“I MEAN, SIX OF THEM. THAT seems like overkill,” Lane said. She and Darling were walking together up the road toward the Bertollis’ house, she with her arm through Darling’s, and he with a bottle of wine tucked into his overcoat pocket. In spite of the melt, it had become damp and cold as the afternoon had worn into early darkness. Lane was happy to be in warm wool pants and her sage-green turtleneck, as well as her thick jacket. Her rubber overshoes reached her ankles and she hoped that the path from the road to Angela’s door would not be full of slush. Should she have worn her wellingtons?
“The notes certainly bespeak a person who is obsessed with Miss Scott or Miss Keeling,” Darling said. “Actually, as we’ve found more of the notes, I’m now inclined to believe they were intended for Miss Scott. Miss Keeling has only been here a couple of weeks. Surely that’s not enough time to excite the ire of some local. Besides, I’m increasingly convinced Miss Keeling is very far from being the victim here. Too much points to her possible involvement in what happened to Miss Scott. As to the notes, they’re from a woman, I would have said.”
“Would you? How curious. Because men can’t write full sentences? Isn’t that a bit like that nonsense cliché that poison is a woman’s weapon?” She considered what her own initial reaction had been. “I confess, I thought that myself, but it’s not useful to assume those ridiculous clichés are true. Women poisoners, women poison-pen writers. It might lead you quite astray.”
They had reached the turn at the top of the road where the Mather cottage sat, smoke curling from the chimney, and the two front windows lit up. What were they doing of an evening? Lane wondered. Not talking, she guessed. Such a bitterness existed between Reg Mather and his wife, Alice, that she could scarcely imagine them spending any time in the same room together. She pulled closer to Darling, thanking whatever stars had been responsible for throwing them together.
“I draw your attention to the very last case of murder we had here on the lake,” Darling said. “The one that ended with Ames getting a posy of flowers from Tina Van Eyck. By the way, I wonder how that is going?”
“Don’t try to change the subject. Against one woman using poison to rid herself of, say, a bothersome man, there are doubtless scores of men doing the same thing up and down the country. It’s neat, for one thing. No blood to cope with, no bashing resisting victims over the head. Why wouldn’t anyone with a murderous bent use it? Why do you think the notes are from a woman, particularly?”
“All that focus on the perceived immorality, calling her a whore and so on. It suggests jealousy, or that the writer feels her own marriage threatened by this single woman floating about unattached in decent society.”
“Piffle. You have a grim view of how women see each other. I spent the whole war working with women and we had none of that. We just got on with our jobs and helped each other. So much is made, and rightly so, about the deep comradeship of men at war, but you would have recognized the exact same instinct among women. We are not a different species entirely, you know.”
Darling smiled in the darkness and kissed her cheek. “I’m relieved to hear it, else we might not be able to procreate.”
They walked on in companionable silence, past a field that lay in impenetrable darkness, toward the cheerfully lit Bertolli cabin. Simultaneously, the collies began to bark and the front porch light was turned on. They could hear David telling the dogs to shut up with good-natured impatience.
Lane stopped and turned to Darling. “But you know, this means the gun is not necessarily Miss Keeling’s. Much more likely to be Miss Scott’s, if she’s the one who was getting the notes. What if the notes in the stove are only scratching the surface? What if she’d been under this sort of pressure for some time, and had become afraid that whoever it was would confront her one afternoon when she was alone at the school? That ‘I’m right behind you’ is chillingly sinister. There is no way to get help, really, if you’re under attack alone. No telephone, and only the one narrow road down the hill.”
The dogs had been settled and Angela had directed David to supply Lane and Darling with drinks while she went off to the kitchen. They were sitting on a sofa in front of an enormous fire that threw dancing golden light along the walls.
“Any news of your potential new neighbours up the hill?” Lane asked.
