Reluctant Dead

by John Moss

  “Who?” said Morgan, his anxiety about Miranda rising.

  “Eddie, you gave me your card.”

  “When?”

  “Today on the ferry. I called the office number, but you weren’t there so I called this number.”

  “Yes, Eddie, what can I do for you?” said Morgan. He wanted to get off the phone in case Miranda was trying to get through.

  “Well, you know, you wanted to know things,” he stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “Well, you know, it’s not difficult to get over to the RTYC lots of other ways.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, you know Toronto Island is just one of the islands, it’s actually called Centre Island, but most people call it Toronto Island, but anyway, the islands are connected, you can take a ferry to Centre Island Park or to the airport, you can hire a water taxi.”

  “You’re a good man, Eddie, you’re thinking outside the box.”

  “I am?”

  “You are. Now, I’m expecting an important call so we’ll have to cut this short. If you think of anything else, you call me. At the office.” Without waiting for a response, Morgan clicked off. He held the phone in his palm, staring at it, but it remained silent.

  He set the telephone on the ottoman beside the uneaten sandwich, and sat back and waited, while darkness slowly filled the room. He felt something vaguely like homesickness. She would be fine. If it were him, he’d be out at the quarry among the moai. The sun would be low on the Pacific by now, poised to fall into the sea.

  A sharp knock on the door startled him.

  He opened it, framed by the darkness behind him and blinded by the light from the street which cast his caller in a stark silhouette.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Morgan. You all right? It’s me.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Sorry. I must have fallen asleep. Come in, let’s turn on some lights. There. Well, now, this is a surprise.”

  Ellen Ravenscroft gazed around the room. It was not what she had expected. In her mind she had furnished Morgan’s home with oriental carpets and Inuit carvings, time-battered tables and chairs glazed with layers of paint, original prints by Canadian artists, a pair of old skis or antique snowshoes leaning against a back wall. There were lots of books, as she assumed there would be, and there was an aura, a masculine warmth that probably came from the smoked meat in the delicatessen bag on the ottoman. The place was distinctive, but dishevelled. Like Morgan. She would have preferred enchanting, exotic, or ominously seductive.

  “So this is it?” she said, indicating the entire place with a slow pirouette.

  “Yeah,” said Morgan. He turned off the overhead, but left the lamps on at either end of the sofa. “My sanctuary. What brings you here?”

  “A predatory impulse.”

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  “Do you have any wine?”

  “Pouilly Fuissé in the fridge.”

  “White?”

  “Pouilly — yes, white.”

  “A good year?”

  “Vintage.”

  “Lovely.”

  All years are vintage, Morgan thought as he opened the wine. He could be giving her plonk and save the difference. Still, class serves the establishment, mumble mumble, he was nattering to himself. Maybe she would go away.

  He brought two glasses of pale, lustrous wine back into the living room, each filled precisely half way. She was sitting on the sofa, comfortable as an old friend.

  “How are you managing without Miranda?” she asked.

  “What?”

  “What’s happening with the D’Arcy file?”

  “He’s missing.”

  “Who? D’Arcy? Come on, he’s too famous.”

  “No, he’s not famous at all.”

  “You know what I mean, he’s too important. Important people can’t go missing. They get missed. Is he dead?”

  “If I knew, he wouldn’t be missing.”

  “Don’t be testy, love. I was just asking.”

  “I don’t think he’s dead.”

  “This is a lovely wine. I’ve seen it in the stores. It’s very generous of you to share a bottle.”

  “A bottle?”

  “We don’t have to drink it all now, love. Save some for the morning.”

  “Ellen, why are you here?”

  “Maria D’Arcy …”

  “Yeah?”

  “It bothered me, the poison, even a concentrate should have left something in her blood. I went back to the report I sent to you. Re-reading it — funny how one notices in words what one didn’t pick up in real life, even when the words are your own.”

  Morgan immediately knew what she was going to say.

