“You didn’t!” Miranda exclaimed. “I thought you could take care of yourself! What if… What would have happened to my car? Mired at the bottom of a pond beside Norman Bates’s motel. With your head in the boot. My God, Morgan, how could you?”
“We say ‘trunk’ in these parts — those of us who don’t own vintage Jaguars.”
“Trunk is what would be left of your body after your paramour finished with it. The defective detective. What were you thinking? It’s obvious what you were thinking with!”
He grinned across the table at her. They were meeting for a coffee and Danish at Starbucks expressly so Morgan could fill her in on what he’d discovered during his unorthodox investigation of their principal suspect. He felt sheepish about admitting he had momentarily panicked in the sauna, yet it was a necessary prelude to confessing his ultimate innocence. First, he would allow himself to appear compromised, then admit to having further avoided her charms.
“So, you’re trying to tell me you didn’t sleep with her. What do I care, Morgan? You probably missed a golden opportunity, if you were up for it.” He exuded a boyish good cheer that irritated her immensely. “If you did sleep with her, I would imagine the conquest was hers, and if you did not, that was probably her doing as well. So tell me, were you good together? Either way, who cares?”
The odd thing to Morgan was that it had never come up as an issue, whether or not he and Shelagh Hubbard would be lovers. After running around like adolescents on the soggy lawn, leaving dreadful footprints to be rolled out later in the season, they had briefly returned to the sauna to warm up, then separately showered in the bathroom off the kitchen where they returned to dry un-self-consciously and make hot drinks of cocoa that they sipped in front of the dying fire. She rose first, leaned down, kissed him on the forehead, and retired to her ground-floor bedroom. After a few minutes, lingering to watch the embers fade and fall, glowing gold and vermillion, he had gone upstairs and crawled under the duvet where he slept soundly and wakened in the early light, feeling completely relaxed. He had not bothered to lock the bedroom door.
Miranda didn’t know whether to believe him or not. “You’re a bit of a whore, you know. Was it worth the effort?”
“Is it ever, Miranda?”
“It all sounds quite adolescent,” she said, and could not stop from reinforcing her previous disclaimer, “I don’t care what you did.”
“Good,” he said. “Then it’s settled.”
“Yes it is.”
“And what about you? Did you have a good weekend?”
“Yes.”
“At the zoo?”
“And otherwise.”
“Now, what does that mean?”
“It means I might have been whoring, myself.”
“Not likely.”
“You’re sweet, Morgan.”
“But foolish?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I don’t think she did it — that’s my judgment after two days of foolishness.” They ordered more coffee and proceeded to sort through the facts and hypotheses. “There’s no pattern,” he said
“Not yet. The pattern will become clear when she does it again.”
“Don’t hold your breath. One funny thing she said — ”
“Only one?”
“She made a point of telling me she had never been abused as a child.”
“What an odd thing to confess.”
“Yeah, over breakfast, she asked about my growing up, but it felt like an excuse to talk about herself, then she explained she’d never been abused, assaulted, molested, or in any way damaged, that she had had a thoroughly ordinary upbringing, absolutely average, absurdly normal.”
“Now, why would she want you to know all that?”
“Establishing her credentials as a psychopath manque.”
“What the hell does that mean, Morgan?”
“A failure.”
“As a psychopath?”
“Perhaps a declaration that there is nothing in her background that would drive her to murder.” He paused for effect. “Or possibly the dead opposite — something more sinister: a declaration that she takes full responsibility for what she’s been doing.”
“You’d rather it wasn’t her.”
“I’d rather it wasn’t her.”
“She’s not a nice person, Morgan. Sometimes I worry about you. Do you really think she’s innocent?”
“ An innocent, no. Innocent? Possibly.”
“I have my doubts.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Grave doubts, Morgan.”
“You’re on shaky ground, you know. Guilt isn’t generally determined by personal animosity.”
“Nor innocence by affection. It seems to me you were the one on shaky ground.”
“You cannot convict someone for having a sauna,” he said.
“Not at all. I’ve had a few myself.”
“No, no, I mean owning a sauna. This is not about you.”
“But it is, perhaps, about you, since you managed to insinuate yourself into the middle of things, so to speak.”
“I mean, she has a sauna, so does Alexander Pope. That doesn’t make them killers.”
