“ANYBODY COULD DO ANYTHING OUT here,” Ames said. “There’s not a single neighbour near enough to hear if there’s trouble.” He’d always been a little mystified at people living so far from town, especially at this time of year. The weather had turned sunny and very cold, freezing the surface layer of snow. Dark clouds were beginning to bank over the mountains on the south side of the lake. The promised new snowfall had not yet begun. Inspector Darling and Ames had crunched down along the narrow road to the teacher’s cottage in the maroon police car and stopped about fifteen feet from the house. Darling had suggested this as they might be better positioned to see who had come and gone from in front of the house, but it was clear that whatever might have been visible had been obliterated by Lane’s car, which had pulled up in front of the house and then backed up and driven close to the door, leaving a complex pattern of tracks. She had said that it looked by the snowed-over indentations as though there had been activity before the snowfall. They could still see traces of these. There had evidently been a car parked at the side of the house up against a chicken-wire fence, but it was impossible to say when it had last been there because of the overlay of snow.
“Another remarkable observation, Ames. Bring the camera. We can take some shots of the inside. It’s apparently been turned over.” Darling went up the stairs carefully, sliding each foot back and forth a little to check the grip of his shoes. The steps Lane had cleared and walked on had become icy. He pushed the door open and looked into the chaos, waiting to go in until Ames arrived with the camera.
“Quite a mess. Were they looking for something, or just wanting to upset whoever was here?” Ames asked. A sudden shot of sunshine exposed by the passing of a cloud made the house momentarily less murky than Lane had found it, but Ames thought he might still need a bulb. He fit one into the camera and took a shot of the sitting room. The room exploded in light, crystallizing, Darling thought, the energy, or was it rage, that had gone into creating this havoc.
“Books are pulled out of the shelf, cupboards opened. That suggests searching,” observed Darling. “But the table is overturned; whatever dishes were on it are smashed. That looks more vengeful, or an attempt to frighten whoever was here.” He could imagine someone in a fury, demanding to know where something was hidden, while one woman, or two, if the missing Miss Keeling had been here as well, cowered by the bedroom door. “Miss Keeling is gone, and the car as well,” he said. Had the two teachers had an argument that had gone terribly wrong? Ames took another photograph of the kitchen area and then moved to the bedroom. “This must be where Miss Winslow found her,” Darling said, standing cautiously by the bedclothes that trailed onto the floor. “She said she was lying on the floor next to the bed. She’d been conscious enough at some point to pull at the bedspread and cover herself with it. The bedspread isn’t here. Lane must have wrapped her in it for the trip to the hospital.” Darling eyed the dresser. Drawers had been pulled out and upended and clothes lay everywhere. The suitcase Lane had described was there, open, clothes and a pair of shoes tumbled about. “It really looks as though it was a search of some kind. What could two not-at-all-wealthy country teachers have that someone would want?”
“Not a very luxurious life, that’s for sure. I saw an outdoor privy. They have a plumbed sink and tub in the bathroom. You’d think whoever built it would have finished the job. It must be miserable in weather like this.” Ames held his camera down by his side and shook his head, as if he thought it a shame to capture any more of the sad shabbiness of this life.
Stepping over some scribblers that had cascaded across the floor, as if the teacher had been doing her marking sitting up in bed when she was surprised by the intruder, Darling left the room and went to the second bedroom. “Here’s a puzzle for you: look at this room.”
Ames walked to where Darling was standing in an open doorway and glanced at him, and then at the room. Darling wore an expression Ames was used to, the space between his eyebrows slightly furrowed, thoughtful, serious. He conveyed a concern for the principals in whatever case they were working on, even before he knew who they were. His inspector face. Ames had seen Darling once, smiling at something his wife had said, and had realized at that moment that there was a side to his boss he wouldn’t have believed possible: Darling relaxed, given to an easy smile, his innate kindness not buried as it usually was but given full rein. A Darling, he thought fancifully, made possible by Miss Winslow. But he appreciated the worry his boss took into every investigation, the concern about who was being hurt by the situation, who could not be saved, whether there would be justice in the end. He’d never been the type of man who reached the end of a case and shut the book with satisfaction and said, “Well, that’s done. Let’s go for a drink.” Ames suspected Darling ruminated long after a case closed about whether he’d done enough.
