Grave Doubts

by John Moss

  “I mean my home. I am looking forward to seeing you.”

  “Yeah,” said Morgan. “Talk to you later.”

  He looked around. He was driving along the edge of a town. It’s big enough, it must be Collingwood, he thought. He pulled into the Tim Hortons for coffee and another doughnut at the takeout window. He thought of a sandwich, but the anxiety running in tremors through his entire body distorted his appetite. Doughnuts fill voids other foods can’t even find.

  Odd, he thought. Doughnuts and cars. In Toronto he ate the occasional pastry and yet, out here in the country, driving, they seemed as indispensable as gasoline. He looked down at the fuel gauge. He was not used to either doughnuts or cars. His stomach felt bloated and the gas tank read empty.

  Miranda ran into the police station and explained who she was — a Toronto detective and a friend of Peter Singh’s. No problem, said the woman at the desk. Where was she off to? Miranda explained they were going to Tobermory, and behind schedule. The woman shrugged and waved her away, telling her to have a good day.

  On the outskirts of Owen Sound, Morgan got through to Alex Rufalo and pulled over to the side of the road so he could hear better. He had already called Peter Singh, asking him to meet him downtown.

  “I’ve got Officer Naismith’s file, Morgan. It looks straightforward to me. Three years on the force. Good record. Good future. She’s got a degree from the University of Western Ontario, comes from the Chatham area between Windsor and Sarnia. Nothing stands out in her background.”

  “What’s her degree?”

  “Honours sociology. Oh, and honours art history. Double honours — very impressive.”

  “Art history?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sociology?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you have her transcript?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lots of psychology courses? Courses in deviance?”

  “Yeah, not unusual for a cop.”

  “Art history? Does she have a credit for a course abroad?”

  “Double credit. One art, one art history. Universitat degli Studi di Firenze.”

  “I didn’t know you could speak Italian, boss.”

  “I read it. I don’t understand it. What’s this all about, Morgan?”

  “At this point I’m trying to connect with Miranda. I’m worried about her.”

  “Anything I can do from here?”

  “No, it’s okay. I’m closing in. Anything else in the Naismith file?”

  “That’s about it. Says her parents were undertakers. Don’t know how that connects to police work, growing up in a funeral home.”

  “Undertakers?”

  “Yeah. Looks like both parents were in the business.”

  “Gotta go, chief. I’ll call for backup if I need it.”

  “Good. I’m together with my wife.”

  “You’re what?” Morgan was flustered. Why on earth would the superintendent be telling him this?

  “She’s a lawyer. We negotiated a settlement. Based on renewing our wedding vows. Thought you’d like to know. Everyone at headquarters has been talking about it for months. So there you are.”

  “Well, thanks for sharing. I’ll get back to you after I find Miranda.”

  “Morgan —”

  “Gotta go.”

  Past Wiarton the road to Tobermory runs up the spine of the escarpment. On the west side the land falls away gently but to the east it plunges dramatically into the depths of Georgian Bay. Miranda had settled into the back seat and could not hear the sporadic conversation between Alexander and Rachel clearly enough to participate without leaning forward and shouting. The van needed work on its muffler and a good tune-up. Alexander’s mind ran to less practical matters.

  Miranda ruminated on what she knew about Wiarton. It had the familiar feel of an Ontario town, declaring itself a good place to live through civic pride, with floral displays and refuse containers in abundance. There were numerous signs proclaiming it the home of Wiarton Willie. Pennsylvania has Punxsutawney Phil, Ontario has Willie. Once a year on Groundhog Day, animals otherwise treated as vermin are scrutinized as they search for their shadows to forecast the coming of spring. Every year spring comes, she thought. So far so good.

  She turned in her seat to survey Alexander’s scuba gear. She had seen compressed-air cylinders in the shed by the side door of his house, but he had only a single tank with him. There was also a box that must contain his regulator and a net bag with his BCD vest, fins, mask and snorkel, and other paraphernalia. She and Rachel had thrown in the gear that was strapped on the back of her car for safekeeping, and they each brought kits with bathing suits and towels.