“I don’t see much, I’m afraid, but Angela tells me they were quite busy bustling up and down the road in vans and trucks. And then it all stopped. Typical builders. With any luck, they won’t start up till after Christmas. They keep the dogs agitated when they’re barrelling up and down all the time,” David said, leaning back, cradling his scotch on his chest.
“It’s absolutely frightful!” called Angela, poking her head around the door. “I’m getting like everyone else in King’s Cove. I don’t want anyone new moving here. It was blissfully quiet and then suddenly we’re in a construction zone. It’s peculiar that I haven’t heard a thing for a few days. That’s contractors for you! They’ve probably left the place an absolute shambles and then gone off. I must say, whoever bought it must be absolutely loaded! The expense of refurbishing a wreck like that! And someone said the vans aren’t local, which must double the cost.”
“Has anyone been up to see it?” Lane asked, ignoring Darling’s “Here we go again” look. “I’m busy tomorrow, but if no one’s working on it we could go up Sunday and have a look.”
“Splendid idea!” Angela said. “Oh, damn, I think I’ve burned the carrots!” She disappeared back into the kitchen.
Dave topped up their glasses entirely unnecessarily, and then asked, “How are you finding teaching, Lane? You are effectively the village schoolmistress now. The boys, by the way, love you. Philip said you gave him an important job. He’s quite puffed up about it.”
“He’s been wonderful; between him and Gabriella, I’m just about able to cope with the younger children. He’s been helping with their arithmetic. It’s the spread of ages and skills—they’re all over the map. I don’t know how people do it. I’ve been having a wonderful time, except for the ghastly business of one of the boys losing his father in a hit and run. He’s practically an orphan now, and he wasn’t much better off before, given his condition. But he’s gone to live with Gabriella’s family and they’re helping him cope. I’m not sure I’m cut out for it. I admire you no end, driving up to town every day to teach. With any luck a new teacher will be along soon.”
“Not before January, I shouldn’t think,” Dave said. “A natural time to assign a teacher would be after the holidays, and they may feel with you there and only a week left of school, they can wait. I must say, the boys really liked Miss Keeling. Perhaps she’ll come back.”
Perhaps, Darling thought, but said nothing. He was relieved when Angela called them to the table.
“You know, Darling, you want to be careful driving the lake road at night,” David said, between mouthfuls of pot roast. “One of our teachers lives out toward Salmo, and he hit a deer that bolted onto the road the other night. He was lucky, not the deer obviously, our teacher. It bounced on the top of the hood and made a mess of the car. He had to put the thing out of its misery. Now I wonder if he took it home. I forgot to ask him.” David took a reflective sip of wine.
“He had a rifle?” Lane asked, momentarily horrified at “putting the thing out of its misery.”
“Good grief, yes. He’s a hunter, though I think he prefers more sport and less vehicular damage.”
August 1939
WENDY SAT OPPOSITE a man behind a desk. He was older, with thin hair and spectacles that he peered over, giving him an air of disapproval. Her face flushed in her anxiety. She still felt exposed and uncomfortable in the clothes Mrs. Franklin had found for her, and she nervously pulled the hem of her flowered dress lower to cover her knees. She had conceded to giving up her head scarf but had insisted on her hair being pulled tightly into a bun. She had never worn a hat, and the flowered straw hat that Mrs. Franklin had helped her pin on felt like something she must try to balance, lest it slide off.
She had been asked if she had any experience with children. It came into her mind to say she had herself been a child once, and this too caused her to blush at its wild inappropriateness. “I was in charge of two young children, and I taught them to read and do arithmetic. We used the outdoors to learn biology.”
“They did not attend school?”
How could she say that they were not, any of them, permitted to leave the property? That her aunt had insisted on their learning to read, even though her uncle had railed at the potential exposure to sin that literacy might engender. Her aunt had persuaded him that one day when they needed to interact with the outside world on farm business it would be best if they could read and cipher so as not to be cheated.
