MISS SCOTT OPENED her eyes. Someone had her arm and was tucking it back under the covers. She made a sound. Her mouth felt dry.

  “You awake then, dear? Yes, I know. You must be thirsty. Here you go.” The speaker held a straw to her lips and Miss Scott sipped, feeling an almost desperate relief. “I’ll just go get Dr. Edison. She wanted to know when you woke up.”

  The straw was pulled away, and Miss Scott closed her eyes and concentrated on the feel of the cool water on her parched throat.

  The room was dim and silent, until she began to vaguely hear sounds coming from somewhere else, outside the door. A metal cart wheeled by, a phone rang. Quiet voices. She had an idea she’d been dreaming. She turned inward and was assailed by a sense of disruption. Clothes being thrown. Books cascading. Breaking things. A feeling of panic. Falling.

  “Ah! Miss Scott. Awake. Splendid.”

  The brisk voice cut through the murky images. Her arm was taken again, and she could feel gentle pressure on her wrist.

  “We had a bit of a scare. Can you answer a couple of questions?”

  Miss Scott had no idea if she could. She moved her lips and a sound came out.

  “Excellent. Now then. Anything hurting right now?” She shook her head. “Headache?”

  Miss Scott considered. No.

  “Do you remember what happened?” the doctor asked.

  She was sitting on the edge of the bed. Miss Scott felt comforted by that. She tried to push away the murky memory of the clothes cascading onto the floor. She’d been in the hospital before. She remembered that. She looked away from the doctor and toward the window. Not this room. She shook her head.

  “You were in the smoking room. Good thing you were in the hospital. We were able to get you up here quickly. We suspect another small stroke. You passed out, you see.”

  The patient nodded, trying to imagine herself in the scene the doctor was describing. Quite clearly and suddenly she remembered the window and someone smoking. She remembered wanting a cigarette. She nodded again, more firmly.

  “Oh, splendid. You do remember. Good sign. Not too much damage. We’re going to keep you quiet for a few days. No books, no reading of any kind.” The doctor smiled.

  Small details seemed to be taking on an overwhelming importance, like that window she just remembered, and now the doctor’s smile. What was in that? Something knowing, as if it was meant to be a secret between them. She nodded again, and then heard herself say, “Water.”

  “Certainly.” The doctor reached for the glass and inserted the straw into Miss Scott’s mouth. “You’re talking. Excellent.”

  Miss Scott closed her eyes and drank, feeling the water fresh and sliding in her throat.

  A noise in the hallway outside, someone running an equipment cart into the wall, made Dr. Edison turn irritably toward the door of the room. Probably a candystriper bumbling about, but it was noise and she wanted her patient quiet. The sudden sputtering of that patient made her turn back in alarm. Miss Scott’s eyes were wide, and she seemed intent on coughing the straw out of her mouth. Water ran down her chin. She appeared to be staring at nothing. Alarmed, Dr. Edison remembered this look on enlisted men who came in with battle fatigue, a kind of shock that took hold and did not diminish.

  “There, there, it’s all right. Just someone being clumsy in the hall.” She had replaced the glass on the side table and wiped the water from her patient’s chin and neck. To her immense relief, Miss Scott seemed to recover. She closed her eyes and lifted her hand slightly, as if to dismiss the doctor. “That’s the stuff. A little sleep. I’ll be in in the morning. We’ll keep a good watch on you overnight. It should only take a couple of days to have you back where you were before this little incident.”

  Dr. Edison rose. Miss Scott could feel the lightening of the space on the bed where she’d been sitting. She could hear her go into the hall, issue quiet instructions. But inside she could feel the blow, hear it over and over, and she could feel the tears sliding down the side of her face.

  Monday, December 15

  THE DAY DAWNED crisp and white. Lane stood looking through the French doors at the gentle waves of snow that covered everything, the sun just hitting the tops of the mountains across the lake. She was holding a mug of coffee and inhaling the smell. Coffee smelled better than it tasted, she thought, taking a sip. She turned back to the table and added another spoon and a half of sugar. Darling was in the bath. He’d said he only wanted coffee and he’d pick up breakfast at the café. He wanted to leave early in case the trek into town was difficult and slow.

