Читать книгу Reluctant Dead - John Moss - Страница 5

3

Murder Becomes Us

Miranda telephoned Morgan again, in the early morning after she got back from her interview with the Isla de Pasqua Police, but he was already out. She did not leave a message. Despite being half a world away in the southern hemisphere, she was only an hour west of him, so he would be working. She tried the office, but he was not there, either. The bland inflection in the Canadian voice at Toronto headquarters struck a chord of empathy, and she longed to be home. She wanted to solve mysteries, she realized, not invent them. And not inhabit them from the inside looking out. She sat down on the edge of the bed and saw that one of the two Heyerdahl books was missing. Her mind was muddled, searching for a metaphor to describe the panic swelling inside her; the feeling that Kafka was in charge of the world.

***

When Morgan arrived at Harrington D’Arcy’s office, high in a bank tower near the intersection of King and Bay Streets, he was surprised to find that D’Arcy had vanished.

“I had an appointment with him at nine,” Morgan explained to the receptionist, then to a secretary, then to an administrative assistant, and finally to an associate executive, each of them dressed in expensive clothes, surrounded by the lavish accoutrements of their relative positions, all in a warren of offices so tastefully appointed that the excess seemed somehow an aspect of corporate efficiency. There was nothing to indicate what kind of work was done there, but the place reeked of success.

Each person he talked to declared that they had no idea of their employer’s whereabouts. He was assured Harrington D’Arcy was unlikely to take off for a sail, to work out at his club, or to attend a secret meeting, without his entire office staff being made fully aware. There were apparently no clandestine moments or covert affairs in the life of Harrington D’Arcy. His very private business activities and reclusive social life were apparently tracked and controlled by his staff.

And yet he had disappeared the day after his wife was found dead, when he was wanted to assist in a police investigation into the possibility of her murder.

There was nothing in the office to indicate tragedy; no sign of grief, no particular interest in being interviewed by a homicide detective. No one professed to knowing Maria D’Arcy on a personal basis. She was apparently no more than a rumour in their glass-walled garrison high above the city streets.

As Morgan stood facing the polished marble of the elevator wall, waiting for one of two ornate metallic doors to slide open, and distracted by the emptiness of his experience in D’Arcy’s office, the reflection of a woman moving down the length of the opposite corridor caught his eye. The apparition came into focus beside him as if the woman herself were caught in the cool surface of the marble walls.

When she said nothing, he turned toward her and was immediately struck by the sculptural radiance of her appearance. The austerity of her demeanour could not suppress the astonishing beauty of her features and figure and carriage. At first he thought she was waiting for the elevator. She stood slightly turned, however, so that when he shifted to look at her they were nearly facing each other, eye to eye. In heels, she was almost as tall as he was. Without them, she would still be several inches taller than Miranda. Her presence made him intensely aware of his own physical being.

“I’m told you are a policeman,” she said, her voice as cool and crisp as January.

“Yeah,” said Morgan, shifting his weight. The elevator door opened and neither of them got on. Several people moved past them and the door closed.

“Your name is Morgan, am I right?”

“Yeah, and you are Ms. …?”

“Simmons.”

“First name?”

“Yes.” She did not volunteer to tell him what it was.

“What can I do for you, Ms. Simmons?”

“Mr. D’Arcy was called away on business.”

“And you are the only one here who knows about it?”

“Yes.”

“Why is that?”

“I am his partner.”

He looked at her closely, moving so that she had to back into the full light of the corridor. It was impossible to tell her age. She wore makeup so well it appeared to be minimal. She was groomed exquisitely; her eyebrows arched with a natural grace and the style of her hair seemed somehow inevitable. She could be in her late twenties, she could be in her early forties. His chest constricted and he gazed past her, catching his breath.

“You want to ask Mr. D’Arcy about Maria?”

“Isn’t it an odd time for a business trip, Ms. Simmons? His wife is on a slab at the morgue — what about grief?”

“What about grief, Mr. Morgan?”

“Detective.”

“Detective Morgan. Is there a protocol for grief required by the police?”

“No, but there are conventions and needs. My goodness,” he declared, using his favoured expression and a little nonplussed by her cool civility, “the man is implicated in murder! Even he seems to think so.”

“I doubt it was murder.”

“You favour the suicide theory.”

“People die, Detective. Sometimes by accident.”

“But there’s always a cause.”

“Death can be a creative force, Detective Morgan.”

“Did I hear you correctly, Ms. Simmons?”

“Possibly not.”

The woman offered a depthless smile, the lawyerly equivalent of a dismissive shrug, he supposed. She proceeded with a rhetorical shift that he found amusing, but only because he recognized what she was doing. “I can assure you, Detective, Mr. D’Arcy has not left the country.”

“It’s a big country.”

“I received a call. If you would step into my office, it’s on my machine. I can’t tell you any more than he told me.”

