Reluctant Dead

by John Moss

  “Private.”

  “Gotcha. Word had it she was adventurous.”

  He smiled ambiguously.

  “In my business, you do what you do.”

  She had heard that expression before. We do as we do, said the smoking man in Santiago. She realized she should be afraid of the handsome Englishman. He was in the same business as her midnight callers, but with polished manners. That made him more difficult to read, and perhaps even more treacherous.

  * * *

  The afternoon dwindled into ennui and Morgan went home early. Maria D’Arcy’s death puzzled him, but he was distracted by the feeling that it was incidental to something bigger — as to what that was, he had no idea. He nuked a frozen dinner and opened a bottle of Ontario merlot.

  Alex Rufalo had called him in after lunch for a progress report.

  “The medical examiner thinks probably misadventure,” Morgan had explained. “That means a coroner’s inquest.”

  “I know what it means, Detective Sergeant. But until we get a definitive report, it’s an open case, so keep at it.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Morgan had said, wandering back to his desk. He spent the rest of the afternoon on the computer, trying to find a connection between his boss and Harrington D’Arcy.

  Before going home, he had made an appointment to see D’Arcy in the morning. You don’t make appointments with suspects, he thought. Only with witnesses. He realized D’Arcy had somehow positioned himself as an innocent by insisting on murder. He also realized sticking to protocol was his response not to the crime, but to his feelings of being played when he didn’t know the the game, let alone the rules.

  For the most part, Morgan was a procedural maverick. He and Miranda were very good at their jobs, bent rules, or overlooked them, and got things done. Nothing illegal — they were both so straight their shadows wouldn’t bend on a bicycle — but sometimes they cut corners, ignored protocol, overrode bureaucratic niceties. And because they were good, they got away with it.

  He did not always get along with senior administration, but he assumed they were on the same side. Right now, he wasn’t so sure.

  He forgot about his dinner in the microwave and the open bottle of wine. With CNN on in the background, he slouched on the sofa, and distractedly sorted through a stack of books on Easter Island, not looking for anything in particular. He picked up a hackneyed guide to the island featuring the inevitable moai on the cover and thumbed through its pages. The book was overflowing with unfiltered ephemera; it was trite, amateur, and soulless. He tossed in on the floor.

  The telephone rang. It was Ellen Ravenscroft.

  “Sorry to bother you so late,” she said, “but I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Yeah, sure. What?”

  “Maria D’Arcy —”

  “Murdered.”

  “Yes, Morgan. You never doubted it?”

  “It was your voice, and the hour. You’ve been working late.”

  “No, love, I’m at home, with the heat turned up and nothing on but the radio. Yes, I’m at work. I’m standing in front of the lady’s naked cadaver as we speak.”

  “Murdered.”

  “Unequivocally.”

  “How?”

  “I thought you’d never ask. It’s the perfume, Morgan — why would anyone risk being caught breaking into a morgue? There had to be something in the perfume. And if the perfume was gone, there had to be traces of whatever it was masking — or, was the perfume a delivery system? Either way, it got me to thinking.”

  “That’s always good. Do you want to finish this conversation over dinner?”

  “You haven’t eaten yet? It’s nearly midnight.”

  “I forgot.”

  “You forgot to eat. I never thought I’d be saying this, but no.”

  “Okay.”

  “No, really, it’s a lovely idea, but I’m still at the ‘office,’ and tomorrow’s a heavy day. They’ve been bringing in the dead all evening, accidents and executions. Toronto’s getting to be a lethal place. I’m going to sleep here.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay, so there were minute traces of poison absorbed through the skin on her neck. The details will be on your desk in the morning.”

  Morgan went to bed on an empty stomach and lay awake for a long time. He listened to the darkness, excited, then calm, until a rush filled his mind and he drifted to sleep.

  * * *

  Miranda and her companion talked deep into the night, huddled over a light supper of sliced Spam with crackers, cheese, green grapes, and a Chilean cabernet to wash it all down. At ease with each other and yet wary in the ambient gloom of the bedside lamp, they might have been lovers in a dangerous time.

  She changed the dressing on his wound, sluicing the ragged flesh with alcohol until he proclaimed he’d rather die from blood poisoning than painful benevolence. There was an urgency to their playfulness that heightened the intensity of being together. But even had the Englishman been up to it, Miranda thought herself unlikely to have sex with such a man. There were too many unknowns, too many evasions. Being in the midst of a conspiracy, when she was not even sure who the players were, was not supposed to be erotic.

  But of course it was. It crossed her mind that intrigue was an aphrodisiac, better than oils and roses. It was infuriating because he looked so astonishingly handsome, his body taut and hard, suppressing pain like a great muscle ready to spring, the strain enhancing his face by making each feature more sculptural. His dishevelled hair and stubbled beard, the bared chest and bloodied bandage, the quiet but resonant voice and elusive accent, made him almost irresistible.

  Bad news, naturally. She gazed at him and realized that the danger and confusion surrounding him were a natural state of affairs. The rational side of her mind found this intolerable, while, strangely, a small part of her wanted no resolution, but for things to go on as they were, one mystery rolling into another, each adding layers of complexity, like a snowball caught in an avalanche.

