“And?” said Morgan. The two men looked at her expectantly, and for a brief moment she enjoyed the suspense.
“You didn’t look inside the car, Morgan.”
“I knew you would. So…?”
“The blood was spattered, not smeared.”
“Yeah?”
“Neat drops of blood distributed in a strategic design. Too neat, too strategic.”
“Then if she did it herself,” said Peter Singh, “how did she get out of here?”
“There had to be another vehicle,” Morgan suggested.
“That’s what we’re to assume. But Morgan, did you see any evidence in your meandering of a place where a car turned around?”
“Maybe he backed out,” said Morgan.
“Who?” Miranda asked.
“The person who abducted her,” said Peter Singh.
“Or he left his car parked at the road,” Morgan offered.
“Too suspicious.”
“He could have backed out,” said Morgan.
“Who?” said Miranda. “Listen to you two. I thought I had you convinced she staged this. She walked out. People walk. This isn’t a conspiracy.”
“Okay, so once she got to the highway, what then?” Morgan asked.
“She could have had a bicycle with her. No one notices someone on a bike. She looked in pretty good shape. She was in very good shape, wasn’t she, David?”
“Wherever she’s got to, she must have had transportation — maybe another car stashed near here or back at her farm.”
“We can check the registration,” suggested Peter.
“I don’t imagine she’d use her own name,” Miranda answered.
“Oh.”
“I like the bicycle explanation,” said Morgan. “But she’d need the other vehicle. This seems an extravagant device, dumping her car.”
“It’s ten years old, Morgan. I’ll bet she replaced it with a sports car.”
“A Jag.”
“I doubt it. Maybe a Miata.”
“There was a bicycle,” said Peter Singh, grasping imaginary handle bars. “I remember a very old CCM beside the back door.”
The layout of the summer kitchen came back to Morgan. “There were two bikes,” he said.
“No, for sure I know there was one bike only.”
“One bike, an old one,” said Miranda. “With a dropped crossbar, red with black piping, CCM, wide handlebars.”
“Not two?”
“No.”
“Well, there you are. She made her getaway on an all-terrain model.”
“Unisex, blue, wide tires with whitewalls?”
“Yes.”
“It was leaning against the inside back wall of the drive shed.”
“Oh, she moved it. There goes my theory.”
“Not at all, Morgan. It reinforces it, circumstantially. She had a bike, she rode it somewhere. It just means her other car was back at the farm, not somewhere closer.”
“Precisely,” said Morgan.
Peter was fascinated and a little annoyed. As soon as the OPP had left, the dynamic duo had swung into action, but not before. He had wanted them to be impressive, verifying his acumen as a judge of their worth, but they had waited until now to display their considerable skills. Still, he was flattered to be there.
“I think before you leave these parts of the country,” he said in an eager voice, “you would like to go to the church where the Virgin Mary is appearing. I have been there already and it is very strange. She can be seen by believers and non-believers alike.”
“In Beausoleil?” Miranda responded. “We know the man who discovered her.”
“The Virgin?”
“The image. He’s a friend of ours.”
“The man who is restoring the beautiful walls?”
“Reclaiming them, yes. His name is Alexander Pope.”
“I saw him there. I introduced myself. There were many, many people. He seemed quite disturbed, and he was relieved to see my uniform. This was today, on my way here. Very indirectly. He thought I would keep the people away, but I explained my jurisdiction is Owen Sound, not Beausoleil. Still, I helped him set up a barricade to keep them back. He was most gracious.”
“Okay, Morgan? Let’s go and see what Alexander’s come up with.”
“It could be a scam to raise funds for his project.”
“He’s got money. He has angels behind him.”
“Haven’t we all!”
Several concessions before they got to Beausoleil, even before the church spire was in sight, they noticed the traffic. Normally on a back road like this there might be the odd pickup or a tractor rumbling along, hauling farm implements or a hay wagon. But a modest congestion of cars such as this was remarkable. Morgan and Miranda parked a ten-minute walk from the church, but Peter Singh, who had followed them in his clearly marked cruiser, picked them up and drove right to the door, where he double-parked with the unabashed authority of his office.
What Morgan noticed most was the silence. There were crowds milling around in clusters outside, and parallel streams of people shuffling in one side of the double-door archway at the front and out the other, having organized themselves spontaneously to give everyone the opportunity to witness the apparition. But there was virtually no conversation among them. It was eerie how quiet they were. Even the children played noiselessly, either in deference to their parents’ solemnity or in imitation of their awestruck behaviour.
With Officer Singh leading, the three of them slipped through and into the building. The crowd was moving in an orderly column down the centre of the nave, so they cut behind the pillars to the side and past the frescoes they had seen before, all of them now beautifully illuminated. The scaffolding was still against the wall beneath the fourth panel that Alexander Pope had been working on a fortnight ago. The plaster had been peeled off entirely. Sister Marie Celeste appeared to be hovering in mid-air, toes pointed like a ballet dancer to display additional stigmata where nails had been thrust through the flesh of her elongated feet. Smaller figures could now be seen toiling at the ordinary tasks of a farming community. She was clearly one of them, yet divinely enhanced, with size and evanescent colour and an ethereal demeanour testifying to her inspired estrangement from the world.
Alexander Pope was standing in front of the window beside the fifth and final panel, which, from the oblique angle of their approach, was nothing more than hand-smoothed white plaster. He seemed an ambiguous presence. He might have been a security guard or Charon at the gates of Hades. He looked haggard, as if he had not rested in a long time, and yet somehow triumphant. Was this, Morgan wondered, what he had secretly been working for all along? The adulation of the masses for the gift of his genius?
Yet no one seemed to be paying him much attention, apart from responding to his solitary posture, facing away from the wall, as a warning not to approach too closely.
When Pope saw them, his wan smile suggested long-suffering forbearance. Miranda gave him an awkward hug, Morgan shook hands, and Peter Singh made incomprehensible gestures meant to indicate he had returned under forces over which he had no control, his pantomime ending with an open-palmed shrug.
“Alexander,” said Miranda. “What on earth have you been doing? Your gentle pilgrims have multiplied.”
“Exponentially,” he responded. “It’s all quite unexpected, and…,” lowering his voice, he continued, “quite undesirable.”
