“Myself, mostly. In the end, we all do.”
“Oh really?”
“The age of spies and spying isn’t what it used to be.”
“If it ever was.”
“Point taken, Miss Quin.”
“Would you stop calling me that.”
“Certainly. Calling you what?”
“Miss — Miranda Quin, yes. Detective Quin, or Ms. Quin, if you feel compelled to give me a title. Not Miss Quin. My great-aunt Maude was Miss Quin.”
“Indeed, Ms. Quin. Or might I presume and call you Miranda? Detective, next question?”
“Your employer?”
“Would it be enough to say I am associated with a certain large entity that does not wish to be compromised by being associated with me?”
“That’s a start, if it’s the truth — which I doubt.”
“Quite wisely. But it’s something like that. I’m more of an agent than a spy. You really do not need to know more. You are alive because you know so little.”
“You think my visitors in Santiago might have killed me?”
“Of course. They are professionals. And skilled enough to know you could lead them to me — which you have.”
“Hardly. You got here first.”
“Yes, I came in on an American freight plane yesterday afternoon.”
“And coincidentally ended up in a room down the hall.”
“Hanga Roa is small. You are travelling under your own name. It was easy to find you, even before you arrived.”
“And they knew you’d find me?”
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why find me?”
“Because you are a very attractive woman.”
“Thank you.”
“And to check out the status of my book.”
“You’re kidding. They had them, you know. In Santiago. Both copies,”
“That is a shame. It belonged to Maria D’Arcy.”
Miranda sat upright. Until now, she had felt surrounded by terrors so absurd they were laughable, because sooner or later she knew she’d wake up. Suddenly, she was awake.
“I have it, again,” she said. “Your copy and mine. They apparently don’t like Heyerdahl. I thought you didn’t know D’Arcy.”
“I don’t. I know his wife — I knew her.”
“And you just picked her husband’s name at random. Now that is quite a coincidence.”
“I’ve lost a lot of blood, Ms. Quin, is that better? Do be kind. I have been quite careless — ”
“With your lies.”
“With the truth.”
“Same thing.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” he said.
The connection between them was the death of Mrs. D’Arcy. Miranda felt like she had plunged into a Hitchcock film, the victim of forces beyond her control.
“I assure you,” said Ross, as if despite the revelation nothing had changed, “I did not know that Maria D’Arcy was dead. I had a private dinner with her near the airport, only hours before I met you. She was very much alive.”
“What is a private dinner, may I ask?”
“Private.”
“Gotcha. Word had it she was adventurous.”
He smiled ambiguously.
“In my business, you do what you do.”
She had heard that expression before. We do as we do, said the smoking man in Santiago. She realized she should be afraid of the handsome Englishman. He was in the same business as her midnight callers, but with polished manners. That made him more difficult to read, and perhaps even more treacherous.
* * *
The afternoon dwindled into ennui and Morgan went home early. Maria D’Arcy’s death puzzled him, but he was distracted by the feeling that it was incidental to something bigger — as to what that was, he had no idea. He nuked a frozen dinner and opened a bottle of Ontario merlot.
Alex Rufalo had called him in after lunch for a progress report.
“The medical examiner thinks probably misadventure,” Morgan had explained. “That means a coroner’s inquest.”
“I know what it means, Detective Sergeant. But until we get a definitive report, it’s an open case, so keep at it.”
“Yeah, sure,” Morgan had said, wandering back to his desk. He spent the rest of the afternoon on the computer, trying to find a connection between his boss and Harrington D’Arcy.
Before going home, he had made an appointment to see D’Arcy in the morning. You don’t make appointments with suspects, he thought. Only with witnesses. He realized D’Arcy had somehow positioned himself as an innocent by insisting on murder. He also realized sticking to protocol was his response not to the crime, but to his feelings of being played when he didn’t know the the game, let alone the rules.
For the most part, Morgan was a procedural maverick. He and Miranda were very good at their jobs, bent rules, or overlooked them, and got things done. Nothing illegal — they were both so straight their shadows wouldn’t bend on a bicycle — but sometimes they cut corners, ignored protocol, overrode bureaucratic niceties. And because they were good, they got away with it.
He did not always get along with senior administration, but he assumed they were on the same side. Right now, he wasn’t so sure.
He forgot about his dinner in the microwave and the open bottle of wine. With CNN on in the background, he slouched on the sofa, and distractedly sorted through a stack of books on Easter Island, not looking for anything in particular. He picked up a hackneyed guide to the island featuring the inevitable moai on the cover and thumbed through its pages. The book was overflowing with unfiltered ephemera; it was trite, amateur, and soulless. He tossed in on the floor.
The telephone rang. It was Ellen Ravenscroft.
“Sorry to bother you so late,” she said, “but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Yeah, sure. What?”
“Maria D’Arcy —”
“Murdered.”
“Yes, Morgan. You never doubted it?”
“It was your voice, and the hour. You’ve been working late.”
“No, love, I’m at home, with the heat turned up and nothing on but the radio. Yes, I’m at work. I’m standing in front of the lady’s naked cadaver as we speak.”
“Murdered.”
“Unequivocally.”
“How?”
“I thought you’d never ask. It’s the perfume, Morgan — why would anyone risk being caught breaking into a morgue? There had to be something in the perfume. And if the perfume was gone, there had to be traces of whatever it was masking — or, was the perfume a delivery system? Either way, it got me to thinking.”
“That’s always good. Do you want to finish this conversation over dinner?”
“You