Sighing, she sat down near the window, crossed her legs, and looked out at the snowy landscape of trees lining the edge of the parking area, with Elephant Mountain, white and imperious, just visible behind them. She had no real idea how long she’d been in hospital. She wondered where Wendy Keeling was, and why she hadn’t come to visit, and then realized that of course she must be with the children at the school. She frowned. There was something about Wendy. She struggled to remember, felt a wave of panic, and then gave up. She looked at the other two people in the room: one an elderly man with flying tufts of white hair and days of unkempt beard growth around his moist mouth, and the other a woman who was feverishly puffing on a cigarette and turning the pages of a magazine. Life, Miss Scott saw, no doubt some old pawed-up issue. She picked up a copy of the Nelson Daily News lying beside her and looked at the date. So, it was close to Christmas. She felt a pang of anxiety. She should be home with her mother. She shouldn’t have to cope all alone with the work on the farm in the winter. She was about to put the paper down and go back to her room, when a headline caught her eye. “Hit and Run Victim Identified.” She read further and then stood convulsively, feeling suddenly as if her head would burst from the pressure, crying, “No, no, no, no!”

  “CONSTABLE TERRELL? THIS is Dr. Edison at the hospital. I thought I’d better let you know that Miss Rose Scott has had another relapse and possible stroke, and I’m afraid she’s back with me upstairs.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. Is there any sense of what caused it? I mean, are you liable to have more strokes once you’ve had one?” Terrell asked. He pulled his notebook forward on his desk and wrote, “Miss Scott, stroke.”

  “Not necessarily. However, between the head injury and a possible heart abnormality, there is plenty of possible cause. And though it is not popular to say so, there was some work done on smoking before the war in Germany that suggested smoking is bad for the heart and lungs, and Miss Scott is a smoker. We’ve kept her away from cigarettes to avoid the coughing, but she has been visiting the common room where you can count on there being lots of people smoking. That’s where we found her, in fact, clutching a copy of the Nelson Daily News. There’s a paper that doesn’t usually knock someone over, but there you are.”

  Terrell was silent for a moment, writing. Had something been in the newspaper? “Would any sort of sudden shock cause her to have a stroke? I was wondering about the paper. Do you recall which day the paper was from?”

  “I would have said no, but in fact the patient who raised the alarm said that she had been reading the paper and suddenly stood up crying out the word ‘no.’ Perhaps she had seen something. I’ll see if I can track down the paper. If we know of something that would give alarm, we’ll be able to keep it from her. She will be with me for the next while anyway and she’s having no disturbance, even a visit from you. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Dr. Edison, but if you could track down the date of the paper, that might be helpful. I’m afraid we have very little to go on just now, and something that alarmed her may be helpful. Perhaps she saw a picture of the man who attacked her, or something that might give us a lead.”

  “Right you are. I’ll do a bit of sleuthing myself at this end and call you back.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  SATURDAY DAWNED UNPROPITIOUSLY GREY AND delivering an icy rain. Lane woke up to find Darling reading beside her.

  “I’ve lit the fire and put on coffee. I think I hear it blipping now,” he said, putting his book down and leaning over to kiss her.

  “Aren’t you a good husband! It smells divine. Gosh. Look at the day. I’ll be off after breakfast to finish up at the teacher’s cottage. I must say, nature could have obliged with some decent weather to support my good works. What are you doing today?” Lane sat up and reached for her dressing gown.

  “I had thought it would be a perfect day to sit by the fire and read. I wish I’d known before I married you that you are so unrestfully ambitious. I suppose I’d best do what I understand rural husbands typically do. I’ll go up to the barn and split a pile of firewood.” He put a bookmark in his Steinbeck; he’d read The Grapes of Wrath on their honeymoon, and with a background primarily in English writing, he thought he’d best keep going with Americans. “If you’re sure you wouldn’t like a bit of a lie-in?” he said with an endearing touch of plaintiveness.

