“WHAT I REMEMBER, YOU SEE,” said Miss Scott, “is that she wasn’t there.” It was Friday morning and Ames had gone to the hospital first thing at Dr. Edison’s call. She reported that Miss Scott now seemed clearer about her circumstances and it might be a good time to interview her. He was relieved to see she had no roommate.
“I see,” said Ames. “You mean Miss Keeling.” He had his notebook out and was wishing hospitals didn’t smell of something that made him want to breathe stingy, shallow breaths. A combination of something they must use to clean—Lysol? Bleach?—with a chemical overlay of strange medications. Miss Scott’s bed was by a window that looked west, and now offered grey morning light filtered through the icy mists that hung over the town. Ames was feeling that vague repulsion the healthy have for hospitals.
“Yes, I think so. Miss Keeling. Yes.” Miss Scott, who was propped on two pillows into an uncomfortable-looking position, neither fully lying down nor fully upright, put her hand to her brow, tenting her fingers over her eyes as if to draw out some clearer memory.
Ames was silent for a moment, unsure how to pursue the problem of Miss Scott’s obvious uncertainty about what she remembered. “Someone came to your door, but Miss Keeling was not there. Had she gone out shopping?” Perhaps some appeal to the ordinary would work.
“I don’t know, you see,” Miss Scott said. “I was packing to go home. I couldn’t find—” Her forehead furrowed. “I couldn’t find her. That’s it. I didn’t know the voice, so I knew it must be for her, but I couldn’t find her, I told them that.”
“When you told the nurse that you remembered something, is this what it was, that a man had called asking for Miss Keeling?” Ames asked, trying to anchor her statement.
Miss Scott was silent. “Miss Keeling was gone already, you see. I had been in town. It was so cold, you see. And when I came back, she was gone. Her clothes, everything. She didn’t leave a note. There was just the bathroom mirror. That’s it.”
Ames was developing an urge to count how many times Miss Scott said “you see.” He didn’t see at all.
“Was this Saturday morning?” And what did she mean about the bathroom mirror?
Her face lit up. “No, Friday, you see, because I thought at first she hadn’t come home from school. You see, that’s what I remembered! I told her I didn’t know where she was.”
Ames made some notes, trying to make sense of the gist. “When you say you ‘told her,’ do you mean Miss Keeling? When she came home you told her you hadn’t known where she was?”
Miss Scott looked at him, suddenly confused. “No, I don’t know.”
“What did you mean about the bathroom mirror? Had something happened to it?” Ames asked. But even as he said this, he remembered the crack in it. Was this what she meant?
Miss Scott reached for a glass of water by her bed and sipped at it, splashing the contents onto her covers. She looked as if she’d exhausted her last bit of strength. At that moment a young nurse, her dark hair in a neat bob under her cap, came into the room and took up the unprotesting patient’s wrist, frowning at her wristwatch.
“That’s it, Sergeant. She’ll have to rest now. Have you everything you need?” She spoke with an authority at odds with her youth.
Not even remotely, Ames thought, getting up and slipping his notebook into his pocket. “Not quite, I’m afraid. Can I come again later? I think she was close to being able to tell me more about the assailant. It’s critical that we get that information.”
Tucking the covers more securely around Miss Scott, whose eyes had closed, the nurse shook her head. She put her hand on the back of Ames’s shoulder and guided him out into the hall. “Head injuries are unpredictable, Sergeant, and people with them can’t be bullied into giving information. We will let you know when you may return, if that is all?” She tilted her head primly in a way that conveyed an air of unequivocal dismissal.
Realizing he should have got her name, Ames stepped back out of the elevator he’d been shown to. “I’m sorry, can I have your name?”
She had already gone behind the counter and looked up when Ames spoke. She really was quite pretty, Ames thought.
“Sister Davies, but I will not be the one who contacts you. Good day.”
Ames got into the car and shuddered. Here was another woman who appeared to disapprove of him. Making a mental note to avoid dating Sister Davies, should the opportunity ever present itself, Ames drove slowly down the hill, relieved that the city snowplow had made it up this hill, thinking about what Miss Scott had had to say. Really, when you thought about it, there was not much in it that you could hang your hat on, with the possible exception that Miss Keeling had decamped some time prior to the assault of Miss Scott. Well, it would all go into the hopper. Sooner or later it might all begin to make sense. Her main preoccupation seemed to be that Miss Keeling had not been there when . . . what? When she got home from going into town. Was that at night? In the afternoon? He suspected Miss Scott might be very mixed up about the times things happened. But then again, she had been very clear that it had been Friday. So say she’d been into town on Friday and had come back and Miss Keeling had been gone. Did that put Miss Keeling out of the running as the assailant? Not completely.