  Both cars had chains, and Lane was happy she had only to go the four or so miles up to the school. She had decided she would tell the story of A Christmas Carol to the students. Darling had warned her against it.

  “You’ll frighten all those little children with Jacob Marley and all those ghosts. I wouldn’t recommend it,” he’d said upon hearing her plans the night before. “It gave me nightmares as a child.”

  “You must have been a very delicately nurtured child. I loved it. And anyway, these children are hardy British Columbians.”

  “I was not delicately nurtured. I was brought up by wolves and obliged to fend entirely for myself.”

  But it had given Lane pause. One could not, after all, project one’s own view of things onto everyone else. She would give the story some context, lay some groundwork—what did Christmas mean to them, what was on their Christmas dinner table, and so on—to direct their attention. Her difficulty, of course, was that from a very young age she had felt herself adrift and alone in the big house she shared with her father and her little sister, who both seemed to need only each other, and the servants and parade of governesses that had drifted through her childhood. When she wasn’t having lessons, or playing outside or in the garage, her favourite places, she was in the library, reading whatever was there. She supposed now that they would be considered adult books. Really, the closest there’d been to any concession to children had been A Christmas Carol. She’d found it quite delightful. By telling it, instead of reading it, she thought, she could spare these children, who might have quite different sensibilities, the most frightening moments of the story.

  With a sigh she swigged back her sugary coffee and heard Darling coming down the hallway, already suited up in overcoat and hat. “Off then?”

  “I am. I shall need a kiss to equip me to deal with the environmental conditions. And you, please drive carefully and try not to frighten the children. I still very much doubt the soundness of your plan. If I had my way, I’d cancel school today.”

  “Why? You’re not closing the police station, after all.”

  “That’s because, in weather like this, criminals strap on skis and keep at it,” Darling said, taking her in his arms and helping himself to the required travel kiss. When he was gone, she rebelliously boiled water for tea, which, in contrast to coffee, smelled of nothing much but tasted lovely, and would be delicious in a Thermos when she had a roomful of frightened students to deal with after she’d alarmed them with Dickens.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “THANK GOD FOR CHAINS,” LANE said out loud in the snow-quiet and deserted early morning, pulling her car alongside the school into her usual spot. The school was like a picture postcard, pristine snow billowing around it and on the roof, the sun sparkling off every surface. Lane sat and looked at it through the car window and shook her head. Beautiful, impractical snow. The realm of the Snow Queen. She, an ordinary human with a taste for warmth and not slipping, faced a good deal of shovelling and fire lighting before she and all her little charges could feel comfortable.

  She took up her bag and Thermos and stepped into the snow, glad she’d worn her wellies, and carried her pumps to put on inside.

  But her thoughts of the Snow Queen persisted as she went about making the school welcoming. Perhaps “The Snow Queen” was a better story for the children, after all. She tried to remember the whole thing, but she was stuck on the magical mirror that made anyone looking into it see only the bad in themselves and forget all the good. It broke, she now remembered, into a million pieces and showered onto the earth like grains of sand. It got into people’s hearts and made them destructive and bad and unhappy.

  Now, that is interesting, she thought, waiting for the newspaper to catch fire and light the kindling to combat the cold that hung like an icy cloak inside the schoolroom. The story spoke to an idea of duality: people had both bad and good, and in forgetting the good, one acted on the bad or was perhaps pushed, if not quite to act on the bad, to feel badly about themselves, and to become unhappy.

  That broken mirror came again into her mind. That little crack, as if someone had looked into it and seen only a reason to despair. Rising early, she had stood with her cup of tea looking at the new snow in the garden and had thought of her own broken mirror, trying to capture what it meant now in her life, a little fearful that no matter how happy one was, one might not be able to escape one’s past.

