This was the second time he had touched an original piece of Rongorongo. Only the previous year he had come across another in private ownership that was peripheral to a murder investigation. It belonged to the original owner of Miranda’s Jaguar, a nasty man capable of unspeakable crimes; a low-profile lawyer like D’Arcy, but unremarkable as a consequence of limited achievement, not professional strategy.
Morgan surveyed the room until his eyes came to rest on a stone carving sitting in the shadows, also from Easter Island. The ubiquitous moai with furrowed brow, pursed lips, and eyes gazing vacantly into the emptiness. He marvelled at how such a remote place, so distant from the Western world, could have had such an impact on cultural consciousness. He guessed that Miranda would bring him either a smaller replica of Rongorongo or a diminutive moai, modest enough to be carried in her hand luggage.
The library seemed, like the rest of the house, to be without gender and with no indication of children, although there was ambient warmth to the furnishings. It was clearly a room frequented by the D’Arcys. In addition to books, there were magazine and newspaper racks, a small stack of the Guardian Weekly and The Economist, a tray with decanters of madeira and port, and kindling to start a good fire once autumn set in.
Wandering into a study off the library, he saw an answering machine blinking and touched the play button. There were calls from a nail salon, a dry cleaner, and two from Maria D’Arcy’s husband, asking her to call him, without saying where. The office was hers. It was more distinctively an expression of personality than the library, not feminine in any recognizable way, yet it clearly bore the imprint of a woman. For one thing, there is the faint scent of Fleurs de Rocaille, Morgan thought. Also stacked neatly, were back issues of Vogue, Architectural Digest, The Walrus, and Vanity Fair.
He played the machine again, this time he focused on her own message. It was warm but precise, first in English then repeated in her native language — he assumed it was the same greeting as he did not speak Portuguese.
He slipped the tape from the machine and put it in his pocket.
When the woman he had described to himself as older let him out, he wondered, older than what?
He walked out of Rosedale past the subway station and turned south on Yonge Street. Morgan walked everywhere when he could. He knew the D’Arcys better now, enough to know how little he knew of them. The lives of strangers were simple to understand, summed up by an item of clothing, a vocal inflection, the twist of a smile, incongruous movement — but the more someone was revealed, the more impenetrably complex they became. At the death scene, the D’Arcys were stereotypes; in their empty study, they became real.
Wherever Harrington D’Arcy was, it was not illegal to grieve in seclusion. Unless, of course, being a widower was a self-inflicted condition.
When Morgan got back to headquarters, he took the tape to a technician and they listened together until the technician got bored. Morgan wrote down what Maria said in English. He checked out the nail salon — she had missed her appointment, and the dry cleaners, who wanted him to pass on the message that the stain on her cashmere sweater would not come out. He listened to her voice over and over, and the more he listened the more empathy he felt for her, although he couldn’t determine why, exactly, except that she had been alive.
He asked a colleague with the surname Gonzales to come in. “Manuela, could you listen to this? See if it’s a word-for-word translation.”
She listened intently.
“It’s not a translation, I mean, it’s her own language she’s speaking. The statements are equal, but not quite the same. And it’s not Portuguese.”
“No?”
“It’s Spanish. I know Portuguese, Morgan. My grandmother and my father speak it at home. This is Spanish. I don’t really speak either but I understand both.”
“She’s from Brazil, it should be Portuguese.”
“Who? Is this the woman who died?”
“Yeah, Maria D’Arcy.”
“I think she is not from Brazil. Perhaps from Chile, maybe Peru. She speaks like a South American, and not Portuguese, not on this tape. Maybe she had Spanish friends, maybe it’s for them.”
“Yeah, thanks,” he said, retreating to his desk to think things over.
Morgan decided that when the errant Mr. D’Arcy turned up, he could straighten this out. He would have to come in from the cold on his own, though. His employees weren’t going to turn him over. Under a glossy veneer of professionalism, D’Arcy’s staff had given an ominous impression of loyalty, as if, from the receptionist on up, they had sworn a blood oath of some sort, or belonged to a cult.
Sitting back with his feet on the desk, he perused the medical examiner’s report. As Ellen had said, a skin swab turned up traces of poison: coniine and pancuronium, along with a blend of talcum powder, and minute particles of ground glass. She had appended a note explaining that the mixture would be rapid acting, the symptoms post-mortem would indicate death by asphyxia, the talc was an adherent and would bind with the the glass to create nearly invisible lacerations to allow the poison a subcutaneous entry into the system. A similar concoction had been used over the last decade or so in Papua New Guinea, on Madagascar, and also in Dublin, according to her research. No probable connection.
No mention was made of the break-in or of the body being washed down by ghoulish intruders. That was speculation, based on the scent of wildflowers that was no longer there. But the report was unequivocal: Maria D’Arcy had been murdered.
Morgan walked to the door marked Superintendent of Detectives and pushed it open.
“Come on in.”
“No,” said Morgan. “Not here.”
“What do you mean, not here?”
“I need to talk to you about Harrington D’Arcy.”
“Yes.”
“I need to interview you.”
“You what?”
“Could we go somewhere else?”
Morgan turned and led the way to an interrogation room. Rufalo followed like an animal in pursuit. As soon as Morgan closed the door, Rufalo wheeled on him. “What the hell!”
“Easy, sir. I need to ask a few questions.”
Perhaps it was Morgan’s ironic deference or his own ingrained respect for procedure, but Rufalo became immediately conciliatory.
“Of course,” he said. “Whatever I can do.”
“Let’s sit down,” said Morgan.
“I’m not a suspect, am I?” said the superintendent cheerfully, trying to relieve the tension.
Morgan did not smile. “No,” he said. He paused. “But you might be an accessory.”
“Good God, Morgan. The man called me. He told me his wife had been murdered. I am a policeman, that was a reasonable thing for him to do.”
“He was sure it was murder?”
“There was no doubt at all.”
“He called you at home? You called me from your place?”
“Yes …” Rufalo gazed around the room for a moment, seeming to see it for the first time as an unfamiliar and oppressive place. “He and my wife are business associates, both lawyers. The legal community at their level is small. We’ve met a few times. He wasn’t asking