Her office had the same impersonal opulence as its surroundings. The paintings on the walls were originals; they seemed familiar, but there was nothing Morgan actually recognized. There were several pieces of Inuit sculpture, industrial size, several Inuit prints, and a woven wall-hanging.

D’Arcy’s message was simple. “Ms. Simmons. There is a matter of some urgency, I need to be away. If a Detective Morgan calls, assure him I will return.”

Morgan stared intently into the woman’s eyes; they were deep brown. Like eyes in a painting by Vermeer, they revealed so much and nothing at all, they gave no indication of the soul within. Her partner had addressed her as Miss.

“How do you know he hasn’t left the country?”

“I would know if he had.”

“You know where he is, then.”

“I suspect he is in the Arctic, but I do not know that as a fact.”

“The Arctic?”

“Baffin Island. We are putting something together.” She paused. This was a woman unused to explaining herself and certainly unaccustomed to sharing her company’s secrets. Confidentiality was their stock in trade. She was also a woman who recognized priorities.

He waited.

“Zinc and copper on Baffin Island, problems of sovereignty. The Arctic and problems of sovereignty can be quite pressing.”

“Enough, apparently, to leave his wife on ice.” He smiled at the droll connection between ice and the Arctic, but she showed no emotion. “Can you track him down?”

“No.”

“Surely there is no place in the world where a man like Harrington D’Arcy cannot be reached.”

“There is, and he is there.”

“That sounds sinister.”

“Not yet. Now if you will excuse me. If I hear from him, I will call.”

“Promise?”

“What? Oh, yes, Detective, I promise. I am glad you like your job; you find it amusing.”

“Yes,” said Morgan and walked back to the elevator on his own. Her most memorable trait was her hair, which draped in a honey-blonde cascade to her shoulders and shimmered when she moved as if it were constantly under studio lights.

He went straight to the D’Arcy home in Rosedale. It was a charming stone cottage tucked away on a curving side street, reminiscent of a small seigneurial manor along one of the more remote rivers of Quebec. Only when he was up close did it seem imposing — from the street it made neighbouring houses appear pretentious and ill at ease.

He had expected something more lavish from a Brazilian heiress and a lawyer legendary for his success managing corporate takeovers. Discreetly legendary; an heiress of what?

The woman who answered the door was older, and she had evidently been crying.

“I don’t suppose Mr. D’Arcy is here?” Morgan asked after introducing himself.

The woman looked at him warily.

“I am here only. The señora, she is deceased. Mr. D’Arcy, he is not at home at this time.”

“Was he here last night?”

“Last night, yes. This morning no. He is go.”

“Do you know where?”

“I do not know where to. There have been calls from his office, looking for Mr. D’Arcy.”

“Could I come in, do you think?” asked Morgan.

“You are police? You have the warrant?”

Morgan was startled by her confidence; she was certainly not an illegal immigrant.

“No, I do not,” he said. “I’m trying to discover what happened to Mrs. D’Arcy. I am trying to help find her husband.”

“She was not murdered by Mr. D’Arcy.”

“No, you’re quite possibly right. And he may be in danger himself.” That thought had not occurred to him before, that the wife’s murder might presage the husband’s, assuming he hadn’t killed her.

“You may come in. What do you wish?”

Morgan simply asked to look around. He was not sure what he was looking for, just something, whatever, an entry into the labyrinth.

In the library, there were photographs on the mantle in silver frames, some of the Pemberly under full sail and at anchor. In the centre of the mantle, there was a piece of wood the shape of a paddle blade, inscribed with hieroglyphs. Morgan immediately recognized Rongorongo, a script devised by the people of Easter Island, which they reproduced for the tourist trade although, now, sadly, no one was able to read it. This example is particularly good, he thought. The wood was riddled with wormholes and the surface appeared very old, not weather-worn, but had a powdery sheen, creating an illusion of authenticity. He reached out and touched it. The surface was surprisingly hard. He traced a line of glyphs with his fingertip.

This was the second time he had touched an original piece of Rongorongo. Only the previous year he had come across another in private ownership that was peripheral to a murder investigation. It belonged to the original owner of Miranda’s Jaguar, a nasty man capable of unspeakable crimes; a low-profile lawyer like D’Arcy, but unremarkable as a consequence of limited achievement, not professional strategy.

Morgan surveyed the room until his eyes came to rest on a stone carving sitting in the shadows, also from Easter Island. The ubiquitous moai with furrowed brow, pursed lips, and eyes gazing vacantly into the emptiness. He marvelled at how such a remote place, so distant from the Western world, could have had such an impact on cultural consciousness. He guessed that Miranda would bring him either a smaller replica of Rongorongo or a diminutive moai, modest enough to be carried in her hand luggage.

The library seemed, like the rest of the house, to be without gender and with no indication of children, although there was ambient warmth to the furnishings. It was clearly a room frequented by the D’Arcys. In addition to books, there were magazine and newspaper racks, a small stack of the Guardian Weekly and The Economist, a tray with decanters of madeira and port, and kindling to start a good fire once autumn set in.

