Читать книгу Grave Doubts - John Moss - Страница 7

Demolition had been arrested in its earliest phase, although the place must have been deteriorating through seasons of freezing and thawing for years. Thick layers of wallpaper had peeled off in great patchwork swathes, revealing plaster that looked pulpy or had crumbled away. Horizontal strips of hand-split cedar showed through gaps where a salvaging contractor had retrieved old fixtures and woodwork. The stair railing was gone, but the wood trim hadn't been touched yet.

As they spread out on the dilapidated stairs to distribute their weight, Officer Naismith explained how salvagers had discovered the hidden closet. In prying a hanging cabinet from one of the bedroom walls, a crowbar smashed through the pulpy plaster and revealed an unaccountable cavity. It wasn't so odd in a larger house for an awkward space to be covered over — Morgan knew that — but it was unusual in a cottage like this. They didn't build in closets; they would have used armoires and dressers, or pegs on the wall. There might be the occasional odd architectural nook. Covered over, it would be forgotten in a generation or two.

"Here we are," said Officer Naismith as if conducting a tour. "The largest bedroom, no less."

"It's still pretty small," Miranda observed. Then, moving forward, she gazed downward. "Oh, my goodness, they look so in love!"

The room filled with a hushed silence.

Officer Naismith was quietly jubilant. Morgan smiled enigmatically. Miranda's lack of professional propriety or affected indifference seemed a genuine relief. Candour from Miranda was not always forthcoming, especially in front of colleagues.

Miranda stifled what might have been laughter or a sneeze, the officer started to giggle, Morgan scowled. But the grisly scene, while eerie, was not oppressive. Death seemed so long in the past, solemnity was no more obligatory than grieving over displays at a waxworks museum.

Morgan kneeled to scrutinize the skin on the back of the male's hand. Leaning forward, he nudged the body and jumped when the hand seemed to flinch.

"My goodness," he said defensively. Not swearing was a modest perversity in a world where obscenities vied with profanities to displace more thoughtful expletives. "They're light as a feather. I hardly touched him." He fingered the man's sleeve. "This material is incredibly well-preserved. It's stood up better than its occupant."

Miranda squatted down opposite, examining the woman's clothing.

"What a lovely dress," she noted, glancing up at the officer then back at her partner. "Satin and lace, and there's no sign of a struggle, no bloodstains. It's a bit odd, Morgan. There's no blood on either of them."

She eased around to look at their severed necks.

"Clean cuts, by someone who knew basic anatomy," she observed. "Even if they were dead, there should have been residual blood. They must have been dressed like this after they were decapitated."

"They don't seem to have shrunk very much," Morgan said. "The frock coat seems a little big, maybe. Her dress is right on."

"How come there's no collateral degradation? You'd think their flesh would meld with the materials, that the cloth would show signs of decay."

"They must have been sealed up virtually airtight in the heat of the summer," Morgan observed. "I suppose the flesh would dry out before rot had a chance to set in. I don't know; it seems a bit strange."

Morgan took a pen from his pocket and probed into the dark folds of the frock coat, retrieving a signet ring that had slipped from the man's wizened finger. He held it up to the light.

"Masonic. It has the same pyramid capped with an all-seeing eye that's on the American one-dollar bill."

"Is it really?"

"Yeah. Take a look the next time you have one."

"I know what's on their dollar bill, Morgan. It's the ring: I'm surprised it's a Mason's ring."

"How so?"

"Because. Look what's in her hand," Miranda unclasped the fingers carefully so as not to break them off and revealed a small, gleaming crucifix on a length of fine gold chain.

"She'd have trouble wearing anything around her neck."

"It's an unlikely combination," Miranda said, ignoring his quip. "A Roman Catholic and a Mason. I wonder if that's why they're like this."

"Dead?"

"In the romantic posture. Doomed by love — destroyed by a righteous father?" "What do you think, Officer Naismith?" Morgan asked. "You haven't said anything."

