Death in a Darkening Mist

by Iona Whishaw

  After an unpleasant struggle to pull her clothes on to her damp body—the towel seemed unequal to the task of drying her properly in the wet confines of the dressing room—she emerged and stood listlessly waiting for Angela and the boys. Angela had them in several cubicles of the ladies’ side and was telling them to get a move on. Lane dried her long hair, more or less, and tied it back, slipping it under her scarf. She was still hot from the water, and wanted to leave her jacket undone, but she knew that the cold would win out, and she ought to preserve some of the heat. Putting her bag down, she leaned on the railing, looking out at the parking area and the little street below, enjoying the crisp coldness of the air on her face. She imagined gold miners—is that what they mined here?—trudging out of the hills with their little bags of loot, looking for a drink at the bar. Suddenly she heard banging, and she turned to see a man pounding his fist on the wooden window of the ticket booth. At first she couldn’t hear what he was shouting, then she understood all too well.

  “Help, somebody, quickly—help! ”

  The wooden window flew open and Betty was there, alarmed by the wildness of the man yelling at her.

  “I don’t understand you, lovie, you must speak English.”

  But the man continued to shout in Russian. Lane bolted to the window and said to the man, in his language, “Can I help you? What has happened?”

  The old man, still in his bathing suit, his white belly hanging over the waist, turned to her as if someone speaking to him in Russian were the most natural thing in the world. “My friend, in there . . . there is something wrong. I think he is dead!”

  Lane looked towards the men’s changing area where the door hung open and then glanced back at Betty. “He says that there is something wrong with his friend in the dressing room. He thinks he is . . . ill. I’m going to check. If there is a doctor in the village, can you get him?” Lane hurried along the walkway towards the open door.

  Behind her, Betty muttered, “I warn them. I tell them. They’re too old to sit for a long time in hot water. It’s bad for their . . .” But Lane was into the passage of the dressing room now, saying to the old man, “Where is he? Which compartment?”

  “There, at the end!”

  Once inside, and accustomed to the dimly lit area, she could see at the end that the cubicle door was closed, but there was a figure stretched out, the top half of his body hidden inside, his legs splayed out under the high door, in the passage. She flung the door open and saw that the man was naked, lying supine, his head to one side. It was the same man she had seen coming through the tunnel. She knelt down and gently shook him.

  “Sir, sir . . . are you all right?” she asked in Russian.

  He did not move, and even with the gentle shake, his head flopped ominously. She brought her hand to her mouth, unconsciously quelling her physical response. He was dead; she knew this with certainty. But how did he die?

  “Lane, darling, what’s the matter? What’s happened?” It was Angela in the door of the passageway. “Be quiet and go wait by the car!” She added this last to the children, who had also begun a rising chorus of questions.

  Lane reluctantly pulled her eyes away from the man’s face. “Angela, get a warm blanket from Betty right now. And find out if she’s contacted any kind of doctor,” she called out past the large body of the distressed friend. He was still standing helplessly outside the cubicle, and seemed to be blocking the whole of the narrow passageway. The “warm” blanket was nonsense, she knew, but she felt part of her mind tagging behind, to some moment when he was still alive. She wished now she’d said something to him after all, as if that delay would have kept him from this meeting with Fate.

  “He was like this when you found him?” she asked.

  “Yes, just like this. He didn’t move. I tried to wake him.” He sounded close to tears now, and looked nervously behind him, as if expecting that whoever had done this to his friend might pop through the door at any moment.

  “Sir, go and get dressed. You will become sick in this cold. I have sent for help.”

  The man shuffled nervously backwards, then turned, and Lane heard the door of a cubicle shut farther down the passage. She swore at the darkness. This cubicle was far from the bulb that hung halfway along the passage. She turned to the figure and, craning forward, looked closely at him, thinking perhaps he’d had a stroke and banged his head. When she saw the wound, she frowned, glancing upward to see if a protruding nail could have caused it, but knowing already it was impossible—no nail was that big. Near the top of the back of his head was a dark spot. She reached out and touched it gently, feeling her finger dip sickeningly into the damp wound in his skull. She brought her finger away, shuddering at the stain on it. Blood. At that moment, Angela was coming along the passage with a thick grey blanket.