Wandering into a study off the library, he saw an answering machine blinking and touched the play button. There were calls from a nail salon, a dry cleaner, and two from Maria D’Arcy’s husband, asking her to call him, without saying where. The office was hers. It was more distinctively an expression of personality than the library, not feminine in any recognizable way, yet it clearly bore the imprint of a woman. For one thing, there is the faint scent of Fleurs de Rocaille, Morgan thought. Also stacked neatly, were back issues of Vogue, Architectural Digest, The Walrus, and Vanity Fair.

He played the machine again, this time he focused on her own message. It was warm but precise, first in English then repeated in her native language — he assumed it was the same greeting as he did not speak Portuguese.

He slipped the tape from the machine and put it in his pocket.

When the woman he had described to himself as older let him out, he wondered, older than what?

He walked out of Rosedale past the subway station and turned south on Yonge Street. Morgan walked everywhere when he could. He knew the D’Arcys better now, enough to know how little he knew of them. The lives of strangers were simple to understand, summed up by an item of clothing, a vocal inflection, the twist of a smile, incongruous movement — but the more someone was revealed, the more impenetrably complex they became. At the death scene, the D’Arcys were stereotypes; in their empty study, they became real.

Wherever Harrington D’Arcy was, it was not illegal to grieve in seclusion. Unless, of course, being a widower was a self-inflicted condition.

When Morgan got back to headquarters, he took the tape to a technician and they listened together until the technician got bored. Morgan wrote down what Maria said in English. He checked out the nail salon — she had missed her appointment, and the dry cleaners, who wanted him to pass on the message that the stain on her cashmere sweater would not come out. He listened to her voice over and over, and the more he listened the more empathy he felt for her, although he couldn’t determine why, exactly, except that she had been alive.

He asked a colleague with the surname Gonzales to come in. “Manuela, could you listen to this? See if it’s a word-for-word translation.”

She listened intently.

“It’s not a translation, I mean, it’s her own language she’s speaking. The statements are equal, but not quite the same. And it’s not Portuguese.”

“No?”

“It’s Spanish. I know Portuguese, Morgan. My grandmother and my father speak it at home. This is Spanish. I don’t really speak either but I understand both.”

“She’s from Brazil, it should be Portuguese.”

“Who? Is this the woman who died?”

“Yeah, Maria D’Arcy.”

“I think she is not from Brazil. Perhaps from Chile, maybe Peru. She speaks like a South American, and not Portuguese, not on this tape. Maybe she had Spanish friends, maybe it’s for them.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he said, retreating to his desk to think things over.

Morgan decided that when the errant Mr. D’Arcy turned up, he could straighten this out. He would have to come in from the cold on his own, though. His employees weren’t going to turn him over. Under a glossy veneer of professionalism, D’Arcy’s staff had given an ominous impression of loyalty, as if, from the receptionist on up, they had sworn a blood oath of some sort, or belonged to a cult.

Sitting back with his feet on the desk, he perused the medical examiner’s report. As Ellen had said, a skin swab turned up traces of poison: coniine and pancuronium, along with a blend of talcum powder, and minute particles of ground glass. She had appended a note explaining that the mixture would be rapid acting, the symptoms post-mortem would indicate death by asphyxia, the talc was an adherent and would bind with the the glass to create nearly invisible lacerations to allow the poison a subcutaneous entry into the system. A similar concoction had been used over the last decade or so in Papua New Guinea, on Madagascar, and also in Dublin, according to her research. No probable connection.

No mention was made of the break-in or of the body being washed down by ghoulish intruders. That was speculation, based on the scent of wildflowers that was no longer there. But the report was unequivocal: Maria D’Arcy had been murdered.

Morgan walked to the door marked Superintendent of Detectives and pushed it open.

“Come on in.”

“No,” said Morgan. “Not here.”

“What do you mean, not here?”

“I need to talk to you about Harrington D’Arcy.”

“Yes.”

“I need to interview you.”

“You what?”

“Could we go somewhere else?”

Morgan turned and led the way to an interrogation room. Rufalo followed like an animal in pursuit. As soon as Morgan closed the door, Rufalo wheeled on him. “What the hell!”

“Easy, sir. I need to ask a few questions.”

Perhaps it was Morgan’s ironic deference or his own ingrained respect for procedure, but Rufalo became immediately conciliatory.

“Of course,” he said. “Whatever I can do.”

“Let’s sit down,” said Morgan.

“I’m not a suspect, am I?” said the superintendent cheerfully, trying to relieve the tension.

Morgan did not smile. “No,” he said. He paused. “But you might be an accessory.”

“Good God, Morgan. The man called me. He told me his wife had been murdered. I am a policeman, that was a reasonable thing for him to do.”

“He was sure it was murder?”