"I was just watching the masters at work," she responded.

Morgan suspected she was being ironic.

Miranda smiled, rising to her feet.

"I'm Miranda," she said, holding out her hand awkwardly. They had already passed the level of intimacy where exchanging first names seemed inane. They shook hands with whimsical formality.

"Morgan is Morgan. He has another name but keeps it a secret."

"I'm Naismith."

"Naismith Naismith," said Morgan.

The woman laughed. "Well, you're Morgan Morgan."

"David."

"Rachel."

"And I'm still Miranda. So what do you think, Rachel? What's happening here?"

"I really have no idea."

"Yes you do."

"Do I? Well, I doubt it's her father who did it. I think they've been set up as a sentimental paradox."

"A paradox?" said Morgan.

"Intimate lovers; but headless, their identities erased."

"Subversive," said Miranda.

"Do either of you know ‘The Kiss' by Auguste Rodin?"

"Yes," said Miranda.

She summoned to mind the enduring embrace of bronze lovers. One of the most famous portrayals of romantic passion ever conceived, bigger than life, highly erotic, the caught moment of absolute love.

"Yeah," said Morgan. "The plasters were at the ROM exhibition last year."

"Did you read the fine print?" Rachel Naismith asked. "Beside the display?"

They felt a little truant; both looked inquisitive.

"The story behind ‘The Kiss' is intriguing," she continued. "Once you know it, the sculpture changes. It literally turns from dream into nightmare, a diabolical vision of sensual entropy —"

"Sensual entropy! I like that," Morgan exclaimed.

"Translation, please," said Miranda, not in the least embarrassed for not knowing what the officer meant. "You honoured in art history, I take it."

"Yeah, art and art history."

Morgan took it on himself to explain Rachel Naismith's esoteric phrase, perhaps to prove he understood. He seemed oblivious to the possibility of appearing pedantic.

"Entropy is a measure of inefficiency, say in an organism or engine where heat is wasted rather than being transformed into energy. A perfect trope for suspended passion."

Rachel smiled, indicating she liked Morgan, pedantry and all.

"That's more or less where I was going," she said. "Rodin apparently had Dante in mind when he sculpted ‘The Kiss.' There's a passage in The Divine Comedy about lovers locked in a perpetual clinch, having been dispatched in flagrante delicto by the woman's husband, who was the man's brother. They fetch up in Hell, an inferno of their own making. Sentimental inversion: they are doomed to hold the posture of their passion forever."

"That's what ‘The Kiss' is about?" exclaimed Miranda.

"That's what Rodin apparently had in mind. It was supposed to be part of a tableau of Heaven and Hell; it was his unfinished masterpiece."

"Beauty becomes horror," Morgan mused in quiet astonishment. "And horror becomes beauty."

"Becomes, both ways," Miranda offered.

He looked at her quizzically.

"Beauty becomes, transforms horror; beauty becomes, complements horror. Change, no change."

Miranda sometimes spoke in a kind of syntactical shorthand. He nodded approval. She turned to Officer Naismith, who seemed to be playing with the verbal permutations in her head.

"You're right," Rachel Naismith continued. She wasn't sure who was right about what. She lapsed into silence, apparently not wanting to sound like a gallery brochure or an academic treatise.

Miranda gazed at the ghastly sensuality of the corpses intertwined at their feet, who now seemed part of something infinitely more sinister. Rachel's comparison was anachronistic, of course. These lovers had been here long before Rodin translated Dante's words into sculpture. But they certainly embodied an unholy paradox. Beneath the sad drape of their clothing, the absolute stillness of articulated limbs conveyed a haunting absence of life. But, as Rachel had suggested, without heads, they were not individuals. The true horror, Miranda realized, lay in the extinction of their personalities.

