John Moss - Grave doubts

“The name’s familiar,” said Miranda. “A short poet; rhyming couplets; a gardener.” What else, she wondered? “Didn’t he say ‘brevity is the soul of wit’?”

“No.”

“No?”

“Shakespeare said that. Pope said ‘Wit is the lowest form of humour.’”

“He must have been having a bad day. This is another Pope, I take it.”

“This one lives in Port Hope. I asked him to meet us. I didn’t think he’d be here already.”

They paused at the door. Morgan’s guest had obviously gone in.

“Do you remember? We talked about this guy in Yorkville.”

“Last summer, in the coffee house. The architect.”

“The ultimate expert in colonial house restoration and the simulation of rustic antiquities.”

“‘The simulation of rustic antiquities’! Sometimes you talk in quotations. Does he write poetry?”

“If you ask him nicely he might pen you a few short lines.”

“Perhaps about corpses and crypts.”

When they opened the door, standing immediately inside with his back to them was a man who in fact was exceptionally tall and quite angular. He was wearing a Fair Isle sweater that had once been a work of art and now threatened to disintegrate if he moved suddenly — which, by his current posture, seemed unlikely.

Without turning around, the man said, “She won’t let me in, Mr. Morgan. This woman seems ready to draw her weapon and I’m not properly armed. Do you suppose you could help?”

Obscured by his lanky frame, Rachel Naismith was revealed by her voice. “Everything is under control, Detectives. He insisted on entering without authorization.”

She edged around so that Alexander Pope had to step into the living-room rubble to get out of her way.

“He’s tall as God, but not as convincing. I invited him to stand very still and he complied. Says he’s here on your invitation. Refused to wait in his van.”

“I saw no reason to remain outside,” he said. “I’m assuming you outrank her, Detective Morgan. Do tell her to stand easy. I’ve never been at a crime scene before, but even here I would hope common civility applies.” Morgan smiled. Here was someone totally comfortable with the persona he chose to project to the world, arbitrary as it was. His intonation and syntax were vaguely English, yet Canadian-born. In a few brief sentences he showed the residual inflection of a genuinely colonial sensibility. Once we were British, thought Morgan. Some still are.

Miranda gazed up at the man in admiration. Everything about him was authentic, she thought. His precarious sweater, his worn corduroy pants, his steel-toed workboots unlaced at the ankle, his three-day beard, and his unkempt steel-grey hair all went together with a fine eye for texture and colour. He held himself proud — he was immaculately clean, his clothes were well-cared-for, despite their deteriorating condition. He could have stepped off the pages of a women’s magazine — the splendid model of an aging bohemian.

She looked at Officer Naismith, who was monitoring her observations. Alexander Pope had moved in the space of a foot or so from the policewoman’s jurisdiction to Morgan’s, gaining his freedom. “What are you doing here, Rachel? Have you been here all along?”

“Yes,” she said. “I got triple shifted — I’m on my second time ’round the clock. Who is this guy?”

For no apparent reason, Morgan led Pope through the kitchen, where he mumbled something about avoiding the coffee, then back past the women out to the stairs, which they ascended one at a time. The lanky stranger had to stoop to avoid cracking his head on the stringer.

“C’mon,” Miranda said to Rachel Naismith in a conspiratorial tone, “Let’s see what our friend has to say for himself. And note: the bodies are not old! There’s foul play afoot, as they say, and it’s not ancient history.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Amazing, eh?”

“Then — ”

“We don’t know. Who they are, how they died, how they got sealed behind plaster, who did it, why, who wrote the script… We don’t know.”

When they entered the room, Miranda was disconcerted to find the bodies gone. They were inextricably a part of the scene in her mind. Otherwise, the room was bright and airy, quite unlike the illuminated darkness of the night before. It seemed almost cheerful, despite the rubble and dust.

“Miranda,” said Morgan, standing between her and the tall man, “This is Alexander Pope.”

“I’ve always admired your poetry.”

“Thank you.”

“And this is Detective Miranda Quin. One n.”

“Must be from Waterloo County. An Ontario Quin.”

“And this is Officer Naismith — ”

“Whom I have already met. Delighted,” he said, bowing slightly. She regarded him warily, lifted her lip in a feigned snarl, and bowed in return. They shared a smile between them.

“The pleasure was mine, Mr. Pope. I’ve always admired your bulls.” No one got the joke. “Papal bulls? Encyclicals? Pronouncements? Don’t you hate that? It’s been a long night.”

“It is four-thirty-five,” Alexander said. “In the afternoon. Saturday. March, I believe.”

“If you want to go, Officer Naismith, we’ll cover,” Morgan offered. “You need some downtime.”

“Hardly,” she said. “But I’ll heat up some coffee if you’d like. I’ve still got a bit left.”

“No thanks,” said the other three simultaneously.

“Now, Mr. Morgan,” said Alexander Pope. “You said on the telephone there were anomalies here. You found two bodies in this closed-off closet, except for their heads, which fetched up in the laundry chute. I am to understand the dead couple were in an intimate embrace, rather in spite of mutual decapitation. I suppose there was a third party involved. Someone contrived what purported to be an ancient crime, but it seems it was not. And you want my opinion about what, precisely?”

There was a touch of the carnivalesque in the air. Pope was relishing his role as forensic antiquarian, Rachel was giddy from sleep deprivation, Miranda was distracted by lingering sensuality that refused to coalesce around particular memories or desire. And Morgan was happy. He had been drawn out of winter lethargy by a macabre spectacle so wondrously devised, where the anonymous victims were dramatis personae and the mysteries of death itself were on theatrical display.

The transition to serious work was abrupt. Alexander took out a Swiss Army knife and pried off a small slab of plaster from the edge of the hidden closet. He set the plaster on the floor and gently crushed it under the ball of his foot, then leaned down with surprising grace for such a tall and angular man and retrieved a few remnants of dust-dry powder and strands of fibre. He turned to the wall cupboard that was leaning against a pile of splintered lath, squatted down, and examined it closely. He smiled appreciatively, turned it over, and scrutinized the back, fingering the bolts that had been embedded in a stringer running between the studs of the original door frame. He drew a penlight out of his hip pocket and entered the closet, disappearing in the sudden darkness as he moved under the eaves. He emerged and walked over to the laundry chute, stuck his hand in with the flashlight, then squeezed his head through the restricted opening and looked down, then up. He extricated himself, rose to his full height, and smiled beatifically.

“Someone has done remarkably fine work,” he pronounced. “There’s a paradox, though. Everything has been meticulously contrived to seem in keeping with the age of the house. The plaster is a good imitation, slaked lime with horsehair binding, aged well, and layered with paint and paper. A lot of thought went into this project. The only woodwork that shows — the baseboard across the bottom where the door had been — is authentic. I assume the culprit took it from one of the other rooms. The filler, the paint, and the blending are spot on. But the inside of the closet has been sealed with a contemporary potion — Polyfilla, I expect.