Morgan didn’t want to break in. That would seem irrationally preemptive, especially when she turned up safe and sound. If she was with the girl, with Jill, she was all right. If she had entered a sanctuary, a refuge of some sort, a secular retreat, or a spa … Maybe it didn’t seem necessary to let him know where she was. She was only his work partner and was officially on leave. It worried him that he fretted so much, as if his anxiety might cause bad things to happen.
Walking up the ramp and around the side of the house, he treaded a fine line between petulance and fear as he went back inside and called Molly Bray’s number. Victoria answered. He introduced himself and asked if Jill was home for lunch.
“She didn’t go to school yesterday or today, Detective,” Victoria explained, pleased to have the opportunity to speak to an adult. “I think her momma’s death has finally sunk in. She’s worse after talking to Miss Quin than before. She mostly just stays in her room, mostly sleeping, I guess. She keeps the door locked. I have a key, but I don’t want to disturb her grieving. Sometimes it’s better to grieve by yourself, even when you’re only fourteen.”
“You’ve seen my partner then?”
“She was here on Friday. And she was here again Saturday morning.”
“Saturday?” Morgan knew what Victoria would say next.
“Yes, sir. She and Jill went off together. Miss Bray without a proper jacket — these kids will catch their death of cold — and she came back around three.”
“Miranda and Jill?”
“No, sir, just Jill. She said Miss Quin dropped her off up the way, by the gates.”
“Could I speak to Jill?”
“I’ll see what I can do. I don’t think she’s talking to nobody right now. She’s so distressed.”
After what seemed like an interminable delay, a girl’s voice whispered, “Hello?”
“Jill?”
“Yes.”
“I’m David Morgan. I’m a detective, a friend of Detective Quin. We met —”
“I know. I remember.”
“Have you seen Ms. Quin?”
“She said I’m supposed to call her Miranda.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Saturday.”
“In the afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“Where, what time? Can you tell me about it?”
“She came here.”
“Did you go to Robert Griffin’s house?”
“Where?”
“Your mother’s associate. Did you go to his house? That’s where I’m calling from.”
“Yes.” She paused. “Miranda wanted me to see it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I came home by myself.”
“Didn’t you tell your housekeeper she dropped you off?”
“Yes.”
“Did she?”
“No.”
“Jill, how did you get home?”
“I left Miranda downstairs at Mr. Griffin’s house, then I walked up to St. Clair and came home by streetcar.”
“Why did you tell Victoria you got a ride home?”
“Because she worries.”
“Does she always worry?”
“Yes. But more now because she thinks I’m really upset.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.”
Morgan was thrown. When he met her at the morgue, the girl had seemed eerily strong, her voice modulated with an inflection of constrained hysteria but firmly under control. Now it was faltering despite her attempt to cover by being exceptionally terse. “You left Miranda here?”
“At Mr. Griffin’s … yes.”
“But I would have thought —”
“We parked the car in the garage. I think she was going to walk home, so I said I would, too. It seemed logical.”
“Logical?”
“I left her there. That’s the last I saw of her.”
“Jill, if you hear from Miranda, will you have her call this number? And I’ll give you my number at police headquarters. If you tell them it’s very important, they’ll know how to reach me.”
“Okay. I left her there downstairs.”
“Write this down.”
“I am.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
Morgan got off the phone, suspecting that Jill’s staccato responses concealed more than they revealed. For now his concern was Miranda, but Jill’s obvious pain resonated with the anguish of the girl he knew Miranda had been, the young woman Miranda had kept like a prisoner locked deep in some darkness inside.
From his perspective slouched in the wingback chair, Morgan surveyed the beautifully modulated subversions in the antique Kurdish runner. The woman who had tied these knots had challenged death with modest flourishes. Within the rigid parameters of tradition she had affixed an elusive signature, writing in symbols only she could remember. This rough rug, in Morgan’s eyes, was as exquisite as all the formal carpets he had ever seen.
Disturbing his reverie, Eugene Nishimura emerged through the corridor, carrying a bucket of sludge. “Too mucky to go down the drain,” he explained as he ambled across the Kurdish runner. Morgan flinched. “It’s from the skimmer pump filter.” He walked out. Nothing had slopped over.
By the time Nishimura returned, having dumped the muck over the embankment into the ravine, Morgan had rolled up the runner and placed it behind the sofa. Nishimura strolled through without speaking, leaving a spoor of mud bits behind him.
Reseating himself, Morgan spied at eye level another of Griffin’s notes. It was barely visible, poking out from the top of a book. A little reluctantly he got up, retrieved the note, and sat down again. This one was written as if it were part of a larger narrative: “I write so beautifully it breaks my heart, rereading what I have written and knowing that no one will decipher my words. Writing and reading are utterly separable. Rongorongo is a code. It conveys messages in the absence of meaning.”
Very enigmatic, thought Morgan. One of the messages of Rongorongo might be that a rich and reclusive degenerate could bury whole lives in a basement hideaway. More followed: “If critics are incapable of grasping what I do, it is not their fault but my own for being out of their reach. They cannot comprehend what they miss.”
Morgan telephoned the Robarts Library at the University of Toronto. There were no records of a book ever being published under the name Robert Griffin. They asked for a title; there might be something under a pseudonym. Then it suddenly came to Morgan that the notes meant nothing. He hung up abruptly.
Griffin had fantasized that he was the author of esoteric works beyond comprehension. Meanwhile he had written little missives about language and the nature of being. He had imagined a parallel universe made only of language where as a creature of words he might leap out of this world and come into his own over there.
The wretched old bugger hadn’t even been real to himself.
Morgan