  “What’s the matter with him? Has he passed out?”

  Taking the blanket and spreading it over him in some unconscious and superfluous bid to keep him warm until help arrived, Lane said, “I’m afraid he’s dead.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  SOMEHOW ANGELA HAD GOTTEN THE boys down the long flight of stairs with the promise of an unprecedented cup of hot chocolate and a sandwich at the café, under a hail of “Why can’t we see?” questions. Lane stood at the top of the landing watching them until their voices died away. Above the trees she could see that the bank of dark clouds along the edge of the mountains had moved nearer, creating a sense of early nightfall, though it was not yet two. She wondered how they would all get home if the snow began again.

  The sitting room of the small living quarters attached to the pay window was surprisingly comfortable. It had a bank of windows facing away from the pool and looking out over the now almost completely cloud-obscured lake. A Franklin provided a comforting dose of heat, and several well-used armchairs clustered around a low table.

  Piotr, who had said he preferred to be called Peter, was hustled inside by Betty and Lane, to be given tea with an offer of a little restorative brandy. Betty, clucking, positioned him in a wing-back chair near the stove and wrapped a blanket around him. Lane longed to stay inside but felt somehow that she should stand watch for the doctor.

  “I must say, he wasn’t that obliging,” Betty had said about her conversation with the doctor. “Retired army fellow, and he doesn’t like being brought out, even on a good day.”

  Now alone in the sudden quiet of the landing and the enveloping forest and cloud, Lane began to regret her decision to wait until someone came, and thought about getting in on some of the tea herself. The other swimmers who had been there when they arrived must have left before any of this started. Perhaps the noise of the boys had gotten to be too much, as Angela had said. In any case, there was nothing disturbing the thick mist rising from the pool. She had just made a decision in favour of tea and, she hoped, brandy, though she had not yet begun to shiver as Peter had, when she heard a car grinding up the little hill into the parking area. It was a pre-war model that sounded and looked worse for wear.

  “Up here,” she called down. An elderly man in a black coat had gotten out of the car and seemed to be rooting around on the passenger side for something. He emerged with a small black bag and started up the stairs.

  “Truscott, and you are?” he said when he arrived out of breath at the top. His military moustache had gathered a layer of condensed droplets.

  “Lane Winslow, from King’s Cove. Thank you for coming so quickly.”

  “Where’s Betty?”

  “She’s inside with the gentleman, Piotr, I mean Peter, who found his friend hurt . . . dead. He’s shaken up.”

  “And you’re not.” He said this in a matter-of-fact manner of someone gathering data. “Where is this person? Is he hurt or dead?”

  “The poor fellow is quite dead. He appears to have a bullet hole in the back of his skull. This way.” She led Truscott through the door of the men’s change room into the dim passageway.

  “I can’t see a bloody thing. See if yo
u can scare up a flashlight, will you?”

  Back in Betty’s sitting room, Peter had sunk into a heap in his chair, but at least he had stopped shivering.

  “He wouldn’t take the brandy. They don’t drink, you know,” Betty said, nodding in his direction. Lane wondered at the “they” but said, “Dr. Truscott needs a torch . . . flashlight; do you have one?”

  While Betty was rummaging in a drawer, Lane leaned over to say to Peter, in Russian, “How are you doing? The doctor is here. I will bring him to talk to you, and perhaps if you’re still not feeling well he could help.”

  “Why should I talk to him? What does he want?”

  “Well, he may have a few questions. The police will come and they will need to talk to you as well. I will stay here to help.” In English she said to Betty, “Did you call the police?”

  “I called,” Betty said from across the room. “They weren’t very happy either. I can’t see why we need the police, though, if he’s gone and had a heart attack.”

  “I don’t want to talk to the police. Why should I talk to anyone?” Peter sounded aggrieved.

