Reluctant Dead

by John Moss

  “What, what?” Ross interrupted.

  “What does that last bit mean?” demanded Gloria Simmons, suddenly eager to be more than an audience and astounded to find herself on side with her potential executioner.

  “You didn’t know?” Miranda asked Ross, while including Gloria Simmons with a sidelong glance. “I’m surprised.”

  She had expected there was little Ross did not know about events on the island, especially ones as morally ambiguous as the murder of Dr. Levesque. It was disconcerting that she could describe murder as morally ambiguous, even to herself. She briefly related the story about the execution of the man who was responsible for the death of D’Arcy’s sister. It seemed somehow urgent that Thomas Ross and Gloria Simmons have the fullest possible understanding of the D’Arcys.

  “In Matteo’s farmhouse?” Ross exclaimed. “My God, I’m astonished.”

  “I’m not,” said Gloria Simmons, who seemed to have no trouble assimilating this new aspect of Harrington D’Arcy’s personality.

  “I thought you’d be interested,” said Miranda to both, in a tone that let Morgan know this was as much information as she felt the need to share.

  “Ms. Simmons,” said Ross, who seemed determined now to take their discourse in another direction, “the lesbian thing, does that mean our little dalliance two years ago was an aberration? I suppose it does. Pity I didn’t know. How humbling. We might have had a jolly good threesome.”

  She smiled with icy condescension. “How fickle men are. Don’t you agree, Detective Quin?” Miranda did not disagree. “Thomas, you seem to forget. Our dalliance, as you so pathetically describe it, endured for two days and the one night between, and it was never actually consummated.” She turned to catch Miranda’s eye. “I have been a reborn virgin through much of my life.” She turned to Morgan. “I have not been penetrated, with respect to male members, since I was raped at fourteen.”

  Morgan thought of their sleeping-bag encounter, how ambiguously intimate they had been, and with an eerie absence of passion.

  “For the record, the man who raped me died the same night.” She looked from Morgan to Miranda, then to Ross, and continued. “In his sleep.” She smiled almost wistfully, which sent a chill through the room. “I went into juvenile detention in Ottawa. It wasn’t tuberculosis. My record was expunged, of course. I studied chemistry. After due diligence, I graduated near the top of my law class. University of Toronto. Articled for D’Arcy, fell in love with Maria, and my rebirth as a virgin was complete.”

  “Why law?” asked Morgan, in what might have seemed an extraneous question.

  “Because religion no longer holds the power. And because I am a woman.”

  Miranda realized these two still had a connection, even though Morgan knew she might have rendered him very dead had things not worked out so well, from her point of view, on the desolate shores of Baffin Island.

  Ross seemed nonplussed to have been caught out having forgotten such an awkward gap in his sexual prowess. He ceded control of the discussion, apparently confident he still held the upper hand cradled across his knees. Miranda was happy to relinquish control as well, for the moment.

  “The three of you,” Morgan said to Gloria Simmons, “you, Maria, and Harrington D’Arcy. A perfect ménage à trois.”

  “A curious idea of perfection, Detective. No, we were bound by the tensions between us as much as the passion. Maria and I were romantic partners. Harrington and I were business partners. He and his wife were domestic partners. There were three separate pairings, each excluding the third person. You can see the complications. Not jealousy. None of us was inclined to jealousy, God knows.”

  “Perhaps the same passions that held you together eventually destroyed you.”

  “Perhaps.” She seemed to be contemplating the fatal paradox of what they had been in each other’s lives. “Perhaps you’re right,” she affirmed somewhat sadly.

  “But you made a choice that changed everything.”

  The room filled with silence.

  Thomas Ross rose to his feet. “And that’s why I’m here,” he said. The others looked at him as if he had been rude, interrupting a conversation that wasn’t his concern. “Ms. Gloria Simmons killed them both.”

  “Yes,” Morgan agreed, “I believe she did. Miranda can explain how Harrington D’Arcy died, apparently.” He watched Gloria Simmons for a reaction, but she betrayed nothing more than passing interest, like someone mildly annoyed that the end of a novel she had already finished was about to be revealed.

