by Iona Whishaw
Weaver shook his head. “That’s what I don’t know. Something happened, and no one’s talking. Heppwith has clammed up tight. I don’t think he’d ever kill anyone, so I’m hoping he’ll come clean. I’ll tell you something. He wouldn’t have a chance against that Klaus.”
“Does he own a revolver?”
“Heppwith? I sure don’t think so. I’d be afraid if he did, because he’d use it on himself first and foremost.”
“Do you have anything more to add?”
“I don’t think so. Do you still want me to wait?”
“Just give me your contact details then, and I’ll catch up with you if I need to.”
Ames joined Darling with an apology. He was sitting with Heppwith at a table against the wall. “Ah, Ames. Mr. Heppwith was about to fill in what happened that night after the initial fight. Please go ahead. I’ll have the constable take a few notes, if you don’t mind.”
Heppwith was somewhere on a continuum between frightened and resigned. “I swear, I didn’t know the guy was hurt, let alone dead.”
“Let’s take it from the top. Tell me what happened after the fight.”
“I think I came back in. I was pretty drunk, and he’d worked me over. I remember someone talking to me . . . that fellow from somewhere . . . maybe Nelson. Next thing I know we’re going down toward the lake, where I guess that Klaus must have gone.”
“When you say ‘we,’ who do you mean?” Darling asked.
“That Nelson guy.”
“What’s ‘Nelson guy’s’ name?” asked Ames.
“I couldn’t tell you. He was at the meeting. I think he came with the speaker. He was sitting to one side like . . . like a guard or something. I remember him watching us. I don’t know much else. It was dark. I think we ran into someone. The guy took the gun, I know that.”
Darling leaned forward. “You had a gun? Can you tell me what kind please?”
Heppwith seemed to realize he was in a corner. “Well, it wasn’t mine, really.”
“Then whose was it?”
“Look, I can’t remember. Can I go now?”
“I think, on the whole, Mr. Heppwith, I’ll have to take you in. It is likely you’ll be charged with the murder of Klaus Lazek. And I’ll just have you show us where it happened.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Lane was doggedly reading The Grapes of Wrath, a present from Angela, and was unhappily conscious that she would have been enjoying it, but for the misery she felt over Darling. She put the book face down on the floor beside her chair and stared at her feet, propped on the unlit Franklin. She was being, what? She couldn’t even think of an adequate word for it. And she wanted to be a writer! It amazed her how little she could understand herself. Her whole life she had wanted to be logical and strong, to show her father, whose voice still lived in her head somewhere saying, “You’re a little coward,” that he was wrong. Now she seemed unable to muster one cogent thought about her condition. She got up impatiently and strode to the kitchen and stared around it as if it would provide the order she needed. But even the kitchen betrayed her. It showed her all too clearly that she lived like someone who would at any moment be on the move. Look at her meals. Toast and jam, omelettes, beans on toast. The only decent meals she got were when she went out to other people’s houses.
The whole point of being here was that she wanted to settle, but after more than a year, she saw herself as she truly was, always poised to leave. No. She shook her head. That was unfair. But she was running from something in herself. Some psychotherapist could no doubt untangle her state of mind, but, she thought rebelliously, he needn’t sweep her lousy meals in with his diagnosis—she was simply a bad cook. Feeling that the fresh evening air might knock the cobwebs out, she went to stand on the veranda. The air was not so much fresh as hot and thick, but sweet with the smell of drying grass at the edge of her lawn. The lake lay impassively before her, as if certain of itself, comfortable with its own depths. What she suffered from more than anything was a longing for Darling. She had run from him, afraid in the last moment. That’s what her invented trick cyclist would say, that she’d had a bad time with her father and compounded the problem by picking that ass Angus, and so she was afraid of loving any man.
But it was no good. She did love Darling, and she knew he was not either of those men. He was Darling. Oh my God, she thought, I’m going to cry. She put her hand on her mouth, willing herself not to, but she could not stop the tears. She loved Darling, she had ruined it, and it was too late. Thank heaven, she thought ruefully, I’m alone. For her, misery loved only solitude.
