Grave Doubts (3 page)

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.”