DARLING WAS LOOKING GRIMLY AT the headline in the Nelson Daily News: “Balfour Teacher Near Death, Second Teacher Sought by Police.” The article that followed, while adhering to the factual rules of journalism, skated near the edge of implying that the second teacher was responsible, with its suggestive wording of “Miss Wendy Keeling, about whom little is known . . .”
The knock on his door roused him from dark thoughts about journalists and how they bent public opinion and got in the way of investigations. “Come!”
“Sir, we’ve had a call from Mrs. Bertolli up at the Cove.” Ames was holding a piece of paper on which he’d made notes. “She didn’t want to bother you directly,” he added, answering Darling’s unspoken question about why the call hadn’t been put through to him.
“Yes, Ames. What is it?”
“Your good wi . . . er . . . Miss Winslow asked her to call. Apparently she found something in the desk at the school that might be of interest. Can I ask, sir, why is Miss Winslow going through the desk? You don’t usually like to involve her in your cases, not that you can ever keep—”
“Ames, I’m in no mood for your impertinence.”
“Yes, sir, sorry, sir. Anyway. She has something and she thinks one of us ought to have a look.”
“If you must know, in the temporary absence of a teacher, she has agreed to take on the job until someone turns up.”
“Wow! She’s brave. But no surprise, eh, sir? That’s Miss Winslow all over.”
“I think she’s utterly mad.” Darling rolled up the newspaper and tossed it into the trash can by his desk with a definitive thud. If Lane thought it important enough to have a call put through, “What sort of thing did she find?”
“Mrs. Bertolli didn’t say. In fact, she said that of course she had no idea since it wouldn’t be appropriate to share information with anyone outside the police. But she did say that Miss Winslow thought it was important. Do you want me to go out?”
Darling nodded. There was no point in his making the long drive. He was hoping to be Johnny-on-the-spot when the hospital called through to say Miss Scott was able to talk. His early-morning call to the hospital had confirmed that she had “stabilized,” whatever that meant, but was unconscious, though they were feeling optimistic.
Ames stopped by Terrell’s desk downstairs to see if he wanted to come along, but he found him still on the phone.
“Well, can you put me through to someone who does know something?” he was saying. He looked up at Ames, who was dangling the car keys, and shook his head. He put his hand over the receiver and whispered, “Bureaucracy.” Then he turned back to the phone. “Yes, this is the police. Constable Terrell of the Nelson Police, yes.”
LANE’S MORNING WAS stuttering along. The children were variously skeptical or excited. The Bertolli boys were excited and traded on the fact that they knew her and she had solved a murder. Lane found herself grateful that they appeared not to be in possession of the full menu of her involvement with the law. Other children seemed to resent an interloper. “Where is Miss Keeling? Is she dead?”
When she had invited them all to sit in their usual seats, and had read out their names, checking them off as Miss Keeling had done in the register, she found she had one missing. “Does anyone know Samuel Gaskell?” All the children put up their hands tentatively. Lane looked at the register. “Gabriella? Do you know if he is sick today?”
The little girl shook her head and glanced nervously at the boy sitting next to her. Lane couldn’t tell if the girl meant that Samuel wasn’t sick, or she didn’t know, but there was certainly something nervous about the children’s response to his name. Deciding that would have to be good enough, she said brightly, “Thank you, Gabriella. Now then, I see that you were given homework. How does your teacher check that you’ve done it?”
Philip put up his hand. “We put our homework on our desk, and the teacher walks around and puts a check in her book.”
“Thank you, Philip. Could everyone do that, then?” While the noise of children opening their school bags and taking out homework unfolded behind her, Lane sought the attendance book and saw there was a column for homework checks with Monday, December 8, ready to be marked off. She made an entry for Tuesday and then walked solemnly by each desk, glanced at the work, and put a check mark next to the student’s name. Only a boy called Randy had not done his. Lane didn’t want to embarrass him by asking, and had just decided she would bring it up later when all the students were occupied with the poem, when he said, “I forgot to write it down, miss.”
Lane nodded. “Thank you, Randy. Maybe there’ll be a moment later for you to catch up. Would you mind handing out everyone’s exercise books? Who would like to hand out the ink and pens?”
There was another anxious shuffle, and then Philip Bertolli put up his hand and said, “Only the big kids get ink, miss.”