“The whole thing is a puzzle at the moment, sir, but I take your point. I’ll take a picture just to show the contrast.”
“You anticipate my every need. What’s it about, then? Does whoever it is find what they are looking for in Miss Scott’s room and not need to go any further? It really looks like Miss Keeling, assuming this is where she slept, has gotten up, dressed, made the bed, packed up whatever she had, and left. Where was she off to, then, and did she leave before any of this happened?”
Ames chewed his bottom lip and shook his head. “Or,” he suggested, “the intruder panics and hits Miss Scott on the head and, realizing what he’s done, runs off. That doesn’t tell us about Miss Keeling, though.” Darling conceded the point with a nod and a shrug.
“We’d better hope Miss Scott is up to a conversation soon. I’m uneasy about this Miss Keeling. What do we know about her? Has she done this and made off with, say, a roll of money Miss Scott kept in a tea tin somewhere?”
“If Miss Keeling was living here with her, wouldn’t she know where she kept things like that? Why would she need to turn the house upside down?”
“Because, Ames, people typically don’t tell people they don’t know very well where they are keeping their money hidden. My understanding is that Miss Scott was about to leave to get married—hence the suitcase—and Miss Keeling had arrived inside the last week or so to take up her post.” Darling moved through the untouched room. There was no wardrobe. A wire had been strung between two nails to serve as a closet, and one lightweight summer dress hung on it. Otherwise there were four empty wire hangers, two of which lay on the floor, as if clothes had been hastily yanked off them. The chest of drawers by the bed yielded one drawer with school supplies: some pencils, a packet of pen holders, a box of nibs, two bottles of ink, and some new exercise books. The only clothing was a pair of socks and a pair of blue wool pants. Where were the rest of Miss Keeling’s effects? The room was certainly suggestive of a hasty removal. He imagined a frantic Miss Keeling hurling things into a bag, leaving things behind in her hurry. Fleeing?
“It sure looks like she left in a hurry,” Ames said, giving voice to Darling’s thoughts. “If that doesn’t look like guilt, I don’t know what does. Was she here long enough to get to know someone here, or did some bad actor she knew from before come to help her rob the cottage?”
Darling shook his head. “This, and many more things to be found out. That school is up past Bales’s store at the top of the road. They’d buy some of their food there, presumably.” He made his way to the kitchen. There was a small GE fridge that looked at least twenty years old. The icing unit was on top of the refrigerator.
“We had one of these when I was really little,” Ames said. “It set my father back quite a bit of money. I guess whoever furnished this cottage picked it up at a junk shop for a song.” He opened it. “Half bottle of milk, plate of margarine, some carrots, the nub end of some sort of dried-out pot roast. That’s not going to last past one meal.” On the counter there was a bowl of eggs, a new tin of cocoa, and a small bag of flour that looked to have been cut open and then sent flying so that flour was spread across the counter, onto the floor, and into the sink. A similar treatment had been meted to a bowl of sugar, which now lay on its side, its contents having been flung across the counter and onto the floor, where it now crunched underfoot. Ames lifted the lid of a green metal breadbox and discovered a heel of brown bread that was beginning to curl. The floor of the kitchen revealed that the cupboards had been opened and swept clean of their contents. A smashed jar of marmalade, a box of crackers, a box of salt, a metal tin of bicarbonate of soda, and several tins of vegetables and corned beef lay scattered on counter and floor. A drawer containing cutlery had not been turned out, but merely disordered, as if whoever it was had picked up the few knives, forks, and spoons and thrown them back into the drawer willy-nilly.