  “Hey, you guys. I’ve got to stop for a minute.”

  The van pulled over and she clambered out and disappeared behind a line of cedars. She went through the motions of having a pee, but in fact she had quite suddenly felt claustrophobic in the back of the van and needed to get out for a moment. Rachel poked her way through the undergrowth, coming up beside her.

  “You all right?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah, you know, too much coffee.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  Miranda watched Rachel as she led their way back to the car. Why was she so abrupt? she wondered. She didn’t seem quite herself.

  When Morgan pulled into the Owen Sound police station, he was enormously relieved to see Peter Singh leaning against Miranda’s green Jag. His heart skipped a beat, however, when he saw the sombre look on Peter’s face and realized the young officer was not moving to greet him.

  “What’s the problem?” he demanded. “Where’s Miranda?”

  “She was here less than an hour ago.”

  “She didn’t call you?”

  “No. The desk officer said she was rushed.”

  “Damn it,” said Morgan.

  “How bad is the situation?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think she’s in immediate danger, but she could be.”

  “Can you explain?”

  “Yes. No. Was she with Pope and Rachel Naismith?”

  “I think so. Apparently she went off in a blue van.”

  “Where? Any idea.”

  “She said Tobermory. She said they were behind schedule.”

  “Was that her phrase? ‘Behind schedule’?”

  “Yes, I was told it precisely.”

  “Let’s go! What’s in Tobermory?”

  “There’s a toll ferry over to Manitoulin Island. From there you can drive across to the mainland above Lake Huron. If you want to go to the United States, you can go to the United States.”

  Morgan’s sense of Ontario geography beyond Toronto was sketchy. As they raced from Owen Sound toward Wiarton, Peter Singh laid it out for him as best he could with words and many hand gestures to represent water, shorelines, and the international boundary.

  “Why on earth would they want to catch a ferry?” Morgan demanded, as if an explanation was somehow Peter Singh’s responsibility as the geography specialist.

  “I really don’t know. But the ferry does not leave until mid-afternoon. We have plenty of time.”

  Morgan took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, and another, which came out like a sigh. She should be all right, then. We’ll get there, he thought, and bring her back with us. He relaxed a little and let his shoulders drop into a comfortable posture — he had been driving since the middle of the night with them tensed up virtually the whole time. He was exhausted. He pulled over and asked Peter Singh to take the wheel, then he slouched low in the seat and told the whole story, as much as he had figured out.

  “Why would Alexander Pope buy the old church?” Peter asked, trying to stitch in a loose thread.

  “I’ve been thinking about that,” said Morgan. “He must have known about the frescoes. He would know about Sister Marie Celeste and the pilgrims. He is a man enthralled with the dark side of mystery. My guess is he fully intended to create a miraculous apparition. He would revitalize
an old building but, more important, he would control the story. The resurrection of history in a context of fanatical faith. Can you imagine the satisfaction, creating a saint that even the Church might be forced to sanction? Extreme fraud. That’s what the man lives and dies for.”

  “And he substituted Shelagh Hubbard’s body for a saint’s bones?”

  “No, I think that was the work of Rachel Naismith.”

  “Really?”

  “If all three of them were lovers and immersed in passionate depravities, there must have been terrible conflicts among them.”

  “Why do you assume they were lovers?”

  “How else to explain the recurrent connection between Pope and Hubbard? Only love has the capacity to accommodate such sordid desires. You will find, Peter, in our business, where reason fails, love prevails. Sometimes it is the only explanation. And how else to account for the way Rachel was able to insinuate herself between them — proof in the Florence snapshots, proof in the forged accounts of her lovers’ atrocities?”

  “You think she came between them?”

