Grave Doubts (17 page)

At the side of the house they were surprised to find a police cruiser parked facing out with the driver’s door open, as if the driver were anticipating a fast getaway, but the driver was nowhere in sight. Miranda chuckled to herself when she saw on the side of the car the insignia of the Owen Sound Police. She gave a congenial beep of the horn as they pulled in beside the cruiser, and as they were stretching from the long drive the figure of a young man appeared in the stable door under the overhung side of the old wooden barn. He was in uniform, wearing a turban. As he walked toward them, trying not to look awkward for being there, Miranda greeted him.

“Officer Singh, I presume.”

“Detective Quin,” he smiled radiantly, having already forgiven himself for venturing well outside his sphere of authority, knowing the detectives were on equally ambiguous ground. “It is so good to meet you. Welcome to the countryside.”

“This is my partner, Detective Morgan. Just call him Morgan. I’m Miranda.”

“My name is Peter.”

They all shook hands. The young officer could not stop smiling. His smile was infectious, and the three of them stood for some time, motionless, smiling.

“I am happy to be of assistance,” he said. “Murder is a rare occurrence in Owen Sound. Mostly domestic violence, and very unpleasant. I have been reading about your case, I believe. The very old bodies in the very old house. And then not so old, after all. It has been intriguing, but it did not stay very long in the papers. I recognized your names. When Professor Birbalsingh told me, I knew who you were.”

As he mentioned the call, he indicated with a hand gesture the universal telephone sign, little finger and thumb extended, the other three fingers folded in.

Morgan said, “We are appreciative, Officer Singh.” He addressed the young policeman with a conspiratorial wink. “We will work as a team. Did you find anything of interest in the barn?”

“Oh, yes. Barns are of infinite interest. But nothing suspicious.”

“Good work,” said Morgan.

“Well,” said Miranda, noticing the cobwebs on his turban, “I’m sure, then, we can turn our attentions to the house.” She realized both she and Morgan were being a trifle patronizing, but, she thought, with good intentions. Peter Singh’s ingenuous enthusiasm made him likeably vulnerable and they were instinctively trying to create protective barriers around him, before either lapsed into cynicism. “Have you been here long? You look like you were getting ready to leave,” she said, nodding at the open door of the cruiser.

“Oh, no,” he said. “I estimated the drive would take you three hours if you left right away.” He indicated driving with two hands moving an imaginary steering wheel. “My car is like that to reassure anyone here of my goodwill.”

“Is anyone here?” asked Miranda.

“No, I do not believe so. Not alive —”

“Peter,” Morgan said, “we’re not looking for bodies, we’re just trying to find Dr. Hubbard.”

“Who is a person wanted for questioning in a homicide investigation.”

“Yes. Who appears to be missing.”

“A very nasty homicide.”

“Yes,” said Miranda. She opened the summer-kitchen door. It seemed reasonable to step inside, to knock on the house door. Immediately, she recognized the door to the sauna from Morgan’s description of the bolt and flanged hinges.

“There are five doors in this room, Morgan. I was expecting two. One for the lady and the other for the tiger.”

Morgan and Peter Singh had followed her in. Morgan grimaced, but Officer Singh asked, “What do you mean? What tiger?”

“It’s an old story. A man has a choice: does he choose the door concealing the lady, or the door concealing the tiger?”

“Oh, I see,” he said, looking quite perplexed. “A difficult choice.”

“Well, what do you think, Morgan. Shall we give the door a try?”

“How about knocking first?”

“Officer Singh already has. I’ll just try the handle. You never know.”

Miranda depressed the handle and pushed and the door swung open into the kitchen. She leaned in and called a piercing “Hello-o-o.”

There was no answer. She stepped inside.

“Morgan, come in. We have a problem.”

Morgan entered and walked by her into the centre of the room. Peter Singh crowded in behind.

“Familiar territory, Morgan?”

He glowered. Peter Singh offered the opinion that it was a beautiful house. The renovations were clearly of the highest calibre, he noted as he made a rapid hammering gesture with one hand over the other, and it was very neat.

“Notice anything?” Miranda asked.

“The door wasn’t locked. It’s unlikely she’d leave it unlocked.”