She thought of the sweep of her lawn, the woods below it, and the lake in the distance, where even now, the shadow of a cloud changed the colour of the water as it passed overhead. She needed to break out, somehow, so she turned back into the kitchen, sat at her typewriter, and wrote:
Here it is greens mostly,
And beyond the names
We find for them, they are layers
Of infinite colours made by shadows
and slants of light
Glittering wittering let’s call
Them fern, apple, forest, moss
Because we have no other way
To call them to heart
They are like the layers
Inside me liquid, unbounded
Greys mostly like this sky,
Simmering withering let’s call
Them longing and loss
By the time the phone rang she was on the ascent again, trying to imagine what she should do to settle into her new life. Paint the house. Take the orchard seriously. Get on with the bed she had made. The call was for her.
“KC 431, Lane Winslow speaking.”
“Miss Winslow, I need your help, please.” It was Vanessa Castle. That “please” was drawn out, desperate.
Lane, after a start of guilt because she had intended to go and help Vanessa with her eggs and groceries, was instantly alert. “Of course, Mrs. Castle. What can I do?” She was already eyeing her shoes by the door, the car keys on the hook.
“Carl needs help. He’s been hiding, you see, and he’s out of food and gas and money. I ought to go to him. Please can you take me? I couldn’t think of anyone else to call.”
“Of course. I’ll be there as quick as I can. Put something together for him and we’ll go.” After she hung up she realized that she hadn’t asked Vanessa where Carl was. How far would she have to drive? He could be anywhere. Nightfall was two hours away, but she grabbed her cardigan in case they were late, though she certainly didn’t need it now. The day was still stifling, in that dry August way.
She looked at her gas gauge as she approached Balfour. Half a tank. Maybe. The gauge had been wrong before. It was maddening now that she didn’t know where Carl was. She pulled up to the gas station and Bales came out.
“Miss Winslow,” he greeted her.
“Hello, Fred, could you fill it, please? I . . .” She couldn’t say that she was in a hurry, that Vanessa knew where Carl was. “I have to go into town and I’m not sure I have enough.”
Bales went about the business of unhooking the hose and undoing the gas cap. “Warm afternoon,” he commented.
“Yes,” Lane said, trying to be patient with this small talk. It wasn’t slowing down the filling after all. “I hope it won’t be muggy all night.”
“There you go. Three gallons. You were nearly empty. Seventy-nine cents please.”
Lane rummaged in her purse and found a dollar. “Here. I’m running a bit late. I’ll pick up the change another time.”
Relieved to be on the road again, she sped down the hill toward the turnoff to Vanessa’s. She had only just thought, with a guilty start, that perhaps she ought to have telephoned Darling or Ames—Carl was their lost man, after all—when she pulled off onto the shoulder of the road and stopped. A strange c
ar was turning out onto the road, going north, the direction Lane had just come from. As the car sped by, she saw with a shock that Townsend was driving and Vanessa was in the front seat. For a brief moment Vanessa looked back, saw Lane, and opened her eyes wide, terrified, pleading, and then it was over.
Had Townsend seen her? Lane prayed not. She waited until the car was about to crest the hill toward the store, and then she turned the car, skidding, raising a cloud of dust, and set out in pursuit.
At the crest of the hill she slowed and watched the car she was following descend. She swerved into the gas lane at the store and was relieved to see Fred Bales still outside. “Fred, call the Nelson police—get inspector Darling, if you can, or Constable Ames. Tell them I am following a car heading in the direction of Adderly or maybe Kaslo, and they are to come as soon as they can. Do you understand?” She didn’t wait to hear his reply but crossed her fingers, hoping that she could follow a car on this lonely road without being seen.
Ames threw his notebook on the desk and barely stopped himself from putting his feet up on the passenger side of Darling’s desk. “He’s still saying he didn’t do it, and he’s still saying the gun wasn’t his, and he’s still saying he doesn’t know the name of the man he was with.”
