Grave doubts qam-1

by John Moss

  “They will be back,” he had assured her. “They’re waiting for the publicity to die down. The curiosity seekers and the desperate, false pilgrims, they’re gone for good. But the true believers, when they see my pictures again, they’ll realize their beloved saint is still here. Her burial niche was desecrated, but the entire building stands as a testament to her enduring presence as a mediator between them and their God. One or two will come, then more and more. The true pilgrims will come back, I’m sure of it.”

  Miranda had listened, pleased by his confidence although perturbed by his proprietorial description of the frescoes as his. She agreed with the implication, in any case, that the pilgrims were the lifeblood of the place — the living manifestation of the story’s vitality, if not its veracity.

  “Where do you think he is?” Rachel asked, gazing around from their vantage beside the open grave in the floor. “This place is eerie. It gives me the creeps.”

  Miranda grimaced. This was where the altar would have been, she thought. Instead, there’s a hole. She followed Rachel’s gaze and saw a vast empty vault of grey stone and white plaster, with light washing through narrow windows, catching myriad dust motes hovering in the air. There was a strong smell of solvents, and a hint of violets emanating from the cavity in the floor at their feet. They could not see Alexander’s pictures without stepping off the chancel, although Miranda noted that his scaffolding on the far side of the nave was still in front of the last panel, where the font for holy water might have been. Or did Catholics place the font somewhere else?

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ll show you the frescoes. Let’s start at the other end — you’ll get them in sequence.” She walked over to a switch by the sacristy door and flipped it on. The entire building suddenly flooded with illumination, staunching the flow of natural light seeping through the windows and bringing the colours of the pictures into striking incandescence. As they moved from panel to panel, Miranda made a few comments, but Rachel was already familiar with the story.

  “My God, they’re wonderful,” said Rachel. “I had no idea. I love the changes in her face. It’s the same face and yet it gets more and more radiant. She’s almost homely in the first panel, pretty maybe, and by the last she’s Botticelli at his most inspired, but it’s the same face, the same painter, same technique. Wow. The settings aren’t Botticelli — they’re pure Ontario Gothic — but the faces are Italian Renaissance, especially in the last two panels, and somehow they fit with the scenes.”

  “How do you know so much?” exclaimed Miranda.

  “I’ve got eyes. Look at her.”

  “I see, I agree. But — ”

  “When I studied art history at Western, I spent two months in Florence for a double course credit, mostly walking around the Uffizi or drinking Chianti.”

  “Something obviously sunk in. Botticelli? That’s neat, because she looks late-Victorian to me, sort of Pre-Raphaelite, but yeah, I can see the face in Botticelli’s… what’s it called?”

  “The Primavera.”

  “No, the one with Venus poised on the half shell.”

  “What about you? How do you know such erudite things?”

  “I’m old… I paid attention… I don’t know. I’ve never been to Italy.”

  “Well, girl, you must go. There’s no place in the world like Florence — Firenze! Unless it’s Sienna — we spent almost a week in Sienna. Not so touristy, great buildings, lovely textures, like you’re walking through architectural history. Italians, they live inside history. Why don’t we go sometime? I’ll show the old girl around.”

  “One thing I like about me is my age. And when I turn forty, I’ll like that too.”

  “And fifty and sixty and seventy?”

  “You bet.”

  “So tell me,” said Rachel, almost whispering as she looked around over her shoulder and then leaned in conspiratorially.

  “What?”

  “Why isn’t Alexander Pope a suspect?”

  “He checked out.”

  “And?”

  “He’s our friend.”

  “So?”

  “No motive.”

  “Shelagh Hubbard wreaked havoc without a motive.”

  “She’s a psychopath.”

  “Was.”

  “Was. Psychopaths don’t have motives. That’s why they’re psychopaths.”

  “Did you decide she was a psychopath before or after you couldn’t come up with a motive?”

  “Point taken. But you should read her journals. There’s an absolute absence of conscience.”

  “Clinically detached?”