“The school was too far to go to. My aunt and uncle were not wealthy enough to afford a car.” This was true as far as it went. Their one truck was patched together and battered by the local roads, and at least a decade and a half old.
“I see. Well, teaching two children is not the same as teaching a room full of children, Miss—” Here he looked down through his glasses at the paper before him. “Keeling. What makes you think you would be able to handle children, some nearly as old as you, in a rural school? Farm children who may be quite strangers to the discipline more common to our urban children?”
“I have always wanted to teach school, Mr. Sanders. Even when I was in grade school here in Vancouver, before my mother died and I had to leave to live with my aunt and uncle. I believe I have a God-given ability.”
Mr. Sanders sniffed. “Well, you certainly don’t lack in confidence, I’ll say that. I will allow you to sit the exams for entry into Normal School and we’ll see where we go, shall we? Please bring a proper piece of identification. Do you have a birth certificate?”
Wendy felt her face flush again. She had never heard of a birth certificate. She nodded and got up to leave.
Cambie Street was alive with noise and cars when Wendy emerged from the Normal School. She stopped on the steps and looked down the street toward the city, pulling her cardigan around her. The unfamiliar handbag, left behind by one of Mrs. Franklin’s girls when she had married, a bit worn but quite usable, hung on her arm.
She had told two lies already: that her uncle could not afford a vehicle, and that her mother was dead. And now she had to get identification. She had made up the name she had written on the paper for the secretary to show the man. She had no idea how she would get a birth certificate. She must have had one because she was born in Vancouver. Her father would know, but she could never seek him out lest he return her to her uncle. The man had said she needed identification. She thought about the children she had been living with. It was suddenly clear to her that they probably had no birth certificates. Her uncle had often railed against the government, sent census takers away, said they had no business in the lives of honest God-fearing men. She was certain her aunt Hilda had said the children had been born at home. Could she tell the man that? How many more lies would she tell, let loose from the restrictions of her uncle’s house? She wondered if it was true after all, that without strong male guidance she was naturally and irredeemably sinful.
If she was sinful, then her aunt, who had been good to her and given her warmth and purpose, must be a veritable Jezebel, with her secret cupboard of books. Her aunt, who wore long dresses and thick stockings, and talked of sin, had nevertheless seemed to Wendy to be a kindred spirit, long before she could have understood those words. Now, looking back, she saw that the books were an anomaly that fairly shouted. She had been told in the strictest confidence that she was to read the books and use them as the basis for teaching the children, but to never let her uncle know where they were hidden. But she could not forget the fearful warning her aunt had delivered when she had declared she would run away rather than be married. It was clear that she was on her husband’s side, when push came to shove.
A truck pulling up to a traffic light slowed in front of her, and Wendy felt the old panic and turned quickly to go east along Twelfth Avenue. She had never been fully free of the fear that they would come and find her. She could scarcely comprehend the enormity of the sin she’d committed by running away.
Even now, after several months, when she stepped out of the rooming house, she looked both ways, searching the street, fearful that her uncle or the elder would be there, venturing out timidly only when it was clear they were not.
Calmer after walking several blocks, she began to think about the exams. Mr. Sanders had said it was highly irregular to accept a student who had not completed grade twelve. Had he been convinced by her tale of being home-schooled because of the isolation of the farm she lived on? In a way, she thought, it was perfectly true. She had schooled herself. Her thoughts drifted to her mother, as she walked down Main Street toward the rooming house downtown.
Sometimes at night she thought she remembered what her mother had looked like, especially her deep blue eyes, and then it was gone. Why had she left? Wendy had thought of forgivable answers and unforgivable ones. Had her mother been threatened or beaten by her father when he was drinking, or had she left because she’d found someone else? Or had she left because she couldn’t be bothered with the work of bringing up a child? It dawned on her with such force that she nearly stopped in the middle of an intersection and only moved on as other pedestrians pushed past her. How she had endeavoured to be good every moment of her life since then, so that she would not be abandoned again. Running away from her uncle’s was her first rebellion. It terrified her, and yet it made her feel an almost surging sense of power.
