A Match Made for Murder

by Iona Whishaw

  “Torrentially. But it doesn’t come and stay for months like at home.”

  “Do you miss it?” Lane asked. “London, I mean.”

  “All that filthy air and smell of damp wool? Not a bit of it. But . . .” Here Priscilla stopped and fell silent. She took out a cigarette, offered one to Lane who shook her head, and lit it, blowing smoke away from Lane. Finally, she spoke with an artificial little laugh. “Well, you trade one lot of disagreeableness for another, don’t you?”

  Lane waited to see if her companion would explain. Priscilla looked down at her hands, holding them out and then turning them as if she were inspecting her gloves, the smoke from her cigarette curling upward.

  “Paul does well. Well, I mean . . . I do have everything I could want. Everything I never had. I grew up in the East End, you know. Most of my neighbourhood got bombed to smithereens. I’ve gone from being utterly poor to quite comfortable, thank you very much. From rain and bad air and outdoor loos to every modern convenience in a warm and sunny place. I’m lucky.” She stubbed the cigarette out on the ledge and dropped it on the ground. She didn’t sound lucky, Lane thought.

  “But?” Lane asked.

  Priscilla looked at her and then away, peering upward through the sunglasses that framed her face, giving her an air of Hollywood glamour. Lane marvelled again at her beauty and delicate bone structure. “Well, I mean, life isn’t a smooth sail, is it? Paul likes things a certain way, and I work hard to keep things just so for him, as any wife would.” She smiled brightly at Lane. “Sometimes I wish I could just jump in a car and drive away. Eat what I want, wear what I want, say what I want. Feel . . . well, mustn’t grumble. It’s the bargain I signed on for.”

  “Is . . .” Lane hesitated. It wasn’t her business really, but she had felt a weight of darkness behind Priscilla’s sudden admission of a dream of escape, however lightly expressed. “Is Paul, well, I mean, is he kind to you?”

  Priscilla turned to her. She smiled broadly, her eyes hidden behind her dark glasses. “Now, whatever can you be thinking?” She stood up abruptly. “I wonder how your Frederick is getting along. I’m famished. I really think you’ll like the place I’ve picked.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Watts cottage was up a winding and rutted road above the Willow Point store. Constable Terrell and Sergeant Ames were on their way to visit Mrs. Watts there, as she had wanted to return to a normal routine as quickly as possible for her daughter.

  “You know, I drove out to a garage near Balfour, run by a guy called Van Eyck, the day before yesterday, and someone had painted the word Bitch on the garage door,” Ames began as they sat on the ferry across to the north shore. “The paint was already dry, so it had happened sometime in the middle of the night. The strange thing is that Tina Van Eyck, the daughter—who is a mechanic there, by the way—believed it was Barney Watts who’d done it. They’d had an unpleasant interaction when he’d brought his car in, and she thought he’d done it for revenge.” Ames said all this, carefully avoiding the embarrassment of his own dubious motives for going out there in the first place.

  “Coincidence, surely. But I guess you didn’t want to ask Mrs. Watts about it when her husband had just died?”

  “Yes. It seemed so trivial somehow, after he’d been found dead. Anyway, I don’t think Miss Van Eyck could really be so sure. It might have had nothing to do with him.”

  “He was away a lot, so we were used to making do on our own,” Mrs. Watts said. They were sitting at the kitchen table with mugs of coffee. They could hear Sadie, her ten-year-old daughter, moving about in the room above them. She had been kept back from school for the day.

  “Away doing what?” Ames asked quietly. Terrell had taken Ames’s usual place as note-taker, and Ames was finding it awkward sitting with his hands empty. It did mean, however, that he spent more time observing the woman than he otherwise might. Her husband had clearly been much older—but there was something weary about Amy Watts that aged her beyond her years. Perhaps some of it was grief.

  “Well, there was the war. And then when he got back, he got a job at the cpr, mostly at the station in Nelson. He was a section foreman in the yard. And then he’d go for training sessions to the coast. Anyway. We got quite used to making do on our own.”

