Still Waters

by John Moss

  Was that why she had turned down the scholarship? She had tried to get away as far as possible. That meant joining the RCMP and loving a man, Jason Rodriguez in Ottawa, who couldn’t love her enough. Meanwhile, Griffin stayed on and earned a Ph.D. What a wasted mind, he thought. What a pathetic creep.

  Eleanor Drummond. He glanced down at the meal in front of him and pushed it away, retrieving only the toast, which he mouthed, dry, with a bit of coffee to wash it down. She had killed herself. She had wanted them to think she was murdered. She had needed them to think there was an intruder, an interloper in the scene, deus ex machina, an operative from outside the narrative. Put that together with Griffin’s murder. She had wanted them to think he was murdered, too. She had diverted them long enough to work out her own death. Simple. They were looking for something too complicated. Eleanor/Molly had known they wouldn’t see the trees for the forest.

  It made sense, yet her motivation defied comprehension. Why, why, why? Miranda would be able to shed light on this conundrum if he could ever find her.

  Knowing she should be conserving her physical resources but fearing, even more, that stasis invited the onset of death, Miranda paced back and forth in the darkness, not rapidly enough to force a sweat but sufficient to create a modest breeze as she moved. She had stripped to her underwear, keeping that on in morbid anticipation of being found dead, wanting to maintain a certain propriety in front of forensics, whatever her condition of degradation, and in front of Morgan, who always displayed an endearing curiosity about her undergarments. Once at the morgue, pretensions would collapse, of course, particularly after being here a while. Eleanor Drummond was the only corpse she had ever encountered whose beauty seemed enhanced by death. And they had gotten her before she was cold. Miranda hoped she didn’t get Ellen Ravenscroft. Anyone but that marauding coquette, her old and dear friend and acquaintance. She figured the cooling air was keeping fluids inside her, though she knew, in fact, from her goose bumps that she was losing water through her skin, which was why she felt a chill.

  Sometimes she slept. She was painfully numb, her lips were bleeding, and she had cramps, but she kept moving when she could, occupying her space like a prowling animal rehearsing the limits of its cage. It had to be Monday or even Tuesday by now.

  In the absolute darkness, words seemed tangible, as solid as flesh. Eleanor, Molly, Jill, Miranda — she shuffled through names in her mind. Griffin? Had he written her a letter when he knew he was dying? But it was unlikely he had known that, especially if Jill’s second-hand diagnosis of sleep apnea was a factor. Could he have caused his own death? Not with enough certainty to write Miranda beforehand.

  She could envision the manila envelope. It had been recycled — at least the label had been stuck on where another label had been removed. Lots of people reused envelopes. Millionaires? Maybe. Then, as Miranda studied the postmark in her mind, she thought perhaps it was the cancellation date that was being reused. She saw the deep creases in the envelope and realized it had been stuffed through her mail slot. The postman had a key. He always opened the whole panel of boxes and put the mail in without scrunching it up. Even her Victoria’s Secret catalogues, which the postman obviously thumbed through, came out folded but not creased. That meant the envelope had been delivered by someone else.

  Miranda lost track of the darkness. Slumping down on the chair, she continued her interior discourse. People didn’t send posthumous mail. So who had access to his stationery? Who knew about his souvenir clippings? Who knew about her, could draft a document, witness it, and forge his signature? And then, to be authentic, in her own spidery handwriting label the envelope because she was, after all, his amanuensis, his accomplice and wicked familiar.

  Miranda was ecstatic. She would have to discuss this with Morgan. He would like amanuensis.

