by Iona Whishaw
“Go ahead,” Ames said. “I should really put a crowbar in the car.” Terrell had come up and offered Ames an open black umbrella, which was gratefully accepted.
The ambulance medic skirted the edge of the road and found a rock suitable to the job. He went around to the passenger side and smashed the window, then reached inside to open the door. Ames watched him gingerly brush the glass off the seat and lean in to feel for a pulse.
“Constable, could you get the camera?” Ames imagined the driver, taken suddenly by a heart attack, maybe clutching at his chest, losing control of the car. He’s not going very fast because he’s just come off the ferry, Ames thought, and he’s going to turn at the top of the road. The car slides down the short embankment and comes to rest, askew, its nose in the dense underbrush at the edge of the forest. He slumps forward, or even keels over sideways toward the passenger seat because the car is listing steeply in that direction. Ames shook his head slightly. This man was leaning forward, with only his right arm fallen, his hand open, on the seat beside him. His left arm seemed to be jammed between himself and the driver-side door. His position went against gravity and logic.
The ambulance driver backed out of the car and shook his head.
“Dead.” He wiped his hands on the back of his already rain-spattered trousers. “Most likely a heart attack. Strange that he’s leaning against the door like that. It’s like he was trying to get out in a hurry and couldn’t.”
Ames walked around the listing car, hunkering under the umbrella. “Nothing in the position of the car suggests he could have been injured by sliding into this ditch. We’d better get his wallet and confirm who he is. We’ll take a few shots, and then can you load him up.”
“Yes, sir!” said the driver with an exaggerated military salute, and then he made a beeline for the ambulance, pulling his hat down against the sleet.
“Oh, for God’s sake, this downpour is all we need! Terrell, give me the camera.”
The sudden clanging of the ferry gangplank made them both look up. Two cars were coming back to the north side. Both of them slowed down. The driver of the first one, a man in his fifties, stopped and rolled down the window, leaning his elbow on the ledge.
“Something wrong?” At an impatient honk from the car behind him, he waved his arm to have them go around, but Terrell, holding his black umbrella, moved to the second car and pulled out his identification with his free hand and asked the driver to wait.
Ames approached the driver of the first car, pulling out his own card. “I’m Sergeant Ames and that is Constable Terrell. Do you recognize this car? It’s likely he was on the other side earlier today.”
The man looked at Terrell, frowning, and said, “Oh.” And then hesitated.
“Sir, I’m going to go have word with the ferry driver,” Terrell said. “The guy in the other car is trying to get to an appointment in town.”
“Thanks. I won’t be a moment,” Ames said. He turned back to the driver. He could feel the rain on the backs of his trouser legs. “Recognize the car?”
“I’m surprised to see one of them on the police force.”
“I’m surprised you can’t answer a simple question,” Ames said. “Yes or no?”
The man turned his attention back to the car. “Well, no, now you ask. Is something wrong with the guy inside?”
“Do you live in Harrop or Procter?”
“I live out Ymir way, but I go visit my sister in Harrop. What’s wrong with him?”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll ask you to move on now, if you don’t mind.”
The man drove off, peeling onto the main road as if to show his ire at being kept out of the goings-on.
Ames waited while the second car pulled even with him. “Thanks for waiting, sir. We’re just trying to find out if anyone recognizes the car here. Did you see it on the other side?”
The driver, an older man with his wife, turned his mouth down and shook his head. “Don’t think so. Isn’t one of ours. Is that someone in it?”
“So you don’t recognize the car?” Ames pursued.
The man shook his head, but his wife, who had opened the passenger window and was staring through the rain at the car, said, “I recognize that licence plate.”
Ames leaned down to look across her husband at her. “Ma’am?”
“It’s unusual. I noticed it at the train station the other day.”
Ames stood up and looked at the plate. It was white with green numbers. 65-018. He couldn’t see how it was remotely unusual. “In what way?” he asked.
“Oh, well sixty-five minus eighteen is forty-seven. You see the small ‘forty-seven’ down the side, for this year.”
Astounded that anyone would go to the trouble of doing sums to find a licence plate out of the ordinary, he leaned down again. “Are you certain, ma’am?”
Her husband shook his head. “The wife loves puzzles. And she used to teach mathematics, if you can believe it, back in the day, before I married her. So if she says it, you can count on it.” He chuckled, and Ames guessed he’d made that joke more than once. The man looked at Ames impatiently. “Anyway, is that all? We’re going to have to hurry.”
“When did you see the car at the station?”
“I like to have coffee with friends a couple of times a week at that little café near there. I’ve seen it most days, I think, only I just noticed the numbers about a week ago,” the woman answered.
Ames took their names and then touched the brim of his hat. “Thanks, sir, ma’am.” He looked back to where the ferry sat idle in the drenching rain. Terrell was leaning into the tiny cabin holding his umbrella and talking to the ferryman. Ames turned back to the scene. The medics were inside the ambulance smoking. Ames slid the camera bag out of the police car—Terrell had replaced it to keep it dry—and took out a couple of flash bulbs to illuminate the inside of the damaged car. He stepped to the now-gaping passenger door and, propping the umbrella on his shoulder and the roof of the car, gingerly leaned in to snap some photos.