MEANWHILE, TERRELL WAS having almost as much difficulty getting information as Ames and Darling were. The woman at the front desk at the hospital had shown great reluctance to accept Terrell’s bona fides. She clearly had never encountered a Black police officer before, or indeed, any person much different from herself.
“I see,” she’d said. “What is it you want, again?”
“I have to learn about the condition of a Miss Rose Scott, who was brought in here earlier today, or even better, actually talk to her to find out what happened to her.”
The receptionist picked up Terrell’s warrant card and looked at it again. “I will have to speak to your supervisor.”
“I beg your pardon? My supervisor? My supervisor is out at the scene trying to understand how Miss Scott was attacked. Could we perhaps start with your supervisor?” Terrell kept his voice pleasant with some effort. The situation was resolved when a doctor strolled through the swinging doors, an unlit cigarette in his mouth and his hands in the pockets of his white coat. He sensed the contretemps at the desk.
“Is there a problem, Miss Saunders?”
“This gentleman claims to be from the police and wishes information about one of our patients,” Miss Saunders said reprovingly, casting a poisonous glance at Terrell, and handing over the warrant card.
“Right,” the doctor said. He looked at the card and offered Terrell his hand. “Constable Terrell, is it? I’m Dr. Arnold. How can I help?”
Relieved to be in the hands of someone competent, Terrell explained his mission again.
“Oh, yes. I saw that case come in. She’s been moved to a room in our intensive unit upstairs. Dr. Edison is looking after her. Quite a bad bang on the head. Thank you, Miss Saunders!” he finished brightly, indicating Terrell should follow him through the doors.
Once into the inner hallway, Dr. Arnold smiled in a confiding manner at Terrell. “You’ll find Dr. Edison an absolute force of nature. We’re all quite terrified of her.” He winked. “Here we are.”
Dr. Edison sat at a desk in an upstairs ward, apparently making notes. She stood up, sighing, and looked with interest at Constable Terrell. She was very tall, fair hair pulled into a chignon, and had an angular, serious face. She looked to be in her late thirties.
“This gentleman is Constable Terrell from the police, and he is wanting to find out what we know about your patient.” Dr. Arnold smiled at Terrell, shook his hand again, and said, “I’ll leave you with the squadron leader, then? I’m off to the mess hall. Missed my lunch.”
“Constable,” she said by way of greeting. “I can tell you more or less what’s wrong with her, but not how she got that way.” Dr. Edison was tall enough to look at him directly, and he sensed a kind of no-nonsense power about her.
“Anything would be better than what we have now,” he said.
“Where was she brought from?” Edison asked. “She suffered from exposure apart from anything else.”
“A cottage up the lake, close to Balfour. She was found by a woman from King’s Cove who had gone to where the teachers are billeted to find out why no one had turned up at the school this morning. It’s not clear how long she’d been lying there, but the cottage was sacked and had no heat. Could have been there the whole weekend, I suppose.”
“That would explain it. Well, I can tell you she was hit on the rear right side of her head, the occipital area, just here.” Edison pointed to the back of her own head. “The blow itself was not terrible. She could have just been knocked over, say, but she also suffered a stroke, possibly as a result of the shock, or some internal trauma because of the blow. Or she had the stroke first and fell, banging her head. She’s been in and out of consciousness, I’m afraid, and I don’t know what she remembers, if anything. You might not get much out of her. It’s a good job she was found when she was. Wouldn’t have lasted another day.”
“A stroke? A woman as young as that?”
“Strokes are not confined to the elderly. She might have had some underlying condition, a weak heart. These are not always detectable and, as you point out, are rarely anticipated in a woman in her late thirties.”
“I see. Do you think I might have a word?”
“If she is awake, yes, but only a brief one. I expect she’s a little confused. Just along here.”
Dr. Edison led him down the hall and into a mostly darkened room. She leaned over and said very gently, “Miss Scott? Are you awake?”
The patient stirred slightly and opened her eyes very slowly.
