A Killer in King's Cove Read online

  “Hi, yourself. Lane Winslow. I think Kenny told me you live up the hill toward the east. I’m barely getting a sense of the layout. I can’t believe three years would qualify you as a new person. I’ve only been here a minute!”

  “Oh my dear, you have no idea. Though I think people will take to you quicker, being English and all. We Yanks don’t rate very highly, and our last name’s Bertolli. American Italians. We might as well be from Mars.”

  “How do you find yourself here? It seems very far away from anywhere, really.”

  “I’m a composer and I’ve come out to write, as a matter of fact. I got sick of the rat race in New York, and my old man the shopkeeper died and left me with a bundle and instructions to keep the business going. I figured he wouldn’t care where he is now, so I sold up to my brother and came out to the quietest place I could find. We got an old log cabin and have added on to it and stuck a grand piano in it and it’s as dandy is it can be. The boys love the country life, and Angela has been doing okay. She’s a painter, though it’s hard to get much done with that bunch. She’s ecstatic to have a friend younger than sixty!”

  “Here, Bertolli, make room for the rest of us!” This exhortation came from a man in his early thirties, who smoothed his straw-blond hair back as he approached Lane. Dave stepped out of the way, his mouth betraying the slightest grimace, and turned to look over the cake tray. Lane took a hasty bite of her cucumber sandwich, as she saw that she might be pinned in this chair for the foreseeable future, her tea getting cold and her food untouched. She had also caught sight of the cake tray, feeling a flicker of concern about the depredations that the Bertolli family as a whole seemed intent on making upon it.

  “Sandy Mather, son of the household of the same name. Mater is over there and, between us, is on the eccentric side, and the pater is outside scowling at the way Armstrong has pruned his apple trees, no doubt. How do?” He too, like David Bertolli before him, put out his hand for her to shake. Any resemblance, however, ended here. His hand had a slightly damp feel that instantly caused her to recoil, in spite of its firm grip, and his face seemed to her to loom much too close to hers.

  “How do you do?” she asked formally, extricating her hand as quickly as possible. She glanced almost unconsciously toward Mrs. Mather, who was holding forth to a woman with grey hair rolled along the nape of her neck in a style that pre-dated the first war. Seeing the woman’s hairdo and even this almost old-fashioned tea made Lane think of the ex-pat British community she’d grown up in. That phenomenon of time stopping for émigrés, while England moved on and was nearly unrecognizable, had overwhelmed her grandmother when she’d had to move to England from Riga in the early months of the war. Lane brought her eyes back to the son. “I do very well, especially now. We haven’t had a pretty woman here in an age. Absolutely everyone is over fifty. I’ve been withering here, socially speaking.”

  He gave her an ingratiating smile, which caused some inner voice in her to say, Oh dear. She smiled politely and then looked quickly down, feeling more trapped than ever.

  “Lane, my dear, please come and let me introduce you to the vicar. Would you mind letting her go for just a moment, Sandy? There, thank you so much.” Eleanor had Lane by the hand, somehow miraculously insinuating a plate with a delicious-looking bit of walnut cake into it, and was leading her down the steps toward the garden where two men were standing with their hands behind their backs in unconscious imitation of one another, looking up at a tree. The afternoon was warm wherever the sun fell, and the leaves that had been a suggestion when she had first driven up the hill from the Nelson road in April with the house agent were well on their way to fully clothing their parent trees on this lovely mid-June day.

  “Thank you,” Lane said to her in a stage whisper before she turned her face brightly to the two men. One she knew was Mather, the other, she assumed, must be the vicar. This proved to be the case and now, not trapped in a chair and having consumed all but the crumbs on the tips of her fingers of the excellent cake, she gave herself with restored equanimity to the task at hand. The vicar proved to be charming and extremely well versed in just about everything. He came originally from Kent, though he had left it as a young man twenty years ago just after his ordination. “Anxious to convert the Canadian heathens!” he laughed. “Do you know Reg Mather?”

  “Yes, he’s one of the people I do know. We met in the post office here. How are you, Reginald? Your son tells me you are an expert on pruning.”

