Death in a Darkening Mist

by Iona Whishaw

  Darling stared moodily out at the passing snowy landscape. She was probably right about that. Right, too, about the gun. The kinds of guns in use by local people were rifles of one kind or another, generally for hunting, and some returning soldiers, no doubt, illegally hung on to their service revolvers. But Doukhobors were not meat eaters, so would not hunt, and were pacifists, so it was unlikely they had signed up. He’d ask young Barisoff if he’d signed on, but he was certain, even now, of the answer.

  Anton Barisoff looked thunderously at Darling and Ames. “You police can’t seem to leave us alone, can you?”

  “Perhaps if you’d told us the truth from the beginning,” Darling said. “I understand you were off in Grand Forks. Could we have the name of the people you visited? And while you’re at it, any explanation of why you didn’t tell us in the first place?”

  Anton Barisoff bit his upper lip and shook his head. “I don’t want them to have to be harassed by the police, that’s why. Why should innocent people get dragged into something that has nothing to do with them?”

  Darling shrugged, softening his tone. “Unfortunately it’s what happens when someone is murdered. I’m sure in the end you and everyone you are connected to would prefer we find whoever has singled out at least one member of your community, and is still on the loose.”

  Supplied by the reluctant Anton with the information he sought, including Barisoff’s assurance that he had not signed up for a war he did not believe in, Darling sat silently in the passenger seat as they drove away. He was certain they would learn nothing from Barisoff’s friends except that he was there visiting, and they would be no further forward on why Strelieff was killed and what had killed him. Perhaps the autopsy would reveal something, anything, about the victim or the weapon used in this very puzzling murder.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “GOD, THIS SNOW!” EXCLAIMED AMES that evening after their adventures in New Denver and beyond, throwing his hat onto the bench and clumping himself onto the chair across from Charles Andrews in Larkin’s Hotel bar. They had been friends since elementary school, and he loved the easy, familiar routine of relaxing at the bar with him. “What are you having?”

  “Yes, please, I will have another, if you’re offering,” Charles responded, holding up his glass. They waved the waiter over and ordered beer. Charlie pulled out his Export A’s and tapped one out for Ames. They drew deeply on their cigarettes, as if they were a life line, and leaned back watching the smoke rise. Ames was the first to speak.

  “It’s been busy. We were called on Thursday, all the way up to Adderly in a bloody blizzard. I didn’t get home till after ten. The boss was at his most grumpy, I can tell you! And then out today all day, driving his nibs in the snow.”

  “What sort of call-out?”

  “Dead guy, of course. Some foreigner. And of course it’s ‘Ames, this, Ames, that!’ usually involving me tramping around in the snow. I shouldn’t complain. I like him, if I’m honest. I’m sure it could be worse. Look at that bastard you work for. Anyway, it was rather more fun this time because the beautiful Miss Winslow was there helping out. You know she speaks Russian? It’s amazing. How a lady that pretty can be so smart. Turns out we needed someone who can speak Russian because our suspect speaks Russian.”

  “Wow, you already have a suspect. Quick work. Hurrah for the Nelson police force!” Charles brought his hand up to his forehead in a quick salute.

  “Well, he was on the scene, and the last guy to see him. I don’t think Darling thinks he is, but I have old-fashioned views on this matter, so I’m keeping him in the suspect category.”

  “There’s no doubt it was him. That’s the sort of thing those Douks would do. All that running around pretending to be pacifists! They’re shirkers is what they are. The rest of us stood up for our country. If you ain’t prepared to die for your country, it ain’t your country as far as I’m concerned.” Charles Andrews moved his injured leg into a more comfortable position, as if to underline his point.

  “Yeah, well. It’s people killing each other off that keeps me in business. How’s that evil boss of yours?”

  “Evil. It’s amazing how a man can be that sour. If anything he’s gotten worse. He never says good morning, but expects all of us to say it to him. And he’s never happy. I really think he thinks we are all out to embezzle money or something. I know I was lucky to get the job what with my injury and all, but I need this beer at the end of the day. I’m not cut out for the banking life, if you want the truth. And I’d keep an eye on Vi if I were you. I’m pretty sure he’s measuring her up to drink her blood.”

