by Iona Whishaw
He suddenly straightened up. He must have seen or sensed something was not right. Lane cowered into a ball behind the stump and waited. There was a loud metallic clang, and then an almost musical sound as whatever it was settled. She cursed herself for a coward. He’d thrown something into the quarry! She came out of her crouch and parted the branches to watch him again. He was standing looking into the quarry, and then glanced around. Satisfied, evidently, that he was unobserved, he turned and started back down toward the road. Lane waited until she could no longer hear his receding footfalls on the soft forest floor and then carefully got into a crouched stand. The forest had fallen back into silence, as if no one were there, not even her. Cautiously, she moved back toward the edge of the quarry. It was impossible, she thought, her heart sinking. The quarry was deep, and the layers of old tins, wooden boxes, old farm tools and the growth of small shrubs and grass that had grown over the now-unused dump made it impossible to distinguish what was in it. Why had she ducked just when he was hurling something in?
“Ninny!” she muttered angrily to herself. Finding a soft patch of moss, she sat down. What had he thrown? Even if she found it, she would not be able to retrieve it; that was police work. She would phone Nelson and tell the inspector. He could come out and cut up his knees looking for whatever it was, or more likely he would deputize that poor sweet constable to do it. What if Sandy was just using the dump for its intended purpose? Tossing out an old bit of machinery or some garbage? Darling would not be amused to have to drive all this way for a rusted hoe. A stab of fear woke her from these coy musings. A rusted hoe—a rusted anything could have been the weapon. She was contemplating going back to the edge of the quarry to look again, this time for exactly that sort of tool. The dizzying understanding of what that would mean made her sit back, her heart pumping in fear again. Was it Sandy? Had he killed the man, dragged him to the creek, and set her up to take the blame? After the episode on the fishing trip, she felt absolutely certain he was capable of violence; she had been badly frightened by him then but had chided herself later, convincing herself it was just an excess of ardour that drove him to be so forceful. She took two deep breaths and told herself not to let her fear run her imagination.
She reviewed her experiences of him. His smooth insinuations at the tea party, his behaviour on the fishing trip, the fact that it seemed to her that he appeared to be popping out at her nearly every time she left her house. The pattern told her that he was perhaps carrying a torch for her. The stark suggestion that he might be the murderer was a leap. Why should he murder a man he’d never met? What was this man to him? Especially if the dead man was related to Mrs. Harris. Still, she was alone in a forest, far from the earshot of any of her neighbours, and though he might not be a murderer, being alone in a forest with him was an unpleasant prospect, given his recent behaviour. A scream would not be heard unless a handy neighbour happened to be right on the stretch of road where the path emerged, and that was a very long shot. People didn’t just go up and down the roads in King’s Cove for no purpose; the mail, or a trip to the wharf or to town; otherwise people kept to themselves, attending to their orchards and gardens.
Waiting till she heard nothing more than the whispery silence of the forest, she moved to the edge of the quarry and peered in. It was impossible to see what he might have thrown in. It was a large area and the rubbish was so overgrown with ferns that nothing stood out. There was nothing for it. She would have to tell Darling. She might be wrong, but could not take the risk. Knowing now that she believed absolutely that Sandy was the murderer, she started back in the direction she’d come, through the trees and back to the creek. Then she realized that it would be much quicker to go by the old path Sandy had taken. With some trepidation, she followed Sandy’s path out to the road. Though the morning was still young, Lane felt she’d just spent a whole day’s worth of anxiety in that forest. She turned briskly home for a cup of tea, rehearsing in her mind what she’d say when she telephoned the inspector.
THE CONVICTION GREW in Reginald Mather that the dead man might be the son he’d been warned about in his aunt’s letter. What he could not make out was why he had turned up dead here. This man would be a stranger to everyone. Try as he might, Reginald could not imagine the circumstances in which someone arriving at King’s Cove looking for him could meet someone who would kill him. First, no one in the community would do it, and secondly, why should they? Thinking like this he very nearly convinced himself that, after all, it could not have been his son. But the fact was that his son had not turned up.
Glancing at the room where Alice slept, or whatever it was she did now—he’d given up trying to work her out, especially when she went into these long withdrawals—he satisfied himself that the door was shut, and he picked up the telephone receiver and listened. It was silent. He dialled and the exchange came on. “What number please?”
“The Nelson police office, please.” He was half-whispering.
“I beg your pardon, could you speak up?”
He let out an exasperated breath. “Nelson police, please,” he enunciated, trying to keep his voice down.
To his relief she intoned, “One moment please.”
In a moment he was speaking to the desk sergeant. Still in a soft voice, he asked to speak to Inspector Darling. He stood, his chest constricting with anxiety, looking out the window. His view gave on to the garden and beyond that, down along the road right past the old schoolhouse, now boarded up. He looked at his watch. It was just after nine. He could get up to town by ten, ten-fifteen.
“Inspector Darling,” came a voice.
“Yes, good morning. I . . .” Now that he had the inspector on the phone he suddenly realized he had no idea what he wanted to say, or indeed, what he could say that wouldn’t take too long and risk waking Alice. “This is Reg Mather. I wonder if I might come up to see you this morning before your trip out here?” was the best he could do.