“Miss Scott, might you be well enough to have a word with Constable Terrell here? He’d just like to know what happened.”
Miss Scott closed her eyes and lay still, as if she had gone off to sleep again. Then she opened them and turned her head marginally in the direction of Edison and Terrell. “A constable? Is something wrong?”
Terrell sat next to the bed so that he wouldn’t loom over her and addressed her very gently. “Miss Scott. I’m Constable Terrell. You’ve been brought into hospital. Do you remember what happened to you?”
Miss Scott smiled and shook her head very slightly. “Happened to me? No, no, nothing has happened. The children are all well. You needn’t have come out all this way.”
Terrell glanced at Dr. Edison, and then turned back to Miss Scott. “It was no trouble at all. You look very tired. I’ll come back another time, shall I?”
Miss Scott looked at him and cocked her head, smiling again. “You’re so like my brother, so kind. I am a little tired, so I’ll turn in. So kind.” She closed her eyes, and this time did go into a deep sleep.
“It’s as if in her mind she’s at home and has gone to the bedroom to rest. She seems to have very little consciousness of where she is, or that anything has happened to her,” Terrell said.
Dr. Edison nodded. “I’ll give the station a call tomorrow if she seems in better shape. She may not be all that befuddled when she’s had a rest and the medications settle down.”
Terrell stood up, looked at Miss Scott again, and went into the hall with the doctor.
“Can you find your way out?” she asked.
Terrell smiled and touched the rim of his hat. He turned to leave and then turned back. “Squadron leader?” he asked.
“I ran a medical unit in the air force during the recent show. I’m afraid Dr. Arnold can’t get past his fascination with the idea of a woman doctor.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Terrell said. He touched his hat again and made his way out of the hospital feeling somewhat uplifted by his conversation with Dr. Edison. So much so that he smiled and raised his hat to the icy Miss Saunders on the way out the door.
IN SPITE OF Darling’s prediction of snow for the afternoon, the skies had cleared, and Lane found herself driving home in brilliant sunlight, which set everything around it to sparkling. She knew Darling and Ames were on their way to the cottage, picking up the case, and so she felt free to enjoy the sun. It was so mood altering that Lane had to chide herself for feeling quite so elevated when poor Miss Scott was barely clinging to life. As she climbed the hill toward Bales’s store, at the peak of the road before it descended again toward the lake and curved around the cove, she thought she would stop in and find out what Fred Bales knew. Kenny Armstrong had said he’d heard Bales mention the new teacher.
A green Studebaker was pulled up at the pump, and Bales was feeding it gas. He was encased in a dark maroon wool jacket with his face nearly obscured by his wool hat and scarf. He looked up and gave Lane a wave as she stopped the car. His breath came in white clouds. Gas bubbled in the glass pump.
Inside the store, Lane walked up and down the shelves looking for something to buy that she hadn’t picked up in town. She settled on a couple of Cadbury bars and then stood at the counter waiting for Bales to finish with the customer outside. She passed the time chatting with his black Labrador, which had abandoned its usual position on the road outside the store for the warmth of the blanket beside the counter.
“Whew! I thought it was bad when the damn snow wouldn’t stop. This is almost worse. It’s freezing out there.” Bales came through the door, stamping his feet and unwinding his scarf. “Lucy said Miss Scott’s phone is down. I’ve been waiting for the rest of them to go. That snow on the wires is starting to ice up.”
“It’s worse than that, I’m afraid. Her phone line was deliberately pulled out. I had to rush poor Miss Scott into town to the hospital. It looks like someone ransacked the cottage and hit her on the head.”
A rustling and then a chair scraping in the room behind the cash counter produced Lucy herself, her earpiece still on her head, the wire dangling where she’d pulled it out. “That’s awful! That accounts for the calls!”
“What accounts for what calls?” Lane asked. “Hello, Lucy.”
“Miss Winslow. The calls. I told you, there were two calls Saturday morning, asking to be put through to her number.”
“Oh, you did, yes. But the line was down, you said.”
