by Vicki Delany
“M.” He reached out one hand. The first few gentle drops of rain fell on the roof of the hospital tent. The officers were worried about the rains. These flat plains and reclaimed swampland would turn quickly into seas of living mud.
“She’s gone, M. Amy’s gone. She’s left me. Thank you.”
Moira leaned over the stretcher to catch his words. “I’m glad, dearest. They’re going to take you to surgery. We’ll talk when you get out.”
“I’m sorry she died, M. I should have helped her.”
“Yes. You should have. But it’s all over. You stay strong and get better, and we’ll talk about her then.”
“Sister,” the orderly said, his voice breaking with kindness, “we have to go.”
Ralph smiled a dreamy morphine smile as his stretcher was hoisted high. “Tell Charlie I don’t blame….”
An ambulance pulled up; the back doors flew open, orderlies rushed to unload more wounded. Ralph’s words were lost.
He died on the operating table while Moira paced outside in the driving rain. Someone had told Dr. Reynolds of their relationship and he came himself out to tell her. He was a kind man, who hated every minute of this war.
Warm comforting arms enveloped Moira and led her back to the nurses’ tent. The staff of Number Four Casualty Clearing Station stood silently as they passed.
Jean held the flap of the tent back and Moira bent automatically to enter.
“Oh, Moira. What can I say?”
She straightened. It was Charlie Stoughton. His uniform was torn and filthy, and a cut over his right eye had dried into a caked mess. His face twisted with the strength of his emotions, and he gathered her up into his arms. They clung to each other for a long time, while Jean fluttered about, patting backs and whispering platitudes, and the rain fell, and the war raged all around them.
Charles Stoughton received the George Cross for his actions that day. Ralph Madison received a grave in Europe, one in a row upon row.
Moira Madison refused to take leave and worked herself around the clock.
The family was at the cottage when the news arrived. Old Augustus Madison died the next day, his heart just giving up. Ralph’s mother collapsed and never quite recovered. His two sisters in Canada mourned, but did appreciate the gestures of sympathy from all their friends. His father went to Ottawa and negotiated a new contract for the output of his munitions factories. Mrs. Brooks, mother of no children of her own, who had warmed Ralph’s milk when he was a baby, and tested its temperature on her bare arm, draped black crepe over the pictures in the house as had her grandmothers for generations uncounted, then walked out to the precipice overlooking the lake, for once forgetting to prepare afternoon tea, and howled into the wind.
The family, gathered in the drawing room, heard her, and tried not to look at each other in embarrassment.
Only Ralph’s grandmother, Elizabeth, received the news without shock. Days earlier, while she was working in her patch of garden, a piercing cry rose from the woods behind the servants’ cottages, abandoned since the beginning of the war. A single cry, so loud, so full of pain, it had the birds flying out of the trees, the squirrels scattering for shelter, the boat bobbing on waves on a lake that moments before had been as still as glass. The old woman remembered her own mother’s tales of the banshee, gathered up her gardening tools into her neat basket and returned to the cottage. She was dressed in full mourning and waiting for the telegram when it arrived.
Chapter Thirty-one
The police inspector sat in the fine old leather chair, sipping at a bone china teacup. A plate of tiny sandwiches, cookies, and thin slices of seed cake sat on a side table placed within easy reach. Lizzie held the door open for Elaine and pulled it shut silently behind her. She felt like a character in a second rate English country house murder-mystery.
He stood up. “Have a seat, please, Ms. Benson. I’m Inspector Watson.” He was coming out the wrong side of middle age, heavily beer-bellied, with a bulbous and brilliantly red nose that would put Rudolph to shame. What hair remained was thin, gray, and greasy. His cheap brown suit was worn shiny in spots, the belt hitched so tightly underneath the eight-month pregnant stomach it looked as if the container of fat would collapse to the man’s knees without support. It looked painful.