“Morgan, I survived my sauna at Pope’s with virtue intact. Rachel and Alexander and I did not compromise anything beyond the limits of modesty. Your friend’s sauna could easily be an oven for the mummification of human remains, even a chamber of execution. And she does own a coffin-sized freezer and she does live in an isolated farmhouse and she does have the requisite talents and arcane knowledge.”
“Circumstantial. Half her neighbours could be accused of the same. All those Torontonians with country retreats.”
“But not the professional training, nor the warped personality. There’s no such thing as a normal, average, ordinary childhood, Morgan.”
No, he agreed, there is not. He said nothing.
“Look,” she said. “We could send in forensics, but I doubt we’d find much at the abattoir. She’ll have cleaned up perfectly. It’s a matter of aesthetics.”
“Maybe she’s just a normal forensic anthropologist. You know, an intellectual more at ease with the dead than the living.”
“A vampire with very big breasts.”
“I found her charming. Gracious, intelligent, sensitive, good-humoured. Any of those sound familiar?”
“Morgan, she’s fucked with your mind.”
“What a nasty expression. She charmed my mind. I would much rather think she is innocent.”
“The last thing that woman is, is innocent.”
Miranda spent the rest of Monday and most of Tuesday going over the accumulated file, looking for missed connections and anomalies. She had been dividing her time over the past couple of weeks, working on other cases that were not in her portfolio, doing background for detectives more directly involved. She responded to inquiries from outside their jurisdiction — one from the FBI and a couple from Scotland Yard. She spent time off duty looking into private schools for girls. The housekeeper who looked after Jill was returning to be with her children in Barbados before they completely grew up. She had dinner with Rachel a couple of times and neither of them mentioned their intimate encounter, although they were comfortably affectionate in each other’s company. She called Alexander Pope from police headquarters to ask him esoteric questions about plaster and paint and the concealment of bodies, and stayed on the phone for over an hour, chatting about his latest reclamation project — the restoration of an infamous abandoned church north of Toronto as a museum of some sort, or a gallery. She dropped in on Ellen Ravenscroft at the morgue and they chatted amiably, but she found little had been revealed in the tissue tests they had run; the causes of death were still deemed extreme dehydration and asphyxia, but whether from a singular cause or a sustained condition was indeterminate.
She was annoyed with her partner. He knew it and stayed out of her way. After they’d left Starbucks on Monday, he had walked with her over to headquarters, but remained outside. She disappeared into the planes of glass and pink granite, while he stood on the sidewalk, admiring the postmodern architecture of the massive edifice, acknowledging to himself the possibility that the austere obscenities of modernism were at last giving way. A police building with a stream flowing from its centre was a blow for imagination and form over function. He spent the rest of the day walking.
Tuesday he got up early, had breakfast out, and walked some more. He was looking for something and it was locked inside. Wednesday morning he called Miranda. She was already at her desk.
“You busy?” he asked.
“No. Are you coming in?”
“Meet me for lunch?”
“Sure. You name the spot. Rufalo was asking what we were up to. He didn’t come right out and say, ‘Where’s Morgan?’ but he wanted to know.”
“He’s trying to get his mind off personal problems.”
“His or yours, Morgan?”
“Must be his. Did you tell him I’m out here doggin’ some leads?”
“Something like that. I told him you were hard at work, that something would break pretty soon.”
“I hope not another murder tableau.”
“Have you heard from your friend?”
The silence on the other end of the line declared his unease. She was not sure if it was with her or with himself. He had obviously moved on from infatuation. She would find out soon enough which way. They agreed to meet at the nondescript little Italian restaurant where she and Rachel had dined two weeks before.
Morgan found himself standing on the corner of Queen and Yonge. He leaned against an opaque glass wall. This was exactly where he had waited for his wife, nearly two decades ago, sheltering from the rain in the lee of the building, waiting motionless, four hours, knowing where she was, not knowing why she wouldn’t come, raindrops sliding down his cheeks into the corners of his mouth, salty, like tears.
Shelagh Hubbard was Lucy. In the middle of the night, last night, Morgan was startled from sleep by the shock of a recognition that had eluded him while awake. They looked nothing alike, but they were one and the same. The forensic anthropologist and his former wife. If Lucy had aged at half the rate he did, a preternatural possibility given her facile personality, she and Shelagh could be twins under the skin. One was full-figured with a head like death as a temptress; the other had the slender and sinuous body of a classical ballerina destined by demeanour always to play roles of betrayal and loss. Both could be ravishingly attractive and, with a shift in the light, a change of attitude, beautifully grotesque. They both embodied ambivalence, playing affection against anger, emotional austerity against blatant sexuality, sympathy against strength. Each was a siren to Morgan’s unfettered Ulysses.