“Yes,” Miranda said. “But even more telling. Feel the temperature. It’s warm in here. The furnace is on. No one, not even on a professor’s salary, would neglect to turn the heat down if they were planning to be away. She’s been gone, I’d say, three days.”

“How do you know that?” said Peter Singh.

“There’s a sweet, yeasty smell; the garbage under the sink is a few days old, not long enough to be rank, too long to live with.”

“Very interesting.”

Morgan looked at her with particular affection. She was good at this.

“Does your nose tell us if she’s still on the premises?”

“She isn’t here. We’ll check all the rooms, but the air is unsullied by human remains. I would think she left in a hurry and under duress, probably in the evening.”

“How so?”

“The dishes are washed; after breakfast or lunch there’d still be a few cups around, a few crumbs, but everything’s been carefully put away, the counter and table are wiped down. I’d say it was the final cleanup of the day. And look on the table: three pieces of paper, with holes for a three-ringed binder. And a pen. She was settling down to write journal entries. And a wine glass. Clean. Empty. She was going to pour herself a glass — did you say she drank port? — a glass of port. She was about to record her memories of the day, her dreams and
her plans. There are no essays in sight — she was probably finished her marking. And there’s not a single book off the shelves. Academics invariably write with books spread open around them.”

“Invariably? Perhaps you’re projecting from stereotype. I think we’ve got about as much here as we’re going to get without a warrant.”

“We have reason to believe a crime has been committed. She didn’t leave of her own accord, Morgan. I think we should look around.”

“I’ll check upstairs,” Officer Singh volunteered.

Morgan sat down at the table and stared into the cold ashes in the fireplace. He got up and closed the damper. Heat from the furnace would be pouring out the chimney. She wouldn’t have left it open. He sat down again, pleased to be alone as Miranda checked out the parlour and downstairs bedroom. He felt something strangely akin to nostalgia. This was absurd, for he and Shelagh had spent only a short time together, and it had been an emotional roller coaster, leaving him both frightened of her possible capacity for evil and irredeemably enthralled.

“Morgan,” Miranda’s voice echoed from Shelagh Hubbard’s bedroom. “I think you should see this.”

As he walked through, Peter Singh came clattering down the stairs, eager to miss nothing. The three of them crowded into the small room, along with a pressed-wood chair, a deal dresser, a three-quarters size bed — neatly made — bedside shelves stuffed with books and a braided rug. Miranda was sitting on the edge of the bed. On her lap was an open three-ring binder with a blue plastic cover. Two others were lying on top of a bookshelf. She turned the binder for Morgan to see in the glare of an overhead bulb suspended from the ceiling. This room had not yet been refinished.

He could not read without projecting his shadow across the open pages, so he took the book from her and turned into the light, only to have it blocked by the young officer who was simultaneously trying to read over his shoulder and stay out of his way. Morgan turned to Peter Singh and, making the universal gesture of two fingers walking, said, “I’ll just walk out to the kitchen with this. There’s better light.”

He sat down at the harvest table with the book open in front of him. Slowly, he thumbed through, opening the pages at random, moving backward and forward, taking in brief descriptive passages, drawings, recipes for plaster and paint, details of antique clothing, outlines of plot, lists that included a crucifix and a Masonic ring, a clinical accounting of the extermination of lives and the preparation of corpses to fulfill their grisly roles in a ghastly embrace. A sketch showed severed heads resting face to face, lips touching lips. They had missed that, when they had lifted the heads from the chute — that they were meant to be kissing. Miranda stood in the small archway leading into the central hall with Officer Singh beside her.

Morgan for a moment envisioned his former wife as the author. He imagined Lucy making notes about buying a freezer big enough for a body, adapting a sauna for murder and mummification. He could picture her planning out a tableau for her own amusement, arranging desiccated corpses like dolls in a depraved parody of affection. Separating bodies from heads — passion is in the mind, she would say. The body is merely the medium, the message is always obscure. He could read his former wife’s personality in the disinterested precision of Shelagh Hubbard’s records.

