Reluctant Dead

by John Moss

  “Did you?”

  “Kill her? Good Lord, no. I don’t even know how she died. I woke up at dawn, came up for a morning’s pee over the side, it is always quite satisfying to piss publicly in such an august place as the Royal Toronto. And there she was. I slept on board alone through the night. God knows where she came from. I called in to your superintendent immediately, of course.”

  “Did you touch her?”

  “Well, yes, obviously. I thought she was sleeping off a binge, I shook her damned hard and I dressed her. Apart from that, no I did not touch her.”

  “But you dressed her?” Morgan asked, looking at the string bikini and noting that the top, such as it was, was green and the bottom was tropical blue. “She was naked when you found her?”

  “No, of course not. She had on her bottom piece, but her top was absent.”

  “You heard nothing. It must have been light when she was —” Morgan paused. He could see no harm in allowing D’Arcy’s story veracity, for the time being, “— when she was brought on board. You heard nothing?”

  “No mystery there. I sleep with ear plugs.”

  Morgan gazed at the man. Yes, perhaps, he thought. But when he had first stepped onto the boat it rolled under his weight and halyards rattled against the mast. You’d have thought someone carrying a corpse would waken a sleeper below. You would have thought a distraught husband wouldn’t have the detachment to shave. Mr. D’Arcy, aboard the Pemberly in the lee of the stately RTYC mansion, seemed quite in control and very well groomed.

  * * *

  Miranda looked around for the handsome Englishman when she disembarked at São Paulo and was ushered to the business-class lounge with a crush of other transients. Perhaps he had remained sitting and she had missed him in the bustle of baggage retrieval from overhead bins and the thronging masses moving up from steerage. She settled in with a gourmet breakfast of croissants, Swiss cheese, and prosciutto on a linen napkin and picked up her Heyerdahl book.

  It had occurred to her that the Englishman might be going to Easter Island, as well. She was restless. She put the book back in her travel bag and pulled out the comics Morgan had given her. Scrooge McDuck from January 1988 was on top. She opened to the panels on the first page and was immediately engrossed, the way she used to be as a child reading Archie, with the voices inside her head.

  The storyline was predictably silly, but there were a few brief passages referring sympathetically to the tragic past of the Rapanui people and there was a jarring reference to the brief visit of Captain Cook in 1774. It was like the cartoonists were using an elaborate code to deliver intimations of another story, not about ducks and their dog-faced adversaries, but about actual people in an actual place.

  She turned to Batman, September 2003. Far from Gotham, the Caped Crusader was locked fist and fang with nefarious nasties among the moai when, suddenly and arbitrarily, there was an historical reference to the terrible plight of the Rapanui following their island’s fate at the farthest edge of Empire. The drawings in Batman, while bleak and sinister, detailed an array of hillside statues similar to their cheerfully pastel representation in Uncle Scrooge’s realm. The genre was different, the artwork was different, the setting in Batman was grim and austere while in Scrooge McDuck it was opulently tropical, and yet the moai gazing with sightless eyes from the volcanic quarry on the side of Rano Raraku were uncannily alike.

  Miranda thumbed through the April 1954 issue of Wonder Woman — it was a prize, a decade older than she was. She then skimmed the April 1982 issue of The Mighty Thor and several other comics Morgan had tracked down for her during his exploratory forays on eBay. Each one delivered, in the midst of mayhem and fantasy, a brief homily about the horrors of a remote Eden corrupted by outsiders, all subversively inviting the reader to identify with the people of the moai rather than with the degenerate interlopers from the reader’s own world.

  She recognized the Rano Raraku site in its various colourfully hued manifestations from photographs in Hyerdahl and other books, the same sources undoubtedly used by the comic-book artists. She had taken the trouble to memorize a few of the key names on the island. She knew the solitary town was called Hanga Roa and that the only beach, which was eight miles away on the other side, was called Anakena. She knew that the people of Rapa Nui speak Rapanui, and that moai rest upright on stone platforms called ahu, or at least that was their intended destination and the place where they received eyes carved from pale coral with red stone pupils, and where many, but not all, were given top hats of the same red scoria.

