by Iona Whishaw
“Sir?” Ames’s voice penetrated Darling’s rumination.
“What?”
“Did she say what the wound was from?”
“Gunshot was all I heard. Her ridiculous phone went dead after that.”
“Who would shoot a fellow and put him adrift in a rowboat?”
“That, Amesy, is why she called us. We are the police. In case you’ve forgotten, our mission is not to drive up the lake to gaze at Miss Winslow, but to solve yet another crime she has discovered.”
“That’s hardly fair, sir. It’s hard not to think that the guy is Carl Castle. I mean, it can’t be a coincidence. I feel sorry for his mother.”
“Just what I was thinking.”
They were on the downhill from the little general store and gas pump at the top of the Balfour hill, below them the great curve of the cove from which King’s Cove took its name. They’d had to slow down as they approached the store because a black Lab lay in the middle of the road and only reluctantly got up and trundled toward the store. A man had come out of the store and shouted at the dog, and waved as the maroon Ford sped up.
It was clear when they had bumped down the winding and narrow road to the wharf that the ambulance van had arrived only moments before them. Ames pulled the car onto the wharf that now seemed crowded with the red pick-up truck he recognized as belonging to Kenny Armstrong, who ran the post office with his wife, and the van, its rear doors gaping open, waiting for the hapless patient it must bear back to the hospital in town. The medics were only just hurrying down the sandy slope from the wharf to the beach, carrying a stretcher. The heat of the afternoon seemed to have intensified, so Darling left his jacket on the seat and positioned his hat to cut down the glare of the sun glinting off the water.
Lane, who had been kneeling by the wounded man, got up at the sound of the emergency vehicles rumbling onto the wharf. Eleanor and Kenny were standing nervously by the young man. Both looked exhausted, as if the vigil of hoping he would not die had been a physical feat. The medics hurried to the victim, and Ames and Darling followed them down onto the beach.
“Inspector. I’m sorry about this. You remember Kenny and Eleanor Armstrong. Eleanor was a nursing sister in the Great War and has done what she could.”
Darling nodded at them and then looked at the young man’s face. His pallor made him look nearly dead, but Darling could see the tiniest movement as breath passed painfully in and out of his blue lips. The medic was bent over him, removing blankets. Could this be the missing man? He cursed himself for having left the picture he had taken from the mother in his office. The photo had showed a vigorous, laughing young man in a light jacket, his hands in his trouser pockets, feigning nonchalance for the camera. Darling could see nothing familiar in this drained shadow of a human.
The ambulance medic had assessed the situation and looked around at the small crowd assembled in silence, watching. “Who did this bandaging?”
“I did,” said Eleanor. “I had a bit of stuff in my kit from the war. I wanted to keep it clean and covered.”
The medic nodded and waved his hand at the stretcher-bearers. “Try to jostle him as little as possible.” Then he turned back to Eleanor. “Good work. You found him here, like this?”
“No, sorry, I should have clarified,” Lane said. “He was adrift in that boat. We took him out as carefully as we could because his legs were immersed in cold water and we thought we’d better risk getting him out to try to warm him. He was absolutely icy.” She pointed to where the boat sat crookedly on the beach, the water lapping gently against its stern. It was tipped toward them, and what normally would be a tranquil lakeside scene was rendered chilling by the bloody water still visible in the bottom of the boat.
“It’s a bad wound. His insides will be a mess. It’s hard to know if it was made worse by the move, but you were probably right to get him out of the cold. Come on, fellows. Let’s get him out of here.” When the man had been carefully borne up the hill and put in the ambulance, the others turned unconsciously toward the boat.
“I saw this after we’d taken him out,” Lane said, pointing into the centre of the boat where one seat partially covered what seemed to be an overly large revolver.
“A Smith and Wesson,” Darling said, frowning. “I’m going to leave things for a moment and get Ames to take some pictures.” He stepped back and looked out across the lake. “Tell me again how you found him.”
“We were up there, fishing.” Lane pointed up toward the rocky peak of the point rising above them. “The point is rocky, and the lake is low today. From where we were it would have been difficult to see down directly below us to the water. One of Angela’s children spotted the boat from where they were playing at the end of the wharf just as we heard it knock against the base of the cliff. I thought at first that it was an unmoored rowboat till I heard that unearthly groan. I swam around and pulled the boat to shore by that rope.”
“And how was he positioned in the boat?”
“Lying with his head at this end, slightly elevated by this seat thing, and the lower half of his body was nearly submerged. The boat had been taking on water, and it was collected here at the stern end.”
Darling looked now at the length of rope, perhaps four feet long, hanging off the prow. He carefully lifted the end. It was frayed and worn. It could have come loose from whatever it had been tied to in even a mild storm, but when he looked closer he saw that some of the strands of rope showed signs of having been cut. “Someone’s cut this.” He looked out at the lake, as though it might reveal the sequence of events. “Could the gun be his? He was planning to attack someone or was being attacked and didn’t get it out in time. If he was shot by someone else, why leave the gun? If you were going to cut a boat loose to drift, besides that being an inefficient way to get rid of a body, you wouldn’t provide oars, would you?”