She arrived back at the rooming house and called as she came in the door. “Mrs. Franklin? I’m home. They’re going to let me take the exams.”
Coming from the kitchen, her landlady smiled. “That is good news. You must have done a good job of convincing them you could pass them.”
“I don’t even remember what I said, I was so terrified! I’ll just run upstairs to put away my hat and then I’ll come down and get at the laundry.”
“Before you go, a couple of men came to the door. They were looking for someone named Wendy Irving. Now, I think they were looking for you.” She eyed Wendy meaningfully.
Wendy went white and sat down hard on the stairs, her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
“Don’t fret, dear. I didn’t let on. I didn’t much like the tone they took, if you must know. I think they were going up and down the street to every boarding house. I quite truthfully told them I don’t have a Wendy Irving here. I watched them and sure enough, they went down to Mrs. Gregor’s across the street. They have no idea where you are. You’re perfectly safe. But I think it’s time you told me what’s going on, don’t you?”
“They must have asked the conductor in Williams Lake where my ticket was for, and then asked the station man here if anyone had seen me. He told me to come down Cardero to look for the boarding houses.” Wendy could feel her heart pounding out her fear.
“There you are, you see? If they don’t find you at any boarding houses, I hardly think they’re going to be able to scour the whole city.”
Wendy was unconvinced. “What did they look like?”
“One was quite old, I’d say in his sixties, but looking much older, and the other was a bad-tempered fellow of about fifty.”
“My uncle and the elder.” Wendy closed her eyes and shuddered.
“Look, come off of those stairs and into the kitchen. The laundry can wait. We’ll make a cup of tea and have a bit of cake and you can tell me why a sixteen-year-old had to run all the way from Williams Lake to hide in Vancouver.”
Between sobs, Wendy told Mrs. Franklin the real reason she had fled, and even shared her fear that she would be damned, if they didn’t catch her first.
“Nonsense, my dear. This is 1939. No one can force a sixteen-year-old into a marriage in this day and age. If they tried it, I’d have the police on them. And you mark my words, if they don’t find you, they’ll give up.”
For the first time Wendy wondered why. Why was she being forced to marry? “He already has a wife. No doubt beaten down by doing his bidding her whole life. I wonder if he gave my uncle money. I think I heard them arguing, my uncle and aunt, I mean, about the farm not doing well.”
“Bigamy on top of it all!” Mrs. Franklin declared. “Well, you’re well out of it. How attached are you to this lovely hair?”
“Why?” Wendy took a strand of her hair that had fallen out of her bun.
“Because it’s time to put that nonsense of a life behind you. We’ll cut your hair, bob it. Annie’s a hairdresser, she’ll see to it. We’ll get you some proper clothes that aren’t just hand-me-downs. And you’re smart as a whip. You’ll pass those exams and go to that school, and you’ll never look back.”
Wendy went up the stairs, still dazed, hardly knowing what she was feeling. She sat on her bed. She had not known there were laws to protect her. She suddenly felt her own ignorance. If she was going to live in this world, she would have to know everything she could. She would study, read the papers, find out about the laws, make new friends who could help her. And not, under any circumstances, let any man interfere with her life. She felt a new determination. She would get to take the exams, and she would pass them. She stood in front of her mirror and instead of avoiding her own reflection as she usually did, she looked at herself as she took the pin out of her hat, and placed hat and pin on the dresser. Her image shimmered in the mirror, her hair pulled away from her face. Without thinking, she pulled her hair out of its bun and let it fall around her face and onto her shoulders. This was her, now. Wendy Keeling. That other girl left behind forever. She would build her house around this girl. When her roommate got back, she would ask her to cut and perm her hair.