“Yes. I don’t know who it was. A man, though.” She lifted her finger with a sudden recollection. “Oh, and someone did call Friday afternoon, so the phone was working then. A woman. I didn’t listen, of course, so I don’t know who it was,” she said primly.
Lane and Bales eyed Lucy with skepticism, and then a honk from outside took Bales out to a customer.
“I didn’t, Miss Winslow. It was very busy Friday afternoon,” Lucy said, defensive now.
“You’re quite sure? Nothing?”
“I swear it. All I can tell you is that it was a woman on Friday, who got through, and a man two times on Saturday when the line was down.”
Lamenting the irony that now, when they could have used a little eavesdropping, Lucy had been too busy to behave in what everyone believed was her usual manner, Lane asked, “The same man both times?”
Lucy adopted a thinking position, her hand on her chin. “I think so. He had a slightly high-pitched voice. He sounded like it was urgent, especially the second time. He must have wanted to make sure the line was actually dead. He sounded upset. In fact, he had a coughing fit. I don’t know why, but it always makes me think germs can come down the line at me, because they’re coughing right in my ear. Anyway, that was a bit later and the call wouldn’t connect.”
“How far apart?” Lane asked, ignoring Lucy’s whimsical germ theory.
“How far apart what?”
“Between the two calls?” She tried not to sound impatient, but Lucy could be obtuse.
Lucy looked slightly offended. “Okay, keep your hair on. I’d say the first one was at around ten thirty, the second one maybe three minutes later.”
“Whom did he say he wanted to talk to?” Lane asked. It wouldn’t be usual. One usually just gave the phone number. Hers, for example, was KC 431.
“Nobody, he just gave the number.”
“So the lines were fine Friday, and so were Miss Scott and Miss Keeling, presumably,” Lane said, more to herself than to Lucy. Was there anything else she ought to ask? It was possible, given the calls, that the police would be interviewing Lucy. She would go home and make a note of what Lucy had told her. “Thanks, Lucy,” she said as warmly as she could. Lucy couldn’t help being curious, and it was a trait Lane could hardly censure in someone else, considering her own inclinations.
Bales came in, the bell on the door jingling loudly, a miasma of gas coming in with him. There was a noise from the switchboard and Lucy hurried to the back to take care of it with a wave at them.
“Coldest day of the year and everybody needs gas,” Bales said, pulling off his hat. His black hair stood at angles and he brushed it back with his hand. “Just the chocolate bars?” he asked, slipping behind the counter.
“Yes, thank you. You’ve met Miss Keeling, haven’t you?”
“Yes, she’s been here a couple of weeks already, I think. Very nice young woman. Oh. I should have asked, was she hurt too?”
“No. She wasn’t there.” Bales rested his hands on the open drawer of the cash register and looked puzzled.
“Not there? How so?”
“Just, not there.”
Bales frowned. “Now let me think. When was the last time I saw either of them? I definitely saw Miss Keeling on Friday. She stopped by here on her way down from the school. Had to pick up eggs and a little bag of flour because she wanted to make pancakes for Saturday morning, she said.”
“So, she was in a cheerful frame of mind?”
“I think so. She laughed about the hijinks of the children and was happy it was Friday. She did sound a little thoughtful at one point because she said, ‘If only all children could be happy, eh, Mr. Bales?’ Nice woman. You can tell she really cares for the kiddies.”
“Does she have her own motor car?”
“No, she usually drives that old thing of Miss Scott’s, but she was on foot on Friday. Said it was a great way to shake off the day. She did mention she was going to buy the car off Miss Scott when she goes off to get married or get a second-hand one of her own.”
“Does she usually drive to the school?”
Bales shook his head. “No, actually. When she arrived, the two of them went to the school together a couple of days last week. Showing her the ropes, I guess. Was on her own most of this last week, I think. I understood Miss Scott was off to the prairies somewhere on the Sunday. Her fellow lives out there. Yesterday, that would be.”