“Okay, let’s try to piece together what he has said. He went to a meeting where the speaker was someone from this fascist party. He doesn’t remember the name of the speaker. He was with his mates, and when it was over people were signing up, and everyone was given one of these natty little things.” Darling tossed the swastika pin onto the desk between them. “They go back to the hotel to drink and talk. There is one person at the table who he doesn’t know and who was at the meeting, and he isn’t introduced. He thinks he has something to do with the speaker. He’s wearing a swastika pin, and at the meeting he’s been sitting behind the speaker looking at the audience. Back at the bar Heppwith is fired up by the fine message of the speaker and sees Klaus and brings him over, thinking it’s too bad he missed the meeting, he would have enjoyed it. Klaus is in a mood, but when Heppwith tells him what the meeting is about, Klaus is outraged, pushes him hard, and makes to leave. Heppwith admits he sees red and goes after him, only to be beaten to within an inch of his life.
“So then what? He is brought back into the bar by his friends, but they can’t calm him down. Then the man he doesn’t know starts talking to him, telling him what? He shouldn’t let some commie beat him up? He knows a way he can settle it once and for all? And then it goes blurry, but Heppwith remembers going down to the waterfront where they saw Klaus going. Heppwith remembers having the gun in his hand but doesn’t know how it got there. He also remembers bumping into someone in the dark. He thought it might have been Carl. He assumed Carl was part of the hunting party. He remembers the flashlight falling into the water, and trying to aim, and then—and this is critical—he feels the gun taken from him, and then a tussle, a cry, a gun firing at close range. He remembers wanting to run, the gun being in his hand again, and throwing it, he thinks in the lake, but he hears the gun hit the boat. They run from along the wooden pier and then they stop. The other man seems upset about Carl, shouts at him that they’ll come looking for him. He’s surprised, because he thought Carl was right there.”
“And, unfortunately for Heppwith,” says Ames, “for all he claims he didn’t fire, the fingerprints on the gun are his. And, though it looks like someone’s tried to scrape it clean, there are still traces of blood visible on the pier.”
“Right. He has a motive, he has a gun, he has the right sort of fingerprints, and we have a dead man. That ought to be the end of it. But I can’t quite square it. For one thing, he’s so very insistent, and for another, Carl disappears, but why? Does he do the shooting after all? Or does Mr. X shoot Klaus and think Carl has seen him?” Darling picks up the swastika pin. “Why is this in the boat?”
“Maybe in the tussle Klaus pulls it off Mr. X. Maybe he thinks, when they find me this will be a clue.”
“Ah, Amesy, if only people about to be fatally shot in the confusion of a dark night had such perspicacity, but as usual you may have stumbled clumsily—yes?” Darling picked up the phone on the first ring.
“Inspector Darling? This is Fred Bales, from the Balfour store and gas station at the top of the hill here.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I hope you won’t think me odd, but Miss Winslow, from up King’s Cove way, whizzed by here and told me to phone you and to say, and I’ll try to get this right, that she is following a car going north toward Adderly or Kaslo and you’re to come as soon as you can.”
Darling was on his feet, reaching for his hat, signalling frantically to Ames. “Did she say who was in the car?”
“No, but I happened to see because I was outside repairing the air hose. The car right before her was a brown late model sedan, Chevy maybe, and I didn’t recognize the driver, but it was most certainly Vanessa Castle in the passenger seat, and he was driving like a bat out of hell.”
“Blasted woman!” Darling said, slamming down the phone. “She’s following a car north along the lake, and she wants us there. How much do you want to bet,” he said, when they were speeding toward the Nelson ferry, “that it’s Mr. X?”