All morning he wondered about the siren’s call. Was it the sound of his own weakness tolling in the chambers of his heart, or was it truly seduction, the melodic ululation of his heart’s desire? By the time he reached the restaurant, walking up Yonge Street, he was convinced that regret was a waste, that he had not stuffed up his ears but had listened, first to one, then the other. Their songs were the same. Surely, he thought, it’s better to wrestle with demons and sleep with the devil than not.
His line of reasoning, such as it was, collapsed when he saw Miranda sitting at a back table, patiently waiting. She smiled receptively. As he leaned down to her, she reached forward and with the back of her hand brushed gently against his cheek. He was startled for a moment, until she blew him a pouting kiss, and he decided he was forgiven. He would not tell her about the connection, the siren. He suspected she would understand. Instead, they would have lunch, talk about antiques and things. Maybe he would tell her about his tattoo, although it was unlikely.
Thursday; they met in front of Professor Birbalsingh’s office. The professor had pretty much lost interest when the bodies were declared modern. Postmodern, in fact, he had quipped. “It is not a question of contemporaneity,” he explained to Miranda when she had dropped in to interview him on her own while Morgan was away. “They are, of course, recently deceased. I am saying we would have discovered that, although perhaps not for a few more hours. A science like ours works incrementally, you know, building one small observation upon another and another, until sometimes we have constructed a dinosaur, Miss Quin, from an elephant’s remains. But eventually, the elephant will out, so to speak, declaring its trunk not a tail, despite our scientific efforts to the contrary.”
“Postmodern?” she had said.
“Indeed, Miss Quin.”
“Detective.”
“Detective Quin. I am sorry. Titles are so very important in my line of work and I am assuming in yours also.”
“They can be, yes.”
“Well, I am saying ‘postmodern’ because it strikes me as a crime that breaks all the rules. You know it is a nasty murder but you feel it is an estimable achievement, nonetheless. In spite of your capacity for empathy with the victims you admire the artistry of their rather hideous demise. You know, it was a scene of undoubted melodrama and of comic absurdity, but certainly presaged by tragedy, devised for ironic effect. All very academic, in fact. Four modes in one. My late esteemed colleague, Professor Northrop Frye, would have been very much pleased. Perhaps ‘pleased’ is not the most appropriate word.”
“So,” Miranda had said, fascinated by his convoluted assessment. “Our killer is an academic?”
“Dear me,” he responded, “I should say so, but that would perhaps be presumptuous. Not a university person, in the strictest sense, perhaps. No, quite unlikely. The university life does not leave room for such a flourish of imagination, I am afraid. Too many committees and subcommittees and granting agencies with juries. A project like this would die in the seminal stages.” He paused, raised his stentorian eyebrows, and added, “As, of course, it should.”
It had occurred to Miranda as he had been talking that Dr. Shelagh Hubbard fit the description. She had the academic credentials to be an adjunct professor, but she was employed outside the university, doing most of her work through the ROM. It was following this conversation that Miranda ran a close check on Birbalsingh’s associate and came up with her connection to Alexander Pope, studying methods of domestic construction in British colonial times. Otherwise, the woman’s curriculum vitae read like an academic prototype, and her personal dossier suggested life was a subsidiary activity to scholarly pursuits.
She liked Professor Birbalsingh and was happy to come along when Morgan suggested they interview him again, even though Morgan did not seem to have particular questions in mind.
When the professor opened his door, he seemed relieved at their presence.
“I was going to call you,” he said. “Come in, come in. Be seated.” He had a pair of comfortable leather chairs in his cramped office, both of them piled with books that he distributed among a clutter of papers and other books on the floor. “Now then,” he said, sitting down behind his desk in a chair strategically placed in front of a narrow window to cast a luminous glow around him while obscuring his features in shadow. “I am happy to have you here. I was wondering if you might be hearing from Dr. Hubbard.”
Good grief, thought Miranda, was word already out about the sauna? Has Morgan offended academic protocol? Are the university authorities holding him responsible for her whereabouts?