  They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the steady influx of lumberjacks, mine workers, and men from the railway. The noise level was beginning to climb; this, plus the pall of smoke, required the two men to lean in to hear and see each other properly.

  Charles looked around to make sure no one heard him and said, “Speaking of girls, that Winslow bint is quite a looker. She comes in the bank sometimes. I look at her and imagine all kinds of things, I can tell you. She’s a bit stuck up with that accent, but I’d soon sort that, eh?”

  Ames looked at him. In all the years since they were boys, he’d never questioned their friendship. Charles was a little older than him, and he’d always been slightly in awe of him. But now he rebelled at this lascivious talk of Miss Winslow. Indeed, he suddenly realized with another good look at Charles that he’d be upset if Charles talked about Vi like that, or any girl. This must be it, he thought, how people drift apart. You just discover one day that people aren’t quite what you thought.

  Ames stubbed his cigarette into the blackened ashtray and stood up. “Darling expects me in good and early tomorrow. We’ll have to go up the lake probably, so I’m taking off.”

  “You poor bugger. On the weekend. I’ve got the day off. I think I’m going to go up the lake too, only all pleasure for me. I’m going to see the little girl who is the telephone operator at the Balfour exchange, and then I think I’ll go see Miss Winslow. Customer service, eh?” He winked at his own witticism and pulled on his overcoat.

  Ames turned towards him and said, “Whatever happened to Sylvia? Haven’t the two of you been going out since you got back? I’ve seen you together.”

  “Ah, Sylvia. That’s all right when you haven’t seen what’s out there, but really, compared to Miss Winslow . . . you’ve gotta be kidding!”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  LANE LOOKED AT HER LITTLE clock by the bed. It was nearly ten. She only allowed herself this lying about in bed with a book and coffee on Sundays. The vicar would be along to conduct the service in their little church at eleven, and she’d been invited to join the vicar and the Armstrongs at Gladys’s for what she called a “light” lunch afterwards. There would be, she knew, a full joint with Yorkshire pudding, just to please the vicar. It was a ritual she’d enjoyed a few times before, and though she knew it to be quintessentially English, she felt sometimes that it was more foreign to her than even to Angela. Her own childhood included a hodgepodge of church attendance, from Lutheran to Russian Orthodox, depending on whom they went with. Her mother had died when she was five, and her father had never evinced any interest in religion, so church was a matter of her grandmother’s wide and catholic social network. There had been lunches, she recalled, but these more often included borscht, pirogi, great dishes of stew, and bowls of polenta.

  The church vestibule was full of umbrellas and overshoes when she arrived. In honour of the sartorial expectations of this event, she had donned her green tweed skirt and jacket with a white silk blouse, and thrown her overcoat over the entire ensemble for the walk to the church.

  The usual hubbub was slightly quieter this week, as she’d expected it to be. Angela had called just before she left to say one of the children was down with a bad throat, and it wouldn’t do to spread it to all the dear old things.

  “And anyway, I’m not C of E, as you like to call it. I’m supposed to be a Catholic. Appa
rently there’s a mass somewhere up the lake, but I haven’t bothered to find it. Come up for a nightcap, or should I say an afternoon cap, given what time it gets dark at this time of year.” Lane promised she would, hoping that she’d have digested her enormous lunch by then.

  Gladys, the dowager of the Hughes establishment, and well into her vigorous eighties, was concluding a conversation with a Miss Peabody from Balfour, who liked to come up to the service at King’s Cove, provided her nephew could drive her up in his truck, and was making her way in to sit at her usual spot. Gwen and Mabel, Gladys’s daughters, both in their mid-fifties, had come along earlier to slide the hymn numbers into the slots and put the hymnals into the pews. Mabel was doing some tentative chording on the organ.

  “Oh, Lane, thank heavens.” Gwen had come up the outside aisle and was approaching furtively.