  The passageway light suddenly flashed through the door. Pressing close to the glass, she saw a shadow slip by, probably Eugene Nishimura again. She overrode the reluctance of muscles and joints that had begun to seize up as her body shut down, lurched back across the room, and collapsed onto her hands and knees, feeling for the bedpan in the murky gloom. Dumping its contents on the floor, she struggled to her feet and scrambled as fast as she could manage back to the door. She held the bedpan up where she could see the polished steel gleam and aligned it carefully, trying to mirror the light that penetrated her window back into the corridor, tilting the pan gently to make the beam dance. Peering around the bedpan through the glass, she waited for an interminable time. Then she spied a shadow moving across the opposite wall and cast her frail beacon against the stone and brick at eye level. But the shadow disappeared, and the light was suddenly extinguished. Miranda threw the bedpan into the darkness, strode over to her bed, lay back exhausted, and allowed herself for the first time to let tears drain precious fluids from the corners of her eyes.

  When Morgan arrived back at Robert Griffin’s house, Eugene Nishimura was already on the scene. A woman dressed in jeans and a sweater was with him. She introduced herself.

  “My name is Ikuko. You are Detective Morgan? I have come to see my husband’s mistress. She has many parts, all of them beautiful, like a geisha.”

  Morgan and Ikuko sat on the limestone parapet, talking and observing the fish, while her husband worked around the pool and inside the house.

  “I know that one is best,” observed Ikuko, pointing to the champion Kohaku when her husband was in the pump room. She lowered her voice to a whisper: “I like the Ochiba Shigura.”

  “Me, too,” said Morgan. “Do you speak Japanese?”

  “Oh, yes, I was born in Kyoto. I am issei, a true pioneer. My husband is yonsei. Our children are gosei when they will be born — old-style Canadian.”

  “Can you translate Ochiba Shigura?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Doesn’t it mean anything?”

  “Not in English.”

  “In Japanese.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Sometimes it is difficult to translate from one culture to another, Mr. Morgan.”

  Her husband came out, bringing food that he divided among the three of them. They each leaned over and hand-fed the more confident fish. The Ochiba Shigura came directly to Morgan, trying to shunt aside the Chagoi, which was voraciously mounting his half-closed hand. It gave up and swam to Ikuko where it ate delicately from her open palm tilted almost to water level.

  “Eugene,” Ikuko announced, “I do not like the Takai Kohaku best. I like the Ochiba Shigura.”

  Miranda sat up suddenly, coming into consciousness in an upright position. Words tumbled through her mind. She was in mid-argument, anticipating the next twist in a convoluted rhetoric. “Thirdly,” she muttered with a throaty rasp into the darkness, “number three, Morgan, is why?” The words sounded less convincing outside her head where they floated hollowly in the thick air and dissipated into the darkness. “My third point …” she continued sub-vocally, trying to recover her composure, knowing illusion was everything in a debate and she had to seem to be in command of her inner voice. What were points one and two? “My third point, Morgan …” she ventured, a little reassured by the sound of his name reverberating inside her skull. “Morgan, the tertiary element to my deductive argument is —”

  She must have passed out from the effort of sitting up, because when she became aware again she was sprawled across the bed with her knees on the floor. They were bruised as if she had fallen in a posture almost of prayer.

  Without moving she drifted into a dream where everything was bright and beautiful but nothing was distinct or familiar.

  Flung suddenly back into wakefulness, she crawled onto the bed and stretched out. She had to think. If she could think through the pain, the pain would leave.

  One — it was as though she could see a number one shaped like a child’s giant birthday candle. Eleanor Drummond had come here to monitor Robert Griffin’s proclivities for nasty behaviour. She was his conscience; he had none of his own. She
needed Jill to see his death as righteous, to restore innocence to her daughter. Ambiguous! To prove Jill’s innocence to herself.

  Miranda rehearsed the scenario so that she could explain it to Morgan. Time passed.

  Two. The number hovered over her head, crudely formed like a numeral made from a twisted balloon. The letter authorizing her as executor was delivered posthumously. Eleanor must have known she would figure that out and go along with it, anyway! The dead woman had known things about her even she didn’t fathom.

  Number three must be coming up! Miranda waited for a numeral to appear. A constellation of stars hovered in the middle distance, forming the number. An image of three crosses on Calvary loomed into focus in the guise of a Roman numeral. Threes swarmed her like the aggressive graphics on Sesame Street, then faded to black.

