To Track a Traitor, page 19
“Think what?”
“No. It really doesn’t matter.” She looked down at young Ben and said, “Ben, could you run upstairs and find Mommy’s glasses?” She waited until he’d clomped off and was well up the stairs before she turned to them and said very quietly, “I don’t believe he’s gone to that cabin. I just wonder if he’s gone off with . . .”
“With whom, Mrs. Arden?” Terrell asked gently.
“There was this woman he used to know. Philippa Bentley. I always wondered if he ever got over her. I even wondered if he’d taken up with her again, that’s all. He . . .”
Ames stayed quiet for a moment, wondering what more she had been about to say. He was surprised by how resigned she seemed to the idea of her husband going off with another woman. Should he tell her Philippa Bentley had gone as well? Perhaps she already knew, through gossip. He was about to speak when she turned to him.
“Before you ask, Sergeant Ames, I already know Philippa Bentley has run off, taken her boy with her. Everyone has been so very kind as to tell me.” Her voice was clipped and angry. “I’m just suggesting that your ride across the lake will be for nothing.”
Wondering if he should ask her how long she’d known about the missing woman, Ames said, “Well, thanks, Mrs. Arden. It’s probably a waste of a boat rental, as you say, but we’re running out of leads.” Of course, they hadn’t told her about the other things they’d learned about his war record. She’d have met him long after the war was over, though now he wondered if she knew about that as well. That was all to come, he guessed, when, and if, they found him. “Can you tell me exactly where the abandoned cabin is?”
Mrs. Arden looked out at the water. “I honestly couldn’t tell you exactly.” She turned her mouth down. “Maybe a couple of miles up that way? It’s a little cove, like a hundred others along the lake. I’m not sure I could find it myself now.”
Ames nodded. “Thanks, then. As you say, it’s probably pointless, but we’ve got to give it a try.”
Ben had come back down the stairs holding his mother’s glasses. He handed them to her and went to stand by Terrell, who was sitting on the dock, his feet dangling over their boat.
It was a risk, Terrell was thinking, considering Mrs. Arden’s objections, but he’d ask it anyway. “Can you point to where you think the haunted house was again?” he asked Ben.
“I think maybe over there. There’s a big rock sticking out. It was after that.”
“Did it have a little beach nearby?”
“Yeah. You have to jump in the water to pull the boat up. It’s really fun! It’s not a very good beach, though. It’s all full of little rocks. You can’t walk on it with bare feet.”
“Thank you. That’s going to be really useful.”
“Good luck, Officers, though I really don’t see why you’re bothering. I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. No one in their right mind would go there, if they could even find it now.”
As they pushed off, they heard Ben ask his mother, “Are they going to find Daddy?”
“I don’t know, darling. Come. Let’s go inside and get you dressed and get to work on that colouring book.”
* * *
out on the water again, Ames pursed his lips thoughtfully. “She already knows Philippa Bentley is missing. She might even know her husband had a dubious war record. But maybe not. He certainly seems to have been a normal sort of husband until he started giving all their money away and might have taken up with an old lover. I think she’s right—this is going to be a waste of time. I bet he’s just packed up and left because it all got too much for him. But we’re here now. We might as well get it over with.” He pushed the outboard to its limits, and the boat leaped forward and fell on the water with a loud “thwack.”
Terrell, who had felt considerably less nervous because the wind had died down, now clutched the side of the boat convulsively with his left hand and pointed more or less to where they ought to go. “Okay. We’re looking for ‘a big rock.’ That could be some sort of point, maybe? Should we slow down so we don’t miss it?”
Ames steered. “If it was being used as a drop for money he owed, he wouldn’t be going an awfully long way from home. It surprises me he took his son there.”
Terrell shrugged. “Perhaps it was before he began to use it for that. Of course, we may be way off course, as it were, and the house might have nothing to do with any of it.”
“I don’t know. One cove looks pretty much like another. A secluded location would be a good place for a drop, but this is pretty elaborate.”
Once along the opposite shore, they putted slowly, looking for Ben’s “big rock.”
“Do you get the feeling that Mrs. Arden is not all that sorry about her husband’s disappearance?” Ames asked.
“I know what you mean. I wondered that myself. It makes me wonder if she knew more than she’s said. She certainly doesn’t make it sound as if her life’s been idyllic. If you’re happier when your husband is off somewhere, that suggests something, all right.”
The morning was crystalline, and the air was warming up, putting them both into a better humour than their mission would suggest. Terrell was beginning to relax again, having got across the lake and finding himself still alive. If he stayed in this part of the country, he could almost imagine himself taking a little boat out onto the lake. “It’s pretty nice out here when it’s not windy.”
“The wind can whip up pretty quickly. People have been out in the wider part of the lake, been caught, and never made it back.”
“Thank you, sir. That’s reassuring.” Terrell looked up at the quiet blue sky with misgivings.
“Hey, how about this?” Ames said. He slowed the motor and pointed.
Terrell turned and saw an outcropping of rock that wasn’t that high but could well be to a child’s eye. They motored slowly past it and saw a tiny, curved beach tucked behind it. Ames angled toward it, ran the boat directly onto the sandy pebbled beach, and tilted the motor.