Morgan had seen one of the original marble versions of Rodin's sculpture in the Tate Gallery when he lived in London after graduating from university. The plaster at the Royal Ontario Museum seemed more real, though, perhaps because it was shaped by the hands of the master, and the stone and bronze versions were done in large part by artisans. Or perhaps it was because London was another life.

Miranda pictured "The Kiss" in her mind. Although she had only seen the plaster, she now imagined the image in bronze. The lovers were naked; the bronze seemed alive, flesh trapped in illimitable torment. "I like it better, knowing the story," she said. Unable to resist sounding like a brochure herself, she continued, "It anticipates the age of irony and the death of romance."

"Oh," said Rachel. "I thought romance was dormant, not dead."

"Only for some of us," said Morgan. "For these two it's the other way around. Death is romance."

"From the ring and the cross, I'd say they were doomed from the moment they met," said Miranda.

"Some lines aren't meant to be crossed," Rachel proscribed with an edge in her voice.

Miranda looked over at Morgan but his attention had shifted to the small cabinet leaning on its side near the gaping wall. It was three shades of bluish-green, with a diamond pattern on the door and an exposed bottom shelf between scooped sides. Across the top was an exaggerated cornice, a minor oxymoron of comic austerity.

Anticipating her query, he explained. "It's a Waterloo County hanging cupboard, mint condition — it might have belonged to your ancestors. German vernacular, Pennsylvania Dutch, made a couple of generations after they'd resettled as Loyalists. What's unusual, really, is that salvagers had to rip it out with enough force they opened the crypt."

"It seems out of place."

"It is, in a sense. There couldn't have been much of a market this close to town for country furniture. I'm guessing people, here, travelled up to Berlin, a century before it was renamed Kitchener, way before trains, to visit relatives or take the mineral waters in Preston. The cabinet is small enough to be brought back by wagon or carriage. Wagon, I'd say, given the modesty of the house. But why was it attached so securely, and why wasn't it painted over with the rest of the woodwork?"

"Listen!" said Miranda. All three held their breath.

"There's somebody downstairs," she whispered. "It's either ghosts or forensic anthropologists! I thought academics slept through the night…."

The clatter and absence of voices seemed ominous, until a hauntingly beautiful woman suddenly appeared in the doorway, followed by a man with quick eyes and a portly physique. Morgan, Miranda, and Rachel Naismith exchanged amused glances, while the dead stirred uneasily as floorboards beneath them shifted from the combined weight of the living.

"Good to see you," said the woman with a tired smile, while the man moved directly to the bodies on the floor as if courtesy were superfluous.

"We're the investigating anthropologists," she explained. "That is Professor Birbalsingh." She nodded toward the man hunkered over the corpses, examining them like specimens. "I'm Dr. Shelagh Hubbard from the Royal Ontario Museum."

Miranda introduced Morgan and the officer, and then herself as an afterthought. The woman nodded at Rachel, then took Morgan's hand and her countenance warmed from weary to sleepy. She was very blond. Surprisingly, when she took Miranda's hand, the sensuality did not subside. This woman has a sexual relationship with the world, Miranda suspected, wondering whether Rachel received short shrift due to race or, more likely, to her status in uniform.

"We got an evening call from police headquarters. Somebody named Rufalo," the woman continued with a congeniality that was apparently meant to counter her colleague's brusqueness. "It sounded intriguing. Professor Birbalsingh phoned me several times through the night. He couldn't sleep for thinking about it, and I couldn't sleep without disconnecting the telephone and putting my bid for university tenure in jeopardy. So here we are."

"Me too," said a voice from the stairs. "I wouldn't miss this for the world."

Ellen Ravenscroft, the medical examiner, stepped into the room, forcing the other four to realign themselves in relation to the bodies and the man on his knees who was engrossed in the details of wizened flesh and uncommon apparel.

"Surprised to see you two here," said Ellen.

"Just ghoulish curiosity," said Miranda. "It's not official."

