A Deceptive Devotion

by Iona Whishaw

  Darling felt his face flush. “Yes, of course. I, we—”

  “I mean, we are here as a support if things get rocky. But I can see that I’ve no need to worry. You’ve both perhaps been . . .” The vicar felt a little off his game and decided to change his tack. “Should we perhaps go through the ceremony itself so that you know what to expect? There is the little matter of ‘obey,’ which does give difficulty from time to time.”

  At the door later, as Lane and Darling were leaving, Vicar Stevens shook them both warmly by the hand. “God is very well satisfied with what is in each of your hearts, I am sure of it.”

  At the window table in Lorenzo’s, where they had been welcomed with cries of delight and a glass of congratulatory white wine, Lane sat with both her hands in Darling’s.

  “What can he have meant by our being ‘capable of sorting it out’?” she said. “Can he have meant what I think?”

  “I can’t imagine what dark avenues your peculiar mind travelled. I’m sure it was perfectly innocent,” Darling said. “I should not be drinking in the middle of the day,” he added.

  “For a moment I thought he was going to say we’d both ‘been around the block.’”

  “We have,” Darling said, putting his glass down and looking into her eyes. “I can’t wait to begin sorting things out. It’s all I can do not to start now. You are especially beautiful when you are about to get a plate of whatever Mrs. Lorenzo has in store for us.”

  Darling was forced to relinquish Lane’s hands when Lorenzo arrived. “We made pasta this morning. A very simple dish, fresh pasta, butter, sage, ricotta.”

  “As usual, it looks and smells divine,” Lane said.

  Lorenzo hovered, as if undecided, and then folded his hands together and looked earnestly at Lane.

  “Mrs. Lorenzo and I are—I hear this expression—over the moon. The inspector is a very, very good man, and now I see he is also very smart. We wish you a long and happy life together, Signorina Winslow.”

  When he had gone, and Lane had recovered from the tears Lorenzo’s words had induced, she said, “That’s all anyone needs to say, isn’t it? I feel if the vicar had said just that, our marriage would have been full of sunny blessings, instead of all that stumbling about with oblique hints about values and God apparently insisting I be a good cook and that business about ‘sorting things.’”

  “Don’t forget that God expects you to be a happy presence,” Darling reminded her. “I suppose he is duty-bound to hint at the impediments life strews along the path of happiness. Fallings out. You, perhaps, growing tired of my recalcitrant nature.”

  “He is a very good man, the vicar. He is kind and worries about all his parishioners up and down the lake. I imagine it was difficult to be confronted with us. I’m sure all the rest of his soon-to-be-newlyweds are barely out of their teens.” She reached across and took his hand again. “I will only grow tired of you if I discover that your decency and humour turn out to have been an act. By the same token, you might find that, in the end, my fits of insecurity and indecisiveness are too tedious for words.”

  “Only if you have been feigning intelligence and kindness.”

  Lane smiled with such sweetness that his heart turned over. Then she took her napkin and spread it across her lap primly and nodded toward the door of the kitchen.

  “Should we eat, do you think? Poor Mrs. Lorenzo will be wild if she thinks we’ve let her lovingly prepared meal go cold.”

  Chapter Eight

  Constable Ames opened the manila envelope handed to him by his landlady, who wore an expression of someone expecting the worst sort of material would be sent to a young man.

  “It came in the mail,” she said.

  “Thanks. From my boss.”

  He pointed at the return address, smiled in as trustworthy a manner as he could muster, and went upstairs, ripping open the seal. Sitting on his bed, he pulled out a photograph of a dapper, not to say rakish, man, well-dressed and leaning against an expensive-looking car. As old as the car looked, Ames thought he wouldn’t mind driving that thing around.

  There was note attached to the photo.

  This is the brother of the Russian woman, Countess Orlova. She’s already tried to track him down in Vancouver, and discovered he came this way, so the whole exercise is probably moot. However, this is just in case she missed something.

  Ames chuckled. So like Darling. No salutation, no “study hard” messages. Just business. He looked at the pile of books on the little desk by the window. He hadn’t the energy to go back into them. He’d go over the notes from the lecture he’d had about arrest, search, and seizure later. He looked at his watch. It was only five o’clock. There might be time to take the tram down Hastings and visit the Russian church again. It wasn’t until he was getting off at his stop that he wondered if anyone would be at the church. As it happened, he was there just ahead of an evening service, and he found the priest readying himself in the vestry. Another man in a suit was with him, holding a robe. Both looked up when Ames knocked on the open door.

  “Ah. Constable. You are back so soon. I have nothing for you, I’m afraid.” He said this with a slightly interrogative uptick, as if buried in his statement was the question of why Ames should be there at all.

  “No, no. I wasn’t expecting anything. My boss sent along this photograph of the man whose sister is looking for him.” Ames pulled the photo out of the envelope and handed it to the priest. Both men leaned closer to look at the picture. “I guess you’ve seen this already, as the lady was probably showing it around,” Ames added.

  Finally, the man in the suit shook his head.

  “I never see this,” he said. His voice was unexpectedly deep coming from a small slender man.

