A Deceptive Devotion

by Iona Whishaw

  “I see,” said Darling. “Well, that could complicate things. I had no idea we even had nuclear secrets. All right, Ames.”

  Darling paused. It was now or never. Clearing his throat, he said, “Listen. I have another little job for you, one that will not depend on you becoming a sergeant.”

  “Sir?”

  “The fact is that Miss Winslow has agreed to marry me—”

  “Aha!”

  “Ames,” Darling said dangerously.

  “Sir.”

  “We’re just having a small wedding at that rickety church out at King’s Cove, but I’ll need some sort of best man.”

  “Me, sir?”

  “Yes, you. Who do you think I meant? Don’t make me regret this.”

  “No, sir! Yes, sir! I’d be very honoured.May I say, sir—”

  “You may not. This is costing money. Just get home. Oh—and thank you.”

  Ames hung up the phone and leaned against the payphone wall in the grip of a tumult of feeling. Never in all the world would he have expected Darling to ask him to be his best man. He pushed open the door and felt the cool September air on his face. It smelled like rain. He looked at his watch. A gift! He tipped his hat happily at a woman waiting to use the booth and, feeling as fizzy as an ice cream soda, turned toward Woodward’s Department Store on Cordova Street.

  October 1923

  Aptekar had only half an ear to the speech. He had, he thought, heard it all before, but he kept his face set in ways that suggested interest. It was his eyes that wandered continuously to two rows in front and slightly to the right of where he was sitting. He was looking at the back of a head he was sure he recognized. He had been grumpy about the continual need the government had to gather everyone into massive red-flag-draped rooms for speeches. He wanted to get back to where he’d been assigned to keep an eye on a German counterpart whose embrace of socialism had seemed to him to be overzealous. The German travelled often to Leningrad, and it was his current trip that had brought Aptekar back. Unfortunately, the German had decamped, and Aptekar was temporarily stuck, asked by his bosses to attend the conference. He had wanted to say to his divisional head that it was a waste of time, and that his German could be getting up to anything, but he suspected the head knew that and was merely responding to some sort of pressure from above about the discipline of field personnel.

  Someone next to the woman he was watching said something to her, and she turned her head. Aptekar’s heart turned over. He had never thought he’d see her again after the day she married, but here she was, in a drab grey serge suit, her hair pulled back severely away from her beautiful face.

  He turned his eyes back to the speaker who was citing some eye-watering statistics about production, and thought about his own almost ungovernable madness leading up to that wedding. It had begun on his first holiday from the military academy. She had begun it, he thought now, looking at her profile, and then her neck as she turned back to look at the speaker. He felt again the astonishment and passion of his own undoing that night so long ago in her father’s garden. For a moment he wondered that she had not sensed him behind her, and then smiled slightly at his own vanity. She was married now, had children, no doubt, and would not remember him. It was only when the wave of applause rose and then fell, and the swell of conversation started up as people began to rise that he thought, What does it mean that she is here at an event laid on for people who work for the MGB?

  “Well?” The director was scowling at the telephone on his desk, his voice tense as he talked to Vancouver.

  “Well. Nice-looking woman, I’ll say that.”

  “You’re not judging a bloody beauty contest, Hunt.”

  “Absolutely no evidence of anything. She says she didn’t tell him anything, and she doesn’t know where he is, though she did concede that if he were looking for her, he’d probably know where to find her. And sir, I’m inclined to believe her. Wasn’t she one of your top girls?”

  “Yes. Well, top girls can be toppled.” But in his heart, he knew Hunt was probably right. Lane Winslow had never been wobbly. If she’d seen Aptekar, she would have said.

  Hunt continued. “The local intelligence people have the wind up, I’ll tell you that. That network of informants that was arrested last year has everyone on edge. People are seeing spies under every bed. There is quite a community of Russian expats here. I imagine it’s keeping the RCMP busy.” He didn’t say he had his own little network of informants who alerted him if any of the Russians on the ships tried to defect.