“Here’s where those galoshes come in handy. Hop out and pull us closer.”
Terrell stepped into the water from the wobbling boat and felt a wash of icy cold water sweep over the top of his boot. “It’s deeper than it looks,” he said, pulling at rope and bow until the boat was halfway onto the beach. He found a log and sat to pull off his boot and empty the water out.
“Bad luck,” Ames said, watching the cascade of water coming out of Terrell’s boot, then added, “That could be a path.” He walked to the beginning of the treeline and stopped where the yellowing grass had a look of possibly being trampled. “Mind you, it could just have been made by bears coming down for a drink.” He grinned at Terrell’s expression. “No need to worry. They’re more afraid of us than we are of them.”
“Somehow I doubt that, sir,” Terrell said, following Ames into the dark shadow of the forest, his wet boot squelching unpleasantly. It took only a moment to realize any trampling was just on the edge of the wood.
Farther along the beach, they found a well-established firepit with several bottles strewn around it.
“A drinking spot. Certainly no cabin from what I can see. Should we go to the next cove?” Ames said.
“How many coves were you thinking of checking, sir?” Terrell asked nervously, when they were back on the water.
“The next one, then I think we give up. I really think this guy either went off with the Bentley woman or went off on his own.”
“But why not drive off? Why the boat?”
Ames shrugged. “Wanted to leave his wife the car? She’s got the kids, after all. For all we know, he went down the river toward Castlegar, where he could pick up the train.”
“Wrong way for the boat to drift back, sir.” Some minutes later, Terrell pointed past Ames. “There’s another cove, sir.”
“Let’s check it quickly. When we’ve finished here, we can contact the station in Castlegar, see if anyone matching his description took the train anywhere.”
This time Terrell managed to get out and pull the boat up without getting his feet wet. “This might be it. There’s a path, all right,” he said, pointing toward the dense wood at the edge of the rocky beach.
They’d gone no more than a hundred yards when they saw it: a squat log structure that the builder had tried to cheer up with some white clapboard, much of which was now hanging down or on the ground.
“If this is it, I can see why the kid thought it was scary,” Ames said. “Who the hell would put a place like this in the middle of nowhere?”
They approached slowly and had gone some forty yards when Terrell spoke. “Little Ben is right about the smell, only this is much worse than what he probably smelled. I’m afraid we’ve found something dead.”
Ames turned away, took a deep breath, clamped a handkerchief over his nose and mouth, and covered the distance to the cabin. He peered in the gaping doorway and then stumbled back to gasp in some clean air. “I didn’t give it long enough to see who it is. He’s face down.”
Equipping himself with his own handkerchief, Terrell went to the door of the cabin. Whoever it was had been shot in the back. It looked as though the man had fallen forward by the way his body was splayed out. He looked up at the door and back to the body. Had the man even seen his attacker? The sickly sweet smell was overwhelming. Terrell took a quick look at the man’s clothing. A pair of black pants, a blue shirt, suspenders, and a short brown leather jacket rent with the telltale bullet hole. He staggered out of the cabin and found that Ames had gone around the back.
“No sign of anyone leaving this way. It’s pretty dense bush back here,” Ames said.
By silent mutual agreement, they made their way some distance up the path toward the beach, and both stood gasping in fresh air.
“Damn. I should have checked his pockets,” Ames said.
“He’s still there, sir,” Terrell said.
“Oh, very funny.” On the principle that he would never ask an underling to do something he wouldn’t do himself, Ames started back toward the cabin, but Terrell anticipated him and passed him.
“I’ll go sir. I can hold my breath longer than you.”
“Well, I can’t let that stand,” Ames said. “Now we both have to go, one side each. Ready? On three . . . Aha!” He held up a roll of cash triumphantly.
Outside again, Ames said, “Man, that does look like the photo of Arden his wife showed us. She said he had some clothes with him in some sort of rucksack, and a revolver. Finding those would confirm it.”
Terrell was already circling the cottage, looking into the bush in case the killer had thrown these things out of sight. “Nothing directly around here, sir. I suppose he could have pushed deeper into the woods here to get rid of the stuff, but I’m wondering if he took them.”
“And yet, he left this nice roll of money untouched in the man’s trouser pocket,” Ames said, holding up the roll. “Let’s search around on the way back to the boat. It would be a nuisance if whoever it was took the stuff with him. Searching a dead man’s pockets is not that much fun.” He shuddered.
Standing at the edge of the water, looking at the boat they came on, Ames said, “She said he took the motor, but the boat came back without it. Did the killer take it? Did he throw it in the drink and push the empty boat into the lake to drift away?”
Terrell crunched along the beach looking into the water as Ames spoke. At the end, where the rocky point rose up, he turned and walked along the curve to the other end, bounded by deep brush that went right to the water’s edge. He bent over and fetched out a bottle that had been lodged under the bushes. “An empty bottle. Some juvenile beach party, perhaps. It looks as if it’s been here a long time. The label is faded and peeling. I imagine there is a lot of this sort of thing if this place was used for years, as Mrs. Arden suggests.”