  Deciding a cartoonist conspiracy to undermine established American values was in her own mind, Miranda pulled out Aku-Aku and began to read, but it seemed tiresomely indulgent, a kind of comic-book anthropology. Setting the book down on the glass table beside her, it bumped against her coffee cup and, in an attempt to avert catastrophe, she wrenched the book back and it tumbled onto the floor.

  As she bent to retrieve the splayed book, Miranda noticed the scrawl in the margin beside a page of photographs. The Englishman! He must have exchanged books. How? While she was asleep. Why? She was wary. Why would he do that? She examined the book more closely. He had. And then he had disappeared.

  She opened the book to the flyleaf and was surprised to find an autograph that was difficult to decipher, but might have been the author’s signature. There was no accompanying message or salutation, but low on the same page was a curiously enigmatic equation written in a clear script: 4/5 = 00. Four over five equals zero-zero. Linked zeroes equal infinity. Nothing more.

  She thumbed through the pages, knowing intuitively that there would be a further revelation among them, but not expecting something so obvious as the neatly folded note she found near the back. She opened the note slowly and held it to the light to decipher penmanship that was sufficiently elegant to appear incongruous in ballpoint.

  The missive started casually enough: “I regret we did not have the opportunity to pursue our conversation about Mr. Heyerdahl’s island.” It quickly shifted in tone: “You are with the police, I am quite sure of that. We are kindred, Miss Quin. (Your name is on your hand luggage, Miranda Quin).” The tone shifted again, from invasive to casually plaintive: “I seem to be in a spot of trouble. Perhaps as a fellow in the constabulary, you could help me out. Would you mind terribly if we leave the plane together? They will not risk making a fuss if there are two of us. Thank you. T.E.”

  She read the note through again, carefully, trying not to be distracted by his precise and flowing hand. His message seemed almost nonchalant, yet it candidly implied distress. He was a cop, then, or a government agent. “A fellow in the constabulary.” How charmingly pretentious, she thought. She looked around the lounge, but of course he was nowhere to be seen. If he was not flying through, there would have been no reason to remain at the airport. If he did not get off the plane … well, he must have, dead or alive. She shuddered, and for a moment was ashamed because she had thought what a pity, if such an attractive man was now dead.

  At the service desk she had trouble making herself understood. The young woman spoke fluent school-English, but seemed to find Miranda’s request for a passenger manifest of the flight she had come in on to be an inordinately complex one. Finally, politely, she declared she could be of no help in Miranda’s quest for the handsome stranger.

  Miranda sat down again, feeling oddly vulnerable.

  In spite of his note, the man was little more than a face in the crowd. They had exchanged a few words, then he had passed on, leaving only a hazy feeling of erotic regret for a connection unmade, an opportunity missed. There was nothing she could do. She was a detective sergeant in homicide with the Toronto Police Service, a former RCMP officer, and far outside her jurisdiction. She tucked the note back among the pages of Aku-Aku, found some old copies of People magazine, and tried to read the captions.

  She looked up occasionally and surveyed the bland, good quality furnishings in the business-class lounge and she felt a brief
surge of claustrophobia, as if the walls had closed in while the world outside had fallen away. Miranda was not a world traveller. She had flown south to the Cayman Islands to scuba dive, had been around Canada and the States a few times as a Mountie during her training period in Saskatchewan and then with the prime minister’s office, where her police function had been to appear in scarlet uniform for photo ops. She had felt like a stuffed moose and left the force after three years for Toronto. This probably meant missing theopportunity for advancement to become a static Canadian icon on international missions.

