Death in a Darkening Mist Read online

  “Thank you, Mr. Barisoff,” said Darling. “Will you tell me everything you can about this afternoon? If I have questions, I will interrupt you as we go.”

  With suitable pauses for translation, Barisoff spoke. “It was no different from usual. We came here to swim and relax; the hot water helps my arthritis. We usually go in the pool for a bit, then we go sit in the caves. It is hotter there. He left before I did from the caves. I told him I would be ten minutes and would meet him at the entrance. It was maybe ten minutes, and I went to get dressed and I found him, like that.”

  “What did you think when you saw him?”

  “That he had a heart attack, obviously. No one expects to find an acquaintance shot in the head. But when I kneeled down to see what I could do, to see if he was alive, I saw the blood. I thought he’d hit his head when he’d collapsed, but when I looked . . .”

  “And what did you do then?”

  “I ran for help, of course. I was upset and could not think how to call in English, and luckily this lady was there. I can’t remember if I showed her where he was or I just went inside. I was shaking.”

  “Was Mr. Strelieff a relative of yours?”

  “No, he is not. He lives in a small cabin on my property. Our houses are close to each other. He came to live there after 1940 from Saskatchewan. We became acquainted because my son and I helped him with his farm. He had no one.”

  “So he has no next of kin here?”

  “None that I have seen. He didn’t tell me much, and I don’t ask. He was a good man, and he helped me as much as I helped him. He worked hard. He came to my house, we shared bread and soup. What more do we need to know?”

  “Do you know if he left family behind in Saskatchewan?”

  “I do not know anything. Can you not make this clear to him?” he said, appealing to Lane.

  Darling sat back and sighed. “I can’t tell if this man is telling the truth. Strelieff has been living, by his reckoning, in the community for nearly six years. If they are back and forth to each other’s houses as much as he suggests, he must know something about him.”

  Barisoff glowered and turned to Lane angrily, “It is a sin to lie. You tell him that! No Doukhobor would lie.”

  “He says it is a sin to lie, that they do not lie. He obviously understands English quite well,” Lane added as an afterthought, looking pointedly at Darling.

  “Do you know, at least, if anyone ever came to see him? Does he have enemies? Did someone phone him? I’m trying, you see, Mr. Barisoff, to ascertain why someone would shoot him. Someone who knew him and followed you here today.” Darling sounded frustrated.

  “I never saw anybody come to see him, and he did not have a telephone. None of us do. We don’t need any telephone. If we want to talk, we go see someone. He was a good man. What enemy could he have?”

  “Well,” said Darling, “someone shot him. Someone must not have liked him. Unless it was you?” He knew as he said this that it would not be well received, and he could see that Lane thought the same thing, as she hesitated to translate. On the whole he believed the man. He knew there were strict beliefs in the Doukhobor community about truthfulness, and unlike some of his colleagues in other districts, he’d believed what he was told on the few occasions he’d had to interview Doukhobors.

  “The policeman has asked what he must ask,” Lane was saying. “He says that even if the man appeared to have no enemies, someone did shoot him. He asks, because he must, if it was you?”

  Barisoff made a dismissive noise. “Here.” He stood and flung off his jacket, holding it up, and then pulled his pockets inside out. “He can look for my gun. Here is my bag. See if you can see it. I’ve never shot a gun in my life. We do not even kill animals to eat, let alone shoot our neighbours. Can I go now?”

  Lane translated this and was asked to get information about how Barisoff could be reached. Lane got instructions for finding the farm, which Ames wrote into his notes, and Barisoff rose to go. He had a cloth bag, which he pulled open and emptied, dropping his towel, his damp swimming suit, and an extra scarf on the floor one by one. “See?” he said. “See . . . nothing!”

  “Mr. Barisoff. Is there any chance this act was intended for you?” inquired Darling.

  “Please, tell him, please. If someone wanted to shoot me they could do it any time. I do not hide. As it is, no one wants to shoot me, except possibly some members of the government. You can tell him that too!”