“There was no doubt at all.”

“He called you at home? You called me from your place?”

“Yes …” Rufalo gazed around the room for a moment, seeming to see it for the first time as an unfamiliar and oppressive place. “He and my wife are business associates, both lawyers. The legal community at their level is small. We’ve met a few times. He wasn’t asking for favours.”

“One favour?”

“He did ask specifically for you, yes.”

“Didn’t that strike you as odd, a murder suspect determining who should investigate the crime?”

“He suggested, Morgan. I determined. And it did not cross my mind that he was a suspect. Is he?”

“Yes. He virtually insisted on it.” Morgan grimaced at his own break with procedural decorum as he confessed: “We had breakfast together.”

“He can be charming, can’t he?”

“Dangerously so, it appears. And yes, I do have my doubts, but at this point he is the only suspect we have.”

“Fill me in.”

“I’d rather not, Alex. Right now, I’d like to keep you out of the loop, for your own sake. He’s disappeared.”

“D’Arcy! Disappeared?”

“Like the Cheshire Cat.” Inappropriate: he left no smile in his wake.

“You want me to stand down?”

“From your job? Heavens, no. The accessory bit was just to get your attention. Why do you think he asked for us?”

“You and Miranda? Because you’re the best. That was his assumption, not mine. It was my decision, though, not his.”

“Let’s put modesty aside and assume he’s right — about us — that means he wants to get caught.”

“If he did it, Morgan.”

“Yeah.” Morgan was thoughtful. “Or it could mean the opposite: a back-handed compliment. If we can’t crack the case, no one can. Get by us and he’s home free. Or, of course, it could mean he’s innocent.”

“Anything else? No? Good. And by the way, you keep saying us. Your partner is out of the country.”

“Yeah.”

“Let me know if there’s anything you think I should …” He didn’t finish his sentence.

As Alex Rufalo left the room he looked back. Morgan was still lost in thought. Rufalo closed the door firmly behind him.

Morgan sat slouched at the interrogation table for more than an hour, letting facts and impressions swirl in his mind. He felt like he was caught at the edge of a whirlpool, unable either to break free or plunge through. This was a case where Miranda’s capacity for deduction would be invaluable. Revising his water imagery, he thought of pebbles tossed in a pond, their ripples confusing the surface — she was good at inferring who threw them from their intersecting patterns.

But she was busy by now on her novel. Her story about the man bleeding in her bed who claimed to be Harrington D’Arcy had faded from his mind. This was not a failure of imagination on his part, but submission to the power of hers. The bleeding man was well on his way to becoming fiction. Apart from a general sense of apprehension, Morgan felt worrying about Miranda was a response too personal, too intimate, for comfort.

It was only her first full day there, so perhaps she was still getting her bearings. He had suggested renting a Jeep and driving out to Rano Raraku, the volcano quarry. It was not far — the whole island was a tiny triangle in the vast Pacific, six miles by eight by twelve. Morgan did not think in metric. His idea had been for Miranda to counter the strangeness of such an amazing place by starting with the familiar. The cover of every book about the vaunted mysteries of Easter Island, every appropriation of images to sell credit cards and cosmetics, featured shots of moai on the outside slopes of the quarry where they stood, inexplicably abandoned, while over the centuries silt had built up to their shoulders. They gazed, pensively, incomplete, over the savannah to their intended platforms bordering the sea.

Morgan would like to have been there. The disjunction, particularly at Rano Raraku, between the powerful presence of the past and a full understanding of how it had all come about, had created in Morgan an oddly intense feeling of serenity. If he were a religious man, he might have described the feeling as mystical. He was moved, literally, beyond words. He hoped Miranda wouldn’t reduce it all to historical hypotheses. Sometimes it was better to live with mysteries than to resolve them.

Perhaps she was still asleep, washed by the westerly breeze through an open window, dreaming of being exactly where she was. Morgan was surprised that he found the image of Miranda in the tranquil embrace of the Hotel Victoria vaguely erotic. Quite suddenly, he got up and strode out of the interrogation room, out of Police Headquarters, into the midday Toronto sun.

An hour later, he was meandering across the manicured grass in front of the clubhouse at the Royal Toronto Yacht Club, which yesterday had seemed so imposing and now struck him as an embarrassingly misplaced anachronism. Perhaps it was being here on his own, without the mediating effect of Harrington D’Arcy, but the antebellum enclave of privilege now seemed a little sad, like a fat man who smokes.

He made his way past the colonnaded portico to the Pemberly. It was still cordoned off with yellow tape strung across the pilings, but no one had thought to post an officer to keep watch. It was assumed the entire premises were secured. And they were: from ethnic interlopers, class jumpers, women of a certain sort, but not from murderers, embezzlers, politicians and lawyers, or world-class sailors.

Morgan had the heart of an anarchist, but the mind of a cop.