“Certainly, sir. May I ask for what purpose?”
“I’ll be able to explain that when I get there. It’s . . . it’s rather important.”
He put the phone quietly back in the receiver, and turned. Alice, her hair sticking out around her head from lying on it, stood in front of her open door, looking at him with an expression of such malevolence that he took a step back, banging into the chair by the desk. “Going to explain, are you? I know, you know. I know all about her. I always have. You must have thought I was very, very stupid.” With this she turned and went back into her room and slammed the door.
Reginald, his head a whirl, pounded out of the house and up by the barn where he kept the car. What the bloody hell did she mean by that? He tore open the car door, got in and slammed it after himself. His breath came in gasps as if he had run up a long hill. He felt, at that moment, more exposed than he ever had in his life.
BACK IN NELSON, Inspector Darling sat with his hands behind his head, looking at the papers on his desk. He was running out of patience and time with the King’s Cove business. Reginald Mather, he thought, had jolly well better be coming in to town to tell him he’d seen the murder happen, or better yet, had done it himself, because without evidence other than that which implicated Lane Winslow, he was stuck. He was even beginning to worry that he’d let her off the hook. All this cloak and dagger stuff with a British secret service officer! It was becoming more and more difficult to believe that there wasn’t a murder in among all that. King’s Cove had existed for, what, fifty years at least, with a blameless record; he’d checked. No one had killed anyone for land or money in all that time, though one man had died in an accident felling a tree. Yet in swoops a beautiful ex-secret service woman and she’s not there ten minutes and a man from the same part of the world and with, as a matter of fact, the same sort of war record, is struck on the head and stuffed into a creek.
Darling groaned. Was it really just as simple as that? He desperately wished it wasn’t. And he desperately wished he’d never met Miss Winslow. He could d
o without that, thanks very much. He stretched and stood up. Now, what would Mather tell him?
“Ames!” he called into the next room. No answer. He put his head around the door, but the small office was empty. He didn’t blame Ames for not being there. Heat seemed to accumulate in this small room on the west side of the building, even with the window pushed up. Downstairs he asked at the desk and was told Ames had gone out to get breakfast. He signed out and went to where he was sure he would be. At the café a block down on Baker, he found his constable propped up at the counter grinning like a Cheshire cat at the pretty waitress. Darling felt a diabolical frisson of delight at the thought of interrupting this courtship.
The inspector perused the tatty cardboard menu. “Scrambled,” he said to the girl, Violet, was it? “And a coffee.” He felt in a celebratory mood. The Mather call coming out of the blue was the first indication, he hoped, that someone besides Miss Winslow might have something to say.
“Don’t flirt on the company’s time, Ames. Let this be a lesson to you.”
“I believe I have a right to breakfast, sir?”
“You have indeed, but just breakfast. Now listen,” he leaned back to allow the lovely Violet to place his thick mug of coffee in front of him, and then waited till she’d gone out of earshot. “Violet, is it?” he whispered.
“April.” Ames corrected. Overall, he preferred his inspector dour and serious. Levity in Darling, Ames decided, was always at his expense. “Sir.”
“Ah. I thought it was something to do with flowers. Now listen, I think we’ve some luck. That character from the top of the road, Mather, just called. Seemed in a hurry, wants to see me in an hour’s time.”
“Did he say why, sir?”
“No. In fact he was whispering.” Darling’s brow contracted. “It seemed as if he was worried about being overheard. In fact he said something peculiar. Something like ‘before you come out here.’ Why would he think we were coming out?”
“Because we haven’t solved the murder, perhaps?” Was there a touch of sarcasm there?
Darling ignored it. “The point is, it’s the first time we’ve got a rise out of one of the locals. Now, it may end up pointing back at the Winslow woman but the hurried, whispered tone suggests something else to me.”
Fighting back an urge to inquire if his boss would always be referring to their attractive suspect as “the Winslow woman” even after, he thought, with a dizzying leap into improbability, they were married, Ames said, “Well, the one certifiably crazy person among that odd bunch is Mather’s wife. Doesn’t she go around the Cove shooting things? Perhaps she’s involved. Perhaps he saw her do something and decided to come clean. Mind you, if I were married to her I’d come clean to something she hadn’t done just to get rid of her.”
Darling nodded by way of thanks to the smiling April as she put his scrambled eggs with four triangular wedges of toast before him, and then paused to think. “Yes. I see the possibility. We could leave the ‘why’ out for a minute. I think she would be capable of killing someone, but she’s a little mad, and she likes to shoot things. Why would she bang someone on the head? Her excuse for the shooting, I shouldn’t wonder, would be that she thought she saw a cougar. To bang someone on the head she’d have to see he was not a wild animal.”
“Unless the person attacked her,” said Ames, suddenly excited. “Let’s say she does her cougar routine and the person, afraid, attacks her and she defends herself. Could that bang on his head have been caused by the butt of a rifle?”
“More likely, apparently, the barrel. But the point is taken. Would she move the body? She’s a skinny little thing.”
“Ah, but that’s where our friend Mather comes in. She breaks down and tells him, and he, anxious to cover up how crazy she is, moves it for her. Now he’s coming to tell us it was all a dreadful accident.”
