by Iona Whishaw
The three people had advanced closer to the edge of the path. Lane knew what could happen next. Townsend would not shoot anyone unless he had to. He was trying to force Carl and Vanessa off the edge. She sprang forward. She could see everything happening at once. Carl saw her, and Townsend turned sharply to see what he was looking at. He turned back, crying out in anger and pain as Vanessa bit down on his arm, and Lane hit him as hard as she could across the back of his knees. Townsend went down and his gun clattered onto the path and slid away from him on a patch of shale. Vanessa, freed, rushed toward Carl. Still holding her weapon, Lane skirted cautiously behind Townsend, who was beginning to try to get up, cursing aloud. He looked toward where his gun had come to rest and lunged for it. Lane swatted at his outstretched arm with the branch, causing him to cry out and collapse where he was. She snatched up the gun, dropped the branch, and pointed the weapon at him. Vanessa and Carl had backed a little way up the hill, onto the other side of the path from the drop to the falls.
“You broke my bloody arm, you bitch!” Townsend groaned. He lay back now, the upper part of his body partially raised by the rise of ground on that side of the path. He was holding his right arm gingerly with his left and glaring at her.
“That’s nothing on what I’ll do to you if you move. The police are on their way.”
“You’re bluffing. You don’t even know what you’ve walked into. That man killed somebody, and I was bringing him in. Now look what you’ve done! What are you going to do now, eh?”
“I’m not bluffing for a start.” Without looking away from Townsend, she added, “Carl, did you kill someone? Is that why you ran away?”
“No! I . . . saw two men. One of them shot someone in Kaslo—he said he’d kill me . . .”
“I wasn’t even there that night . . .” Townsend seemed to realize he should probably stop talking.
“Lane’s car!” Darling said, pointing. He was already opening the door before Ames pulled the maroon police car to a stop. “If it’s Townsend she’s been following, he’s probably armed.” He reached into his pocket and readied his own weapon, and then raced through the underbrush.
Ames glanced at the car that had been hidden in the bushes. He didn’t recognize it. He sprang after his boss, who had rounded the corner, and nearly ran into him. He stifled a bark of laughter that bubbled, unbidden, from inside him, and managed to convert it into an ear-to-ear smile of delight. Even Darling was rendered momentarily speechless.
There before them was Lane Winslow, revolver in hand, her focus trained on Townsend, who was sitting awkwardly and angrily on the path, holding his arm and scowling. Mrs. Castle and the young man that both policemen presumed to be her son were sitting on a log, he with his arm around her.
“Ah,” said Lane, without looking away from her prisoner. “It took you long enough.” She lowered the weapon and held it out to Ames. “This is Mr. Townsend, the phone man. You remember, Inspector. I expect he was about to force Mrs. Castle and her son, Carl, off the edge here so that their deaths would look accidental. Carl, this is Inspector Darling and Constable Ames. They will be very interested in your story. In fact,” she added crossly, “if you had gone to them in the first place, all of this could have been avoided.”
“I’m sorry I’m late, Violet. We had to arrest a man all the way up toward Kaslo.” Ames sat down with a thump at the table. She barely looked at him but concentrated instead on the lights of the cars coming around the corner into town. They were in the little restaurant near the hospital where they’d agreed to meet.
“What are we doing here?” she asked, finally turning to him. Her hair was in an unyielding roll off her face, allowing the little angled tilt of her hat that he had always found so attractive. Looking at her now, he suddenly saw all this perfect coiffing as unbending. “If you’ve come to apologize, it’s a bit late,” she said, lifting her chin.
“You know I’m going away,” he said, faltering.
“For a couple of months. That’s hardly a death sentence. Look at all the other men. They went to war, for God’s sake. Their girlfriends and wives didn’t desert them. I don’t intend to either, whatever you say.”
Ames rubbed his hands over his eyes and then had to look at the waitress who had appeared by their table. “What would you like, Vi?” he asked.
“Just a coffee.”
