Death in a Darkening Mist

by Iona Whishaw

  Lane laughed. “I’m sure most people are exactly what they seem to be.” But part of her wondered as well. The seeds of tragedy planted early in life . . . hadn’t Darling said something like that to her in the summer? She moved to where her hostess presided over the mince tarts, and asked about her recipe, but her sudden thoughts about Darling disquieted her. She longed to be at home, alone with these thoughts.

  SHE FOUND ANGELA in the kitchen. “I’m off. I’ll see you for lunch tomorrow with your big American turkey dinner.”

  “We’re going as well,” Angela said. “The boys are excited about Santa coming, and he doesn’t come till after they’re asleep. We’ll drive you.”

  Lane declined the offer. Only the Bertollis had brought their car; everyone else had come on foot, except Ponting, who had a great deal farther to come and always rode everywhere on his brown mare. “I’ll walk down the hill with Kenny and Eleanor. They can fill me in. I saw them talking to Reginald.”

  There was a nearly full moon, and she relished the quiet and the night, though she still got a frisson of fear at the looming darkness of the forest. Walking with the Armstrongs would leave her only a short walk alone. As they went through the back gate, towards her favourite path, she nuzzled Ponting’s mare, who was tethered under a tree.

  “Hello, beautiful. I saw him putting on his boots. He’ll soon be along to get you to your nice warm stable,” she said. She wondered if she wouldn’t like a couple of horses. It would keep Angela from making suggestive inferences about her being alone. Her father had kept horses, and her younger sister was an expert rider. Yet another reason for her father to prefer her sister. Lane had ridden but never with the panache and bravery of her sister.

  How far away it all seemed now, walking in companionable silence with her neighbours through the still, snow-padded night.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Eleanor said as their cottage came into view at the bottom of the hill, “all the oomph has come out of Reg. He’s not much fun at all. We used to quite enjoy laughing at his mad plans to build a lumber empire; now all he talks about is the leak in his garage. Mind you, it seems to have done Alice a world of good to be in charge. She’s not very friendly, but she’s not barking mad, either.”

  “Wait till cougar season,” said Kenny darkly.

  “Good night, you two. Happy Christmas. I don’t feel I could have been more lucky in my neighbours or my house, complete with your mother.” She gave each of them a hug. It was the first time, she realized.

  “Come round for a drink tomorrow evening after you’ve finished with David and Angela. Are you sure you don’t want Kenny to walk you the rest of the way?”

  “Good heavens, no. I’ll see you tomorrow, then!”

  The silence that fell as the cottage door closed was blissful and absolute. Lane almost hugged herself in contentment at knowing, completely, that this was home, the very place her heart was. The moon threw pearly light across the white ground, and she stopped before crossing the bridge over the little gully that separated her from the Armstrongs’. She breathed deeply, finding it hard to imagine needing anyone, surrounded by this beauty. The shadow cast by Aptekar lingered still, but she felt it pushed away by her own happiness, by her own self-sufficiency, and the sense that had been growing in her since she had left London, that she did not have to be owned by anyone.

  She opened her front door and heard a movement in the sitting room. The lamp by her favourite chair was on and light poured into the hallway.

  “Hello?” she called, standing stock-still on the rug where she had been about to remove her boots.

  “As a policeman, I should caution you against leaving your door unlocked. Anyone could get in,” Darling said, coming into the hall and holding a bottle awkwardly in his hand. Around its neck was a red bow.

  “Clearly,” Lane said. She felt her face flushing. She removed her boots and hung her jacket on the hook, reaching into the pockets. She brought out a brown paper packet with half a dozen mince tarts that old Mrs. Hughes had pressed into her hands as she left.

  “I haven’t seen you since the inquest so I came to see how your arm was. Your car was still here so I assumed you couldn’t be far off. I hope you don’t mind. I brought you this. ’Tis the season and all that. We’ve tied up most of the Andrews business, and since I couldn’t phone you without the danger of that beastly girl listening in, I thought I’d better drive out and tell you in person.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Inspector, but a long way to come in the snow to avoid a phone call. Look, I’ve been given these.” She held up the packet of mince tarts. “We were at a lovely cider-and-Christmas-treat do at old Mrs. Hughes’s. Everyone was there. But I have some ham and eggs if you want something more substantial. How’s Ames? What does he do at Christmas?”