He did not want to change anything because that wasn’t his job. The world worked the way it worked, and when it didn’t, then it was up to people like him to get it working again. He stepped on board the Pemberly and felt it rock gently against its moorings. Morgan’s knowledge of boats, particularly yachts, was from books. You don’t grow up among the working poor in old Cabbagetown familiar with halyards and spinnakers, bowsprits, and transoms. Sheets and shrouds were to cover the living and the dead, not to catch the wind.

When he stood on the foredeck and gazed down at the hatch, something seemed askew. The hatch was locked from the outside. Under him was the fo’c’sle locker; why wouldn’t it be secured from within? He went below and made his way past the head and a large locker into the forward hold. There were no bunks, as he had expected, only a stowage area.

He realized he was wrong about the lock. The hatch was used for passing things through, probably sails, so an outside lock was appropriate. Still, as he ran his fingers around the mahogany combing beneath the hatch, he felt dents in the wood and by shifting his position he could see gouges that a screwdriver might have left in an attempt to pry the hatch open. Flecks of varnish came off on his fingers. The damage was very recent.

Someone, a woman, he suspected, had been forcibly confined down here. D’Arcy would know his own boat; he would know how much force it would take to smash through the fo’c’s’le or companionway hatches. They were wood, thick enough to withstand the forces of water lashing the boat in a storm — but they were only wood, mahogany, and they could be broken from inside with a few sharp blows from a winch handle, an elbow, or even the blunt end of a screwdriver. Most places can be broken out of, if you are willing to break things. A woman is less likely than a man to resolve the dilemma of her confinement through violence. It is not about the nature of women, but how they are taught restricting conventions as absolutes. The truth is, wood breaks, glass breaks, it would not have been difficult to escape from the belly of the Lion.

Miranda would be irritated by the sexist assumption. She would counter with a statement of resonant ambiguity: we live in an age, thank God, when even absolutes are uncertain. She would conclude that the person locked below, without deference to gender, was either incapacitated or lacking imagination, or both. The autopsy indicated Maria had consumed alcohol. She might have been up to no more than a haphazard effort. She likely anticipated a hangover, not death, or she would have tried harder. He could hear Miranda’s words in her own voice.

Morgan looked around for the screwdriver and found it against the foot of a berth in the main cabin. As he leaned over to pick it up he smelled Fleurs de Rocaille. She had certainly been there, lying on this berth, not long before dying. He touched where she had been, and withdrew his hand with an instinctive rush; the mattress was still warm. But of course it was not; it was his own body heat reflected from the Ultrasuede cover.

Morgan was seized by a sense of connection with the dead woman. The rich gleam of highly finished mahogany brightwork, the blue mattress covers on the three berths, the brightly coloured cushions and small pillows, the diminutive curtains drawn away from the portholes, the gleaming brass fittings, polished chrome instruments, and spotless galley with a stainless-steel stove on gimbals and woven tea towels folded neatly in a slot, all signified a distinctive taste. The confined space of the cabin was an expression of personality and Morgan felt certain it was not the work of a nautical designer, nor that of Harrington D’Arcy.

There was a gallery of framed photographs screwed into the forward bulkhead. Morgan had noticed them before. What seemed to be generic sailing pictures now resonated, since he had seen duplicates in the D’Arcy home. There were expected shots of the Pemberly under full sail, heeling perilously close to the wind, with canvas taut, the skipper’s hand on the tiller with an iron grip; and of the Pemberly moored against a series of familiar and exotic backdrops.

In one of the action shots, professionally dramatic in black and white, there were two people in the cockpit. Harrington D’Arcy could be identified, braced against the combing on the high side. Morgan peered this way and that until he confirmed that the other figure, wearing the skipper’s cap with her hand on the tiller, was Maria.

He recalled thinking of D’Arcy as the sole owner. If the Pemberly had been moored at the Port Credit Yacht Club down the lake, he might have assumed it was a family boat. In fact, he recognized the Port Credit clubhouse in the background of one of the pictures. He had been there a few years ago on a case that proved to be a suicide masking a murder. There was something familiar, if generic, about the tropical setting of another picture. Then he realized it was not the Pemberly in the foreground, but a two-masted ketch, a small ocean sailor of about the same size. Both D’Arcys were in the cockpit. Behind the ketch was the semblance of a harbour, little more than a bay, edged by a few buildings and a sparse scattering of palms. And, indistinctly, near the centre, a shadowy rectangle, the back of a moai facing a soccer field across the gravel road. He could not see the road or the field in the photograph, but he knew they were there.

Easter Island, the village of Hanga Roa. The Rongorongo on the mantle was a souvenir, not an auction-house acquisition. The D’Arcys had sailed there in the ketch, probably east from Tahiti. They would have stopped at Pitcairn along the way, before the long haul to the most isolated island in the world. He had not thought of it as remote when he was there last year, but in the context of small-boat sailing, the open sea surrounding it seemed limitless.