Cursing herself for not telling Bales whom she was following, Lane hoped that the urgency was evident and that Darling knew enough about her to know she would not call him out idly. Following people in a car was no picnic, she decided. It always sounded so easy in books, but look at the night of the party. Ames had picked up almost immediately that they were being followed. She tried to keep far enough behind so that she would not raise the alarm. The curvy road was both a curse and a blessing. The bends obscured her from her target, but she had to pray at every moment that they would not disappear up a side road she didn’t know existed. She watched the brown car slow down to take the turn over the bridge at the bottom of the sharp bend and then climb the other side. How far back should she stay? The open side of the road was virtually treeless. She stopped. She would wait till they were almost completely up the other side and traversing the dangerous part of the road that hung over the lake. She could linger behind the curve until they had completed that.
As she drove into Adderly she slowed, looking down toward the hotel, and up toward the hot springs parking area. No sign of the car. They must have moved on. After a few miles she became seriously alarmed. She had not seen the car for some time. Had it stopped, or sped up, heading toward Kaslo or some point beyond? Good grief . . . New Denver . . . and from there they could go all the way west. She sped up and was turning onto the bridge at the creek with the waterfall, when she looked ahead. No dust. No car had been by to raise dust. She stopped and looked behind her. Where could they have gone? She turned awkwardly in the road and drove slowly back to the bridge and over it, looking right and left in the underbrush. Could they have stopped here? She wished she’d not let them get so far ahead. Then she saw it. The brown car was backed into the thick cover of bushes. It would be invisible coming the other way. That’s how she’d missed it.
In the silence that descended when she turned off the car, she sat for a moment. How long were Darling and Ames likely to be, even if Bales had got hold of them? She leaned out her window and listened intently for any sound of voices. Nothing. Why were they even here? This was where Klaus had put up his shack. Is this where Carl was? She got out of the car and gingerly closed the door. Was Carl’s yellow car here? She went swiftly across the road and looked into the window of the brown car, and then ventured farther along into the underbrush. There was no sign of Carl’s Chevy, but this brown car was certainly the car she’d been following. For some reason Townsend had brought Vanessa here. Vanessa had been frantic. Had he offered to take her to Carl, and she was so frightened she didn’t wait for Lane? No. Vanessa had looked terrified, Lane was sure of it. She looked at her watch. Forty minutes now since she’d asked Bal
es to phone. They’d be at least thirty minutes away still, but they would stop when they saw her car. Could she wait? Would Vanessa be safe?
A shot plundered the silence and sent a scattering of birds noisily out of the trees. Lane knew she couldn’t wait.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The explosion of the gun had been so loud that it took a moment for Lane to realize she’d also heard a scream, short and strangled. Had Vanessa been shot? Whatever had happened, it had happened close by, near the top of the winding path down to the water. Lane tried to remember the layout even as she sped forward, keeping low and trying not to make noise. She could feel her whole being poised, focused, every nerve tingling in a kind of synchronicity utterly familiar to her. She stopped, her hearing concentrated. Voices, and nearby, but slightly obscured, as if around a curve in the path. If they were too far down, she would have no cover. She moved forward, crouching by the edge of the path. They were not visible. She would have to risk going into the open. Thank God for the grass verge, she thought. It muffled her progress. Once onto the path she moved slowly to the first bend, created by a hill of land sloping down toward the path. They were there! Three of them, standing on the edge of the path nearest the top of the waterfall. Just there, the sound of the water cascading over the edge and crashing into the creek below was the loudest.
She stopped and watched. Townsend had his back to her, one arm holding Vanessa so that she was facing away from him and toward a young man who looked terrified and had his hands partially raised, either in submission or supplication. Townsend’s other hand held the gun, which he was pointing at Vanessa’s head. Townsend was saying something, but Lane couldn’t hear what. Very cautiously, terrified of raising the alarm with her movement, she backed away so that she was again hidden by the curve of the hill. No one was dead yet. Some bargaining was going on. But what? Townsend clearly was threatening Carl with that gun at his mother’s head. Lane looked swiftly around her for a weapon. Useless against a gun, but with the element of surprise . . . she picked up a heavy branch as strong and as thick as her arm. It would have to do. Taking in a deep breath, she darted forward as quietly as she could.