Death in a Darkening Mist Read online

  Lane was silent for a moment, considering her next theory. She did not want to derail the investigation by sending people on a wild goose chase, but she felt strongly enough that she finally spoke.

  “I think she might be Russian; I mean, that the picture was taken in the Soviet Union.”

  “Oh, why?” said Darling, opening his desk drawer to pull out the slender file on the case. He pulled the photo out and looked at it closely.

  “The clothes, I think. The pose. The expression, even. The blank background. It is like a picture for some sort of official document. A passport, or the identification documents all Soviet citizens carry.”

  “You saw such documents during the course of your war-time work?”

  “It was not my main occupation, no, but I was sometimes called in to provide a quick translation if their regular man was not available.”

  “I see. That opens up a whole new can of worms. What if he is a foreign national? His name could be assumed.”

  “What if he was hiding out here? He was certainly playing the long game if he was in his sixth year, at least at old man Barisoff’s farm,” said Ames, momentarily suspending his attack on a cinnamon bun.

  “I felt anxious about suggesting Marina might be Russian, because it sets you further back, and may open up speculation that would be costly and difficult to pursue and may be quite wrong.”

  Darling flipped through the few papers in the file. “If he assumed the name Strelieff—it does seem to be a common name in the Doukhobor community in Saskatchewan—then we don’t even have a name now. All we’ve got is Marina, and your theory, at this point, is as good as any, no matter how tiresome it proves to be.”

  Handing over the manila envelope she had assembled with the diary and her translations, Lane said, “I suppose you might as well put these in there as well.” As Darling went to insert the envelope behind the other papers, something caught Lane’s eye.

  “What is that?”

  A small envelope was taped to the back of the file with some notes.

  “It is the bullet that Gilly, our post-mortem man, found lodged in the collar bone of our victim. The shot was fairly high on the head, at an angle that caused the bullet to get stuck there instead of exiting. According to Gilly it was a fairly low-impact affair, or it would have done more damage, especially fired point-blank.” He pulled off the envelope and opened it to show the contents to Lane. “It seems fair, since you have a theory about the weapon, for you to have a look. Tell us what you think. It was likely fired from some sort of silenced gun, given that no one heard the noise. We’ve still got someone working to identify the gun.”

  “You know, I’ve had a bit of a think,” said Lane, “and I do know of at least one weapon that would do that.”

  Feeling a slight sinking of the spirits, Darling looked at her with studied neutrality. “I see. Can you explain, Miss Winslow?”

  Calculating the degree to which anything she might say would violate her promise to the British Government to keep its secrets, Lane sat silently for a moment, looking at her tea cup. Sighing, she said, “You understand, Inspector, that I may be limited in what I can say.”

  “I understand that you may wish to limit what you say, yes,” he said. “Are you able to help us or not?”

  Ames, who felt his admiration for Miss Winslow increasing with every demonstration of her sangfroid and seemingly dangerous knowledge, looked disapprovingly at Darling, especially as he saw his heroine look down with obvious unhappiness at the inspector’s suddenly cold tone. He took the envelope and handed it to her.

  Lane looked into it, reluctant to touch the small bullet inside in case of fingerprints or she knew not what. This bullet, she thought, killed someone, and yet it is, in itself, just a small, neutral piece of metal. She said, suddenly decided, “There is one weapon that fits the characteristics of this murder, together with its having been carried out in the manner of an assassination. My difficulty is that I cannot see how such a weapon would turn up here. It had very limited distribution in the secret service, and not many of them were made. It beggars belief that Barisoff’s son should have one.”

  “May I assume you were issued such a weapon?”

  “No. Yes. It was not given to me to use, if that’s what you are asking.”

  Hardly knowing what he was asking, and feeling that the ground between how she presented herself and her dark past had now become slippery and uncertain, he took a deep breath. He was only aware that it made him extremely unhappy, and a glance at Ames’s glowing admiration of this woman made him glummer. “Miss Winslow, since you seem to be determined to involve yourself in my work, let me clarify some procedural points for you. We do not decide which facts we might use based on some idea that they might be unlikely. The job is to lay out every fact as far as it can be known, however unlikely, and proceed from there. If you have information that can help us, and are withholding it, you might be liable to face charges of obstruction.”

