by Iona Whishaw
CHAPTER THREE
THE DRESSING ROOMS NOW SEEMED even darker. The single light bulb only emphasized the murkiness of the place. Truscott switched on the flashlight to light their way down the passage. “Bloody strange place to come and get shot,” he commented. The victim’s bare feet weren’t covered by the blanket the doctor had thrown over him. Darling thought, illogically, how cold he looked. Truscott stood aside, holding the flashlight aloft to provide some better lighting for Darling’s inspection. Darling pulled the blanket right off to look at the scene as a whole, noting the layout of the body. “Do you know who he is?”
“His friend in there said his name was Viktor Strelieff. He didn’t seem to know much else about him. Date of birth, et cetera. Remarkably unhelpful.”
Darling glanced around the small cubicle to see from what quarter death had come. He must have been shot from close range, the shooter coming up behind him as he changed. Then why was he lying on his back? With his gloved hand the inspector turned the victim’s head slightly to see the wound in the upper left-hand side of the skull, near the back of the head. It was just visible the way his head was turned. He gingerly turned the head the other way and could see no exit wound. “You didn’t turn the body over, did you, Doctor?”
“Certainly not.”
“I wonder if whoever found the body did.”
“I asked the young woman the same question. She seemed to have the good sense to leave well enough alone.”
I bet she did, Darling thought. “Could we have that flashlight along the wall here? How tall would he be? About here.” He leaned over the body in the close confines and peered at the wall. Nothing.
“Perhaps Mr. Barisoff moved him,” considered Darling. “We’ll have to find out. In the meantime, I’d better figure out how a shooter got in and out of here without being seen or heard. Ah. My van seems to have arrived.” They could just hear gears grinding as a vehicle made its way up the little hill. “Thank you, Doctor Truscott. Do we have your number in case we need anything more?”
They started down the passage, the doctor leading the way, when Darling called, “Wait, Doctor, could I have that flashlight? I just want to check these cubicles.” The doctor handed him the flashlight and went on.
Darling first went to the very end of the dressing area and shone the light on the back wall. There was a door, but it had no doorknob. It appeared to open outwards. He stepped back and looked at the floor. There’d be little enough to pick up off the rough slats that formed the floor of the dressing area, but he thought he’d leave the door for now till he and Ames could have a good look at it. Then he realized the falling snow must be obscuring any footprints that might have left an impression in the light snow of earlier in the afternoon; if their killer was not the man in Miss Wycliff’s sitting room, then whoever it was might have had made his getaway out this door.
“Blast!” he muttered, going back to the house.
He found Lane, Ames, and Barisoff gathered around the table, Ames taking notes and Barisoff looking miserable. “Ames. Get that camera and come with me. We need to get some shots before the snow and darkness obscure every hope of tracing anything. Miss Winslow, could you ask Mr. Barisoff if he turned the body, or moved it?”
Lane asked Peter, who was newly alarmed by the activity of Ames bouncing out of his seat and rushing out the door with a leather bag. “No, I did not,” he said with a shudder, as if his interlocutor must think him mad. Assured on this count, supposing the man was telling the truth, Darling followed the constable, but then poked his head back in through the doorway.
“Miss Wycliff, is there a way to get around the whole dressing room structure without going through that back door?”
“Yes, let me show you, dear.” She climbed back into her brown coat and followed him out the door.
“Just along there, see? Right to the end, then around the building. Mind how you go. There’s no path or anything, and there’s lots of brush. And it’s quite steep in places.”
“Thank you, Miss Wycliff. My men have just arrived. Could you show them up here? No need to go along yourself, just let them know where it is.” Having received assurances from Betty Wycliff, Ames and Darling went past the entrance to the change rooms, Ames readying his camera and flash apparatus. “We’ll need some of the usual photos of the body, but let’s try to catch what we can outside before the footprints are completely obliterated,” said Darling.
The afternoon had taken on a dusky quality that meant darkness would make what they had to do nearly impossible inside of thirty minutes. They moved along the boardwalk, which ended abruptly with a deep step down into a narrow gully between the building and the hill. Because of the shelter of the building, the snow had not accumulated as much here as elsewhere. They could see that the door at the end of the changing area let out onto a narrow wooden staircase.
“The door on the inside had no handle, as though it is meant to be pushed out. I suppose it was built to be some sort of fire exit,” commented Darling. Farther along there was a corresponding rear exit behind the women’s changing area, though this staircase was longer, because the distance between the building and the sloping ground was greater.
“I’ll take a snap of the door anyway, just in case. Very hard to get dabs, though I would guess our shooter wore gloves, if only for the weather,” said Ames.
Darling nodded and stopped just short of the stairs. The snow was covering the more exposed stairs, but it was evident that there had been traffic there, judging by the soft indentations still visible on each stair. Darling looked carefully at the door. It was designed with springs, so that it would slam shut on its own, and had a vertical wooden handle on the outside. “Ames?”
“Steps in evidence going down, I’d say, sir.”
