A Deceptive Devotion

by Iona Whishaw

  “Search me. It was stuffed into the wheel well instead of my spare. You should come have a look. No one told me about it, that’s what’s so strange. Mind you, I was dispatched here the minute I stepped into the station this afternoon.”

  “I’d be very interested, seeing as I’m marrying into the police.”

  “Oh, Miss Winslow! I should have congratulated you right away! The tyre business put it out of my mind. I could not be happier. I guess you know the inspector asked me to be his best man?”

  “I certainly do, and I approve heartily. It’s a sign of his quite correct regard for you.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “I would. The big question now is will you bring a guest?” Lane almost winked. The ups and downs of Ames’s love life were a constant source of speculation and not a little teasing by the inspector.

  Ames opened the trunk and pushed aside the boots and bucket to lift the blanket off the wheel well. “See? Can you beat that?”

  Lane leaned forward and put her hand on the surface of the case. “You know, I don’t think I can,” she said, her voice low and suddenly grave. She pulled the case out of the wheel well. “Is it locked?”

  “No,” Ames said. He snapped open the latches and opened it. “Look.”

  Lane looked, and then she closed it and settled it back into its spot and pulled the blanket over it.

  “Listen carefully, Constable. Do not talk to anyone about this. Let’s go back into the house. I’m going to give a quick call to the inspector, and I’m going to ask you to pick up my two deck chairs and set them up on the bottom of my lawn around the back of the house. Wait for me there.”

  Now more mystified than ever, Ames nodded. Her tone brooked no questions. She stopped by the phone and nodded toward the back porch where the deck chairs were set up next to a little table, and then she rang through to the exchange, with her fingers crossed.

  “Ah,” she said when she heard Darling’s voice. “Listen.”

  Darling waited. There was a tone of warning he’d not heard before in that word.

  “That package you sent out with Ames? It’s meant to be a surprise, so don’t tell anyone just yet. I’d hate like heck to ruin it.” She didn’t use the opportunity to tell Darling she’d been at the scene of the murder. It didn’t seem to matter so much now, with this astonishing discovery in the trunk of the police car. Maybe she’d mention it to Ames and leave it at that. Who needed a dressing down from Darling just now?

  Oxley hadn’t, strictly speaking, “moved in” to the office. It would be just as well, at this point, to be downstairs at one of the unused desks in the main office. He took a deep breath, pulled his few things out of the desk drawers, took his jacket and hat, and went into the hall. Darling’s door was shut, and he could hear him talking in a low voice. Should he be worried? He paused, but he could not make out what the inspector was saying. Could Darling be talking to that good-looking woman of his up the lake? If that was the case, he wouldn’t have to worry.

  Downstairs he was surprised to see O’Brien not at his usual place. Someone else was sitting by the phone at the front desk. This person looked up at him. Oxley wished he’d done a better job remembering who everyone was.

  “Is that desk over there anybody’s?”

  “Nope. Did you get the bum’s rush because Ames is back?” the young man asked.

  “Yup. Where’s O’Brien?”

  “Dunno. He went out with Ward and the dog.”

  Oxley looked up to where the keys of the car were kept, and his heart jolted. “Where are the car keys?”

  “Ames took them. He said he was going up the lake. I don’t know where the other ones are. You could see he was happy about it. He loves that car. Looks after it like a kid. I bet he missed it while he was out in Vancouver.”

  Chapter Twenty-FIVE

  August 1947

  “I hope you’re not here to try to get out of this assignment. I told you, you’re the man for the job,” Oxley’s supervisor said. It annoyed him to have to jimmy this one along. He should just do what he was damn well told.

  “Of course not, sir,” Oxley said. He had been minding his p’s and q’s for months, so he hoped he could be trusted again, but with this assignment he’d be out of the centre of everything.

  “Well, cat got your tongue? Nothing to say on this matter?”

