A Killer in King's Cove

by Iona Whishaw

  “I see. So, having seen the light flashing in the field, you went outside to investigate. What I find peculiar is that this is a fairly unusual course of action. Most people, and here I mean men or women, would not go out at three in the morning to see what was going on.”

  The silence among them after this hung on in a way that was inching toward the uncomfortable, at least for Lane. She could not explain why she’d gone out into the night.

  The only thing she could say concretely was that she was sure it had to do with the murder and she felt it was important. She decided to say this. “I think I just felt it must have something to do with the death of that man. I had this idea that someone was . . . I don’t know . . . cleaning up or something and I think I felt I ought to stop it. And considering what I found, I’m worried you left coming out here a bit late.”

  Her use of the words “cleaning up” was so close to what Darling had been saying earlier in the day that he looked at her sharply. But there was nothing in her face but puzzlement. Her pageboy hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, and a few wisps of auburn were hanging over her eye. She had on a white, sleeveless blouse that seemed to highlight her features: a generous pleasant mouth, eyes that he remembered as green, though in this light they appeared more hazel, and the brow over them just at this moment was furrowed. He brought himself smartly back to the problem at hand. He tried to decide whether he ought to get out with Ames in tow to look at this suspiciously and suddenly produced shoe, or if he should confront her now with the evidence in the photo that she most certainly was connected to the dead man.

  Lane was bewildered by the hesitation in the proceedings and wondered if she’d transgressed some Canadian law regarding the scene of a crime, or interference with an investigation. “I realize it must seem strange that I might go out in the dark to investigate. I can only say that I thought it might be important. I felt this very strongly, but once out there, I realized that the figure . . . well the light he was carrying actually, was going further into Harris’s land and I just thought if I try to crash about following, I’d mess up any evidence there might be. And to be honest, I was petrified he’d seen me, so I stood like a ninny till I was frozen solid and I was sure he’d gone. It was on the way back that I found the shoe. I was very surprised that it should be on my side of the fence. I didn’t want to touch anything but I went down this morning to make sure I’d not been imagining it and it was still there; a nice, if scuffed-up, brogue. I’ve been quite nervous, waiting, in case the someone who dropped or put it there came back.” Here she allowed a slight look of reproof at Inspector Darling.

  Darling was experiencing a small internal war. She seemed honest enough, but this could be a colossal game on her part. She knew something about this man, he had the evidence in his manila envelope, and yet she seemed, with complete sincerity, intent on helping their investigation. And quite intelligently, with all this not wanting to mess up evidence. Ames was writing, and the scraping of his pencil went on into the silence when she had finished this explanation.

  “Oh, and I called him this morning. Harris, I mean, to see if he’d been out last night for any reason and he asked me what kind of a fool I took him for.” Lane smiled at this.

  Darling wanted to smile too, but he sighed instead. “All right, Miss Winslow. I think you’d better sit down. In fact we’ll all sit down. Not you, Ames.” This when Ames made to pull out a chair. “You go fetch the envelope.”

  “Sir,” said Ames, who in truth did not mind being ordered around by Darling, whom he longed to be one day, but he was worried about what he might miss in the minutes it would take him to go out to the car for the envelope. “And the bag,” interjected Darling.

  And the bag. “Back in a jiff,” Ames said, and meant it.

  “Something has come up, Miss Winslow, that considerably alters our situation here. I don’t mind saying I was very surprised to get your call. You will see why in a moment, but we have reason to believe that you can tell us more about the victim than you seemed disposed to earlier. Needless to say, your banging about outdoors at all hours in this context will strike you, I dare say, as odd.” Darling said this in his usual unhurried and calm manner.

  Lane wondered, now with some irritation, how he could maintain such a correct tone and demeanour while talking in this slangy fashion. “I’m sorry?” she said.