  “There was a turn of phrase, Morgan —”

  “Yeah, I missed it, too. The swab —”

  “Exactly. If she was cleaned down so thoroughly even her perfume was washed away, how is it I found no trace in her blood, but the poison powder concoction appeared on a swab?”

  “On the nape of her neck?”

  “No, the front, just above the clavicle. It was easy to miss the ground glass abrasions because it was applied after death. Whoever broke into the morgue interfered with the corpse in a most unusual way. I’ve never heard of poisoning a corpse before. The poison, it was meant to be found. So there you are. Someone wanted us to think she was murdered. I was working late. When I realized what happened, I needed to tell you.”

  Morgan recognized the desire to share a discovery; that somehow telling someone else made it real. He felt a warm sense of kinship with Ellen Ravenscroft, and empathy, realizing she had no one in her life to share things with. He at least had his partner. He and Miranda sometimes called back and forth in the dead of night to exchange nocturnal revelations about work. It was a kind of intimacy he missed terribly with her being away, knowing she would be gone until well into winter, if winter came early.

  “So what do you think, love? I mean, apart from the fact I screwed up.”

  “No, you didn’t screw up. You found poison, it’s in your report. I’m the detective, I missed the implications.”

  “But I declared the death homicide. I should have seen the anomaly. I got distracted.”

  “Yeah, we both focused on the absence of Fleurs de Rocaille.”

  “My, my, Fleurs de Rocaille. You do your research.”

  “So we’re back to square one. This doesn’t mean that she wasn’t murdered. We just don’t know if, for sure, or how, or by whom.”

  “Sorry, love. If it’s any consolation, the champagne in her gut was Dom Perignon. Very classy, very expensive. I’ve only had it once. It did the trick.”

  Morgan needed time to assimilate the shifting patterns — same events, different perceptions. He looked at Ellen Ravenscroft, sitting languidly against the cushions of the blue sofa, the stem of the heavy crystal poised in her fingers, the glass empty now except for a few drops that she swirled lazily against the sides. It was difficult to tell if she was embarrassed by the error or amused. She seemed to be enjoying herself.

  He went to the kitchen and brought the bottle back out into the living room and poured more into her glass without asking. She accepted with a smile. He poured more for himself and sat down facing her. She drew her legs up to the side on the sofa, shifting her weight, and her skirt revealed more of her legs than he could actually see in the shadows.

  Neither of them spoke. She seemed comfortable with silence. It was nice, just to sit, to be together for a while.

  Finally, she got up and went into the bathroom. When she came out she walked by him and started up the steps to his sleeping loft. She paused halfway, shrugged out of her blouse, and, letting it drop behind her, disappeared into the shadows.

  Morgan watched, feeling vulnerable on her behalf, admiring her willingness to risk rejection. He rose, turned off the lamp, and, leaving the remainder of the Pouilly Fuissé open on the table, he followed her.

  In the soft light of the city drifting u
p from the open blinds of the living room, he could see that she lay naked in the centre of the bed, arms by her sides and knees modestly together, like a doll waiting to be animated, or a sleeping princess. He stepped over her clothes on the floor, and, removing his own, placed them neatly on their chair in the corner. He turned to her and saw she had rolled onto her side to make room for him. He settled his weight gently on the bed beside her, so close he could feel the body heat between them, and they lay still, listening to the sounds of Toronto seeping through the walls and to the sounds of their own breathing.

  Gradually, their bodies drifted together. At first they touched so imperceptibly, it was like a tingling, and then they touched with a lightness that sent shivers running over the surface of their bodies, enveloping them and pressing against them, and then they touched with deliberate pressure, not yet with hands or lips, letting their skin merge in common sensation, then, tentatively, they kissed, they caressed, their bodies entangled, and they became fierce in their lovemaking, like creatures intent on devouring each other, each drawing satisfaction and finally being sated by attention to their own separate needs. When it was finished they edged apart, staying close enough they could still feel their body heat warming the air between them.

