark green, and it took a moment for Lane to realize how big the stack must be to be visible from all this distance away.

  She turned to Darling and pointed across the creek. “Angela crossed over there and went around the bend and found the oar. I encouraged us both to stop and turn back when I saw it, as I suddenly imagined a fight to the death going on right there, and the boat with the unfortunate man being pushed out. I’ll sit here while you go have a look.”

  “Send Ames along when he’s done,” Darling said, and followed Lane’s instructions toward the natural stepping stones across the now-widening creek.

  Lane sat on the warm pebbles on the beach and leaned back against a log. She heard Ames crunching down layers of flat pebbles on the beach in his expensive shoes, and directed him to follow the route she’d sent Darling on. She closed her eyes to let the light from the sun warm her face. During the summer, since she had returned from England in mid-July, she had written nearly nothing besides a letter to her grandparents, and she wondered about what poetic approach one could take that would encompass at once a scene of such sensual beauty and the spectre of the dark absence and death of the man who had come to live here. She fixed in her mind her physical sense of this great dichotomy, and then she heard the footsteps of the returning policemen.

  “We’re going to need to look around in the cabin and collect his few things to take back with us. Can I entrust you with the books, Miss Winslow? You mentioned before that you read German,” Darling said.

  “I do, though not terrifically well. You don’t need to know the content of the books, do you? I can give you the gist because it does suggest what sort of things mattered to him,” she answered.

  “More in case there is further correspondence under his pillow or in that suitcase.”

  “Of course. Any luck? Was the oar still there?”

  “It was. There is no evidence that it did anything but float there. There’s no sign of violence, really, anywhere on that section of beach. No bloodstains or convenient fingerprint-covered weapon discarded nearby. It
was Ames who pointed out that if the oar had been used by the man while he was still alive, it could have some bloodstains on it. I’ve pulled it up onto the beach. I’ll get him to carry it back up the hill. Something might be found on it. On the whole, though, I’d say the attack did not take place here. But wherever it did, there must be blood. I can’t believe he was shot in the boat. The bullet exited the wound and wasn’t in the boat, and didn’t put a hole in it.”

  “So he’s shot ham-handedly by someone and he gets into the boat himself, to try to get away . . . but wouldn’t the shooter have seen that he’d made a bad job of it and finish it up?”

  “Unless he thought he’d succeeded. His victim falls, stunned, and doesn’t move. The killer pushes off, and the victim comes to enough to crawl into the boat.”

  “Or, the victim falls, stunned, but right into the boat, because the shooting happens right beside the boat, and the shooter tosses the gun in and cuts the boat loose,” Lane said.

  “Do you know, you have a positively ghoulish enthusiasm for this sort of thing that’s very unladylike.”

  “You don’t actually think that, do you?”

  Darling smiled. “I feel I should, but I don’t. I fear it’s a flaw in my own character.”

  “Do you think he got his mail in Kaslo?” Lane asked as they made their way back up the hill. “I mean, maybe he’s received a letter or two that might tell us more about him.”

  Darling looked at her and rolled his eyes. But when they were in the car, he said, “Ames, set a course for Kaslo.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  With some reluctance, and after a close inspection of Darling’s warrant card, the woman who handled the mail in the dry goods store handed him one envelope. “It came earlier this week. He never got no mail to speak of. One letter a week or so ago, and now this. It’s not even a real letter. It’s just a returned letter he sent out. ‘Addressee unknown.’”

  “Your reward, Miss Winslow, will be to read this letter to us, as I suspect it is in a foreign language.” Darling passed the letter back to where she sat in the back seat as they drove out toward the Nelson road. “One thing it may tell us is who else might know him. It’s addressed to Hans Bremmer at Tomslake here in British Columbia.”

  “I think that’s up north somewhere, sir,” said Ames.

  “That narrows it right down, thank you as always,” Darling said. “Miss Winslow?”

  “German,” she said, when she had it open. “It’ll take a minute. I’m more used to reading printed German.” She read silently for a few moments. “‘Dear Hans: Sorry I didn’t write before, earlier’ . . . something like that. ‘I’ve had no word, or news, of anyone from the old days. I don’t even know what happened in the end. Your . . . your’ . . . ah . . . ‘little ones must be grown up now . . . it has been eight years. I enlisted, as you know and am living in the south now. You would not be . . .’ I can’t read this word . . . ‘proud,’ maybe? ‘You would not be proud. I live like one of those crazy men in a . . . small hut,’ maybe . . . ‘by a creek and work in a mill. I don’t mind. I am not fit for anything else. It is a kind of . . . banishment? Exile? I will not be free until I know of Julia from the Red Cross. They always told . . . tell . . . told . . . me everything will be fine. If she was in a refugee camp she will be helped. But, Hans, I already feel in my heart she is dead, and the children, her husband. It is my fault, you see. I managed to get to the lists on the papers, but I did not get to the people on time to make them come with me to Poland.’ This is sad. Is Julia his sister? The one in the photograph?” Lane asked, rhetorically. “There’s one more section. ‘Really, I write to tell you that I saw him, our very own local Bahn führer.’ That’s ‘train commander,’ I suppose. I think he means more of a dictator, given his communist leanings. ‘You won’t credit or believe it, Hans, he is a local man. No doubt he took all our money and made himself rich. I accused him to his face. I marched into his office. Like the old days! I confronted him and he kicked me out. I told him I would tell everyone the truth. He could not care less. I am like a fly . . . he pushes . . . swats,’ maybe, ‘me away. But he will know I don’t forget ever what he put us through. Maybe I will come back one day and see you, but I will not lie. I never want to see Peace River again. You know me. I’m a hot head. I’m writing because I want to find out what happened. I want to be fair. Just because he didn’t give us what we were promised, I suppose doesn’t mean he took it for himself. So maybe in the end you got it all? Please write and tell me. Maybe after all, I won’t have to kill him. You see. I still have a sense of humour. Ha ha. Yours, etc., Klaus Lazek.’ Well, what is to be made of that?”