  “You know, I’ve no idea. Amesy sorts of things, I suppose.” They were standing in front of the Franklin.

  “I haven’t gotten you anything,” she said, taking the bottle of Scotch he offered. “Thank you. I’m going—I hate to sound like a cliché of myself—to make a ham and cheese omelette. I can’t face another mince tart just now. That’s the trouble with these events that are not quite tea and not quite dinner. And I’m getting quite good at working with one hand.”

  “Still, you’d better let me cut the ham and grate the cheese,” Darling said, following her into the kitchen. The last time he’d been in her kitchen was in the summer, when he’d been using it as an interview room when he and Ames had come out about the body in her creek. He was impressed now with the sparseness of it. It reminded him of a kitchen he’d seen in England when he and a few pilots had been invited for a dinner at a local farm near the base. Everything put away into the green cupboards and a clean dishtowel hanging on the oven door. The one exuberance in Lane’s kitchen was a deep blue glass vase on the wooden kitchen table with a spray of evergreens.

  As if she could guess what he was thinking, she said, “I don’t cook much, I’m afraid. I manage omelettes and I baked a little ham to fall back on through the season. I still haven’t had even a lunch party since I’ve been here and everyone else has been so kind to me. I’m horribly in debt, socially speaking. You have been my only dinner guest.”

  “I’m honoured.”

  “Don’t be. I didn’t invite you, either this time or after that last business in the summer.” The minute she said it, she regretted it. Clever and mean. Hardly in the Christmas spirit. She tried to cover her confusion with a bright, “Here it is! I knew there was a grater among the dishes Lady Armstrong left here. Anyway, I owe you for that lovely lunch at your Italian friends’.”

  “I don’t cook either, luckily for Lorenzo and the café next door to the station. Mrs. Andrews used to do it, abominably, though I shouldn’t say it, but she seems to have given me up. I can imagine that it is impossible to bear to be around a man who has told you your son has died horribly. She looked daggers at me at the inquest when I had to reveal what we suspected.”

  “Well, aren’t we a pair. Here, scoop that into here. Poor thing. Whatever will she live for now?”

  “Here’s where the redoubtable Ames has surprised even me. He went to see her about Sylvia and the baby. Sylvia was staying with a friend whose parents do not approve of her condition, and Mrs. Andrews didn’t think twice, which is surprising, considering how rude she was about her at the inquest. She took Sylvia in and has her grandchild to live for, which I believe is due in about four months.”

  Lane felt a surge of happiness and turned to look at Darling, spatula in hand. “That is the best news. Sorry.” She wiped her eyes with a sleeve. “I’ve been so worried about her. For one mad moment I thought of bringing her out here, but she’d be very unhappy and, really, we don’t have much in common. You,” she added, “don’t give Ames enough credit. It was brilliant of him to do that. I was brought up by my grandparents. When you’re short of parents, there is nothing better. Here or in front of the fire?”

  Darling, who in trut
h was stricken by the accuracy of her assertion about his view of Ames, and unsettled by her reminding him that he’d never actually been invited either time he’d been offered an omelette, felt suddenly exposed. He saw her position: a woman alone upon whom he’d imposed his presence. Why had he come? He had forced her into a position in which she had no alternative but to busy herself entertaining him, when in all likelihood she simply wanted to be alone.

  “I’m terribly sorry. I should not have barged in on you like this. Why don’t we eat here?” He was wary of the intimacy of sitting in comfortable chairs by the fire as they had in the summer. It hadn’t mattered then. He hadn’t, he realized, cared so much then. If he wasn’t careful, it would be Gloria all over again.

  Lane sensed his sudden withdrawal, and set the table, wondering at her own lack of sophistication. It was the twentieth century. It ought to be possible to be alone with a man, almost a colleague, without it being so fraught. They seemed to spend their time together pushing each other away.