  “Blowing into the lungs,” Miranda explained. “Excessively oxygenating his blood. Too much oxygen forced into the bloodstream creates a deficit of carbon dioxide necessary to trigger the impulse to breathe. She doesn’t suck, she blows. The empress of ice cream blocks passive intake of air. Death follows.”

  “Empress of ice cream?”

  “Would you prefer succubus? Like I said, she doesn’t suck. Morgan, this is not a nice woman.” Miranda glanced over at Gloria Simmons who seemed to have lost interest again and was staring in the direction of her soapstone carvings, looking as if she were trying to access which ones she might eliminate from the collection.

  “For that to work, the blow-block thing, victims would have to be cooperative,” Morgan observed. “Or weak from exposure,”

  “Or a little bit drunk on Dom Perignon,” said Gloria Simmons. She had been listening, after all.

  “Thank you,” said Morgan. Then, turning to Ross, he proceeded with his summation, “We discover Ms. Simmons strangled a man when she was fourteen. We postulate that she killed again on Baffin Island, behind my back, so to speak. It is reasonable to surmise that she murdered Maria D’Arcy in much the same way.” Shifting his focus to her, he noted with an interrogative lift at the end of his observation, “Perhaps there have been more?”

  “Morgan, with the man in Apex, I used a pillow. Smothered, not strangled. I was only fourteen.”

  “Sorry. Did you murder Maria to force D’Arcy’s hand or to prevent her from playing her own?” Morgan was back on track.

  “These were two people I loved very deeply,” she said. “It was not a pleasant thing to do, when they had given me so much.”

  “But you did kill them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Continue.”

  “They both knew of my commitment to the Baffin project — whose success would bring their own project to a crashing halt. After Maria sent the message to Matteo —”

  “The message?”

  “The book, Morgan. Me!” Miranda had been following while her thoughts raced back and ahead. The fascist junta had wanted her kept alive in case the insurrection sputtered out. That explained the luxury cruise. Her knowledge of the island’s secret might just be incendiary enough to start it up again. But Ross knew the coordinates, now, so she was expendable. Miranda suspected he wouldn’t hesitate to eliminate her if the need arose, and Morgan, as well. With regrets, of course. But at the moment, he was hunched forward, listening intently, and he had set the rifle, almost as a challenge, casually on the floor. Clearly he was trying to get a stronger grasp on his own role in the unfolding story.

  Gloria Simmons continued. “After connecting Detective Quin with the encrypted message, Maria knew I would have no choice.”

  “You realize she wrote me a suicide note?” Morgan asked.

  “To exonerate me.”

  “Not D’Arcy?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Why not, if she loved him?”

  “Morgan, she wasn’t a stupid woman. She knew you’d see through the suicide gambit. She also knew Harrington would be devastated by her death and would swing his open support to the Rapa Nui side, no matter what the cost. But D’Arcy Associates were, and are, committed to maintaining the stability of the Chilean government and underwriting the interests of the Inuit people. It would not be politically correct to do otherwise. This is Canada, you know. The conflict of interests nearly destroyed him before this all blew
up. Our side was the right side. But his devotion to his wife and his commitment to Rapa Nui had reduced him to a painfully passive role in our negotiations. The trauma your partner explained makes his situation that much more poignant. I didn’t know about that.”

  “By trauma you’re referring to his execution of a human being with his bare hands.”

  “It can be quite traumatic killing someone, even someone who deserves to die. My own people were not excessively offended when I killed my attacker in Apex. It bothered me at the time, though. And of course it bothered the so-called authorities who brought me to law — and taught me its uses.”

  “The uses of the law?”

  “Of the legal system, yes. It is arbitrary and dispassionate and its powers are almost without limit. The perfect model for a lost little girl …” She looked deeply into Morgan’s eyes and for the first time, ever, allowed him to see the human within. A girl desperately in search of something to connect with, who found only the law. And its uses.

  The woman blinked, glanced at Miranda, and back at Morgan. “I am a very good lawyer,” she said.