  “Morgan described them as ‘self-justifying.’ More like an application for a research grant.”

  “Detailed and aggressively impersonal?”

  “Yes. And no. I don’t find them impersonal. They’re not emotional, but she’s there in every word and sketch and turn of phrase. I find them chilling precisely because she is there in her text and yet shows no emotion.”

  “Sounds psychopathic to me. So, back to our friend Alexander.”

  “There’s no evidence here or at the farm.”

  “Not of his presence, but not of anyone else, either.”

  “There’s no reason to connect him to her death. As far as the melodramatic disposal of her body, it’s unlikely a man so immersed in recovering the story of this place would violate his own project. I mean, why?”

  “Why not? He had opportunity on his side, and maybe there’s a perverse satisfaction, bringing his saint to life.”

  “Dead. She was brought here dead.”

  “Figure of speech, dear. Confusing, isn’t it? New bodies passing for old — that was Hubbard’s specialty. It’s fitting and proper that hers should be used for the same.”

  “Agreed,” said Miranda. “Someone’s idea of poetic justice. But not Alexander’s — the connection’s so obvious it’s untenable.”

  “I’m glad you’re on side,” said Alexander Pope, stepping out from behind one of the columns separating them from the nave.

  “Good God,” Rachel shrieked, recovering immediately with a muffled laugh. “How long have you been there?”

  “Just arrived, just arrived. Had no time to hear accusations — ”

  “Suspicions!”

  “Suspicions, my darling Rachel, are the poor cousins. Same family. I stand accused. And — thank you Miranda — exonerated.”

  “Oh, hell,” said Rachel. “I guess you didn’t do it then. What a relief.” She leaned up and kissed him, first on one cheek, then the other. “I’m glad. I could cope with the killing part, but embalming, yuck. Even embalming with violets. Doesn’t seem an Alexander Pope thing to do. ’Course, you have an ancestral interest in gardens.”

  “And in couplets that rhyme. That doesn’t mean I go around coupling.”

  Miranda looked from Alexander’s face to Rachel’s. He obviously did not feel threatened by her and she was not intimidated by him. In fact, there seemed to be an indefinable current between them, Miranda thought, that despite their radical differences in character and world experience suggested they were, as they say, kindred spirits. Stupidly, she felt excluded.

  Alexander Pope turned to her. “Well, Miranda, what do you think? The place is looking good, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it make a lovely gallery? I’m thinking of moving up here and turning myself into a purveyor of fine art.”

  “And leaving Port Hope? I don’t believe it.”

  “No, probably not. Maybe for the summers. I could sell antiques here, and spend the winters at home making more. Ha!”

  “Ha!” she responded, feeling a lovely bond of intimacy, scolding herself for having felt left out.

  “Reproductions!” Rachel challenged.

  “I’m getting too old to be rebuilding old buildings,” he countered. “I need to fall back on old talents.”

  “What’s with you about old? Both of you, in your dotage. Good grief, consider the alternative.”

  “I have and I do,” Pope res
ponded gravely. “All too often.”

  “What would your patrons think of a gallery?” Miranda asked.

  “My patrons? My angel. Oh, well, I can do with this place pretty much what I want, I suppose.”

  “Does that include burying a saint in the floor?” said Rachel.

  “Sinner, my dear. If there ever was a sinner, it was the late Dr. Hubbard.”

  “No argument here,” said Rachel. “Sinning is as sinning does.”

  “Meaning what, Forrest Gump?” Miranda envied the easy repartee. For her, banter always carried an element of self-consciousness, except with Morgan.

  “What do you say we go swimming?” Rachel suggested, throwing the non sequitur into the air with dramatic effect. “You guys up to it? Not too old?”

  “I swim only underwater,” said Alexander Pope casually, as if they had been talking about sporting activities all along.

  “Well, good for you. Let’s go scuba diving,” said Rachel. “We’re not that far from Tobermory. Miranda, do you want to go wreck-diving? There’s a National Marine Park there; lots of wrecks. How about it?”