"Not official?" Rachel Naismith exclaimed. "You've been drinking my coffee! And you're tourists! For me, it's a crime scene."

Miranda introduced her to Ellen Ravenscroft. The two women did not exchange courtesies, beyond nods of recognition for their professional roles.

"I'm surprised they'd send a medical examiner on a case like this," said Miranda. "I'd have thought the academics had it covered."

"If it's dead and there's a chance it was human, it's ours," Ellen responded. "Just a formality, love, so I can fill out the papers."

"No autopsy?"

"Not likely," she said. "Excuse me."

Morgan watched with admiration as the ME shunted the academic experts aside and squatted down to examine the bodies. "I'll take a look here before you two start messing about."

Professor Birbalsingh rose to his feet, harumphing with indignity, eyes flashing, muttering something about forensic anthropologists, but said nothing more. He hovered like a raptor tracking its prey until Ellen Ravenscroft glowered up at him and muttered "forensic pathologist trumps anthropologist," backing the professor away.

"Did the police get pictures?" she asked.

"Yes," said Officer Naismith

"That's what brought us here," said Miranda.

"Okay, let's just see what we have —"

"Be careful with that," snapped Birbalsingh with a vehemence suggesting he was not used to his authority being usurped, especially by a non-academic and a woman. "It is a very fine cloak. You do not want to cause it damage. These are very good clothes."

Without turning around, the ME announced, "I am Dr. Ravenscroft, coroner's office. Who are you, love?"

"This is Professor Birbalsingh from the University of Toronto," said his colleague. "I'm Shelagh Hubbard, cross-appointed from the ROM. We're the forensic anthropologists here by request."

"By request? Well, isn't that a treat. They let you off campus. I went to York, myself."

"For the suburban atmosphere, I presume."

"You do, love, you presume," she said, standing up. "The real York, as in Yorkshire. Not the nether regions of Toronto and certainly not the ‘New' one — the five boroughs on the Hudson."

"So, what do you see?" Miranda interjected to restore professional decorum, although Rachel and Morgan had been enjoying the repartee.

"They're thoroughly dead." Ellen Ravenscroft seemed to triumph in a declaration of the obvious. "Their heads are missing. I'd say that's about it." She nodded gravely. "They're all yours, Professor Birbalsingh, Dr. Hubbard. If the heads turn up, kindly inform someone."

"Anyone in particular?" Miranda asked.

"I've got my doubts about the heads," said Morgan. "They weren't in the crypt, so they're probably converted to dust."

"Well," said Miranda, "apparently a conversion was called for."

There was an awkward pause; then, remembering the cross and ring, Morgan chuckled and as soon as he did Rachel Naismith recognized the joke and chortled to herself. Ellen seemed indifferent to missing the point.

"I'm out of here, my friends. Give me a call, Morgan. We'll talk about missed opportunities. Good night, Miranda. Good night, Officer."

And almost as an afterthought she said over her shoulder, "Good night, forensic anthropologists. Let me know if you find anything." And, finally, with a fading sigh, "Do call me, Morgan."

Miranda rolled her eyes at her partner as Ellen Ravenscroft disappeared down the stairs. He looked away, he squinted back at her, mouthing an indecipherable phrase.

"What is it you're trying to say, Morgan?"

He shrugged.

"Do you two want more coffee?" Rachel asked.

"Definitely not for me," said Morgan.

Shelagh Hubbard stood up. "I'd like some coffee, if you wouldn't mind, Officer. It couldn't be worse than I make myself."

"You'd be surprised," said Miranda.

"Would he like some?" Rachel asked, nodding in the direction of the portly Professor Birbalsingh, crouched over his headless victim. "I've got lots. It's been steeping all night."

"I think he probably would," said Dr. Hubbard. "Both black, no sugar."

"That's good," said Rachel. "I didn't bring extras."

"Milk and sugar are necessities," said Morgan, who preferred double-double, and had no intention of enduring more of the poisonous brew.