MISS SCOTT’S RECOVERY now included walking sedately up and down the hallways of the hospital for a few minutes a day, though she found she still had little memory of why she was there. Sometimes in her dreams she felt the opening of a great black chasm full of fear, and she woke up gasping. They had upped her dose of sleeping pills, and the fear that sometimes followed her into the day receded a bit.
She had found books in the little reading library, but her head hurt after only a few pages, and the nurses had pulled the books away from her saying reading was a no-no. She had tried to write to her mother, but the effort made her vision swim, and the enormity of telling her mother she was in hospital was too much. Her mother needed her. It was wrong in every way for her to need her mother.
After her breakfast of milky porridge and lukewarm tea, Miss Scott got carefully out of bed and shuffled into her slippers and dressing gown and made for the smoking room. She had been visited by no one but the various policemen, and had no one to bring her cigarettes, and in any case had been told she was not to smoke. She couldn’t see why, really. What had smoking to do with a head injury? Reasoning that being among smokers would be almost as good, she went into the common room and found two people, only one of whom was smoking.
Sighing, she sat down near the window, crossed her legs, and looked out at the snowy landscape of trees lining the edge of the parking area, with Elephant Mountain, white and imperious, just visible behind them. She had no real idea how long she’d been in hospital. She wondered where Wendy Keeling was, and why she hadn’t come to visit, and then realized that of course she must be with the children at the school. She frowned. There was something about Wendy. She struggled to remember, felt a wave of panic, and then gave up. She looked at the other two people in the room: one an elderly man with flying tufts of white hair and days of unkempt beard growth around his moist mouth, and the other a woman who was feverishly puffing on a cigarette and turning the pages of a magazine. Life, Miss Scott saw, no doubt some old pawed-up issue. She picked up a copy of the Nelson Daily News lying beside her and looked at the date. So, it was close to Christmas. She felt a pang of anxiety. She should be home with her mother. She shouldn’t have to cope all alone with the work on the farm in the winter. She was about to put the paper down and go back to her room, when a headline caught her eye. “Hit and Run Victim Identified.” She read further and then stood convulsively, feeling suddenly as if her head would burst from the pressure, crying, “No, no, no, no!”
“CONSTABLE TERRELL? THIS is Dr. Edison at the hospital. I thought I’d better let you know that Miss Rose Scott has had another relapse and possible stroke, and I’m afraid she’s back with me upstairs.”
“Oh. I’m sorry. Is there any sense of what caused it? I mean, are you liable to have more strokes once you’ve had one?” Terrell asked. He pulled his notebook forward on his desk and wrote, “Miss Scott, stroke.”
“Not necessarily. However, between the head injury and a possible heart abnormality, there is plenty of possible cause. And though it is not popular to say so, there was some work done on smoking before the war in Germany that suggested smoking is bad for the heart and lungs, and Miss Scott is a smoker. We’ve kept her away from cigarettes to avoid the coughing, but she has been visiting the common room where you can count on there being lots of people smoking. That’s where we found her, in fact, clutching a copy of the Nelson Daily News. There’s a paper that doesn’t usually knock someone over, but there you are.”
Terrell was silent for a moment, writing. Had something been in the newspaper? “Would any sort of sudden shock cause her to have a stroke? I was wondering about the paper. Do you recall which day the paper was from?”
“I would have said no, but in fact the patient who raised the alarm said that she had been reading the paper and suddenly stood up crying out the word ‘no.’ Perhaps she had seen something. I’ll see if I can track down the paper. If we know of something that would give alarm, we’ll be able to keep it from her. She will be with me for the next while anyway and she’s having no disturbance, even a visit from you. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Dr. Edison, but if you could track down the date of the paper, that might be helpful. I’m afraid we have very little to go on just now, and something that alarmed her may be helpful. Perhaps she saw a picture of the man who attacked her, or something that might give us a lead.”
“Right you are. I’ll do a bit of sleuthing myself at this end and call you back.”