by Iona Whishaw
“Come on, Sylvia, there’s nothing we can do here. We have to move. It’s cold and we can’t stay here. I promise, it’s not far.”
Somehow Sylvia came to life and began to walk silently beside Lane, slipping and clutching at Lane’s one good arm. Lane wondered if she could bear her weight the whole way. Her broken arm was throbbing where she’d tucked it inside her jacket against her waist. Well, she thought ruefully, the struggle to keep walking was keeping her from thinking about her arm, or anything else for that matter.
After an interminable, dark time, it was the shouts that caught her attention. She wondered why it hadn’t been the headlights, and then realized it was because she could finally see the lights of the houses they were approaching, on the outskirts of the village, and was concentrating on these, relief palpable, imagining stumbling across a threshold and being given warmth and comfort. But instead she was bundled into a car, a familiar voice asking her questions. She wanted to answer, to say something, but her mouth seemed frozen in place.
“Lane, for God’s sake!” Darling sounded anguished. A heavy coat was being put around her shoulders.
“No,” she finally managed, “Sylvia, the baby . . .”
LANE SAT AT a table near the heater, tea steaming before her, her arm expertly dressed by the retired army medic, Dr. Truscott, who evidenced no more joy about this call-out into the snowy night than he had at the last, when he’d attended the shooting. They were at the small hotel in Adderly, which had provided a room for Sylvia and tea all round. The manager had gone off to find something more substantial for them to eat. They were the only guests.
“I hope you are not going to make out that you rescued us,” Lane said to Darling, who sat opposite her, toying with his hat and ignoring his own tea.
“Didn’t I?”
“By the time you found us we’d walked most of the two miles ourselves.” She pulled the tea cup to her mouth and sipped gratefully, feeling the heat on her face. “I wonder how poor Sylvia is doing? She was pretty uncomplaining, but I could see she was in agony, and frozen. Those little overshoes filled with snow. Where’s Ames?”
“I’ve sent him to order up a team for first light. He drove back to look at the crash site. He can’t imagine that anyone would have survived it. Lane . . . Miss Winslow. I need to know why you were with them.”
Lane shook her head. “There wasn’t a ‘them’ at all. Sylvia was in the back of the car, drugged unconscious, and he turned up, desperate, because he said she’d passed out, and could I help. I knew it was foolhardy, because by that time I didn’t doubt he was the Soviet agent . . . it sounds ridiculous attached to him! But I could only think of Sylvia. She looked awful, and he said they’d been visiting his aunt and she’d passed out. Of course my head is screaming, ‘There is no aunt!’ but I just felt I had to help her. Then it all went off the rails when he turned towards Adderly. He was driving like a maniac and I discovered she’d been drugged. Chloroform. God, what a disgusting smell! I guess at some point he decided there was no point in pretending. He said some really odd things. That he told someone I spoke Russian; something about a meeting, then something about Featherstone, which I could not make head or tail of. He’s the bank manager,” she said, seeing a look of confusion on Darling’s face. “But honestly he was driving so badly I didn’t have time to think. The car spun and started heading back down the road. You know, I think the brakes failed. He was pumping like mad. Luckily Sylvia was semi-conscious. I shoved her out of the car and followed after. That’s it, really.”
Darling desperately wanted to take her one good hand. He wondered, hoped, that this might be the last time he would doubt her. Or himself. Was it seeing Lane half frozen, trying to get Sylvia to safety? Or the thought of her going over the cliff in that blue car with Andrews? All he knew was that Gloria didn’t seem to matter anymore.
“You were very brave.”
“Inspector, it is not in the least brave not to want to die.”
“How’s the arm?”
“Throbby. Truscott has given me some tablets. I imagine it could have been a lot worse. I’m more worried about Sylvia. I don’t know how pregnant she is, but she stands to lose the most here. What I can’t make out is why Andrews was dragging his unconscious, pregnant girlfriend across the country. Surely that would only complicate things? See, I think he must have wanted me all along. All that ‘I told him you spoke Russian’ stuff. And he mentioned a telegram. That must have gone over in the car with him. What did he say about Featherstone? It’s all such a blur. Maybe that Featherstone had found something out? I’m sorry, I can’t remember.” She shuddered and reached for her tea to cover this sudden weakness.