  “I mean, Miss Winslow, that given what we now know, your movements last night might be looked upon as somewhat suspect. Ah. Here’s Ames.” Darling held out his hand and Ames placed into it the brown manila envelope. Darling unwound the string holding the flap shut, pulled out the eight-by-eleven photo, and placed it on the table, squaring it before Lane. She looked at it and frowned. His last remark had set off a spiral of anxious speculation that made it hard for her to concentrate on the grainy print before her.

  It was clearly a photo of a piece of paper; she could see the ridges that were still visible, though someone had tried to smooth them out. She could also see faint traces of what looked like fragments of writing. She felt the constriction somewhere in her chest before she even really knew why, and then her brain caught up. It was the W. The way the end of it curled down into a little drop. But so bizarre was this thought that she shut it out completely. “What is this, Inspector?” She kept her voice completely even. She’d had a good deal of experience with covering anxiety and appearing cool in occupied France. She was surprised by how easy it was to do still, and was possessed now of a caution nearly equal to that which she’d exercised during missions. It seemed vital to her that she keep her wits about her.

  The inspector leaned forward. “This is a photograph taken by our lab people, after they’d done work on it, of the piece of paper we found on the victim’s body. In the jacket pocket. It was the only thing we found on his person. No identification, no papers, no passport. Just this. If you will see, here,” he pointed to the letters that were visible, “are the letters spelling parts of words, we suspect. Ane, ins, and then this Where. I won’t keep you guessing, Miss Winslow, about what this suggested to us immediately. Your name.”

  Lane sat back heavily on her wooden kitchen chair. Of course. She could see this. She would have said the same thing, now that it was put to her. And now, because she was an orderly thinker, she allowed the thought she had torpedoed earlier. The W. Angus had written his W with this little drop that now seemed to be pulsating off the photograph. But of course, many people might do this. It was only that she was so aware because on the many letters he had addressed to her it was the Miss L. Winslow that had made her heart stop every time she saw it. She had developed an affection for the little drop on the W.

  Her logical approach brought her a small degree of comfort. Since this absolutely could not have been written by Angus, who had been dead since 1944, then it must not have been. Often she would receive letters from him from wherever he was deployed. It had been comforting how they often came before she went out on a mission. As if he knew, which of course was rubbish. He knew nothing about her work. That was what had made their relationship a strain at times, all that subterfuge and pretending to a desk job in the War Office. That life was part of her deep and finished past.

  But now remained the problem of her name. This was less easy to explain away and its presence in the dead man’s pocket made absolutely no sense to her. But even that thought was wrong. It made a kind of sense, the implications of which made her blood freeze.

  “Miss Winslow?” Darling had been watching her.

  “Inspector, I see how you have reached that conclusion. I do. But I cannot make head or tail of it. If the man was carrying my name, why was he carrying it? The other explanation is that this is not my name at all.”

  Ames spoke up suddenly. “I’ve thought of that, sir. It could be something like plane window if that s weren’t an s but a partially erased d.”

  “Thank you, Ames. Always on the job. And what would the meaning of such a note be? Why would a man who ended up dead i
n the middle of Miss Winslow’s water source have plane window in his pocket?” His tone was somewhere between repressive and mocking.

  “It could have been where he sat on the way over, sir, if he came on an aeroplane. I’ve had really silly things on pieces of paper in my pockets. The other day I had a note that said pencil markings in my pocket. It was really a reminder to get something to remove the pencil markings from my fence that some hooligan put there but if I’d been killed in Miss Winslow’s creek,” here he grinned at her cheerfully, “it might take on much greater significance. Someone might think it was a dying man’s clue to what had happened to him, no?”

  “Can I interject at this point that there is no reason to suppose he was killed in my creek,” said Lane, a little peevishly.

  “You make a point, Ames,” Darling conceded, ignoring her.

  Lane tried to relax. There was still that W with its little downturn, and though her earlier logic had absolutely ruled it out, she could not shake the idea that it was so very like Angus’s writing.