As he pulled the car into its spot in front of the station, he wondered how Darling was getting on with the hit and run and telling that poor boy about his father. Ames’s visit to the Legion and the Metro had yielded exactly nothing.
Ames knocked on the door of Darling’s office. It was ajar, and he could see Darling standing by the window with his hands in his pockets, his inevitable pose when cases became difficult. “Sir?”
“What is it, Ames? You’d better have good news,” Darling said, turning away from the window. “More bloody snow!” He sat down with a sigh.
“I’m not sure if it’s good or not.” Ames took out his notebook and sat down heavily, making the chair scrape loudly.
“Please, sit down,” Darling said with a wan smile.
“Sir.” Ames smiled briefly. “Miss Scott doesn’t seem like she’s all there, I must say, but what I got out of her possibly takes Miss Keeling out of the picture, or not.” Ames went on to explain what he’d got in his interview at the hospital. “Unless Miss Keeling cleared out her things with a view to coming back later to demand whatever it was from Miss Scott and then do a runner. In the event Scott refused to tell her, so she trashed the place and made her getaway.”
Darling nodded and rubbed his chin thoughtfully, and then folded his hands in front of him. “I’d love to take the elusive Miss K out of this mess. It would simplify things if we could just assume she went off for her own reasons, angry about her pay or what have you. Unfortunately, your Miss Winslow has found something that puts that in doubt.”
“Sir?”
“She has found a revolver hidden away on a top shelf at the school, and put there recently, Detective Winslow says, because the gun is not dusty while the rest of the cupboard is, and furthermore, that young Samuel Gaskell saw a car parked just down the road from the school several times, and furthermore, he told her that the car looked like the same one that was outside the teacher’s cottage late last Friday afternoon. So no, I don’t think we can drop Miss K just yet.”
“Wow!” Ames leaned back in his chair.
“As you say. We don’t, of course, know for certain that the gun belonged to Miss Keeling, or Miss Scott, or, indeed, some previous teacher. It’s being dusted for prints. You’re going to have to get a kit and pop back up to the hospital and get Miss Scott’s prints for elimination.”
“Just this minute, sir? I was more or less given the bum’s rush out of there by a pretty ferocious nursing sister who said I was tiring her patient.”
Darling gave him a look that suggested he was a blatant coward to be afraid of a nurse, and that he’d better hop to it.
“What about the Legion and the Metro?”
“Oh, right. He wasn’t at the Metro on Friday night, at least no one saw him there, though he sometimes puts his head in before he decides if he’s going in. He was, apparently very much as usual, at the Legion for much of the night. He has a specific corner he sits in, and he usually drinks pretty heavily, and then, God help us, drives home. He talks to a few of the people that the bartender pointed out to me, so I had a chat with them. They certainly remembered him being there, but one person thought he might have seen him leave a little earlier than usual, when the bartender told him he was cut off. The funny thing about Friday is that he didn’t have his car. He said he’d left it ‘somewhere,’ he didn’t seem to remember where. And here’s something, sir. Someone seems to have given him a ride, because he was seen getting into a car, which no one could remember the make or colour of. No one, by the way, seemed very sad to hear he’d died, though they all said they were sorry for the little kid.”
“Good. That narrows it down. Interesting about the car. I wonder where he left it? And, critically important, who gave him a ride. That person was the last one to see him alive.”
“I did ask, sir, if anyone there had taken him home, but no one admitted to it, anyway. I think that shows how much his colleagues give a damn. Not one of them offered to drive him, or even thought twice about how he’d get home. He walked off into the night and they went back to their business.”
Ames paused on his way out the door. “Oh, I forgot. About Miss Scott. She mentioned that crack on the bathroom mirror. She sort of implied she saw it when she found Miss Keeling gone. That means it might not be part of the trashing done by the man who came there. And that, by the way, is all I got before she faded and I was ushered out.”
“Go back to the man who said he saw Gaskell getting into a car. Find out anything he might have remembered about the car. Maybe in retrospect he will have remembered something useful, like who was driving the damn thing.”