Truscott appeared and pulled out a chair at their table. He sat down heavily and shook his head. “She nearly lost that baby. She’s going to have to go to the hospital where they can keep an eye on her. She’s very low.”
Lane waved and another tea cup was brought. “I’d better go sit with her,” she said.
“Thank you.” The doctor sounded weary. “I’ll take her in after I’ve had some tea. I’m not really sure how much she can understand at this point. Shock, I’d say, and the stress of that walk in the cold.” When Lane had disappeared up the stairs, he turned to Darling. “Who is that woman? Every time she comes near the place I get summoned out of my nice warm retirement to some disaster.”
“You might well ask,” said Darling, smiling ruefully.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
LANE WATCHED DARLING LEAVE HER porch and go into the darkness. Then she repeated the trip he’d made through her rooms, turning off each of the lights he’d turned on. His busy solicitude had been quite unnecessary. Any immediate danger to her lay at the bottom of the cliff on the Adderly road. But now, illogically, she felt as if he’d left some essence of himself in each room, and she wanted to soak it up, breathe it in. Pulling herself together gruffly, she found the bottles she sought in the bathroom and the sitting room, swallowed four Aspirin down with a good shot of scotch, and then sank into an exhausted sleep.
She woke with a jolt, and saw that it was only 12:40 AM, not an hour after she’d gone gratefully to sleep. Her heart was racing, and the panic that seemed to start somewhere in her chest expanded until it filled the whole darkness of the room.
She was pinned to her bed by it, powerless. After what seemed an interminable period, she exerted enough strength to reach out and pull the chain on her bedside lamp. In the sudden flood of light, she struggled to sit up, uttering a cry at the sharp pain in her arm. The growing panic collapsed in shards, and she began to shake. She drew up her knees and clasped her one good arm around her. The light, at one moment her friend, now illuminated her terrible aloneness. She looked at the book she had dropped as she’d gone to sleep, but could not stop shaking to reach for it. She tried deep breathing, and somehow this made her arm ache more. She closed her eyes and just focused on the pain. It can’t last forever, was all she thought.
WHEN LANE WOKE again it was near eight o’clock. She felt . . . sodden was the only word she could think of. Every part of her body was heavy and everything, including her eyes, seemed to be aching, and her arm throbbed insistently. She wondered when she had finally gotten back to sleep. It was surely her worst night since the end of the war, she thought, with a tinge of gratitude that it was over, and a growing fear that she might have to endure others like it. Was this, at last, what she had feared all along would happen? Shell shock, battle fatigue, whatever they were calling it now. Tea, she thought. Crawling out of bed, she struggled with her dressing gown and then gave it up and shuffled to the kitchen. The Aspirin and the bottle of scotch still sat, both unstoppered, on the kitchen table. Fat lot of good they did. The world outside the window was a subdued grey and white. She was grateful for an ordinary thought like whether there would be more snow, and filled the kettle. She screwed the lids back onto the unhelpful bottles with her good hand and put out her teapot and can of tea. She’d been drinking coffee like a g
ood Canadian almost every morning since she’d arrived. Today only tea seemed to offer the required comfort. Lots of sugar. That was something, anyway.
A kind of peace descended on her as she drank her tea. The ordinariness of the rising tones of the kettle boiling and water sloshing over the grains of tea felt sweet in this aftermath of her nighttime terrors. It came to her that she had nearly died, but after all, she had not. She would call the Armstrongs because she would be cared for, and because they would love it that she felt she needed them now.