  “However,” Darling continued after a moment, “we must think about probability. It is more likely that a note found near the home of Lane Winslow, which is made up of enough letters to reasonably conclude it has Lane Winslow’s name spelled out on it, is more probable than that the note would say plane window and only if the s were a damaged d .”

  “But what doesn’t make sense, to me at least, is that I do not know this man, I could swear to it. He certainly never contacted me before he died. Who was he? I mean, perhaps I should have another look. You still have him, I suppose? Of course. You will. Until you’ve solved this.” She retained her steady calm but she knew now she had to see him. Could it be someone she knew, even slightly, who’d been sent for her? And if it was, what would she do? If she could be traced here, where was left?

  Ames, who should have been writing, had stopped and was watching Lane with something bordering on admiration. Here she was, clearly on the verge of being accused of being involved in a murder and she was behaving as if she was completely innocent and offering to come view the body. Perhaps she was innocent. The thought cheered him up immensely.

  “I will most certainly take you up on that offer, Miss Winslow. We still have him, yes. On ice, as it were. In the meantime, since we have driven all the way out here, perhaps you could take us back down the garden path, to see what you saw last night.”

  “Très amusant, Inspecteur,” said Lane, “but I assure you my story is quite genuine, and I will not be leading you anywhere fictitious.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  London, June, 1943

  MRS. DONALD CALLED UP THE stairs, “The post, Miss Winslow! From your bosses at the Ministry!” She thought Lane was a secretary. Lane, who’d been drinking the last of her tea before she set off to work at that self-same Ministry, was sure she would have a mission in the next week or so and was doing the mental exercises she had early decided helped her to prepare. She had developed her kitchen shelving metaphor for storing information and she was mentally clearing each of the shelves, one by one, taking things out, packaged like groceries from the shop: tins, paper-wrapped sugar, and so on, but were facts, figures, and coordinates to she had no idea what, and she was throwing them into a large metal bin. She’d not been on a mission since May, when she was sure she’d seen Angus on the train. And she’d not heard from him, either. It had been difficult, having no word from Angus and not being able to talk to anyone about him. He had been clear: their relationship must be kept completely hush-hush, mainly, he told her, to protect her work of translation. And reporting to work every day and finding that she was set to translating what seemed to her to be extremely non-essential documents. A report in Pravda about the marriage of a minor government official did not seem to her to be something the security of Great Britain would be hanging on.

  The sound of Mrs. Donald’s voice calling out the post nearly made her heart stop. Angus! It must be; who else would write to her? She was not deterred by the return address that must have been from one of the government offices. Angus had always written as though he was an official of the government. Well, he was, as a pilot. The letters were always breezy, as if from a friend, but the language they had developed provided them with meeting places, with their chance to be together. Their relationship had needed to be kept secret, but his letters, sent in the often-long intervals between their meetings, kept her alive. She put her cup down with a clatter and bounded down the stairs. The letter was sitting on the landing and she snatched it eagerly.

  There was her name, all right, but typewritten, and the envelope looked official. She groaned in disappointment and saved opening the letter until she was back in her room. She leaned against her dressing table and applied the letter opener to the envelope. There was a single sheet, even the signature typewritten. Dear Miss Winslow, you are asked to present yourself to the Office of Commander R. Fredrickson at 08:00 hours on Wednesday, June 23. Nothing else. June 23rd was the next day.

  At lunchtime, she was at the door of the building she worked in with another of the girls, Betty, who was blowing smoke rings in a nonchalant fashion into the cool drizzle of the day while watching the crowds in the street. “Honestly,” Betty said, “there isn’t a single decent man left in London.” In spite of the anxiety that had been gnawing at her all day, Lane smiled at this. While, indeed, not in London—there was a war on, as everyone was so fond of saying—her man was decent. She wished sometimes she could babble about how good-looking he was, like the other girls did over their glasses of beer at the pub. Betty waved at a young woman approaching them. “Ah, Mary, there you are. The tea shop today?” The other two laughed at this, as they had never been anywhere else after finding the best lunches for the best price. Sometimes even ham made a rare appearance on the menu, though usually it was thin slices of the ubiquitous Spam. It was too risky to pick somewhere else and miss the rare ham day.