“The whole thing is a pretty awkward carry-on in a rowboat,” Lane said.
The ambulance finally began its laboured ascent of the narrow winding road back to the Nelson road. Ames, who had been looking along the water’s edge near the boat, was coming toward them on the beach. Darling waved him back.
“Camera, Ames. I want photos of this. There’s a Smith and Wesson in the boat I want snapped in situ. Get photos of the end of the rope there as well.” Ames gave the tiniest nod and turned back toward the wharf.
Eleanor and Kenny were folding up the tarp and the two blankets. Regretfully Kenny said, “I don’t guess you need us, so we’ll drive back up to the house. There’s tea if anyone needs it.”
Darling looked at Eleanor. “You dressed the wound. Gunshot?”
“Yes. I’ve seen plenty of them. I’m surprised by the location. Shooters are going to aim higher if possible, are they not? Though gunshot wounds can be all over the place. If you’re close enough with something like a bayonet, this is more like what you get. With a bayonet, you stab at the nearest thing, often straight at the middle of the torso. This looked something like that.” Eleanor could hear herself speaking, could feel the years fall away. She had the sudden visceral memory of reporting to the doctor in charge at the station in France. Kenny was looking at her with raised eyebrows and a slight smile that suggested he admired this rarely seen side of his wife.
“If I may, I’d like to come up when we’ve finished here and take some notes. We’ll probably be glad of the cup of tea, as well.” Thus gently and tactfully dismissed, the Armstrongs made their way back to the truck and followed the ambulance, which had gained the Nelson road and was speeding to the hospital.
“Remarkable woman,” Darling said. “You see only a dear old thing with white hair who looks as mild as a buttercup, and she starts talking about the best way to bayonet someone.” He looked at the point. “Can you show me exactly where you were standing?”
While Ames, who was back with his camera, too
k pictures, Lane and Darling climbed back along the rocks to the point. From the promontory the long sweep of the north end of the lake was visible, as well as the curve of the bay to the south.
“You didn’t see it floating about before it fetched up at the base of this?” Darling asked.
“No. The first I heard of it was Rafe shouting. I tried to lean over to see it, but it’s nearly impossible to see the base of the point from this angle without going into the drink.”
Darling smiled slightly for the first time. “That would have complicated the whole scene,” he observed.
As if to emphasize the activities of the afternoon, Darling, walking toward the north side of the point, tripped over Kenny’s fishing basket, which had been abandoned as they’d hurried to rescue the man in the boat.
“I’d better get that back to Kenny,” Lane said, collecting the basket. She picked up the fishing rods, winding the line back onto the reels of each of them. “I’m sure he was devastated to leave. He’s an avid secret detective. He is agog with fascination about every aspect of investigative procedures.” Kenny had proved to be a very eager armchair detective on earlier cases Darling and Ames had been called upon to solve.
“How long would you have been here before you heard the rowboat?” Darling asked.
“Thirty minutes, perhaps?” Lane ventured. “Are you wondering how long it was there?”
“Well, that and where it came from, and how long it was on the lake. The way it took on water it could have been bobbing about all night. There was a storm last night. I wonder if that is why it took on so much water?”
“Sir!” Ames’s voice carried up to where they were standing.
Darling walked back to where he could overlook the scene on the beach just below. “What is it?”
“There’s a bag here, sir, jammed under the seat at the back. A sort of small military kit bag. I’ve photographed it. Permission to take it out?”
“I’m on my way down.” Darling turned to where Lane was juggling the rods and basket. “Can I help?” he asked.
Lane smiled for the first time since the drama of the wounded man had begun. “I think I can manage, thanks. Ames needs you more than I do.”
Darling’s eyes lingered for a brief moment on Lane’s face and then, with a slight upturn of the lip, he wheeled around and descended by jumps to where Ames was wrinkling his nose at the prospect of extracting a bloody-water-soaked bag out of the boat.
Lane tried not to think of the momentary smile reflected in Darling’s charcoal eyes as she went down the rocks to the beach behind him. It was most unseemly to think about them in the middle of this sorry drama.
Darling watched with his hands in his pockets while Ames rolled up his shirt sleeves and leaned into the boat to pull out the thick canvas bag. “Don’t drop it,” advised Darling levelly.
Lane smiled again at the scene of Darling tormenting his second-in-command and then turned to go back up to the wharf to drop the fishing gear in the apple hut.
“I’m wondering where the boat could have come from,” Darling said. “I can’t help thinking it came from up the lake from the Kaslo end. Or even from the other side.”
Lane was crunching back along the beach toward them. “Was it windy out here last night?” Darling asked her.
“It was indeed. And very rainy. I’m not surprised the boat is so full of water. I woke up at about one in the morning and the rain was hammering down. What’s over there?” Lane asked.
“Ainsworth, Kaslo, and on the other side, Riondel is up that way,” Ames said. “Tiny place. Practically abandoned mining town.”