  “No, sir. But I had hoped with what was developing here—”

  “I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about. You come from out there somewhere don’t you? You can visit your dear old mum.”

  “Yes, of course, sir.”

  “We need someone who speaks the lingo, just in case. We need eyes and ears, understand? And if what we suspect actually transpires, we’ll need a good deal more than that. Your counterpart is on the way. We’ve made the arrangements with the local police. Let’s hop to it.”

  Later, in an apartment in Ottawa near the Soviet embassy, two men sat over drinks, spent cigarettes filling the ashtray between them. “He’s the hardest type to deal with. Smart, willing, well-trained, to be sure, but that tendency to overconfidence.”

  “Overconfidence you call it? It’s more than that. He thinks he knows better than anyone else. He could become a danger in time. But you were maybe right to send him out on this. He can think himself in charge and he won’t shy away from bold action. I hope he doesn’t bungle it. Everything depends on him right now. Nevertheless, I think we would be wise to make what you people call a fallback.”

  “I don’t know how much I can say, Ames. No, I do know. Nothing. For one thing, I don’t understand; for another, if I did, I may, nevertheless, be under an obligation.”

  Ames frowned. “Is this something to do with the war? That’s all over, isn’t it?”

  “It’s never all over, I’m afraid. And I couldn’t say if it is anything to do with the war. I suspect not. Now then, you weren’t sent out here to congratulate me on my upcoming nuptials. Darling would never countenance the waste of petrol. So why are you here?”

  They were sitting at the bottom of the lawn, looking out toward the lake, and not for the first time, Ames felt himself soothed by the view, by the green around him, by the bank of daisies along the edge of the garden, and he tried to imagine himself living in such a place, and as before, knew himself to be too much of a townie. This would be great for a holiday. He quickly swatted away a sudden image of himself on the lawn of a country cottage with Tina Van Eyck.

  “I guess the boss told you that, while I was in Vancouver, he had me look into anything I could find about your old lady’s brother. I think because of what I found, or didn’t find, he’s uneasy about her. I think he wants me to find out what you think. I mean, do you think there’s anything fishy about her?”

  Put directly like that, the question challenged Lane. Darling had told her that Ames discovered that Orlova’s brother might be an MGB interrogator, and that the countess perhaps did not go around looking for him in Vancouver as she had suggested she had. On the surface these discoveries appeared to be in contradiction to what Orlova was saying about herself, and Lane could not shake the idea that disparate things were beginning to add up to there being something wrong about her guest.

  She would expect someone in Orlova’s position to be evasive. She’d known nothing but repression and persecution under the Soviets, so she would have adopted evasion as a necessary shield to protect herself. The MGB brother, for example, perhaps had fled the country, having found his own situation untenable. Madam Orlova could have feared exposure and instigated her own search for her brother in Vancouver. But that left one question still hanging: if she had spoken to no one, how would she have learned that he might have come here? And now . . .

  “I don’t really know how to answer that question, if I’m honest with you. I would have told you that even with your in
formation from Vancouver, I could well imagine someone in her situation, a refugee who is fearful for her life, might well behave exactly in that way: evasive, untruthful even.”

  “So you don’t have any doubts about her?” Ames asked.

  “No. I’m not saying that exactly. I am beginning to have questions, certainly. But I’m not completely sure that they add up to her being sinister in any way. Except, I suppose, that she said someone told her the brother had come out this way, to Nelson. What you’re saying contradicts that.”

  “Not necessarily. I went directly to the two churches in Vancouver to talk to their priests. She could have talked to someone else altogether.”

  “That’s true, I suppose. Ah! Madam! You are back.” Lane had seen Orlova coming around from the front of the house holding a portfolio. She continued in Russian. “Look, this is the young man who is going to be the best man for Inspector Darling at the wedding. He has been away getting his sergeant’s qualifications.”

