John Moss - Grave doubts

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?”

“No, I do not.”

Rachel cast off as Alexander revved up the engine and Miranda pushed them away from the wharf. Miranda was used to outboards at camp and dive boats in the Caribbean but she had not actually been in a boat this size and was surprised at the stability. It had probably been a saltwater vessel, she thought, retired to a freshwater job that seemed a trifle effete in comparison, after years having decks awash with the guts of innumerable fish.

Although Rachel had never mentioned previously diving at Tobermory, the other two accepted that she was directing their dive on the basis of earlier experience. They had decided on single-tank dives; they had three cylinders of compressed air aboard, including the one Alexander had brought from home. They would pick their site carefully, away from the bigger dive boats. Georgian Bay water was notoriously frigid, even in June, but if they stayed relatively shallow they could dive for an hour, even more if they were exceptionally efficient on air, although even with heavy-gauge wetsuits an hour might be more than enough. If they got too chilled, they could forego the second dive or cut it short.

Once out of sight of the harbour, Rachel directed the trawler toward an isolated area down the coast. Miranda looked back at the shoreline where the Niagara Escarpment, extending from the Falls far to the south, shambled into the bay. It was rugged and elusive, sometimes seeming closer than it was and sometimes farther away. No wonder so many ships met their doom in these waters. In a storm this would be a treacherous place, and even on a placid day in June, the water seemed ominous. Miranda had only been diving in the tropics, where the translucent surface reveals myriad depths of blues and greens. Here, the surface was like polished ebony, as if the bottom were a dark secret. So many have drowned here, going down with their ships, Miranda thought. She was used to diving amidst living coral and bright-coloured fish, not among wreckage haunted only by the drowned ghosts of the dead.

They found a marker buoy flying the diagonal red-on-white flag, and swinging the stern downwind they tied off securely and lowered the ladder into the water. Quietly, they slipped into their gear, helping each other to safety-check valves, regulators, buckles, and BCD vests. Buoyancy Control Devices; was there a sport anywhere with more acronyms? Miranda wondered, trying to distract herself. Each checked the others’ auxiliary regulators and mouthpieces to make sure in an emergency a buddy could breathe from the same tank. The octopus, she thought. At least octopus is descriptive — a metaphor, not an acronym. They conferred about weights, and trusted Rachel’s judgment based on her previous experience in fresh water. They needed to dive heavy to compensate for the buoyancy of the thick suits. Better too much weight, she said, than too little. You can increase buoyancy by adding air to your BCD vest, but if you’re too light, you’ll be fighting to stay down the whole dive.

Rachel had a small dive bag that she attached to her belt, along with one of the flashlights the dive shop provided. Miranda wondered where the bag came from when she saw Rachel take it from her knapsack. They had not come north expecting to dive. “Whatcha got there?” she asked casually, trying not to further arouse the uncharacteristic crankiness Rachel had been showing for the last hour or so. Miranda realized that her friend was likely apprehensive about the dive, just as she was, and that’s how she was dealing with anxiety, just as Miranda was coping by being exceptionally quiet.

“Just stuff, don’t worry,” said Rachel, and she smiled disarmingly.

Miranda felt reassured. At this point in any diving adventure, Miranda found nerves were always a little on edge as the excitement mounted, and a display of companionable affection was welcome. She observed Alexander. He, too, was inordinately quiet. For the moment, Miranda felt a renewed bond with him, perhaps because they both seemed to be enacting a scenario that was primarily Rachel’s design.

They stepped down onto the dive platform, moving awkwardly under the heavy burden of their tanks, their limbs constricted by the thick, clammy, synthetic material of their wetsuits. They wriggled into their fins, pumped a bit of air into their vests, adjusted their masks and checked to see their snorkels were in place, slipped on thick gloves, then put in their mouthpieces. Rachel immediately took a broad stride forward and splashed into the water, her head barely going under. Miranda followed and Alexander came last.

Miranda was astonished by the slap of cold against the exposed flesh of her face and even more by the crystal clarity of the water hidden under the dark surface. She felt an icy trickle track the length of her spine between wetsuit and skin, but looking down at the panoramic scene spread out below them in glimmering detail she forgot her discomfort.

Raising her head for the last time in open air, she exchanged excited grins with the other two divers, despite mouths jammed with breathing apparatus, and each diver gave the okay signal followed by a thumbs-down sign. They slowly began their descent along the sloped length of the mooring line. At ten feet Miranda stopped, squeezed her nose through her mask, and blew until a slight popping in her ears relieved the pressure, and then she hovered, surveying the wreck below them. She felt a familiar thrill spread through her body as she slowly descended, pausing periodically to clear her ears, eyes shifting from wonderment at the wreck below to monitor her companions’ progress, ensuring that they stayed within easy reach of each other.

Twenty minutes south of Tobermory, Peter Singh asked Morgan, “What is the significance that her parents were morticians?”

“Rachel? I’m sure most kids of funeral directors grow up excessively normal. It’s almost de rigueur. But it seems likely Rachel was exposed as a child to the arts of embalming and preparing corpses for public display in ways that have shaped her life ever since. She acquired skills and a fascination with death, the way a lawyer’s kid will become a classroom advocate and end up as an adult serving hard time for manipulating the limits of power. Or a politician.”

“My goodness, I am glad my father was a grocer!”

“Grocers’ kids become cops.”

“Actually, he was a lawyer, himself, in Punjab, but that is another story.” After a few moments, when all they could hear was the hum of the tires on pavement, he asked, “Do you think Rachel could have killed the Hogg’s Hollow couple in Professor Shelagh Hubbard’s farmhouse? Is there any possibility?”

“Strong circumstantial evidence plus DNA ties Hubbard, herself, to those two. She almost certainly brought the colonial clothes from England; she arranged the corpses just so — ”

“Strangers in an eternal embrace. That really is a wicked notion.”

“Let’s say Rachel and Alexander recognized Hubbard’s grisly tableau at Hogg’s Hollow as a signature crime,” Morgan continued. “They were supposed to. But there was a problem: they would suspect that Miranda and I, and you, might eventually resolve the mystery and find it led back, one way or another, to them — an eventuality they preferred to avoid. So they created the counterfeit journals together. Rachel had the talent — she was a genius with pens and paper. Pope supplied the details of the London murders. He would, of course, know them intimately. And they adjusted the narrative chronology to coincide with Shelagh’s tenure at the museum.”