  The director was silent for a beat. “Bloody Russians everywhere. I expect I’ll hear from my local man that Aptekar’s fetched up here, but just in case, keep an eye out at the port of entry. He’s probably travelling under an assumed name, but something might turn up.”

  “Why is he so important? He was coming over anyway, wasn’t he? Why not just let him run to ground?”

  “Thank you, Hunt. Keep me posted.” The director put the receiver into the cradle definitively. It was happening all over since the war ended. Even Canada. British citizens had been got at, he knew, and he was under pressure from the home office to produce some names. “Have to justify your salary, Dunn,” the home secretary had said with only a thin veneer of humour.

  “Hello? Is this the police?”

  “Yes,” said Constable Oxley. Of course, it bloody is. “Who is this?”

  “Oh. Yes. Mrs. Metcalf? Mr. Taylor’s landlady?”

  Oxley sat up straighter and pulled a pad of paper forward. “Yes, Mrs. Metcalf. Did you think of something else?” She certainly hadn’t got much when they talked to her.

  “I don’t like to speak out of turn . . .” Mrs. Metcalf hesitated. Oxley waited. “It’s more that I forgot, really. You see I turn in quite early. Before Mr. Taylor. He rents the room downstairs near the kitchen.”

  “Yes, I remember you showed us the room.”

  “Well, I woke in the night. Sometimes I can’t sleep, you see, and I went downstairs to the kitchen to make myself some hot milk. It’s very soothing. It works like a charm.”

  Oxley, who was maintaining a polite patience, wrote “charm” across the top margin of his paper and drew a glass of milk. For good measure he added a few wisps of steam coming off it.

  “Are you there?” Mrs. Metcalf sounded anxious.

  “Yes, absolutely.”

  “That’s when I noticed that Mr. Taylor’s door was open, and the light was off. And, well, I peeped in while the milk was heating, and he wasn’t there. I think the disaster of the milk boiling over put it right out of my mind. It took ages to clean up. It burns onto the stove, you see.”

  Oxley did see—but didn’t care. “What time was this, Mrs. Metcalf?”

  “Oh, it would have been one or one thirty.”

  “Was he there in the morning?”

  “Well, I went around and checked that the doors were locked. I like to have Mr. Taylor here, as I’m a widow and live alone since Mr. Metcalf died. Naturally, I was very tired once I finally went to sleep and I didn’t wake up till almost nine in the morning. Of course, he’d be at the shop by then. He is a very early riser.”

  “Do you usually make the bed, Mrs. Metcalf? Had it been slept in?”

  “Oh no, I make it a strict rule that the tenant has to look after all that sort of thing. I do the washing once a week on a Monday, and I make breakfast and supper.”

  “So, was the bed slept in?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to say, Constable. I wouldn’t be able to tell you. He is very good about making his bed and keeping his room tidy, but, I don’t know, I did feel when I looked in the morning that he’d never been there at all.”

  Oxley wrote up the rest of his notes and went to stand outside Darling’s door.

  Suddenly aware of Oxley haunting his threshold, Darling rolled his e
yes. “Can we establish that you knock, Oxley? What is it?”

  “The landlady, sir. Taylor, it turns out, was not at home overnight as she had thought.”

  Chapter TWENTY

  “I don’t believe there’s anyone running around with a knife,” Eleanor said. “Do you? If you’d done that to someone, you’d be off like a greyhound. Why hang around waiting for the police to come looking for you?”

  Eleanor, Kenny, and Lane were sitting on the back porch, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun. Alexandra was asleep at Eleanor’s feet. The tea plates were empty but for the crumbs of the currant scones that had engaged their attention earlier. Orlova had returned to the Hugheses’ garden to finish up some sketches.