  “Here then,” she said more kindly, putting the utensils on the table. When they had sat down, she said, “Tell me about the case.”

  Darling, grateful to be on safer ground, said, “You know that we found a cache of Russian language books in Mrs. Andrews’s room. But a search under the mattress produced a partially written letter complaining that he had done what he was asked, and effectively he wanted out. It seemed to be written in a hurry and then abandoned. This will amuse you; it was addressed to a Mr. Smith. She must at some time have become suspicious and gone through his room. When he didn’t come home, she must have been torn. Desperate to phone us to look for him, but fearful that police involvement might implicate him in something. I suspect she hid them in her room then. I’m grateful for your observation of her behaviour at the inquest. By itself it would not have been enough, but it touches on his money troubles. The real clincher, of course, was the angry telephone operator. She was at pains to tell us that he had taken her to a cabin for trysts. That links him to the cabin where we found the gun. I’m sorry; of course you found the gun. That does put the bow on it, I think. And interestingly, the ‘Smith’ who was getting money from Featherstone turned out to be a son he fathered out of wedlock, who found out about him and thought he’d get his own back, as it were. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.”

  “So, what now? Andrews is dead, and so is a Russian national. Have you had to contact the government?”

  “I reluctantly wrote up what little we knew about Zaharov, thanks to the help from your people in London, and it has disappeared into the maw of some Dominion bureaucracy. I suspect that because he wasn’t anyone really important, a political refugee if you think about it, no one really cares.”

  “Featherstone will go on trial?”

  “Yes. Once we found the side cutters hidden in the secret recesses of his desk at the bank, he rather shockingly gave up and confessed. He’s an ex-military man, a sapper in the Great War. You know, I expect he was something of a hero. Those men took down bridges, blew up trains, interfered with convoys, de-activated bombs. I suspect he has lived since then feeling unappreciated. Anyway, he certainly had the skills to subtly interfere with the brakes on Andrews’s car.”

  “A risk, though, surely. How would he know when the brakes would finally fail? They could have failed coming down one of those steep streets in town and killed anyone in the way.”

  “He is single-minded. When his son from some short extramarital liaison began to blackmail him, his immediate move was to silence him with money. However, the man continued to demand money, and he’d run out of his own, so he was ‘borrowing’ money from unsuspecting clients, and then he got onto borrowing yours, fully intending to replace it. Andrews found out about it somehow and realized it was your money he was taking. We’ll never know why that was Andrews’s moment to become ethical. I suspect that though he was using you as a cover for his more murderous activities, he was, after all, quite smitten with you, being a ladies’ man with an eye for a beautiful woman.”

  “Very flattered, I’m sure. But why would Andrews risk making a fuss? It would only draw attention to himself and what he was up to.”

  “Featherstone wouldn’t have known about any of that. To him Andrews was what he appeared to be. A wounded war vet who was popular and well liked. Something Featherstone never achieved when he came back, I’ll wager. After their loud argument, he must have felt the whole thing was unravelling. His guilty affair with a married woman, the money he’d been embezzling. He’d have been fired if any of it came out. At his age he’d have been left with nothing. He wasn’t thinking it through, though. He still had the blackmailer to deal with. I suppose sooner or later he would have gone in search of him as well.”

  “I can’t say I really understand. That enormous step that leads someone to kill to protect themselves. It’s not much of a world we’ve made, is it? We seem to be more uncaring than ever, more willing to kill.”

  “It’s not as bad as all that. As you rightly pointed out, Ames cared, very much as it turned out, and old Barisoff cared for his friend enough to bury him and mourn him, whoever he turned out to be. And Wakada, who has suffered extremely at the hands of fate, cared enough to come to the funeral. I suspect he will become Barisoff’s firm friend now.” He leaned back and gazed around the kitchen, stopping at Lane. She was, he admitted, beautiful—like Gloria, transcendent, but not like her. Softer, less self-involved, so unconscious of her own beauty. He looked away in sudden confusion. “That’s what impressed me, you know, after the horrors of that war, after what we all inflicted on each other, how many small acts of caring there were. Are.”