They sailed together. He was slowly assimilating the fact that Harrington D’Arcy and Maria D’Arcy must have been a very close couple, who handled intimacy as discreetly as if they were having an affair.

And she had died here, he thought, on this berth. Perhaps her husband found her, he was sure it was murder but had no proof. He carried her above to the cockpit and placed her in a nonchalant pose. He went back down below to wait for dawn. Why wait?

Apparently to be sure he got Morgan involved with the case. Why the disinterested attitude? As a boardroom lawyer, he was used to planning strategically, guiding events to a desired end. But each move along the way was a controlled response. That was tactics. The difference was subtle: the attitude was strategic, manipulating Rufalo to bring Morgan on board, that was tactical. And disappearing into the Arctic, what was that?

Ellen Ravenscroft said Maria D’Arcy had died where she was found, verified by the way blood had settled in the corpse. But if her husband had attended her closely, and moved her carefully within a short time of her death, lifting her up through the narrow companionway, she might have died below decks. Could he have done it by himself? Perhaps someone else was involved. Someone who knew where he was now. Ms. Simmons, perhaps.

Morgan walked back to the clubhouse and found an attendant in the men’s locker room, a lithe sunburned man in his forties.

“Were you working yesterday?” Morgan asked him.

“Are you here about the murder?” said the man, running his fingers through a shock of sun-bleached hair. “Yes, I was working. I saw you talking to Mr. D’Arcy on the Pemberly, and Mrs. D’Arcy. You had breakfast with him on the verandah.”

“Mrs. D’Arcy was dead,” said Morgan, a little taken aback at having been so closely observed.

“Well yes, but she was there. You must have arrived just after seven, you caught the first ferry, I caught the second.”

“How’d you know I didn’t come on a police boat?”

“You didn’t. He didn’t kill her.”

“You figure not.”

“I’m certain of it.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Look out there, that window, it looks straight down the channel, the third boat along, I can see the Pemberly from here while I’m working.”

“And?”

“And sometimes they’d spend the whole evening by themselves, without going out on the lake, just reading, talking when the sun went down. They were very private, very together. The kind of people you like from a distance. You don’t want to know them, just watch them.”

“Do you know many of the members — personally?”

“Ah, the class thing. The service thing. Yes, yes I do. I sail. I’ve sailed quite a lot over the years. I’m available whenever anyone’s a hand short. I’ve sailed most of these boats and, trust me, the minute we cast off I’m as good as the best of them. I can see the wind, Detective, and there’s not a sailor here who doesn’t respect that.”

Morgan couldn’t help but warm to this man, who struck him as his own mirror opposite. The man tilted his head forward and looked up. The corners of his eyes were creased from years of squinting into the maritime sun. His eyes glittered like an ancient mariner who was kept young by his passion for the sea.

“You sailed with the D’Arcys in the South Pacific, didn’t you?”

“How’d you know?” There was a glint in his eyes, but no wariness.

“You skippered a ketch from Tahiti to Easter Island.”

“Rapa Nui, yes. From Hawaii down and across. They flew in, joined us in Papeete, Tahiti. They flew home from Rapa Nui. Several years ago. How do you know what a ketch is?”

“How do you know they were a good couple? Not looking out your window. You said you wouldn’t want to know them close up, but you did.”

“No mystery there. One felt intrusive, being with them. It was just the way they were. How’d you know about the Pacific thing?”

“I’m a detective,” said Morgan, who had made a lucky guess. “When you say they joined ‘us’ in Tahiti, you mean you and your boat. You sailed single-handed down from Hawaii.”

“Yes I did. And how’d you know that? I suppose because you’re a detective?”

“Because you work at a menial job and have the skills of a man born to privilege. Spells renegade to me, an authentic loner, rising to the challenge of a lonely voyage.”

“Yes,” said the man. “Sorry I can’t help with the murder.”

“With solving it?” said Morgan, wondering exactly how his regret was directed. “Perhaps you’ve helped already —”

“I don’t think so. I never saw them quarrel, I don’t know their problems, or their enemies, their business interests, their politics, their religion.”

“What about their sex lives?”

“What about their sex lives?” said the man, shifting the emphasis.

“I understand D’Arcy was …” Morgan paused, then recalling it was D’Arcy himself who had made the assertion, he continued, “… that he was bisexual.”

“Oh, come now, Detective, aren’t we all? I’m no help to you there.”

“Morgan,” he said. “Detective Morgan.”

“Rove,” said the man.

“First name or last.”

“McMan. Rove McMan, sailor at large.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way.”

“What? Oh yes, you’re being ironic. No, Detective Morgan, I am not a murderer. I adore the cramped quarters of an ocean voyage, but I would not fare well in a cell. I would prefer to remain free, as it were, and a sailor.”

“As it were,” Morgan repeated, turning the phrase over in his mind. A strangely effete expression for a seaman, he thought.

