“But?”
“But I worried from the beginning. The only time I saw that old light in her eyes was when she was with you girls. It is too bad your sister was only a baby when she died.”
Instead of anchoring her, the trip into the past unsettled her. To hear her mother described as full of laughter made her wonder about herself. Was she full of laughter? What good had it done her mother, to have her laughter stilled by a man?
She felt her hand taken and looked up to see Darling watching her with concern. This move was not lost on her grandfather, who smiled at his wife.
“Now then. Why don’t we forget about the old days? They weren’t much to write home about anyway. Why don’t you tell us how you met?”
It was no good keeping secrets about absolutely everything, Lane thought. It becomes a habit that eventually drives everyone you love away. “Pour us all some more tea, and I will tell you. He arrested me!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Whitcombe, November 1908
TILLY STOOD WITH HER HAND on her mouth, her breath choking in her throat, watching two men from the village bring in Lucy’s body. No one spoke. Mr. Browning stood resolutely looking away from Mary, who was weeping inconsolably.
“Oh, Tilly!” Mary cried, and Tilly took her into her arms.
Later, in the garden, Tilly had come out with a shawl for Mary, and asked her if she wanted to come in and have a little supper.
“Tilly, how could she do it? I keep imagining myself at the top of the cliff about to fling myself off, and even in my imagination I cannot see myself able to do it. What was in her, or not in her, that allowed her to drop like a stone to her death?”
“I reckon that grief takes everyone differently, Miss Mary. Our Lucy, well, she was always like a butterfly in the sunshine. She never thought anything would change or that anyone who loved her would hurt her. For some reason she never did come back from that.”
“I never thought anything would change either. Not anything. I thought it would always be the four of us here, happy as clams. Why should I have lived and not them?”
“I don’t know, miss. I reckon it’s the will of God.”
“It’s not the will of bloody God! It’s the willfulness of bloody Aggy. And then she went and died without seeing what she’d done. I could never forgive her, not if I was standing at the gates of heaven.”
“Miss. It’s cold out here. Why don’t you come in?”
Mary did not move. “If you want the truth, I never thought any of us would even get married and leave till Lucy fell in love with that dreadful man. We all tried to be happy for her, didn’t we?”
“We did, miss.”
“Father’s not well.”
“No, miss. Please come in now.”
“You know what I see now? It will just be you and me and the ghosts in this house in the end.” Then she turned to Tilly. “You’re younger than me. You will get married, and then it will just be me. Promise me you’ll come to see me if that happens. There’s no one else who knew Lucy.”
“And Miss Agatha,” said Tilly.
“Nobody knew her. Nobody,” Mary said, turning away.
ELEANOR ARMSTRONG SLID open the wooden post office window with a bang and locked it into place. Angela was at the screen door calling to the boys to wait before they gave Mr. Armstrong’s horse an apple. “Do you think Kenny will mind?” She asked Eleanor.
“Good heavens no. I got some news this morning,” she added after a moment.
“Well, go on. Don’t keep me in suspense. It had better be about Lane!”
“It is. They phoned in a wire. She’s coming back in a week.”
“Oh, thank goodness!” Angela exclaimed. “I was honestly afraid that if she went to England she wouldn’t come back here.”
“I know something else as well,” Eleanor said coyly.
Angela was about to protest at being strung along in this fashion, when Gwen Hughes came in, banging the screen door. “Your horse is going to be as fat as a blimp at the rate those boys are feeding it,” she remarked.
“Eleanor was about to tell me something about Lane. She’s coming back in a week.”
“Oh, about that inspector, I suppose,” Gwen said.
“Gwen! You listened!” Eleanor said, frowning.
“I didn’t mean to! I picked up the line to order some feed and I chanced to overhear that bit.”
“What about the inspector?” Angela cried, in an agony of curiosity.
“Only that he was over there at the same time and is already back,” Eleanor said, with a repressive glance at Gwen, who had been about to speak.
“Ha! I knew it! She’s always pretending there’s nothing in it. Horrors, I hope they haven’t married. I wanted to be there!” Angela said.
“I was only going to say,” said Gwen, still embarrassed about being caught eavesdropping, “that we should go and tidy up her garden. I’ve had to split some of our bedding plants, so we could bring those along. What do you say?”
“I think it’s a splendid idea. I’ll bring lemonade and the boys can help with the weeds.”
“I bet they can,” said Gwen.
“DAD,” SAID DARLING. He was standing on the wooden porch of his childhood bungalow in Vancouver. His father, wearing a white shirt and suspenders, looked at him, leaning forward a bit, as if his eyes were troubling him.
“I didn’t know you were coming. Come in.”
His father was a taciturn man, and Darling dreaded visits because he ended up having to fill the silence and feeling like some sort of chatty ingénue. He rather preferred his image of himself as a man of not few, but at least only necessary, words. But of course, recently, with Lane, he had not found that to be true either. In fact, everything seemed now to be upended, and perhaps his visit to his father, while certainly fulfilling a filial responsibility, was a way of going back to the beginning and trying to rebuild that sense of security he felt certain he had constructed for himself since the war, until Lane, until a murder charge in London.