  “Don’t try to tempt me away from my duty! Come, the coffee smells divine, and I have some bacon to go with Gladys’s eggs.”

  Darling had no sooner buttoned up his grey tartan flannel shirt than the phone in the hall rang. He waited. Two longs and a short. “I’ll get it,” he called. He looked at his watch. It was already nine thirty, though it felt, because of the dim weather, much earlier. “KC 431, Winslow-Darling residence.”

  “Ah, sir. I’m sorry to bother you at home. It’s Constable Terrell.”

  “Bully for you, Constable. What’s so important I’m being kept from my coffee?”

  “Sir. I got a call late yesterday from the hospital, Dr. Edison. You know, she works in the special care part of the hospital. It appears Miss Scott had another stroke. It is possible it was triggered by reading the paper. It turns out it was the December 12 issue, yesterday’s. I’ve got hold of one, but I can’t immediately see what she might have seen to alarm her.”

  Darling could smell the bacon wafting up the hall and hear the uplifting clatter of plates being handled. “What do you mean ‘triggered’?”

  “Oh, sorry, sir. I mean she apparently was reading the paper in the smoking room, and, according to someone there, stood up suddenly saying ‘no’ several times and fell over, presumably from the stroke.”

  “Right. Well, I don’t know what can be done at this juncture. I have this week’s papers here. I’ll give it a look-see at this end. You on your own there?”

  “Weekend staff, sir. Though Sergeant Ames is upstairs doing paperwork. Thank you.”

  Darling hung the earpiece on the phone and went in search of the papers piled on the window seat. Muttering as he looked through them, he said, “Aha!” as he found the right one. “I have something else to do,” he said, going into the kitchen. “I’ll be going through yesterday’s paper to find out why Miss Scott keeled over after reading it.”

  “Good God! Really? Poor woman. I’m so glad she’s in the hospital where they can keep an eye on her. Right. I’m off.”

  LANE PULLED THE car up to the front steps. The deserted cottage looked even more dismal than usual, though the sleet that had been falling out of the looming sky was beginning to let up. It almost looked as though the little house had shrunk further from the pummelling. With a sigh, she buttoned the top button of her jacket, adjusted her hat, and got out of the car and went around to the trunk to take out the supplies she’d brought from home. Bucket, cloths, a mop, and her container of Old Dutch scouring powder, because the one she’d bought at the store the afternoon before was not, she felt, going to be enough. She put them down on the porch, balancing her mop on the wall, while she opened the door to the house.

  Just before she went in, she looked in the direction of Gaskell’s house, what she could see of it. She wondered about the hit and run. It must have damaged the car that hit him in some way. David had just last evening told a story of a teacher hitting a deer at night. It was obviously a more common hazard than she had imagined. She herself had seen them in her headlights, leaping up the embankment along the Nelson road, having crossed in front of her. It struck her now what a wallop a car, and the driver, for that matter, would receive hitting a deer. How different would a car that had struck a deer look from one that had struck a man?

  Inside, Lane, having picked up most of the things slung around the sitting room and kitchen the afternoon before, started the serious cleaning in the easiest room, the one she assumed had been Miss Keeling’s. She got to work stripping the bed and making a pile of washing to take home, which she set by the door. She also took the two garments that had been left behind. She could keep them, in case Miss Keeling came back, or pass them on to charity should a new teacher be assigned. This room was straightforward. A sweep and a mop, and she’d remake the bed once she brought the sheets back.

  Miss Scott’s yielded more complex problems. She flipped the light switch and found the low-watt bulb provided little added illumination. She shuddered. She loved light. Sunlight, bright electric light. How could someone live in this murky semi-darkness? Even the window gave only a little light as it was small and looked out onto the patch of dense, looming evergreen woods at the back of the house.

  There was Miss Scott’s half-packed suitcase, and a quick look in her dresser showed that she must have intended to pack another suitcase, as two drawers still contained clothes. She opened the second, as-yet-unfilled suitcase. Hoping there would be enough room for all the clothes, she set about packing the rest of them. Should she take them home so that they would be ready for Miss Scott when she got out of hospital?

