Grave doubts qam-1

by John Moss

  Joleen Chau met him at the door of the building. She recognized him immediately and commented on his tan.

  “You are kind,” he said, “but it’s a layered sunburn.”

  “Cuba?”

  “No.” He paused, a little self-conscious. He wondered if he had chosen Rapa Nui for bragging rights. I can’t be that superficial, he thought, and responded aggressively, “Easter Island.”

  “Wonderful,” she said. “Wow, are you lucky. I’ve actually applied for a postdoctoral fellowship to study the moai culture. How does a tiny isolated island mirror historical procedures in the rest of the world where social evolution was virtually contagious? Neat, eh? I need to get out of the library; I want to go and commune with the stone. Try writing that up as a research proposal.”

  Morgan beamed.

  “Of course, I could be wrong,” she continued. “The historical parallels might be imposed by outsiders like me. In which case, I publish something on the limits of anthropology, about cultural imperialism and stuff like that.”

  “We’ll compare notes when you get back,” said Morgan, realizing immediately how pretentious that must sound, given that he had travelled as a tourist and she was armed with years of research and the analytic instruments of her discipline. “You’ll love it there,” he said. “It’s magic.” He could not help himself and went on. “The people are descendents of the moai; the statues and the petroglyphs and the Rongorongo are ancestral.”

  She grinned. She knew what the word Rongorongo meant. “You’ve been reacting to Thor Heyderdahl,” she said.

  “Yeah, and a few others.”

  “We’ll talk when I get back. If I go. I really know nothing about the place except as a heritage site. How long were you there?”

  “Ten days, plus two each way. Two weeks, altogether. You want to go soon.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I’ve met Inuit from Baffin Island who say that every family up there consists of a mother, a father, two kids, and an anthropologist. Right now kids ride horses through the streets of Hanga Roa — ”

  “Streets?”

  “Paved with brick. It’s a town. There are even a few taxis. Get there before the invasion, Joleen. Tourists arriving on luxury cruises are bussed around for a few hours of sightseeing; a couple of planeloads of visitors, mostly in transit from Chile to French Polynesia, stop over every couple of days; a handful of backpackers hang out, fired with imagination and a shortage of funds. The rest of the outsiders are academics! They’re there, studying the people, the language, the environment, the profusion of artifacts, the impact of tourism, you name it. It won’t be innocent for long. The Americans put in a high-grade landing strip a generation ago, in case they needed a rescue base for space shuttles in the empty Pacific. I understand Hawaii offers a summer course there for university credit. Go soon.”

  “Thank you, Detective Morgan. God and the granting agencies willing, I shall. If you’re looking for Professor Birbalsingh, he’s working at home. It’s exam time and there’s a lot of marking to do. I think you might catch Dr. Hubbard in her office at the ROM. She’s heading out for her cottage later today. Marking. April is the cruellest month.”

  “Breeding scholars out of discontent. What about you?”

  “I have a teaching fellowship. Lots of marking. And I’m defending my dissertation next week. I’ve gotta go, but I’ll get in touch.”

  “For sure,” he said, and he watched her stride off with daunting determination. As her slim figure disappeared around the corner of a building, he smiled to himself and felt oddly wistful.

  Shelagh Hubbard’s door was open when he found her office after ambling among the Byzantine pleasures of the museum, each corridor leading to further treasures and delights, from explications of the ordinary to expositions of the wondrously arcane. Past the articulated bones of huge dinosaurs, dioramas of indigenous peoples, displays of early Canadian furniture, gemstones, and core samples, dead creatures in animated poses, the gleanings of empire from China and the Near East, he wandered, gradually closing in on the offices of resident scholars.

  She was standing beside her desk, arranging piles of examination booklets and essays in a box.

  “From this, you will determine their futures,” he said.

  “Oh, hello,” she responded, turning with a radiant expression as if she had been expecting him. “How are you, Detective? I gather you’ve been away.”