  They had never talked about diving. Miranda remembered seeing dive gear at Alexander’s Port Hope house. Rachel probably saw it, too. And yet, they hadn’t discussed the subject with him or each other. It didn’t surprise her that Rachel was a diver. It was something else between them. Among them. All three were apparently divers.

  “Sounds good,” said Miranda. “Tomorrow, if the weather clears.”

  “It’s right as rain right now.”

  “But it’ll take a day for the waves to subside. Georgian Bay builds up really big swells.”

  “Excellent,” said Alexander Pope. “Tomorrow should be perfect. I would enjoy the break. I have never dived in a wreck.”

  “Me neither,” said Miranda.

  “Well, let’s do it,” said Rachel. “We’ll rent equipment and a boat in Tobermory. I love it; we’ll have an adventure.”

  Miranda looked at her friend, wondering whether the eagerness was for wreck-diving or the chance to cultivate the great poet’s namesake, or for some other obscure reason she could not imagine.

  The rest of the day they spent on a charmingly excruciating tour of Alexander’s project, getting a detailed explanation for every minute aspect of his work. So great were his enthusiasm and depth of esoteric knowledge about plaster and frescoes, the structure of the building and the arcane stories it held, that in spite of themselves Miranda and Rachel were captivated, and by the late afternoon all three of them were utterly exhausted.

  Over a Chinese dinner in Midland, they recapped some of the highlights of the afternoon and made plans for wreck-diving the following day. They agreed to meet at the church and drive over with Alexander. He was clearly excited at the prospects ahead and actually had his complete scuba gear, including a 7 ml wetsuit, in his van.

  “You never know,” he said. “I thought I might get in a dive or two.”

  “I’ve never dived in fresh water before,” Miranda announced.

  “Actually,” said Alexander, “neither have I.”

  “But you brought your gear?” she queried. Turning to Rachel, she asked, “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Have you dived in cold water before?”

  “Fresh water?”

  “Cold fresh water?”

  “Only. I’ve never been to the tropics.”

  “So, okay, tell us…”

  “As long as you’re suited up for it, you’re fine.”

  “I don’t like the cold,” said Miranda, shivering as she thought about slipping into the depths of Georgian Bay.

  They talked about diving for a while, about soaring free of gravity, only bubbles rising to an elliptical plane of light overhead to indicate which way was up. Alexander likened it to the illusions of weightlessness created by dancers in ballet, and Miranda thought of it as walking in space, where direction itself is only an illusion. Rachel chose flying in dreams as her best analogy.

  Miranda described Morgan’s diving adventure on Easter Island.

  “Without proper training?” said Rachel. “He could have died.”

  “What on earth was he doing on Easter Island?” asked Alexander. “Apart from taunting mortality?”

  “Good question,” said Rachel. “He probably just wanted to call people ‘buddy.’”

  “Buddy?” said Alexander. “How very unlikely.”

  “Divers call each other ‘buddy’ a lot,” said Miranda. “It’s like calling your lover ‘darling.’ Then you don’t have to remember his name.”

  “Why does one go to Easter Island?” Alexander persisted, and then in response to his own query he continued, “I would imagine for the same reason one travels to Egypt to see the pyramids. Some people need to be confronted with things bigger than themselves. It’s a form of affirmation: you prove your own existence by witnessing works that have transcended the deaths of their makers, whose past existence is thereby indisputable even if your own is in doubt. Are there people on Easter Island, or is it only populated by giant heads?”

  Miranda was slightly appalled by his presumptuous misreading of her partner’s existential needs, as well as by his ignorance about Easter Island.

  “Morgan,” she said, “has no doubt about his existence — the fact of, if not the quality of — and yes, there are over four thousand islanders, called Rapanui. They call the island ‘Rapa Nui’ — two words — and they have a resounding history of triumph and doom. That’s what interested him, more than the statues, which aren’t heads, you know, but include torsos — although they’re often buried to the neck or decapitated — and they had a written script called Rongorongo, when no one else in all Polynesia had writing, and no other neolithic culture had writing. And now no one knows how to read it. The people faithfully reproduce tablets of Rongorongo for the tourist trade, but they can’t read what they’re writing.”

