Grave Doubts. John Moss

from the town and after ten minutes of exhilarating lakeshore landscape they turned into a long driveway and drove up a hill to Alexander Pope's fine old house, which was set in brooding isolation behind a shrouding of foliage. The building itself was a marvel of austere congeniality on the outside, and conveyed the promise of esoteric pleasures within.

      Waiting at the door on the side porch, which was partially enclosed as a shed, Miranda stared into the shadows beside them. There was what appeared to be the entrance to a wood-fired sauna. A stack of dry maple firewood. Various tools for gardening and building. A chainsaw. She felt the thrill of connection on seeing a couple of compressed-air tanks leaning against the wall.

      He's a diver, she thought.

      Alexander Pope was a man of wide-ranging pursuits, as well as of arcane skills, esoteric knowledge, eccentric apparel, awkward charm, and stellar lineage.

      She was going to mention the scuba gear to Rachel but something in the other woman's muted excitement made her keep silent. The two of them were like teenagers calling on the mysterious boy in the big house who had just moved into the neighbourhood. When the inner door opened, they breathed deeply in unison, as if something magnificent were about to occur.

      Alexander greeted them through the storm door like old friends. He recognized them instantly and invited them in. After brief chatter he gave them a tour of the house. He identified old locks, small cabinets, hinges, and latches, and with unexpected candour he showed them how to distinguish original sideboards and dressers and tables from reconstructions. He showed them replicas he had himself contrived, with meticulous attention to detail. Even hidden joints, places, and materials never meant to be seen, bore the artisan's signature devotion to successful dissembling.

      Since the surrounding grounds were too soggy from the spring thaw to be negotiated, he explained the exterior of the house while they sat in front of the kitchen fire. He described how the Georgian lines were so well-served by painted wood siding made to represent ashlar blocks, which came to light when the layers of clapboard and aluminum had been peeled away.

      On the outside, restoration had been scrupulously governed by Pope's desire for authenticity. Inside, he had taken liberties, moving or eliminating walls to achieve an airy yet intricate effect that allowed him copious wall space against which to display his country furniture.

      All in all, Alexander Pope seemed to have eliminated the Victorian era. Everything around him had been made by, or honoured, the settlers from the Old World and up from the States who displaced native inhabitants in the area, or was unabashedly contemporary. The lighting was modern, not tacky reproductions of old lanterns and lamps, the plumbing and appliances were not coyly disguised. The panes in his twelve-over-twelve windows were rippled with age, although the glass had been set into newly built versions of old frames.

      They sat on ladder-back chairs — brought up during the Revolution by United Empire Loyalists — at a harvest table from Ile d'Orléans before the fall of New France, with the robust patina of a dozen generations etched deeply into its broad, blackened boards, and drank instant coffee. It was better than Rachel's, Miranda thought, but not much. How can you ruin instant coffee? Perhaps it was never meant to be endlessly boiled.

      Alexander Pope asked Miranda for a progress report on the Hogg's Hollow investigation, affecting a gravitas that Miranda found curiously winsome. Rachel laughed at him. He seemed not to notice. After eliciting particulars that from his perspective were extraneous, such as the identity of the victims and the finer points of their execution, he let the matter drop, cracked open a bottle of cooking sherry, and they spent the rest of the afternoon talking antiques.

      Several times the possibility of murder as an art form arose, invariably embedded in a historical context, and drifted away amid talk of aesthetics and artifice, antiquities and architecture. They might have been in another time, or out of time entirely. It was a most pleasant occasion, thought Miranda as they drove back to Toronto, each woman silently savouring what they had shared.

      The Port Hope foray occurred on the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter. Morgan had mysteriously taken his leave a couple of days earlier. He would only admit to a return date, later the following week. Miranda guessed he was heading south. The Cayman Islands, perhaps. That's where she had gone scuba diving several years back, living aboard a dive boat and earning Open Water and Advanced PADI certification. He had subsequently promised he would dive with her some day, although she wouldn't have held him to it. Knowing Morgan, she suspected he had snuck off to learn on his own so that he could keep up with her.

      The visit to Alexander Pope was in some way related to her partner's absence, she suspected, although it had arisen in conversation with Rachel as simply a fun thing to do. She could not remember which of them first brought it up, but they had both taken it on as a pilgrimage — not to the man, but for the sake of the lovely odd values and grace he embodied.

      Back at her desk the next week, Miranda was still annoyed with Morgan. The autopsy reports finally came in: they suggested both victims had died from a profound breakdown of the autonomic system, in all probability by protracted exposure to heat without adequate hydration — symptoms, according to the medical examiner's report, consistent with a slow death in the central Sahara.

      Miranda shuddered. She phoned the medical examiner's office and asked for Ellen Ravenscroft.

      "I enjoyed the report," she said. "Nice prose style; a touch ornate."

      "Which report would that be, love?"

      "The Sahara Desert. That was good."

      "It was a particularly trying job. Onerous, very onerous. Have you ever been to Guanahuato?"

      "Where?"

      "Guanahuato. It's in Mexico. No, I don't suppose you have."

      Miranda wondered why she had called.

      "They put bodies on display in the Museo de los Mommias. There's a natural mummifying effect from the sand where the townspeople bury their dead. If no one pays the cemetery fees, after ten years the bodies are disinterred. The interesting ones go into the museum, the others are tossed out. It's electrifying, walking among them."

      "Why would you do that?"