  “I’m back on the case.”

  “That would be the case of the enduring embrace,” she declared, as if to establish that there was not another murder that might draw them together. “How are we doing?”

  “Well enough, thank you.”

  The blue of her eyes was intense and her hair was pulled back in a relaxed way so that her high cheekbones seemed softly beguiling. The fluorescent light of her office made her pale blond hair look ethereal. Far from the death’s head Miranda had seen in her visage, he found her alluring. She was wearing slacks and a modest sweater set that conflicted playfully with her extravagant figure. She seemed brazen and yet almost demure, an anomaly that Morgan found disconcerting.

  “Is there anything you want in particular, Detective Morgan?”

  “I’ve been wondering,” he paused. What had he been wondering? “If you’ve had second thoughts about how easily you and your colleagues were taken in.”

  “And you, Detective, have you been wondering how you were taken in as well? It was brilliant, wasn’t it? They had us completely fooled.”

  “They?”

  “Do we know it was only one person?”

  “No, we don’t, but it seems likely. Psychopathic depravity isn’t a group sport.”

  “Not when the act is so well accomplished, I suppose. I find it all quite intriguing. Disturbing, of course, but very good drama.”

  “You’ve worked with old bodies before.”

  “Of various vintages, yes. With mummies from ancient Egypt, and mummified bodies in Mexico, and corpses drawn from Scandinavian bogs, and the preserved bodies of saints in sacred crypts. And they all look the same — very dead — and each one is different. Each negotiates the passage of time in its own grisly way. There was no reason to think our lovers were otherwise; they were simply themselves, the story of their deaths determined by their place of discovery. It was our job, in the circumstances, to determine how they had come to be as we found them, not why. That would be your job, I should think.”

  “Now. Yes.”

  “I understand your expert, the tall poet fellow, confirmed the mode of concealment was worthy of his own talents.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Alexander Pope? By reputation. You must admit, the crime scene was a wondrous creation. Quite omnificent. An expression of extravagant vanity.”

  Omnificent! he thought, repeating the word to himself. Such a lovely word.

  “Vanity, for sure,” he said. “It was done for our appreciation.”

  “You’re very solipsistic, Detective. Maybe it was done for private reasons and you, we, are accidental witnesses, incidental to a flawless performance.”

  “People died.”

  “Yes, they did. Life, or should we say death, imitates art. But art imitates nature. And nature, Detective, what does it imitate? God’s daydreams, I suppose.”

  Morgan did not want to like her, but she had an interesting mind, and seemed unconcerned about the risks of thinking out loud.

  “I appreciate your cooperation,” he said.

  “Have I been cooperating?”

  “I’ll keep you posted. We’ll crack this.”

  “You and your partner, Detective Sergeant Quin. Why aren’t you a detective sergeant, Detective?”

  “I am. If pressed, I can show my credentials.”

  She was perched against the side of her desk. He was leaning against the wall inside her door. They could have been academic colleagues or old friends.

  “I have to go,” she said apologetically. “I’m heading u
p to Georgian Bay for two weeks of wretched solitude.”

  “Marking?”

  “Essays and exams.”

  “You have a cottage?”

  “I have a perfect fieldstone farmhouse in the middle of a rolling field near Owen Sound. Trees along the drive, a classic four-storey barn, a drive shed, and the fresh smell of spring. Otherwise, there’s nothing to distract me for miles.”

  “D’you own the farm, the whole thing?”

  “I lease my fields to neighbours, mostly for grazing. When I bought the house, it was a shell. I’ve restored it over the last few years, from floor joists to roof. It’s a project, David, a labour of love. You must come and visit. Please do. Come up on the weekend. Tell me about your vacation. Give me a break from the drudgery. I’ll take you to dinner in Collingwood, the Elvis-impersonation capital of Canada, with some of the best restaurants north of Toronto.”