  She realized much of her pedantic oration had been cribbed directly from Morgan, redeeming him, somehow, from the existential limbo assigned him by Alexander Pope.

  “Sort of like calligraphy,” said Rachel. “The meaning is in doing it, not what it says.”

  “That,” said Alexander, “is the most esoteric of the arts: to write someone else’s signature script and make it your own.”

  Miranda continued, feeling Morgan had been given short shrift. “He loves to immerse himself in the details of a place, and let them swarm around him; he counts on them eventually falling into a comprehensible pattern. He’s the same with a case or a culture. Easter Island was an escape to someone else’s reality, a way to be himself in disguise.”

  The other two said nothing, so she added, “He got a tattoo.”

  “How unlikely,” said Alexander Pope. “A tattoo. How very odd for a grown man. Well, it takes all sorts.”

  Miranda regretted her indiscretion, and seeing this, Rachel came to her aid. “I think it’s an adventurous thing to do.”

  “Going to Easter Island?”

  “Getting a tattoo. He doesn’t fit the demographic; that’s precisely why he would do it. I think it’s adventuresome.”

  “The tattooist’s name was Tito,” said Miranda.

  “There,” said Rachel. “Proves my point. Who else would know their tattooist’s name but rogues like Errol Flynn and David Morgan?”

  “Errol Flynn died before you were born,” said Alexander. “Before any of us were born, even me.”

  “He’s become his own name,” said Miranda. “Like Marilyn Monroe. Like the names of painters. Botticelli, for instance. Rachel thinks the faces in the frescoes look like Botticelli.”

  “Does she?”

  “I do,” said Rachel. “Some of them.”

  “Tell us all about it,” said Alexander. Miranda winced, finding his tone condescending, as if he were asking a child to explain why she had coloured the sky orange and green. But Rachel did not seem bothered and, rising to the challenge, she responded
with a brief exposition on Renaissance art, the Florentine neo-Platonists, and the achievement of Sandro Botticelli.

  “And you think Sister Marie Celeste looks like Simonetta?” Alexander demanded in a quiet but authoritative voice

  “Only in the first panel.”

  Miranda interjected. “Who is Simonetta?”

  “The beloved of Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo Medici… Lorenzo the Magnificent,” said Rachel.

  “He wasn’t modest, was he?” Miranda observed.

  “Who?”

  “Magnificent Lorenzo. Who was Simonetta in her own right?”

  “The model for Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, somewhat idealized, I would think,” said Alexander.

  “She’s lovely, fragile, and vacuous,” said Rachel. “Appropriate for Venus arising, newborn but fully mature, generated from the cast-off testicles of a truculent god.”

  “Uranus, I believe, at the hands of his son, Cronus the Titan.” Alexander spoke as if he were merely providing a reminder for a story he assumed everyone knew.

  Miranda was astonished at the level of discourse. She had a general knowledge of art, gleaned mostly from reading Christmas gift-books like Sister Wendy’s The Story of Painting, but these two seemed comfortable with fifteenth-century aesthetics as a topic of casual conversation. She was especially surprised by Alexander. She knew Rachel had spent a summer studying in Florence, but how had Alexander managed to assimilate such knowledge into his capacious, undisciplined mind? No, she thought, that’s Morgan. Alexander’s mind is large, but it is quaint and orderly. She had vague recollections of him talking about art school, long before he took up reconstruction, reclamation, renovation, authentic reproduction, and the like.

  Restoration. She added that to her list: art restoration. For his project in Beausoleil, Ontario, of course, he would have to know about plaster and painting in Renaissance Italy.

  “Are you listening?” Rachel said, nudging Miranda out of her quizzical reverie. “I’m talkin’ here.”

  “Yeah. Botticelli, Venus.”

  “Right, but I think Sister Marie’s other faces come from ‘The Allegory of Springtime’ — the Primavera.”