  Morgan realized three or four hours had gone by. It must be well after midnight on Rapa Nui. He listened to Ellen breathing. She was awake. He was pleasantly depleted, but lonely. He got up.

  “Thanks,” she said into the darkness.

  “You too,” he said. “Why don’t you sleep? I’ll be back in a bit.”

  He picked up a robe that was draped over the balustrade, surprised at how difficult it was to put on in the dark, and descended into the living room. Both of them were aware he would not be coming back up. She would sleep soundly for a few hours. He would read through the rest of the night. She would get dressed and leave in the morning as if she had just popped by for a chat. They would never talk about what had happened; it would remain in their minds as the most uninhibited and generous sex each had experienced, but they would remember only themselves making love and the other would fade like a dream.

  4

  Till Death Do Us Part

  Morgan woke to find himself slumped against the side cushions of the sofa. Someone had placed a light cover over him and turned off the lamp. He had not heard her leave. He swung his legs over and sat up, trying to focus on yesterday’s mail beside the answering machine. Poking out from a small pile of bills and flyers was the upper edge of a vellum envelope bearing a monogram with the letters D and A intertwined, and the return address of the seigneurial cottage in Rosedale. The note inside was not from Harrington D’Arcy, but from his wife, Maria. It was addressed to Detective Sergeant Morgan. It was a suicide note.

  * * *

  “Kai i te au.” That was the answer Miranda had received to every question she asked of the Isla de Pasqua police. She had gone straight to their office after Ross had been dragged away, but they were closed for the night. She had returned in the early morning and talked with a man identified by a name tag as Te Ave Teao — at least she assumed that was his name — a man who, by his uniform, was part of the island constabulary. He did not seem interested when she gave her own name, although it registered when she said she was a police officer.

  He was cheerful. He seemed unperturbed by her report of violent abduction, as if such a thing were not possible on Rapa Nui, and by implication was more likely the product of a hysterical imagination.

  “How do you think I got this bruise on my face?” she demanded.

  “Kai i te au,” he said. “It is not a very big bruise.”

  No, she thought, I don’t suppose it is. That was hardly the point.

  “Do you have any record of a man called Thomas Edward Ross?”

  “Señor Ross? No, I do not know him.”

  “Do you know where he is?” she persisted.

  “Señora, how I can know where this man is if I do not know him?”

  “But you know who I mean?”

  “Kai i te au. I do not know anything.” Behind him, another officer, sitting at a desk with his back to her, chuckled as if she were a bit of a fool.

  “Thank you for your help,” she said.

  “You will be staying for long?” asked her interlocutor amiably.

  Miranda smiled. “Kai i te au.” If she understood the phrase correctly, it meant, I don’t know and it doesn’t matter. “Kai i te au,” she repeated.

  The policemen with his back to her turned his head and smiled, not at her but at the man called Te Ave Teao; perhaps conspiratorially, or in derision, she didn’t care which.

  Miranda had walked back along the dusty street and up the small incline to the Hotel Victoria. She tried unsuccessfully to call Morgan from her room. Sitting on the edge of her bed, her mind was a jumble of brutal images and fragmented thoughts. She could feel the panic swelling inside her, but she refused to let herself cry. Kafka, she thought — I wonder if you know when you’ve turned into a cockroach. After a while she walked down the corridor to Ross’s room. The blood had been cleaned up. There was no evidence that he had ever been there, or that the room had been occupied recently.

  She found the old concierge puttering outside the house next door and asked if he knew where Ross had been taken. His response was not unexpected.

  “Kai i te au,” he said, shrugging.

  “Kai i te au,” she repeated, then asked again, “Mr. Ross, Señor Ross, you know Señor Ross?”

  “No, señora.”

  “He was here.”

  “No señora, never.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “I am afraid nothing, señorita. No Mr. Ross.”