“Two coffees, please,” he said quietly. When the waitress was out of earshot he spoke again. “Look, Vi, it’s not only about me going away. I’m . . . I simply don’t think it’s going to work. We’re too different.”
“I’m not different. I haven’t changed in the least. But I don’t even think I know you anymore.” She paused, opened her handbag, and took out a compact, which she opened and then closed without really looking at it. She dropped it into her bag, which she snapped shut. “I assume there’s someone else. There always is in these cases.”
Ames wasn’t sure what to say. He expected she would like to hear there was someone else, because she wouldn’t be able to accept that he’d leave her simply because he didn’t want to be with her.
“Well? Who is it?”
“It isn’t anyone, Vi. It’s what I said before. I don’t think I’m ready.” That wasn’t true, and he regretted the evasion it represented. “Look, I don’t think we’d agree on much. How to bring up children and that. And my job . . . you know what the hours can be like.”
“Not agreeing on children? That’s what this is about? You’re the man. Obviously we’d do what you wanted. I wouldn’t agree with it, mind. I don’t believe in bringing up spoiled brats, but that’s what being married is about, isn’t it? ‘Love, honour, and obey.’”
The bleakness of this future she outlined for them came to him forcefully. He guessed that it must be right that men were supposed to be in charge, but suddenly he had no appetite for it. He wasn’t even sure he believed in it. His father had supposedly been in charge, but, looking back now on the bitter figure that had been his father, it seemed to Ames that it would have been more true to say that his mother had had to take care of his father, as if he were a barely functioning child.
“I don’t want to be in charge like that. I want . . . I don’t know . . . to feel like we agreed on things and would decide together about things.”
The coffee arrived, and Violet stirred some cream into hers and then put the spoon down without drinking. “You know what? I guess you’re right. I certainly wouldn’t want a man who waffles around like you do. I want a man to be in charge. When my dad was alive he was in charge, and we were all the better for it. That’s how things are supposed to be. I don’t want a man my children can’t look up to.”
Ames had no response to this. He sat looking miserably down at his coffee. He would have liked to heap the three spoons of sugar into it that he usually took, but he suddenly saw this through her eyes. It would no doubt be unmanly as well.
“So, this is it then, is it?” Violet asked.
Ames looked down.
“Oh, for God’s sake, just say it! I don’t even know how you do your job as a so-called policeman. You’re pathetic.” She turned her little chin away from him, staring again out the window into the dark.
Ames felt something inside him harden. “Yes, okay, Violet. This is it. I don’t want the kind of life you’re describing. Maybe you’re right to say the things you do. I don’t know. But your version of what a man is isn’t mine.” My version of a man, he thought, is Inspector Darling. Honest, imperfect, able to love someone who was as strong as he was. He smiled—nay, stronger.
“What are you smiling at? Is this fun for you? Because I’ll tell you something for nothing, I’m not enjoying it.”
“No, Vi. It’s the furthest thing from fun. I’m sorry it turned out like this. I hope we can be friends after this.”
“Really? ‘Let’s be friends’? I wouldn’t be friends with
you if you were the last man on earth! You have to at least like someone to be friends with them, and I surely don’t like you!” She stood up and smoothed down her dress, and then walked out without another word.
Ames collapsed back on his chair breathing a sigh of relief, and reached for the sugar bowl.
Darling, up the hill in his house, had, if he but knew it, the opposite problem. He had managed, without wanting it, to divest himself of the woman he loved. He stood at his window, which he had flung open, with an untouched Scotch in his hand, listening to the sounds of Nelson below him slowly calming for the night. He wondered at his own . . . impetuousness, perhaps, so at odds with the dour inspector image he portrayed. No, he didn’t just portray it. It was real. He was dour in some ways. Nothing in the war had improved his view of humanity, and nothing in his experience of the perennial sordidness and lack of imagination of the people he had to deal with in his job allowed for anything but a grim view of things. Why did he allow himself to commit so wholly to something as unstable and buoyant as love?