Morgan responded, “No, I dropped in to see her last weekend at her farm. She was marking papers and exams. Is there a problem?”
“There is. She was expected back yesterday noon.”
“And she’s late by a day,” said Miranda. “Did you call her?”
“Oh, yes, I did, but there was no answer.”
“And is that a grave problem?” she said.
“Yes, very grave.”
“How so?” asked Morgan.
“Well, you see, she was expected to speak to the tenure committee yesterday at four o’clock.”
“And it was a bad thing to miss her appointment?” Miranda posed this as a question but the answer was obvious.
“Yes, very bad. She was being considered for tenure and there were questions to be asked about her publication record.”
“Is that standard procedure?” asked Morgan.
Professor Birbalsingh leaned forward over his desk so that his facial features emerged into the light of the room. “It can be,” he said. “Especially if there are ambiguities.”
“Such as?”
“Just ambiguities. The committee wanted clarification.”
“About what?” said Miranda. “I’ve read her CV. It’s impressive.”
“Perhaps that is the problem, Miss Quin — Detective.”
“I know she was waiting to hear about a grant proposal,” said Morgan. “She told me about a Shirk application — ”
“Shirk,” said Miranda. “SSHRC. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.” She was quite pleased with herself. Usually it was Morgan who had access to the obscure meanings of acronyms and abbreviations.
“I was not aware of such an application,” said Professor Birbalsingh. “Even if she applied through the ROM, it would have gone by me. No, I do not think she applied this year for funding of any sort.”
Morgan was perplexed. He described her research project. Professor Birbalsingh reacted with mounting astonishment.
“I do not think it likely, Mr. Morgan — I am sorry, Detective Morgan. Perhaps you would prefer to call me Iqbal. But no, we will let such an opportunity pass. What Dr. Hubbard told you seems a rather quixotic venture. I doubt very much there would be money or interest to sustain such a project. There is not much of a market for saints in Ontario. Perhaps in Quebec, though I doubt it. And it all seems very conjectural. I suspect she was spinning a fantasy. Such are the ruminations of the forensic anthropologist.”
“But she has, perhaps, spun a few others in her pursuit of tenure?” Miranda found Shelagh Hubbard’s predicament mildly amusing.
“No, not exactly. But as I am her sponsor, so to speak, having encouraged her cross-appointment with the museum, I am dismayed by her failure to appear before the committee.”
“Did you call the police?” asked Morgan.
“I was about to when you arrived, unsummoned.”
“You’d have to call the OPP. It’s provincial jurisdiction.”
“Morgan, it’s only been a day. She could have been out for a walk when Professor Birbalsingh called, or in the bath, or simply not answering the phone. Try again, Professor. Let’s give it another day. You call us tomorrow, if she hasn’t turned up. We’ll look into it. I wouldn’t worry. I’m sure Dr. Hubbard is in her own capable hands. She’ll look after herself.”
“Was there something else that brought you all this way to my office, or was it a social call?”
If there had been a purpose, Morgan seemed to have forgotten. He turned to Miranda. She shrugged amiably.
Professor Birbalsingh nodded gravely and rose to his feet, indicating their interview was over. “Then I am sorry for your wasted time. I am afraid I must say goodbye,” he said, shaking both their hands.
In the corridor, after they heard the lock click, Morgan and Miranda exchanged knowing glances. There was something endearing about a man so much the caricature of an academic. They walked out into the sunlight of University Circle and, immediately, each was taken up with a medley of personal memories from when this had been the centre of their separate worlds.
When Professor Birbalsingh’s call was relayed to Miranda early Friday morning, she told him they would look after it and she called Morgan.
“You know, I think we should take a run up there,” Morgan said.
“It’s OPP jurisdiction.”
“Exactly my point. I’d like to get there first, have you look over the place before they get involved.”
“We’re not breaking in, Morgan. If we get there and no one’s around, we call the Provincials.”
“Oh, for sure,” he said. “Want to meet for breakfast?”
“I’ve got to go into the office. I’ll pick up a car and be over in an hour.”
Morgan showered and got dressed, then decided he might as well cook up breakfast for both of them. He put a frying pan on to heat and broke eggs into a bowl, ready to scramble as soon as she pulled up in front; put the coffee on; took six pieces of back bacon out of the freezer which he carefully pried apart with a bread knife and put on to fry — this was double his weekly allotment; he was feeling magnanimous. By the time Miranda came in, toast and juice were on the table, coffee aroma filled the air, the eggs were cooking, and there were four pieces of cooked bacon left, to be split between them.