“Ah. Well, raise your hand if you normally work in ink.” Several children responded. She was about to ask Philip to hand out the ink, when Randy spoke up. “What about the prayer, miss? We don’t do nothing till we pray the Lord’s Prayer.”
“Oh, of course. Thank you, Randy.”
He nodded, looking important. Perhaps his reminding the new teacher about the Lord’s Prayer made up for not having done his homework.
“And who leads us in prayer, Randy?”
“You do, miss.” He nodded at the other children and they all stood up, folded their hands in front of them, and put their heads down.
“Oh, of course.” Feeling slightly hypocritical, Lane began. “Our Father . . .” All of the children joined in, pulling Lane to the preferred speed of very slow and well articulated. “. . . Forever and ever, amen.”
“Right,” Lane said, when the correct booklets and equipment had been handed out. “I thought we would begin with a little penmanship today. I’ve put two verses of a poem by a famous English poet called William Wordsworth on the board. It’s about daffodils. I thought it would be fun to remember the yellow of daffodils in the middle of all this snow. You can copy down the poem in your very best writing, and then we can talk about it.”
A hand went up. “My pencil isn’t sharp.”
Lane looked around and spotted the pencil sharpener attached to the top of the low bookshelf. “Off you go, then, and sharpen it.”
This invitation elicited several more blunt pencils, so the children lined up and the room was filled with the sound of wood grinding.
Lane leaned back on the teacher desk and smiled at Rafe, who sat at the forward-most desk.
“I’m good at arithmetic,” he said.
“That’s splendid,” Lane said. “You can help me get everyone organized when it’s time for the lesson.”
“Everyone is at a different level. Me and him,” he pointed at a boy also sitting at the front, “are at the same level, because we’re in the same grade. And Ralph is with Gabriella and Samuel, and Philip is on his own because he’s better than anyone, even though he’s only in grade five.” Wondering how Miss Keeling, or Miss Scott, or any of the miss or mister anyones, managed such divergent needs and levels in these small schools, Lane took in a deep breath and told herself, One thing at a time. Penmanship first; take cues from the children. The local board could not be long in assigning a proper teacher.
The pencil sharpener was finally silent, and the children back in their places. “Can anyone read what I have written on the board?”
There was a shuffling, then Gabriella spoke up. “Samuel is the best reader, miss.”
“That’s very nice of you to say so. Since Samuel is sick today, would anyone else volunteer?”
Finally, after an agonizingly long silence, Philip Bertolli put up his hand. “I guess I could, Miss Winslow.”
“Splendid. Have a go.” Philip stood up and began, “I wandered lonely as a cloud, that floats on high . . . I don’t know that word . . . or?”
“O’er. It’s a kind of old-fashioned shortcut for saying ‘over.’ Carry on, you’re doing very well. Read to the end of the stanza, and we’ll see if someone else can read the second one.”
Philip, thus encouraged, proceeded to the end, and sat down.
“Why doesn’t he just say ‘over’?” asked Randy. “It’s easier to understand.”
“You make a good point, Randy. The poem is over a hundred years old and poets then tended to use special language when writing poetry.”
Gabriella volunteered the second verse, stopping firmly at the end of each line, though she balked immediately at “continuous.” “I know what it is when I read it to myself, but I never had to say it out loud,” she said, to stifle a giggle from one of the boys.
“Thank you, Gabriella. That happens to all of us. I often encounter words in reading that I’m not really certain how to pronounce.”
Gabriella folded her arms with a satisfied nod at the giggler.
That done, Lane instructed them to write the poem down, using the lines in their scribblers to write as neatly as possible.
“We usually do special circles and lines to practise,” said Rafe, holding up his book to show that, indeed, there were exercises completed before each writing assignment.
Lane contained a sigh. “Good, then let’s do the exercises first. How many lines do you usually use for the exercises?” By the time the children were on to writing out the poem, Lane was wondering how she would make it through to lunch, never mind the end of the day.
“WELL, I DON’T like the sound of it,” Gladys declared over lunch, a meal of chicken soup with bottled peas and carrots from their root cellar and great slabs of bread and butter. Mabel had baked the day before. They sat at their kitchen table enjoying the warmth of the wood stove upon which the soup had been produced. The white blankets of snow mounded over the flower beds outside the long bank of east-facing windows added to their sense of snugness. The two cocker spaniels were lying on the bench where the wood was kept, watching the lunchers hopefully, and the cat was curled up by the stove. “The way Robin was talking, that builder seemed to be suggesting that the new owner was nothing to write home about. And the van wasn’t local.”
