"You've got it."
"You're kidding!"
"For sure."
"Is it our case?"
"It is."
"Oh, well done, Morgan."
"I dropped into the forensic pathology lab this morning."
"Because you had nothing better to do on a Saturday off?"
"I wanted to talk to Dr. Hubbard."
"Come on, Morgan. She's got cantilevered tits and Olive Oyl hair. Not your type at all."
"No?"
"She looks like a raunchy popsicle."
"I can't picture it."
"Morgan, if she ever let her hair down, her cheeks would sag to her chin."
He had never known Miranda to be so bitchy. She had good instincts, and she didn't hesitate to judge by appearance, but usually she was subtle. A cocked eyebrow, the trace of a smile. She was incisive but seldom unkind. And she was usually right. He, in contrast, saw neither what people wanted others to see, nor what they wanted to hide. He did not believe in the concept of self as a coherent entity. He saw personality as process, something revealed over time.
Often their conclusions converged, although his were less static than hers, and while they evolved slowly they were more open to revision.
"Is something bothering you?" he asked.
"Why?"
"You don't seem yourself."
"Do I ever?" she grinned. "I was looking forward to lazing in bed," she said. "Dreaming good dreams, spending a lovely while on my own." She continued to smile, without looking over at him. She had awakened blissfully distracted, like she had made love through the night, but her phantom lover had departed, and she could not remember his name. "So, what's going on?" she asked.
"We missed it. They missed it. The medical examiner missed it. We were royally duped — by a master of the macabre. It's all very Gothic."
"Damn it," she said. "I knew the clothes fit too well."
By the time he explained as much as he knew, they had pulled up in front of the house in Hogg's Hollow, which looked more dilapidated by daylight, somehow more sad, as if shunned by the neighbouring houses. There was a van parked slightly askew in the driveway. The name "Alexander Pope" in exquisite hand-script on the driver's door proclaimed the owner a person of profoundly good taste, either too modest to add a line declaring his profession or so confident it was not deemed necessary.
As they walked by, Morgan peered through the side windows and saw, lying in casual disarray, odds and ends of antique paraphernalia. There was a pair of hand-forged fire irons, were three or four swing arms from the inside of fireplaces, and a couple of iron pots and a kettle. There was a copper cauldron from central Sweden, an old import. There were cardboard boxes brim-filled with ancient nails, a brace of decoys, part of a dry sink, a box of door latches and hinges, and random lengths of painted pine. There were shadows and colours and contours Morgan would have loved to have explored. He was a natural at rummaging through obsolete treasures.
"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