  It suddenly occurred to her, as she gathered up hairbrushes, combs, boxes of pins, and a jar of face cream, that Darling had been puzzled about there being nary a word from Miss Scott’s fiancé. Had Darling said that when interviewed she hadn’t remembered she was off to be married? Hadn’t Bales said she’d been meant to leave that Sunday? If she was going home first, the fiancé would have had no reason to become alarmed, but if she was going straight to wherever he was, he should have been heard from by now. These thoughts deepened the real mystery of Miss Scott. Was she really getting married? Or was she planning to run away? If those poisonous notes were for her, Lane thought, she had every provocation. Looking at the condition of the cottage and knowing Miss Scott was in dire straits in the hospital, it seemed clear she had left running away just a little too late.

  And that begged the question: If the notes were from a woman, as Darling seemed to assume, would a woman have come in, wrecked the cottage, and attacked Miss Scott? Surely the teacher would have had more of an ability to fight off a woman?

  Having cleared the dressing table, she took the large doily off it and wiped the surface with a damp cloth, giving the edges of the surface a quick swipe. She replaced the doily and went to the kitchen to rinse the cloth and nearly missed it: a dark ferrous red stain on the cloth. She hurried back to the bedroom and turned the light back on. She was certain that there had been nothing on the surface of the dresser, so after looking at this she ran her hand gingerly along the edge. There! A slight irregularity, like food dried on a surface. Snatching her hand back, she leaned in to look more closely. It was right on the corner and barely visible against the dark wood in the dim light, but what was on her cloth was assuredly dried blood. Had Miss Scott struck her head on this? It was a low dressing table. If she’d been pushed, from which angle? Lane stood experimentally where she thought Miss Scott might have been standing to hit the back of her head on this corner of the dresser.

  She contemplated the dresser, imagining the scene, the assailant following Miss Scott into the room. Perhaps she’d made a run for it and had tried to close and lock the door of the bedroom, but he, or she, had pushed through. Miss Scott, her back to the dresser, her front to—here Lane stopped. Her front to the wardrobe? She remembered that when she’d first found Miss Scott she’d wondered if she’d hit her head on the bedstead but had seen no evidence of it. That would have made sense because the bed was directly opposite the door into the bedroom, and a frightened, backing-up Miss Scott, who was pushed, would have hit her head on some part of the bed. The dresser, on the other hand, where she’d found the blood, was behind the door. Perhaps the blood was from something else, after all. A scrape, a cut finger.

  It didn’t change anything, really. Someone had still come in, made a mess of the house, pulled out the phone cord, and either hit or, more likely, pushed Miss Scott so that she fell and got a concussion. Just a curiosity, really, but she thought it would be helpful to the police.

  She worked until about one thirty and then went outside with the bundle of bedding, placing it and then the suitcases into the car. She had got through a good amount of scouring, powder washing the chamber pots, doing the bathroom sink and the bath, and scrubbing the kitchen sink and wiping up the mess of flour and sugar off the counters and floor. She’d washed two milk bottles and stacked them neatly by the sink and had removed whatever would not last another month from the fridge and given it a good cleaning as well. She could stop at the King’s Cove dump on the way home.

  As she was dumping the garbage, she imagined again the assailant tearing the house apart looking for whatever it was he, or she, expected would be there. Looking in cupboards, under the sink, lifting the mattresses. Now that was odd. The mattresses did not look as if they’d been moved. She’d check with Darling when she got home. Perhaps they’d straightened the mattresses during their initial runs through the cottage.

  Of course, she realized, driving slowly down the rutted garbage dump road toward Bales’s store, she was overthinking it. Obviously the person had found whatever he’d been looking for and could stop searching and get on with the business of fleeing. Or kidnapping Miss Keeling and fleeing. Where was Miss Keeling? Could Darling be right that she was in league with the assailant?