  “I’m inclined to agree with you,” Lane said. “I really do think that whoever killed that poor man was after him specifically. Mind you, if I’m a narcotics importer or something equally unsavoury, there’d be no better place to hide than in the bush up above our little settlement.”

  “There’d be no point in a narcotics outfit establishing itself here,” Kenny reasoned. “We’re miles from anywhere. You’d want to be near one of the big places, like Vancouver. No, I agree with Lane. Someone wanted him dead, and we have nothing to worry about.”

  They maintained a friendly silence for a bit. Alexandra, always an alert sleeper, turned on her side and stretched her neck to look out at the garden, now a riot of fall colour. Black-eyed Susans, mums, late delphiniums. Lane wondered how they’d look in a modest little bouquet.

  “Actually, I do have a little news of my own.” Would this ever get easier? “I, well . . . I’m to be married. The inspector—”

  But whatever else she would have said was lost in Eleanor Armstrong’s delighted cries. Alexandra was up barking, and Lane’s hand was being pressed in earnest congratulations by Kenny, and Eleanor’s enormous false teeth were displayed in a beaming smile. Lane was pleased to note that Angela had actually managed to keep it a secret. The surprised reaction of her neighbours was quite genuine.

  “But where? Oh. I suppose you’ll be off to the coast. Doesn’t the inspector have family there?” Eleanor asked, preparing to be disappointed.

  “No, actually. Mr. Stevens, our very own vicar, has agreed to do the heavy lifting, and we’re going to be married right here at St. Joe’s. I did tell Angela yesterday because she’s going to be my matron of honour, and I must say I’m impressed she managed to sit on it all this time.”

  “That is absolutely splendid!” Eleanor said. “I won’t mention a thing till you’ve told everyone else.”

  “I suppose I’d better send out some invitations. I might as well have the lot. You can stick them in everyone’s mail boxes and have the excruciating pleasure of having to talk about it endlessly.”

  “Listen, where you and that inspector are concerned, the gossip is already pretty endless, but never excruciating. Oh.” Eleanor sat back, an expression of dismay on her face. “I suspect this means you’ll be leaving us.”

  “No, it won’t. Darling and I have agreed to live here. I couldn’t bear to leave.”

  “Now, you just hold it right there. This calls for a celebration.” Kenny got up and went into the house, followed by Alexandra. He was limping a little.

  “It’s nothing,” Eleanor said, seeing Lane’s eyes following him. “He gets a bit of a twitch in his hip when he gets up. It wears off in no time. It comes to all of us, I’m afraid. Oh, I am happy to know there will be a family next door. You and that lovely inspector and—”

  “Steady on! The lovely inspector and I, and maybe a dog.”

  Kenny had a bottle of sherry and three exquisitely engraved glasses. “Now, then, I’ve been into the glass cabinet for these. They only get an airing on very special occasions.” He put the tray down on the bench and poured three glasses. “To Miss Winslow and Inspector Darling!”

  The next morning there was a substantial gathering at the door of the post office. Normally people came down to collect their mail in dribs and drabs as their work and chores allowed, but this morning some collective sense seemed to permeate King’s Cove and most had turned up at the same time.

  “Didn’t someone say they heard a shot the other day?” Glenn Ponting asked. “It’s amazing that I was up in the bush nearish to there, and I didn’t hear it. But I might have missed it; I was collecting samples and that involves a fair bit of hammering away on rocks.”

  “You’re lucky you weren’t dispatched,” remarked Mabel. “I thought that shot was in all likelihood,” and here she dropped her voice into a whisper, “Alice shooting at her imaginary cougars.”

  “That was Angela,” Lane said, raising her voice slightly to speak over the approach of Robin Harris grumpily bumping down the road toward them on his tractor. Both he and the tractor were smoking.

  “Angela was shooting at cougars?” asked Gwen, looking surprised.

  Reginald Mather came out of the post office and looked disapprovingly at the gathering. “Nothing wrong with my hearing. It was not my Alice, so you can stop that for a start. I’ve put the rifle out of reach, and she was at home.”