  As she offered the invitation, she arched slightly, making her breasts rise against her pale blue sweater, and her legs stiffened, accentuating the firmness of her thighs through her slacks. She can’t help herself, he thought. Her eyes glistened disingenuously. A cheerfully blatant sexual predator — he had no intention of accepting her invitation.

  “I just might,” he said.

  “Here’s my number. I’m easy to find. Do come up, David. Live dangerously.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Georgian Bay

  It was late Saturday afternoon when Morgan got away. As Miranda’s vintage Jaguar coursed through the Caledon Hills, the long descents forced him to gear down and the car lagged with a gratifying rumble, then roared as he raced up the far sides of the valleys and broke into the clear evening light. It was easy to imagine the city left in darkness behind him. He rushed through the landscape like the sole spectator in a wraparound movie, with the machine an extension of will; an astonishing experience — he almost liked driving. By the time he reached the alluvial terrain sloping down to Georgian Bay, it was night.

  Shelagh Hubbard had given him explicit instructions but he pulled over several times onto the shoulder to read the map in the violet glow of the dashboard instruments, not having fathomed the secret of the maplight. He anticipated confusion, even though there were only a few intersections to negotiate along the way and the turnoff from Highway 41 was clearly marked.

  Miranda had been wary about lending him the car.

  “You know,” she had told him, “while you were checking out the voluptuous Dr. Hubbard at the museum, I dug up an ominous bit in her academic files. It seems she once took a course sponsored by the University of London and the British Museum. Morgan, it was on adaptation of old-world building methods to conditions in the settler colonies, namely Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. So guess who taught the hands-on part of the course.”

  “Alexander Pope.”

  “The same. He laughed when I called him and said he’d taught dozens of courses over the years, with hundreds of students. We had a nice chat. He asked me to come out again sometime, said to bring you. He’s a wonderful source if you want to find more about Canadiana — ”

  “What a dreadful word, Miranda.”

  “You use it all the time. So what do you think about your Dr. Hubbard, now?”

  “She invited me up to her farm.”

  “You’re kidding! Whereabouts?”

  “Near Georgian Bay. She’s going for a couple of weeks. We can’t just have the OPP pick her up on spec.”

  “It’s their jurisdiction.”

  “You can hardly arrest someone for taking a course.”

  “Did she take it as a scholar, do you think, or a necromantic apprentice? Has she finally put her learning to practical use?”

  “‘A little learning…’ That’s Alexander Pope, I believe; the real one.”

  “Wait until Monday. We’ll drive up together.”

  “Monday?”

  “Rachel is taking Jill and me to the Metro Zoo tomorrow.”

  “Then you won’t be needing the Jag.”

  “You can’t resist a dangerous woman.”

  “If you lend me your car, you’ll reap heaven’s reward: seventy-seven virginal youths.”

  “How thoroughly repugnant. Men who dream of virgins make lousy lovers; virginal men are by definition lacking experience, inept.”

  “So much for that.”

  “You go, big boy. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Just keep your head. On your shoulders. And stay out of closets. And don’t sleep with her, Morgan, for God’s sake. If she’s the killer, you’ll feel like an ass — if you survive the experience. And if she’s not, you’ll feel like an ass, anyway.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Call me if you get scared.’

  The darkness had turned into a dismal gloom on the back roads, defined only by the merging cones of the Jag’s headlights penetrating the mist-laden air. Morgan was relieved when an old-fashioned mailbox appeared with the name Hubbard stencilled on the side. The metal flag was raised, which he knew intuitively meant there was mail, so he stopped and picked up an accumulation of letters and fliers, jockeying the car so he did not have to get out. Driving slowly down the long driveway flanked by the shadows of soaring spruce trees, he cringed as sodden clumps of grass scraped against the bottom of the Jag. He pulled up to the front of the house, parking on an angle so the high beams illuminated what turned out to be a splendid stone cottage, not built in the vernacular style of the Georgian Bay area, which tended to be multi-hued granite blocks set with geometric precision. Nor was it like the stone houses of eastern Ontario, he thought, masterfully built by freelancing Scottish masons after they finished work on the Rideau Canal, nor was it fieldstones artfully placed as were the houses of Mennonite farmers that Miranda had shown him in the country around Waterloo County. Much more cement showed. It was almost a rubble construction, and the effect was ominously seductive.