  “Gwen, are you all right?” Lane asked. The woman looked as though she’d not slept, and her winter pallor was heightened, making her look bedraggled.

  “I can’t talk now, but something rather awful has happened. I don’t like to tell Mummy and Mabel, as they will take great delight in blaming me. I’ve no one else to talk to.”

  Lane looked around as the churchgoers filed in for the service.

  “No, it’s all right, we can’t talk here. I have to tidy things up at the end. Mabel is going back with Mummy right after to get things ready for lunch. Can you stay and walk up with me?”

  “Goodness, yes, of course,” Lane said, wanting to ask more. But the robust opening measures of “Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow” sent everyone scurrying to their appointed pew to stand and sing in the vicar.

  Lane had difficulty concentrating, so curious was she about what could be troubling Gwen. The vicar, a charming man from Kent whom she’d first met the previous summer at the annual tea, had a talent for brevity. He focused his homily on the upcoming holy days leading to Christmas, made some amusing remarks about his love of local baking, and then took the service to the conclusion. It was going to take some time to get people out of the church, but Mabel had closed the lid of the organ with decision and collected Gladys to set off up the hill, and that seemed to send a discreet message to everyone else.

  “We’ll see you at lunch, Vicar,” Gwen said when he’d come out in his civilian clothes to see if he could help. “Lane will give me a hand and we’ll be up in two ticks.”

  “Now then,” said Lane. “Whatever is the matter?” It only ruffled her conscience slightly that she might have an equal measure of curiosity with her very real concern for Gwen. They sat down in the quiet church. The burbling of the creek next to the building was still faintly audible though muffled by the walls and the thick snow.

  “I feel so stupid, really. Mabel and I went up to town on Friday and I stopped in at the bank while she did some shopping. I don’t know what made me do it, but I asked to see my savings account. I never touch it, you see. Rainy day and all that. I was quite horrified to see that I had lost nearly five hundred dollars.”

  “What do you mean, you’d lost it? It wasn’t an investment account, was it? You said it was savings.”

  “It is. That’s why I was so puzzled. When I tried to ask about it, the clerk put me on to the manager, Featherstone. I’d trust him with my life. He’s always been there. Well, he suggested that maybe I’d mixed up the accounts and had been taking household money out of the wrong account. I felt so stupid, Lane! I mean, I could have.”

  “Take a deep breath, and think. When you go into the bank, I bet you do the same thing every time. Tell me.”

  “Yes, yes, I do of course. Let me see. I go in, and I go to one of those counters they have around the pillars in the middle, and I take out a slip, put in the account number, and say how much I want for housekeeping. It’s always the same. I even go to the same pillar every time.”

  “And you always write the same number?”

  “Always. The account number, and how much I want to take out.”

  Lane mused. “It doesn’t seem likely that you would suddenly switch and write another account number, does it? Is this your family savings account?”

  “No, that’s the trouble. It’s a little money John Armstrong left me. I was so shocked to discover that he’d written me into his will before he left. Ken and Eleanor knew, of course, they told me about it just after he’d died, but I can’t bear to think of them finding out I’ve been squandering it.”

  “But, Gwen, you haven’t been squandering it. I’m sure it’s a simple banking error. You’ll see.”

  “Featherstone was so nice about it. He said he’d follow up and see if he could find a mistake, but you could see he thought I’d taken it and just forgotten.”

  THE LUNCH WAS held in the Hughes’ formal dining room. The heavy mahogany table was spread with a padded mat and spotless white linen tablecloth. The fire in the adjacent sitting room offered an extra dose of cheer. The joint, in this case roast beef, purchased from a farmer in the Balfour area, was succulent and accompanied by a great dish of Yorkshire pudding as well as potatoes and carrots and canned beans from the garden. The main course was followed up with an apple pie in a pan so large it required a glass egg cup baked into the middle to hold up the crust. The vicar had been placed next to Lane, and after his initial assault on his lunch, he turned to her. “Is it true you’ve found another body?”

  “That was only a few days ago. I suppose your direct conduit to God . . . ?”

