SERGEANT AMES STOOD IN THE doorway of the teacher’s cottage and looked around the scattered room, as if trying to see it with new eyes and put a little distance between the violence that must have happened on Friday or Saturday and the bleak emptiness of the abandoned cottage now.
He would start with the untouched room. It looked as though the occupant had cleared out, so there would be less to find, and he could check it off his list. He closed the front door. He wanted to take his heavy wool coat off so it would be easier to move about, but the unheated cottage was icy.
Sweeping his gaze across the room, he saw again the little stool by the bed with a lamp. He imagined Miss Keeling, if this was her room, reading before she went to sleep. Reading what? He lifted the coverlet and looked under the bed, and he was surprised to see what looked like a small bible by the back leg, as if it had fallen to the floor as its owner had drifted off to sleep. It was at some remove from the chamber pot, he was happy to see. He went round to the other side and leaned over to retrieve it. Bible or no bible, Miss Keeling was right in the middle of this, he was certain.
Trying to imagine what sort of conflict the two teachers would have had that could escalate to this destruction, he was about to set the bible down when he realized it might be inscribed to its owner. He opened it. There, in a careful, almost childish hand, was the name W. Irving, and nothing else. He put the book down, made a note in his notebook, and as a last measure lifted up the mattress to see if anything had been left under it. Finding nothing, he turned to the bedroom where Miss Winslow had found the nearly unconscious Miss Scott.
It was interesting that it was Miss Scott who was leaving and Miss Keeling who was replacing her. Miss Keeling’s room looked barely used. No pictures on the wall, or personal items on the dresser. But, of course, it had been packed up and quit in what appeared to be a hurry. Miss Scott’s was still full of only half-packed things, as if she was somehow reluctant to leave and was dragging out the packing process.
He started with the suitcase, open, and lying at an angle half off the bed with its contents spilling out. He gingerly lifted the clothes out and put them on the bed, searching for anything that might give even the remotest clue to what had happened here. Under those clothes that remained in the case, he found a slim leather document holder. It had a flap with two buttons, and he opened these. Pulling out a stack of about five sheets of paper, he looked at them one by one, placing them face down on the bed next to him as he finished. First was a certificate of professional teaching issued in 1936 by the Province of Manitoba to Rose Marie Scott. 1936. She must have been young. What was she now? There were several letters addressed to “My darling girl” from “Mummy.” They dated to 1943. They were on blue airmail paper, until one more recent one dated 1946 that was very brief and announced the death of her father. He turned these over as well. He did not want to read Miss Scott’s private mail if it was not necessary. She was making a recovery. She should soon, he hoped, be able to supply them with the information they needed. The next was an army discharge document. He nodded. She’d been in service. Had she made it overseas, or did she serve in one of the many domestically based outfits? Last, an envelope from the Western Union telegraph office. He opened the flap and extracted the folded paper and read: “Sorry, Rosie, just learned. Captain S. Corcoran confirmed lost Scheldt, October 1944. DB.”
Ames turned this over, as if its bloodless message could be explained in some way. DB must be a friend of hers, he thought, and then slipped the telegram back into the envelope and replaced all the papers in the leather folder. Who was Captain Corcoran to Miss Scott? No nasty letters. He put the document case back into the suitcase and continued his search. There was nothing to be found under Miss Scott’s mattress either. But of course not, he reasoned. People hid things they valued under mattresses, not things that were upsetting.
His search of the living room revealed nothing. He concluded that any other poison-pen letters must have been destroyed. He went to stand in the doorway of Miss Scott’s room, and gave some more thought to what might have happened to her here. She had suffered a blow to the head, the doctor had said. Had she fallen and hit her head after being pushed by someone? Or had she been coshed? It made a difference. He could imagine some sort of tussle, say, between the missing Miss Keeling and Miss Scott, where Miss Scott had come upon Miss Keeling going through her things and moved to stop her, causing Miss Keeling to push her away violently. If she’d been struck by something, it seemed to him more plausible that there was an assailant who’d come deliberately to rob the premises or take away the missing teacher for some reason.
What did it mean that she hadn’t been killed? Was the kidnapper/assailant/robber not worried about being identified later? Or did he, or she, seeing Miss Scott fall unconscious, think she had died?