  TERRELL REREAD THE front page of the newspaper. Luckily, he’d found it with its crossword still not done, piled on the front counter where O’Brien usually sat. “Holy mackerel!” he exclaimed. How had he not seen this immediately? He wondered if it was worth disturbing Darling again. But perhaps his boss had made the self-same discovery—and hadn’t taken so long about it.

  “Holy mackerel, what?” asked Ames, who had been coming down the stairs from his office.

  “I think it’s the article about the hit and run where they’ve identified Gaskell. She’d know he’s the father of one of her students.”

  “Of course!” Ames said, taking the paper from Terrell. “Poor little Samuel. I’m sure she must have felt sorry for the kid. If he went to school dressed the way he was when Darling picked him up the other day, I’m sure she must have worried about him. Seeing this, she’d realize how devastated he would be. Didn’t he already lose his mother?”

  “Yes. She apparently decamped early in the fall, or late summer. I asked the rcmp, but they haven’t traced her yet. I also asked, by the bye, if there’s been anything on the missing Miss Keeling. I called this morning to tell the inspector about Miss Scott’s condition. Should I call about this? It’s Saturday and he did sound a little impatient. He said he was going to look through his papers there.”

  Ames shrugged. “He’d sound like that even if he’d especially asked you to call him back. The truth is, he doesn’t really take the weekends, necessarily, so he might like to hear. No harm in showing him you’re alert and on the job.”

  “You again,” Darling said into the telephone receiver. “What now? Not enough to keep you busy in town?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s just that I think I may have discovered what startled Miss Scott in the paper.” He glanced up to where Ames was leaning against a desk with his hands in his pockets, looking amused.

  “Startled, you call it, do you? Well, go on.”

  “There’s a headline about the hit-and-run victim being identified as Mr. Gaskell. Miss Scott wouldn’t have known he’d been killed, but she’d know he was that little fellow Samuel’s father. I can see where she might be upset.”

  “Hmm. The question is, why would it give her a stroke?” Darling said after a short silence.

  “She’s in a weakened condition. Perhaps—”

  But Darling interrupted. “Yes, all right. Since you aren’t a doctor yourself, unless you’ve been keeping something from me, perhaps you could check with Edison at the hospital.”

  AT A LOOSE end and unwilling to get started just yet on the pile of wood waiting in the barn for his attention, Darling remembered that there was apparently another cookery book somewhere upstairs among the effects of the late Lady Armstrong. He had not yet fully explored the house, and he had to admit he felt in his heart it was Lane’s house, and not yet theirs. He went up the creaking stairs and opened the door to the attic and was immediately hit by the icy cold of this shut-off and completely unheated part of the house. But at the same time, the attic was suffused with light, albeit the cold blue grey of the ice and rain pounding the windows that faced south toward the lake. He’d been here only once, the summer he had met her, when she had spread paper across the floor and was mapping out the events that had led to her arrest after a man had been found dead in her creek. His heart warmed at the memory. Then the room had been bathed with sun, the windows open, letting in the fragrant flurry of warm summer air, and Lane had been beautiful and serious. He saw her now, earnest, kneeling over her map, the sunlight reflected off the waves of that wonderful hair. He must have been well on the way to being irretrievably lost. He recalled now that in the summer there’d been no door. Perhaps Kenny Armstrong had put one in. He was happy to see it now corralling all that cold away from the rest of the house. The attic was enveloped in a deep icy chill. He quickly scanned the wooden boxes that had been pushed under the eaves. There were dishes stacked with old newspapers around them, some boxes with fabrics, perhaps clothes or table furnishings, other boxes with old-fashioned heavy photo albums. Seeing a box with books, Darling pulled it forward and began to take them out.

  “Aha!” he said into the cold. He pulled out a weathered cookbook by someone called Fannie Farmer. Not much minding what was in it, as long as there were recipes, he seized it, pushed the box back under the eaves, and, with a final look out the windows at the unrelenting rain, hurried downstairs to the warmth.