“Morgan, I think you’d better take a look at this one, too.” Miranda set another blue binder down on the table and turned it open to the final page. Below the text was a very
accomplished sketch of a Huron burial mound, as it was labelled, and a list of necessary artifacts to create an illusion of authenticity. On the bottom of the page there was a brief note: “Needed, one saint — a sinner will do.” Morgan turned over the page. Taped neatly to the obverse side was a newspaper clipping, carefully scissored to eliminate extraneous detail. Cut from the caption and taped as a label beneath the picture were the words, “Detective David Morgan, Homicide.”

Miranda placed her hand on his shoulder. He showed no external emotion but sat very still. She could feel a slight quivering as he gently leaned into the reassuring pressure of her hand. Sensing a mystery beyond comprehension, Officer Singh made a slight walking gesture with his fingers and slipped out the door. He was perturbed by how personally engaged the city detectives appeared to be with their work.

chapter nine
Owen Sound

“It’s pronounced ‘Bo-slee,’” Miranda explained over dinner in a Collingwood steak-house. “It’s spelled ‘Beausoleil,’ but it’s pronounced ‘Bo-slee,’ like the nerdy factotum in
Charlie’s Angels
.”

“He was Bawz-lee. There was a street where I lived in London called ‘Beechum’ Place, spelled ‘Beauchamp.’ But of course, Londoners declared the spelling aberrant, not the pronunciation.”

She sat back and sighed. “It’s been quite a day,” she said. “Thank God we’re not driving back tonight. Rufalo said the budget’s good for a couple of rooms and dinner.”

“No breakfast?”

“And breakfast.”

“We could find a motel with breakfast included.”

“A doughnut and coffee. They call it ‘Continental.’ Anyway, Beausoleil is a crossroads hamlet near Penetang. Alexander Pope has a restoration project there. Artwork of
some sort in an old church.”

“The only thing I know about Penetanguishene is there’s a prison for the criminally insane.”

“That’s where your new best friend will go, if we ever find her,” said Miranda.

“Well, if we can get your own new best friend on the case, we’ll find her in no time.”

“She’s following the case from afar.”

“Who?”

“My new best friend.”

“I meant Officer Singh of Owen Sound Police Services.”

“I thought you meant Rachel.”

“You’re very fickle. What about me?”

“Why don’t we compromise? Officer Singh is our new best friend, together.”

“He’s a nice kid,” said Morgan. “He’ll make a good cop some day.”

“Oh, go on. He’s a good cop now. You all right?”

“Yeah. A little shaken, a little humbled, a lot embarrassed, and very relieved. I wonder why she didn’t do me in when she had the chance.”

“I think she was pretty confident she could get to you later. And she knew that I knew where you were. Her notes make it clear your little episode in the sauna was just a dry run, so to speak. Maybe that’s why she didn’t climb into your bed — assuming she didn’t. Extended foreplay. Prolonging the game. If you and the lady had been intimate, Morgan, I’m sure you would have been graded.”

“How did you convince the OPP to let us have the binders? All we’re dealing with at this point is unlawful disposal of human remains.”

“Until there’s proof the murders happened on the farm, it’s our case. That’s what Rufalo says. Anyway, the binders just
happened to be in the back of our car when the Provincials arrived.” She smiled. “I told them about them, of course. I might have implied they were already on the way to Toronto.”

“And meanwhile, where was I?”

“You were a bit discombobulated. You went for a walk.”

“I just went out to the barn. I was looking for her car. It wasn’t in the drive shed. I don’t think I’ve ever actually been in a barn before — not one that hasn’t been converted into an antiques emporium. There’s something comforting about a four-storey haymow with light beams poking through, aslant from the sun —”

“Is that a quotation?”

“I think so, I’m not sure. Anyway, when I came out, the place was swarming with cops.”

“They’re a committed bunch, the Provincials. They pulled out all the stops. If there’s DNA anywhere, in the freezer, the sauna, wherever, they’ll find it. They’ll find yours, of course.”

“Oh, for goodness sake!”

“Are you on file?”

“Yeah, I imagine.”

“I’d say you’re an indelible part of the story, sauna or not. You were being set up as her next victim. Maybe you should recuse yourself from the plot.”

“
Au contraire
. It makes me an invaluable asset to the investigation. Fifth business, at least.”

“Fifth business, yes. You’d have to be dead to be the villain or the hero in this story. That’s how her stories work.”