Reluctant Dead

by John Moss

  Easter Island, the village of Hanga Roa. The Rongorongo on the mantle was a souvenir, not an auction-house acquisition. The D’Arcys had sailed there in the ketch, probably east from Tahiti. They would have stopped at Pitcairn along the way, before the long haul to the most isolated island in the world. He had not thought of it as remote when he was there last year, but in the context of small-boat sailing, the open sea surrounding it seemed limitless.

  They sailed together. He was slowly assimilating the fact that Harrington D’Arcy and Maria D’Arcy must have been a very close couple, who handled intimacy as discreetly as if they were having an affair.

  And she had died here, he thought, on this berth. Perhaps her husband found her, he was sure it was murder but had no proof. He carried her above to the cockpit and placed her in a nonchalant pose. He went back down below to wait for dawn. Why wait?

  Apparently to be sure he got Morgan involved with the case. Why the disinterested attitude? As a boardroom lawyer, he was used to planning strategically, guiding events to a desired end. But each move along the way was a controlled response. That was tactics. The difference was subtle: the attitude was strategic, manipulating Rufalo to bring Morgan on board, that was tactical. And disappearing into the Arctic, what was that?

  Ellen Ravenscroft said Maria D’Arcy had died where she was found, verified by the way blood had settled in the corpse. But if her husband had attended her closely, and moved her carefully within a short time of her death, lifting her up through the narrow companionway, she might have died below decks. Could he have done it by himself? Perhaps someone else was involved. Someone who knew where he was now. Ms. Simmons, perhaps.

  Morgan walked back to the clubhouse and found an attendant in the men’s locker room, a lithe sunburned man in his forties.

  “Were you working yesterday?” Morgan asked him.

  “Are you here about the murder?” said the man, running his fingers through a shock of sun-bleached hair. “Yes, I was working. I saw you talking to Mr. D’Arcy on the Pemberly, and Mrs. D’Arcy. You had breakfast with him on the verandah.”

  “Mrs. D’Arcy was dead,” said Morgan, a little taken aback at having been so closely observed.

  “Well yes, but she was there. You must have arrived just after seven, you caught the first ferry, I caught the second.”

  “How’d you know I didn’t come on a police boat?”

  “You didn’t. He didn’t kill her.”

  “You figure not.”

  “I’m certain of it.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Look out there, that window, it looks straight down the channel, the third boat along, I can see the Pemberly from here while I’m working.”

  “And?”

  “And sometimes they’d spend the whole evening by themselves, without going out on the lake, just reading, talking when the sun went down. They were very private, very together. The kind of people you like from a distance. You don’t want to know them, just watch them.”

  “Do you know many of the members — personally?”

  “Ah, the class thing. The service thing. Yes, yes I do. I sail. I’ve sailed quite a lot over the years. I’m available whenever anyone’s a hand short. I’ve sailed most of these boats and, trust me, the minute we cast off I’m as good as the best of them. I can see the wind, Detective, and there’s not a sailor here who doesn’t respect that.”

  Morgan couldn’t help but warm to this man, who struck him as his own mirror opposite. The man tilted his head forward and looked up. The corners of his eyes were creased from years of squinting into the maritime sun. His eyes glittered like an ancient mariner who was kept young by his passion for the sea.

  “You sailed with the D’Arcys in the South Pacific, didn’t you?”

  “How’d you know?” There was a glint in his eyes, but no wariness.

  “You skippered a ketch from Tahiti to Easter Island.”

  “Rapa Nui, yes. From Hawaii down and across. They flew in, joined us in Papeete, Tahiti. They flew home from Rapa Nui. Several years ago. How do you know what a ketch is?”

  “How do you know they were a good couple? Not looking out your window. You said you wouldn’t want to know them close up, but you did.”

  “No mystery there. One felt intrusive, being with them. It was just the way they were. How’d you know about the Pacific thing?”