  Señorita. He had shifted to the title for a young woman, perhaps trying to appease her with flattery. Or perhaps her obvious bewilderment made her seem younger. She looked the old man straight in the eye until he averted his gaze, glancing around as if he were trying to find something to capture his interest, then he shrugged and walked away.

  Miranda was annoyed with herself for allowing anxiety to get the upper hand. It was being in a strange place and surrounded by languages she did not understand. It was the mystique of Easter Island; she had been seduced by the stories she had read and the stories she had not read. This was a place of tangible unknowns, huge statues whose origins and significance were subjects of the wildest speculation, rocks and gates and walls bearing inscriptions that could not be read. She knew about the moai, there were over nine hundred, ranging from the size of a small child to at least one over sixty feet tall if it were standing erect. She knew about the hieroglyphic inscriptions on stone and wood that no one could decipher. She had read of curses, and, that beneath the Catholic veneer, powerful forces shaped lives on the island, because people believed in their power. She had already experienced the capacity of the island to absorb violence and close over it as if nothing had happened.

  She changed into a light sundress and sandals, then walked down to a cottage on the main street decorated with travel posters that housed the office of Lan Chile, the national airlines.

  “A man came in on Monday,” she explained. “I am trying to find him.”

  A young woman in crisp, white blouse and ironed slacks, a uniform that seemed quaint and incongruous in what was little more than a hut, answered in excellent English.

  “What is the gentleman’s name, please?”

  “Thomas Edward Ross.”

  “No,” she responded with casual authority, not bothering to look anything up. “There is no Mr. Ross.”

  “Perhaps he was travelling by another name?”

  “No,” she repeated. A brief shadow crossed her features. “That would not be possible,” she said. “If his name is Mr. Ross, he must travel as Mr. Ross. It is not legal in Chile to be some other person.”

  Miranda caught a glimpse of life under Pinochet, with memories of thugs in the night and the disparu. The terrors of the past were buried in a shallow grave.


  “I believe Mr. Ross is a policeman,” she said, meaning to reassure the young woman, but of course this declaration only increased her apparent anxiety.

  “No Mr. Ross,” the woman declared. “You are policeman?” she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she made it clear she was in no doubt by responding as if to interrogation. “I am not from Isla de Pasqua, not Rapa Nui. I am born in Valparaiso, I am …”

  “You know nothing, correct?”

  “I know nothing.”

  “Kai i te au.” The young woman looked bewildered by the phrase, confirming her off-island origins. “Please look,” Miranda said. Using the woman’s nervousness to her advantage, she gestured toward papers on the desk with an air of authority.

  The woman shuffled the papers without even pretending to look at them. “On Monday, señora, there was no airplane.”

  Miranda momentarily blanched. “A freight plane?” she asked. “Maybe American.”

  “No, señora. We have no freight plane. No American freight plane. Maybe military. All planes come on Tuesday, you came on Tuesday. All other days, sometimes, but not Monday. There is no Mr. Ross, I am sorry.”

  She seemed apologetic, now, more out of courtesy than fear.

  “Thank you.”

  Miranda paused at the door. She was a little thrown by the instant return of the woman’s composure. “I may come back,” she said.

  The woman smiled, her teeth gleaming like an image on one of the travel posters.

  As Miranda stepped out into the humid sunlight, she caught the scent of the ocean on a cooling breeze; it brushed sensuously across her exposed skin and for a moment the terrors of the previous night might have happened to someone else. This dissociation was not reassuring. She walked down to the harbour, which was really no more than a small sandy break in the ragged volcanic shoreline, and sat on the windward side of a moai, letting the breeze wash over her. Like the statue at the airport, this one was apparently authentic, but obviously displaced from its original site, perhaps to affirm for the incoming armies of anthropologists that their dreams of glory had already begun. She tried to remember what arcane pursuit had brought her so far from home.