  “No one thinks it was Alice, Reg,” said Lane soothingly. “I only meant, it was Angela who heard the shot. But the man who was killed was a hunter, and he was hunting in the mountains just north of us here, so it’s not surprising someone heard a shot. She was worried because my guest was out walking, and Angela thought she might want to be careful.”

  “Ah, yes. Your Russian,” Reg said without further comment, but leaving his disapprobation of this foreigner in their midst hanging in the air.

  “She’s all right,” Gwen said. “She’s painted some lovely pictures of the garden. Even Mummy is impressed.” She leaned over to Lane and said sotto voce, “Mummy doubts she’s much of a gardener. She was very smug about it.”

  Robin got down off the tractor and spoke through the cigarette in his mouth. “When are the ruddy police going to catch this man? We aren’t safe in our beds. We’ve all got work to do now picking season is here. We’re sitting ducks. This idiot could pick us off one by one.”

  “For God’s sakes, Robin. To what end?” Gladys said.

  “I don’t know, do I? He’s already killed a completely innocent hunter. What’s to say he’s not an escapee from a loony bin? Likes to kill people? What’s going on with your tame policeman?” He addressed this peevishly to Lane.

  Lane wished she could still the rising anxiety, but she didn’t have much knowledge of what the police were thinking, and what she did have, she felt unable to share.

  “I’m afraid they might find out about us,” Verne Taylor said. They were sitting on a boat dock in a secluded patch of lake near Balfour. They met there often.

  Cassie Brodie looked at him, frightened. “But they already do. Arlene told them. Do you think it matters? The police think it was over five years ago.”

  “I know, but what if they discover I was with you all night? I mean, my landlady told them that—”

  “Wait, what do you mean all night?” Cassie Brodie had put her hand over her mouth. “It was not even two when you went back to town. Oh my God, Verne, just tell me the truth. Did you do it?”

  “How could you think that?” Taylor said. He could hear his own voice shaking. He hadn’t told her where he’d been. He took her hand and looked at her imploringly. “I love you. Isn’t that all that matters? I don’t know what happened to him. But you have to believe me, I would never have killed him!”

  Even as he said it, the lie tasted bitter in his mouth.

  “I couldn’t bear it if I thought you’d done it. I couldn’t bear it, Verne! It would be the end of everything!”

  She tried to pull her hand away, to lean away from him on the upturned rowboat on the pier next to her, to hide the anguish she felt.

  “Hey, hey, hey! There now. I’m not going t
o lie to you, Cass. Not about anything. Come here.”

  He pulled her into his arms, feeling, with a combination of anger and pity the slenderness and fragility of her body. It had been the last straw, that Friday night a couple of weeks before, when Brodie had come home and found his wife lying down, a cold compress on her forehead from a violent headache. He had been enraged to find the stove unlit, the table unset. She had gone to a neighbour the next morning and managed to call him, using their usual code. When they met, he had seen the bruises on her arm and cheek.

  “And you know what? I’m glad he’s dead. When I heard I felt so happy, Cass. So happy that we would finally be able to be together. We just have to wait till this all blows over and they catch the guy. But Cassie, I need you to do something for me. I need you to tell the inspector that I was with you all night. It won’t really be lying because I wasn’t off killing anybody.”

  “Oh, but—”

  “Cass, you need to trust me, no matter what. No matter what, do you understand what I’m saying to you? You need to trust me that I didn’t do this!”

  “So, sir, how would you like to proceed on Taylor? He was out somewhere in the night. He could have been killing Brodie.”

  Darling considered this. “Perhaps. Though we think it more likely that Brodie died in the afternoon, and even if Taylor had developed, shall we say, special skills during the war, he would have had difficulty pulling it off in the pitch dark. But, it’s not completely out of the question. The time of death is not one hundred percent certain.”