by Iona Whishaw
“Yes. All right. If he thinks it’s necessary. I’ll get Mummy and Gwen.” A new fear gripped her: Lane might be dead or kidnapped. Would it be her fault? It seemed harder to imagine that whatever happened to her would be separate from Bob waylaying her behind the garage.
“Mummy, Gwen. That was Eleanor. We’re to come down immediately to the post office. I think there’s going to be some sort of search party set up,” she called out from the steps.
“What? All of us?” Gladys asked incredulously. They had not all gathered together for an emergency since the fire of 1919.
“I wonder if Miss Winslow’s disappearance has anything to do with that poor dead child,” Gwen said, as the three women, their wellingtons making a rubbery cacophony, clumped down the hill. Mabel felt her innards compress with the knowing it had everything to do with it.
They found the grass area directly in front of the door of the post office bristling with the energy of a small crowd with a purpose. Harris had lumbered up in his tractor and now sat forward on its curved metal seat, one arm resting on the steering wheel and a drooping cigarette in his free hand, watching people gather. Alice Mather thumped her walking stick impatiently against her shoe while her husband talked quietly to Kenny. Glenn Ponting, the prospector from the cabin along the main road, was there with his horse tethered to the fence. Inside a paddock, the Armstrongs’ horse, which until the year before had pulled the wagon he’d used to collect the bags of mail and supplies delivered by the steamboat, watched the goings-on with interest.
Darling stood on the front step, waiting for them to gather. Those horses might be useful, he thought, in extending the range of the search in the bush. Not a big group, he thought morosely. He had a sudden fantasy that King’s Cove had as many dead people in it as living, and that they now hovered curiously and invisibly, keeping mum about all they knew.
Darling began. “Miss Winslow seems to have gone missing some time yesterday evening. What we know is that yesterday morning she reported to me by telephone that she had gone to the house that formerly belonged to the Anscomb family. She reported that she believed the vagrant, about whom most of you have heard, I believe, had been squatting at that location. It is possible she returned there. It is likely that this is the same vagrant that was seen by a young girl from town who broke into a summerhouse down by the lake. First, has anyone else spotted this person? He is in his fifties or sixties, if the girl is to be believed, bearded, of average height.”
There was a general murmur and shaking of heads. Mabel looked studiously at the ground, feeling as if her heart was being squeezed of the last of its blood.
“Very well. Miss Winslow left her house unlocked, probably not an unusual circumstance, and took her car somewhere. We have looked in every conceivable place for the car and have not found it. Constable Ames is still out looking for her or the car.”
“Might she not have gone into town?” asked Reginald Mather. His wife snorted.
“We wondered that, but her leather handbag was in the kitchen. We think it unlikely she left the Cove area. What we must establish now is who was the last to see her and where. I should add that we don’t absolutely know for sure that her disappearance is related in any way to the sudden arrival of the vagrant at King’s Cove, however, the circumstances are singular, and the connection is difficult to dismiss absolutely.”
The silence that greeted Darling’s speech caused his heart to sink. He wondered now why he’d nurtured any hope that anyone in this misanthropic and reclusive collection would have noticed anything outside of their own gardens. Suddenly Alice Mather spoke.
“I saw her yesterday. I think it was yesterday. She drove past us, and then I heard the car go up the road to that old house. Maybe forty minutes later I heard it come down again, but it didn’t come back past us like usual. Funny thing was, I didn’t hear it go down to the main road either. I thought for a minute she’d stopped to see that American woman with the three noisy children, but they’ve gone off somewhere.”
“What time was this?” Darling asked, animated by a tiny sense of hope.
“Couldn’t say, really,” she shrugged. Darling wanted to throttle her.
“Before lunch? After lunch? In the evening?”
“Sometime after lunch, or supper, I expect. I don’t bother with it, but he makes his own. I think it was after he left his usual mess in the kitchen,” Alice said. She didn’t look at Reginald, but he was scowling at her.
“That’s rubbish. You’d have to have been looking out the sitting room window. You didn’t leave your blasted room all day,” he said irritably.