Terrell came back and walked around to where Ames was trying to get a close-up of the man’s torso. “The ferryman is adamant that that car was not on his ferry today, either going or coming,” he said.
Ames frowned and pulled himself upright, looking back toward the ferry. “That’s odd.”
“Yes, sir. I thought so as well. But I did find something else, if I can show you.”
They walked toward the lake and then Terrell stopped and pointed. What Ames saw was a clear indication that a car had swerved violently in a way that left gravel splattered in an arc as it evidently had turned away from the water. Recent traffic had obliterated some of the tracks, but the swerve picked up again at the other side of the road and nearly disappeared off the side.
“Good catch, Constable. So it looks like someone must have sped down this road toward the ferry stop and then swerved violently so that he was heading back toward the main road. It could have been anyone, but my money is on our corpse up there.” They walked toward the other edge of the road.
“He turns violently to stop himself from going into the lake, swings around facing back up the road and nearly goes off the edge here.” Terrell pointed. “And then somehow he gains control of the car enough to get back on the road here but loses it again up there where we found him.”
“So what we have is a dead man, in a locked car that is positioned as though it has come off the ferry. But it hasn’t. Instead it’s careened around and back up here. No car keys in evidence, by the way, though they may be on the floor under the seat or somewhere, and I think the way he’s slumped, almost against the driver-side door, is a bit strange.”
“I’m wondering if he felt some sort of attack coming on and turned down here to be off the main road? Then he realizes he’s headed for the drink and turns the wheel desperately and ends up over here.”
A
mes looked up and tried to imagine this. It certainly looked plausible. “The way his left arm and leg are jammed between the door and the steering wheel may have kept him from falling onto the passenger side, either when he died or when the car tilted when he went into the ditch.”
Pictures done, the medics took the dead man onto a stretcher and put him in the ambulance.
Ames searched the man’s car and found nothing, except to note it had an unpleasant but vaguely familiar smell, as if he hadn’t given the car a good cleaning in a while. They’d have to get into the trunk when they got the car towed to the station.
“You boys can help yourselves to his pockets,” one of the medics said.
Ames climbed into the back of the ambulance and gingerly went through all of the dead man’s jacket and trouser pockets, but they were empty. Frowning, he jumped back onto the road and repositioned his umbrella, looking at the space between the two vehicles.
Terrell called out from the car. “No sign of the keys, sir.”
“And no sign of a wallet. Something is very strange here.”
“Do you mind if we get going?” asked the driver. “We’ll drop him at the hospital morgue and you fellows can figure out what to do with him after.”
“Yes, of course.”
As the ambulance drove off, Ames began looking around the car. “No wallet. No keys. Doors locked. Trunk locked. We’ll have to get into that when we get the car back. Was this a robbery?”
“Man’s dying of a heart attack or something, someone’s with him, takes advantage of the situation by robbing him. But why not just roll the driver out and take the car as well?” Terrell asked. “A hitchhiker?” He too began a search, focusing on the shrubby edge of the forest.
“A hitchhiker would have taken the car too,” Ames suggested.
“Unless he can’t drive,” Terrell said.
Ames walked toward the turnoff onto the main road. I’ve got a ride with someone who’s suddenly keeled over with a heart attack; I’ve robbed him, he thought. I’ve locked him unnecessarily inside the car. I need to get away. Have I grabbed the wallet and stripped its contents and thrown it into the bush, or have I taken it with me?
He was surprised when he found it. It hadn’t even been thrown, just dropped at the corner where the main road met the ferry turnoff. It was sitting in a pool of water that had gathered in a depression at the side of the road.
“Got the wallet!” he shouted down to Terrell. He pulled out his handkerchief and picked it up, shaking the water off it, and started back down to where the car still sat, forlornly tilted at the side of the road, as if it were already beginning its journey into decrepitude.
“I was looking for keys as well,” Terrell said, “but nothing doing. It must have been someone he picked up. But why would someone take the keys? Do a lot of people hitchhike along this road?”
“That’s a good question. I suppose some must. Not everyone owns a car.”
Being careful not to put his fingerprints on it, Ames opened the wallet. It was empty of cash. This increased the likelihood of a robbery but illuminated very little else. In a second pocket was a thick folded paper.
“God, this bloody awful rain. Hop in,” Ames said, dropping the wallet onto the seat and collapsing his umbrella. Once back inside the police car, he pulled the wallet out with his handkerchief, laid it on the seat between them, and opened the thick card carefully. It was soaked through, but still perfectly identifiable as a British Columbia driver’s licence.
It was a 1941 licence issued to one Barney D. Watts, complete with address of same.
“It’s been a horrible day,” Lane said. She and Darling had dressed for dinner, but now sat listlessly on the end of the bed, in the grip of the same miasma of bewilderment that seemed to have overtaken the whole inn. “I’m not even sure I’m hungry. And I can’t imagine how poor Mrs. Renwick and Mrs. Holden are feeling. Police have told both of them they can’t leave. And I’m feeling a little guilty because I can’t stop thinking about whether either of them has something to do with it.”