“Upper Canada College,” said Rove McMan, reading Morgan’s response. “A first in philosophy at Oxford. Rowed, you know. But chose not to affect the Oxonian accent. Sailed dinghies as a child, have sailed ever since. Poor by choice.”

“And is Rove short for something?”

“Yes it is.”

“What?”

“Yes, it is short for something.”

Morgan smiled, and he walked away without saying anything more, as if he had other business more pressing. When he reached the front door under the portico of the main building, he turned to see if he was being watched, but the attendant had apparently gone back to work.

When the club ferry pulled in, he recognized the same officious young man who had accosted him the day before for not dressing to code, assisting passengers ashore. Morgan waited on the return crossing until they were in the middle of the harbour and the RTYC was obscured behind a shoreline frieze of staggering willows. As Morgan approached him, the young man glanced around furtively; the ferry was nothing but a glorified launch and there was no place to hide.

“Where were you when I came over around noon?” Morgan asked him, closing in as the young man edged against the rail.

“Right here, sir.”

“No,” said Morgan.

“You weren’t looking for me. I stayed in the wheelhouse.”

“And why would that be?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

Morgan gazed into the young man’s eyes. What he saw there was familiar, not the sullen defiance of an ex-con, or the horror of an illegal dreading exposure, and it was not the fear of a man guilty of crime. It was the suppressed panic of someone cowed by the power of a gun in the hands of authority. Morgan was used to this, the fear of police. Here was a young man at the service of people who could bring down governments, who could buy and sell entire nations, and he was comfortable in their aura of privilege and power because he knew his place in their scheme of things. But a cop, one of his own, terrified him.

“You know Mr. and Mrs. D’Arcy?” Morgan asked. The young man nodded affirmative. “The day before yesterday, did you bring them over?”

“I worked the evening shift. I brought Mr. D’Arcy over, not her. She didn’t come.”

“Well, she did. She was murdered over there.” Morgan nodded in the direction of the yacht club.

“Not on this boat, sir. I would have seen her. Sailors know each other.”

“You’re a sailor?”

“I aspire to be a sailor, sir. I read Yachting magazines my passengers leave behind. I have made a study of sailing, although I have not actually sailed, yet.”

“And what about Rove McMan, do you know him?”

“Yes, sir, of course.”

“Did he come over yesterday.”

“Yes sir, the run after yours.”

“No, I mean the evening before?”

“Sunday. No sir. He was already there. I think he’d been out on the lake for a couple of days. I took him back Sunday morning.”

“You worked a double shift? And how do you know McMan?”

“It’s a seasonal job, I often work double. Everyone knows Rove McMan.”

The locker room attendant was someone the young man admired, Morgan could tell by the way he spoke his name. Working the ferry was the closest he could come to emulating the lifestyle of an itinerant world-class sailor. Morgan felt sorry for him.

He gave the young man his card. It was an old card with writing on the back. It was only his number at home.

“If there’s anything you can think of, give me a call,” he said.

The young man brightened. He was an ally, a police accomplice.

“Oh, I will for sure. If I see or think of anything unusual.”

“Thank you,” said Morgan, wondering what the young man might think was unusual.

Back at headquarters, Morgan ran a search on Rove McMan. The locker-room attendant and world sailor had anticipated any question of criminal involvement by declaring his arrival at the club subsequent to Morgan himself. The ferryman would seem to have cleared him, as well. Still, anyone who had sailed in a small boat for weeks on end with a couple he claimed hardly to know must have been concealing a great deal of himself, or about them.

McMan checked out. RTYC, dinghy races as a kid, with distinction. Upper Canada College. Father bankrupt, a Rosedale suicide, mother remarried. One sibling, a sister, resident until death at 999 Queen Street, the public asylum; no further record. Oxford, full scholarship. No tax or employment records. Never married. Round the world twice, once non-stop single-handed in a borrowed boat. Wrote a book, Random Wake. Good title, poor sales.

All this from public archives, newspapers, and the Internet. No criminal record, not even a parking ticket. No car, a rented apartment.

He is a man living his own life to the fullest, which is more, than most of us so, Morgan thought. Of course many of us live a number of lives simultaneously. Rufalo walked by his desk several times and Morgan ignored him, but late in the afternoon he looked up and saw Rufalo watching from his office. In that moment it occurred to Morgan that there was the link. He wanted to rush in, but instead sauntered into the superintendent’s office without knocking. Rufalo looked wary.

“Any word on D’Arcy?” Rufalo asked.

“Nothing. The guy walked off the face of the earth.”

“I’m getting calls. Polite inquiries, so far. I’ve been vague, and there’s not a news editor in the city willing to risk the wrath of Harrington D’Arcy by speculating murder, suicide, misadventure, or sudden poor health without the word from us. Once they find he’s missing, though, they’re going to go wild.”

“Why bother,” said Morgan. “He’s not a celebrity.”