“No, you never do see me, do you?” she remarked darkly, and was silent.
“Right,” said Darling, ignoring this domestic fracas. “So we have her driving up to the abandoned house and then driving back, at least as far as the intersection sometime in the afternoon or late afternoon. The Bertollis live there. Under normal circumstances she might stop in there. However, they are away, and we checked and her car is not to be seen anywhere in this part of the Cove, unless it’s hidden in a lay-by somewhere. Anything else? Anything?” He felt himself sounding desperate and didn’t care.
Mabel squirmed inside her own skin. She could not tell her story. She could not. It would be the end of everything. She knew she must say something, but words stuck in her throat.
Closing his eyes for a moment, Darling fought back desperation. “Right. Well, you can all help, if you would, if you could search along all the paths that link the various homes, go to the creeks and so on. She might have fallen, lost her way. Mr. Armstrong, can you organize some groups? I’d like people to go in pairs, please.” He knew speculation about her being lost along a path in the forest somewhere was hopeless. She was unlikely to have abandoned her car and wander into the brush and, in any case, her car was gone. No, what he feared more was that the vagrant had either hurt her and left her for dead in the forest somewhere, or become desperate and kidnapped her with the car.
While this was being done, Mabel moved toward the inspector. Gwen watched her, surprised. Mabel could feel her sister’s eyes on her, but she came up to Darling and said to him in low voice, “Can I talk to you?”
“Do you know something? You didn’t speak up just now.”
“I can’t. It’s . . . it’s private,” she muttered.
God, he wanted to shout, what could be private in this emergency? “Yes?” he tried not to sound impatient.
“It’s just that,” she hesitated. She was sure she could feel the others staring, but she did not turn. “It’s just that he talked to me. He sort of waylaid me. It’s Bob, you see, Bob Anscomb. The vagrant, I mean. He told me he had to come when he read the papers about the child. He . . . I told him he had to talk to the police, but he ran off into the woods up behind our house. I don’t think he had anything to do with Miss Winslow.” She trailed off, uncertain and shaking.
Darling battled his rush of anger and fear. “My God, why did you not say something?”
“I couldn’t. I . . . I haven’t seen him since I was a girl, not after . . .”
“Not after what? What are you not telling me?” He called out to Kenny. “Hold it, please!” and then turned his attention back to Mabel. To his dismay, Mabel’s face contorted with pain and she began to sob. “No, I can’t say. It has nothing to do with Bob I’m sure of it. It was more than thirty-six years ago.”
Darling looked at Mabel, his lips set in a grim line. “Look,” he finally said. “It’s not up to any one person to decide what is or is not relevant. We’ve already connected the missing child potentially to that family. Now a member of that family who is likely to be very dangerous turns up and Miss Winslow goes missing when she goes off in search of him. Do you understand? You don’t get to decide.” His clear anger made Mabel recoil. “When did you have this conversation?”
“It was yesterday evening,” she whispered, trembling. Darling could see that this spectacle with the now-crying Mabel had arrested a
ll activity, so he turned to the group. “Right. For those of you who may have known him, it appears we are looking for Bob Anscomb. We believe he is dangerous with possibly a violent temper. Under no circumstances are you to approach him or engage him in any way. Is this absolutely clear?” This announcement caused a gasp from Gwen, and the group turned to where Darling and a cowering Mabel stood.
“Bob?” Kenny said. “Well I never.”
The clouds from over the lake had spread and now threatened an early darkness. Darling could feel himself on the edge of panic. “Can you get started, please?” he barked. “Please report back here when you have finished traversing the whole of a path so that we can mark each of them off. Thank you.” Only Gwen still stood, transfixed by the sight of her sister, looking crushed. Darling turned back to Mabel. “I haven’t got time to talk to you right now. You get going with one of the groups. You may be assured we will be talking later.”