He thought of his father—distant, almost unconscious of his own misanthropic wry humour. Had he ever loved his wife? Had he been young and optimistic and willing to give himself entirely to love until Vimy and his wife’s death beat it out of him? Darling felt a welling of pain. His mother had been gentle and intelligent, had read to her sons and walked with them. He had loved her in the blind way children have of believing their mothers will be there forever.
A car coming up the hill suddenly faltered and then revved up with a grinding of gears. Darling turned away from the window, as if the truth of a sudden realization would be confirmed in the quiet darkness of the room behind him. He saw himself now in contrast to his father. He had lost his mother, he had fought a war, but he loved someone. He loved her and nothing in his life had diminished his capacity to love this person. Surely his mother would say, right now, “How wonderful that you are able to love.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Darling woke groggy and thick headed, as though he’d had too much to drink, something he hadn’t done since before he signed up. It was, he knew, the tossing and turning, imagining over and over calling Lane, saying what to her? Apologizing? For what? For being a fool, for assuming too much? Finding the kitchen in his small house as telling as Lane had found hers, with its lack of creature comforts, including breakfast, he took up his jacket, slammed on his hat, and made for the café. Ames was already there, moodily eating scrambled eggs.
“What’s eating you?” Darling asked.
Ames thought, I might say the same thing, sir. You look awful. But his boss wasn’t much for cheek first thing in the morning. “Sorry, sir. I needed some coffee.” He watched Darling order a plate of toast and some coffee and then said, “But it’s a big day, sir. We found Carl, and we have the two men involved in the shooting of Lazek.”
Darling sighed wearily. “We didn’t find him, Ames. Miss Winslow, our eager Girl Scout helper, found him. And we don’t have much. Heppwith and Townsend are both protesting loudly that they had nothing to do with the shooting of Lazek, and Carl will be in to give a full statement today, but he said he couldn’t see anyone properly in the dark, and he disappeared because whoever it was threatened him.”
“Has Heppwith seen Townsend yet?” Ames asked.
“No, they’re in separate cells. Why? Thank you.” Darling reached eagerly for the coffee he’d been provided. It had better do the trick. He couldn’t go into the day in this state. Confounded bloody woman. That’s what Townsend had said, and Darling could almost agree with him in that moment.
“Well, sir, Heppwith says he didn’t do the shooting. He said that the man gave him the gun, but when they got to the pier he found he couldn’t shoot Lazek, and used the dark as an excuse. The man took the gun, shot it, and then handed it back, telling Heppwith to get rid of it. If we take him at his word, we could simply ask him to identify the man he was with, which we assume is Townsend. With both of them there, we’ll get at the truth, all right.”
“This isn’t a melodrama, Ames. Proper police interviews, if you please. But you have a point. We do need to establish properly that it was the two of them.”
Heppwith, as it turned out, was not in the least bit helpful. He was sitting in the interview room with his hands cuffed behind him when Townsend was brought in. He looked at Darling, perplexed.
“Mr. Heppwith. Is this the man you were with on the night Lazek was shot?” Ames asked.
“I’ve never seen this man before in my life,” Heppwith said.
Lane, who also had not slept particularly well, was savagely ripping at some weeds in the garden. Darling was insufferable. “Thank you, Miss Winslow, we’ll take it from here.” She said these words out loud now, remembering how they’d been delivered in that official police-y way of his. Darling and Ames had bundled their prisoner into the police car, and Darling had not even looked back. A wink and a smile from Ames was all the thanks she got. She smiled briefly. Good old Ames. How did he work for that prig? She sat back, holding a weed that dropped dirt from its roots onto her crossed legs. She looked at it and frowned. What if this was some important bloom put in by Gladys Hughes when they’d planted her garden? With a twinge of guilt she went back on her knees and dug around the hole she’d pulled the weed from and tried to put it back in. The plant, she couldn’t help noticing, was already beginning to droop in the morning heat. “You can blame Inspector Darling,” she said to the plant and stood up, brushing off her legs. She clearly didn’t know what she was doing, in spite of Gladys’s best efforts. How could she be such a dead loss with a grandmother like hers, who could be head gardener for the king?
