Along the main street, he noticed, the shops had closed; the town was ghostly quiet. He turned into Willner Road and was soon edging his Morris Minor onto the verge near the entrance to the Wentworth place.
Mrs. Landry had not been exaggerating. Reverend Lawson counted four ambulances, two police vehicles, and several unmarked cars. His stomach knotted. May was right: something very bad had happened indeed.
He noticed a young police officer walking purposefully along the creek and gathered that whatever it was would be found in that direction. When he opened the car door, he could feel the air moistening, thickening. The weather was coming in. Steeling himself, the reverend crossed the road, unlatched the gate, and started over the fields toward the darkening north.
It was at this point, Reverend Lawson was to tell the police officers who came to visit him in his vestry the following Monday morning, that he had experienced a premonition of what he was going to find.
“Not the specifics,” he hastened to add. “I couldn’t have begun to imagine what I’d see beyond the ridge. But as I drew nearer, a recent conversation came back to me.”
“A conversation with Mrs. Turner?”
“I run an open door at the church—a ready ear, an impartial mind, a loving heart—and my parishioners often arrive seeking counsel. Mrs. Turner came to see me some weeks ago, and as I walked across that hill last Thursday, our conversation flooded back with a dreadful sick feeling.”
“What was it that Mrs. Turner spoke to you about, Reverend Lawson?”
At this, he balked. “People talk to me in confidence. I wouldn’t normally breathe a word...”
“I think we can agree that the circumstances here are not normal.”
Reverend Lawson, remembering what he’d seen beneath the willow, gave a nod. “She was drawn and tired; it was some weeks after the baby had been born and she said she hadn’t been sleeping well. She talked generally for a time, but I could see that something was weighing on her. Finally, she came to the point. She wanted to know what it meant if a woman was driven to do something that meant her children would be left without her. If she was acting in a way that she believed was best for all, was it possible she could still be considered a good mother, even if it meant leaving them behind? I asked her whether she was talking about a brief separation, at which point, she made the strangest sound. Not a laugh exactly, but a dry noise at the back of her throat that startled me somewhat and gave me a cold feeling.”
“Did she answer you?”
“She said, ‘Not a brief separation, no.’ She was thinking of something more permanent than that.”
“Did she tell you what she was planning?”
Reverend Lawson shook his head and told them he was sorry, he could offer no further information, whereupon the policeman who had been asking the questions let out a long sigh.
“Are you sure, Reverend? There isn’t anything else you can think of that might help with our inquiries?”
He was sure.
It was only as he lay awake in bed at night, his wife sleeping soundly beside him, or when he found himself alone in the vestry, sharing a quiet moment with his God, that he caught himself scrutinizing the advice he’d given to Mrs. Turner that morning.
Knowing that she hailed from England, aware that her husband was away more and more these days, he had assumed that she was lonely, that she was thinking about taking a trip back home, perhaps even a stay of extended duration. “A woman should be with her children, Mrs. Turner,” he had said, in his most reassuringvoice. “She shouldn’t leave them behind. Wherever it is she plans to go, and no matter how difficult the logistics might seem, she would be well advised to find a way to take them with her.”
As Reverend Lawson arrived at the awful scene that Christmas Eve, back at the church, Mrs. Landry was taking her deputation seriously. Her cheeks were still flushed, but she’d managed by now to catch her breath and had positioned herself at the open front doors of the church, where she was waiting to let the congregants know that the minster had been called away on urgent business and the service would therefore be starting later than planned.
She was half watching Kitty and a couple of the other choir girls who’d been sent along early for rehearsals, agonizing over whether to stop them from climbing on the stone wall, when a hearty voice called out from a distance, “Hello there, May! The cavalry has arrived!”
May looked up to see Maud McKendry striding along the paved path, arms full of bouquets for the pew ends.
“Oh, Maud,” said May, twisting her lace-gloved hands together with relief. “Just the person I hoped to see.”
“Why, you’re so flushed! Where is Reverend Lawson? What on earth has happened?”
“That’s half the worry. I don’t know exactly.”
“Tell me what you do know. Quickly now, before anyone else comes along.”
Something maternal in Maud McKendry’s stern manner inclined a person to obedience, and accordingly Mrs. Landry began to recount what she had seen on her way to church—the ambulances, the police, the absence of Evie Turner. Mrs. McKendry maintained an impassive expression, listening through to the very end before nodding sharply. At this point, she turned on her heel, her arms still full of the most beautiful rose bouquets, and began walking at a calm but purposeful pace along the path to the back of the church.
Few people would have felt comfortable entering the sacred space of Reverend Lawson’s vestry without invitation, but Mrs. McKendry wasted no time in letting herself inside. She set down the flowers, picked up the telephone receiver, and dialed the telephone exchange.
“Marian?” she said, when the call was answered. “Marian, it’s Maud McKendry. Can you put me through to the police station, dear?”
The Tambilla police station is little more than a pair of rooms inside a modest stone building on the corner of West Road. A few stairs at the front lead up to a small landing with a door in the middle; the sign above it reads simply:police. It is a humble repository for law and order, reflecting the community’s tendency toward temperance and moderation.