“What time is he coming, sir?”
“Ten or so. Didn’t we spot a 1930 or so Morris in his driveway? It’ll take fifty minutes in that thing. Let’s make it 10:30.”
It was, in fact, 10:10 when the desk sergeant called up to tell Darling that someone called Mather was there to see him. “Put him in the interview room,” the inspector said into the receiver, and hanging up, he barked, “Ames. We’re on!”
REGINALD MATHER SAT at the small wooden table, which was placed by a window, saving it, he thought, from being the fictional sealed room with the single hanging light bulb. The view was only of the alley, but real sunlight streamed in and diminished, though only somewhat, his anxiety. He was looking up to see if there was a light bulb when the door opened and Darling and Ames stepped in. Mather stood and offered his hand to Darling. They sat opposite each other and Ames pulled out a chair against the wall and sat with his notebook in hand. There was a longish silence.
“In what way can I help you, Mr. Mather? You seemed most anxious on the telephone to share some information you may have about this matter.”
“I . . . er . . . yes. I’m here on the outside chance, you see.”
“The outside chance of what, sir?”
“Well, that the man who was killed might be, well, known to me. No, I mean, not really, you see, but he might, if you will, be something to me.”
“Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning, Mr. Mather. What has made you think you might in some way know this person?”
“No, don’t you see, I don’t know him, but if I could see him I might, I don’t know. It’s so dreadful, and with Alice and Sandy behaving so strangely. And then as I was leaving, Alice said she knew. She knew! And of course she would be happy if he were dead, wouldn’t she? And so would Sandy. Oh, I never should have said anything to him!”
This string of seeming non sequiturs looked like it was going nowhere. “Ames, could you fetch Mr. Mather a glass of water?” Darling sat with his hands folded on the table while Reginald looked miserably out the window into the alley. He accepted the glass of water when it came, but then only held his hands around the glass, as if to still the trembling.
“Now then, Mr. Mather, take it slowly, and from the beginning,” Darling said soothingly.
Reginald Mather took a deep breath, and as he began talking, Alice Mather was stepping out on to the porch of the house she had shared with him for nearly forty years, flicking her walking stick as if to test its soundness, and walking down the stairs.
SANDY PULLED OFF his gloves and stood for a moment in the road. He considered turning left and going to the post office, then realized he would only do that to walk past Lane’s house, and he thought bitterly that he needed to stop that. She was a bitch. He’d known that from the beginning. He still could not make out why the police had brought her back. He would, he decided, go home and look at the plans his dad had for the mill. This at least he had secured for them and his father could no longer ignore him. He heard a car going down the back road; it must be near the church now, obviously heading down toward the Nelson road. It took a moment and then he realized it was his father’s Morris. His brow wrinkled and he looked at his watch. Where would his father be going at this time? He’d made a run up to town only two days before. Anxiety crept like an unwelcome visitor into Sandy’s gut. He turned down toward the post office. That’s when he saw her.
THOUGH SHE KNEW the forest to be empty now, Lane had crept toward the opening of the path onto the road. Ferns curved across the unused path and she pushed them aside, thinking for a moment how like walking in England it was, and then she froze. She heard exactly what Sandy had heard, the car progressing down the road from the direction of Angela and David’s. She waited, wondering if it was Angela going to the lake with the boys. No, their car was a station wagon; this was a tinnier sound. When it faded, she started again to the road.
About ten yards from the road, she could just see the top of Sandy’s head. Blast! Why was he still there? She should have retraced her steps to the creek! Lane watched him nervously. He seemed to be in the grip of indecision. She waited, barely daring to breat
he, and with a sudden nod, Sandy turned, not upward as if to return to his own home but downward, toward the post office and, more unnervingly, toward her house. With a muttered prayer to the gods, she waited, suddenly anxious now to be out of there, to be safe back in her own house.
Sandy watched the house from near her metal gate. He told himself not to be an idiot and kept going to the Armstrongs’. He had an excuse now; his father was off out in the car; he could go and get the mail. Just as he reached the turnoff up to the Hughes’, he heard the sound of Harris’s tractor behind him. He waited, that anxiety he’d felt at hearing his father’s car leaving King’s Cove now back. He had a vague sense that he did not have control of events and it was making him jumpy. He must calm down. Nothing unusual in Harris on his tractor at this time of day. He’d be going to his orchard. Adjacent, Sandy thought triumphantly, to the stretch of forest Harris had ceded to him for the mill.
Harris lumbered up and stopped, the engine chugging, and looked at Sandy. “I suppose you heard.”
“Heard what?” That stomach-churning fear again.
“There’s something in the car. The police are coming out again.”
Sandy looked nervously back toward the direction of Lane’s barn. “How the hell do you know that?”
“Armstrong said. It’s supposed to be hush-hush. What did you do, you infernal whelp?” Harris slipped the tractor angrily into gear. “And now . . . never mind.” He started up the hill, and Sandy could hear Harris spit out the word “Idiot!” as he watched him grinding up the hill, the back of his faded work shirt and overalls a contemptuous dismissal.