While she waited—Eleanor had adjured her with cries of alarm not to move an inch—Lane sat with her tea, looking across the snowy landscape of her lawn, the white-bent trees and the clouds hanging over the lake. It was not the first time she had nearly died. But this was not war time. It was peace time and she would have to stop pretending. She felt a kind of grown-up resolve stealing over her. It was not quite enough to imagine one could escape to the back of beyond, as she’d heard Mabel Hughes say once, and live an idyllic life free of every connection with the past.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
THE DAY DAWNED A GOOD deal too soon for Darling, who had finally gone to sleep at four in the morning. He could feel his mind, as if on a schedule of its own, beginning a list: they must get to the bank to get whatever could be found at Andrews’s desk, interview Sylvia to see what she remembered . . . and then he groaned. He must tell Mrs. Andrews about her son. He had thought of going to see her when they got back, but it was close to midnight, and in truth they had not yet recovered the body—this would have to be done by boat, and he was reluctant to approach her before he could tell her all that she might ask. This part of the job never got easier. Harder, really, since the war. He had a stronger sense of the value of individual human lives, ironically, after so much wholesale slaughter. He tried to imagine having an only son, and some officious policeman coming to tell him that the boy had died in such appalling violence. Swinging his feet reluctantly to the floor, he remembered one other task. Of course, they had not interviewed Miss Winslow thoroughly about the events of the night before.
She’d been exhausted and in pain, and deeply troubled about the welfare of Sylvia and the baby. After Truscott had set her arm and gone off with his pregnant patient to the hospital in Nelson, Darling and Ames had dropped Lane off at home, Darling insisting on going into the house first to investigate, before, with silent and enormous reluctance, leaving her to her scotch and Aspirin and bed. He had stood in the dark just beyond the cast of light from her porch, overcome with an inchoate sense of longing. He imagined himself sending Ames home and turning back to the house asking Lane if he could stay. He and Ames had driven back to town in exhausted silence. Darling had known already that he would not sleep that night.
AMES WAS BEHIND his desk when Darling passed his office. He leaped up when he saw his boss, ready for the day. He had obviously slept like a baby, Darling thought enviously.
“Good morning, sir.” Ames followed Darling to his office.
Darling grunted something that might have been a response and followed up with, “I’ve got to tell that poor woman about her son. What have we heard?”
“I got a call from the RCMP detachment we asked for help with the recovery. They confirm . . .” Ames hesitated. “Badly burned remains. They’ll be bringing them to the morgue.”
Darling looked at his watch grimly. “Do you think she’s up now? What time do normal people get up?”
“It’s only seven now, sir. How about a cup of coffee and try at eight? Do you want me to come with you?”
“No. But you can get me that coffee, and then I want you down at the bank the minute anyone comes to open it. And I want you to get every scrap of paper Andrews has in his desk or carrel or whatever it is bank tellers occupy. Do not respond to curious questions. We are not releasing any information. Blast. We’re going to have to search his house as well. I’ll take Constable Scott along. He can search while I try to console poor Mrs. Andrews.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
THE BEAUTIFULLY LETTERED GOLD SIGN on the door said the bank opened at nine. Ames figured that bank people would come in before that to get ready. Would they come in some back door? He walked around the corner to the alley behind the bank. It was discouraging. The alley was piled with dirty snow, and rivulets of water ran down onto the sidewalk. No one in their right mind would go there, he thought, and returned to his post at the front door. Sure enough, an older man and some younger men and women had begun to gather at the front door. The older man—was he Featherstone, the bank manager? Ames had never had to see him, equating a visit to a bank manager to a visit to the principal in school.
“Bank’s closed till nine,” said the manager gruffly when he saw him.
“I’m Constable Ames, Nelson Police,” Ames said, producing his identification.
The door had been opened and the clerks streamed in, leaving the manager and Ames on the street.
“Featherstone. I’m the manager. What do you want?”
“Could we get inside? I need to speak with you.”
With ill grace, Ames was led into the inner office where Featherstone had an enormous and spotless wooden desk. His host pulled up the blinds on the windows that looked onto the main street and sat, putting the desk between him and the policeman. “Well?”