“You have something on your lip,” she said when she sat down. “Bit of bacon? Are these four mine, then?”
“I was just testing.”
“The point of hoarding a commodity is not to enhance consumption but to control distribution.”
“Sounds like Economics 101.”
“Not the bacon, dear, I was thinking about murder. Did she deep-freeze her victim while she figured out what to do with him? Or did she know from the beginning and was just using the freezer for storage until the right woman came along to complete the coupling she had always intended?”
“All that because I snuck a bite of my own bacon? You can’t say ‘she,’ for sure. We’re a long way from having a case.”
“Ring ring,” she said.
“Did you say ‘ring ring’?”
“I did. It’s my vibrator,” she said, reaching for the cellphone on her belt.
“That’s an odd place to keep a vibrator.”
She gave him a mock smile and he mumbled to himself, “ring ring.”
“Hello, Quin here.”
“Detective Quin,” said the voice in the phone. “Singh, here — Owen Sound Police. I have had insistent calls from a Professor Birbalsingh — several calls. He gave me your name. They’ve patched me through from your office.”
“Yes?”
“Do you know Professor Birbalsingh?”
“Yes, Officer Singh, I do. I assume this is about Shelagh Hubbard.”
“He apparently called the OPP to report her missing.”
“I gave him their detachment number.”
“I gather they explained that since she’s a part-time resident, it would not be unusual for her to be away. It struck them as most likely Miss Hubbard had simply left for Toronto or elsewhere. He was most upset. He called us, as the nearest municipal police. I called the OPP myself and they sent a car out at my request.”
“And what did they find?”
“Nothing. Everything appeared normal. No evidence of forced entry. They felt they had neither just cause nor authority to pursue the matter.”
“I appreciate you letting me know, Officer, but where are we going with this?”
“Professor Birbalsingh was insistent. He said you would confirm that a most serious problem was happening.”
“My partner and I are involved in a murder investigation. We would like to question Dr. Hubbard — ”
“She is a doctor? I did not know that. We need more doctors up here. Shall I drive out and look around? Unofficially, of course.”
“That is very kind, Officer Singh. But no, my partner and I will drop in and check things out. If there’s anything irregular, we’ll let you know.”
“Thank you, Detective. Is Dr. Hubbard a murder suspect? Is she a specialist?”
“She’s a Ph. D. in forensic anthropology, and no, she is not a suspect, as far as Professor Birbalsingh is concerned.”
“I take your meaning, Detective Quin. If he calls back, I will be most discreet.”
“Thank you, Officer. I’ll keep you informed.” She snapped the cellphone shut.
“So, it’s on vibrator mode, is it?”
“Resist the double entendres, Morgan. The word ‘vibrator’ is not inherently comical.”
“I take it my friend is still missing. Do you want that piece of bacon?”
“I do,” she said, snatching it out from under his swooping hand and popping it whole into her mouth. “Arghixtphtuftisdngtoo.”
“Is that anything like ‘ring ring’? Mustn’t talk with your mouth full.”
“Fktfu.”
“You too.”
When they turned in at the mailbox that starkly proclaimed Hubbard the resident, Miranda was surprised by the austere beauty of the scene. The landscape was rougher than the rolling hills of Waterloo County. The fields surrounding the house sloped in irregular planes this way and that, drifting downward from the high hills of the meandering escarpment to the southwest, while in front of the house they seemed poised, gathering momentum for an eventual rush to the Georgian Bay shore. Towering black spruce hovered along either side of the drive, making a dramatic statement of proprietorial authority against the drab earth and dry grasses newly released from their cover of snow but not yet aroused into life. As they approached through the tunnel of spruce, the house was revealed to be charming, one-and-a-half storeys, with a front gable, shutters smoky-green against the rubble-stone walls. Miranda was so distracted by the paradoxically harsh and yet pastoral setting that she momentarily forgot why they were there.
At the side of the house they were surprised to find a police cruiser parked facing out with the driver’s door open, as if the driver were anticipating a fast getaway, but the driver was nowhere in sight. Miranda chuckled to herself when she saw on the side of the car the insignia of the Owen Sound Police. She gave a congenial beep of the horn as they pulled in beside the cruiser, and as they were stretching from the long drive the figure of a young man appeared in the stable door under the overhung side of the old wooden barn. He was in uniform, wearing a turban. As he walked toward them, trying not to look awkward for being there, Miranda greeted him.