  Standing, Lane said, “Even you, Inspector, cannot bully me out of my obligation to the Official Secrets Act. I assure you that the consequences to me from my previous employers would be far more grievous than some charge you could trump up. I am prepared to give you the name of a likely weapon and that is all, but it may help your ballistics man. Though given the nature and history of the gun, I am very possibly overstepping my bounds. May I?” She reached for the envelope with the bullet in it and wrote Welrod MkII. “I have obligations to my elderly neighbours now. Thank you for the tea.”

  Ames leaped up to open the door for her, for which she thanked him with exaggerated charm, and she was gone.

  “Good work, sir. It’s the second time she’s left here in that mood. You seem to have a real way with her.”

  “Shut up, Ames, and I’ll thank you not to make personal remarks.”

  “Sir.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  LANE LOOKED AT THE LEATHER-STRUNG snowshoes Mabel Hughes held out to her. “Are you sure?” she asked. It was the next morning, and Lane had gone to look at the snowshoes she’d been offered.

  “Goodness me, yes!” said Mabel. “They’ve been hanging in the woodshed for years, since poor old Adam from up at the cabin died. When was that, Mother, ’24 or ’25? His city nephew didn’t want them and gave them to us. We never use them. Boots always seem to be enough for our winters.”

  “Not another word,” boomed Gladys. “Girls, more tea for our guest.” The work of the orchard and the extensive gardens had rendered the features of the Hughes women rugged, and their greying hair, pulled back into buns from another era, made the daughters seem closer to their mother’s age than their own.

  The Hughes kitchen, far from having the desolate air one might expect of a house inhabited by a widow and two elderly spinsters, exuded warmth and comfort. Like most of the residents of King’s Cove, besides herself and the upstart “Yanks” the Bertollis, the Hughes had never moved away from their wood-burning range, which kept the kitchen warm—and, she suspected, most of the rooms on the ground floor of the rambling house. They took their tea and breakfast at the ancient pine table, and looked out across the snow-covered garden through a bank of windows that stretched the whole length of the kitchen. Pots hung by the range, and plates were stacked in the open cupboards along the back wall. Two cocker spaniels decorously pretended sleep at their feet, and a tabby expressed his disdain for their begging behaviour by ignoring them all from his place on a well-worn pillow on the lid of the wood box by the door.

  Lane came often to buy eggs, and she had never been in the house when it didn’t smell luxuriously of baking. In spite of the pioneering look of the kitchen, Lane preferred it to the formal dining room next door where they’d had their Sunday lunch, with its massive dark Victorian oak table and eight chairs, Turkish carpets, and a sideboard that would not shame a lord. The contrast spoke to the origins of the older residents of King’s Cove; some had come from genteel families, like the Hughes and the Armstrongs, and even the
Mathers, who lived up the road from her, had some pretensions, though Reg Mather had been a remittance man who had somehow blotted his copy-book in the old country and been banished to the dominion.

  She envied the Hughes. They had each other. Like the Austen girls, Jane and Cassandra, with their widowed mother, living respectable lives of acceptance. She knew that Gwen had been unlucky in early expectations of love and marriage. Her hopes had died along with Kenny Armstrong’s brother, John, at the Somme. Lane looked at Gwen now, and wondered if there was still some corner of her that mourned, some secret place she guarded so that she might never forget that once she had been young and in love. Or had she managed to expunge it completely after so many years, as if it had never happened? Lane’s own corner of blighted hope grew sometimes like a deadly flower at night, when she lay unprotected from the long hours of sleeplessness. The loss of the money from John’s legacy must be coloured by Gwen’s memories of him, she thought.

  “Do you know how to put them on?” Gwen asked her, nodding at the snowshoes. “The leather cords are a little stiff. I’d wash them with some sort of soap to soften them and then apply some boot grease. That should do it. And you’re in luck. It smelled of a new snowfall this morning.”