  The priest handed back the picture. “You know, I never saw this either, and I do not know the man. Mind you, I did not meet the lady, for that matter.”

  At this, Ames frowned. He remembered that the priest had not mentioned meeting anyone like this Countess Orlova on their last meeting.

  “That’s strange, now that I think of it. Would she not have come here first if she had traced her brother to Vancouver?”

  The priest shrugged. “I suppose, yes. But there is another parish. Holy Resurrection on West Seventh Avenue. You should go there as well.”

  With instructions for getting to the other church, Ames sat on the rocking tram, looking out at the street scene going by. He had never been to a big city and, except for the centre where the main hotel and the rail terminal were, Vancouver felt more like a small town with its rows of wooden houses. He hopped off near his rooming house and decided it might be too late to go to the other church. He would go directly after his session the next day. It was only a week until his exam, and he thought he’d better have some supper at the diner he’d come to like on Main Street and then go home to study. But he was musing as he ate his bowl of beef stew at the counter. Why had the priest of one of the two Russian churches in Vancouver not seen the picture of the man his sister was so keen to find?

  Saint Petersburg, 1897

  Tatiana stood at the back of the room, transfixed. The hall was packed with men—though some young women dotted the crowd, some not even wearing hats—shouting and raising their fists. It made her heart swell with a thrill she had not experienced before. The man on the stage was named Ulyanov. He was not handsome, exactly, but passionate. His dark eyes had a quality, she thought, of boring right into your soul. He was talking about the corruption of the tsar and of the cruel oppression of the peasants, no better than slaves at the hands of the wealthy landowners. Capitalism, he said, is the source of the suffering of the people of Russia. Tatiana wasn’t quite sure what capitalism was, but she understood his cries of anguish on behalf of the peasants. Didn’t she feel it herself? Didn’t her father? But now the suggestion that her father was in the wrong after
all. It was not enough to be kind to the farmers, to make their burden lighter. They should not have farmers at all. Farmers should be in charge of the means of production, should be working for themselves.

  She could feel her heart filling. At that very moment Ulyanov seemed to be looking right at her, into her eyes. He was speaking directly to her, she was sure. It took a moment for her to realize that there was a commotion at the door, shouting, banging, the doors being pushed with the butts of rifles. In a moment her passion was replaced by panic. She had to get out. Thanking God that she was by the door, she pressed her body against the back wall and waited for the soldiers to get in and begin pushing through the crowd—then slipped out and ran back toward the street.

  She looked around, frantic. She had got away from her chaperone, Madam Rykova, as a lark because she had seen a flyer stuck on a wall: VLADIMIR ULYANOV, THE NEW WORLD. Now, in the bustle of the street, Tatiana wondered where she would find her again. There was nothing for it but to go back to their apartment. Madam would have to go back there eventually.

  “My God, where have you been?”

  Tatiana felt her arm wrenched, and she was pulled away from the line up for the tram. She set her face in defiance to whatever her governess was about to say to her.

  “You nearly made my heart stop!” her governess gasped, with a tone between fear and fury.

  “I just went to look in some shop windows. I don’t know why you’re making such a fuss. It’s the middle of the day. No one is going to hurt me!”

  “If your mama hears of this, I will be put out onto the street!” Rykova said, looking furtively around, as if someone from the household might have followed them.

  “Who is going to tell her? I’m not. And no one’s going to put you on the street. You’re a relation, after all.”

  “Yes, a poor relation. The most disposable kind. I will explain our lateness by saying we both went to look at the shops. You’d better tell me what you saw.”

  “That’s the spirit! Now what shall we tell her we saw? She is most interested in evening gowns. Let’s talk about those.”

  Madam Rykova stopped. “You didn’t go look at shops, did you? Where have you been? Oh my God, not a young man? How could you have conducted a correspondence with a young man without my knowing? Oh my God, your papa—”

  “Madam, please stop!” Tatiana could not shake the sound of Ulyanov’s voice, the searing gaze of his eyes. There was a man! “When have you known me to be interested in young men? Have you ever met a young man in our house, or in any other, that wasn’t insipid and boring? Who could be interested in such hothouse specimens? Men without passion or heart. Really, madam, sometimes I think you don’t know me at all!”

  They resumed their journey, but Madam Rykova was not at all easy in her mind. That was the problem, really. She did know Tatiana, very well. All this talk of passion and heart convinced her that she should talk with her charge’s mother as soon as possible on the subject of getting Tatiana safely married. They had delayed too long already.

  Glenn Ponting, a geologist turned prospector who lived in a small but comfortable cabin a short distance from King’s Cove along the road to Adderley, was taking samples a mile up the steep mountain behind his house. It was getting late, and the shadows would soon start to fall across the clearing he was working in. He would finish labelling the last couple of samples and start back down. His mare was tethered nearby and had been grazing peacefully when something alarmed her. Her head came up, and she lifted off her front legs in a little dance and whinnied. Ponting, who had a small canvas bag in his hand and was writing in a notebook, looked up at the sound.

  “What’s up, little lady?” he said, looking across the meadow toward the woods that encroached on them from above. He put down his things and walked over to her and stroked her nose. “You hear something?”