  “Very successful,” said Miranda. “They’re not the same thing.”

  “Sometimes they are,” said Gloria Simmons, and then continued as if she were completing an earlier thought, “I did not want to kill Maria, but she knew I had no choice. It was difficult.”

  “The choice? Or the killing?” Miranda genuinely wanted to know.

  “Both.”

  “So she knew you would kill her because she was vitally important to the insurgency, more so having sent the book. Didn’t you play into her hands, though, making her a martyr?”

  “The planned insurrection. It hasn’t happened. She and her family were a powerful force on the island. But I’m sure when her brother heard of her death, he knew it was over, he prepared in his mind for his own death.”

  Miranda flinched. Matteo was not a fatalist.

  “You were nearly finessed,” Morgan observed. “She knew her death would force her husband to oppose you. But why would she want to make him a suspect?

  “Because that would bring you into the story.”

  The room had filled briefly with silence before, now it seemed drained of air. Morgan said nothing.

  “I’ve been through this, Morgan,” said Miranda. “It gets you wondering whatever happened to free will. She sent you the suicide note. But also, she would have suggested to her husband that, should anything happen to her, he was to get you involved. And he did get you involved. That wouldn’t have happened if he had not been a suspect.”

  “Why me, for goodness’ sake?”

  “I asked the same question about myself. The answer is, we were brought in together. Separately, but as a team. It was a good call: we’re here, sorting it all out. The flaw in their plan, unfortunately, is the guy holding the gun.”

  Almost casually, Thomas Ross leaned over and retrieved the Winchester. “It’s a beautiful piece of hardware, isn’t it. My compliments, Ms. Simmons, on keeping it clean and well oiled. Have you ever used it?”

  “Not recently.” She smiled.

  “The D’Arcys’ master plan seems to be in disarray,” Miranda observed.

  “If you mean the Rapa Nui part, things will work out,” declared Ross. “Independence is a pipe dream of course, but as they rise from the brink of annihilation, they yearn to be recognized as a people. And that, trust me, will happen. And it’s worked out well for the Inuit, something that would please Harrington D’Arcy, in spite of himself. I think Ms. Simmons might agree.”

  Gloria Simmons responded as if they had been sitting on opposite sides of a seminar table. “Maria believed with all her heart that the Rapa Nui need historical sovereignty to survive. Possession of their own past is the best guarantee of a future. Political independence would be a bonus. As for us, we simply want to control our resources. That gives us all the autonomy we need. The Inuit were never conquered, you know. Canada joined us. We don’t need independence, simply the powers to be who we already are.”

  “Well said, Ms. Simmons.” Ross rose and touched her lightly on the shoulder with his free hand, his other being occupied with maintaining a grip on the Winchester.

  “Whose side are you on?” Miranda exclaimed.

  “There are no sides,” said Ross, then turning abruptly to Gloria Simmons he whispered, as if exchanging confidences. “Speaking of poison —”

  “Were we?” exclaimed Gloria Simmons, as if they had been.

  “It was more than a rumour, then?”

  “What?” said Miranda.

  “Ms. Simmons has a certain reputation, enviable in some circles, as the Catherine de Medici of the corporate world. Apparently, it was more than a metaphor for the appalling brutality of international commerce.”

  “You’ve got the wrong Medici,” said Morgan. “Poison was epidemic among the Medicis. Catherine wasn’t the worst.”

  “The wrong Medici, but the right Ms. Simmons,” said Ross.

  Morgan turned to Gloria Simmons. “Speaking of poison, then, why the perfume, the break-in, the wash-down? Were you afraid of losing me on the case?” That sounded strange. It made him uncomfortable, not through modesty, but to think he’d been so easily manipulated.

  “Fleurs de Rocaille,” she said. “A lovely scent. The original, not the faux version. No, that was Harrington’s idea, I imagine. The perfume was Maria’s own, the poison was apparently mine. I mixed up a batch of the nasty mixture a few years ago from a recipe I devised as a chemistry student. Harrington had his own small portion stored for emergencies, possibly for blackmail. Of course blackmail worked both ways, should either of us have actually used it.”