  “I’d best get off, then, whilst the path is still manageable.”

  Gwen walked her to the top of the path. “Thank you for not mentioning anything,” she said. “About the money, I mean.”

  Lane considered whether it would be prudent to tell her of Miss Peabody’s troubles. Yes, she decided. It would stop her from doubting herself.

  “There is at least one other person who has noticed money missing from an account at the bank. The vicar told me yesterday. He is going in to see Featherstone today. I didn’t name you, but I told him that there was another person in the same difficulty. I’m sure he’ll get to the bottom of it. But, you see? You didn’t make the mistake.”

  “Thank you. Goodness. I feel so much better. I hardly slept a wink last night. I thought you must think me so foolish.”

  “Not a bit of it. Let’s see what miracles the vicar can work.”

  Lane took the path, now nicely flattened by the coming and going of the Hughes ladies, that led down the hill to the back of the Armstrongs’ garden and then across to her house. The hell with policemen, she thought. She cast aside the fact that she still stung from Darling’s treatment of her over the gun and the Official Secrets Act. I’ve my snowshoes, a new snowfall, and the comfort of good friends. I have enough money from my grandmother to live modestly, and I have my writing. A pox on the police. She pushed the door into the house and felt its quiet, soothing emptiness. Light poured partway down the darkened hall from the sitting room windows that looked out onto the lake. Would hers be the cosy retreat of a spinster in thirty years, with that soft, lived-in, baked-in feeling of the Hughes’ and the Armstrongs’? Or would it always be filled with this beautiful, quiet, sharp-angled light, with its sorrows and joys as keen as they were now?

  THE SNOW CAME that night, as Gwen had foreseen, leaving in its wake a sunny morning and gentle drifts between her and anywhere else. It was Tuesday. Perhaps a visit to Angela should be her maiden trip by snowshoe. David would have left for his snowy drive into town to teach at the local high school, the children delivered to their school in Balfour. By the time she fetched up on Angela’s front porch she would be exhausted and ready for coffee. Angela, she thought happily, was never short of something good to eat, what with all those boys. Lane donned her thick wool trousers, tucking them into a double pair of socks, and laced up her boots. Tying her hair back with a scarf, she pulled on a knitted hat and finished the costume off with two pullovers and her plaid jacket.

  Her sense of adventure was increased because she chose the path through the forest and across a meadow, rather than risk being seen on the road stumbling about incompetently, though Lord knew, there was little traffic. The only person who drove anywhere daily was Dave Bertolli, and he took the back road that made up the square of roadway connecting the various families at King’s Cove. The forest path had not seen use at all during the recent snow, and while she was delighted that the snowshoes allowed her to effectively ride along the top of the snow, it was a new and awkward form of transport for her, and by the time she reached the meadow, which was just a hundred yards from the driveway leading to the palatial Bertolli log cabin, she was exhausted from the exaggerated lifting of her legs with each step.

  She stopped and breathed in the cold snow air, her head hot from the exertions. The snow formed banks and waves like a captured sea, and the sun made deep indigo pools of shadow around the base of each of the few spruce trees along the meadow’s edge. She took off her hat, relishing the cold. A sudden burst of barking shattered the silence. The Bertolli dogs must already sense her approach. With her mittens and hat stuffed into her pockets, she made the last hundred yards, experimenting with walking more normally, and was delighted to find she could make even better time and exhaust herself less into the bargain.

  Angela burst out of the kitchen door at Lane’s knock, yelling, “Shut up, will you?” as she always did. “How lovely to see you! Come in. I’ve just finished a load of washing and I need a break. I’m so glad we got a proper machine or you’d have found me out in the barn hand-rolling the sheets through the roller! Thank God for electricity. It takes a fraction of the time. I’ve got the old one out there. I’m trying to think of a proper use for it.”