  “I’m a detective,” said Morgan, who had made a lucky guess. “When you say they joined ‘us’ in Tahiti, you mean you and your boat. You sailed single-handed down from Hawaii.”

  “Yes I did. And how’d you know that? I suppose because you’re a detective?”

  “Because you work at a menial job and have the skills of a man born to privilege. Spells renegade to me, an authentic loner, rising to the challenge of a lonely voyage.”

  “Yes,” said the man. “Sorry I can’t help with the murder.”

  “With solving it?” said Morgan, wondering exactly how his regret was directed. “Perhaps you’ve helped already —”

  “I don’t think so. I never saw them quarrel, I don’t know their problems, or their enemies, their business interests, their politics, their religion.”

  “What about their sex lives?”

  “What about their sex lives?” said the man, shifting the emphasis.

  “I understand D’Arcy was …” Morgan paused, then recalling it was D’Arcy himself who had made the assertion, he continued, “… that he was bisexual.”

  “Oh, come now, Detective, aren’t we all? I’m no help to you there.”

  “Morgan,” he said. “Detective Morgan.”

  “Rove,” said the man.

  “First name or last.”

  “McMan. Rove McMan, sailor at large.”

  “Let’s hope it stays that way.”

  “What? Oh yes, you’re being ironic. No, Detective Morgan, I am not a murderer. I adore the cramped quarters of an ocean voyage, but I would not fare well in a cell. I would prefer to remain free, as it were, and a sailor.”

  “As it were,” Morgan repeated, turning the phrase over in his mind. A strangely effete expression for a seaman, he thought.

  “Upper Canada College,” said Rove McMan, reading Morgan’s response. “A first in philosophy at Oxford. Rowed, you know. But chose not to affect the Oxonian accent. Sailed dinghies as a child, have sailed ever since. Poor by choice.”

  “And is Rove short for something?”

  “Yes it is.”

  “What?”

  “Yes, it is short for something.”

  Morgan smiled, and he walked away without saying anything more, as if he had other business more pressing. When he reached the front door under the portico of the main building, he turned to see if he was being watched, but the attendant had apparently gone back to work.

  When the club ferry pulled in, he recognized the same officious young man who had accosted him the day before for not dressing to code, assisting passengers ashore. Morgan waited on the return crossing until they were in the middle of the harbour and the RTYC was obscured behind a shoreline frieze of staggering willows. As Morgan approached him, the young man glanced around furtively; the ferry was nothing but a glorified launch and there was no place to hide.

  “Where were you when I came over around noon?” Morgan asked him, closing in as the young man edged against the rail.

  “Right here, sir.”

  “No,” said Morgan.

  “You weren’t looking for me. I stayed in the wheelhouse.”

  “And why would that be?”

  “I don’t know, sir.”

  Morgan gazed into the young man’s eyes. What he saw there was familiar, not the sullen defiance of an ex-con, or the horror of an illegal dreading exposure, and it was not the fear of a man guilty of crime. It was the suppressed panic of someone cowed by the power of a gun in the hands of authority. Morgan was used to this, the fear of police. Here was a young man at the service of people who could bring down governments, who
could buy and sell entire nations, and he was comfortable in their aura of privilege and power because he knew his place in their scheme of things. But a cop, one of his own, terrified him.

  “You know Mr. and Mrs. D’Arcy?” Morgan asked. The young man nodded affirmative. “The day before yesterday, did you bring them over?”

  “I worked the evening shift. I brought Mr. D’Arcy over, not her. She didn’t come.”

  “Well, she did. She was murdered over there.” Morgan nodded in the direction of the yacht club.

  “Not on this boat, sir. I would have seen her. Sailors know each other.”

  “You’re a sailor?”

  “I aspire to be a sailor, sir. I read Yachting magazines my passengers leave behind. I have made a study of sailing, although I have not actually sailed, yet.”

  “And what about Rove McMan, do you know him?”