“And I’d agree with you, Ames. And once down, where to?” Anywhere they looked away from the stairs there was thick brush. “If there were a path directly away from the building a man could disappear quite quickly over the hill and down just on the other side of that rise, but it would be hard going, hacking your way through this.” The bush nearby looked undisturbed. It didn’t appear as though anyone had attempted it.
“Down by that other set of stairs there’s more space under the building. He could have gone under there.” Darling looked towards where Ames was pointing. The entire building was supported by regularly placed stilts that became longer the farther the structure jutted out from the hill. “I see. Well spotted. Let’s see how far our party could have travelled in that way.”
They discovered that a person could have gone under the building at a crouch, and thence under the residence, each step becoming easier as he descended. It appeared that this led out to the staircase leading up to the bathing area from where the cars were parked. “A man could get right away to the parking area this way. You’re a bit taller than me, Ames, and you have the camera. Go back and take a picture of those rapidly disappearing footprints, and I’ll try my luck imitating a fleeing criminal by this route. And when you’ve done that, get up into the change room for the pictures of the scene.”
Ames dutifully went back to take the required pictures, while Darling stooped over to go under the building. It was dark underneath. The daylight would have trouble penetrating at the best of times, he thought, taking the flashlight out of his pocket, but with this early winter evening already upon them, it might as well have been nighttime. The flashlight showed that the ground under the building was a hard-packed mixture of earth and gravel; another piece of bad luck, as any footprints would be nearly invisible, but he proceeded slowly nonetheless, in a more hopeful frame of mind.
The descent was sharper as it neared the stairs, so while it was possible to stand almost upright, the going was treacherous because of the steepness and loose gravel. Near the edge of the building his flashlight showed a long skid where a person—or persons; he had not considered there might be more than one until now—had lost his footing. Not a footprint, certainly, but good evide
nce that this might have been the escape route. He followed his prey’s would-be path out from under the building, back into the snow, and saw that he could have then stuck close to the structure that supported the long stairway to the pool area and arrived at the parking lot virtually unseen, certainly by anyone up top. Trees, he noted, would have hidden him from anyone on the street below. Resolved to follow the whole way down to the parking area, Darling moved carefully, holding the supports of the stairs to keep from sliding down. There, right in front of him, very near the bottom stair, he saw it. A small, dark wooden button. The only reason it had not been buried in the new snowfall was that it had fallen inward and just under the stair. Darling shone the flashlight on the wood of the structure, looking to see if this might be his man’s, scraped off his coat or jacket in his hasty descent. Sleeve, he decided, very possibly the left one because it had fallen inwards. Leaving the button in situ, conscious that the snow could begin to drift inwards and under the stairs in very little time, he jumped the last bit to the level of the parking area. He needed to get Ames and his camera down here, but he stopped and looked around. The man would have either jumped into a car left here in the lot or gone down to the street where he had perhaps left the car for a quick getaway, either towards Kaslo or back towards Nelson. He thought of asking the townspeople if they’d seen anyone, but the street bore more of a resemblance to a ghost town than anything else.
In the meantime, Ames returned to the dressing room and, stifling an involuntary shudder, either from the cold or the uncompromising vision of death provided by the naked corpse, began to consider his shots.
He unpacked his leather camera bag and readied the flash with a bulb, placing three more bulbs in his pocket to allow for quick changes. The flashes were startling in the dark space and illuminated the grotesque sight of this pale naked body captured in its last deadly moment in this tiny cubicle. He could hear the inspector talking quietly to the removal men outside. When he got outside, where it seemed scarcely any warmer than inside, the removal men were waiting, rolled-up stretcher and canvas at the ready for their grim task. Ames greeted them with a smile, which under the circumstances might have seemed callous but for the fact that he was brimming with the resilience of the young. He saved a more sombre expression for Darling, who now signalled to follow him down the stairs to the parking area to discuss how a killer might have got away.
LANE WATCHED THE two policemen go out to begin their work, feeling slightly let down that she should not be part of the investigation, and then chided herself. Her curiosity about the situation did not entitle her to become an amateur sleuth. During the interval, when she was helping Ames with the initial part of the statement, they had really only covered the barest of facts. Barisoff’s name, date of birth, address, and the name and anything else he might know about his deceased friend. Lane longed to ask him a bit more, but worried that when Darling came back, he would cover the same ground. Peter Barisoff would become even more aggrieved, and answer questions asked of him a second time in a peremptory manner, leaving Darling with less information than he might otherwise get. Instead she said, “I was so surprised to hear you speaking Russian. I moved here from England in the summer, so I have a lot to learn. Are there many Russian speakers here?”
“There are some of us. We used to live together, but our communal land was broken up. Now we live here and there on farms. We have been here for more than forty years. We are Doukhobors. We do not fight. We do not wish to send our children to their schools. We do not eat meat. We get in trouble with the government for this.”
“What do you mean, your land broken up? By whom?”
“The government. Now we must pay rent for the privilege of living on what was once ours. We do not pledge allegiance to the King. We came here from Russia to get away from all that.” It hit Lane suddenly that this was at least one reason he did not want to stay and speak to the police. To him, the police could not mean anything good.