  Okay, she thought. Eleanor had recognized Miranda when Morgan and she were beside Griffin’s body. The woman had already planned to die. She had set up a scene where Griffin might have been reading, then had impulsively, on a morbid whim, walked out to the pond and ended it all. She had seeded obvious notions of suicide in his case, but why? So the police would suspect murder. Later they’d do the same when her body was discovered. Terrible crime, a double homicide. Distasteful perhaps, but not a disgrace. One problem: how could Eleanor guarantee her daughter’s inheritance?

  And then Jill’s mother saw Miranda!

  Miranda searched the darkness for numbers, but there were only a few strands of dazzling red surging against the insides of her eyelids.

  What if they had driven Griffin to it?

  No, Morgan, listen! You can’t leave me out of the equation.

  And what if Molly’s transformation into Eleanor Drummond was the beginning of murder? Perhaps until then he could have justified rape as a response to his victim’s desires, the voyeur seduced by his vision. But she had backed him against the wall, the way she had Roger Poole, the man who beat up his kids. Instead of retiring, perhaps into fantasy, Griffin had turned to something more sinister — a metamorphosis of his own. He again had the power. What if she had known that and believed it was her fault?

  A brief thought snapped like a whip through her mind. The horror, that summer, was learning she had the capacity to make a man monstrous! That was what she couldn’t forgive herself for.

  They — Griffin and Eleanor — had sustained each other by mutual hatred, but Eleanor had another life. He had only this dungeon and his beloved koi.

  Miranda doubted they were lovers.

  He had needed Eleanor’s soul. Dried walnuts?

  No, Morgan, no. That’s your expression, but no. The soul is whatever’s inside that gives a human being moral dimension, like air in a balloon. You can’t see it, but it’s there. Don’t give up on souls because you’ve given up on God.

  Griffin had needed Eleanor’s soul because he didn’t have one. And after he finished with their daughter, he knew Eleanor’s soul would be gone, as well, and it would be time to die.

  And he did finish with her, with all his victims. Perhaps because of their enfeeblement or their desperate affection. Maybe because they were no longer innocent; no longer incarnations of his virgin mother.

  You check, Morgan. I bet she died just before all this started, before his watching got out of hand. You check it for me, okay?

  And he had left them in here, turned up the controls. They had died by desiccation, their juices gone, their corpses dried to the bone. This was an execution chamber. How many had died here between Molly and her? Was she the first?

  Oh, my God, Morgan, I’m tired!

  Miranda could feel the overwhelming rage rising within her, and with bitter irony she realized she no longer had enough strength to sustain it.

  Eleanor had wanted them to think they were lovers. That was strategic. Better her daughter was the offspring of a wealthy eccentric and his mistress than sired by a serial killer. Better they were lovers than she was the keeper of his conscience, and a failure at that.

  Jill’s mother had counted on Miranda being compelled to understand her connection with Griffin. She had sent her daughter to the morgue. She was sure Molly Bray and Eleanor Drummond would merge when Miranda met her daughter. The dead woman had known everything about her. She was a knowledge broker — that was her power, and her downfall.

  She was right, Morgan. Jill is my responsibility. I’ll look after Molly Bray’s daughter as if she were my own.

  Morgan tried sporadically through the day to locate Miranda, pacing his initiatives to keep his rising apprehension in check. When she didn’t turn up at Robert Griffin’s house before Nishimura and Ikuko left, he went inside and used the telephone. His cell phone was back in his kitchen where it usually was when it wasn’t with his pager in his desk at headquarters. He called her cell phone, he called her at headquarters. He called her at home and listened to her voice mail greeting.

  When Nishimura came to the door, Morgan looked up from where he was comfortably ensconced in the wingback chair and explained he would wait for Miranda here. She had said nothing to suggest she would come to Griffin’s, but he didn’t know where else to look.