  “Oh, I used to toil in the apple orchard like everyone else. I’m hoping to diversify. You know, one thing or another. How are you getting along?” He smiled at her in a pleasant, avuncular way that made her think about how different a father and a son could be. The father, a man in his mid-sixties she estimated, clearly had at one time been a good-looking man. Tall and straight with a bearing that suggested an innate sense of superiority. His hair, thick and just starting to speckle toward grey, was, in a reflection of his personality, the aggressive opposite of his son’s thin, fair hair, and made him still a striking specimen. Lane could not shake the feeling, however, that he too was turning his charm on her and seemed intent on managing her in some way. Perhaps father and son had something in common after all.

  “I’m getting along fine, thank you. I’ve settled in and am just keeping an eye on what is coming up in the flowerbeds. Mostly weeds I fear at the moment; it’s been five years since Lady Armstrong died. Kenny, I think, has had a hand in keeping the orchard shipshape. I don’t know how he does it all!”

  “Oh, I think you’ll find us like pioneers, Miss Winslow. A strong breed of man grows up out in the British Columbian climate. Some a damn sight too strong for their own good.” This observation was delivered suddenly and darkly at the sight of another figure coming off the stairs and into the garden.

  Lane couldn’t resist asking. “Who is that? I’ve seen him sort of at a distance once or twice in an orchard adjacent to my place.”

  “Robin Harris. An unpleasant and taciturn member of this otherwise excellent community. Shell shock, don’t you know. I think you will find him a tiresome neighbour, should he ever take a dislike to anything you do. My advice is to avoid crossing his land, gumming up his creek, or otherwise bothering him and you should be fine. I can’t think what induced him to come to this. He never sticks his head into the church, so it’s certainly not for the vicar. Eleanor must have a remarkable hold on him to get him through that barbed wire fence and into the light of day!”

  In any event, the mystery of how Eleanor had gotten Harris off his property and out to a tea, which beverage he didn’t touch, was solved by Harris himself when he was introduced to her by Kenny.

  “Came to see who you were,” he said, his hands thrust into the pockets of a decidedly informal pair of overalls. He wore an expression that Lane would have described as “lowering” except that this was something you’d do when you were angry and clearly his face was set in this growly expression all the time.

  Moved by what pain might be encompassed in the term “shell shocked,” she put out her hand, saying, “How do you do?” and was obliged to take it back again when he made no move to remove his hands from his pockets.

  “You planning to work the orchard?” was his next query.

  He could, she decided, be fifty but he looked, perhaps because of his demeanour, closer to sixty. Like nearly everyone she had met, he had a still-discernible trace of an English accent, as though they had all come here as children.

  “I’m not terribly sure. At the moment, I’m just getting my bearings. It’s been beautifully kept up though,” Lane said, taken aback by the question. In truth, she did not see herself in coveralls with pruning shears but perhaps, between writing books . . .

  “Oh, do leave her alone, Harris,” came the sudden voice of Sandy Mather. He took her by the elbow and steered her away, toward the newly dug vegetable bed. “He’s a dreadful old bore,” he confided to her. “I felt I was well on my way to finding out what a be
autiful young woman is doing burying herself out in this godforsaken place when you were whisked from me.”

  Lane considered whether the young bore was a good exchange for the old one and tried to decide how to tell him as little as possible about herself, as she was convinced that any information would be unsafe with him. “I’m just seeing how I like it out in Canada,” she managed, and then, “I do beg your pardon. I’m just going to help Eleanor.” She was sorry to invent this excuse but she didn’t think she could bear another moment of being pounced on. Taking refuge in the kitchen, she said to Eleanor, “What a lovely tea! It’s like the great pre-war teas of my childhood. What can I do?”

  Eleanor laughed. “You mean, whom should you try to stick close to? Tired of the Mathers? Let me recommend the Hughes, mère et filles. They are harmless and wonderful gardeners. They’re over there by the lilac.” She pointed to a trio of women presided over by the older woman with whom Mrs. Mather had been talking earlier. The chair vacated by Mrs. Mather now beckoned invitingly.