  “It is my direct conduit to a thousand gossiping old ladies up and down the lake.”

  “Do men not gossip?”

  “I fear you have me there. Look at me. I am gossiping right now. In any case it is not as improbable as you think. Kenny, touché, a man, told me about it when he called me yesterday about Miss Peabody. I think he was concerned about you.”

  “He’s very sweet, and I don’t mind in the least. I didn’t find the body, actually; it was found by his poor friend. I only came in handy because I speak Russian. The police are on to the matter now.”

  “Doukhobors. A most interesting people. I think of them as closest to Christ’s teachings. Perhaps because of it they share Christ’s fate of being reviled.”

  “What has happened to Miss Peabody?” Lane asked.

  “The poor thing seems to have lost some money. I shall have to look into it tomorrow.”

  This was so close to Gwen’s story that Lane glanced across the table to where Gwen sat, looking moodily at her nearly untouched pie.

  “Lost how?” she asked the vicar.

  “She seems to have had a bit of money from her father, who was nearing one hundred when he died, and she has it in an account at the bank. I don’t know how, but she suddenly realized she hasn’t got what she thought she had. I’m going to pop over and talk to the manager on her behalf tomorrow.”

  “Vicar, I can’t tell you how I know, but I’ve heard a very similar story from someone else. I understand that Featherstone, the manager, is looking into it. One old lady losing money is sad, but two is puzzling. If there’s some funny business going on at the bank, he’d be the one to get to the bottom of it. I found him quite intimidating when I first came here. I had to be interviewed before I could put my little all into the bank!”

  The vicar frowned. “I shall definitely alert him. It is such a cruelty to steal from the elderly, if that indeed is what is happening.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “BLAST,” SAID DARLING, SLAMMING THE receiver back onto the phone. “Ames!” he called out into the hallway outside his office.

  “Sir?” Ames appeared so quickly that Darling sometimes thought he might simply sit parked outside his door waiting for the summons, rather than beavering away at his own desk in the next small office. It suggested a degree of eagerness to please that ought to please, but instead made Darling feel slightly cranky.

  “Just heard from Saskatchewan on the phone. They’ve no record of any Strelieff of this description. There are Strelieffs there, but they are eithe
r aged, or too young to fit our man. So between that and the mysterious and beguiling Marina, we are no further ahead.”

  “Perhaps the beguiling Miss Winslow has discovered something in that diary?”

  “You can stop that for a start,” Darling said crossly.

  “Sir.”

  “She has been on the telephone this morning, and she is coming in to town with the diary and every boring detail of that man’s lesson planning written out in English. So, nothing doing there.”

  “That’s nice of her, to make the trip all this way . . .”

  “Ames!” Darling sounded a warning note, then relented. “She said she had to come in anyway. Several of the snowed-in old ladies in King’s Cove want things picked up from the shops. I expect her in about,” he consulted his watch, “an hour. See if you can rustle up some tea, and get a few buns from the bakery.”

  Ames smiled. “Tea. Nice touch that. Let’s hope her brief incarceration here in the summer did not put her off eating at the police station.”

  “Yes, thank you, Ames. I live for your insights. I do think, as she is helping us, we can offer her a cup of tea when she drives through the snow to get here.”

  Lane was, in fact, very happy for the tea. She was still somewhat unused to driving in snow, and though the roads had been sanded from about ten miles into town, the early part of the journey had been harrowing. She, Darling, and Ames now sat around Darling’s desk with tea and some nice-looking cinnamon buns from the local bakery.

  “I’m sorry, Inspector. I had hoped there would be some crumb in the diary. I can only suggest again that his handwriting indicates an excellent education. And something, I think, can be read into the meticulous and detailed organization of his notes. There’s a kind of efficiency in them that make me feel he came from a walk of life where this was required.”

  “Hmm. Well, the police in Saskatchewan had nothing to offer. All we’ve really got is Marina, and as you know, Barisoff had never seen or heard of her. And the fact that he asserted that she absolutely did not come from the Doukhobor community. Her dress alone indicated that.”