He looked carefully around the room to identify something she might have fallen against. The bed was a simple wooden bedstead with plain bedposts that extended only about ten inches above the base of the bed. Ames looked closely at the two that were away from the wall. There did not appear to be any evidence of a head falling against them. He began to pick up the books and personal belongings that had been knocked off a small bookshelf that had fallen over, which had likely stood on the inside wall of the room. She could have been pushed and knocked it over as she went down. The blow was to the rear side of the head. This seemed more likely. The trouble was that Miss Scott had been lying with her head away from the shelf, unless she had fallen and somehow, perhaps trying to make her way to the bed, repositioned herself.
He closed his eyes, trying to imagine the scene. Judging by the mess in the main room, Miss Scott has run in here to get away, because the assailant is between her and the only door out of the cottage. He opened his eyes and looked at the window that was opposite the door. It was closed and latched. He tried the latch and found it very hard to turn. Had she rushed in here, hoping to escape by the window, and found out too late that she couldn’t? It would have been a desperate gambit in any case; the window was small and had a screen on it that might have taken time to dislodge.
She’d been found alive, so if Miss Scott had been hit on the head, she might have been able to turn herself over, grab at the bedcover, and do no more. Perhaps she’d lain quietly until the attacker had left, and then tried to move, but had had the stroke, which, according to the doctor, had done the bulk of the damage. Running his hand along the bookshelf, he looked for some indication that she might have fallen against it.
He went back into the living room and again surveyed the chaos. What kept niggling at his mind was the question of who the poison-pen note had been for, and if you received such notes, did you keep them somewhere, or get rid of them? One certainly was kept, shoved into the desk drawer at school. Perhaps it was the most recent one. She hadn’t had time to throw it away, and then she never got the chance.
It occurred to him that if Miss Scott was scheduled to leave, she would have emptied out her desk for Miss Keeling’s use. That suggested the note had been addressed to Miss Keeling. But it had fallen behind the drawer, Miss Winslow had said, meaning it could have been Miss Scott’s and she’d missed it when she was clearing out.
Manitoba, 1942
“YOU CAN’T POSSIBLY. I absolutely forbid it! It’s not enough that your brother’s gone, I don’t suppose?” Rose Scott’s father, who had been sitting with his paper by the fire, had only barely listened to his daughter’s declaration, but when the full portent of it finally penetrated, he’d thrown down the paper and had stood up. He had his hands in his pockets, as if to keep himself in check.
“Father, I’m twenty-five. I don’t see how you can stop me. I want to help. With my teaching, I have skills that will be of use. With Danny gone, I can’t sit idly by. It’s not right. I’m only really telling you as a courtesy.”
Rose’s mother had been in the kitchen and now stood at the doorway into the sitting room, one hand over her mouth, fearful of her husband’s too familiar tone.
He lurched angrily toward his daughter and then stopped. Rose could hear her mother’s gasp of protest. She stood squarely, as if she would fight him if he came closer.
Mr. Scott’s face hardened into a blotchy rage. He took another step closer to her and raised his voice. “Courtesy? Courtesy? There is no courtesy in outright disobedience. I am the head of this household and you do as I say while you live under this roof! Have you heard what they call women who go into uniform? Loose women, trash. Not on my watch, my girl, not on my watch. Have you thought about what this will do to your mother?”
Rose looked at her mother, who was now crying silently, looking at her daughter, appealing to her to stop, to make it right. But Rose gave a little shake of her head, and, full of the sorrow brought on by the finality of this moment, turned away and mounted the stairs to her bedroom. She had anticipated this. She had heard her father carry on about his disgust at women joining up. His declaration that the fabric of society would be torn up by women quitting their proper sphere. Released from the respectable bounds of family, they would be whoring about. Whoring. Rose remembered her shock at hearing the word said out loud for the first time, and by her own father. Consequently, she had packed her bag in advance and had it at the ready.
She came downstairs and put the bag in the hallway, took her coat and hat, and put them on. She could see that her father had returned to his newspaper, perhaps convinced she would obey him after all, or perhaps cutting her out of his life altogether. The expression on his face, she thought, was much the same either way. Her father had never admitted of a world outside his own view of things.
