John Moss - Grave doubts

“Cuba?”

“No.” He paused, a little self-conscious. He wondered if he had chosen Rapa Nui for bragging rights. I can’t be that superficial, he thought, and responded aggressively, “Easter Island.”

“Wonderful,” she said. “Wow, are you lucky. I’ve actually applied for a postdoctoral fellowship to study the moai culture. How does a tiny isolated island mirror historical procedures in the rest of the world where social evolution was virtually contagious? Neat, eh? I need to get out of the library; I want to go and commune with the stone. Try writing that up as a research proposal.”

Morgan beamed.

“Of course, I could be wrong,” she continued. “The historical parallels might be imposed by outsiders like me. In which case, I publish something on the limits of anthropology, about cultural imperialism and stuff like that.”

“We’ll compare notes when you get back,” said Morgan, realizing immediately how pretentious that must sound, given that he had travelled as a tourist and she was armed with years of research and the analytic instruments of her discipline. “You’ll love it there,” he said. “It’s magic.” He could not help himself and went on. “The people are descendents of the moai; the statues and the petroglyphs and the Rongorongo are ancestral.”

She grinned. She knew what the word Rongorongo meant. “You’ve been reacting to Thor Heyderdahl,” she said.

“Yeah, and a few others.”

“We’ll talk when I get back. If I go. I really know nothing about the place except as a heritage site. How long were you there?”

“Ten days, plus two each way. Two weeks, altogether. You want to go soon.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’ve met Inuit from Baffin Island who say that every family up there consists of a mother, a father, two kids, and an anthropologist. Right now kids ride horses through the streets of Hanga Roa — ”

“Streets?”

“Paved with brick. It’s a town. There are even a few taxis. Get there before the invasion, Joleen. Tourists arriving on luxury cruises are bussed around for a few hours of sightseeing; a couple of planeloads of visitors, mostly in transit from Chile to French Polynesia, stop over every couple of days; a handful of backpackers hang out, fired with imagination and a shortage of funds. The rest of the outsiders are academics! They’re there, studying the people, the language, the environment, the profusion of artifacts, the impact of tourism, you name it. It won’t be innocent for long. The Americans put in a high-grade landing strip a generation ago, in case they needed a rescue base for space shuttles in the empty Pacific. I understand Hawaii offers a summer course there for university credit. Go soon.”

“Thank you, Detective Morgan. God and the granting agencies willing, I shall. If you’re looking for Professor Birbalsingh, he’s working at home. It’s exam time and there’s a lot of marking to do. I think you might catch Dr. Hubbard in her office at the ROM. She’s heading out for her cottage later today. Marking. April is the cruellest month.”

“Breeding scholars out of discontent. What about you?”

“I have a teaching fellowship. Lots of marking. And I’m defending my dissertation next week. I’ve gotta go, but I’ll get in touch.”

“For sure,” he said, and he watched her stride off with daunting determination. As her slim figure disappeared around the corner of a building, he smiled to himself and felt oddly wistful.

Shelagh Hubbard’s door was open when he found her office after ambling among the Byzantine pleasures of the museum, each corridor leading to further treasures and delights, from explications of the ordinary to expositions of the wondrously arcane. Past the articulated bones of huge dinosaurs, dioramas of indigenous peoples, displays of early Canadian furniture, gemstones, and core samples, dead creatures in animated poses, the gleanings of empire from China and the Near East, he wandered, gradually closing in on the offices of resident scholars.

She was standing beside her desk, arranging piles of examination booklets and essays in a box.

“From this, you will determine their futures,” he said.

“Oh, hello,” she responded, turning with a radiant expression as if she had been expecting him. “How are you, Detective? I gather you’ve been away.”

“I’m back on the case.”

“That would be the case of the enduring embrace,” she declared, as if to establish that there was not another murder that might draw them together. “How are we doing?”

“Well enough, thank you.”

The blue of her eyes was intense and her hair was pulled back in a relaxed way so that her high cheekbones seemed softly beguiling. The fluorescent light of her office made her pale blond hair look ethereal. Far from the death’s head Miranda had seen in her visage, he found her alluring. She was wearing slacks and a modest sweater set that conflicted playfully with her extravagant figure. She seemed brazen and yet almost demure, an anomaly that Morgan found disconcerting.

“Is there anything you want in particular, Detective Morgan?”

“I’ve been wondering,” he paused. What had he been wondering? “If you’ve had second thoughts about how easily you and your colleagues were taken in.”

“And you, Detective, have you been wondering how you were taken in as well? It was brilliant, wasn’t it? They had us completely fooled.”

“They?”

“Do we know it was only one person?”

“No, we don’t, but it seems likely. Psychopathic depravity isn’t a group sport.”

“Not when the act is so well accomplished, I suppose. I find it all quite intriguing. Disturbing, of course, but very good drama.”

“You’ve worked with old bodies before.”

“Of various vintages, yes. With mummies from ancient Egypt, and mummified bodies in Mexico, and corpses drawn from Scandinavian bogs, and the preserved bodies of saints in sacred crypts. And they all look the same — very dead — and each one is different. Each negotiates the passage of time in its own grisly way. There was no reason to think our lovers were otherwise; they were simply themselves, the story of their deaths determined by their place of discovery. It was our job, in the circumstances, to determine how they had come to be as we found them, not why. That would be your job, I should think.”

“Now. Yes.”

“I understand your expert, the tall poet fellow, confirmed the mode of concealment was worthy of his own talents.”

“Do you know him?”

“Alexander Pope? By reputation. You must admit, the crime scene was a wondrous creation. Quite omnificent. An expression of extravagant vanity.”

Omnificent! he thought, repeating the word to himself. Such a lovely word.

“Vanity, for sure,” he said. “It was done for our appreciation.”

“You’re very solipsistic, Detective. Maybe it was done for private reasons and you, we, are accidental witnesses, incidental to a flawless performance.”

“People died.”

“Yes, they did. Life, or should we say death, imitates art. But art imitates nature. And nature, Detective, what does it imitate? God’s daydreams, I suppose.”

Morgan did not want to like her, but she had an interesting mind, and seemed unconcerned about the risks of thinking out loud.

“I appreciate your cooperation,” he said.

“Have I been cooperating?”

“I’ll keep you posted. We’ll crack this.”

“You and your partner, Detective Sergeant Quin. Why aren’t you a detective sergeant, Detective?”

“I am. If pressed, I can show my credentials.”

She was perched against the side of her desk. He was leaning against the wall inside her door. They could have been academic colleagues or old friends.