“I need to collect all the belongings and papers belonging to Charles Andrews.”
Featherstone glanced behind Ames into the body of the bank, as if expecting to see Andrews suddenly materialize. He furrowed his brow. “Why, what’s he done? Why should the police be interested in him?”
“Unfortunately I’m not at liberty to say at the moment. Can you have someone show me to his working station, please?”
Featherstone sat silently, his clasped hands rubbing nervously together in the only sign of agitation he would permit himself. After a moment, he said, “Well, I’m not at liberty to permit you to take anything. It is bank property. It is confidential.”
Ames sighed, turning the hat he held in his hand. “Your bank is about to open. I suggest that we get going with this, otherwise you will have the bank crawling with uniformed police during opening hours.”
After another silence, Featherstone barked, “Harold!” and a nervous man with thinning hair and thick glasses appeared at the door, hurriedly buttoning the jacket of his dark suit.
“Take this man to Andrews’s desk. Kindly stay with him until he has finished.”
ANDREWS’S DESK WAS one of five in the working area behind the tellers’ windows. The surface of the desk held a heavy black adding machine, an inbox with a small pile of opened letters neatly clipped to their envelopes, and an empty outbox. The desk itself was locked, and he was about to ask for the key when he felt under the desk and was rewarded with a small brass key hanging at the back of the left-hand front leg of the desk. It surprised him that the contents of the desk were tidy, meticulous almost. It suggested an obsessive side of Charles he had not suspected. The shallow top drawer contained a collection of perfectly sharpened pencils, a fountain pen, a bottle of ink, a brass letter opener, a neat stack of clean paper, and a bundle of envelopes. One side drawer contained rolls of paper, presumably to go with the adding machine, and ledger paper.
The second drawer was deep and divided into segments for filing. Much to the discomfort of Mr. Harold, Ames settled onto the chair of the desk and began to pull out the contents of this drawer, section by section.
“It’s all right, Mr. Harold,” Ames remarked. “You can go about your duties. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”
Harold looked nervously towards Featherstone’s office, but the door was now closed, so he reluctantly moved away. Ames went carefully through the papers in the drawer. Eye-wateringly boring bank property, he thought, but he’d better take it back to the station, just in case. When he had emptied the desk drawer, he saw that there was a small gap between the file dividers and the back of the desk. He thrust his hand into this and was re
warded with a small bundle of envelopes. They appeared to be from the Western Union office down by the railway station. These looked more promising, but he resisted the temptation to look at them. The bank had opened and customers were beginning to drift in.
With his bundle of papers under his arm he approached the manager’s office and knocked. After some moments he heard “Come!” and when he opened the door he found Featherstone in the same position he’d left him in, sitting sternly before his desk with his hands clasped in front of him.
“I’m taking these,” Ames said.
Featherstone glanced at them and said, “What’s this about?”
“I’ll return every document that is indeed bank business and not relevant to our investigation,” Ames countered. He waited a moment, but Featherstone said nothing more, so Ames thanked him with exaggerated courtesy and left.
DARLING STILL WASN’T back when Ames sat at his own messy desk in his office and looked at the pile of paper. He put the Western Union envelopes aside and began leafing carefully through the papers he’d taken from the files. Invoices, copies of letters to customers regarding loans and mortgages. How had Charles done a job like this? It seemed incongruous suddenly that Charles, Mr. Adventure, had nailed himself to a desk job that yielded nothing more exciting in a day than this pile of monotonous communication. Deciding there really was nothing of interest he turned to the envelopes. Each one contained the handwritten message that one would deliver to the telegraph operator for transmission. With messages like transfer recorded 500 dollars account Smith Vancouver, Ames was losing hope. But then it began to strike him as odd that all but three of the envelopes contained nearly identical messages, with only the amounts changing. Two hundred one time, 350 another. Who was Smith, and why was he getting so much money? He checked the destination address again. A bank in Vancouver. That was something anyway; they’d be able to get hold of the bank and find out who Smith was.