  The kindling caught and crackled, and she felt cheered again at the sound. She watched the fire a little more until the larger pieces of wood began to catch, then she closed the stove, double-checked the flue, and went to sit quietly at the desk she now thought of as hers. She opened her bag and pulled out her own reflection on the Snow Queen, read it silently, and, not particularly happy with it, made some marks on it before she tucked it back away.

  After a Night of Snow,

  And the burying billowing mounds of white

  That cover all that shattered glass,

  I get a brief respite.

  I’ve left behind the rattling past

  For some other better day

  All my faults abandoned

  Where they lay.

  I see only these gleaming curves now

  But in the thaw,

  Under every greening bough,

  In the flowering

  Of all Spring’s charms,

  Those telling shards might all be waiting,

  revealing and unharmed.

  October 1933

  COOK SHUFFLED HER to the chair against the wall and said good-naturedly, “It’s your birthday, Laneke. Thirteen years old! Not such a beauty as your sister because you never smile, but lovely nonetheless. I am making a special cake. It is meant to be a surprise, but I can’t keep it from you, my sweet! Run upstairs. I am sure your papa and sister are happy for you today.”

  Lane felt a sudden heaviness in her chest. The kitchen was warm and bustling; upstairs she would meet with her father’s cold discontent, her sister’s everlasting superiority. Prettier, more cheerful, more interesting. She wished she could be with her grandmother. She smiled briefly at Cook. They would be with Grandmama soon, because Father would be going away again.

  She climbed up the back stairs rather than going up to her room through the sitting room, where her father sat working. Masha was coming down with a mop and a bucket.

  “Not this way, miss,” she said in Lettish. “You know that. Why are you so disobedient? Your sister, at least, does what she is told.”

  Lane reversed her steps and instead went up the stairs that led to the sitting room. Her father was bent over some papers at his desk, and her sister played with the cat in front of the fire.

  “Happy birthday,” her sister said with a touch of sarcasm.

  Lane nodded. “It’s good to know you are so happy for me,” she retorted and moved across the room.

  Her father turned, slamming his pen down. “You are not to be rude to your sister. She wished you a happy birthday. You could be gracious.”

  Lane froze. “Yes, Papa.” She glanced toward her sister, who still stroked the cat and watched the scene with her head slightly tilted.

  “She doesn’t mean it,” her sister said at last.

  “How old are you?” her father asked, his voice modulating slightly.

  “Thirteen, Papa,” Lane said. She wished she did not feel this aching fear whenever he addressed her.

  “Thirteen and as disagreeable as ever.” He sighed, turning back to his work, and Diana looked at Lane and smiled.

  Her father spoke again suddenly, turning to look at both of them. “I’m sorry to say I will have to leave this afternoon. I cannot be here for supper. Cook is preparing a cake, I believe, so you will have to enjoy it without me. Diana, can you ready my bag as you always do?”

  Lane watched Diana get up and go to her father, put her pudgy arm around his neck, and kiss his cheek. “Yes, Papa. Just the way you like it.” She did not waste another second on her sister but turned to go into the hallway where their father’s leather shoulder bag hung on a hook by the door.

  “Is there anything I can do, Papa?” Lane could feel her voice faltering, alone now with her father. Putting her arm around his neck and kissing him was unimaginable to her.

  “No, thank you.” He got up and began to push papers into an envelope. Then he turned and looked at her again. He seemed to be attempting a smile, as if to soften his words. “You are not to be rude to Cook. She has no doubt gone to a lot of trouble for you, all right?”

  Lane looked down abashed, amazed that her father did not know that it was Diana and not she who was rude to the servants, treating them with a supercilious air and ordering them about in a way Lane found unimaginable.

  “But I—”

  “No one is interested in what you think. All I ask is for a little cheerful good nature from my daughter. Instead I get this sullen, sulking face day in and day out.” He shook his head and sighed, pulling on his gloves. “Now, your grandmother will want you both tomorrow. I will have the car. Anton will drive you in the cart.” He reached out, almost as an afterthought, and patted the top of her head and said stiffly, “You will have a good birthday, Lanette. I am sorry I’m missing your cake.”