"Only for those who can't do without."

"That is a tautology," he said.

"Yes it is," she said, reassuring him.

She walked out of the room and suddenly there was thunderous clatter as if the stairs had collapsed. Miranda was closest and through the door in an instant, calling Rachel's name.

Rachel waved from the gloom in the downstairs hall.

Miranda heard an embarrassed scramble behind her and wheeled around to see Morgan and Shelagh Hubbard jammed in the doorframe, in a comic simulation of the grotesque embrace on the floor. Miranda rolled her eyes and returned her attention to Rachel, who was waiting.

"You okay?" Miranda called. "What the hell happened?"

"It was only a loose step," Rachel answered. "I skied my way down. You take care, any of you, coming down after me." She craned forward to see the couple in the doorway frozen in place by their futile attempts to avoid pressing flesh.

Morgan and the anthropologist disentangled themselves and receded into the room. Miranda followed.

"I see you two are becoming quite friendly," she whispered to Morgan, looking at Shelagh Hubbard.

The woman was preternaturally attractive; her pale skin and light blue eyes and long blond hair, pulled tightly against her skull, made her seem otherworldly, but not ethereal; less ghostlike than deadly.

Shelagh Hubbard bent down to exchange words with Professor Birbalsingh. He was closely examining the remnants of dried flesh at the collars of each corpse, something that held his interest more than anything the living could possibly offer. He nodded assent.

The woman took out her cellphone, explaining that since the cadavers had been inappropriately disentombed, they were vulnerable. She did not explain how or to what. Rapid deterioration, Miranda supposed; airborne bacteria, diseases of the dead. They needed to get the bodies to the lab at the university as soon as transportation could be arranged. Ambulance or hearse? Miranda wondered. Neither seemed quite suitable.

With the medical examiner gone, the forensic anthropologists were in charge. The police function was to offer assistance, guard the remains, and bear witness to the irrevocability of death. It was time, Miranda thought, for the ghouls to go home. She glanced at Morgan and saw that he was gazing at Dr. Hubbard, perhaps savouring the effects of their fleeting embrace. The woman was wearing perfume, Miranda realized; a subtle scent but inescapable. She had dressed for the occasion.

Miranda considered the implicit judgment about disturbing the bodies. Almost certainly the uniforms who answered the call had moved them only enough to identify the problem. Normal procedure would demand nothing be disturbed. But at some point, as Morgan had suggested, time intrudes and evidentiary materials simply become artifacts.

Morgan was lingering. He had a genuine interest in forensic anthropology. Little was revealed, however, by observing the mental activities of the two academics, who were scrutinizing and registering from their specialized perspectives. This must be how we appear, he thought, prowling the scene of a crime — cerebral and disengaged. He chuckled at the image as he admired Dr. Hubbard.

Miranda coughed throatily, seemed to listen for something elusive, then coughed again. Then she announced, "I'm going to scream."

Morgan looked puzzled, tolerant.

She shrieked wickedly in variable pitch.

A racket from downstairs was followed by thumping footsteps, and Officer Naismith sprang through the doorway, her semi-automatic clasped in both hands. Everyone froze.

For a moment even the bodies seemed part of an allegorical danse macabre, with Rachel cast in the role of Death.

Then the tableau collapsed in laughter, much to the officer's annoyance.

"Sorry," Miranda said. "I should have warned you."

Rachel looked down at her Glock semi-automatic, summoned an indignant smile, and tucked it back in its holster.

"Bang bang," she said.

Good recovery, Morgan thought. He regarded Miranda with bewildered affection, and waited.

"Listen," Miranda said. "You can hear the emptiness."

Nice, thought Morgan, imagining the music of the spheres.

"I noticed when we were in the kitchen — I've never figured out why people say the word echo to hear an echo. I wonder what they say in Chinese."

She had their attention.

"Okay," she said. "Listen."

She called, "Echo-echo-echo."

