Reluctant Dead. John Moss

place with a slow pirouette.

      “Yeah,” said Morgan. He turned off the overhead, but left the lamps on at either end of the sofa. “My sanctuary. What brings you here?”

      “A predatory impulse.”

      “Can I get you a drink?”

      “Do you have any wine?”

      “Pouilly Fuissé in the fridge.”

      “White?”

      “Pouilly — yes, white.”

      “A good year?”

      “Vintage.”

      “Lovely.”

      All years are vintage, Morgan thought as he opened the wine. He could be giving her plonk and save the difference. Still, class serves the establishment, mumble mumble, he was nattering to himself. Maybe she would go away.

      He brought two glasses of pale, lustrous wine back into the living room, each filled precisely half way. She was sitting on the sofa, comfortable as an old friend.

      “How are you managing without Miranda?” she asked.

      “What?”

      “What’s happening with the D’Arcy file?”

      “He’s missing.”

      “Who? D’Arcy? Come on, he’s too famous.”

      “No, he’s not famous at all.”

      “You know what I mean, he’s too important. Important people can’t go missing. They get missed. Is he dead?”

      “If I knew, he wouldn’t be missing.”

      “Don’t be testy, love. I was just asking.”

      “I don’t think he’s dead.”

      “This is a lovely wine. I’ve seen it in the stores. It’s very generous of you to share a bottle.”

      “A bottle?”

      “We don’t have to drink it all now, love. Save some for the morning.”

      “Ellen, why are you here?”

      “Maria D’Arcy …”

      “Yeah?”

      “It bothered me, the poison, even a concentrate should have left something in her blood. I went back to the report I sent to you. Re-reading it — funny how one notices in words what one didn’t pick up in real life, even when the words are your own.”

      Morgan immediately knew what she was going to say.

      “There was a turn of phrase, Morgan —”

      “Yeah, I missed it, too. The swab —”

      “Exactly. If she was cleaned down so thoroughly even her perfume was washed away, how is it I found no trace in her blood, but the poison powder concoction appeared on a swab?”

      “On the nape of her neck?”

      “No, the front, just above the clavicle. It was easy to miss the ground glass abrasions because it was applied after death. Whoever broke into the morgue interfered with the corpse in a most unusual way. I’ve never heard of poisoning a corpse before. The poison, it was meant to be found. So there you are. Someone wanted us to think she was murdered. I was working late. When I realized what happened, I needed to tell you.”

      Morgan recognized the desire to share a discovery; that somehow telling someone else made it real. He felt a warm sense of kinship with Ellen Ravenscroft, and empathy, realizing she had no one in her life to share things with. He at least had his partner. He and Miranda sometimes called back and forth in the dead of night to exchange nocturnal revelations about work. It was a kind of intimacy he missed terribly with her being away, knowing she would be gone until well into winter, if winter came early.

      “So what do you think, love? I mean, apart from the fact I screwed up.”

      “No, you didn’t screw up. You found poison, it’s in your report. I’m the detective, I missed the implications.”

      “But I declared the death homicide. I should have seen the anomaly. I got distracted.”

      “Yeah, we both focused on the absence of Fleurs de Rocaille.”

      “My, my, Fleurs de Rocaille. You do your research.”

      “So we’re back to square one. This doesn’t mean that she wasn’t murdered. We just don’t know if, for sure, or how, or by whom.”

      “Sorry, love. If it’s any consolation, the champagne in her gut was Dom Perignon. Very classy, very expensive. I’ve only had it once. It did the trick.”

      Morgan needed time to assimilate the shifting patterns — same events, different perceptions. He looked at Ellen Ravenscroft, sitting languidly against the cushions of the blue sofa, the stem of the heavy crystal poised in her fingers, the glass empty now except for a few drops that she swirled lazily against the sides. It was difficult to tell if she was embarrassed by the error or amused. She seemed to be enjoying herself.