  Ames looked around. Her repetition of the phrase “making do” suggested a stark, narrow existence. The kitchen was primly tidy and a little over-warm. Dishes were stacked neatly in the open shelves, and cups hung above the sink. A full wood box was tucked between the wall and the stove. A cat lay on a worn grey blanket folded near the other side of the stove. There were no dishes piled for washing, or surfaces cluttered with pencils or books. An empty laundry rack above the stove was pulled tight to the ceiling. Did she always keep it like this, or had grief made her try to find ways to keep busy?

  “What about his health?”

  “I don’t know. I never knew him to be really ill. A little winded sometimes after chopping wood. Recently he would come home and fall asleep right after dinner, but I assumed that was mostly because he’d been at the bar.”

  “Who is his doctor?”

  “We never had a doctor. Been lucky, I guess.”

  “So he wasn’t taking any sort of medicine?” Ames asked.

  “No.” Mrs. Watts drew the word out. “But now that you say it, I noticed lately that he wouldn’t eat like he used to. Kept saying he had no appetite or was too tired to eat.”

  “How recently?” Ames asked. Terrell sat with his pencil poised over his notebook.

  “The last month or so maybe? I honestly couldn’t say. Are you suggesting he was keeping some sort of health problem from me?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “It would be like him, actually. He always had to be the strong man. Nothing could ever touch him, he said, since he survived the war. I asked him about why he wasn’t eating at first, and he just told me to leave him alone. I stopped asking because he’d get mad.”

  “Can we talk about yesterday? Was it a normal day for him?”

  “Yes. We got up, I made breakfast for both of them, and then he drove off with Sadie. He wasn’t feeling well so I made him an extra hot cup of tea. He said he was getting a cold, now that I think of it, and I told him not to go to work, but he was adamant that he felt well enough to work. He drops—” she caught herself, “dropped Sadie off at the school down the hill every day. She usually walks back on her own with Betty Ann who lives farther up the road.” She clutched at her mug of coffee, kneading it with nervous fingers. “I don’t understand why he was over by the Harrop ferry.”

  “So he never said anything to you about going over there—business with the railway, anything?”

  “No. As far as I knew it was just a day of work.”

  “Now, your husband . . .” Ames hesitated. He had sat in while Darling asked questions, but now confronted with having to ask personal questions, he felt as though he was watching himself, waiting to say the wrong thing and give offence. Luckily Mrs. Watts leapt into the silence.

  “I was sixteen when I met him in ’36. He’d have been twenty-nine. We met at a church bazaar, which is a little ironic, considering neither one of us was a churchgoer. I was helping Mum with the jumble sale—I have no idea why he was there. The beer tent, I suppose. I went for a break. It was a hot day, and I went to sit on the grass under a tree. Same tree he was smoking under. I was bowled over, you might say, having a grown man pay attention to me that way. I knew he had a reputation, but I didn’t care. Eventually, well, we ‘had’ to get married. I’m not sure that was what he wanted. I think he’d been used to getting his way, if you know what I mean. He did tell me he had a steady girlfriend before we met, and I sometimes used to wonder who she was. But once Sadie was born, he settled down. She was his pride and joy. It surprised me when he started getting jealous. First he kept on about who I saw when he was away in Europe, and then he got sort of distant, lik
e he was preparing for me to leave. I don’t know how many times I told him I never would. For better for worse, I told him.”

  Ames nodded. “You said he had a reputation. Can you explain what you mean by that?”

  Mrs. Watts jerked her head abruptly to look away from them, and then quickly turned back. “He got around a fair bit. He’d been out with more than a few of the girls from school. It didn’t bother me, really. I think it made him more attractive.”

  Terrell cleared his throat, and Ames glanced over at him. He’d told Terrell to feel free to hop in if he thought of something. “Ma’am, some men came back from the war a little altered. Did he show any signs of that? Anything from nightmares to even keeping a kit bag packed and stowed somewhere?”