“I wondered about the current of the river running through the lake, but that runs from south to north. Would a rowboat, even with the help of some wind, float south against a current like that?” Darling asked.
“According to Kenny Armstrong, the Duncan River comes down the north arm of the lake in this direction and meets up with the Kootenay River, and then they both go off to Nelson along the west arm and points south,” replied Lane. “He was telling me about it this morning when we were up on the point. I imagine the boat could definitely have floated from up Kaslo way.”
Ames had managed to get the bag out of the boat and had placed it on a canvas sheet next to the revolver, where it lay exuding water that ran down the folds of the canvas and sank into the gravelly beach. He was holding his hands away from his body as if he’d rather not know them, and then he went to the edge of the lake and shook them vigorously in the clean water at the shoreline.
“Poor Ames always gets the dirty jobs,” Lane said to Darling.
“Nonsense. It’s good for him. Builds character. Anyway, I won’t make him get into that bag until we have it back to the station,” Darling said. He turned to Ames. “Could you get onto the wharf and go down to the end of it and take some shots of the point from there? I don’t know if they’ll give us much information, but you never know.” He turned back to Lane. “We’ve had a call out about a missing young man. A widow named Mrs. Castle. I very much fear this could be her son.”
“Oh, dear,” said Lane. “Can she be the woman who sometimes has eggs at the Balfour store? How beastly for her. Even if it is not him, the injured man belongs to some other poor unfortunate family.”
“She does have a chicken farm,” Darling said. “Have you met her?”
Lane was walking back toward the boat. “No, but I sometimes stop at the store at Balfour for eggs if Gladys has run out.” Gladys was the imperious mother of Gwen and Mabel, two spinster sisters in their fifties who lived up the hill from the post office and presided over the most spectacular gardens Lane had ever seen. Lane stopped near the boat, trying not to breathe deeply. The smell of blood seemed to have settled permanently into her nose. “One oar. That’s interesting. It’s illogical that someone trying to kill him would provide oars, unless he’s fleeing after being wounded and tries to row away. One oar falls out of the lock and he’s too weak to continue. Or, what if it is a suicide attempt? Does he get into his boat, cut the rope, and then trust to the tides to carry him away to somewhere he can shoot himself? He’s made a poor job of it, if that’s the case. If he’s going to do that, why get into a boat at all? And he’s got a bag. If I want to kill myself and spare my loved ones the trouble and cleanup when they find me, I might row out up the lake, either to the middle or to some hidden and wild bit of shore. But why am I taking a bag?”
Darling turned to her. “Why do you think it might be a suicide attempt?”
“Oh, yes, I forgot to say. Eleanor said he whispered, ‘Let me die.’ He slurred his words terribly, but she was pretty sure that’s what he said. Doesn’t that suggest a suicide? Perhaps he brings the gun to kill himself but bungles it, and then hopes to bleed to death.”
Darling shrugged. “Hmm. Possible I suppose. If it’s our missing man, according to his mother he’s as cheerful and well balanced as can be.”
“Or that’s what he wanted his mother to think,” Lane observed.
Darling, his mood darkened suddenly by the number of things his policing life had shown him were kept secret from loved ones, saw that Ames had finished with the pictures and was making his way back to the car.
“Let’s go get that tea.”
CHAPTER FIVE
In the back seat of the police car, Lane felt wrung out, as if she were recovering from a bad night of sleep.
“This is hardly the day I had planned. I wanted to enjoy the benefits of the peaceful country life. Sitting in the sun, learning to fish. Instead it’s been all blood and mayhem,” she said, watching the verdant wall of trees that lined the road to the post office, their leaves reflecting sun and shadow, a cheerful contrast to the grim turn of the afternoon.
Darling turned to look at her and then said with such kindness that her heart constricted, “You’ve had a beastly day. Shou
ld we drop you at home?”
“What, and miss more revelations from the hitherto blameless and mild Eleanor Armstrong? Not on your life!”
“Besides,” said Ames, who had heard the soft tone of Darling’s voice and rejoiced at it for Lane’s sake, “you seem to like being involved. I don’t think it’s too much to say that you’ve been helpful in the past. Wouldn’t you agree, sir?” Darling merely harrumphed in reply.
Lane had received a letter from Yvonne only last week wondering at her involvement with police investigations. She had answered this query with “Really, I don’t try, and I don’t particularly want to. It’s just happened somehow. I suppose if I were honest, I would say that I find the challenge intriguing. I can’t stand a question being unanswered.” After this afternoon she was beginning to feel that she attracted crime. The feeling was in no way a comforting one.
Revived by the tea Eleanor offered in so domestic a manner that her earlier revelations of her wartime work seemed like mere fantasy, Darling and Ames took their leave. Ames had taken proper notes of the observations Eleanor had already made, and Darling was anxious to get along to the unfortunate Mrs. Castle about her missing son.
“Drive to the farm. We had better collect Mrs. Castle. I very much fear this could be her boy.”
“I wonder if it could relate to that paper she found?” Ames said.