  Looking at herself in the mirror, Miranda had never been so aware of herself as a woman. She decided to turn this to her advantage. She suspected Thomas Edward Ross could out-manoeuvre her in the manipulation of truths, but in the oppressive intimacy of their situation, perhaps she had the upper hand.

  She led him on, playing on his urge to define himself. He talked. He had abandoned her book on the plane to São Paulo, he told her. That’s where the smoking man must have found it. Ross had spotted the Chilean travelling in the tourist section, that’s when he exchanged books and asked for Miranda’s help. But when he realized his pursuer knew he had been seen, he changed plans. Instead of leaving with Miranda, he slipped out through the baggage hold, leaving a few dollars in his wake.

  What is odd, she thought, is that this seems improbable, but not impossible. She asked questions.

  Why were they after him, whoever they were?

  Why was he concerned about the Heyerdahl book?

  How did she fit in?

  Had she been part of his plans from the beginning?

  What was special about Maria D’Arcy’s copy of the book?

  Did it have something to do with the handwritten notations?

  Was there a connection between the book and Maria D’Arcy’s death?

  Who attacked him here in the Hotel Victoria? Was it the smoking man?

  Why did they follow him to Easter Island?

  Or did they follow her?

  He repeatedly responded without answering, leaving her enthralled by his artful evasions when she should have been infuriated or frightened.

  They both flinched at the sound of a gentle knock on the door. She recognized the voice of the concierge — perhaps he was also the owner — but could not make out his words.

  She looked to Ross, and he shrugged, indicating that the inevitable could not be avoided. She slipped the lock on the door and opened it a crack.

  The door slapped against her, pushing her backward into the room. A man came in, and t
he concierge stood behind him. The man walked directly to Ross and wrenched him to his feet. Another man entered the room. He imposed himself between Miranda and the door. When she moved, he slapped her hard and she fell to the floor. The first man hauled Ross out of the room. The second man snapped off the bedside lamp, then followed, drawing the door closed sharply behind him. Both men had worn kerchiefs pulled up over their faces; only the concierge was recognizable.

  No words had been spoken. Miranda’s head throbbed. The scene had played out like a black-and-white movie, with the sound muted. Film noir, she thought, aware she was lying alone in the dark, with the taste of blood in her mouth. She had slipped into a screenplay written by Dashiell Hammett in league with John le Carré.

  * * *

  3

  Murder Becomes Us

  Miranda telephoned Morgan again, in the early morning after she got back from her interview with the Isla de Pasqua Police, but he was already out. She did not leave a message. Despite being half a world away in the southern hemisphere, she was only an hour west of him, so he would be working. She tried the office, but he was not there, either. The bland inflection in the Canadian voice at Toronto headquarters struck a chord of empathy, and she longed to be home. She wanted to solve mysteries, she realized, not invent them. And not inhabit them from the inside looking out. She sat down on the edge of the bed and saw that one of the two Heyerdahl books was missing. Her mind was muddled, searching for a metaphor to describe the panic swelling inside her; the feeling that Kafka was in charge of the world.

  ***

  When Morgan arrived at Harrington D’Arcy’s office, high in a bank tower near the intersection of King and Bay Streets, he was surprised to find that D’Arcy had vanished.

  “I had an appointment with him at nine,” Morgan explained to the receptionist, then to a secretary, then to an administrative assistant, and finally to an associate executive, each of them dressed in expensive clothes, surrounded by the lavish accoutrements of their relative positions, all in a warren of offices so tastefully appointed that the excess seemed somehow an aspect of corporate efficiency. There was nothing to indicate what kind of work was done there, but the place reeked of success.

  Each person he talked to declared that they had no idea of their employer’s whereabouts. He was assured Harrington D’Arcy was unlikely to take off for a sail, to work out at his club, or to attend a secret meeting, without his entire office staff being made fully aware. There were apparently no clandestine moments or covert affairs in the life of Harrington D’Arcy. His very private business activities and reclusive social life were apparently tracked and controlled by his staff.

  And yet he had disappeared the day after his wife was found dead, when he was wanted to assist in a police investigation into the possibility of her murder.

  There was nothing in the office to indicate tragedy; no sign of grief, no particular interest in being interviewed by a homicide detective. No one professed to knowing Maria D’Arcy on a personal basis. She was apparently no more than a rumour in their glass-walled garrison high above the city streets.

  As Morgan stood facing the polished marble of the elevator wall, waiting for one of two ornate metallic doors to slide open, and distracted by the emptiness of his experience in D’Arcy’s office, the reflection of a woman moving down the length of the opposite corridor caught his eye. The apparition came into focus beside him as if the woman herself were caught in the cool surface of the marble walls.

  When she said nothing, he turned toward her and was immediately struck by the sculptural radiance of her appearance. The austerity of her demeanour could not suppress the astonishing beauty of her features and figure and carriage. At first he thought she was waiting for the elevator. She stood slightly turned, however, so that when he shifted to look at her they were nearly facing each other, eye to eye. In heels, she was almost as tall as he was. Without them, she would still be several inches taller than Miranda. Her presence made him intensely aware of his own physical being.