  Frowning, Mrs. Watts glanced toward a box bench by the door. “It’s funny you should say that. He didn’t have nightmares or anything like some I’ve heard about. But he was proud of surviving. He’d say he was invincible now. But he did have a bag.” She got up and went to the bench and lifted the seat. “Oh. It’s gone. He wasn’t scheduled to go anywhere, but his bag is gone. It wasn’t anything to do with the war, I don’t think. He just had it for when he had to travel for work.”

  “Did he usually take a kit bag, for overalls or work clothes?” This reminded Ames that they had not yet gone into the trunk. The car had been towed and was now parked in the alley behind the station.

  “No. He kept those in a locker at work. I don’t know why I didn’t notice he was carrying it. In fact, I don’t think he was. I always packed a lunch box for the two of them. His is one of those big ones, with a thermos. He had that with him, and Sadie had hers, and her book bag.”

  Terrell wrote and Ames thought.

  “Can you give me the names of his friends or colleagues that he associated with regularly? They might have known his plans. It’s possible he was in the car with somebody, though he certainly was driving,” Ames said.

  Mrs. Watts was silent for a long moment. “I wouldn’t even know who they are. He went for a few beers after work sometimes, maybe played cards, but he never let me into his affairs.” She sniffed and Ames saw that she was about to cry. “I wondered for a moment if it was this girl he used to hang around with before the war.” She bit off the end of the sentence as if she was going to spit it out.

  “Which girl was that?” asked Ames.

  She tossed her hair and endeavoured to look disdainful. “I don’t remember her name, if you want to know the truth. Lived up the lake somewhere. Her dad ran a garage.”

  “That reminds me,” Ames said, glancing briefly at Terrell. “Did your husband take your car for repairs a couple of days ago?”

  Frowning, Mrs. Watts said, “I don’t know. He could have, I suppose.”

  “Right,” said Ames, wishing he had his notebook in hand so he could pretend to glance at it. “Do you remember if he went out later that night?”

  “Certainly not. Why on earth would he?”

  “No particular reason, Mrs. Watts,” Ames said. “Just trying to see if there was anything out of the ordinary that might help us understand what happened.”

  “That was lovely,” Lane said, leaning back in her chair. “I’ve never had Mexican food before. It’s a delightful place, a bit like pictures I’ve seen of little Mexican villages.”

  “I’m glad your initiation began here. It just started up recently, but they do things right. Come. I’ll drive you through the centre. You can see where I go to do my shopping.” Seeing Darling’s face, she added, “I recognize that look. I’ve seen it on Paul. Eyes glazing over at the thought of shopping. Don’t worry, we won’t stop. It’s right on your way back to the hotel.”

  They drove along Stone Avenue and Darling said, “It’s a little bit like Nelson. I expect it’s much bigger, but it has that small-town feel to it.”

  They stopped at a traffic light, and Lane, who had chosen the back seat this time to allow Darling a better view, noticed a couple arguing outside a restaurant. “Good heavens! It’s Meg Holden and . . . I don’t know who.”

  As the light changed, Lane and Darling both turned to look out the side window and then the back one. Meg started to walk away and the man, a burly specimen in a brown suit that was a little too small, pulled her arm hard and swung her around to face him. Just when Lane wondered if they ought to intervene, Meg pulled her arm back and rubbed it and then, paradoxically, began to laugh, reaching out to stroke the man’s cheek.

  “Someone you know?” asked Priscilla, glancing at Lane through the mirror.

  “Yes, a bit. She’s a guest at the inn. In fact, she was the one standing right next to the poor man who was shot.”

  Darling turned to look at Lane with a slight inquiring tilt of the chin.

  “It’s all right, darling,” she said, smiling innocently. “I am making nothing of it.”

  When they were back at the inn, shoes and stockings off, lying on the bed with a fan blowing waves of cool air at them, Darling said, “I actually wonder if we should be making something of it. You told me she was visiting a paramour in the hallway of the hotel, and now she’s seen having an argument with yet another man in the street, who, by the way, looks like a movie gangster. It beggars belief that she has three men in her thrall, as interesting as that hair colour is.”

