A Lethal Lesson

Shortlisted for the 2022 BC and Yukon Book Prizes' Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award
An Indigo Top 10 Best Mystery of 2021
A Globe and Mail bestseller

Lane Winslow trades crime solving for substitute teaching in the eighth installment of this mystery series that Kirkus Reviews calls “riveting”.

Back home in the Kootenays after her Arizona honeymoon, Lane offers her assistance when neither the outgoing teacher, Rose, nor her replacement, Wendy, show up at the local schoolhouse one blizzardy Monday in December. But when she finds the teachers' cottage ransacked with Rose unconscious and bleeding, and Wendy missing, Lane delivers Rose to the hospital in Nelson and turns the case over to her exasperated husband, Inspector Darling, and his capable colleagues, Sergeant Ames and Constable Terrell.

Never one to leave a post unmanned, Lane enlists as substitute teacher for the final two weeks before the Christmas holidays, during which time she discovers a threatening note in the teachers' desk and a revolver in the supply cupboard. But these clues only convolute the case further. Who has been tormenting these women, and where has Wendy gone?

Meanwhile, Darling finds the body of a hit-and-run victim in a snowbank miles outside of Nelson, the residents of King's Cove are preoccupied by the possibility of a new neighbour, and Sergeant Ames is as confused as ever by the inimitable Tina Van Eyck.

PROLOGUE

“Get out.” The driver’s voice was compacted with rage. The car was stopped in the middle of the road. Only the fan of light provided by the headlights made any inroads in the utter darkness. Any trace of that night’s half-moon was obliterated by the swirling snow. At near midnight, in these conditions, it was unlikely any traffic would be on the road.

“What?” The man was drunk. He couldn’t make out what was being said to him.

“Get out!” Shouting now, the driver leaned over, opened the door, and pushed hard at the man. Unable to help himself, the drunk man tumbled out onto the bank of snow that had piled up on the side of the road. He watched the car disappear around the corner toward Castlegar, the last red shred of its taillights disappearing behind the bend. He stood, bemused, and then turned and began to trudge back to town. In an unconscious imitation of driving, the man stumbled across the road to walk on the right-hand side. The river roared below him in the blackness. He shook his head as if to clear it, but the driving snow that blew onto his face under his hat countered his efforts to understand what was happening. He wondered suddenly where his car was. He tried pulling his hat off to see better, but that only covered him in snow and didn’t alleviate the darkness. It occurred to him that he’d left something at home, and he tried to remember what it was. Not the car. How would he have gotten this far without the car? In the same instant he remembered, the road was lit blindingly by the headlights of a car coming from behind him, heading toward Nelson. His spirit buoyed in this one illuminated moment, and everything made sense. He would get home, be welcomed. He put out an arm to stop the car. He wanted to turn to face it, but he felt dizzy. The engine revved, sudden and deafening; he could hear it behind him and frowned. The sensation of being thrown into the snowy air made him feel full of light, as if the angels had come. In the darkness of the next moment, he was not aware of landing. He did not hear the blunt, hard sound of breaking, nor the muffled scream from somewhere. He had no sensation of bouncing or rolling. He knew nothing of sliding like a broken doll and resting in the snow far below. He did not hear the roar of the car disappearing, or see the lights blink out. He, indeed, would never hear or see anything again.

CHAPTER ONE
Wednesday, December 3, 1947

Wendy Keeling was as happy as she could ever remember being in her mostly unhappy life. She had ushered the children outside after they had put their lunch things away, and she could hear them now, shrieking in the snow, releasing all that pent-up animal energy they had accumulated during the morning. She would try to get them all on to arithmetic in the afternoon. She would start with a puzzle they could tackle in pairs. She walked up and down the short rows to make sure all the crumbs and jam smudges were off the desks, checked inside to make sure no one had hidden a sandwich away, and then she looked at the clock. They had five minutes still before they had to come in and remove their piles of now no doubt soaking outer clothes.

Taking up a piece of chalk, she drew six glasses on the board and indicated with a line that the first three were filled. Then she went outside holding the school bell and rang it, calling, “It’s time, ladies and gentlemen!”

Under the cries of protest, she stood on the porch, her arms crossed in front of her, looking benignly implacable and saying nothing. Even after only a few days, they knew the routine. Line up in front of the stairs and be allowed in quickly. The door was kept closed to keep the heat in until they were all ready to come in at once.

“What are we doing this afternoon, miss?” asked Rafe, one of Angela Bertolli’s boys, turning to give a little shove to someone trying to usurp his first-place spot in line.

“Rafe!” Miss Keeling gave a warning note, and then smiled. “It’s a great afternoon for arithmetic. Okay, everyone present and correct?” Seeing that the jostling group contained the number of students she expected, thirteen, Miss Keeling swung open the door, and watched the muffled group clamber up the stairs and into the classroom. She turned and put her head in the door. “Coats and scarves up! In your desks by the time I turn around.”

She looked again at the now-quiet yard, with its trampled snow and two nascent snowmen, and was about to come in when she saw a red knitted scarf hanging on a branch of a short spruce tree at the south side of the school. Edith. Her granny had knitted it for her, Edith had told her. She was about to call the girl to come and take responsibility for her scarf, when she thought better of disrupting the complications of removing outer clothes and rubber boots, so she closed the door and went down the four stairs and stepped into the snow, wishing immediately she had her rubbers, and made for the scarf.

When she saw the black car, parked halfway down the hill, the clouds of white coming out of the exhaust, she frowned. The car was not moving, but the engine was running. Sunlight reflected off the front windscreen, showing only the snow and trees around it, making it seem, she thought whimsically, as if she could see into its mind. Who was in it? It was almost as if someone were watching her, or the school, or more worryingly, the students. But who? She didn’t recognize the car. She was going to wave, but then thought, Someone has come up the wrong road and is even now looking at a map. If that person was lost, she’d not be much use to them. She’d only come to the area a short time ago herself.

Even with the door closed, she could hear the banging and laughing of the children in the little kitchen room, boots being pulled off and hurled under the coat-rack bench, and she turned back to retrieve the scarf. When she looked down the road again, she saw that the car was slowly beginning to back away. Then, in some trick of the light, the windshield stopped reflecting the peaceful world it looked out on, and she could see, for the briefest moment, the shape of the head inside turned away to look out the back window, right arm over the seat, gloved left hand on the steering wheel, as the driver backed the car nonchalantly down the hill.

She lurched up the steps, not daring to look again, some atavistic superstition urging her to ignore what she had seen. It was a bad reflection, it was nothing, a lost stranger now pulling silently back to the main road. Do not look, it seemed to be saying, because looking will make it real. But competing with that desperate hope was the cold hard nub of the truth, deep in her gut. It had been too good to be true. Somehow, they had found her.

—From A Lethal Lesson