  With that Barisoff left the residence. In the moment of silence that followed his departure, Lane wondered at the fact that he did not slam the door. I might have in his position, she thought.

  “Miss Wycliff had better know what really happened. I’m sure she is already put out that we have not allowed her to go into the men’s change room, because of the blood in the cubicle, but it will need to be cleaned up,” Darling said. “In the meantime we might as well hear from you, Miss Winslow. How much of any of this were you around for?”

  “I was in the tunnel, inside the caves, when Strelieff said he was going to change. I was surprised, you see, to suddenly hear Russian being spoken, especially out of the dark of that tunnel. Have you been in there?”

  “I have not,” he said austerely. “And then?”

  “You should try it. It’s quite relaxing.” Darling made no response to this. “Mr. Barisoff replied from the front of the other tunnel entrance that he would be a further ten minutes, and said he would meet Strelieff, as he himself said, at the entrance. I really didn’t see anything else until I heard him calling for help.”

  “You didn’t see Mr. Barisoff leave the tunnel?”

  “No. Angela and I were sitting on the little shelf with our backs to the pool shortly after that.”

  “Where was she prior to this?”

  “She was in the pool with her boys. When she felt they were safe, she came along to the tunnel.”

  “She could have seen our guy go into the dressing room, if he used the front door,” Ames observed.

  “I hadn’t thought of that. Of course. I was so worried about getting Angela and the boys out of here and back to the Cove before the snow got really bad on the road. It didn’t occur to me to ask her. In any case she was worried about how I was going to get home when I told her I’d better stay.”

  Darling looked at her quizzically. “And how did you tell her you were getting home?”

  “I rather said I could catch a ride back with you. I hope you don’t mind. It is on your way.”

  “It will be no trouble at all!” Ames said enthusiastically. “Will it, sir?”

  His answer was lost in the banging of snow-laden boots on the mat outside the door and Betty coming in. “Will I be able to get into the other change room any time soon?” she asked. “The snow is letting up, but it’s covered everything. You ought to be back on the road soon or you won’t get through. Not that I want you out of here! You’re welcome to stay as long as you like. I reckon I can scare up a couple of cans of beans and some bread for our supper.”

  “No, no, Miss Wycliff. That won’t be necessary. But we do need to ask a couple of questions. Will you sit down?”

  Puzzled, she took off her jacket, sat at the space that Lane had vacated, and waited expectantly. “It’s Mrs. Wycliff, by the way. Lost the Mr. just before the war. Heart attack. That’s why I feel so anxious for these fellows. They aren’t as young as they used to be!”

  “I’m afraid this isn’t quite the situation you might first have believed it to be, and I’m hoping that you might be able to help us. The fact is, Mr. Strelieff died of a gunshot wound. There is no evidence that anyone else was meant to be harmed. It looks like someone came here with the purpose of shooting him, and only him.” This he said in an attempt to allay the fears of Mrs. Wycliff, who had gone pale and very still. “We think we have identified how the individual got away from here without being seen, but what we are wondering is, did anyone see him coming in? From your vantage point, did you see any individual come past the
pay window, perhaps just looking like someone who wanted to have a quick look.”

  “God almighty!” she gasped. “Shot! I can’t believe it! That means there’s . . . blood in the change room? Who would come to my damn pool to shoot someone?”

  “That’s what we’d like to find out. We know how he got out, but how did he get in? How did he walk into the change room without anyone seeing him?”

  “Well, don’t look at me! I didn’t see him! I was inside, minding my own business. I only go to the window when someone knocks on it. Wait, wait . . .” She put her head down and clutched at her forehead. “I’m just trying to think . . . Did I hear footsteps going down or up? What time was this?”

  “The closest we can get is around one, maybe just before,” Darling replied, content to let her go through whatever process she was using to dredge up her memory of the afternoon.

  “One. I would say I’d have been having my lunch. I might have heard some footsteps then, but if no one stopped at the window, I’d have assumed they were just leaving. I didn’t pay attention to whether they were going up the stairs or down.”