  “Yes, sir, of course.”

  “Did he come over yesterday.”

  “Yes sir, the run after yours.”

  “No, I mean the evening before?”

  “Sunday. No sir. He was already there. I think he’d been out on the lake for a couple of days. I took him back Sunday morning.”

  “You worked a double shift? And how do you know McMan?”

  “It’s a seasonal job, I often work double. Everyone knows Rove McMan.”

  The locker room attendant was someone the young man admired, Morgan could tell by the way he spoke his name. Working the ferry was the closest he could come to emulating the lifestyle of an itinerant world-class sailor. Morgan felt sorry for him.

  He gave the young man his card. It was an old card with writing on the back. It was only his number at home.

  “If there’s anything you can think of, give me a call,” he said.

  The young man brightened. He was an ally, a police accomplice.

  “Oh, I will for sure. If I see or think of anything unusual.”

  “Thank you,” said Morgan, wondering what the young man might think was unusual.

  Back at headquarters, Morgan ran a search on Rove McMan. The locker-room attendant and world sailor had anticipated any question of criminal involvement by declaring his arrival at the club subsequent to Morgan himself. The ferryman would seem to have cleared him, as well. Still, anyone who had sailed in a small boat for weeks on end with a couple he claimed hardly to know must have been concealing a great deal of himself, or about them.

  McMan checked out. RTYC, dinghy races as a kid, with distinction. Upper Canada College. Father bankrupt, a Rosedale suicide, mother remarried. One sibling, a sister, resident until death at 999 Queen Street, the public asylum; no further record. Oxford, full scholarship. No tax or employment records. Never married. Round the world twice, once non-stop single-handed in a borrowed boat. Wrote a book, Random Wake. Good title, poor sales.

  All this from public archives, newspapers, and the Internet. No criminal record, not even a parking ticket. No car, a rented apartment.

  He is a man living his own life to the fullest, which is more, than most of us so, Morgan thought. Of course many of us live a number of lives simultaneously. Rufalo walked by his desk several times and Morgan ignored him, but late in the afternoon he looked up and saw Rufalo watching from his office. In that moment it occurred to Morgan that there was the link. He wanted to rush in, but instead sauntered into the superintendent’s office without knocking. Rufalo looked wary.

  “Any word on D’Arcy?” Rufalo asked.

  “Nothing. The guy walked off the face of the earth.”

  “I’m getting calls. Polite inquiries, so far. I’ve been vague, and there’s not a news editor in the city willing to risk the wrath of Harrington D’Arcy by speculating murder, suicide, misadventure, or sudden poor health without the word from us. Once they find he’s missing, though, they’re going to go wild.”

  “Why bother,” said Morgan. “He’s not a celebrity.”

  “No, but he’s exceptionally powerful. Your corporate lawyer could be turned into bloody good copy. If he killed her, Morgan, it will be news, I guarantee it. Missing, that makes him fair game, I’m afraid.”

  “But I don’t think he did it.”

  “Good.”

  “Good?”

  Rufalo shrugged noncommittally.

  “What I wanted to ask, did you ever talk to D’Arcy about Miranda?”

  “Good God, no. About Miranda. No, not at all. I don’t know D’Arcy, not like that.”

  “What about his wife?”

  “What about her?”

  “Did you talk to her about Miranda going to Easter Island?”

  “No, of course not. I’ve only spoken to the woman a few times in my life.”

  “But Caroline knows them both, and she knew about Miranda’s sabbatical project.”

  “Yes, I suppose she did, but no, Morgan, I —”

  “And she might have mentioned it?”

  “To D’Arcy, I don’t think so. Perhaps to his wife, it’s possible. There was nothing confidential about it. In fact, yes, of course, that book I passed on for Miranda. It would have been from D’Arcy’s wife. It’s quite possible Caroline told her. She must have, I suppose.”

  “Alex, I’m not accusing you. I just need to know.”

  “Why? What’s the connection?”