  “I have an electric mangle,” Lane said as she unbuckled her snowshoes and leaned them against the wall with a sigh of relief. “In fact I’ve got my laundry hanging over my kitchen now.” Lane had done a small load of laundry the day before and strung it up on the pull-down drying rack in her kitchen.

  Angela whooshed her inside.

  “I must say you’ve gone native. You look the quintessential cliché of a Canadian in that get up. Come in, come in! Go away.” The dogs had gone from barking to wagging and nuzzling.

  “IT’S QUITE FUN,” Lane explained over their coffee in the sitting room. “I plan to explore the area. Get to the trapper’s cabin that I heard is up past the top of this road.”

  “I thought you were busy doing things for that good-looking inspector.”

  Ignoring the suggestive tone Angela had adopted, Lane said, “No. All done. But I’ve come away with a new respect for poor Constable Ames; he must be treated abominably by that insufferable man.”

  “He didn’t seem particularly cowed when he was here. Quite cheerful in fact. I sense a falling-out. What happened?”

  Reviewing the situation, Lane felt, on the whole, that there was little of it that could be revealed without compromising either the investigation or the tyranny of the Official Secrets Act. “Nothing. He’s just a bit of a bully. Anyway, I’m well out of it. What’s been happening up in your neck of the woods. I love being able to say that!”

  “Now who’s being insufferable? You never tell me anything. But I can read between the lines, you know. Methinks . . .”

  Lane put up her hand. “No, no, no. Don’t say the rest of it. I protest the exact right amount, I assure you, and while I know it’s hard to find things to think about out here in the wilds, inventing romances for your friends is not advisable. I’ve been in love before, and I will not do it again.”

  Only mildly chastened, Angela said, “Well, perhaps one day you will tell me about that.”

  “Perhaps I will.” She would too, she thought, one day.

  “In any case, there’s that gorgeous Charles Andrews. He’s much nicer, and much better-looking. When will you see him again?”

  “Angela, for God’s sake,” was all Lane said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  HIRO WAKADA DROVE HIS PICKUP down the logging road into New Denver. The road was newly covered, but the layer of snow actually gave him some traction. He was an idiot, he thought, not to put the chains on, but if the traction held he should get to the general store in one piece. Barnes, the storekeeper, looked up
when he came into the shop.

  “Well, look what the snow dragged in. I haven’t seen you for ages. How’re things up by you?” Barnes got up with a grunt from his wooden chair by the stove. He went to the part of the counter where he kept the mail and began sorting through it.

  “Snowy. I thought I’d just stay up there till we ran out of stuff. But I’m expecting my boy back in a couple of days from Alberta for the winter break. The missus isn’t that taken with the idea of running out of food. What’s up around here?”

  “We’ve had the police out. Saturday, it was. Something to do with Barisoff. I can’t see him getting up to no good. I’ve asked him, but he’s not talking. Haven’t seen that neighbour of his for a while either. I think something has happened to him.”

  “What do you mean, ‘happened to him’? Wouldn’t Barisoff have told you if something had?”

  “Not him. As silent as the grave, he is. But you mark my words.” Barnes handed Wakada a small stack of mail. “You’ve got a couple of things from the coast and some papers. What else do you need?”

  Hiro Wakada had wanted to study law in the 1920s, but the prohibitions against Asians made it impossible for him to get into law school at the University of British Columbia and so he’d opened a small restaurant instead. He’d lost everything when the Japanese had been moved into the camp at New Denver. The early years had been especially hard, but somehow they’d found ways to make a home out of an impossible situation. They set up a school for the children, improved their cruelly austere lodgings, created a community with leaders and sports teams. He had decided to stay on in the New Denver area and farm after the war, a decision that, surprisingly, had pleased his wife. He still liked to read up on the law, and he couldn’t help musing about whether Barisoff might need some legal advice. Lord knew Barisoff and his people hadn’t had the easiest time of it either. It gave them something in common. He stowed the supplies his wife wanted and lumbered back out on to the road. He would stop by and see Barisoff and Strelieff. He hadn’t seen them for a few weeks.