“I’ve been wondering,” he paused. What had he been wondering? “If you’ve had second thoughts about how easily you and your colleagues were taken in.”
“And you, Detective, have you been wondering how you were taken in as well? It was brilliant, wasn’t it? They had us completely fooled.”
“They?”
“Do we know it was only one person?”
“No, we don’t, but it seems likely. Psychopathic depravity isn’t a group sport.”
“Not when the act is so well accomplished, I suppose. I find it all quite intriguing. Disturbing, of course, but very good drama.”
“You’ve worked with old bodies before.”
“Of various vintages, yes. With mummies from ancient Egypt, and mummified bodies in Mexico, and corpses drawn from Scandinavian bogs, and the preserved bodies of saints in sacred crypts. And they all look the same — very dead — and each one is different. Each negotiates the passage of time in its own grisly way. There was no reason to think our lovers were otherwise; they were simply themselves, the story of their deaths determined by their place of discovery. It was our job, in the circumstances, to determine how they had come to be as we found them, not why. That would be your job, I should think.”
“Now. Yes.”
“I understand your expert, the tall poet fellow, confirmed the mode of concealment was worthy of his own talents.”
“Do you know him?”
“Alexander Pope? By reputation. You must admit, the crime scene was a wondrous creation. Quite omnificent. An expression of extravagant vanity.”
Omnificent! he thought, repeating the word to himself. Such a lovely word.
“Vanity, for sure,” he said. “It was done for our appreciation.”
“You’re very solipsistic, Detective. Maybe it was done for private reasons and you, we, are accidental witnesses, incidental to a flawless performance.”
“People died.”
“Yes, they did. Life, or should we say death, imitates art. But art imitates nature. And nature, Detective, what does it imitate? God’s daydreams, I suppose.”
Morgan did not want to like her, but she had an interesting mind, and seemed unconcerned about the risks of thinking out loud.
“I appreciate your cooperation,” he said.
“Have I been cooperating?”
“I’ll keep you posted. We’ll crack this.”
“You and your partner, Detective Sergeant Quin. Why aren’t you a detective sergeant, Detective?”
“I am. If pressed, I can show my credentials.”
She was perched against the side of her desk. He was leaning against the wall inside her door. They could have been academic colleagues or old friends.
“I have to go,” she said apologetically. “I’m heading up to Georgian Bay for two weeks of wretched solitude.”
“Marking?”
“Essays and exams.”
“You have a cottage?”
“I have a perfect fieldstone farmhouse in the middle of a rolling field near Owen Sound. Trees along the drive, a classic four-storey barn, a drive shed, and the fresh smell of spring. Otherwise, there’s nothing to distract me for miles.”
“D’you own the farm, the whole thing?”
“I lease my fields to neighbours, mostly for grazing. When I bought the house, it was a shell. I’ve restored it over the last few years, from floor joists to roof. It’s a project, David, a labour of love. You must come and visit. Please do. Come up on the weekend. Tell me about your vacation. Give me a break from the drudgery. I’ll take you to dinner in Collingwood, the Elvis-impersonation capital of Canada, with some of the best restaurants north of Toronto.”
As she offered the invitation, she arched slightly, making her breasts rise against her pale blue sweater, and her legs stiffened, accentuating the firmness of her thighs through her slacks. She can’t help herself, he thought. Her eyes glistened disingenuously. A cheerfully blatant sexual predator — he had no intention of accepting her invitation.
“I just might,” he said.
“Here’s my number. I’m easy to find. Do come up, David. Live dangerously.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
It was late Saturday afternoon when Morgan got away. As Miranda’s vintage Jaguar coursed through the Caledon Hills, the long descents forced him to gear down and the car lagged with a gratifying rumble, then roared as he raced up the far sides of the valleys and broke into the clear evening light. It was easy to imagine the city left in darkness behind him. He rushed through the landscape like the sole spectator in a wraparound movie, with the machine an extension of will; an astonishing experience — he almost liked driving. By the time he reached the alluvial terrain sloping down to Georgian Bay, it was night.
Shelagh Hubbard had given him explicit instructions but he pulled over several times onto the shoulder to read the map in the violet glow of the dashboard instruments, not having fathomed the secret of the maplight. He anticipated confusion, even though there were only a few intersections to negotiate along the way and the turnoff from Highway 41 was clearly marked.
Miranda had been wary about lending him the car.
“You know,” she had told him, “while you were checking out the voluptuous Dr. Hubbard at the museum, I dug up an ominous bit in her academic files. It seems she once took a course sponsored by the University of London and the British Museum. Morgan, it was on adaptation of old-world building methods to conditions in the settler colonies, namely Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. So guess who taught the hands-on part of the course.”
“Alexander Pope.”
“The same. He laughed when I called him and said he’d taught dozens of courses over the years, with hundreds of students. We had a nice chat. He asked me to come out again sometime, said to bring you. He’s a wonderful source if you want to find more about Canadiana — ”
“What a dreadful word, Miranda.”
“You use it all the time. So what do you think about your Dr. Hubbard, now?”
“She invited me up to her farm.”
“You’re kidding! Whereabouts?”
“Near Georgian Bay. She’s going for a couple of weeks. We can’t just have the OPP pick her up on spec.”
“It’s their jurisdiction.”
“You can hardly arrest someone for taking a course.”
“Did she take it as a scholar, do you think, or a necromantic apprentice? Has she finally put her learning to practical use?”
“‘A little learning…’ That’s Alexander Pope, I believe; the real one.”
“Wait until Monday. We’ll drive up together.”
“Monday?”
“Rachel is taking Jill and me to the Metro Zoo tomorrow.”
“Then you won’t be needing the Jag.”
“You can’t resist a dangerous woman.”
“If you lend me your car, you’ll reap heaven’s reward: seventy-seven virginal youths.”
“How thoroughly repugnant. Men who dream of virgins make lousy lovers; virginal men are by definition lacking experience, inept.”
“So much for that.”
“You go, big boy. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Just keep your head. On your shoulders. And stay out of closets. And don’t sleep with her, Morgan, for God’s sake. If she’s the killer, you’ll feel like an ass — if you survive the experience. And if she’s not, you’ll feel like an ass, anyway.”
“Anything else?”
“Call me if you get scared.’
The darkness had turned into a dismal gloom on the back roads, defined only by the merging cones of the Jag’s headlights penetrating the mist-laden air. Morgan was relieved when an old-fashioned mailbox appeared with the name Hubbard stencilled on the side. The metal flag was raised, which he knew intuitively meant there was mail, so he stopped and picked up an accumulation of letters and fliers, jockeying the car so he did not have to get out. Driving slowly down the long driveway flanked by the shadows of soaring spruce trees, he cringed as sodden clumps of grass scraped against the bottom of the Jag. He pulled up to the front of the house, parking on an angle so the high beams illuminated what turned out to be a splendid stone cottage, not built in the vernacular style of the Georgian Bay area, which tended to be multi-hued granite blocks set with geometric precision. Nor was it like the stone houses of eastern Ontario, he thought, masterfully built by freelancing Scottish masons after they finished work on the Rideau Canal, nor was it fieldstones artfully placed as were the houses of Mennonite farmers that Miranda had shown him in the country around Waterloo County. Much more cement showed. It was almost a rubble construction, and the effect was ominously seductive.