TAKING ANOTHER SIP of stale water and hoping it had no amoebas in it to kill her, Lane pulled herself together. It was ridiculous that she was imprisoned in a . . . whatever this was. Then, feeling almost a sense of embarrassment, she thought of the big doors at the front. Locked and sealed, yes, but wood. How had she not thought of bashing her way out? Thinking about her own barn, with its ancient tools hung neatly on nails along the walls, she got painfully off her apple-box seat and moved as quickly as she could toward the nearest wall, feeling the ground with her feet to avoid yet another mishap. Why hadn’t that blasted man left her a flashlight, she thought crossly, feeling now along the walls with a new sense of urgency. Several hammers, but none big enough to tackle a heavy wooden door, she reasoned. Finally, she felt something with a long and substantial handle. She could feel the smooth wood and cautiously moved her hand upward. An axe. God, she thought, it’s ridiculous! How long have I sat here and I didn’t think of battering at the door with something? She seized it and felt her way toward the wall that fronted the road and, making sure there was no machinery, she swung in the dark at the wood.
IT WAS LATE in the afternoon. Lane had been missing a day and a night, and another night was coming on, along with the possibility of more rain. Ames, who had driven to every house, walked along the beach to every empty cottage along the cove, looked down every side road and track he could find, was now driving back up onto the Nelson road from the wharf, where he had found no sign of her car. His efforts were greeted with nothing but silence and the cold of the oncoming evening.
He would have to go back and break the news to Darling that he had found nothing, Ames thought miserably, when he saw Lane’s car about to turn onto the Nelson road. A man was driving it! Astonished, Ames pressed hard on the gas, practically leaping out onto the road, and roared to the intersection where he swung the car across so that Lane’s car had to screech to a halt. Frowning, Ames ran to the driver’s door and yanked it open. He seized the man by the arm and wrestled him out of the car.
“Where is she?” he shouted, rage overtaking him now, wanting to beat this man into submission. Instead he shook him and then dragged him to the police sedan and reached into the back for handcuffs. The man, surely in his fifties, would have been no match for Ames, and in any case seemed to have lost all fight and now submitted to the cuffing and being pushed unceremoniously into the back of the policeman’s car. But he did not speak.
Ames roared back up the hill and then turned sharply down toward the post office, throwing his prisoner roughly against the door. Good, he thought. He pulled to a stop as Darling burst out of the screen door of the Armstrongs’ cottage.
“He had Miss Winslow’s car,” was all Ames said to him.
Darling looked past Ames at the man in the back of the car. He felt himself flooded with an absolute sick terror. What had he done with Lane?
THE WOOD FINALLY gave way, and with nearly a sob of relief, Lane welcomed the light that flooded though the shattered shards of wood. Even though it was the waning light of evening, it felt like looking into the full blinding brilliance of the sun. With renewed energy she chopped at the opening she’d made, with a fantastic hope that she would make a space big enough to crawl through. She stopped, panting, and with the light now filtering into the building, she looked around. She could see that what had felt like a dark and inescapable dungeon was just an apple shed, with boxes, papers, canvas bags for pickers, ladders stacked against the walls, and some sort of motorized picker. What a fuss she’d made over something so ordinary, she thought crossly. But in the next moment the silence was broken by the sound of a car. She heard the car stop somewhere below her on the road. Desperate now to get out of her prison, however ordinary, she took up the axe and tried to be more intelligent about her efforts, striking along the grain of the wood instead of against it. If she could knock out the board, she might squeeze through. She began to shout.
“Hello! Anyone! Help!”
“Over here!” she heard. Ames’s voice. Ames’s lovely voice!
In a moment there was the heavy bang of a wooden bar being moved and the slow pull of the massive door scraping along the ground, and she felt herself enveloped.
“Thank God, thank God,” gently, near her ear. She could feel her own arms around him, could feel his hand stroking her hair, could feel her own heart. He reached up and gently touched the angry bruise on her forehead. “He hit you,” he said, anger flaring, but she shook her head, trying to dismiss it. And in the next moment she was being wrapped in his overcoat and Ames, who had evidently gone off on the pretext of looking at the door, had returned.
“I’ve absolutely ruined Dave Bertolli’s barn door,” she said ruefully.