“This is Constable D’Mosca.” He nodded to a much younger man, standing in the shadows beside the cold, dead fireplace. The Constable wore the standard winter uniform of the Ontario Provincial Police. His shoulders were broad and his hips narrow. He watched Elaine with a rather ugly face that completely lacked expression, and nodded once. He also had a teacup and a plate of sandwiches, resting beside him on the mantle. His hands looked as if they would crush the fine china into dust if he dared to raise the cup for a sip.
Elaine wiped her palms on the seat of her jeans and slipped into the offered chair.
Watson sat back down. “I hope you don’t mind if I eat my sandwiches while we talk, Ms. Benson. I didn’t have the opportunity to have lunch.”
“Please, continue,” she croaked, wondering what he would say if she did object. Better not to find out.
The interview was crisp and formal. D’Mosca didn’t speak, but Elaine could feel his eyes boring into her back. She related the events of the night before last, as best she could remember them. Watson took her step by step though her nocturnal wanderings. She had seen no one, heard the dogs, thought that perhaps someone was in the kitchen but didn’t go to investigate.
“You saw no one in the storage building?”
“Not a soul. Until I called the alarm and Alan arrived.”
“What do you know about the people who are camping out over on the island?”
Elaine’s nerve endings twitched. “Almost nothing. They’ve been invited to stay by Miss Moira Madison, who is the permanent resident here. They’re not trespassers.”
“I never said they were.”
“Good. They’re nice people.” Well, most of them, anyway. She kept the last thought to herself.
“I understand that you were witness to an incident yesterday between Charles Stoughton and Dave Thomas. Can you tell me about it.”
“Nothing to tell. If you know about it, then you know as much as me. Charles was angry. He accused Dave of starting the fire. He did attack Dave first, although it was all bombast and bluster. He’s an old man, for goodness sake. Dave pushed him away and he fell. That’s it.”
“Why do you think Mr. Stoughton accused Mr. Thomas of starting the fire?”
“Because he doesn’t like him. In my humble opinion that’s the only reason.”
“Did you see Mr. Thomas the night of the fire?”
Elaine thought. “I think so. Some of them rowed over from the island. I would say that’s completely natural: you see a fire, you investigate. I think Dave was with them. Yes, I’m sure he was.”
“What’s the relationship between the people staying on the island and the Madison family?”
“There is no relationship. They are all fond of Miss Madison. She seems fond of them. They keep to themselves.”
“Would you say they are fond of Mr. Stoughton, Mrs. Stoughton, or Mrs. Blake?”
“I have no idea.”
“But you know they are friends with Miss Moira Madison?”
“Look, Charles doesn’t want them there. We all know that. But Moira has invited them. So there you are. As for Megan and Maeve, Mrs. Stoughton and Mrs. Blake, I don’t know what they think about anything, and they are highly unlikely to tell me.”
“No need to be so prickly, Ms. Benson.” Cake finished, Watson wiped his fingers on the colorful paper napkin provided.
“I am not being prickly. Merely helpful.”
Behind her, D’Mosca shuffled from one foot to the other. Elaine did not turn around to look.
“Had you met Dave Thomas before you came here?”
“Never seen the fellow before. Why do you ask?”
“Just curious. An occupational hazard. Did you know Donna Smithton?”<
br />
Elaine’s head spun at the abrupt change of topic. “No.”
“You never met her?”
“No. Never.”
“But you know who she is?”
“I was told when I arrived, that she was my predecessor. She’d been hired to work on Miss Madison’s memoirs first.”
“In preference to you?”
“Yes, in preference to me. I guess that means I was second choice. No one wants to think of themselves as second choice. But I didn’t sneak up here in the middle of the night, to a place I’d never been, to push a woman I’d never met into the lake, on the off chance that she couldn’t swim, so that I could get a job.”
“I never suggested that you did anything of the sort, Ms. Benson.”
Elaine almost swallowed her tongue. Could she be any stupider? Why not clap herself in irons while she was at it?
“Thank you for your time, Ms. Benson.”