“Thanks. How are you keeping?” He came in and put his suitcase down. “Place looks the same.”
“Go on up to your room. How long are you staying?”
“I thought a couple of days.” He said this tentatively, aware that this was no longer his house.
“Long as you like. Your brother’s got engaged. Couldn’t reach you on the phone to tell you.”
“I’ve been in England. In London. I’m just on the way home.”
Later, over coffee in the sparse and obsessively tidy kitchen, his father said suddenly, “Did you go to Piccadilly? I went there when we first arrived. I wanted to see it because of the song. We all gathered there in throngs before we shipped out to France. I wrote about it to your mother.”
Darling’s desire to re-establish his sense of familiarity and security was dealt a blow by this speech, which was the longest he’d ever heard his father make. His father was looking at him, the large dark eyes Darling had inherited now rheumy with age. His father spent his retirement from the engineering firm poring over his stamp collection for hours. No wonder his sight was going.
“I guess I knew you fought in the Great War. You never talked about it.”
His father shrugged. “After Piccadilly it was all downhill.” He put a spoon of sugar in his mug of coffee and looked out the window that gave onto the back garden and the apple tree that had now grown taller than the house. “I wasn’t as badly affected as some of the fellows, but I still dream about it sometimes. I dream about being caught on this roll of barbed wire. One of my friends bought it like that right in front of me. In my dream I can’t tell if I’m me or him. Funny, after all this time, to still dream. I guess I came out no worse because I had something to do.”
Darling watched his father, and then said, “What do you mean, ‘something to do’?”
“I guess I mean that I wasn’t just handed a gun and told to go fight with it. I was in the army corps of engineers. We had, I don’t
know, problems to solve. I think it maybe kept me from thinking about what was going on so much.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way. Perhaps it worked for me as well. I think it still works, being a policeman. Problems to solve.” He paused, and then thought, what the heck? “I had to go back because they reopened an investigation into the crash I had in ’43. Turned out someone reported he saw me shooting one of my own men. Suddenly I was in prison, getting ready to face a trial. I felt like I was trying to climb a sand dune and just going farther down with the sliding sand. I didn’t, obviously. Shoot someone, I mean. The witness made a false statement. Now I’m back. The result of good police work, I’m happy to say. But it has shaken me up somewhat. You don’t expect your world to be turned over like that.”
His father reached over and patted Darling on the hand once. “Glad it worked out. I felt all at sixes and sevens when I got back.” Darling could see that his father had collapsed this return from England from the one two years before, after the fighting. “You have to have someone to turn to. I turned to your mom and then you boys. There’s no other direction to go but forward.”
“I miss Mom,” Darling said. “I wish she could meet . . . the person I might turn to . . . and John’s fiancée for that matter. What’s she like?”
His father smiled for a moment, which lit up his face. “Atta boy. There’s no other direction.” He got up, pushing his chair carefully away and then replacing it under the table.
I got my meticulousness from him, Darling thought.
“I’ll give your brother a ring. See if he and that girl can come over. She’s okay. I think I like her. He does, that’s what matters. Then we can go to the butcher and get some pork chops.”
AMES WAS FEELING a bit like he had when he’d gone off to police training in Vancouver when he was nineteen. He’d come home feeling changed, more grown up, and was anxious about his parents not seeing that and just treating him like a boy, as they always had. He got to the police station early. He wanted to tidy his office, to feel like he was in charge, at least in his own space. He looked anxiously at his watch. Ten to eight. Darling would be along any minute. He heard the sound of the door opening from the street. O’Brien called up the stairs.
“You in already, Ames? I guess His Nibs is due back this morning.”
“Yup. Any minute,” Ames called back. Then he heard the door again.
“O’Brien.” Darling said by way of greeting, and then started up the stairs. Ames stood up and then moved firmly to the hallway.
“Ames. Good to see you.” Darling reached out and shook his hand and then, much to Ames’s amazement, smiled. “You better not have had your feet up on my desk.”
“No, sir. Only on my own. It’s good to have you back, sir. I don’t think the others were too keen on my being in charge.”
“They looked all right to me. Seem to have survived your reign of terror.”
Ames smiled. “Very funny, sir.”
“I’m going to hang up my hat, and then I want you to tell me about your case.”
“SO, I HAVE Father Lahey coming in today. He is going to take charge of Mary Browning’s funeral. She’ll be buried in the cemetery near his church. In the meantime Sergeant Fripps over in Whitcombe will be handling that end of the business. I’ll take Agatha Browning along to the funeral. It turns out the old lady left her property to the maid, Tilly. I think that’s all, sir. Oh, except Sergeant Fripps invited me to come over to visit him one day. He says his mother was pretty excited to learn her son was on the telephone to a policeman all the way over in Canada. She wants to meet me.”