  “I’m not sure, but there is one. Thanks.”

  Morgan walked back to his desk. He sat down, he stood up. It was after six; he left for the day.

  He picked up smoked meat on rye and coleslaw from a deli on the way home. The air smelled of August as he walked along Harbord Street. The heat of the day was draining away and the cool of the evening was rising from the lengthening shadows. He had been tempted to eat in the restaurant, but decided that he wasn’t all that hungry and would rather change first and crack open a beer and watch some TV or read the paper.

  As soon as he approached the door of his condo, one segment of a rambling Victorian house subdivided into a postmodern architectural puzzle, like those three-dimensional intelligence tests where no two pieces are the same, he realized he was already rehearsing his conversation with Miranda. At the door he hesitated for a moment, discerning his spectral reflection in the paint he had applied, layer after layer, when he had first moved in more than a decade earlier. He had been trying to emulate the magic depth on the Georgian doors of Dublin, where he had spent several months half a lifetime before.

  He picked up his mail without looking at it and dropped it on an end table beside his answering machine, which registered no calls. He set down his deli parcel on the ottoman, slumped back into the blue sofa, and dialed the very long number of the Hotel Victoria in Hanga Roa. After two rings, someone spoke to him in Spanish. He tried to explain what he wanted, but got nowhere. He hung up and called a Bell Canada operator and asked her to make the connection, person to person. After an interminable wait, during which he could hear voices in Spanish and English negotiating, the operator informed him there was no one registered at the Hotel Victoria by that name.

  “Miranda Quin,” he said. “One n.”

  “There’s no one there by that name.”

  “Did she move out?”

  “I don’t know, sir. They said no one by that name has been registered there. She must be staying somewhere else. Is it a big place?”

  “What?”

  “Isla de Pasqua?”

  “No, it’s a very small place. Could you connect me to the police?”

  “The Toronto police?”

  “I am the Toronto police; to the police on Easter Island.”

  “Where, sir?”

  “Isla de Pasqua!”

  “One moment, sir.”

  She came back on the line.

  “There is no number for police on Isla de Pasqua. Would you like me to try Santiago. That is also in Chile.”

  “Try Carabinaros. Isla de Pasqua Carabinaros.”

  “Is that a person or business, sir?”

  “Try Guardia Civil.”

  “I’m
sorry sir, is Guardia the first name or last?”

  “Uh, try Policía.”

  “Policía. Thank you, sir.”

  She came back on the line again. “To whom did you wish to speak?”

  “The Isla de Pasqua Policía!”

  “This is a person-to-person call, sir.”

  “Anyone. Please.”

  He could hear muffled voices in the background and then the operator returned. “I will connect you now.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank you for using Bell Canada.”

  “Si?” a new voice inquired.

  “Carabinaros?”

  “No Carabinaros. Policía.”

  “Habla Inglés?”

  “No, poco. A little.”

  “I am looking for Señorita Miranda Quin,” said Morgan in a very slow and deliberate voice. “I am calling from Canada. She is a police officer, she is staying at the Hotel Victoria.”

  “I am police, Señor. There is no Miss Quin at Hanga Roa.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know, we are a little place.”

  “And you know everyone?”

  “Señor, it is my job.”

  “You know everyone there?”

  “Si. I know Rapa Nui. Señorita Miss Quin, she has never arrive. Thank you for your call. Goodbye.”

  The line went dead.

  She’ll phone, Morgan thought. She’s moved to another hotel. She’ll call this evening. It’s only mid-afternoon in the South Pacific. She’s out exploring at Rano Raraku. He was annoyed that she was inaccessible, irritated by her lack of consideration. He was worried, too. It was not like Miranda to disappear. A pang of fear ran through him, but he shook it loose. She knew how to look after herself.

  The telephone rang. Morgan jumped, then took a deep breath and relaxed.

  “Miranda?”

  “It is Edwin Block.”