  Ames leaped out of the chair he was in, impressed as always by hearing Miss Winslow launch into another language as if it were her mother tongue. He bowed slightly at the minute old lady and offered his hand. He had to admit, she did look absolutely harmless. She said something, smiling, and Ames nodded, mystified.

  “She says you are a most handsome man and that the inspector chose well. Now listen, I’m going in to get something for us all to drink. You entertain Countess Orlova and I’ll be right back.”

  “Oh, hey . . .” Ames said, raising his hand in protest, but Lane was already halfway across the lawn. He smiled again at Countess Orlova and waited for her to sit down, and then sat down himself, wondering if this day could get any stranger or more difficult.

  In the kitchen, Lane pulled the iced tea she had made from the fridge and put it on the table, and then stopped and leaned on the table with both hands. It was no good. Things were not all right with Orlova. She moved to the window and looked down toward where Ames and the old lady were sitting.

  Orlova seemed to have taken the lead and was showing Ames her watercolours. He was nodding and smiling, looking like he genuinely admired them. Lane gave a slight smile. A little culture would do him good. Then she darted, her heart pounding, toward Orlova’s room.

  Aptekar walked into town pulling up the collar of his jacket. He watched people bustling on the street, cars going by, could hear the whistle of the train, could see the traffic on the lake. The September sun threw a light that was reflected back on the few leaves that were beginning to turn. We always think seasons are beginnings, he thought. Autumn, we go back to school. Winter, we begin with new resolutions. Spring, we clean to welcome the new world. Summer is the beginning of rest. For him, any of these now could be a time to die.

  He walked down to the edge of the lake and sat on a bench and tried to calculate his risk. He was certain that if there was to be trouble, he was the cause of it. Both the British and the Soviets knew of his connection to Lane Winslow. He was sure they would have sent someone. The British, perhaps, to warn her. They had someone in Vancouver, he was sure. But the Soviets, they could have someone on the ground already, and they would send someone he didn’t know.

  He had to see her. To place the names in her hand, and maybe even, but here he laughed grimly, seek asylum in Canada. He was no fool. That would not be the outcome. Pulling down his hat, he walked up the hill to the post office. The man at the motel had told him where it was. He had seemed surprised that someone as scruffy as this man had something to mail. “I can post it for you,” he’d offered.

  “Thank you. I will go. I need some exercise.”

  “It’s going to be a couple of miles,” the man had warned.

  “I can manage. Thank you.”

  “Suit yourself.” The man had shrugged. Old guy like that. Bound to keel over with a heart attack. Good thing he’d prepaid.

  Aptekar watched the letter thrown into a bag that was going out in the afternoon mail. He would wait.

  Her heart pounding, Lane turned the doorknob and pushed gently on the door. How had she never noticed the squealing of the hinges? She stopped and looked behind her and then slipped into the room. Orlova had pulled the curtains, throwing the room into a green shade. She could hear, through the open window, Orlova talking slowly and loudly outside, and she took a relieved breath. Poor Ames! There would be silence any moment as both gave up the unequal battle with mutual incomprehension.

  Under the bed there were the two suitcases her guest had come with. Orlova had put her cloth bag with the painting supplies on her dressing table. Lane thought she knew for certain now that when Orlova was out with the suitcase, she was not out painting. She dropped to her knees and gently moved each suitcase and then selected the one that seemed full and pulled it forward. It was very similar to the one she had seen in the car. She snapped the latches and they sprang up, making a noise, she thought, like a saucepan falling, so loud did it seem.

  Inside Lane saw what she’d expected to see, what she’d dreaded. Very familiar transmission equipment. She sat back staring at the dials, the neatly folded wires. These had a range of what, fifty miles? More than enough for Nelson, but in this mountainous country probably not much more. Even then, she would probably have had to take the equipment to higher ground. Lane could see herself again as if it were yesterday working with the communications people in France, demonstrating the equipment, dialling in frequency, hearing the often-muffled reply from a distant machine, the squeak and buzz of electrical interference.

