There was a gallery of framed photographs screwed into the forward bulkhead. Morgan had noticed them before. What seemed to be generic sailing pictures now resonated, since he had seen duplicates in the D’Arcy home. There were expected shots of the Pemberly under full sail, heeling perilously close to the wind, with canvas taut, the skipper’s hand on the tiller with an iron grip; and of the Pemberly moored against a series of familiar and exotic backdrops.
In one of the action shots, professionally dramatic in black and white, there were two people in the cockpit. Harrington D’Arcy could be identified, braced against the combing on the high side. Morgan peered this way and that until he confirmed that the other figure, wearing the skipper’s cap with her hand on the tiller, was Maria.
He recalled thinking of D’Arcy as the sole owner. If the Pemberly had been moored at the Port Credit Yacht Club down the lake, he might have assumed it was a family boat. In fact, he recognized the Port Credit clubhouse in the background of one of the pictures. He had been there a few years ago on a case that proved to be a suicide masking a murder. There was something familiar, if generic, about the tropical setting of another picture. Then he realized it was not the Pemberly in the foreground, but a two-masted ketch, a small ocean sailor of about the same size. Both D’Arcys were in the cockpit. Behind the ketch was the semblance of a harbour, little more than a bay, edged by a few buildings and a sparse scattering of palms. And, indistinctly, near the centre, a shadowy rectangle, the back of a moai facing a soccer field across the gravel road. He could not see the road or the field in the photograph, but he knew they were there.
Easter Island, the village of Hanga Roa. The Rongorongo on the mantle was a souvenir, not an auction-house acquisition. The D’Arcys had sailed there in the ketch, probably east from Tahiti. They would have stopped at Pitcairn along the way, before the long haul to the most isolated island in the world. He had not thought of it as remote when he was there last year, but in the context of small-boat sailing, the open sea surrounding it seemed limitless.
They sailed together. He was slowly assimilating the fact that Harrington D’Arcy and Maria D’Arcy must have been a very close couple, who handled intimacy as discreetly as if they were having an affair.
And she had died here, he thought, on this berth. Perhaps her husband found her, he was sure it was murder but had no proof. He carried her above to the cockpit and placed her in a nonchalant pose. He went back down below to wait for dawn. Why wait?
Apparently to be sure he got Morgan involved with the case. Why the disinterested attitude? As a boardroom lawyer, he was used to planning strategically, guiding events to a desired end. But each move along the way was a controlled response. That was tactics. The difference was subtle: the attitude was strategic, manipulating Rufalo to bring Morgan on board, that was tactical. And disappearing into the Arctic, what was that?
Ellen Ravenscroft said Maria D’Arcy had died where she was found, verified by the way blood had settled in the corpse. But if her husband had attended her closely, and moved her carefully within a short time of her death, lifting her up through the narrow companionway, she might have died below decks. Could he have done it by himself? Perhaps someone else was involved. Someone who knew where he was now. Ms. Simmons, perhaps.
Morgan walked back to the clubhouse and found an attendant in the men’s locker room, a lithe sunburned man in his forties.
“Were you working yesterday?” Morgan asked him.
“Are you here about the murder?” said the man, running his fingers through a shock of sun-bleached hair. “Yes, I was working. I saw you talking to Mr. D’Arcy on the Pemberly, and Mrs. D’Arcy. You had breakfast with him on the verandah.”
“Mrs. D’Arcy was dead,” said Morgan, a little taken aback at having been so closely observed.
“Well yes, but she was there. You must have arrived just after seven, you caught the first ferry, I caught the second.”
“How’d you know I didn’t come on a police boat?”
“You didn’t. He didn’t kill her.”
“You figure not.”
“I’m certain of it.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Look out there, that window, it looks straight down the channel, the third boat along, I can see the Pemberly from here while I’m working.”
“And?”
“And sometimes they’d spend the whole evening by themselves, without going out on the lake, just reading, talking when the sun went down. They were very private, very together. The kind of people you like from a distance. You don’t want to know them, just watch them.”
“Do you know many of the members — personally?”
“Ah, the class thing. The service thing. Yes, yes I do. I sail. I’ve sailed quite a lot over the years. I’m available whenever anyone’s a hand short. I’ve sailed most of these boats and, trust me, the minute we cast off I’m as good as the best of them. I can see the wind, Detective, and there’s not a sailor here who doesn’t respect that.”
Morgan couldn’t help but warm to this man, who struck him as his own mirror opposite. The man tilted his head forward and looked up. The corners of his eyes were creased from years of squinting into the maritime sun. His eyes glittered like an ancient mariner who was kept young by his passion for the sea.
“You sailed with the D’Arcys in the South Pacific, didn’t you?”
“How’d you know?” There was a glint in his eyes, but no wariness.
“You skippered a ketch from Tahiti to Easter Island.”
“Rapa Nui, yes. From Hawaii down and across. They flew in, joined us in Papeete, Tahiti. They flew home from Rapa Nui. Several years ago. How do you know what a ketch is?”
“How do you know they were a good couple? Not looking out your window. You said you wouldn’t want to know them close up, but you did.”
“No mystery there. One felt intrusive, being with them. It was just the way they were. How’d you know about the Pacific thing?”
“I’m a detective,” said Morgan, who had made a lucky guess. “When you say they joined ‘us’ in Tahiti, you mean you and your boat. You sailed single-handed down from Hawaii.”
“Yes I did. And how’d you know that? I suppose because you’re a detective?”
“Because you work at a menial job and have the skills of a man born to privilege. Spells renegade to me, an authentic loner, rising to the challenge of a lonely voyage.”
“Yes,” said the man. “Sorry I can’t help with the murder.”
“With solving it?” said Morgan, wondering exactly how his regret was directed. “Perhaps you’ve helped already —”
“I don’t think so. I never saw them quarrel, I don’t know their problems, or their enemies, their business interests, their politics, their religion.”
“What about their sex lives?”
“What about their sex lives?” said the man, shifting the emphasis.
“I understand D’Arcy was …” Morgan paused, then recalling it was D’Arcy himself who had made the assertion, he continued, “… that he was bisexual.”
“Oh, come now, Detective, aren’t we all? I’m no help to you there.”
“Morgan,” he said. “Detective Morgan.”