“Yes, you have,” Darling said. “I’ve found your shoe.” He held it up.
“No, Inspector. I can put my own shoe on.” Alarmed at seeing him begin to bend down to help her, Lane stopped him. He waited and then began to steer her down the path toward the road, his arm around her shoulders. She winced and he loosened his arm a trace. “What’s he done?”
“No,” Lane shook her head. “I don’t think it was him. It was me being stupid. I think I tried to go up the stairs and fell down them. There’s no rail and they’re pretty unstable. I knocked myself out, and maybe bruised myself. He . . . well, I fell backward against something so I have a bit of a bump at the back of my head. It’s all rather ridiculous, I’m afraid.”
“He what? What else did he do?”
“Nothing, all right? I’m fine.”
“We’ll have to get you to a doctor. You might have broken something.”
“I assure you, nothing is broken. A hot bath and some aspirin will do me,” Lane said. She turned to him. “How did you know to come here? I heard cars driving up and down the road the whole time. It was maddening.”
Fighting back his dismay at what this must have felt like for her, trapped in the dark, Darling said, “That bastard told us. He was trying to swipe your car and Amesy here stopped him.”
“You didn’t hurt him, did you? He never meant to keep me locked up. I surprised him and he didn’t know what to do with me. I think it might have been Bob Anscomb. Oh. He knows something about the child! He kept saying ‘he,’ I don’t think it’s Isabel at all. I tried to talk to him, but he was waving his torch at me and I didn’t feel like another clonk on the head. He asked me if I’d taken the boot. He said something about the boots not fitting him. He said he didn’t kill him . . .”
Darling stopped and turned her toward him, holding her arms. Ames had gone ahead to start the car. “You had no idea who he was, or what he might be capable of. I told you not to go near the place. Typical of you to go barging off, putting yourself in danger, putting . . . it’s got to stop!” his relief had turned to fear and anger at her recklessness.
Lane pulled away from him and began to walk toward the car, and then she stopped and looked at him. “Don’t,” she said. “Please don’t tell me where to barge. We can never be friends if you think you can.”
Ames, driving back down the hill t
o her house, stifled an audible sigh. Miss Winslow silent and angry in the back seat, Darling fuming in the front. How had it all gone south so quickly?
“The whole populace of King’s Cove has been out looking for you. Mr. Armstrong organized them from the post office,” he said, trying to lighten the atmosphere.
Lane could feel exhaustion stealing over her body, making her limbs heavy and achy. She wondered about that moment when she was left alone at home if she would feel elated and relieved to be alone with her own bath and her own fireplace and her own bed, or suffer some delayed reaction that would keep her awake. Whichever it was, it would be taking place in her own lovely house, on her own terms.
“Constable, don’t drop me at home just yet. I should like to thank people if they are at the post office. Everyone has gone to a lot of trouble.”
“Are you sure, Miss Winslow? You’ve been through a real ordeal,” Ames said, looking in the rear-view mirror at her.
“It would have been a good deal more of an ordeal if no one had come looking for me! Yes, please, I’d like to stop and let people see I’m all right. Where is Bob?”
“I caught him just as he was leaving the Cove. He was trying to steal your car! We’ve locked him up in the post office,” Ames said. “He’d sort of given up, I think, because he told us where you were.”
“Ah. I have you to thank, Constable. Well done. I should have known it was you. I can’t think Eleanor is pleased about having him in her post office, though!” Darling maintained a grim-lipped silence during this exaggeratedly cheerful exchange.
Unsuccessful in the search, the small parties had returned to the post office in dribs and drabs and now knew that the vagrant had been trying to make an escape in Lane’s car, and had told the police where Lane was.
Kenny looked around. Everyone was back now, and Eleanor was busy making tea in the kitchen. People had assembled in the Armstrong sitting room and were talking in quiet voices, as though they were at a final vigil by a sickbed. No one was volunteering to bring a cup of tea to Bob Anscomb, who had been locked in the post office for the duration. They jumped up when they heard the car and crowded through the door to the porch.