  “They will just want to know anything you can tell them about your friend and what you saw. I will stay here with you and translate. Try not to worry. It has been a terrible day for you.”

  “Here you go,” Betty said, holding a flashlight out to Lane. “It seems to work.” Lane took the flashlight and hurried back to the doctor, whom she found waiting outside the dressing room door, looking impatient.

  “Do you want me . . .” Lane began.

  “No, I don’t. I think I can manage to identify whether someone is dead or not. Go back inside.”

  But she didn’t. She went again to the landing, wondering what to do about Angela and the boys. She had put her beloved leather-strapped Waltham on after her swim, and she consulted this now. Already half past. It would be dark in a couple of hours. She would like to just collect them and get them all back to the Cove before the snow came. As if on signal, faint, whirling white flakes began, suggesting a new bout of snow. In what seemed like only a few minutes, she could hear the doctor’s footsteps along the passage, and the banging of the dressing area door. She met him at the door into Betty’s.

  “He’s dead. I’ve covered him over with that blanket. Did you move the body?”

  “No. That is, only enough to check his vitals and note the head injury. Is it a bullet?”

  “It is. And neatly done. No exit wound. I’ll need to fill in the paperwork. Let’s get in out of this.”

  Inside Betty busily offered tea to Truscott, who rejected it and settled at a small wooden table with papers he’d removed from his bag. Peter had taken the blanket from his shoulders, and now sat staring suspiciously at the doctor. Lane wondered if it would be rude to ask for tea, as she’d not been offered any, but Betty seemed to anticipate her, because she produced a cup, already dressed with milk and, Lane hoped, sugar. “I’ve put a little drop in, dear. You must be a block of ice.”

  Lane sipped her tea gratefully, noting with approval that it was very sweet and contained a good deal more than a “drop.”

  “What time was he found?” Truscott asked from the table. “Oh, and what was his name?”

  Lane tried to work backwards. It was nearly quarter to three now, but she had no sense of that much time passing. What time had they gotten out? It must have been near one, because the boys would have been hungry and missing their lunch. She turned to Peter and said in Russian, “Peter, do you know what time it was when you found him, when you got out of the water? And what his name is . . . was?” She did not see the doctor raise his eyebrows in surprise, because she was concentrated on Peter, who seemed to be struggling.

  “I don’t know. I don’t wear a watch. Of course I know his name. He was my friend. Viktor Strelieff.”

  Lane turned to Truscott. “I think it will have been about one, or a little before. This gentleman can’t remember.” She added the victim’s name, which the doctor wrote down after checking for spelling.

  “You’re English,” said the doctor, who appeared to be just discovering this. “Betty, did you call the police?”

  “Yes, right away. It could take ’em two hours to get here from Nelson in this weather.”

  Nelson. Lane’s heart sank.

  “Well, I’m going to have to stay unless they bring their own medic,” Truscott said irritably, looking out the window where the whirling of new snow seemed to have picked up.

  Lane sat wondering what to do about Angela, then decided there was nothing for it. They, at least, did not need to stay in these deteriorating conditions. If worst came to worst she would get a ride back to the Cove with the police. It was on the way, after all. With a grim thought for what it would be like to take this trip with her old acquaintances from the Nelson police detachment, she said, “I’m going to find my friend in the café and get them off home. Those three little boys of hers will be going stir-crazy by now. I’ll catch a ride back with the police.”

  “Don’t be all day about it. I may have more questions for this man,” the doctor said, frowning over the paperwork. “I think I will have that tea now, if you don’t mind,” he added to the hovering Betty.

  Lane went down the stairs as quickly as she dared, thankful she’d worn her leather work boots. The increasing snowfall made the wooden stairs slippery. When she reached the bottom of the turn-up to the parking area, she looked along the part of the street they had not passed coming in, to see if she saw anything that looked like a café. The new snow was beginning to leave a clean carpet of white on the ground. Angela must have been watching for her because she came out of a nearby building that stood closer to the water and waved frantically. Lane saw that the building was an early turn-of-the-century wood-framed hotel.