“No, but he’s exceptionally powerful. Your corporate lawyer could be turned into bloody good copy. If he killed her, Morgan, it will be news, I guarantee it. Missing, that makes him fair game, I’m afraid.”

“But I don’t think he did it.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

Rufalo shrugged noncommittally.

“What I wanted to ask, did you ever talk to D’Arcy about Miranda?”

“Good God, no. About Miranda. No, not at all. I don’t know D’Arcy, not like that.”

“What about his wife?”

“What about her?”

“Did you talk to her about Miranda going to Easter Island?”

“No, of course not. I’ve only spoken to the woman a few times in my life.”

“But Caroline knows them both, and she knew about Miranda’s sabbatical project.”

“Yes, I suppose she did, but no, Morgan, I —”

“And she might have mentioned it?”

“To D’Arcy, I don’t think so. Perhaps to his wife, it’s possible. There was nothing confidential about it. In fact, yes, of course, that book I passed on for Miranda. It would have been from D’Arcy’s wife. It’s quite possible Caroline told her. She must have, I suppose.”

“Alex, I’m not accusing you. I just need to know.”

“Why? What’s the connection?”

“I’m not sure, but there is one. Thanks.”

Morgan walked back to his desk. He sat down, he stood up. It was after six; he left for the day.

He picked up smoked meat on rye and coleslaw from a deli on the way home. The air smelled of August as he walked along Harbord Street. The heat of the day was draining away and the cool of the evening was rising from the lengthening shadows. He had been tempted to eat in the restaurant, but decided that he wasn’t all that hungry and would rather change first and crack open a beer and watch some TV or read the paper.

As soon as he approached the door of his condo, one segment of a rambling Victorian house subdivided into a postmodern architectural puzzle, like those three-dimensional intelligence tests where no two pieces are the same, he realized he was already rehearsing his conversation with Miranda. At the door he hesitated for a moment, discerning his spectral reflection in the paint he had applied, layer after layer, when he had first moved in more than a decade earlier. He had been trying to emulate the magic depth on the Georgian doors of Dublin, where he had spent several months half a lifetime before.

He picked up his mail without looking at it and dropped it on an end table beside his answering machine, which registered no calls. He set down his deli parcel on the ottoman, slumped back into the blue sofa, and dialed the very long number of the Hotel Victoria in Hanga Roa. After two rings, someone spoke to him in Spanish. He tried to explain what he wanted, but got nowhere. He hung up and called a Bell Canada operator and asked her to make the connection, person to person. After an interminable wait, during which he could hear voices in Spanish and English negotiating, the operator informed him there was no one registered at the Hotel Victoria by that name.

“Miranda Quin,” he said. “One n.”

“There’s no one there by that name.”

“Did she move out?”

“I don’t know, sir. They said no one by that name has been registered there. She must be staying somewhere else. Is it a big place?”

“What?”

“Isla de Pasqua?”

“No, it’s a very small place. Could you connect me to the police?”

“The Toronto police?”

“I am the Toronto police; to the police on Easter Island.”

“Where, sir?”

“Isla de Pasqua!”

“One moment, sir.”

She came back on the line.

“There is no number for police on Isla de Pasqua. Would you like me to try Santiago. That is also in Chile.”

“Try Carabinaros. Isla de Pasqua Carabinaros.”

“Is that a person or business, sir?”

“Try Guardia Civil.”

“I’m sorry sir, is Guardia the first name or last?”

“Uh, try Policía.”

“Policía. Thank you, sir.”

She came back on the line again. “To whom did you wish to speak?”

“The Isla de Pasqua Policía!”

“This is a person-to-person call, sir.”

“Anyone. Please.”

He could hear muffled voices in the background and then the operator returned. “I will connect you now.”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you for using Bell Canada.”

“Si?” a new voice inquired.

“Carabinaros?”

“No Carabinaros. Policía.”

“Habla Inglés?”

“No, poco. A little.”

“I am looking for Señorita Miranda Quin,” said Morgan in a very slow and deliberate voice. “I am calling from Canada. She is a police officer, she is staying at the Hotel Victoria.”

“I am police, Señor. There is no Miss Quin at Hanga Roa.”

“How do you know?”

“I know, we are a little place.”

“And you know everyone?”

“Señor, it is my job.”

“You know everyone there?”

“Si. I know Rapa Nui. Señorita Miss Quin, she has never arrive. Thank you for your call. Goodbye.”

The line went dead.

She’ll phone, Morgan thought. She’s moved to another hotel. She’ll call this evening. It’s only mid-afternoon in the South Pacific. She’s out exploring at Rano Raraku. He was annoyed that she was inaccessible, irritated by her lack of consideration. He was worried, too. It was not like Miranda to disappear. A pang of fear ran through him, but he shook it loose. She knew how to look after herself.

The telephone rang. Morgan jumped, then took a deep breath and relaxed.

“Miranda?”

“It is Edwin Block.”

“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.