  After an interminable wait through undifferentiated minutes and hours, she boarded her plane for Chile and landed at dusk in Santiago, only a little apprehensive that she was in the country notorious for its thousands of disparu. She had to wait overnight for her flight to Rapa Nui — she was trying hard to think of her destination by the Polynesian name, not as Easter Island or Isla de Pasqua.

  She settled back in the taxi driving in from the airport as they passed by a parade of decrepit buildings covered with graffiti and scruffy tropical vegetation. South America had always seemed unreal; it was only now, away from airports, that it was coming alive. She felt dread and a strange elation, driving into the centre of a city haunted with ghosts of political dissidents, but also with the ghosts of Incan emperors and the righteous conquistadors who destroyed them. She gazed out the window of the taxi at the people milling about in the evening light, trying to pick out individual faces. The driver, in whom she had put her trust to deliver her unscathed to her hotel, spoke occasionally in Spanish and shrugged amiably at her confused responses.

  The Best Western was above expectations evoked by her travel agent, who had little sympathy with anything Latin. It was late, she skipped dinner, she would be on the move again at dawn.

  She tried to read the Heyerdahl book, but ended up thumbing through, gazing at the photographs. They seemed to have no relationship to her destination. Everything was reduced to archaeological sites and artifacts. Here and there she found handwritten snippets of potted wisdom like the one about the importance of enemies she had discussed with the Englishman. They were inscribed in ink, the letters formed with a rigid evenness that suggested careful deliberation, not the zealous spontaneity their sentiments implied. Several more were about the ambiguity of enemies:

  “It is not our foes we must fear but our friends.”

  “Forgive friends, they will hate you. Forgive enemies, they are in your debt forever.”

  And there were as many whose positive sentiments in such an arbitrary context seemed almost as chilling.

  Miranda shuddered at the incipient paranoia of the writer, which eerily conveyed an anonymous, but distinct personality. She set the book aside and fell immediately into a deep sleep, surrounded by wailing throngs of the disparu, with ominous moai looming in the background. She had no idea of the time when she was awakened by the noxious smell of burning cigarettes. Motionless and silent, Miranda stared into the gloom, for a moment suspecting she was dreaming. Two hulking figures, featureless in the dark, stood smoking at the end of her bed.

  * * *

  After a curiously relaxed breakfast as Harrington D’Arcy’s guest on the sweeping verandah of the RTYC mansion — since the exchange of currency was not allowed, this was the only way to get food, except for a few discreet vending machines in the men’s locker room — Morgan had wandered aimlessly among the docked boats, admiring the simple complexity of the spars and rigging. The Royal Toronto was not a club that took kindly to power boats unless the owners were inordinately influential. When he walked back toward the Pemberly, he noticed among the flurry of police activities that no one had thought to cover the body — perhaps because she was wearing a bikini and exposure seemed natural, even in death.

  Gazing intently at the corpse as he approached, Morgan had to do a quick sidestep to avoid colliding with Ellen Ravenscroft, the medical examiner from the coroner’s office.

  “Quite distracting, isn’t she!”

  “G’morning,” said Morgan.

  “You’ve been here awhile?”

  “Arrived by invitation at dawn.”

  “That sounds sinister.”

  “The husband’s connected. He called Rufalo at home and requested me.”

  “Where’s your intrepid partner?”

  “She’ll be in Santiago about now.”

  “Good God, she really did want to get away from you. That’s in Chile.”

  “I know it’s in Chile. She’s on leave.”

  “Well, good for her, love. She’s been through a lot. She needs to put murder behind her.”

  “She’s writing a murder mystery. On Easter Island.”

  “Lovely! I hope in the arms of a comely young Polynesian.”

  “She’s not that way inclined.”

  “You’re telling me ‘comely’ refers only to women? You never know, Morgan. She’s on holiday. So, I’m comely, and you’re not?”

  He smiled. He found her amusing and wearing. She was Miranda’s age, late thirties, and one of those people who was very attractive until you analyzed their features and realized it was all in the personality. You ignored the features and concentrated on the personality, which could be dangerously seductive.