“Officer Singh, I presume.”
“Detective Quin,” he smiled radiantly, having already forgiven himself for venturing well outside his sphere of authority, knowing the detectives were on equally ambiguous ground. “It is so good to meet you. Welcome to the countryside.”
“This is my partner, Detective Morgan. Just call him Morgan. I’m Miranda.”
“My name is Peter.”
They all shook hands. The young officer could not stop smiling. His smile was infectious, and the three of them stood for some time, motionless, smiling.
“I am happy to be of assistance,” he said. “Murder is a rare occurrence in Owen Sound. Mostly domestic violence, and very unpleasant. I have been reading about your case, I believe. The very old bodies in the very old house. And then not so old, after all. It has been intriguing, but it did not stay very long in the papers. I recognized your names. When Professor Birbalsingh told me, I knew who you were.”
As he mentioned the call, he indicated with a hand gesture the universal telephone sign, little finger and thumb extended, the other three fingers folded in.
Morgan said, “We are appreciative, Officer Singh.” He addressed the young policeman with a conspiratorial wink. “We will work as a team. Did you find anything of interest in the barn?”
“Oh, yes. Barns are of infinite interest. But nothing suspicious.”
“Good work,” said Morgan.
“Well,” said Miranda, noticing the cobwebs on his turban, “I’m sure, then, we can turn our attentions to the house.” She realized both she and Morgan were being a trifle patronizing, but, she thought, with good intentions. Peter Singh’s ingenuous enthusiasm made him likeably vulnerable and they were instinctively trying to create protective barriers around him, before either lapsed into cynicism. “Have you been here long? You look like you were getting ready to leave,” she said, nodding at the open door of the cruiser.
“Oh, no,” he said. “I estimated the drive would take you three hours if you left right away.” He indicated driving with two hands moving an imaginary steering wheel. “My car is like that to reassure anyone here of my goodwill.”
“Is anyone here?” asked Miranda.
“No, I do not believe so. Not alive — ”
“Peter,” Morgan said, “we’re not looking for bodies, we’re just trying to find Dr. Hubbard.”
“Who is a person wanted for questioning in a homicide investigation.”
“Yes. Who appears to be missing.”
“A very nasty homicide.”
“Yes,” said Miranda. She opened the summer-kitchen door. It seemed reasonable to step inside, to knock on the house door. Immediately, she recognized the door to the sauna from Morgan’s description of the bolt and flanged hinges.
“There are five doors in this room, Morgan. I was expecting two. One for the lady and the other for the tiger.”
Morgan and Peter Singh had followed her in. Morgan grimaced, but Officer Singh asked, “What do you mean? What tiger?”
“It’s an old story. A man has a choice: does he choose the door concealing the lady, or the door concealing the tiger?”
“Oh, I see,” he said, looking quite perplexed. “A difficult choice.”
“Well, what do you think, Morgan. Shall we give the door a try?”
“How about knocking first?”
“Officer Singh already has. I’ll just try the handle. You never know.”
Miranda depressed the handle and pushed and the door swung open into the kitchen. She leaned in and called a piercing “Hello-o-o.”
There was no answer. She stepped inside.
“Morgan, come in. We have a problem.”
Morgan entered and walked by her into the centre of the room. Peter Singh crowded in behind.
“Familiar territory, Morgan?”
He glowered. Peter Singh offered the opinion that it was a beautiful house. The renovations were clearly of the highest calibre, he noted as he made a rapid hammering gesture with one hand over the other, and it was very neat.
“Notice anything?” Miranda asked.
“The door wasn’t locked. It’s unlikely she’d leave it unlocked.”
“Yes,” Miranda said. “But even more telling. Feel the temperature. It’s warm in here. The furnace is on. No one, not even on a professor’s salary, would neglect to turn the heat down if they were planning to be away. She’s been gone, I’d say, three days.”
“How do you know that?” said Peter Singh.
“There’s a sweet, yeasty smell; the garbage under the sink is a few days old, not long enough to be rank, too long to live with.”
“Very interesting.”
Morgan looked at her with particular affection. She was good at this.
“Does your nose tell us if she’s still on the premises?”