  Lane stood in front of her mirror in her room. Masha had come in and offered to put her hair up, like a grown-up, now that she was thirteen, but her head felt alien where her father had touched it.

  “There is no point. Papa is not here. We are eating alone. Anyway, I’m ugly. Go put Diana’s hair up. She always acts like the grown-up in this house.”

  LANE BEGAN TO pull herself away from this memory, which in truth made her feel ashamed. What a sullen, unpleasant child she must have been! But one thing stood out. How had the mirror got broken? Had she hit it with her brush? Had Masha still been in the room with her? She only remembered sitting fearfully in front of the mirror, her face a jagged broken reflection in the cracked glass, knowing how much trouble she would be in. She could see clearly, suddenly, that no matter how hard she tried to be good, she wasn’t good at all. She was sulky and angry.

  “SIR, I’VE FOLLOWED up on locating Miss Keeling’s people. The rcmp and the Vancouver Police are working on it. Wait, before you say anything,” Ames said, raising a hand and looking down at his notes. He was leaning against the door into Darling’s office. “She did graduate from Normal School in Vancouver in 1942. She was very young, apparently. She was about nineteen when she left, but she was a good student according to the records.”

  “Did she have an address on file?”

  “Yes. And I called one of my pals from the Vancouver Police, and he went to have a look at it. A rooming house for young women. Apparently the woman who ran it is retired and living with a daughter. I’ve asked him to track her down and see if she remembers anything about Miss Keeling’s family. I’ve got someone looking into birth records in Victoria now.”

  Darling sat back and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “If she’s the one who attacked Miss Scott, she’s probably unlikely to go back to family, were we even able to find them. I wonder if she’d seek shelter with an old roommate.”

  Ames moved into the office and sat on the chair opposite Darling’s desk. “What I find so strange is that everyone who knew her liked her, and she was by all accounts a great favourite with the students. On top of that, we know she was a good student, despite her age. She completed three years of Normal School, which means she must have started when she was sixteen.”

  “Your point, Ames?”

  “Well, what I’m thinking is that she seems, on the face of it, an unlikely sort of person to suddenly become violent. I’m wondering if whatever she was running from all those years ago finally caught up with her. Why is a sixteen-year-old living in a rooming house? Because she can’t, or won’t, live at home. What if she was running from whomever it was, and in his frustration, he tore up the cottage and struck Miss Scott when she didn’t know, or wouldn’t tell him, where Miss Keeling had gone?”

  “I’m wondering if Keeling is even her real name. I know Terrell has been trying to trace her family and can’t find anything before her engagement with the Normal School. The Mounties have come up with nothing, so far.” Darling sat up straight and moved a pile of papers an inch or two to the right. “Before you go constructing a novel with your speculations, find out what you can from the retired landlady. And maybe Vital Statistics will come up with something, though unlikely, if Keeling is an assumed name. In the meantime, Miss Scott has had a relapse, and we still don’t have a bloody clue who ran down Samuel’s father.”

  AMES GOT OFF the phone with his friend Constable Blake, whom he’d met while studying for the sergeant’s exam in Vancouver, and glanced at his watch. They might have a lead to follow up. Blake said he’d call back either later that afternoon or the next day. Nearly one o’clock.

  “Sir, I’m thinking of going down to the café for lunch. Care to come, or can I bring you something?”

  “Nope. Yes. Bring me a sandwich, ham, no cheese. Take Terrell. He’s been working on the Miss Scott angle today. You can talk shop. And don’t be all day about it!”

  Ames, knowing full well that the inspector was unlikely to give him money just that moment for the sandwich, put on his overcoat and hat, and clattered down the stairs whistling. The snow was falling now in big flakes, and as annoying as it was for the traffic crawling along Baker Street, it was lovely. Christmassy, he would have said.