Dismissed, Elaine stood up. “You must have a reason for asking me about Donna Smithton. Does that mean that you suspect foul play?”
Watson looked at her.
“It’s just that, what with the fire and all, I’d like to know if something suspicious is happening around here.”
“Thank you for your time, Ms. Benson.”
Suitably put in her place, Elaine made her way out of the room. As she pulled the door behind her, she heard Watson’s low voice. “Alan Manners….”
She returned to the study, hoping that they could pick up where they left off. But Moira was distracted and anxious. She chattered on for a while, about friends she had known in the war and lost touch with after. But soon Moira sighed and dismissed Elaine in much the same tone as that used by Inspector Watson. Elaine pretended not to notice the supercilious smile Ruth threw at her as she slipped away.
She wandered into the kitchen in search of a mid afternoon snack and a bit of gossip. But Lizzie also was uncustomarily abrupt. She thrust a tin of cookies at Elaine and turned back to the cookbook. She was studying a full page color picture of a whole fish, salmon probably, covered in a smooth yellow sauce and sprigs of a fresh herb. Elaine hoped that was going to be dinner.
She could get used to having a cook.
Elaine wandered through the house, munching on cookies, and ended up outside, on the deck. The sun was falling fast, casting long shadows through the woods and a band of orange flame across the waters of the lake.
What would it have been like to grow up in this wonderful place? Whole summers filled with nothing but swimming, boating, parties, and playing in the woods and on the rocks along the shoreline. Despite what her speech to Greg may have hinted, Elaine hadn’t had a deprived childhood. There was no apartment in Mimico—rather they lived in a three-bedroom detached house in a nice suburb—and most years her parents rented a cottage on Lake Erie or Wasaga Beach for two weeks. But, still, the pokey summer rentals, crammed onto a busy road of identical buildings, were light-years away from this.
Alan emerged from the boathouse pulling a small rowboat at the end of a rope. Watson and D’Mosca clambered aboard; Alan tossed them the rope and they pulled away, heading for the island a few hard strokes off shore.
The younger generation, Phoebe and Amber and Brad and their assorted brothers and sisters, were children any one would envy. But Moira, Megan, and Maeve? No way, Elaine thought. Luxurious surroundings were great, but a loving family was a whole lot better. She didn’t know what she felt about the Madisons of her own generation, of whom Alison was the only one she’d met. They were right in the middle, most likely. Short of the freedom their own children knew, but not as trapped in convention, rigid class and gender roles as their mothers.
A loon called out from the far side of the lake; a soft breeze carried the fragrance of the decomposing forest floor and the sound of waves lapping at the shore.
Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can make being miserable a whole lot more pleasant.
Willow danced down to the waterline to greet the rowboat, followed immediately by Rachel, who pulled on the child’s arm and pushed her back into the woods. Arms akimbo, feet apart, red hair blazing in the long rays of the afternoon sun, Rachel faced the intruders like a Saxon warrior watching the approach of the Vikings. All she lacked was a double-headed axe.
“They have their bureaucratic hearts set on our Dave as the villain of the piece.” Alan climbed up from the waterfront to stand beside Elaine.
“Do you think he started the fire? They seem to think someone did.”
“Dave? In a heartbeat, if it suited him. He’s a right prick, that one, although he’s managed to charm Moira, who’s usually a lot more sensitive to people. But I can’t see that it would suit him to torch Moira’s home. No motive. Quite the opposite. If the house falls down, the occupants leave. The property comes under the surveillance of the insurance company. Never good for squatters. Surveillance, I mean.”
“He seems to have a bit of an influence over Amber.”
“More the fool her. They’ve set up quarters over the boathouse. A nice, cozy little love nest. They think no one notices. He rows over when it’s dark and goes upstairs, then she sneaks out after dinner and they spend the night in conjugal bliss.”
“Are you going to say anything?”
“Me? Of course not. She’s of age. She’s not being coerced. Stupidity and willful blindness aren’t crimes, not yet anyway.”