“She isn’t here. We’ll check all the rooms, but the air is unsullied by human remains. I would think she left in a hurry and under duress, probably in the evening.”
“How so?”
“The dishes are washed; after breakfast or lunch there’d still be a few cups around, a few crumbs, but everything’s been carefully put away, the counter and table are wiped down. I’d say it was the final cleanup of the day. And look on the table: three pieces of paper, with holes for a three-ringed binder. And a pen. She was settling down to write journal entries. And a wine glass. Clean. Empty. She was going to pour herself a glass — did you say she drank port? — a glass of port. She was about to record her memories of the day, her dreams and her plans. There are no essays in sight — she was probably finished her marking. And there’s not a single book off the shelves. Academics invariably write with books spread open around them.”
“Invariably? Perhaps you’re projecting from stereotype. I think we’ve got about as much here as we’re going to get without a warrant.”
“We have reason to believe a crime has been committed. She didn’t leave of her own accord, Morgan. I think we should look around.”
“I’ll check upstairs,” Officer Singh volunteered.
Morgan sat down at the table and stared into the cold ashes in the fireplace. He got up and closed the damper. Heat from the furnace would be pouring out the chimney. She wouldn’t have left it open. He sat down again, pleased to be alone as Miranda checked out the parlour and downstairs bedroom. He felt something strangely akin to nostalgia. This was absurd, for he and Shelagh had spent only a short time together, and it had been an emotional roller coaster, leaving him both frightened of her possible capacity for evil and irredeemably enthralled.
“Morgan,” Miranda’s voice echoed from Shelagh Hubbard’s bedroom. “I think you should see this.”
As he walked through, Peter Singh came clattering down the stairs, eager to miss nothing. The three of them crowded into the small room, along with a pressed-wood chair, a deal dresser, a three-quarters size bed — neatly made — bedside shelves stuffed with books and a braided rug. Miranda was sitting on the edge of the bed. On her lap was an open three-ring binder with a blue plastic cover. Two others were lying on top of a bookshelf. She turned the binder for Morgan to see in the glare of an overhead bulb suspended from the ceiling. This room had not yet been refinished.
He could not read without projecting his shadow across the open pages, so he took the book from her and turned into the light, only to have it blocked by the young officer who was simultaneously trying to read over his shoulder and stay out of his way. Morgan turned to Peter Singh and, making the universal gesture of two fingers walking, said, “I’ll just walk out to the kitchen with this. There’s better light.”
He sat down at the harvest table with the book open in front of him. Slowly, he thumbed through, opening the pages at random, moving backward and forward, taking in brief descriptive passages, drawings, recipes for plaster and paint, details of antique clothing, outlines of plot, lists that included a crucifix and a Masonic ring, a clinical accounting of the extermination of lives and the preparation of corpses to fulfill their grisly roles in a ghastly embrace. A sketch showed severed heads resting face to face, lips touching lips. They had missed that, when they had lifted the heads from the chute — that they were meant to be kissing. Miranda stood in the small archway leading into the central hall with Officer Singh beside her.
Morgan for a moment envisioned his former wife as the author. He imagined Lucy making notes about buying a freezer big enough for a body, adapting a sauna for murder and mummification. He could picture her planning out a tableau for her own amusement, arranging desiccated corpses like dolls in a depraved parody of affection. Separating bodies from heads — passion is in the mind, she would say. The body is merely the medium, the message is always obscure. He could read his former wife’s personality in the disinterested precision of Shelagh Hubbard’s records.
“Morgan, I think you’d better take a look at this one, too.” Miranda set another blue binder down on the table and turned it open to the final page. Below the text was a very accomplished sketch of a Huron burial mound, as it was labelled, and a list of necessary artifacts to create an illusion of authenticity. On the bottom of the page there was a brief note: “Needed, one saint — a sinner will do.” Morgan turned over the page. Taped neatly to the obverse side was a newspaper clipping, carefully scissored to eliminate extraneous detail. Cut from the caption and taped as a label beneath the picture were the words, “Detective David Morgan, Homicide.”
Miranda placed her hand on his shoulder. He showed no external emotion but sat very still. She could feel a slight quivering as he gently leaned into the reassuring pressure of her hand. Sensing a mystery beyond comprehension, Officer Singh made a slight walking gesture with his fingers and slipped out the door. He was perturbed by how personally engaged the city detectives appeared to be with their work.