Her mother stood in the hall, watching her daughter settle her hat using the little mirror by the door, her misery mute and contained. Rose put her arms around her mother and hugged her briefly. “Goodbye, Mother. I will write to you, I promise. No. Don’t come with me. I will wait at the station on my own.”
She picked up the suitcase and turned to open the door, certain that her mother, always subservient, would have nothing to say at the constant tension that unfolded between herself and her father. But her mother had put her hand on her shoulder firmly, giving it a little shake, and had whispered, “You’re a good, strong girl.”
October 1944
THE GIRLS SAT on their beds in the barracks, waiting while the milk boiled on the little single burner for their nightly cocoa.
“I wonder what the men do,” said Daisy, a short, plump blonde from Halifax. She was like an optimistic child. Always full of good cheer and curiosity.
“They get shot,” said Rose. She said it as if it was lightly meant, but it hung starkly in the air for a moment.
Daisy hesitated and looked down, and then said, “No, I know.” She, like the other girls in the room, knew about Rose’s brother, Danny. “But I mean now. Do they make cocoa or do they have secret bottles of hooch they take out for what Daddy used to call a ‘nightcap’?”
“I don’t think military discipline allows for hooch, Daisy,” Rose said, smiling now. She stirred the cocoa and doled it into cups. “Let’s drink up and say our prayers. Antwerp tomorrow.”
Daisy threw herself back on her bed, a hand over her forehead. “I wonder if I’ll see Rufus again.”
“That’s what you get for falling in love with a man called Rufus,” Rose said. “Here. Sit up and get this down.”
“Yes, Mother,” Daisy said with charming sarcasm. “I don’t know how you could understand, at your age.”
Rose smiled again. “A woman of twenty-seven is not too old to fall in love, Daisy.” Her smile belied the pang she felt. What would Daisy think about Captain Corcoran? What would anyone think? Stifling a rueful smile by drinking her cocoa, she asked herself, What would my father think? He would be proved right, after all.
In the dark, Rose lay on her side, her arms crossed on her chest, her hands tucked under her chin, a position that had given comfort all her life, and thought about Stigg Corcoran, Third Canadian Infantry Division. He’d only said there was a big push. He hadn’t said more, but she had heard they were doing something near or in Holland, she wasn’t sure which. She closed her eyes and all she could see in that inner darkness was a terrible, gnawing fear.
THE SKY HAD darkened again as Ames drove back toward Nelson, and he was happy to be going back before the next snowfall hit. The ferry was on the Nelson side when he arrived, and for some reason there was quite a lineup of cars waiting to go across. It was doubtful he’d even make the next one.
People had gotten out of their cars and now stood in small groups, smoking and talking quietly. It was clear something was up. Ames joined a couple of men a few cars down.
“What’s going on?” he asked, pulling his collar up against a gust of wind. A definite smell of new snow. He wondered how Terrell was getting on with the boy, Samuel.
One of the men, dressed in a long overcoat with his hat pulled low, shook his head. “Apparently they are short-staffed. The guy who is supposed to start the shift today never turned up. Good thing there’s no emergency, that’s all I can say.” He drew on his cigarette, and then put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the packet, offering one to Ames.
Ames shook his head and said, “Thanks.”
“I saw your colleague in the Legion last evening. He was pretty good with that fool, Dixter, in spite of the insults being flung at him. You can always count on Dixter to take things too far. Not the first time he’s gone crazy. Can’t take his drink. I expect they’ll ban him after this. The war, I’m told, though it’s been thirty years. Usually his brother-in-law comes to get him before anyone calls you fellows. I gather that officer is new here,” the man said, repocketing his cigarettes.
“Yes, he is.” If the man had hoped to use this as an opening salvo for a longer conversation, Ames was sorry to disappoint him. He was cold and wanted to get back into the car.
The ferry lights finally came on and there was some sign of movement. Ames lifted his chin toward the other side of the lake. “Looks like there’s some action.” He touched the brim of his hat with a pleasant smile and returned to his car.