  Fearing it might be bears or a cougar, he took his rifle from its holster on the saddle and continued to talk quietly to the horse. The sound of crashing in the underbrush just south caused them both to turn and see another horse, clearly in some distress, burst out of the forest and then stop in confusion at the sight of them. Ponting put his rifle down and approached slowly. It was a black gelding, complete with saddle and saddlebags, and a bedroll that had come loose and was swinging near the horse’s back legs, adding to the animal’s panic.

  “Whoa, there, calm down,” Ponting said quietly, as he sidled forward and reached for the reins that dangled off the bridle of the anxious beast.

  The horse moved his head up and down and fidgeted anxiously, but seemed soothed by Ponting’s voice and finally allowed himself to be taken. The prospector led him to where his mare watched the proceedings and tied him nearby. He fixed the bedroll so that it was secure on the back of the saddle and then looked the whole thing over.

  “You lost your rider, eh?” he said.

  He looked out in the direction the horse had come. Why had he bolted? Either the rider was, even now, crossly tramping out of the bush cursing his mount, or he’d been hurt, and had possibly even sent the creature for help. Most animals head home. Was this the way home for him? But there was nothing much north of King’s Cove until Adderley. More likely he would come from along the lake, or one of the farms near Balfour. Or even King’s Cove itself—though he was pretty familiar with the equine residents of King’s Cove, and this fellow didn’t look familiar.

  Deciding at last that he’d better ride back in the direction the horse had come from, Ponting repacked his sample bags, hung his geological pick, thermos, and rifle back onto the saddle and mounted. He set out toward the woods in the south leading the riderless horse. They had not gone a hundred yards into the bush when the black horse stopped and pulled back so suddenly that Ponting nearly dropped the lead.

  “Come on,” he coaxed, making a chucking noise, but to no avail. He could see a clearing up ahead. The horse would not budge. “Spooked by something, eh? What’s happened?” He dismounted and tied the lead around the trunk of a slender tree. “You’re going to stay here and behave, and I’ll go look and see what’s happened to your master, agreed?”

  Ponting rode into the woods and across into the meadow.

  Once in the forest, he tried to follow the path the gelding must have taken and was forced to dismount so that he could see the ground more closely. On a forest floor already covered in needles, dead branches, and fallen trunks it wasn’t easy. They continued until Ponting’s eyes began to blur, and he had no idea if he was following a trail, or simply imagining he was following one. How far away had the horse been when he lost his rider? Or was the rider fine and even now looking for a horse that had been spooked and pulled away and bolted?

  He estimated they’d travelled to the north edge of King’s Cove, maybe a quarter mile above the abandoned cabin up the hill from his own snug cabin, when his mare suddenly pulled back and became skittish, snorting anxiously. He tried to still her to listen.

  “What now?” he asked softly, stroking her neck. “Do you sense something?”

  He could see a small clearing ahead, and at first glance, nothing seemed amiss. A substantial downed tree lay across the middle of the clearing, but nothing else. The horse was unwilling to move another step, so Ponting wound the reins around a slender tree and walked toward the log. It was then that he heard the distant gurgle of a stream. It must be the upper reaches of the small creek he drew his water from.

  He looked across the meadow and walked toward the sound of the creek. Why was the horse spooked? He got to the edge of the clearing where trees marked its southern boundary and spilled down a sharp, shaded incline to the creek below. He walked along the top of the rise, trying to see through the thick growth of trees to the water below.

  The creek and its underbrush looked undisturbed. But something felt wrong. If the person who owned the horse was a hunter, he could have wounded an animal ne
ar here somewhere and then perhaps set off on foot to finish it off. He moved forward to see if he could spot a trail of blood anywhere and then stopped. With a wave of horror, he thought, what if the tables had turned, and somehow an enraged bear or cougar had attacked and dragged the hunter into the bush? If that were the case, the hunter would have dropped his rifle, the underbrush and grass would be disturbed. But in deep contrast to what he was feeling, the meadow and the creek below gave no indication of any disturbance.

  “Hello! Hello . . . is anyone there?”

  The forest, deeply shadowed in the dwindling afternoon, was silent but for the faint whispering of the tops of the trees as the breeze moved through them.

  “Sir.” It was Thursday morning, and Oxley had put his head in Darling’s door.

  Darling was still unsure about Oxley. He wasn’t Ames. He was too—well, what was it, Darling thought—too earnest perhaps? Was he too lacking in humour? Yes, he decided, maybe that was it. Still, he’d have to do.

  “Yes?” Darling said without looking up.

  “We’ve had a call about a hunter who hasn’t returned.”

  “Chalk one up for the beasts,” Darling muttered under his breath. “Where?”

  “Somewhere in the mountains above Balfour. It’s not unusual for this person to be away overnight on a hunt, but it’s been a couple of nights, and his wife is worried.”

  “We’d better go along and see her. Did you get her address?”

  “Yes, sir,” Oxley said with a slightly offended tone. “Shall I get the car?”

  “Yes, fine. Oh. I have the keys.” Darling reached into his jacket pocket and tossed the keys across the desk. I’ll meet you outside.”