“And here we go,” said Darling, taking her hand. “Look, the place was awash with police officers today, right on the scene. It’s nothing to do with us. And starving ourselves is not going to achieve anything but making me crotchety. Come. Avanti.” Darling stood up and pulled Lane to her feet and folded her in an embrace.
“Of course, you’re right, darling,” Lane said from his shoulder. She lifted her head and looked into his eyes, something she had an affinity for as much as he did for her cheekbones. “But, don’t you—”
“Ah!” he said, raising an admonishing finger. “Dinner.”
The dining room was subdued, as if the spectre of the death that had taken place right outside the window had instilled a fearful reluctance in the hotel guests to be noticed by the fates. When Lane and Darling were being ushered to a table, the room fell quiet for a moment, and then people leaned in to talk quietly and pretend not to look at her.
“We missed our drink with the sunset,” Darling said. “A cocktail?”
“Won’t it look unfeeling?” Lane asked.
“We can ask the waiter to hold the tiny umbrella and any other frivolity. In fact, we can ask him to put it in a mug, if you like. If anyone needs a drink, it’s you. None of these people had to spend the afternoon being questioned by the police or attempting to keep poor Ivy Renwick from disintegrating. And Mrs. Holden too, for that matter.”
The waiter dispatched for strong drink, and the steaks ordered, Lane sat with her chin resting on her hand. “I can’t shake these two things: Meg was meeting a young man with a moustache on the sly, and Renwick apparently has an unstable, shell-shocked brother who could quite probably be angry about the family company going to his younger sibling.”
“And you think,” Darling raised his eyebrows in a show of incredulity, “that these things are related?”
“I’m not saying that, certainly, but they are . . . I don’t know . . . circumstances. How often have you said that secrets lie at the heart of every murder?”
“Never. And anyway, the possibly angry brother is no secret. Renwick told us quite openly about him. And may I remind you that Wisconsin is very far away. However, since you are so insistent on using dinnertime conversation that could better be spent on other topics, did you tell Officer Sandler either of these things?”
“I didn’t. I was being asked to describe what I saw and heard. Anyway, I didn’t think of it till afterward. And it’s a dilemma, isn’t it? Meg’s liaison is most certainly a secret, and if it has nothing to do with Renwick being shot, then it’s none of my business and revealing it would likely do untold damage to her marriage. And as to the other, you’re right. Wisconsin is far away. But more importantly, Sandler asked Ivy if her husband had any enemies and she said he hadn’t, that he was very well respected by all who knew him. Ivy told me the brother is on the way and should be here tomorrow. Apparently, she called him in a panic because she didn’t want to have to cope on her own. The police will no doubt question him then. I’ll go see both of them in the morning to make sure they’re all right,” Lane said, brightening slightly at the arrival of their drinks, about which none of their neighbours batted an eye.
The morning, a symphony of golden sunlit colours and birdsong, found Lane sitting outside on the deck in a chair with her feet on a stool reading The Nine Tailors. As if on cue, a church bell nearby began to ring. She closed her eyes to listen. She was a child again, listening to the bells on Sundays from the churches in the nearby village. Approaching footsteps interrupted her memories, and she looked up to see a hotel maid carrying a tray toward the villa.
“Good morning,” Lane said, smiling. “Is that for the Holdens? They probably need it; I don’t think they ate last night at all.”
“Yes, ma’am. Mr. Holden ordered it.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to d
elay you, what is your name?”
“Consuela Ruiz, ma’am.”
“Oh, does your brother drive a taxi in town?”
The woman smiled and nodded. “Raúl, yes. You know him?”
“Yes, he drove us here from the train station.”
The woman hesitated a moment longer. “But I better get this to the guests.”
“Yes, of course. I was only going to ask if anything was ordered for Mrs. Renwick, next door here?”
“Oh. I don’t think so.”
Lane got up. “Okay. I’m going to see how she is getting on. Can you stop by when you’ve finished with the Holdens? I might ask you to bring something for Mrs. Renwick.”
“Of course. You are a very kind lady to think about her.”
Lane knocked lightly on the door of number 27 and called out, quietly. “Mrs. Renwick? Ivy? Can I come in?” She heard a shuffle from inside and let out the breath she realized she’d been holding.
The door opened slowly. Ivy Renwick, in a pale pink silk nightgown and peignoir, a sad testimony to the violent end of what was to have been her honeymoon, stood aside and let Lane come in.
“How are you? Did you sleep at all?”
Ivy shook her head and took the handkerchief she’d been holding clenched in her hand and pressed it to her eyes. She sat down on the bed. “Thank you for offering to stay with me last night. You’re very kind. I did try to sleep, but in the middle of the night everything is a jumble. You can’t think straight.”
There was a gentle tap on the door. “Oh, that’s the very nice woman who brought a tray for the Holdens,” Lane said. “I asked her to stop by. Will you let me ask her to bring you coffee and a little something to eat?”
“Coffee, I guess.”
Lane stepped out and said quietly, “Can you bring coffee for the two of us, and maybe some toast and a scrambled egg for Mrs. Renwick? Please put it on our bill. We’re in number 26.”