His jaw was tight and his face set into hard lines. The wind caught his hair and fluffed it into gentle curls around his face.
“Do you know anything about the old cabin back in the woods a bit?” Elaine pointed as she talked, speaking without thinking. It was always lying under the surface of her thoughts. She had to talk to someone about it.
“I know that it’s there. That no one’s supposed to go near it. Have you?”
“Come on, Alan. Tell me you’re not curious. That’s an incredibly valuable piece of property. Frontage on Lake Muskoka, road access but secluded. Yet it’s been abandoned to grow a healthy crop of moss and saplings. The children weren’t allowed near it. They teased each other with challenges of who could spend the night in the cabin. And no one managed it. Did you know that?”
“Doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been told to keep it boarded up, but otherwise there’s no need to clear the vegetation or trim the trees or to touch up the paint.”
“You’ve never felt anything…strange out there?”
“Of course not. Are you sure that Phoebe’s childhood stories aren’t playing on your imagination, Elaine? I’ve never had reason to go inside and that suits me fine. Less work.”
“You don’t strike me as the sort of man who avoids work, Alan.”
He was staring out over the lake, watching the island, as was she. Rachel and the police had moved back into the trees, towards the campsite itself, and there was no further sign of movement. Alan turned his head and looked at Elaine. “I don’t avoid work. But I do avoid that which I’ve been told not to interfere with, and so should you.”
“I’ve never been any good at doing as I’ve been told.”
He laughed, genuine laughter full of mirth and amusement. “Then you shouldn’t be working for Moira, babe.” His looks were quite unremarkable most of the time, but when he laughed….
A bustle of activity over at the island and a small crowd burst out of the trees at the water’s edge. Willow danced ahead to pick up stones and fling them enthusiastically into the lake in order to hear the satisfying sounds they made as they splashed. The adults, however, didn’t look quite so happy. It was hard to make out the expressions on individual faces, but body language said enough. The islanders were angry and hostile; arms crossed, legs planted firmly on the gray rock of the shore as they watched Watson and D’Mosca scamper back into their rowboat. For a moment it looked as if the bulky constable would tip the wobbly craft. But incident was avoided, dignity retained, the boat righted, and the forces of law and order rowed back across the narrow strait.
�
��Stay out of things that don’t concern you, Elaine. Please.” Alan didn’t look at her as he hurried down to the dock to help the police pull aside.
***
Elaine found herself thinking about that conversation a good deal of the time. If not always in the foreground of her mind, it was now, more than ever, usually resting in the back.
She walked down the flagstone path to stand under the old white pines that marked the entrance to the secluded copse where the servants had spent their summers long ago. But her feet would take her no further. There had to be a reason the family ignored this piece of property so completely.
Elaine set her mind to finding out what it could be.
Chapter Thirty-two
At last it was over. This stage of it anyway. The war in Italy wound down. The wounded were evacuated back to England, the healthy deployed elsewhere. Moira returned to No. 15 General Hospital and in March of 1944 they were sent back to England.
The heart is a creature unto itself. Moira mourned her brother, and all the men she had watched over while they died, but nothing could dampen her excitement at the idea of England. For England meant Grant. And she knew he was as excited to see her as she was to see him.
They were able to plan leave together. A whole week. They would meet in London, visit the jazz clubs they had talked and written about so much.
Moira blushed as she bought a satin nightgown from a tiny London shop. Her mother sent her money regularly, but she had nothing to spend it on. And even if she did, she had no wish to set herself apart from her fellow nursing sisters. She had bought victory bonds with most of the money, and carelessly tossed the rest into a bank account. The negligee was a rare treat.
Moira Madison was an Army Nurse. She knew all there was to know about the facts of life. In theory. She fingered the peach satin and delicate lace while the sales clerk, an older woman encased under a much too heavily made up face and false smile, watched her customer through knowing eyes, and, with a shiver of apprehension, realized that, in reality, she knew nothing at all.