Darling looked through the papers Ames presented to him. “Not bad,” he said. “Clever of you to get the inspiration that the dead woman might not be Agatha Browning after all. But don’t go patting yourself on the back too much. After all, the murderer came back to tell you all about it. In fact, a child of eight could have solved this. Had breakfast?”
“No, sir.”
“Go get your hat and get this junk off my desk.” Darling handed Ames back his file.
Ames finally asked the one thing he’d been dying to ask from the beginning. “How’s Miss Winslow, sir? Did you see her while you were overseas?”
“A bit, yes.”
Ames smiled happily as he left Darling’s office. At least that was still a go. “Atta boy,” he said under his breath.
“Ames, did you just say ‘atta boy’?” Darling said, following him into the hall.
“No, sir.”
“Good thing. I won’t allow that sort of familiarity till after your promotion.”
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I THINK IT’S ABOUT TIME TO thank my mother. Of course she’s no longer here to accept those thanks, but they are heartfelt nonetheless. Her young (and, to me, unknown) self was the original inspiration for Lane Winslow, the framework upon which I built some of Lane’s character, and certainly her exceptional beauty. But more and more, my mother’s crazy courage—not just during the war, but after, when I was still a small child dependent upon her for stability and sandwiches—are a constant source of wonder to me. Even though I have given Lane a complete life of her own, I like to think that if my mother were to wander back from the great beyond and get her hands on one of my books, she might recognize herself a little.
A deep thanks as well to my manuscript readers, including Sasha Bley-Vroman and Gerald Miller, who have been generous with their time and kind in their support and encouragement to get it right.
My husband Terry is my constant sounding board, idea sharer, and enthusiastic supporter. He always knows what really matters in life.
Finally, the glorious Touchwood team—Taryn, Tori, Renée and Colin—deserve not just my abiding gratitude, but enormous martinis.
IONA WHISHAW was born in British Columbia. After living her early years in the Kootenays, she 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.
Turn the page for a preview of
the next Lane Winslow mystery,
A SORROWFUL SANCTUARY
PROLOGUE
Friday, July 18, 1947
IT WAS DARK WHEN HE finally stumbled out of the hotel. Had he ever been this drunk? He lifted his wrist to look at his watch, pawed at his shirt sleeve, and then gave it up. Why had he even come to Kaslo? He had to do something urgent, he was sure of it. Then he remembered. He looked down the dark street towards the water.
“God, no!” he groaned, and though he said this out loud, his own words seemed to come from somewhere outside of him. He turned and looked at the light pouring out the windows of the hotel bar. Light and smoke. Like fire, he thought. The noise of talking and laughing coming from inside seemed muffled as if he were wearing earplugs.
No one was coming out. It might be okay if he could just get there first.
He loped down the street towards the water, panic rising in his gut and chest as he realized he was about to be sick. At the edge of the pier he crumpled and then vomited, his head burning and his body convulsing with the effort; when he was spent, he lay back on the pebbled beach, panting. He closed his eyes in exhaustion, and his mother’s face, lined with concern, flashed briefly in his mind, but then the ground began to spin; he opened his eyes wide to try to make the dizziness stop. The sky was black above him; the frantic beat of his heart pounded in his ears; he felt the approaching storm as if it were already swirling i
nside his head. Pulling himself onto the wooden pier he stood, looking down, swaying, and tried to remember why he had come here.
The sound of someone running in the dark startled him and, he swung around in alarm; only luck and gravity kept him from reeling into the water. A blinding light swung in his face, and he threw his arm over his eyes; then the light flew past him, rising and falling with the jagged movement of the running man holding it. A second man nearly ran into the drunk man and swore, pounding after the first man. Trying to catch his balance, he looked towards the end of the pier, now hidden in the darkness, to where he knew the boat was moored. He wanted to shout, “Run!” but only a futile, rasping wheeze came out. He heard the booted footsteps on the wooden causeway and followed them, lurching dangerously close to the edge of the pier. Bobbing in front of him, the flashlight seemed to move on its own, illuminating the sky, the wharf, the water, and, for a moment, the stunned face of the man who looked up at the commotion, frozen in place, his expression twisted in fear and surprise.
Even in his drunken stupor he knew he had to get there, had to warn him. But before he could do so, there was a thud, and the flashlight rolled into the lake, its light sinking in the murky green water like a fleeing demon. Then it went dark. Garbled shouts rang out—there was a struggle—then a demand:
“Give me that!”
A shot pierced the darkness, followed by a cry and the sound of something heavy falling. Terrified, the drunk man slid off the pier into the icy water. Clutching at a slimy crossbeam in the water, he pulled himself under the wharf, swallowing water, his breath ripping at his throat, and gasped at the sudden cold.
It Begins in Betrayal Page 28