  “What I find so interesting,” said Lane, “is that even though we have ‘solved’ this business, that is, we know Andrews killed Zaharov, and was himself killed in this completely unconnected sideshow with Featherstone, there are so many things we don’t know. Do we really know why Andrews got involved with the Soviets? Or even little things, like why the body was turned over?”

  “That’s true. I suppose it is all the little human things that are never explained fully. You get your man, but what drove him to it? Ames said Andrews was a gambler. Perhaps he got into serious trouble during the war. People tend to veer in the direction of weakness in the desperation for relief and entertainment when they’ve been on the battlefield. His weakness was gambling.” Mine was Gloria, Darling thought.

  “I don’t know about your war,” Lane said.

  “No.” Darling paused, leaving the “no” in the air, then stood up and collected the plates and put them by the sink. “I’d better be off. There could be more snow.”

  In the hallway Lane handed him his overcoat. She stood with her arms crossed, watching him putting it on, seeing his fingers as he buttoned it up and positioned his hat, sliding into his pockets for his car keys, reaching finally for her one good hand.

  She could see he wanted to say something, and she thought of saying Merry Christmas to him, but she did not want him to let go of the hand he had taken and which he seemed reluctant to shake. “It seems you are always leaving,” she said finally.

  Rubbing the back of her hand gently with his thumb, he finally, reluctantly, let it go. “Yes, but I’m sure Ames will find a way to interfere with that as well.”

  “Perhaps,” she said, “you depend too much on him.”

  She watched his car back out onto the road, the headlights sweeping the inky forest as it turned. In spite of the darkness that descended as the car disappeared, she smiled.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I’d like to thank all the enthusiastic readers of my first book; their uplifting and valuable feedback has inspired me to continue. Thanks in particular to Gerald Miller and Sasha Bley-Vroman for their advance reading. Special gratitude to Gregg Parsons for showing me how to tamper with the brakes of a 1940s sedan. And my long-ago college Russian teacher, Sheila McCarthy—who made brave and futile attempts to help me master case endings—left me with an endurin
g interest in the Russian Revolution; for that I am deeply grateful.

  IONA WHISHAW was born in British Columbia and, after living her early years in the Kootenays, spent her formative years living and learning in Mexico, Nicaragua, and the US. She travelled extensively for pleasure and education before settling in the Vancouver area. Throughout her roles as youth worker, social worker, teacher, and award-winning high school principal, her love of writing remained consistent, and compelled her to obtain her master’s in creative writing from the University of British Columbia. Iona has published short fiction, poetry, poetry translation, and one children’s book, Henry and the Cow Problem. A Killer in King’s Cove was her first adult novel. Her heroine, Lane Winslow, was inspired by Iona’s mother, who, like her father before her, was a wartime spy. Visit ionawhishaw.com to find out more.

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  the next Lane Winslow mystery,

  AN OLD

  COLD GRAVE

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT WASN’T QUITE THE FIRST day of spring, but the air had a softness, a promise of coming warmth, that made the people in King’s Cove want to do things—tidy up the garden, go through the sock drawer, fling open the windows to air out the house. Nothing in the splashes of sunlight stretching across the dormant gardens suggested that it was a good day to be confronted with the spectre of death.

  Gwen Hughes, a woman in her late fifties who had lived in the same house with her sister and mother since she was a young girl, stood in the root cellar, scowling in the dim light thrown by the single electric light bulb hanging from the wood joist on the ceiling. Her gaze was directed at the wooden shelves that lined either side of of the cellar. Vegetables and fruit in tall blue-green glass canning jars stood on the top shelves, and jams and jellies in small jars occupied the bottom shelf. On the other side, wooden boxes containing root vegetables and apples were arranged along two planks that kept them above the dirt floor. A bowl of eggs sat nearest the door. There was a funny smell; it was this that was causing Gwen to search among the jars for the culprit, the eggs having already been exonerated. No one had given the place a good going over since the previous fall, when most of what was in there had been laid away to keep them fed over the winter.