  The tea room was steamed up from the damp coats of the girls, who crammed in at lunch from firms all over the area, and the warmth coming from the kitchen. Not a ham day today, but they opted for the bowl of bean soup that was on offer, with a nice roll. Mary was leaning in. “I think something’s gone wrong. Everyone on my floor is all quiet and people keep going into closed rooms to confer. I think something’s gone west with an operation!” Her two companions looked anxiously around at this revelation. They never, ever talked about operations outside their offices. But Mary was too full of her news to be concerned, though she lowered her voice further. “One of the agents has been killed; not shot down, but on the ground during a pick-up. Angus someone. I heard one of the men talking by the wc .”

  Lane stopped hearing anything her companions said. Angus. She felt a rush of horror go through her. She forced her mind, which suddenly seemed to be in slow motion, to order the facts. It was not possible that it could be her Angus. He was not an agent, for starters, and he was stationed in Ireland and he flew missions over . . . the North Atlantic, surely. It’s what he’d told her. He’d never been in operations. But he’d been on a train in France a month ago and he shouldn’t have been there either. She shuddered violently and stood up. “I’m not feeling well. It must be something in the soup. I’m . . . I’m . . .” and she made her way through the suffocating tea room to the door. The other two looked at their bowls with suspicion and then Betty noticed Lane had rushed out without her coat and hat. “For pity’s sake! Mary, hold the fort; I’ll go after the daft sickie. God, I hope she isn’t up the spout!”

  She found Lane shivering on the front step, the back of her hand over her mouth, taking deep breaths. “You don’t look too clever. Here, put your coat on and get off home. I’ll stop on your floor and tell them you’re not well.” She helped her on with the coat and positioned her hat over her auburn hair. She took Lane’s hand, suddenly. “Listen, you’re not . . . ?”

  Lane looked at her as if she were only just seeing her, and then somehow realized what she meant. She shook her he
ad and turned to go, then she looked back at her friend. “Thank you,” she said simply, and walked away, leaving Betty standing ambivalently on the pavement. Betty knew Lane was intensely private and that she would only annoy her by trying to follow and help.

  Lane had never received another word from Angus after that, so she knew it must have been her Angus. She had mourned silently and deeply. She could not get past it. There was nothing to help her close the door on her grief; no funeral, no newspaper obituary. She saw only then what an absolute fantasy she’d been living in. She hadn’t even known where he’d come from. It was as if he had never existed at all.

  LANE WAS GLAD to step outside into the sun. She’d finally stopped mourning for Angus in the last year, but sorrow had ground her down, left a hollow that she had come to expect would be permanent. It was not just the loss of him; it was the strange lack of any trace of him after. She had realized as the weeks passed after she learned of his death that she had not a single token of his. She hadn’t even kept the letters, because he’d been so insistent that she burn them. She hadn’t questioned him about this, or anything really. It was his physical presence that was everything to her. How young she’d been to have that absolute trust in a man! She had recovered in stages by continuing her war work, then moving to France, and now by moving here. It had been well over two years. But she was oppressed by the memories that had flooded her mind at the sight of that W, the sheer inadmissibility of it and yet the too-plausible idea that on that paper, her name must be inscribed . . . by someone. She led the policemen around the house and past the new flowerbed she’d put in. The sun, nearly overhead, cast short busy shadows around them as they walked across to the clearing in front of the barn.

  “Please take us only as far as the shoe. We will have to decide what steps to take from there.” Inspector Darling was walking directly behind Lane, and his voice sounded sudden in the heavy afternoon silence.