  “It’s most irritating that he hasn’t named the man he says he confronted, but I suppose both he and his correspondent knew the name, so he didn’t have to bother,” Darling said. “Ames, slow down at this corner.”

  “Sir.”

  “What do we know about this man, besides that he’s nasty?” asked Lane.

  “Not enough,” Darling said flatly. “Can you make a translation for us? I will leave you with this, and we can arrange for pickup when you’re done.”

  Lane stood watching with some regret as Ames and Darling disappeared up the road from her house. She stayed at the top of her drive to listen as the car turned the corner and started down past the church and onto the road to Nelson, and then she turned listlessly toward the house. It was a beautiful afternoon, and the peas were waiting to be picked, after all. But instead, she went to her writing desk where the papers comprising her map were piled. She spread them out in their correct sequence and taped them to the kitchen table. They knew so much more now. The man’s name, where he lived, who he travelled with to work. And this extraordinary letter he sent. Not where he died, or why. As usual she wrote in everything she knew, under the headings of the places where things could reasonably be supposed to have happened. What struck her when she stood over the map, with a cup of tea in hand, was that the locus of all the activity was Kaslo. He must have died there. No doubt Darling and Ames would be concentrating there, interviewing more people. The other thing that caught her attention was that, according to Darling, the man named Bronson had seen the disagreement at the bar, and some other men . . . there were several? Was that right? Or did he say a number? Apparently these men were not part of the usual group there. And that, according to Bronson, some of those miners were part of some secret, or maybe not so secret, fascist society.

  Not for the first time, she wondered about Mrs. Castle’s son, Carl. He had disappeared right around the time they’d found the body. What if he belonged to this secret whatever it was, and was one of the strangers at the bar that day? This gave rise to other possibilities. He could have killed Klaus Lazek and fled, or he could have seen who killed Lazek and been killed himself. She mentally shook her head. No body. Yet. She made a mark on the map roughly where they had found Lazek’s lonely dwelling, and then put the pencil in the jar where she kept her sharpened pencils.

  Though the day called out to her, she sat down and translated the letter. What came to her forcibly was that there seemed to be invisible strings connecting dead Klaus, missing Carl, and the local politician and prat. The memory of Lorimer’s secretary driving that big car away from the Castle house came to her suddenly. She shook her head. She could maybe draw a string between Lorimer’s secretary and Castle, ostensibly involving the business of picking up eggs. But none of that was of any use. Later, while she was outside picking peas and reflectively eating them before they got into her basket, something scurried forward from the very back of her mind.

  February 1939

  Lane Winslow’s new flatmate, Irene, stubbed out a cigarette and brushed the ashes off her flannel nightie. They were both lying in their beds, battling the cold with thick duvets and extra blankets. The blackout curtain helped keep some of the damp cold out, and there was an illusion of warmth from the little lamp between them t
hat threw an orange light over the bedside table. Lane sighed, flipped her book over and lay on her side, her elbow propping up her head, and looked at Irene.

  “You ought to give it up. It’s smelly and costs money.”

  “It’s terribly sophisticated. Haven’t you been to those dances? If you have a ciggy in your hand, fellows leap from all sides wanting to light it for you. Nothing else garners attention like a cigarette. Anyway, it calms me down.”

  Lane, whose only experience with tobacco had made her feel giddy and light-headed and the very furthest thing from sophisticated, asked, “Why do you need calming down?”

  Irene laughed mirthlessly. “Dearie, there’s a war on. We all need calming down. And I know I’m not supposed to say anything, but today—”

  But Lane stopped her. “Then don’t. The war and all that.” She didn’t know for certain what work Irene did, nor did Irene know hers. That sort of sharing was strictly off limits.

  “No, but this is nothing like that. I don’t think it’s hush hush, and anyway, I was only going to ask a question. If we’re at war with Germany, why are we bringing Germans here? That’s all I want to know.”

  Lane frowned. She knew Irene was a German speaker, and she suspected that it was this skill that was being put to use. What did Irene mean, “bringing Germans here”? Lane could think of no operation that involved bringing Germans into the country, though she could imagine that there must be double agents at work for Britain. And she was certain that people passing themselves off as English were in fact Germans and no doubt engaged in espionage. The reverse was certainly true.