They could hear a faint reverberation in the walls.

"There's a laundry chute," she said.

Yes, Morgan thought. You can hear emptiness if you know what to listen for.

"I remember the laundry chute in my grandmother's house," Miranda explained. "We'd holler up and down, and when they covered it over because they were afraid we'd climb in you could still hear where it was through the walls."

Morgan picked up a crowbar from the floor next to the hanging cupboard. He walked along the main supporting wall, tapping. They could hear chunks of plaster skitter behind thick layers of paper and sift between the lath down into the hidden depths.

He stopped and looked out in the hallway. There was a brace at eye level supporting a brick chimney that rose into the attic — all that remained of an abandoned heating system when stovepipes had snaked through the different rooms during the winter. Beneath the brace a thickening in the wall. Morgan rapped on the protrusion. There was a hollow thud.

He went back into the bedroom, aligned himself precisely, and smashed the back of the crowbar against the wall. Shards of layered paper scattered, plaster flew, and lath shattered. Professor Birbalsingh muttered unhappily.

Once a hole appeared at laundry-chute height, Miranda stepped forward and tried to peer into the cavity. Choking on the dust, she pulled lath and plaster away with her bare hands. Morgan interceded with the crowbar. Rachel Naismith helped, and soon they had an opening big enough a person could reach in up to the shoulder.

Morgan set the crowbar down, preparing to explore, but Miranda shunted him aside.

"This one is mine," she said. "What'll you bet there's a board jammed across to stop things falling through to the cellar."

She extended her arm fully down into the hole, grimaced as she made contact with something, and carefully lifted her arm out of the chute. Her hand was entwined with long tendrils of human hair. Suspended from the hair was the mummified head of a young woman, skin taut against the skull, lips drawn in a haunting grimace, membranes in her eye sockets catching fragments of light.

"Morgan," she said. "Could you get the other one?"

Morgan tried to look in but his own head cast a shadow. He reached down, blindly, careful not to rip his flesh on splintered lath, and suddenly flinched. Steeling himself, he grasped the short-cropped hair of the remaining skull. He pulled it upwards and through, into the room.

Miranda was still holding the woman's head cradled in the crook of her arm. Without exchanging words, both of them carried their grim loads over to the bodies.

Professor Birbalsingh and Dr. Hubbard stood aside while Morgan and Miranda kneeled and propped the heads against the necks from which they had been severed.

When they rose to their feet, the floorboards shivered and the heads lolled to the side. The detectives smiled shyly at each other. They had at least made a gesture to acknowledge the victims had once been alive.

Taking his cue from Miranda, who seemed quite pleased with herself but ready to leave, Morgan announced, "Well, folks, our work's done here. It's time for us to call it a night." He felt strangely uplifted, as if the pieces of a lingering murder investigation were finally coming together, and at the same time he felt cheated, knowing it wasn't theirs.

Birbalsingh grunted as he manoeuvred his soft body to get a better perspective on the male. Hubbard was opposite, hovering over the woman. It was as if they had divided the victims according to gender.

She looked up at Morgan, then at Miranda, then back at Morgan.

"Goodnight, Detectives," she said.

Miranda sensed strain in the woman's smile. Possibly the police had overstepped their bounds in retrieving the heads. Perhaps in placing the heads they had undermined procedural objectivity by performing their small ritual of empathy and defiance.

Miranda didn't much care. She was ready to go home.

Rachel Naismith saw them to the door.

"Thanks for dropping in," she said.

"We'll do it again, sometime," said Miranda.

The two women exchanged a quick embrace, while Morgan walked by himself toward the car.

Miranda caught up and, slipping on the sidewalk, grabbed his arm to recover. He walked her to the driver's side. Morgan stood back and waited until she pulled away from the curb, but he still got an icy soaker as he climbed in beside her. It had been an adventure; they both felt somehow winter was over. They drove into the darkness, at its bleakest just before dawn.