  “I’m told you are a policeman,” she said, her voice as cool and crisp as January.

  “Yeah,” said Morgan, shifting his weight. The elevator door opened and neither of them got on. Several people moved past them and the door closed.

  “Your name is Morgan, am I right?”

  “Yeah, and you are Ms. …?”

  “Simmons.”

  “First name?”

  “Yes.” She did not volunteer to tell him what it was.

  “What can I do for you, Ms. Simmons?”

  “Mr. D’Arcy was called away on business.”

  “And you are the only one here who knows about it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I am his partner.”

  He looked at her closely, moving so that she had to back into the full light of the corridor. It was impossible to tell her age. She wore makeup so well it appeared to be minimal. She was groomed exquisitely; her eyebrows arched with a natural grace and the style of her hair seemed somehow inevitable. She could be in her late twenties, she could be in her early forties. His chest constricted and he gazed past her, catching his breath.

  “You want to ask Mr. D’Arcy about Maria?”

  “Isn’t it an odd time for a business trip, Ms. Simmons? His wife is on a slab at the morgue — what about grief?”

  “What about grief, Mr. Morgan?”

  “Detective.”

  “Detective Morgan. Is there a protocol for grief required by the police?”

  “No, but there are conventions and needs. My goodness,” he declared, using his favoured expression and a little nonplussed by her cool civility, “the man is implicated in murder! Even he seems to think so.”

  “I doubt it was murder.”

  “You favour the suicide theory.”

  “People die, Detective. Sometimes by accident.”

  “But there’s always a cause.”

  “Death can be a creative force, Detective Morgan.”

  “Did I hear you correctly, Ms. Simmons?”

  “Possibly not.”

  The woman offered a depthless smile, the lawyerly equivalent of a dismissive shrug, he supposed. She proceeded with a rhetorical shift that he found amusing, but only because he recognized what she was doing. “I can assure you, Detective, Mr. D’Arcy has not left the country.”

  “It’s a big country.”

  “I received a call. If you would step into my office, it’s on my machine. I can’t tell you any more than he told me.”

  Her office had the same impersonal opulence as its surroundings. The paintings on the walls were originals; they seemed familiar, but there was nothing Morgan actually recognized. There were several pieces of Inuit sculpture, industrial size, several Inuit prints, and a woven wall-hanging.

  D’Arcy’s message was simple. “Ms. Simmons. There is a matter of some urgency, I need to be away. If a Detective Morgan calls, assure him I will return.”

  Morgan stared intently into the woman’s eyes; they were deep brown. Like eyes in a painting by Vermeer, they revealed so much and nothing at all, they gave no indication of the soul within. Her partner had addressed her as Miss.

  “How do you know he hasn’t left the country?”

  “I would know if he had.”

  “You know where he is, then.”

  “I suspect he is in the Arctic, but I do not know that as a fact.”

  “The Arctic?”

  “Baffin Island. We are putting something together.” She paused. This was a woman unused to explaining herself and certainly unaccustomed to sharing her company’s secrets. Confidentiality was their stock in trade. She was also a woman who recognized priorities.

  He waited.

  “Zinc and copper on Baffin Island, problems of sovereignty. The Arctic and problems of sovereignty can be quite pressing.”

  “Enough, apparently, to leave his wife on ice.” He smiled at the droll connection between ice and the Arctic, but she sho
wed no emotion. “Can you track him down?”

  “No.”

  “Surely there is no place in the world where a man like Harrington D’Arcy cannot be reached.”

  “There is, and he is there.”

  “That sounds sinister.”

  “Not yet. Now if you will excuse me. If I hear from him, I will call.”

  “Promise?”

  “What? Oh, yes, Detective, I promise. I am glad you like your job; you find it amusing.”

  “Yes,” said Morgan and walked back to the elevator on his own. Her most memorable trait was her hair, which draped in a honey-blonde cascade to her shoulders and shimmered when she moved as if it were constantly under studio lights.

  He went straight to the D’Arcy home in Rosedale. It was a charming stone cottage tucked away on a curving side street, reminiscent of a small seigneurial manor along one of the more remote rivers of Quebec. Only when he was up close did it seem imposing — from the street it made neighbouring houses appear pretentious and ill at ease.

  He had expected something more lavish from a Brazilian heiress and a lawyer legendary for his success managing corporate takeovers. Discreetly legendary; an heiress of what?

  The woman who answered the door was older, and she had evidently been crying.

  “I don’t suppose Mr. D’Arcy is here?” Morgan asked after introducing himself.

  The woman looked at him warily.

  “I am here only. The señora, she is deceased. Mr. D’Arcy, he is not at home at this time.”

  “Was he here last night?”

  “Last night, yes. This morning no. He is go.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “I do not know where to. There have been calls from his office, looking for Mr. D’Arcy.”

  “Could I come in, do you think?” asked Morgan.

  “You are police? You have the warrant?”

  Morgan was startled by her confidence; she was certainly not an illegal immigrant.

  “No, I do not,” he said. “I’m trying to discover what happened to Mrs. D’Arcy. I am trying to help find her husband.”