DARLING LOOKED DOWN the short embankment. They could see the river below them. They were a few miles along on the road toward Castlegar. A tire-shaped curve in the snow right near the edge of the road suggested a vehicle had come too near the edge and swerved back, but it was snowed over so it was impossible to tell what sort of vehicle it would have been. Cars driving along the road with chains all day had turned the road into a dimpled landscape of snow. The figure, which looked like a doll that had been tossed out a car window, still lay face down and was almost completely covered in snow.
“It’s remarkable anyone actually saw him,” Ashford Gillingham said. The police pathologist had accompanied Darling to examine the corpse at the death scene, something he was doing more now. It was his normal practice to wait until the body of a victim was brought to his basement morgue, but he’d been interested to learn that one could gather more information by seeing the body in situ. He had fallen into the job when he was still a family doctor and had been asked to do a post-mortem on a man who had been shot at a local mine. He had found it intriguing and had offered himself to the police on a more regular basis, and he was working hard to catch up on his reading about the latest approaches in forensic science. He now stood next to Darling, gazing at the shape of the body lying below.
“Nothing for it,” Darling said, and began to sidle down the short snowy embankment.
“I’ve brought my camera, so I can take a few shots. They might help, though no doubt your caller is right, it looks like a hit and run. As he’s off this side of the road, I’m going to tentatively assume he was walking toward Nelson.” The two men whose task it would be to take the body into town stood by their van smoking and drinking coffee from a Thermos, watching the activity around the body below. They were still not used to seeing Gilly working at the scene, though he had gone out to see Mrs. Hughes’s root cellar when human remains had been found the previous spring.
Darling had joined the pathologist. “Scruffy-looking fellow,” he observed. “How long has he been lying out here, I wonder.”
“Still in a state of rigor mortis, but that’s not saying much. In these cold conditions it can last for days. We may only get a real sense of that when we find out how long whoever he is has been missing from the bosom of his family.” Gilly leaned down and looked closely at the face from which he’d brushed the snow. It was now exposed because of the angle of his head. “There are some abrasions on his face, but possibly from his slide, or fall, down to this position. If he was hit by a car, I might expect a broken neck, or back, perhaps.”
Darling stood up, looking along the edge of the road above them, and shook his head. “Whoever hit him didn’t bother to stick around.” His voice registered grim disapproval. He leaned down and fished in the one coat pocket visible and found only a few coins. What he did notice was the lining of the coat was torn and the coat itself was old and well-worn along the edges. The man had several days’ growth of beard.
“He almost looks like a vagrant,” Darling suggested. “If he was hit in the back, he won’t have seen the end coming. That’s a mercy, I suppose. I wonder what he was doing this far from town on foot.”
“I expect, from the lingering odour, we will find he’d been drinking,” Gilly said. “Perhaps he’d had a skinful and was walking home.”
“From where? Castlegar is miles in that direction, and he’s going the wrong way if he was drinking in Nelson. If he has no identification on him and he is vagrant, it will be the devil trying to work out who he is. It would have been a long walk in this snow, no matter where he was headed.” Darling waved his hand at the van to signal the men to begin the process of removal. “Unless you have anything more you’d like to look at?”
“Nope. I have a couple of snaps. Together with whatever I discover in the post-mortem, I might be able to make a fairly complete picture. Good luck finding the driver. With this coat, if he was hit in the back, it’s unlikely to have left a convenient dent on a front bumper, but we’ll see how hard he was hit.”
CONSTABLE TERRELL, WITH his hand resting gently on Samuel’s shoulder, stood on the front porch of the neighbours who had once taken the boy in. He removed his glove and knocked on the door. Mentally crossing his fingers, he prayed they would take him. The child needed to be somewhere familiar, near his school, rather than uprooted into town. He looked down and saw that Samuel was looking up at him, concerned. Terrell gave him a little wink and a smile.
Footsteps, and then the door was opened by a plump young woman who looked puzzled at the sight of Terrell, but then burst into smiles when she saw Samuel.
“Hello, you!” she said. “Come in, come in. It’s freezing out. It’s already starting to snow again. It wouldn’t do to have you out there turning into a snowman!” She pushed the screen door open and stood aside. “Look, Ed. It’s young Samuel and a friend,” she called into the kitchen. “And who is your friend?” she asked, bending down to unbutton the boy’s coat.
“This is Constable Terrell. He’s helping me. I met two other policemen, too.”