“Trust Robin to get the wrong end of any stick,” said Gwen. “I’m sure he’s perfectly nice. Maybe he just likes to keep himself to himself. That would suit most of us down to the ground.”
“If he keeps himself to himself, it doesn’t matter if he’s nice or not,” suggested Mabel, in rare support of her sister.
“What if he’s got some hare-brained scheme to log the place like Sandy had?” asked Gladys. “Life here wouldn’t be worth living.”
Sandy Mather, the unpleasant only son of Reginald and Alice Mather, was serving time out on the coast for second-degree murder. He’d had plans to log his father’s property and had been in the process of trying to buy up some of Robin’s property for the same purpose, when he was arrested.
“I’m actually interested to see what that builder does with the place, especially if he’s not local. He might be a fancy big city man from Vancouver,” Gwen said, rolling her napkin up and sliding it back into its ring. “I’m going to tackle the linen cupboard. Everything needs a bit of an airing. The sheets felt damp last time I changed the beds.”
“I’m having a nap,” said Gladys. Mabel would have been happy to retreat to her bedroom with a book but thought she ought to be doing something if Gwen was airing the linen. She took the dishes to the sink and unwound the rope that held the drying rack over the stove.
While Gwen tended to the linen cupboard, Mabel stoppered the sink, filled it, and took up the soap saver and whooshed it about in the hot water. The whole business of someone moving into that dreadful house was completely unsettling and reminded her uncomfortably of one of the greatest follies of her life. If this person proved to be someone who wanted to make a complete nuisance of himself by upending everyone with a logging enterprise, it really would be too much.
AMES HAD RETURNED from Balfour with the documents, only to find Darling had gone out to the hospital, so he called O’Brien and asked him to send Terrell up. “Any luck with the education people?” he asked.
“The chairman of the local board was extremely upset,” Terrell said. “He’d had a call from Mrs. Bertolli saying Miss Winslow would be happy to look after things until someone turned up. It’s apparently not that easy to find a teacher mid-year. Miss Keeling had extremely good references and had, in fact, taught briefly at some community on Vancouver Island called Saanich. I think he felt he ought to be in charge, because it took some persuading to get him to give me the contact he had at the department in Victoria, but I got it out of him finally, on the proviso that I tell them Balfour needs a teacher double quick. Victoria confirmed that Miss Keeling had been a top candidate. She’d attended Normal School and even had a couple of years of university. Nothing known to her detriment.”
“Hmm,” said Ames. “What do you make of these, then?”
Terrell read through the two papers and bit his lower lip. “This notice of posting is obviously Miss Keeling’s, and what I find interesting is that she is not happy with her salary. The remark she scribbled here about a man making more makes her seem a trifle rebellious, though I suppose it’s a good thing to be rebellious about. The other one—poison pen. Do we know that it is hers? It could have been sent to the other teacher, Miss Scott, who, after all, got hit on the head.”
“You know what I wonder?” said Ames. “I wonder if this is the only one. I’m sure Miss Winslow, having found this, would have searched the rest of the desk, but we didn’t search the house for anything like this, did we?”
They heard the familiar tramp of Darling coming up the stairs.
“Boss?” said Ames.
Darling stopped at the door and began to remove his hat and scarf. “Bloody waste of time,” he declared. “Miss Scott is awake, all right, and at least seems more on top of things than when you spoke with her, Constable. She can speak enough to ask what she’s doing in hospital and remembers absolutely nothing. Doctor says she seems okay otherwise, but they’re keeping her in for a few more days. Knows she’s a teacher, knows where she lives, how old she is, and the like. Didn’t seem to remember she was getting married or anything about her fiancé, and there you are.” He caught sight of the letters lying on the desk. “Any luck there?”
Ames briefed him on the contents and gave a précis of their discussions. They were interrupted by the phone. It was O’Brien. There’d been an altercation at the Legion, and they wanted the law down there to apprehend the culprit, whom they’d temporarily locked into a cupboard.
Darling looked at his watch. “At this time of day? He must have got an early start. Terrell, you can go see to that. Ames, you’ll have to find time to go back to the cottage and see if there are any more notes. Tomorrow, first thing.”