“Bring it along, I guess,” Ames said. “Doesn’t look like anyone has used this place since last summer, maybe. There are the remains of a firepit.” He pointed at a slight indentation in the beach with a partial row of rocks placed around it. It certainly hadn’t been used recently. “Good thing, too. If kids were here in the last few days, they would have found him.”
Terrell made his way back to the boat, still looking in the water. He leaned over and, pulling up his sleeve, reached into the water and pulled up a rusty metal object. After scraping off the sand, he held the object up for Ames to inspect.
“That is an oarlock, landlubber. If we keep this up, we are going to find a garbage can full of old stuff. We need nice fresh prints and a discarded pistol,” Ames said.
* * *
“i still can’t get over it,” Ames said, angling the boat back toward town. “It’s almost certainly Arden. I’ve only seen a photo, but I would bet it’s him. With two hundred dollars in a nice little roll and no sign of his rucksack. It makes no sense at all.”
Terrell nodded, his mind no longer on his anxieties about Ames’s handling of the boat. The money was wrapped in Terrell’s handkerchief in his pocket, and the bottle and rusty oarlock rested on the floor of the boat. “It would certainly make more sense if it was not Arden. Let’s say he’s brought that money for a blackmailer. If that’s Arden, and he was shot by the blackmailer to keep him quiet, his blackmailer would surely have taken the money after he shot him. And if dead guy is the blackmailer, and Arden shot him, he wouldn’t leave his two hundred bucks in the dead man’s pocket.”
They had found nothing else in any of his pockets to identify the man. They would have to find out anything else about the man’s death from Ashford Gillingham, a local doctor who had become involved in forensic work for the police. Ames said,“Gilly will enjoy this. He likes dead people.”
* * *
“nice day on the water, fellows?” O’Brien said when they came through the doors of the station.
“Hardly,” Ames said, taking off his jacket and holding it away from him as if it had been tainted by what they’d seen. “Terrell got a boot full of water, and we found an old empty bottle of hooch, a rusty oarlock, and . . . oh, and a dead guy. Can you get Gilly on the telephone?”
“Well, well,” said O’Brien, reaching for the phone. “The boss has only been gone five minutes and already you two are stirring up trouble. Where shall I say he’s wanted?”
“Tell him to come here, and to wear his wellies. I guess I’d better get my equipment. If I’d known we were going to find a corpse, I’d have taken the damn camera with me in the first place.”
O’Brien put the call through, and Ames headed toward the stairs but then turned to await the outcome of the phone call. Terrell was contemplating the roll of money on his desk, along with the bottle and the oarlock, wondering about fingerprints.
After a couple of brief exchanges, O’Brien hung up the phone. “You two had better go get a quick lunch down you. It’s going to take him an hour to get here. He’s finishing something up at the hospital.”
“Good idea, Sergeant. One of your best. Put that oarlock down, Constable. I feel the need of a sandwich and a strong, sweet cup of tea, for the shock and all that. In fact,” he said, bouncing back with the unabashed ability of the young to slough off unpleasantness, “I’m having two. I’m going to have to motor back along the lake to take Gilly out to see our little friend.”
Chapter Sixteen
“that’s probably him now,” sandra Donaldson said, looking up toward the ceiling, where stockinged steps could be heard creaking on the floor above. “Listen, I’ll go get things moving in the kitchen. His nibs will be home soon, and we’ll have a nice dinner. I managed, don’t ask, to get hold of a scrawny chicken. Unfortunately, we can whistle for spuds. They’ve been put on strict ration suddenly, after being the easiest thing to get during the war!”
Lane stood at the window, her heart beating unevenly, or so it felt. She chided herself for being nervous about seeing the man she loved—after all, they had only been apart a few days. Perhaps it was the distance. Seeing him far away from their home made it seem as if they’d been apart far longer. Outside, the street was quiet. She looked at her watch. Of course—kids would be in school. She still didn’t have a clear sense of what time it was. She turned as she heard him coming down the stairs, and then heard Sandra asking if he slept well. He had. “You’d better go along into the sitting room, then. I’ll bring you a cuppa.”
“You don’t have to—” he began.
“No, really. Get along with you.”
“Darling!” He stood in the doorway, surprised for a moment, and then came to her, folding her in his arms, breathing in the scent of her hair. “How did you get here?”
She pulled away and moved his hair away from his eyes and kissed him. “The usual way, on the underground. Sandra telephoned my hotel and told me you were out like a light. I thought I’d come and have a look. She offered dinner. Obviously, I couldn’t turn it down. How was your flight?”
“Long. I think air travel is barely a step up from flying a bomber. Cold and noisy. I think they imagine the passengers are going to sleep, but I conditioned myself to stay awake while in the air all through the war, and it turns out not to be an easy habit to break.” Darling had been a pilot on a Lancaster bomber.
There was a tentative knock on the door frame, and Sandra came in with a cup of tea, a couple of digestives perched on the saucer. “Please excuse me. I thought Frederick had better have a cup of tea to hold him till supper. There, I’m out of your hair!” She retired to the kitchen.