  After a much more pleasant interlude with another piece of cake, chocolate this time, and the blameless Hughes, Lane finally made her apologies to Eleanor and was relieved to see that gathered at the front door, also ready to leave, were the Bertollis, whose children had probably reached their limit of exhibiting the behaviour required for one of these formal English teas.

  Angela Bertolli turned on Lane with a great warm smile. “My dear Lane. Follow the road up, take a right at the Mathers’ imposing stone abode and turn in at the second drive about half a mile along. It is a lovely walk, and I will give you lunch one day soon. I must get to know you without the throng. Agreed?” Lane was delighted to accept this abrupt invitation, and, with a wave, walked the path back to her quiet house.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT WAS A FEW DAYS later, after having breakfasted and tidied up, that Lane was trying to decide if she should finally sit down in front of her typewriter and really give some serious consideration to beginning a literary career, or if she should gird up her loins and go into her barn, something she’d avoided thus far, fearing she knew not what. Rodents, she supposed. Standing at her door, she gazed at her bedraggled pond under the weeping willow. It wasn’t that she hadn’t been writing at all. Her notebook was beside her bed, with a pen and a bottle of ink. That night, she’d had a bad dream in which a bomb had exploded right by her and she knew she was going to die. She had woken petrified and scarcely able to move. There was a grey light coming in the window and she saw that it was four in the morning. Blearily she had reached out for the light, switched it on and had taken up her notebook and pen, holding them on her chest as if still trying to recover her aplomb.

  We dropped like ashes out of the night

  to settle some secret list of scores

  but how we longed for our enemies to take flight

  and we to return to the sunlit shores

  She often scribbled small poems into the pages of her leather-bound book. It distressed her to fill the pages with what she feared was drivel, and unconnected drivel at that, but she knew that writing anything was better than writing nothing. She’d imagined she would write books about love and war but she found she was too close to it and everything sounded wrong. Only her dreams seemed true to her, as illogical and dark as they were, if she tried to remember them. Having written these words, she put the book aside and said determinedly to herself, “I’m going back to sleep.” In the dark, the blankets pulled up around her ears, she did indeed sleep.

  The morning streaming through the curtains was so lovely, like the mornings of her childhood—fresh, clean, full of promise—that she decided against the still-unexplored barn just so she could be outside. She would evaluate what it would take to bring her pond back. She went outside and picked her way through the unmowed grass. She was just leaning over the pond to assess its condition when Sandy Mather stepped out from behind the willow, nearly stopping her heart.

  “Sorry, Miss Winslow. I was just coming back from the post and thought I’d stop in and see how you were.” He was wearing a short-sleeved summer shirt and a well-pressed pair of tan trousers.

  Certainly not dressed for any sort of agrarian work, she thought uncomfortably, and he now was standing with his hands in his pockets, somehow managing to look unsure.

  Blast, she thought. He must have been hovering there trying to decide if he should come knock. I shall have to invite him in, I suppose, and then wondered if she could get away with saying she was just off to the post herself.

  “I’m just off to the post office myself now, actually. But I’m fine, really. It’s very kind of you to ask.” For some reason she had trouble looking into his face. Instinctively she worried that it would give him ideas. He had come on strongly at the tea and she’d been pleasantly surprised not to have had to deal with him in the intervening days, though she’d seen him twice at the post office.

  “Oh, well, that’s all right. I’ll walk you over there.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes. She had absolutely no idea what to say to him that she could trust would not be some sort of encouragement. “Your mother is well?” she asked, and then immediately regretted it. Eleanor had said it was more or less hush-hush that Mrs. Mather had “spells.” Now what? So much for her devotion to secrecy.

  Sandy coloured. “You’ve heard then, I suppose. Who hasn’t? It’s not something easy to hide is it, your mother being mad.”

  Lane stopped, appalled. “Oh, I am sorry Sandy, I didn’t mean . . .”

  “No, it’s quite all right. Everyone around here pretends that’s she’s just ‘eccentric.’ Even I do. It’s ridiculous, truth be told. I knew you weren’t just asking after her health. You’ve heard something. That’s it, really, isn’t it? Everyone pretends to your face, but talks behind your back.” Sandy stood on the path with his hands still in his pockets, looking down. Lane was wordless. She felt she ought to put a consoling hand on his arm, but could not. Well, it was out now.