Terrell had removed his hat and was standing on the mat in front of the door. He nodded and said, “Ma’am.”
“I’m Julia Benjamin. Just call me Julie. This is my husband, Ed. Gabriella is upstairs reading. They have a temporary teacher at the school she seems to like who is encouraging it. Gabriella! Come see who’s here! Samuel’s come to see us,” she called. “Samuel, let’s hang your coat up, and you go upstairs to see Gabby. There’s a good boy.”
The three adults stood watching Samuel climb the stairs to meet their daughter, who took him by the hand, saying, “I wondered where you’d got to.” Julia Benjamin turned back to Terrell, her expression worried. “What’s happened? He’s welcome here, he’s a lovely little boy, but I don’t want any trouble with that father of his. I’m assuming his turning up with a bruised eye like that, at our doorstep, with a policeman, means something is not right.”
“Let’s get the constable off the mat, shall we?” Her husband came up behind her, smiling and wiping his hands. “Come in. I’ve just made a fresh pot of coffee. We can sit down. I’m guessing we’re going to need to be sitting down for this.”
Terrell, extremely grateful for the offer of coffee, explained that Inspector Darling had found Samuel at home, where he’d evidently been on his own since sometime on Friday.
“On his own? He’s all of eight or nine years old. That man’s a bloody criminal! He oughtn’t to be allowed to care for him,” Julie exclaimed. “It’s not the first time, either. My Gabby went over to see him earlier in the fall, maybe October, and found him alone. She brought him back here. She left a note on the kitchen table saying Samuel was with us. Well, didn’t his father rant and rave at us, telling us he didn’t take ‘nothing’ from ‘no neighbours,’ and threatening us. He’s an uneducated boor. I can’t even believe Samuel can be his son. The mother, poor soul, left, you know. We don’t know when. But I expect she was getting some of what Samuel has on his face. She was terribly frail and beaten down, if you know what I mean. But I wonder if she would have left if she thought he was going to be left at home like this, on his own.
“The thing is,” Terrell said, “the only thing we’d be able to do is place him with a family in town, which might take some time and would also deprive him of being in his own school with his own friends. He’s putting a brave face on it just now, but he’s going to need people who care about him, as you folks so evidently do, until his father comes back, when he begins to take in the enormity of being left like that.”
Ed shook his head. “You don’t need to ask, Constable. The man’s a brute, and no doubt about it. That kid deserves better. If I’m honest, I only wish we could keep him. Gabby loves him, and often said she wished she had a little brother she could care for like she does Samuel. But I suppose he’ll have to go back.”
“There will likely be charges of neglect and so on. The courts could deem his father unfit. A search would begin, will begin, in fact, for his mother. The preference is always for a family member.”
Julia sniffed. “I know she wasn’t strong, but what kind of mother would she be, seeing as she couldn’t cope or look after him?”
“Now, Julie, we don’t know the full circumstances. Anyway, we’ll be glad to look after him. Is there anything you can do to keep that maniac from coming over here uttering threats? I don’t really think he’d do much, but he frightens Gabby,” her husband said.
“He frightens me!” Julia Benjamin said.
“I think there is something. We can get an injunction to keep him away from here and away from Samuel till this is resolved. I’d like to see the boy back in school. He seems pretty bright.”
“As bright as a button. Loves to read and is interested in everything. It’s a real shame.”
“I’m very grateful to you both,” Terrell said, rising and taking up his hat. “And the coffee really hit the spot. I’d best get on before the snow gets too bad.”
“You’re new, Constable Terrell. How are you finding everything?” Julia Benjamin asked.
“Thank you, ma’am. It’s a small station and everyone has been very welcoming. And Nelson? It’s not too different from a small town in Nova Scotia.” Enough said, Terrell thought. Every town had a percentage of people who were determinedly friendly, and those who scowled and pulled away. According to Ames, some people even scowled at the small number of Italians in town, so it might have more to do with people unwilling to be around anyone different from themselves. The Benjamins were determinedly friendly, and that extended to him and to lost children.
He buttoned himself into his coat and slipped on his gloves. “Thank you again for taking him. I think you’re just what he needs right about now.”
“Don’t worry about a thing,” Ed Benjamin said. “We’ll take good care of him.”