  “But you did use it,” Morgan argued.

  “Killing people is wrong,” she responded with a smile.

  “But sometimes apparently necessary. In Papua New Guinea, on Madagascar, in Dublin! Places where D’Arcy Associates did business. As Mr. Ross indicated, in some circles it was apparently not a secret.”

  “Perhaps not. I believe Harrington and Rove, Rove had his own bit, remember, I believe they accomplished the morgue caper all on their own. It might have been Rove by himself, but it would have been Harrington’s idea, he was afraid you wouldn’t think it was murder. I heard about it from you.”

  “Really,” said Morgan. “It had the opposite effect. It convinced the medical examiner that the only felony was desecration of a corpse; it convinced her that the death itself had been suicide. A conclusion affirmed by the suicide note.”

  “But not you, you knew it was murder.”

  “I felt it was murder, there’s a difference.”

  “And you suspected Harrington? You felt he was guilty.”

  “On the contrary, I felt quite strongly that he was innocent. I believed he could point me in the right direction, if only I could figure out why he was trying to lead me on. It was important for us to talk. I think he was relieved when he saw me on Baffin. I felt in some ways that he’d arranged for me to be there. What I did not feel, or comprehend, was that you were a threat to his survival. I realize now, he must have recognized his predicament the moment you appeared like a Valkyrie in the mist, ready to spirit the slain warrior away, only he wasn’t dead yet. He wanted to die. Not that that absolves the crime.”

  “That’s a lot of feeling,” she said. “I never trust a man in touch with his emotions.”

  Miranda’s jaw dropped. These two were flirting, for God’s sake. This woman was in extreme peril, Miranda and Morgan were in jeopardy; this woman had killed at least four people, probably more. “Morgan,” she said in a resonant voice that he recognized immediately was loaded with unspecified meaning. “I think it’s time we deal with Mr. Ross.”

  “Mr. Ross is holding a loaded Winchester 73 with the safety off,” said Thomas Ross.

  “That appears to be the case,” said Morgan.

  “It’s rapid-fire,” said Ross. “Given its vintage, it’s remarkably fast, less than half a second between
shots. I adore the lever action. Listen.” He flashed through the lever action, ejecting another live bullet and snapping a fresh one into the chamber. “Fast, isn’t it?”

  “Then let us proceed with our discussion,” said Miranda. “We might as well make the most of our time.”

  “Whatever is left of it,” said Gloria Simmons with a sardonic flick of her perfect eyebrows that might have led into a shrug, had her arms not been bound.

  Now there, Miranda thought, is a fatalist, a Calvinist to the core. No wonder she and Morgan were drawn together in spite of the fact that she was a cold-blooded killer and he, well, he was Morgan, a lapsed Presbyterian.

  “Thomas. What’s your real name? Are you really from Parkdale?”

  “Miranda,” Morgan remonstrated, “this isn’t a coffee klatch.” He paused. “Maybe we need a break. I could use a double-double about now.”

  “A what?” Ross demanded, afraid they were speaking in code.

  “He’s not from Parkdale!” said Morgan, grinning. “Or he’s been out of the country for a very long time.”

  “And yet he knows the terms bare-naked and underwear pants! So, next question. Real gentleman gone bad or sophisticated fraud?” Miranda queried, trying to lighten the gloom.

  “You make them both sound rather appealing,” Ross responded with a wry smile. “I’m afraid I’m with your partner, though, I don’t see the relevance.”

  “It will make it easier to track you down when we’re finished our present business.”

  “You’re quite remarkable, Miranda. Do you see this rifle?” He slapped the lowered barrel against the side of his leg. “It’s very real.”

  “I’m trying to determine if you are.”

  Morgan stifled a chuckle.

  “Or if you’re from Abington Piggotts? I wouldn’t mind if you were, you know. Thomas, you really did give me a knock in the gut? Could I go to the bathroom for a minute? Now I really have to. Glock’s in the purse.”