by John Moss
There was a moment of awkwardness as she waited for an explanation, which Miranda found pleasing, knowing they were not automatically assumed to be police.
“Officer?” Miranda did not recognize her. “I’m Detective Sergeant Quin, this is Detective Morgan.”
The woman nodded without introducing herself. “You’re a sergeant too, I imagine,” she said, glancing at Morgan, then back to Miranda. “I wasn’t expecting anyone just yet. Are you coming in?”
“Please,” said Miranda.
The policewoman led them through refuse and rubble into the kitchen. The kitchen itself was bright and hospitable.
“I’ve got some coffee,” she said. “You might as well use your own cups. I’ve been letting it steep to counter the smell.”
“It doesn’t smell,” Morgan observed. “It’s just an old house. Smells like burnt coffee.”
“I’m surprised you’re alone,” said Miranda. “I’m surprised the stove’s working.”
The woman shrugged. “Wrecking crew left the power on. Most of the wiring’s been stripped, or at least the fixtures. Some rooms are dark, others not. Like a bad horror flick, without the music. They’re all bad, I guess.” She indicated the location of the desiccated lovers with an upward nod. Her features softened for a moment. “Those two aren’t very good company; they’re sort of into each other. If it wasn’t for the missing parts, they’d be kind of sweet.”
“Sweet?” Morgan said. “They’re dead.”
“The dead in one another’s arms, Detective.” He waited for her to finish her thought, but that seemed to be it. She gazed into his eyes without smiling.
The woman poured them coffee. Miranda liked her; she warmed to anyone who could serve coffee that smelled so rank without an apology. Morgan was wary; her confidence seemed almost a reprimand for assumptions about her uniformed status.
They sat at the grey Arborite table, sipping. The woman was young and, despite the androgynous uniform, attractive. The coffee was execrable.
“It’s not necessarily murder,” said Miranda. “It could be a third party honouring their dying wishes. A ghoulish accomplice; except what would he — or possibly she — have done with the heads?”
“Could have been separate acts,” said the policewoman. “They could have died embracing; then someone stole the heads for souvenirs and sealed the remaining remains in the wall.”
“‘The young in one another’s arms,’” said Morgan, delivering the phrase in quotation marks, catching up to her previous statement.
“Yeats. He wasn’t talking about dying, Morgan. He was talking about sex.” Miranda cast a conspiratorial glance at the young policewoman.
Morgan began compiling a list of doomed lovers in his mind, from Hero and Leander to Sean Penn and Madonna. Himself? No. Doomed elevated something that was simply sad.
The young woman seemed in no hurry to show off her charges, and for Miranda and Morgan it was a matter of pacing.
“So where’re you from?” Morgan asked.
The officer flushed with anger. Miranda blanched. In an immigrant society you never ask people of colour where they’re from. You either know, or it’s not your concern.
“I’d guess southwestern Ontario,” Morgan blithely continued. “Down past Waterloo County — that’s where Miranda’s from. Do you have a name?”
“Naismith. My family is from Halifax. Africville. Until they tore it down. I thought you were figuring maybe Jamaica. Dat girl, man, her come from de islands?”
The Caribbean cadence was derisive, but Morgan wasn’t sure if she was mocking him or herself. That was the point, thought Miranda.
“Africville? United Empire Loyalists.”
“Good stock, as they say in the people trade. We predate the Loyalists. Freed-men, before the Revolution, when Halifax was still called Chebucto by the Mi’kmaq. But I grew up within sight of Detroit; we’re not from Africville anymore.”
“And went to the University of Windsor,” said Morgan, trying to connect.
“The University of Western Ontario. Where I was rushed by the African Club, the Afro-American Student Coalition, the West-Indian Association, the Moorish-American Movement. La Societé Franco-Afrique, you name it.”
“Nothing Canadian?” said Morgan, unsure whether that was a good thing or bad. That is the point, thought Miranda. It was both.
“Nothing Canadian and black; they were mutually exclusive. I could be professionally black or honourary white. That was it! I was in demand socially by every white group on campus so they could pretend we were exactly the same.”
“Cursed by the colour-blind,” said Miranda.
“You’ve got it,” said the young woman. “If you think invisibility is a bitch, try being the object of tolerance.”
“So,” Morgan asked, carefully, “is Toronto — the most cosmopolitan city in the world, as they say — any better?” He was fascinated by how much attitude she revealed, and how little was shown of what she actually felt.
“Well, sir, here I’m an ethnic minority. Before I was just a minority. You tell me.”
Blowing steam across the top of his coffee, Morgan lapsed into personal reflection. He had never been invisible but he had certainly been isolated. By choice? Is it ever by choice?
Listening to the silence, Miranda realized that from the moment the front door opened she had been aware the young woman was black. She had admired her dark complexion, her gleaming hair, her bold face. Miranda was suddenly uncomfortable, knowing she would not have catalogued the features of a white officer unless the person was either extremely homely or outrageously beautiful.
Their eyes connected and for a brief moment each woman looked into the depths of the other, each at a loss as to what was revealed.
“What have you done for a toilet?” Miranda asked. “I see most of the plumbing is gone.”
“Haven’t had to. But I figure I’d just go outside.”
The two women pushed at the back door, ratcheting it open against the drifted snow, and Miranda stepped out. She was back before the officer had even poured herself a refill.
“That,” said Miranda, “was not pleasant.”
“But quick,” said Morgan.
The two women chatted for a while, sitting at the Arborite table, nursing their coffees. Morgan, standing, leaned against a counter, grinding his soles on the floor. He sat down. The women tried to open their conversation, to make it inclusive, but he only listened, and periodically glanced at the ceiling, trying to envision the macabre scenario overhead.
Miranda looked at her partner over the rim of her cup. She felt almost sorry for him. Delay somehow relieved his guilt for wanting to subvert professional disinterest and plunge into the Gothic depths of what promised to be a really good story.
“I’m going up,” he finally announced, rising to his feet again.
The muted groan of his chair against the battered linoleum startled them. A faint moaning echo reprised as the other two slid out their chairs and joined him shuffling through rubble as they made for the stairs.
chapter two
The Room Upstairs
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 wo
uld 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 pers
onalities.
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?”