  “Is it possible they could have gone the whole length of the boardwalk, past the change rooms to the end?”

  “It’s possible, I suppose. I just don’t remember. Like I say, I don’t pay attention unless someone bangs on that window. Why didn’t I hear a shot?”

  “No one seems to have heard it,” Darling mused. A silencer? “Mrs. Wycliff, there is certainly some blood on the floor and the wall of the cubicle. If you want, we can send someone out tomorrow to give it a clean. Would you be willing to shut the place down for the day?”

  “The Ruskies will kill me. They are my biggest patrons in the winter. Why not leave it to me? I’ll hose it down and throw some bleach on it.”

  This made Darling think of another question. “Did Barisoff and his friend Strelieff come here often?”

  Mrs. Wycliff shrugged. “Barisoff has been coming here for years. The other fellow only started coming a couple of years ago. They usually come on a Thursday. He seems different from the rest of them. Seemed, I mean. Jesus, I still can’t believe it!”

  “Different, how?” Darling asked.

  “I don’t know. He just wasn’t like them. Not so hefty, for a start. That’s the first thing I recall about him; how thin he was. He looked like he’d been ill or something. He’s certainly not as bad these days as he was. He usually just goes on his own to the tunnel, doesn’t hang about when the others are in the pool. And I’ve seen him smoke. Now that’s something, because those people don’t smoke, but I’ve seen him go down to the parking area more than once and have a smoke. Now that I think of it, out of sight of the others.”

  “Most people do smoke, do they not?”

  “Yes, but not those folks. They don’t do a lot of things, as I understand it. A lot of people don’t like them, but I don’t mind them. They come here pretty often from farms all around here, sometimes all the way from the other side of Nelson. Always been very polite to me.”

  As Lane listened, trying to be unobtrusive by the stove, she put off her anxiety about the trip back along that terrifying road, in the dark, after a major snowfall, with the irrepressible Ames at the wheel, by thinking about this group of people she’d never heard of before. The list of evident prohibitions suggested to her a religious group of some sort. She remembered from her childhood that Russia had more than one such sect. Had they come to Canada to avoid persecution? From the little she had heard she thought that they had not entirely succeeded, and resolved to ask Darling all he knew about them. Barisoff’s behaviour suggested he must have run across the law in the past.

  She turned as she heard Darling making thank-you-and-goodbye noises and, stilling the sudden upsurge of anxiety, went about putting on her jacket and collecting her things. Ames was stowing his notebook into the leather bag with the camera and shrugging into his grey coat, and Darling was asking Betty Wycliff if she felt all right about staying after they had all left.

  “I’m perfectly fine, Inspector. I’ll lock this door and make sure the latches are on the windows. But if you think whoever it is went away, I can’t see them coming back here in the middle of a snowstorm to finish off a middle-aged lady no one’s ever heard of.” Lane wondered if she was putting a brave face on things, but there was something determined in her delivery that suggested she meant it. The pioneering spirit, Lane thought, a little enviously. In Betty’s shoes she wasn’t so sure she’d be as plucky in the face of a mysterious assassin.

  The snow crunched under their boots as they descended to the parking area. The cascades of it had let up somewhat, but there was an accumulation of a good two or three inches of dry, powdery snow across everything, including the car. Though it was dark, the snow seemed to cast a pale light of its own. Darling opened the front passenger door for her, and she hesitated. “I’m quite happy to ride in the back. I’m being an infernal nuisance as it is.”

  “If by infernal nuisance you mean giving up your afternoon to help out the police with your Russian skills when you could be home in front of your own Franklin stove about to dig into an omelette and a glass of wine, then yes, I suppose you are. Please get in. It’s quite entertaining watching Ames clear the snow off the windows from this vantage point.” He closed the door and got into the back seat next to Ames’s equipment. They both sat in silence for some moments watching the constable sweep the snow off the windscreen with his arm and then shake the snow off his sleeve like a cat who’s been made to walk in a puddle.

