She came downstairs and put the bag in the hallway, took her coat and hat, and put them on. She could see that her father had returned to his newspaper, perhaps convinced she would obey him after all, or perhaps cutting her out of his life altogether. The expression on his face, she thought, was much the same either way. Her father had never admitted of a world outside his own view of things.

  Her mother stood in the hall, watching her daughter settle her hat using the little mirror by the door, her misery mute and contained. Rose put her arms around her mother and hugged her briefly. “Goodbye, Mother. I will write to you, I promise. No. Don’t come with me. I will wait at the station on my own.”

  She picked up the suitcase and turned to open the door, certain that her mother, always subservient, would have nothing to say at the constant tension that unfolded between herself and her father. But her mother had put her hand on her shoulder firmly, giving it a little shake, and had whispered, “You’re a good, strong girl.”

  October 1944

  THE GIRLS SAT on their beds in the barracks, waiting while the milk boiled on the little single burner for their nightly cocoa.

  “I wonder what the men do,” said Daisy, a short, plump blonde from Halifax. She was like an optimistic child. Always full of good cheer and curiosity.

  “They get shot,” said Rose. She said it as if it was lightly meant, but it hung starkly in the air for a moment.

  Daisy hesitated and looked down, and then said, “No, I know.” She, like the other girls in the room, knew about Rose’s brother, Danny. “But I mean now. Do they make cocoa or do they have secret bottles of hooch they take out for what Daddy used to call a ‘nightcap’?”

  “I don’t think military discipline allows for hooch, Daisy,” Rose said, smiling now. She stirred the cocoa and doled it into cups. “Let’s drink up and say our prayers. Antwerp tomorrow.”

  Daisy threw herself back on her bed, a hand over her forehead. “I wonder if I’ll see Rufus again.”

  “That’s what you get for falling in love with a man called Rufus,” Rose said. “Here. Sit up and get this down.”

  “Yes, Mother,” Daisy said with charming sarcasm. “I don’t know how you could understand, at your age.”

  Rose smiled again. “A woman of twenty-seven is not too old to fall in love, Daisy.” Her smile belied the pang she felt. What would Daisy think about Captain Corcoran? What would anyone think? Stifling a rueful smile by drinking her cocoa, she asked herself, What would my father think? He would be proved right, after all.

  In the dark, Rose lay on her side, her arms crossed on her chest, her hands tucked under her chin, a position that had given comfort all her life, and thought about Stigg Corcoran, Third Canadian Infantry Division. He’d only said there was a big push. He hadn’t said more, but she had heard they were doing something near or in Holland, she wasn’t sure which. She closed her eyes and all she could see in that inner darkness was a terrible, gnawing fear.

  THE SKY HAD darkened again as Ames drove back toward Nelson, and he was happy to be going back before the next snowfall hit. The ferry was on the Nelson side when he arrived, and for some reason there was quite a lineup of cars waiting to go across. It was doubtful he’d even make the next one.

  People had gotten out of their cars and now stood in small groups, smoking and talking quietly. It was clear something was up. Ames joined a couple of men a few cars down.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, pulling his collar up against a gust of wind. A definite smell of new snow. He wondered how Terrell was getting on with the boy, Samuel.

  One of the men, dressed in a long overcoat with his hat pulled low, shook his head. “Apparently they are short-staffed. The guy who is supposed to start the shift today never turned up. Good thing there’s no emergency, that’s all I can say.” He drew on his cigarette, and then put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the packet, offering one to Ames.

  Ames shook his head and said, “Thanks.”

  “I saw your colleague in the Legion last evening. He was pretty good with that fool, Dixter, in spite of the insults being flung at him. You can always count on Dixter to take things too far. Not the first time he’s gone crazy. Can’t take his drink. I expect they’ll ban him after this. The war, I’m told, though it’s been thirty years. Usually his brother-in-law comes to get him before anyone calls you fellows. I gather that officer is new here,” the man said, repocketing his cigarettes.

  “Yes, he is.” If the man had hoped to use this as an opening salvo for a longer conversation, Ames was sorry to disappoint him. He was cold and wanted to get back into the car.

  The ferry lights finally came on and there was some sign of movement. Ames lifted his chin toward the other side of the lake. “Looks like there’s some action.” He touched the brim of his hat with a pleasant smile and returned to his car.

  DARLING LOOKED DOWN the short embankment. They could see the river below them. They were a few miles along on the road toward Castlegar. A tire-shaped curve in the snow right near the edge of the road suggested a vehicle had come too near the edge and swerved back, but it was snowed over so it was impossible to tell what sort of vehicle it would have been. Cars driving along the road with chains all day had turned the road into a dimpled landscape of snow. The figure, which looked like a doll that had been tossed out a car window, still lay face down and was almost completely covered in snow.

  “It’s remarkable anyone actually saw him,” Ashford Gillingham said. The police pathologist had accompanied Darling to examine the corpse at the death scene, something he was doing more now. It was his normal practice to wait until the body of a victim was brought to his basement morgue, but he’d been interested to learn that one could gather more information by seeing the body in situ. He had fallen into the job when he was still a family doctor and had been asked to do a post-mortem on a man who had been shot at a local mine. He had found it intriguing and had offered himself to the police on a more regular basis, and he was working hard to catch up on his reading about the latest approaches in forensic science. He now stood next to Darling, gazing at the shape of the body lying below.