  “Lane, God, are you done yet? I really do feel we must be heading back, or the drive will be impossible. I can’t see spending the night here with the boys!”

  “Yes, that’s why I’ve come looking for you. I want you lot to head off right away. I shall need to stay on. The police will be here and I have to be on hand for Peter. He speaks almost no English.”

  “Horrors! I can’t leave you here!”

  “No, really, it’s quite all right. The police are coming from the Nelson detachment, so I’ll get them to drop me off on the way back.” She kept this remark as neutral as she could.

  A smile momentarily lit up Angela’s worried face. “Nelson. Ah! That nice policeman . . .”

  “Please don’t,” said Lane firmly. “Now go get those boys and let’s get you back into the car and out of here.”

  HAVING WATCHED ANGELA and the boys drive off into what had now become to all intents and purposes a proper winter snowfall, Lane rejoined the others and drank more tea. The doctor wrote, Peter sat in sullen silence, and Betty bustled in and out of her pay kiosk, tidying up. Lane looked anxiously at her watch. After a time, she went outside and waited, as if a watched policeman ever arrived, she thought. But, to her relief, in much under the two hours Betty had predicted, she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. A maroon roadster, the chains on its wheels rattling softly in the snow, pulled into the parking lot next to a battered truck, which she now realized must belong to the hapless Peter. A young man got out of the driver’s side, wearing a grey overcoat and a good-looking new hat, and turned to look up the stairs they were to traverse. Even his rubber overshoes looked stylish. Seeing Lane, he broke into a smile and turned to say to the other man, now coming out of the passenger side in a dark coat, “Look, sir, it’s Miss Winslow!”

  The other man said nothing but looked up at her where she stood partway up the stairs and touched the rim of his hat. When they had reached her, he said, “Miss Winslow. What have you done now?”

  Ignoring this, and the amused look in his charcoal eyes, Lane said, “Hello, Inspector Darling, Constable Ames. I don’t know how much Betty told you, or whoever she talked to at the station.”

  Glancing at his boss to se
e if he looked rebuffed by the beautiful Miss Winslow—he did not—Ames said, “Just that someone has had a mishap in the change room. Is he dead?”

  “Yes. The local doctor is here and has confirmed.” They had reached the door. “If you’re wondering why I’m here, I stayed on because the man’s friend, who found him, speaks only Russian.”

  Ames’s admiration for Lane, which had developed earlier in the year when a body had been discovered in a creek near her new home at King’s Cove, leaped another notch. “You speak Russian as well. Of course. I forgot. Amazing!”

  Darling shot him a disapproving look and kicked his boots against the door frame to get the snow off. Betty threw the door open at the sound, urging them to come in out of the cold and not to worry about the snow. The room now seemed hot and bright by comparison to the outdoors. Betty had turned on several lamps against the pressing gloom. Both policemen removed their hats as if in greeting, and Darling said, “Inspector Darling. This is Constable Ames. No, we won’t sit, thank you. We’d best get on with it.”

  “I’m Betty Wycliff, this is Dr. Truscott, and here’s Peter. Oh dear, I don’t know his last name. What was it, Doctor?”

  But Peter rose and said in a heavy accent, “Barisoff. Peter Barisoff. I want go now.” He turned to Lane, switching to Russian. “There. The police are here. You can see it is snowing and I live far from here. How long will this take?” He spoke as if he expected Lane to be an expert in police matters.

  “I will ask them, shall I?” Lane turned to Darling. “This gentleman has been shaken by this whole business, and he lives quite far away. Judging by the rickety lorry outside, it promises to be a difficult drive. He wonders how long he will be detained.”

  Darling seemed to ponder for a second then said, “Ames, can you begin taking a statement from Mr. Barisoff, with Miss Winslow’s help? Dr. Truscott, perhaps you can show me to the scene.”

  Thus arranged, Peter Barisoff, Ames, and Lane moved to the small table so that Ames could begin the statement, and Truscott and Darling went back out into the snow.