  “Sandy, I am really sorry. It’s really none of my business. It must be very difficult for you. I, I . . . really didn’t know.”

  “No, of course you didn’t. It’s what you heard, though, isn’t it? That she’s mad. I’ve heard the name, ‘Mad Mather.’ You can’t keep any secrets, even in a place like this where everyone lives a mile away from everyone else. If you must know, she’s not actually mad, in the way most people understand. Not crazy. She just gets these terrible moods and she becomes paranoid and angry. Other times she’s brilliant. I mean that literally, brilliant, clever, funny, she talks a mile a minute. It’s not so bad now, honestly. It was hard growing up. Between Dad thinking I was a total waste of time and her being peculiar, the only relief I had was going away to school in Vancouver.”

  Lane looked at him and tried for something like sympathy. She did feel sorry for him. All that bravado and annoying male behaviour was covering up this ongoing misery. “Why did you come back from Vancouver? Did you study for a career there?”

  He barked an ironic laugh. “You might well ask! I did study for a career. I studied agriculture. I got out of having to enlist just at first on that basis and then I signed up when I’d done my degree. Things didn’t quite work out and I was obliged to leave after training, so I never went overseas, for which the pater has never forgiven me. He disowned me for that, you know. He thought I’d done something dishonourable—that I was a coward! Such a funny attitude for a man who didn’t serve a day in his war! I was getting the bloody degree to help him, there’s the irony! I came back to help him set up a mill for producing board feet of lumber for the war effort; Mum’s idea, by the way, and he completely botched the whole thing. So here I am, no prospects and a useless degree. I should leave. I’ve been planning it.” These last words were said in a slightly defiant tone, his chin lifted. “There, I’m being boring, aren’t I? Let’s get you off to the post office. I’ll drop you at the roadway and get back to the madhouse.”

  They crossed the brid
ge and he bowed slightly, smiling into her eyes. “Thanks for listening. Sorry about the outburst. I hope you will allow me to make it up to you. I could take you fishing on the lake. I have a lovely little boat. What do you say?”

  Lane smiled back at him, still feeling an internal struggle. “That might be nice. Thank you.” With a sinking heart she turned off to her little bridge and wondered what she had agreed to. Perhaps he would forget the offer.

  THE BUCOLIC ATMOSPHERE of her new community was somewhat shaken a few days later. Lane was pleased to find herself invited to proper lunch with Angela and David Bertolli and their wild brood. She put on a flowered dress that she had bought in France just after the war. It was, one had to admit, outdated now but had been a very expensive dress in the thirties and it had been refurbished by an enterprising French seamstress. She had loved it on sight and its golden calla lilies and blue-hued background set off her dark hair to perfection. Aside from going to church she’d hardly had an opportunity to dress up. Though there was only the lightest breeze, she slipped a yellow cardigan over her shoulders and lifted her foot onto the kitchen chair to tie on her espadrilles. She went into her bedroom to tilt herself slightly before her vanity mirror to try to see the total effect. Her hair hung loose to her shoulders and swung over her eyes as she bent over. Seeing herself in the dress produced a pang of missing Yvonne. They had been together, laughing in delight at the good fortune of finding the dress and Yvonne had told her of plans to hold a party and invite “some people” for Lane to meet. A man was what she meant. But Lane had left France before this party ever materialized. A good thing, she thought. She was unsuitable as a companion for any man at this point.

  Now she was at King’s Cove where there was hardly any danger of men, only Angela’s rambunctious children. Lane left her house and stood for a moment on the porch with her key in her hand, then turned away from the door with a smile. She would not have to lock her house here. She dropped the key into the pocket of her cardigan, wondering at her own deep momentary sense of contentment. The sun, she thought, the green, must scrub and filter away the darkness, as if her fearsome nights belonged to someone else. When she reached the crossroads she saw that there was a path heading into the forest that looked to be going in a direct line to the Bertollis’. Angela had told her about this path. She would take it today, she decided, and, parting the bushy fronds of fern that had grown over the beginning of the path, walked into the muted and dappled light of the forest.