Monday, December 1
“WHERE’S MY MONEY?” Gaskell said it quietly. He and Art Mackenzie were standing by the dock at shift change, smoking.
Uttering an imprecation, Mackenzie threw his cigarette into the snow. It was cold, he was just starting his shift, and he didn’t need this.
Gaskell reached over and shoved Mackenzie hard. “I want my money. I’ve asked nicely.”
“That’s right. Your usual tactic. Bullying. You can bully that kid and your wife, but you aren’t going to push me around.” Mackenzie pulled his hat down and turned to go.
“What’s that you said?” Gaskell’s face seemed to go crimson with rage.
“You know how I know?” Mackenzie said, turning back to Gaskell and leaning close. “Know how I know? She told me, crying, looking for comfort, nestled up all sweet in my arms.” He was nodding. “And you can go to hell. I don’t have your money, and I doubt I ever will.” He knew he’d landed a blow. Gaskell had taken a step back and his mouth was opening and closing as if he’d lost the power of speech.
The strike, when it came, was surprisingly fast. They were standing in snow, dressed in the voluminous winter garb they needed to be out in this weather on the deck of the ferry. Mackenzie was taken aback by Gaskell’s speed and rage. He had barely begun turning to go back to the ferry when he felt his head snap back with the crack to his chin, and he staggered backward, trying not to lose his footing. A second blow hit him in the solar plexus and this time he did go down, gasping for breath. He flinched as Gaskell surged up to him.
“I’ll kill you, Mackenzie. See if I don’t,” he said in a strangled voice. “You won’t know what hit you. You have a week to get my money, and if you ever mention my wife again you’ll be sorry.”
“Hey, everything all right here?” Their shift supervisor came on the scene just as Mackenzie was getting up, still trying to catch his breath. “Could you two sort this out later, maybe? Mackenzie, you’re due on. We’ve got cars piling up.”
Gaskell turned without a word and made his way up the street away from the landing.
Mackenzie watched him disappearing up the road. “He is a horse’s backside,” he said, shaking his head.
“You’re no saint yourself. Now get to work.”
AMAZINGLY, THE WEATHER had warmed up just enough to render the roads and streets a slushy mess. On the byways of King’s Cove, this typically took on a muddy characteristic that left deep splatters over the backs of cars trundling up and down the roads. Lane had watched Darling’s car disappearing up the road with an unhappy Darling at the wheel. He would be stopping by the Benjamins’ to talk with young Samuel.
Lane readied herself to go to the school, telling herself not to forget the tin of lemon and oatmeal cookies Eleanor Armstrong had given her for the children. It might, she had said, cheer them up a bit, if, and she did not doubt it, the news of Gaskell’s death was already out. Lane wondered, as she walked through the melting snow with books and the tin of cookies, how Samuel was coping, and if she ought to say something to the other students.
She would make some hot cocoa for after the lunch playtime and bring out the cookies then. They could talk about Christmas and then perhaps they could spend the afternoon making cards. She had purchased all the stationery supplies Bales had in stock.
Samuel had come back to school a little later in the morning, much to her surprise, Mrs. Benjamin explaining that he hadn’t wanted to stay at home. The children, who had indeed heard the news in that mysterious way children had of knowing things, had kept a sombre mien when Samuel was about. Lane had taken him aside and told him how sorry she was about his father, to which he had nodded and said, “Thank you, Miss Winslow.” He had been about to go back to his seat, where Gabriella was laying out his work in as protective and motherly a fashion as could be imagined from a child, and then he said, “I have to go back to my house because I have to get my things, because I am going to keep staying with Gabriella.”
“That is lovely, about staying with Gabriella,” Lane had said. “Will her mother go with you to help?”
He had nodded solemnly and gone to sit down. The cookies and cocoa had been a big success, and the children had thrown themselves into the card making with much energy and laughter. While they were working, Lane had placed a piece of string across the blackboard so that the children could hang their cards until the last day of school when it was time to take them home.
It was Samuel talking about going home to get his things that put Lane in mind of the teacher’s cottage. She was certain it had been left in the appalling state she had seen it in when she had found Miss Scott. It was the first time it occurred to her that she had no idea who might be deputized to clean it up. After all, in spite of Darling’s glum outlook at the lack of progress on any front, which he had regaled her with over dinner the evening before, sooner or later a teacher would be coming along, and it would be a shame for her, or him, to have to cope with the cottage in that state. Consequently, when the last child had left, she tidied the classroom, banked the fire, made her way down the hill to the Balfour store, and went in to use the phone.