She had dropped Vanessa Castle and Carl off at their farm the evening before, promising to pick them up in the morning to drive them into town, where he would make his statement to the police, and then take Carl and a can of gas to wherever it was he had abandoned his car. She looked at her watch and sighed. Nine thirty. She’d barely have time to get dressed and pick them up by ten.
Lane pulled a summer dress off the hanger where it was hanging in her cupboard next to the skirt Yvonne had sent her. She wouldn’t have occasion to wear that again, she thought. She saw herself as she had been that night, drinking champagne on the terrace, dancing with Darling, dancing with Lorimer, hiding in the underbrush listening to Lorimer and Townsend. She stopped and frowned. What had he said? Something like “Do I have to do everything myself?” Or “Do I have to do it myself, again?” She shook her head, wishing she could remember exactly. By the time she had put her handkerchief in her handbag and closed the front door, she was very certain that what he had said implied he’d already had to do something himself. What? Was he in on the robberies, or was it something more sinister? He’d certainly been confronted by Lazek. Was Lorimer guilty of something that Lazek knew about from the past? Is that why Lazek had to die? She had told herself earlier that Lorimer wouldn’t do any killing himself; he’d send an underling. But the underling they’d arrested yesterday had sworn he had nothing to do with Klaus’s killing. There was that other man, Lorimer’s repellent secretary. He could have done it. And he wasn’t arrested, and neither was Lorimer. How long would it take for Lorimer to find out Townsend hadn’t succeeded in getting rid of Carl?
Spurred by this new anxiety, Lane hurried down the hill to the main road and tore off toward Balfour, only to find Carl and his mother looking very relaxed, waiting at the top of the lane down to their farm. Vanessa looked more at ease and happy than Lane had ever seen her.
“Good morning. You look wonderful, Vanessa. How are you both feeling?”
Carl nodded and smiled slightly. Vanessa said, “I think I slept for the first time since he left, even though I kept waking up to remind myself that it was true, that my Carl was asleep in the next room. He’s told me everything. I think he feels a bit foolish now.” She smiled fondly at her son.
�
�I’m not sure you have to feel foolish, Carl,” said Lane, as she drove onto the main road. “It sounds like you were threatened, you said yesterday. I’d want to run off as well.”
Carl was sitting in the back seat, his head leaning against the window frame, the breeze coming in the open window lifting his hair off his forehead. “It’s not that; it’s the whole thing. That stupid meeting, signing up. I was mad about losing my job, and I’d had too much to drink, and I felt that Heppwith was on to something. He’s a bit all in with this nationalism thing, and I see some of his points. Anyway, I signed up that night, got my little pin, and then the whole thing unravelled with that fight. I could see that Heppwith wanted to kill that guy, and I got scared. I wanted to leave, but I suddenly felt I couldn’t let it happen, so I went down to where I saw Lazek go towards the water to warn him to get out.”
“Did you know the man Heppwith was talking with?” Lane knew she ought to leave the questions to the police.
“No. Never seen him before. He was at the meeting, looking like he owned the place. I don’t know if I missed the introductions or what. Besides the speaker, he was the only one in a suit. I’ve tried and tried to remember what I saw that night, but I can’t. I only know Heppwith was there because I recognized his voice. I just don’t know about the second guy.”
Lane hesitated, and then said, “Carl, when you’re talking to the police, tell them as much as you can about everything you remember. Any little thing could be important.”
“Yes, ma’am. I will.”
They drove in silence for some miles, each lost in their own preoccupations, which in Lane’s case was how to avoid seeing Darling. She could drop them off at the front of the station and meet them somewhere else, at the café maybe. They were rounding the long curve that led past the beautiful faux Tudor house where Lane had taken Eleanor to pick up Alexandra—Lane remembered the puppies squirming and wiggling winningly—when the rest of that visit came into sudden focus. She’d been put off by Lorimer’s smooth presentation right from the beginning, but then she had pointed out to Eleanor that for a man of such pretensions, he had threads pulled out of his jacket lapel.