She thought back to her childhood; she’d been protected by her Englishness in Latvia. But she knew Latvians who had had trouble with Russian authorities. They feared the police, and with very good reason. She was surprised to find out that authorities in her new country might be guilty of such harassment and repression. But Lane knew these policemen at least. “I know these men,” she said. “They will only want to know about your friend, and anything you can tell them about what you found.” But even as she said these words, she worried. What if they turned their suspicions on him? What, indeed, if it was he who had shot the man?
Peter Barisoff greeted her assurances with a shrug, and while Lane was trying to think of a more reassuring topic of conversation, Betty came back in, followed by a gust of cold air.
“Where have they gone?” asked Lane.
“Down to the bottom somewhere. They’d better hurry; it will be dark before long and the snow has picked up. Honestly, you just don’t know what the day is going to hold when you get up in the morning.” She took off her jacket, the melting snow creating drops on its surface, and bustled to the stove, rubbing her hands. “That poor fella didn’t come that often. You know, I can’t think why they want to go behind the building, can you?”
Lane realized that Betty could not know that the man had been shot and was therefore still under the assumption that he’d had a heart attack. Thinking of the alarm it would cause if Betty did know, she said, “I don’t know. I’ll just go and see how they’re getting on.”
Outside, Lane could hear the engine of the van. Just like that, she thought, a man disappears into the night. She shuddered, the first indication of what she might endure later, alone at home, as the full realization of this death came to her. She could see footprints along the boardwalk at the front of the building that indicated the direction Ames and Darling had gone. Around the back of the building, she could not see either man, and then she caught sight of Ames, coming up the stairs towards her, shouldering his leather bag.
“Miss Winslow, what are you doing out in this?”
She could think of no ready answer but asked, “Where’s Inspector Darling?”
“Just coming. We think we’ve found how the man might have got away.”
As if summoned by the mention of his name, Darling appeared below them, from around the front of the building. He’d returned by the regular stairs and was now in search of Ames.
“Miss Winslow? You’ve something to offer, have you?”
“I’ve really just come to see when you might speak with poor Mr. Barisoff. Only he’s anxious about getting home.” She waved her hand vaguely upward at the falling snow, thankful that she could still think on her feet.
“It’s poor Mr. Barisoff, is it?” Darling asked rhetorically. He started back towards the residence. “Do you have some special knowledge that he might not be guilty of this himself?”
For a moment she wondered if he was making fun of her, but he seemed quite serious.
“From the state of him, I suppose. He seems genuinely upset, and really rather harmless. He apparently comes from a pacifist sect of some sort. I’ve not heard of them before, but I can’t see that it would allow for him to shoot someone in the back of the head.”
“Ah,” said Ames, “a Doukhobor. I said so, sir, didn’t I?”
“Yes, Ames, you did. Your perspicacity is, as usual, exemplary. So our victim is a Doukhobor. This sort of crime would be unusual in that community. They run more to crimes of protest against the state, if you will. Ames, come with me down to the bottom of the stairs. There’s one more picture I need. Miss Winslow, please tell Mr. Barisoff that it will only be a few more minutes.”
“It’s getting dark,” Ames observed.
“Very good,” murmured Darling, passing Lane as he and Ames went down the stairs.
CHAPTER FOUR
INSIDE AGAIN, WITH A RENEWED round of tea, and Betty Wycliff discreetly out of the room doing all that was required to close the pool down for the night, Darling, Ames, Barisoff, and Lane sat ar
ound the table under the warm glow of a standing lamp. Outside, snow was falling steadily, whirling against the window, just visible in the reflected light. If truth be known, Darling would sooner have had Lane out of the room as well, as she had no official standing, but he would have had to wait, possibly for days, to procure an official translator, and by then Barisoff might clam up completely. As it was, his lips were snapped shut, perhaps determined to thwart any progress for the police. Darling could only hope Lane was up to the job. He had no idea how much Russian she spoke, or if a dialect of some sort might be involved with which she was not familiar.
“Mr. Barisoff, thank you so much for waiting. You understand that under the circumstances we needed to get as much information as we could while conditions allowed. I am asking Miss Winslow to stay and translate, if that is all right. I know she is not an official translator, but I do not wish to detain you any longer than I absolutely have to. I know it has been a difficult day.”
Lane translated this, to which, speaking through Lane, Barisoff replied, “I have had more difficult days, thanks to the Canadian police. Miss Winslow is fine. In fact, I would refuse to speak to you without her. She, at least, is impartial.” The bitterness he felt for whatever past interactions he’d had with the police was plainly evident.
Ames, with his notepad open and pencil on the move, glanced at Lane as she translated this. Though she, too, was beginning to show signs of weariness, she seemed incapable of looking unattractive. For Ames this was a new type of beauty he had had no experience with. There was the obvious physical beauty of her dark eyes and auburn hair, of course, but the allure of her intelligence and hidden depths of resourcefulness and maybe even sadness added something, he decided, that perhaps was not found in Violet Hardy, his current girl. The war, he assumed. It had made her a little like Darling. He himself had narrowly missed the call-up because of his age, and had been disappointed that when he’d resolved to join up he was told that he was required for policing on the home front.