  Lane snapped out of her memory with a jolt. What she heard now was complete silence coming in the window. Ames and her guest were no longer talking. With a massive effort of will she stilled the sudden racing of her heart—how had she ever done this during the war? Willing her hands to be steady, she pressed the lid closed and snapped the latches into place. She could hear footsteps coming up the stairs of the porch. Praying that Ames would find a way to detain Orlova, something that would be a fortunate accident since he did not know she was skulking about in her guest’s room, she pushed the suitcase under the desk, slipped out the door, closing it with her breath held, and ran on tiptoes into her own room.

  She opened a drawer—she would use the pretence of needing a sweater—and looked into it, seeing nothing but the dials on the transmitter. She could hear Orlova coming up the hall, going into her own room. She lunged at a blue cardigan, her movements jerky with panic. What if Orlova had left the suitcases in a certain alignment? She would know instantly. It meant that her guest was a spy, a trained operative. That her “accidental” placement with Lane was deliberate. No, she told herself. Calm down. The radio certainly meant something like that, but no need to add the panic that she had taken the precaution of positioning her things in a manner that would allow her to detect if anyone had been in her room. After all, she had not locked the suitcase, so she must still think herself safe and undetected.

  This thought calmed Lane considerably. She put back the blue cardigan, closed the drawer firmly, and took up her usual green one from where she had tossed it on the chair. Coming out of the room she saw that Orlova’s door was ajar, and she could hear her moving about. She turned down the hall toward the sitting room, saying as casually and cheerfully as she could, “I’ve put out the iced tea, and now I’m wondering if it’s the right thing. I can definitely feel that fall chill in the air.”

  Ames, who had been standing at the window looking at a picture, turned. “I know what you mean. That’s why we came in. Look, she’s given me this.”

  He handed Lane the watercolour. It was of the lake from, she guessed, the top of her north field, right near the fence that separated her property from Robin Harris’s. It was lovely. Masquerading she may be, Lane thought, but she was a damn good artist.

  “Well, lucky you! You’d better get it to the framer as soon as you get back.”

  “My mom will love it. W
e don’t have any real art in the house.”

  Chapter Twenty-SIX

  Lane had not slept well. Knowing what she now knew, she wondered about staying in the house at all, but claiming suddenly that she had to go up to town for the night would tip her hand. It would suggest she thought herself in danger and clearly Orlova, as dishonest as she was, did not pose any actual danger. She was wracked with indecision, though. Should she confront her guest? Or sneak off to town to see Darling? By the time her bedside clock read three in the morning, she had decided the better part of valour was to go to Darling. She thought she knew why Orlova was here, though she resisted the notion with every part of her being.

  She woke with a jolt at seven, a new thought filling her with a visceral fear. There was something about the suitcase. Then the glance she had seen of the dead Brodie as they had loaded him into the van came to her memory, but then, as she became fully awake, she shook her head and smiled grimly. Things were bad enough. No point in absolute hysteria. Brodie’s murderer had been arrested, and in spite of Cassie Brodie’s protestation Lane trusted that Darling must think the evidence against Brodie was strong enough to warrant the arrest.

  She put a compressed hot washcloth on her eyes to soothe them, and then went back to her room to dress. This was out of the norm, a sign of her sudden caution. Normally she padded to the kitchen in her slippers and bathrobe to make coffee or tea, whatever her mood dictated that day. Today it was tea, strong, lots of sugar, as if she were treating herself for shock. It would suit her guest, too, strong black tea, she thought with a touch of annoyance. Very Russian.

  Relieved that the countess seemed not to be stirring, Lane took her tea onto the porch. The mornings were increasingly chilly, so she put on her thick green sweater. She couldn’t bear to be in the house just now. She walked to the railing and put her cup of tea on it, and then moved her deck chair so that it was at the outer corner of the porch, where she could turn to see the lake without having her back to the house.