  She turned to the inspector in the back. “You know, I had a thought a few moments ago. The single bullet to the head. It was like an execution.”

  Darling looked at her, an expression of worry shadowing his face for the barest moment. “Have you seen executions?” he asked, wondering what part of her life would have served up that horror.

  France, March, 1943

  As the dawn light spread, Lane could see more clearly now that she was in a field, near the treed edge of a road. She had spent an uncomfortable night sleeping in the damp stubble of barley that had been harvested the previous fall. She changed out of her jumpsuit, shivering in the morning chill, and tried to make herself look as much like a young woman going about the morning business of a typical small village as she could. She bundled her jumpsuit and her chute, which had been her sole source of warmth in the long night, into as small a shape as she could manage, and then bent low, hurrying towards the trees. The thick hedge of brush was just what she needed. She could secrete her bundle there; in any case she would never see it again. She hoped that in the coming weeks someone would find it and make use of the silk.

  The road was empty, but the light was coming on and she could not be found walking alone too far from the village. She needed to find the farm. She took a moment to sit on the parachute bundle and retrieve the map from her bag. Somewhere a dog began to bark, then stopped. The road ran roughly north west–south east. The farm lay on the east side of the road at the end of a driveway. She calculated that it could not be more than a mile from where she was. The village lay another half mile north. Replacing the map and checking her bag once more for identification papers, money, and the small string shopping bag that was her own addition to give her early morning presence on the road some verisimilitude, she pushed through the brush onto the narrow road and quickly crossed to the fields on the other side. She had been handed the revolver she’d trained with at the air field before she left, but she had refused it. If she were stopped and searched, she reasoned, it would be difficult to explain a young, supposedly local farmer’s daughter carrying a gun in occupied France. “I’ll be much safer without it,” she’d said.

  There was still no traffic on the road as she followed the furrow that ran parallel to the avenue of trees towards what she hoped would soon make itself evident: the farm of a M. Fournier. She had been told she could expect safe harbour and, she was hoping at this point, something to eat. Just as she was beginning
to think she would have to untie her brown pumps to shake out the dirt that had fallen into them from the uneven path on the near-frozen ground, she caught sight of the farm. She had memorized the photo, along with the information she was to convey, and she was sure she had found her target. She began to hurry, and was about to cut diagonally across the field when an instinct from she knew not where made her stop. She calculated she was 200 yards from the edge of the yard surrounding the farmhouse. She crouched down, cursing the dirtying of her stockings, and waited. For some moments she heard nothing and began to feel foolish. After all, she had been assured that the occupants of the farm were from the Resistance and would help her relay the information she needed to, and take back what was needed by her keepers, and that they expected her.

  Then she heard it. A muffled crack sound, followed by two more. Her heart pounded in her throat, and she instinctively looked around to make sure she could not be seen from any direction. Then, barely audible, the voices of what she thought might be two men, emerging from the farmhouse. She wanted to look but stayed down. She heard the sound of a motorbike starting up, obscenely loud in the quiet of the early morning. “Vite, vite! ” someone called, voice raised over the sound of the motor.

  Instead of turning north, as she had expected, towards the village, the motorbike was coming towards her. Though she was sure she could not be seen, she flattened herself on the ground and waited, terrified the bike would slow down and stop. But it did not; it roared past, the sound receding towards the south. When she was certain it was well beyond her, she risked getting up to look. What she saw was two men, dressed warmly against the spring chill, in civilian clothes, speeding around a corner and out of her vision. Who were they?

  She stood indecisively, waiting to hear any further sound from the farmhouse, but the silence was complete. The dawn that she’d thought grey because of the time of day proved to be grey cloud cover that exerted a damp cold, which she suddenly felt acutely. Beginning to shiver in spite of her wool stockings and skirt and her warm jacket, she continued to watch the farmhouse, certain that something appalling had happened. Knowing she could not delay any longer, and in any case having nowhere else to go at that moment, she moved cautiously towards the building.