  He had no idea why he thought of Ellen Ravenscroft as dangerous.

  “Is she really writing a mystery?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well good for her. So you’re available, then?”

  “That’s not determined by the whereabouts of my partner.”

  “Morgan, Morgan, Morgan. I could have had my way with you years ago, if I’d wanted.” She paused. “So tell me about the bikini, which is mismatched, by the way.”

  They were still on the dock, waiting for the forensics people to stand aside.

  He shrugged.

  “She’s rather voluptuous.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Vivacious.”

  “It’s hard to be vivacious and dead.”

  “She’s stunning.”

  “On the surface,” he muttered, stupidly.

  “Is there another way, love?”

  Morgan braced himself on the wire shrouds and eased Ellen aboard. He watched her examine the corpse, first very close without touching, then gently shifting and prodding.

  “No bruises. Minor abrasions around her upper arms — you can see by the discolouration from her blood settling, pale side up, it confirms her posture, she probably died right here.”

  “Of what?”

  “Suffocation … an overdose … poison …”

  “What about natural causes?”

  “Morgan, you’re very unromantic.”

  “But could it be?”

  “Yes. That’s a possibility.”

  “Then why does the husband prefer murder? He set up the scene, he called us. We’re here on the presumption of murder.”

  “The presumption of murder, I like that. Good title for what’s-her-name’s mystery.”

  “Yeah,” said Morgan. He wondered what sordid scheme the widower could possibly need to conceal by using murder as an alibi.

  “Morgan, look closer at her face. Serene expression. Make-up, a perfect mask. Except for the eyes — look at the creases. This woman was crying when she died. Someone has done her make-up after death, someone who knows what she’s doing.”

  “She?”

  “Could be a professional, a mortician. Make-up artist with a film crew.”

  “At sunrise?”

  “Time and a half for overtime.”

  “When did she die? The husband told me he tried to shake her alive — that would be the abrasions on her arms — but he claims to have been down below until dawn.”

  “It’s after ten, now. I’d say four, five hours ago. Whatever I find, you’ll be the first to know.”

  “Yeah, call me. I’m going to wander around here for awhile.”

  “For sure, might as well take advantage. It really is a world apart, isn’t it?”r />
  “Yeah,” said Morgan, looking across the harbour at the city, which seemed to be floating like an island of towering facades between water and the late summer sky.

  “You take care, love. I’ll call.”

  Morgan stepped over onto the dock and felt the gentle sway of the Lion as his weight shifted, and heard rasping high in the shrouds where the mainsail halyard slapped against the mast. He liked the sounds of sailing, although they were not part of his personal history. Perhaps in another life.

  Morgan spent the rest of the day wandering around the RTYC, admiring boats, sidestepping guano deposited by innumerable seagulls, ducking overhanging branches of ancient willows, his mind skipping back and forth from the dead woman in the bikini to Miranda, on her way to a wind-swept island in the South Pacific. After lunch, back in the city, digging through files of old newspapers, financial papers and journals, scoping out Harrington D’Arcy. The dead woman’s name was Maria. A Brazilian heiress. The details were vague, the wealth implied. The D’Arcy wedding had been so exclusive even the Globe and Mail was uncertain of the guest list, although it received restrained coverage in the Financial Times and a paparazzi photograph in Vanity Fair.

  The few photographs of Maria D’Arcy were difficult to read. It was as if each had caught a separate aspect of her personality, although she was identifiably the same person. Like a signature, he thought; always the same and invariably different — too much the same, and it was fake. She was certainly not fake, he thought. Intriguing, yes, and from her pictures somehow inscrutable. He found himself liking her, she was familiar and exotic at the same time. Her pictures invoked the scent of wildflowers and sun-drenched pebbles — the lingering smell of her perfume that was caught in the air around her corpse although he had not focused on it at the time.