  “Not in Florence, at least not at first. For a while they were probably a charming ménage à trois; she was seduced by the horrific allure of their demonic passion. At some point she had to have discovered the grotesque bond between them. It didn’t scare her away — it drew her closer. But life has a way of intruding on romance. I suspect they went their separate ways at the end of the summer. How else to account for the long delay until the Hogg’s Hollow murders?”

  “Maybe they went about murdering people by themselves,” said Peter Singh. “Maybe it was a love game. In the publicity surrounding unaccountable deaths they would recognize each other’s signature work. Or they would let each other know, if the murders weren’t discovered. It was a way of keeping in touch. It is interesting, you know.”

  Extreme as the possibility seemed, Morgan realized he could be right. He was thinking like him. “You see, I know how you think,” he heard the younger man say, as if he were reading his thoughts.

  A little flustered at what seemed an invasive prescience, Morgan silently pursued the notion of unsolved murder as an expression of love. Statistically, it would appear most murders were resolved, but in fact there was no way of being certain. Gangland slayings, domestic homicide, street killings, violent deaths by assassination, by spontaneous manslaughter, were relatively public. But how many murders were premeditated, executed, and never discovered? They happened. They did happen.

  “Could it be,” Peter Singh continued, “Dr. Hubbard discovered the other two had renewed their relationship? Perhaps that is so, and the result was murder.”

  “Ultimately her own,” said Morgan. “The horrors of the eternal embrace. That was her final love letter — an acknowledgement she knew about their betrayal; a warning, a threat, a farewell gesture. She devised an extravagant drama, intended to be fully accessible only to her former lovers. The headless corpses — another villain would have torn out the hearts, but Hubbard located passion in the brain. The heart is merely a pump to keep the brain flush with lust and the appropriate other bits engorged with blood. Her methods were extravagantly subtle — she knew their discovery would bring Alexander Pope onto the scene. She located the reveal where she could be fairly certain Rachel would be on duty. She revelled in the details.”

  “She was very good. She knew they would know it was her.”

  “The ring and the cross, those were for the benefit of the police, maybe for Miranda and me. Could she have known we’d be involved? It’s our kind of case. Whether she was thinking religion or Freud, she couldn’t resist the ring and the cross. Potent symbols of a romance fated to implode. They invited lovely speculation about motive, so long as we thought it was all in the colonial past. But she needed to have the historical story explode — it wouldn’t have worked if we hadn’t realized it was a fake. She needed Miranda and me as part of the story.”

  “But why the next phase? Why would Rachel Naismith kill her?”

  “To seize control of the story. Again, literally. Let’s say Hubbard’s extravaganza had its desired effect and drove a wedge of doubt, or fear, or envy, between Rachel and Alexander. What better way to rekindle a precarious relationship, especially if we’re right and he was trying to manufacture a miracle in Beausoleil. Give him a body smelling of violets, the illusion of sacrosanct flesh refusing corruption. The ironies run deep.”

  “Kill one lover as an act of devotion to the other.”

  “God forbid if Alexander Pope did not appreciate her efforts. If Pope felt threatened by Rachel’s extravagant play for the renewal of his affections, for whatever reason, their love would sour on a cataclysmic scale. Then imagine the two of them vying for the most horrific method of exterminating the other.”

  “And you think Miranda might be caught between them.” Morgan’s silent response chilled the air for a moment, then Peter Singh continued. “What happened to Sister Marie’s bones?”

  “What?”

  “If Rachel Naismith placed her rival in the crypt, what happened to the bones?”

  “They haven’t turned up. If there was a mouldering body, she might have hauled it away for secret burial. She was experienced with both: secrets and burials. Or she might have ground up the bones and mixed them into Pope’s plaster. Saint Marie Celeste literally embodied in her own image. It would be as if Rachel had written her invisible signature across his achievement.”

  “I think that is unlikely,” said Peter Singh. “Perhaps not. In any case, Officer Naismith must have known Shelagh Hubbard’s body would be recognized.”

