pages at random, moving backward and forward, taking in brief descriptive passages, drawings, recipes for plaster and paint, details of antique clothing, outlines of plot, lists that included a crucifix and a Masonic ring, a clinical accounting of the extermination of lives and the preparation of corpses to fulfill their grisly roles in a ghastly embrace. A sketch showed severed heads resting face to face, lips touching lips. They had missed that, when they had lifted the heads from the chute — that they were meant to be kissing. Miranda stood in the small archway leading into the central hall with Officer Singh beside her.
Morgan for a moment envisioned his former wife as the author. He imagined Lucy making notes about buying a freezer big enough for a body, adapting a sauna for murder and mummification. He could picture her planning out a tableau for her own amusement, arranging desiccated corpses like dolls in a depraved parody of affection. Separating bodies from heads — passion is in the mind, she would say. The body is merely the medium, the message is always obscure. He could read his former wife’s personality in the disinterested precision of Shelagh Hubbard’s records.
“Morgan, I think you’d better take a look at this one, too.” Miranda set another blue binder down on the table and turned it open to the final page. Below the text was a very accomplished sketch of a Huron burial mound, as it was labelled, and a list of necessary artifacts to create an illusion of authenticity. On the bottom of the page there was a brief note: “Needed, one saint — a sinner will do.” Morgan turned over the page. Taped neatly to the obverse side was a newspaper clipping, carefully scissored to eliminate extraneous detail. Cut from the caption and taped as a label beneath the picture were the words, “Detective David Morgan, Homicide.”
Miranda placed her hand on his shoulder. He showed no external emotion but sat very still. She could feel a slight quivering as he gently leaned into the reassuring pressure of her hand. Sensing a mystery beyond comprehension, Officer Singh made a slight walking gesture with his fingers and slipped out the door. He was perturbed by how personally engaged the city detectives appeared to be with their work.
CHAPTER NINE
“It’s pronounced ‘Bo-slee,’” Miranda explained over dinner in a Collingwood steak-house. “It’s spelled ‘Beausoleil,’ but it’s pronounced ‘Bo-slee,’ like the nerdy factotum in Charlie’s Angels.”
“He was Bawz-lee. There was a street where I lived in London called ‘Beechum’ Place, spelled ‘Beauchamp.’ But of course, Londoners declared the spelling aberrant, not the pronunciation.”
She sat back and sighed. “It’s been quite a day,” she said. “Thank God we’re not driving back tonight. Rufalo said the budget’s good for a couple of rooms and dinner.”
“No breakfast?”
“And breakfast.”
“We could find a motel with breakfast included.”
“A doughnut and coffee. They call it ‘Continental.’ Anyway, Beausoleil is a crossroads hamlet near Penetang. Alexander Pope has a restoration project there. Artwork of some sort in an old church.”
“The only thing I know about Penetanguishene is there’s a prison for the criminally insane.”
“That’s where your new best friend will go, if we ever find her,” said Miranda.
“Well, if we can get your own new best friend on the case, we’ll find her in no time.”
“She’s following the case from afar.”
“Who?”
“My new best friend.”
“I meant Officer Singh of Owen Sound Police Services.”
“I thought you meant Rachel.”
“You’re very fickle. What about me?”
“Why don’t we compromise? Officer Singh is our new best friend, together.”
“He’s a nice kid,” said Morgan. “He’ll make a good cop some day.”
“Oh, go on. He’s a good cop now. You all right?”
“Yeah. A little shaken, a little humbled, a lot embarrassed, and very relieved. I wonder why she didn’t do me in when she had the chance.”
“I think she was pretty confident she could get to you later. And she knew that I knew where you were. Her notes make it clear your little episode in the sauna was just a dry run, so to speak. Maybe that’s why she didn’t climb into your bed — assuming she didn’t. Extended foreplay. Prolonging the game. If you and the lady had been intimate, Morgan, I’m sure you would have been graded.”
“How did you convince the OPP to let us have the binders? All we’re dealing with at this point is unlawful disposal of human remains.”
“Until there’s proof the murders happened on the farm, it’s our case. That’s what Rufalo says. Anyway, the binders just happened to be in the back of our car when the Provincials arrived.” She smiled. “I told them about them, of course. I might have implied they were already on the way to Toronto.”
“And meanwhile, where was I?”
“You were a bit discombobulated. You went for a walk.”
“I just went out to the barn. I was looking for her car. It wasn’t in the drive shed. I don’t think I’ve ever actually been in a barn before — not one that hasn’t been converted into an antiques emporium. There’s something comforting about a four-storey haymow with light beams poking through, aslant from the sun — ”
“Is that a quotation?”
“I think so, I’m not sure. Anyway, when I came out, the place was swarming with cops.”
“They’re a committed bunch, the Provincials. They pulled out all the stops. If there’s DNA anywhere, in the freezer, the sauna, wherever, they’ll find it. They’ll find yours, of course.”
“Oh, for goodness sake!”
“Are you on file?”
“Yeah, I imagine.”
“I’d say you’re an indelible part of the story, sauna or not. You were being set up as her next victim. Maybe you should recuse yourself from the plot.”
“ Au contraire. It makes me an invaluable asset to the investigation. Fifth business, at least.”
“Fifth business, yes. You’d have to be dead to be the villain or the hero in this story. That’s how her stories work.”
“They’re brilliant, actually, narratives frozen in time, like eighteenth-century court tableaux; everything is posed. The absolute stillness excuses all excess — there is no obscenity, nothing is admitted as vile, even death is held in suspension.”
“Well, it’s better your death is held in suspension, for the time being, at least.”
They skipped dessert and lingered over coffee. Morgan added double-double and Miranda pretended not to notice.
“What’s in the third binder?”
“I don’t know yet. It appears to be set in England.”
“You think it was a similar crime?”
“Comparable, not similar. The Hogg’s Hollow case and the project she was developing for you are entirely different — ”
“But equally depraved. Equally ingenious.”
“You can’t help yourself, can you? You admire her.”
“She was intending to kill me.”
“I’ve had relationships like that.”
“Something about her — my response to her — reminded me of Lucy.”
“Oh, Morgan, how sad.”
Although he had been divorced before he teamed up with Miranda over a decade ago, and despite the fact that he seldom talked about his marriage, he occasionally mentioned his former wife on a first-name basis, as if