  “Welcome to The Georgian Bay,” Shelagh Hubbard called from the door. “Park around the side. I’ll meet you.”

  When he stepped into the summer kitchen that stretched across the back of the house, connecting it to a drive shed, she was just coming out, having, he noticed, tightened her hair in the interim. The bare overhead bulb illuminated her features, casting a pallor over her skin and accentuating her cheekbones and the sharply defined line of her jaw. She was dressed casually in slacks and a sweater, wearing makeup.

  “My goodness,” said Morgan, “you have a beautiful place.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Do I get the tour?”

  “But of course. We’re in the summer kitchen. The ceiling is sagging, but in no danger of immediate collapse. To your left are two doors. The choice is yours: the lady or the tiger. One leads to the shed and the other, the sauna, which is fired up in case we want to relax later on.”

  There was no mistaking which door led to the sauna. It was made of double layers of heavy tongue-and-groove cedar, reinforced with iron flanges extending from the hinges across it entire breadth, and with a heavy bolt, securely padlocked.

  She interpreted his gaze with an explanation. “I’m wary of kids getting in there; you’ve got to think about things like that when your house is empty a good part of the year. Imagine: if you were racing around back-country trails on a snowmobile in sub-zero weather, the sauna might be an irresistible temptation. They could burn the place down.”

  “Why not just turn off the power?”

  “A lovely idea, David, but it’s an old-fashioned wood-burning affair. The stove is underneath, stoked up from outside.”

  As an inveterate urbanite, such things were beyond his experience. Saunas were something he avoided in gyms. He couldn’t imagine going outside in mid-winter to build up a fire so that you could roast yourself in an airless room, then go back out and roll in the snow.

  “It would be too dangerous with the fire inside,” she explained. “You could turn the room into a raging inferno; or it would suck the air out of your lungs; or create a bone-sha
ttering draft from under the door. Or you’d scald yourself trying to cool the flames.”

  She seemed to be mocking herself, reciting her litany of possible disasters as if the full range had never before crossed her mind.

  “Burn, bake, or broil,” she went on. “Steam cook, dry preserve, or boil — everything but fricassee or southern fried! It gets hot as Hell in there; it’s an oven, after all.”

  He glanced at the bottom edge of the door. It looked to be a pretty tight seal.

  Morgan sniffed the air like a cat trying to determine whether it is the predator or the prey. Shelagh Hubbard leaned against a workbench and watched him, apparently fascinated by his ambivalence.

  His mind shifted and, leaning against the bench beside her, he relaxed. He was not used to the sensuous impress of a country place. He could separate the sweet odour of a smoky fire from the dry smells of ancient boards and musty walls that were stuffed with horsehair and dust, and the organic smells of linoleum ground through with dirt from the fields and the barn, smells of leather cracked with age, of horse collars and harnesses hanging from pegs against the stone wall. The visual scene was as rich. A couple of bicycles leaned at the end of the bench in casual clutter, an older one supporting the weight of a sporty all-terrain model. By the outer wall, between the shed door and the sauna, a derelict sideboard — with layers of original paint showing through in a medley of blues and greens — held a motley array of old bottles, canisters, and arcane culinary instruments, including a potato peeler and a small glass butter churn. Dusted off and placed on display in a shop on Avenue Road, all this would be worth a small fortune. On the floor was a hooked rug in such disrepair as to be of indeterminate design, yet strangely enough it was clean. There were several pairs of rubber boots and workboots in various stages of decomposition beside a new pair of cross-country Solomon ski boots. In the corner, by the door he had come in, a twenty-two calibre single-shot rifle leaned casually against the wall.