  Lane pulled herself up to lean on her elbow and looked at him. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m thinking that I, we, should tell Martinez, and here’s why: Is it a coincidence she was standing next to Renwick when he was shot? What connection might there be between, say, the man on the street and Renwick?”

  “Well, certainly not one Ivy Renwick would recognize.” She glanced at her watch. “I suppose the brother is probably here by now if he flew down. What are you going to do?”

  “I might call the police station to talk to Martinez.”

  Lane felt dismay. She sat up. “Oh, darling, let me talk to Meg first. No. No, I can see at once that that is nonsense. I’m just trying to protect her, and I can’t even think why. She seems, I don’t know what. Not vulnerable, exactly . . . but a little like a woman whose life is not quite in control.”

  “With three men on the go? I dare say it’s not! Thank you for pulling back from the brink.”

  Darling held up a card they had found slipped under their door when they returned. “Now, what shall we do about this?” It was an invitation from the inn for a special cocktail party followed by dinner, with apologies for the disruption of “recent events.”

  “A free cocktail and dinner? I don’t know how you can ask. I’m going to wear my wedding cocktail dress. Maybe white gloves like Priscilla. She looked so glam, don’t you think, with the gloves and scarf and glasses?”

  “If you say so. She’s not a patch on you and, I must say, doesn’t look all that happy. There’s a bit of the caged bird about her.”

  “Inspector Darling, that is very inspectory of you. I think you are exactly right. I did try to probe around about whether she was happy, but I must have made a real mess of it because she more or less drew herself up to her full height and gave me the brush off. I’m off to the front desk to pick up some postcards. I leave you in peace to call Martinez.”

  Walking along the winding path through the garden, Lane marvelled at how it seemed impossible the horrible events of the day before had ever happened. The sudden tearing of the veil of quiet, moneyed sophistication had revealed the human potential for violence, but it was already beginning to seem distant, with everything hurriedly being returned to its usual quiet routine. Lane reluctantly glanced to where the body had been and saw the blood had been scrubbed away by the anxious hotel staff; an air of normalcy was vigorously restored for all of the guests who had nothing to do with the death in their midst.

  She arrived at the door, nodded at a couple sitting under the ramada drinking soft drinks, and went into the hall
past the library and the restaurant and up the few steps to the main floor. Out of an unexamined curiosity, she turned down the hallway where she’d first seen Meg Holden embracing the man with the moustache and walked the length of it. There were a couple of offices and a door to the outside at the end of it. She pushed open the door and looked out. It was here that some of the underpinnings of the hotel were kept out of sight: a laundry and a cleaning supply closet, both with their doors open, were on one side of the little patio, and a small gate out to the street on the other. What you might call the servants’ entrance, she thought. She was about to turn back when she spotted Chela rinsing a mop in a deep cement sink in the supply room.

  “Hello, Chela,” she said, stepping into the room. “I see you’re back to your regular duties, then.”

  Chela turned off the tap and said shyly, “Yes, ma’am. Can I get you something?” She looked as though she might have been crying.

  “No, no! I was just exploring. I’m sorry to interrupt your work.”

  Looking suddenly stricken, Chela turned away and made a stab at continuing her mop washing.

  “Are you all right?” Lane asked, coming closer and laying a hand on the girl’s back.

  “It’s nothing, ma’am. I just had to clean up . . . well, you know.” She crossed herself. “It is so terrible. I kept thinking of the blood pouring out of him.” She wiped her hands.

  “Oh, I am sorry it was you who had to do it! It’s so hard to think of someone dying like that. Especially for poor Mrs. Holden. She was right there.”

  Chela turned away, wiping her hands on her apron, but Lane did not miss the way she clamped her lips shut.

  “What is it, Chela?”

  “I shouldn’t say, ma’am. It’s not my place.”

  Lane turned her gently by the arm. “Look, if you know something, it certainly is your place. I expect that at the moment the police have no idea what happened. Anything might help them.”

  Looking genuinely frightened, Chela shook her head. “Oh no, it’s not about the man who was shot. It’s just that Mrs. Holden. I don’t think she’s a good woman. I’ve seen her . . .” Chela stopped.