  “Nothing for it,” Darling said, and began to sidle down the short snowy embankment.

  “I’ve brought my camera, so I can take a few shots. They might help, though no doubt your caller is right, it looks like a hit and run. As he’s off this side of the road, I’m going to tentatively assume he was walking toward Nelson.” The two men whose task it would be to take the body into town stood by their van smoking and drinking coffee from a Thermos, watching the activity around the body below. They were still not used to seeing Gilly working at the scene, though he had gone out to see Mrs. Hughes’s root cellar when human remains had been found the previous spring.

  Darling had joined the pathologist. “Scruffy-looking fellow,” he observed. “How long has he been lying out here, I wonder.”

  “Still in a state of rigor mortis, but that’s not saying much. In these cold conditions it can last for days. We may only get a real sense of that when we find out how long whoever he is has been missing from the bosom of his family.” Gilly leaned down and looked closely at the face from which he’d brushed the snow. It was now exposed because of the angle of his head. “There are some abrasions on his face, but possibly from his slide, or fall, down to this position. If he was hit by a car, I might expect a broken neck, or back, perhaps.”

  Darling stood up, looking along the edge of the road above them, and shook his head. “Whoever hit him didn’t bother to stick around.” His voice registered grim disapproval. He leaned down and fished in the one coat pocket visible and found only a few coins. What he did notice was the lining of the coat was torn and the coat itself was old and well-worn along the edges. The man had several days’ growth of beard.

  “He almost looks like a vagrant,” Darling suggested. “If he was hit in the back, he won’t have seen the end coming. That’s a mercy, I suppose. I wonder what he was doing this far from town on foot.”

  “I expect, from the lingering odour, we will find he’d been drinking,” Gilly said. “Perhaps he’d had a skinful and was walking home.”

  “From where? Castlegar is miles in that direction, and he’s going the wrong way if he was drinking in Nelson. If he has no identification on him and he is vagrant, it will be the devil trying to work out who he is. It would have been a long walk in this snow, no matter where he was headed.” Darling waved his hand at the van to signal the men to begin the process of removal. “Unless you have anything more you’d like to look at?”

  “Nope. I have a couple of snaps. Together with whatever I discover in the post-mortem, I might be able to make a fairly complete picture. Good luck finding the driver. With this coat, if he was hit in the back, it’s unlikely to have left a convenient dent on a front bumper, but we’ll see how hard he was hit.”

  CONSTABLE TERRELL, WITH his hand resting gently on Samuel’s shoulder, stood on the front porch of the neighbours who had once taken the boy in. He removed his glove and knocked on the door. Mentally crossing his fingers, he prayed they would take him. The child needed to be somewhere familiar, near his school, rather than uprooted into town. He looked down and saw that Samuel was looking up at him, concerned. Terrell gave him a little wink and a smile.

  Footsteps, and then the door was opened by a plump young woman who looked puzzled at the sight of Terrell, but then burst into smiles when she saw Samuel.

  “Hello, you!” she said. “Come in, come in. It’s freezing out. It’s already starting to snow again. It wouldn’t do to have you out there turning into a snowman!” She pushed the screen door open and stood aside. “Look, Ed. It’s young Samuel and a friend,” she called into the kitchen. “And who is your friend?” she asked, bending down to unbutton the boy’s coat.

  “This is Constable Terrell. He’s helping me. I met two other policemen, too.”

  Terrell had removed his hat and was standing on the mat in front of the door. He nodded and said, “Ma’am.”

  “I’m Julia Benjamin. Just call me Julie. This is my husband, Ed. Gabriella is upstairs reading. They have a temporary teacher at the school she seems to like who is encouraging it. Gabriella! Come see who’s here! Samuel’s come to see us,” she called. “Samuel, let’s hang your coat up, and you go upstairs to see Gabby. There’s a good boy.”

  The three adults stood watching Samuel climb the stairs to meet their daughter, who took him by the hand, saying, “I wondered where you’d got to.” Julia Benjamin turned back to Terrell, her expression worried. “What’s happened? He’s welcome here, he’s a lovely little boy, but I don’t want any trouble with that father of his. I’m assuming his turning up with a bruised eye like that, at our doorstep, with a policeman, means something is not right.”

  “Let’s get the constable off the mat, shall we?” Her husband came up behind her, smiling and wiping his hands. “Come in. I’ve just made a fresh pot of coffee. We can sit down. I’m guessing we’re going to need to be sitting down for this.”

  Terrell, extremely grateful for the offer of coffee, explained that Inspector Darling had found Samuel at home, where he’d evidently been on his own since sometime on Friday.