  “Yes, she would be displacing Alexander Pope’s story with one equally as good, maybe better, except this one would be hers. Perhaps meant as a tribute to Pope but taken, I would imagine, as an affront.”

  “My goodness, competitive psychopaths.”

  “Psychopathic lovers.”

  “Deadly.”

  “Very.”

  By the time they passed through Wiarton, Peter felt he had a sufficient grasp of the situation to ask, “Can we arrest them?” His voice was tremulous with excitement.

  “No,” said Morgan. “Not unless, God forbid, they’re in the midst of another crime. To make a case, we’ll need a warrant to search his house.”

  “You said you already know what is there, in the house.”

  “But I am not supposed to know. Meanwhile, if Miranda’s okay, we don’t want to spook them. Not that there’s anywhere for them to run. The easiest place to keep track of fugitives from the city is in the wilderness.”

  “This is not wilderness, Morgan. It is countryside.”

  “If you’re from the city, it’s wilderness.”

  “The law is a most exciting field of endeavour,” said Peter, as if the idea had never struck him before.

  “Yes,” said Morgan, who had never been in doubt that it was.

  chapter seventeen

  Tobermory

  Alexander Pope wheeled the blue van down into the harbour area and pulled up abruptly by the red and white sign in front of the dive shop. There were not many boats to be seen but quite a few tourists were milling about, taking in the nautical ambience. The glass-bottom vessels would be out sightseeing by this time, while the sun was high in the sky and visibility was at its best, and the larger dive boats were out as well. Tied to the wharf across from the shop was a small trawler adapted for diving. It had a waterline platform attached to the transom and rails to hold on to, with a ladder that would flip down into the water at the dive site.

  When they entered the shop, a young man greeted them — obviously a diver earning his keep. He glanced at their dive credentials and told them their boat was ready to go.

  “You sure you don’t want a guide?” he asked.

  “I don’t mind, one way or the other,” Alexander responded, turning to Miranda and Rachel for input.

  Miranda was about to say she would welcome the guide when Rachel spoke up, pleasantly but firmly refusing
the young man’s offer. “I’ve been here before. Wrecks aren’t a problem. We’re not going deep, no penetration. Just give us a good map.”

  “You look familiar. Not many —.” He stopped.

  “Not many black women diving in Tobermory?”

  Miranda flinched. She had never heard Rachel play the race card before, not so obviously and without even a touch of irony. The young man turned a deep red.

  “No,” he mumbled. “Police. Not many cops come in here to dive. Usually they, you, make your own arrangements. I remember — you’re a policeman.”

  Rachel thrust her breasts out against the material of her T-shirt until Miranda thought the young diver’s eyes would pop.

  “Woman,” he amended. “Are you all cops?” The question was rhetorical: he was sure Miranda was, and assumed by his imperious bearing that Alexander must be as well. “The gear you’ll need is through here. Pay in advance. It’s good weather for diving. The trawler over there is gassed up, ready to go.”

  He was talking to Rachel. When they came in, he had assumed Alexander was in charge. There was no question, now. This was Rachel’s show.

  Morgan stared out the side window from his slouched position in the passenger seat. He looked at his watch. He gazed at the sky ahead. He turned to Peter Singh. “What time is that ferry?”

  “Not for a couple of hours.”

  Morgan sat up so fast the safety belt wrenched him around in his seat. “Then why the hurry? Why did she say she was behind schedule? What was the rush?”

  Peter Singh glanced over at him, then back at the road, then at Morgan again, expectantly, waiting for an answer.

  “How far are we from Tobermory?”

  “Thirty minutes, maybe forty.”

  “Let’s get moving.”

  “What are we suspecting?”

  “I am suspecting that they are not catching a ferry. They’re going scuba diving.”

  “They are what?”

  “They are going wreck-diving, underwater. Scuba, you know?”

  “I know what ‘scuba’ means, I am only surprised that they would be going to do that. Do you think she will be safe?”