Mr. Bales was stacking some cans of peas on a shelf when she came through the door. “Afternoon, Mrs. Darling,” he said, relieved to be away from the box of cans. “Need some gas?”
“No, I’m all right there. I’m just wondering if I could phone through to my husband. I was thinking that the new teacher might come any day and it would be nice if the cottage were tidied a bit. I may pick up a couple of cleaning supplies as well.”
Bales’s black Lab had gotten up and was now inspecting Lane’s knees with interest. Bales inclined his head toward the phone sitting on the desk behind the counter. “Just get her to put you through.”
Lane stooped down to have a quick word with the dog and then went around behind the counter. “Hello, Lucy, do you mind putting me through to the police department in town?” she said into the doorway to the exchange where Lucy was hurriedly putting her earphones down.
“Certainly, Miss Winslow,” she said, performing some mysterious procedure with jacks being plugged into sockets. “It’s ringing through now.” Lane smiled. Lucy had obviously been listening in to some conversation. Lane supposed she could hardly be blamed. It no doubt helped pass the time, though Lane could see she also had a paperback book face down on the console. A seedy-looking volume called Stolen Love, with a cover to match.
“Hello, it’s me. I just had a thought. Would you mind awfully if I went to tidy up the teacher’s cottage? Either Miss Scott will get better and go back, or the new teacher will come, and it’s a frightful mess.”
Darling considered. She had a point. They’d been back once since the initial search for evidence, and there appeared to be little more to find. “I suppose there’s no harm in it.”
“I mean, is anyone else going to do it? Who is usually in charge of this sort of thing?” Lane asked.
“Usually the householder, when all is said and done, but as you point out, there’s really no one to do it. Miss Scott will no doubt need recuperation time before she goes off to get married.” Darling stopped. “It’s very funny, now that I think of it, that no one has come forward claiming to be the bridegroom and demanding to know where his fiancée is.”
Lane wanted very much to ask if they’d received any word of Wendy Keeling. She was becoming increasingly worried about why she might have disappeared but was very conscious of the presence of Lucy just around the corner, no doubt primly reading her book. “That’s good then. I’ll pick up some scouring powder and some sponges and have a go at it now. No, before you say it, we don’t need to worry about supper. Angela has invited us over. We can discuss the goings-on up at the old house. Can you pick up a bottle of something on your way home? I’m just at Bales’s store now and will go right down to get started. Bye now,” she finished brightly.
Ah, Darling thought, hanging up the phone on his end. She’s as intrigued as I am, no doubt, about the possibility of a missing fiancé to add to the confusion, but she was probably being closely monitored by Lucy the telephonist.
LANE BUMPED DOWN the road to the teacher’s cottage. She would have another hour of daylight, and perhaps she could get the furniture upright at least, and then maybe tackle the cleaning the next day. The cottage had electric lights, but she thought she’d like to get home before it was dark. She would be back the next day, after all. The snow that had been on the steps had melted after being trampled on by her and various police officers, leaving the unpainted and greying wooden steps exposed. Taking up the box of cleaning supplies, Lane started up the stairs and then was startled by a loud wet noise coming from the side of the house.
She smiled at her own jumpiness when she saw that it was just a huge mass of snow that had slid off the roof under its own melting weight. Once inside, she put the box of supplies on the counter and turned to look at her task. This proved to be difficult to assess because the inside of the cottage was so dark. She pushed open the kitchen curtains as far as they would go, and then those in the living room, and then tried the lights, but they barely made a dent. It was absolutely freezing in the house, and Lane did not take off her coat. Perhaps she would warm up as she got moving.
She went to the kitchen stove and lifted the lid. Miss Scott must have thought of starting a fire because there were twisted scraps of paper inside and a few bits of kindling had been put on top. That Friday had been cold. Did this mean that the assailant had come very early, before she had had time to light the fire? That might be helpful in terms of establishing a time, if Miss Scott herself still could not quite remember. Lane was about to put the lid back in place when one of the papers caught her attention. It had writing on it in very dark pencil.
Careful not to get soot all over her coat sleeve, she put her hand in and pulled out the paper and unrolled it, flattening it on the surface of the stove. She recognized the hand immediately. It was the same one as had written the note she’d found in the teacher desk. “Miss high and mighty. The whole world will know what a whore you are. I’m right behind you.”