  “On his own? He’s all of eight or nine years old. That man’s a bloody criminal! He oughtn’t to be allowed to care for him,” Julie exclaimed. “It’s not the first time, either. My Gabby went over to see him earlier in the fall, maybe October, and found him alone. She brought him back here. She left a note on the kitchen table saying Samuel was with us. Well, didn’t his father rant and rave at us, telling us he didn’t take ‘nothing’ from ‘no neighbours,’ and threatening us. He’s an uneducated boor. I can’t even believe Samuel can be his son. The mother, poor soul, left, you know. We don’t know when. But I expect she was getting some of what Samuel has on his face. She was terribly frail and beaten down, if you know what I mean. But I wonder if she would have left if she thought he was going to be left at home like this, on his own.

  “The thing is,” Terrell said, “the only thing we’d be able to do is place him with a family in town, which might take some time and would also deprive him of being in his own school with his own friends. He’s putting a brave face on it just now, but he’s going to need people who care about him, as you folks so evidently do, until his father comes back, when he begins to take in the enormity of being left like that.”

  Ed shook his head. “You don’t need to ask, Constable. The man’s a brute, and no doubt about it. That kid deserves better. If I’m honest, I only wish we could keep him. Gabby loves him, and often said she wished she had a little brother she could care for like she does Samuel. But I suppose he’ll have to go back.”

  “There will likely be charges of neglect and so on. The courts could deem his father unfit. A search would begin, will begin, in fact, for his mother. The preference is always for a family member.”

  Julia sniffed. “I know she wasn’t strong, but what kind of mother would she be, seeing as she couldn’t cope or look after him?”

  “Now, Julie, we don’t know the full circumstances. Anyway, we’ll be glad to look after him. Is there anything you can do to keep that maniac from coming over here uttering threats? I don’t really think he’d do much, but he frightens Gabby,” her husband said.

  “He frightens me!” Julia Benjamin said.

  “I think there is something. We can get an injunction to keep him away from here and away from Samuel till this is resolved. I’d like to see the boy back in school. He seems pretty bright.”

  “As bright as a button. Loves to read and is interested in everything. It’s a real shame.”

  “I’m very grateful to you both,” Terrell said, rising and taking up his hat. “And the coffee really hit the spot. I’d best get on before the snow gets too bad.”

  “You’re new, Constable Terrell. How are you finding everything?” Julia Benjamin asked.

  “Thank you, ma’am. It’s a small station and everyone has been very welcoming. And Nelson? It’s not too different from a small town in Nova Scotia.” Enough said, Terrell thought. Every town had a percentage of people who were determinedly friendly, and those who scowled and pulled away. According to Ames, some people even scowled at the small number of Italians in town, so it might have more to do with people unwilling to be around anyone different from themselves. The Benjamins were determinedly friendly, and that extended to him and to lost children.

  He buttoned himself into his coat and slipped on his gloves. “Thank you again for taking him. I think you’re just what he needs right about now.”

  “Don’t worry about a thing,” Ed Benjamin said. “We’ll take good care of him.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  TERRELL ARRIVED AT THE POLICE station late, just as O’Brien was going off shift. He’d been waiting for the night man to come on.

  “Busy place today,” O’Brien commented, placing his Thermos in the lid of his substantial lunch box. “I’ll be glad to put my feet up.”

  Terrell was still in the grip of some despondency about the ultimate fate of young Samuel, and worried that his consoling words about the father being deemed unfit to care for his son might, in the end, be but wishful thinking. If Gaskell wore a suit and made a good enough case to a judge, he could regain custody of the boy.

  “Feet up sounds good. Are the inspector and the sergeant here?” He took off his hat and shrugged gloomily out of his coat.

  “Ames has been out to the teacher’s cottage again, and Darling’s been up the road collecting a corpse from a ditch.”

  “A corpse! A car accident?”

  “More like a hit and run. He’s upstairs if you want chapter and verse. I’ll say good night.” O’Brien took his coat off the row of pegs on the wall, each with the name of its owner taped above it, and took up his lunch box. He’d just opened the door when he closed it again, shaking his head. “I’ll forget my own head next. The hospital called. What with the excitement of the body, it went clean out of my mind. I made a note.” He tucked the lunch box under one arm and shuffled through the untidy pile of papers at his desk.

  Terrell, who had been partway up the stairs, came back down and took the note. “Seems she’s remembered something,” O’Brien said.

  UPSTAIRS, TERRELL FOUND Darling and Ames in conference in Darling’s office. Darling waved him in.

  “I hear you’ve been out at a hit and run, sir,” Terrell began.

  “First things first, Constable. How’s the little lad? Were they willing to take him?” Darling asked.

  “They were. A very nice, warm family, though they are worried that they will have to deal with trouble from the father. I did assure them that we could seek an injunction to keep him away for the time being, but I’m not completely confident that a judge will place a child away from the father, especially if he presents himself penitently. I’m afraid my experience in these matters has not been encouraging. My thought is we should try to find the boy’s mother as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, you make a very good point. We’ll put something through to the RCMP and put some ads in the papers and hope for the best. At the moment we don’t even have his father in hand, unless he’s slunk home in the meantime,” Darling said.

  “He hasn’t. I stopped by the house to see if he’d returned and made sure it was shut up.”

  “Good man. Ames here has been back to the house of the hapless teachers to have another look around, especially for more notes, but aside from a folder of legal whatnots and letters belonging to Miss Scott, he hasn’t found much to add.”