  He dozed awkwardly in the chair, wanting, when she walked in, to seem as if he had been thinking with his eyes closed. When he awoke and glanced at his watch, it was mid-afternoon. He called the office again. No one had seen Miranda. Maybe she was sick, they told him. He knew that wasn’t it. She would have called him. Morgan thought of trying to call someone in Waldron to see if she had gone up there on family business, but where? He tracked down her sister in Vancouver, and she said they hadn’t been in touch, but if Miranda did call she would let him know that he was asking about her. Morgan gave her Griffin’s number and said she should phone him collect. He expected no resolution from that quarter, but it amused him to be building up the outstanding balance on Griffin’s bill. Miranda would have to deal with it. She would be exasperated but tolerant.

  Morgan walked through the corridor and into the labyrinthine crypt under the oldest part of the house, heading directly to the pump room where the door opened easily. He surveyed the elaborate convolutions of pipes and tanks, went over and picked up the rag draped across the tap. He knew what a gusset was and tossed the rag aside.

  Striding out to the main passageway again, he turned and stopped at the wine cellar door without noticing there was a key in the lock. He leaned forward to peer through the glass but could see nothing, not even his shadowed reflection. Returning to the main passage, he made his way to the door of the tunnel connected to the de Cuchilleros estate, pushed it open, and stared into the darkness. Another dead end. He returned to his chair.

  Morgan was too restless to settle for very long, and after a while he rose, put on his rumpled jacket, though it wasn’t cool in the cellars, and picked up a pewter candle holder. Taking the Zippo from his pocket, he lit the candle and went back to the tunnel entrance. There was an imperceptible breeze that made the flame flicker as he entered the darkness. The tunnel took several abrupt turns, and Morgan felt increasingly claustrophobic. Then a turgid movement of air snuffed out the candle, and for a moment he froze. The floor was suddenly a dark abyss, as if he might step off the earth into a terrible void.

  The lighter dropped when he took it from his pocket and clattered against the cobbles. As he squatted slowly toward the sound where it had landed, warm wax dripped onto his wrist. In surprise he released his grip on the candle holder and was startled by the resonant thud of pewter on stone as it fell to the floor. Shifting to his knees, he made a sweep through the darkness with his hand and almost immediately brushed against the holder, but the candle was gone. He was amused and annoyed at his fear. His fingers closed around the lighter, and he rose to his feet. His mind, even before a flame leaped into the darkness, summoned an image of Jill at the morgue.

  Locating the candle, he relit it, carefully shielded the flame with his cupped hand, and moved forward inside the flickering aura of light until he was confronted by two heavy
oak doors, one of which opened with considerable effort onto a stone stairway. At the top of the steps he discovered he was in the de Cuchilleros carriage house, which was attached to the main house and was used as a garage. Descending, he tried the other door, which swung freely as if the hinges had been oiled, and found himself staring out into the widow’s back garden.

  Morgan was strangely unnerved by his feelings of violation as a trespasser, and he returned through the tunnel. He had been enthralled by the cellars and passageways, but now it all seemed more sinister, perhaps because for a moment the darkness had closed around him like the walls of a grave.

  Before going home he went down to police headquarters, did a search of hospital admissions with no result, and finally decided Miranda had gone off on a fling. When he got home, he sat in front of the television, angry at her and worried. If she was touring the Muskoka colours, it was a dumb way to do it, not telling him first. No one at headquarters had showed any concern. Alex Rufalo had pointed out that she was on compassionate leave, so she could do what she wanted.

  Morgan fell asleep sprawled across his sofa. When he woke up, the television was flickering grey. He shivered while he stood beside the toilet to pee. Weighed down with the excessive gravity of early morning, he struggled to get up the stairs. After he crawled into bed, he dreamed of autumn leaves falling on still water.

  Miranda awakened in bone-wracking pain. She tried to raise herself, but her body was a dead weight. Her mind seemed uncannily lucid, her mental world separate from its violated container, reaching to float free. Her body was holding her back, urging her that it was time perhaps to leave it behind.