He wished he could talk to Miranda.
In Miranda’s notion of unbelief, anything was possible. Perhaps even a God still in his garden beyond the limits of language.
He needed to talk to her. She would tell him he was being pompous or immature, or bring him to earth with speculation on where he was wrong. Where in the world was she?
The telephone exploded into sound, and he leaped to his feet, then realized it was on the table beside him. Grasping the receiver, he sank back into the chair.
“Miranda, where are you?”
“Morgan, is that you?”
“Miranda …” he repeated, this time unsure.
“It’s Ellen Ravenscroft.”
“Sorry. I’m expecting a call from Miranda.”
“Hasn’t she turned up yet?”
“No”
“I’m sure she’s okay, Morgan. She’s a very resourceful lady.”
“Yeah, she is.”
“Headquarters relayed my call. They said you’re at Griffin’s.”
“Yeah, waiting for Miranda.”
“I’ve got an interesting bit of news.”
“About Robert Griffin or about Eleanor Drummond? You haven’t released them?”
“Of course not. Miranda’s responsible for their funerals. Morgan, something crossed my strange little mind, so we pushed through some DNA tests.”
“The bit Miranda sent on from the drain? Was it blood?”
“It was blood, but no, it’s being processed. DNA from the bodies —”
“Eleanor Drummond is really Molly Bray.”
“Morgan, Griffin and Eleanor Drummond —”
“They’re both imposters?”
“No. But they’re related.”
“To each other?”
“He’s her father.”
“Whose father?”
“Robert Griffin is Eleanor Drummond’s father.”
“She’s his daughter?”
“It works either way.”
“Molly Bray, Eleanor Drummond, the woman who presented herself as Griffin’s mistress, she’s the man’s daughter?”
“You’ve got it.”
“I knew she had something on him. I was sure of it.”
“Morgan?”
“I knew it. When Molly became Eleanor, there had to be something to account for the radical shift in power.”
“Morgan, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sixteen years old, pregnant, Molly Bray searches the provincial records at Queen’s Park. She wants to find out about herself. She finds her birth registration papers. Elizabeth Clarke told us she was listed as the mother, and her doctor friend wrote himself in as the father. Okay, but Molly would have known that was unlikely. She called her grandmother, and the woman was in her fifties when Molly was born.
“So then Molly would have researched her own name. I don’t think she would have found any Brays in the Detzler’s Landing area, but she was a very savvy young woman. She would have traced the name in other villages where Griffin owned mills. She would have found Brays living in one of them. And I’m betting there was an Eleanor Drummond in the Bray’s family tree. So she figures Griffin is her own father as well as the father of her unborn baby. And she confronts him with the good news.”
So Miranda wasn’t the first, Morgan thought. Strange relief.
“I’m still trying to figure out where Detzler’s Landing is, Morgan! You’re talking about things I know nothing about, and it’s scary. It’s beginning to make a certain amount of sense, though. Not a lot, but I’m assuming she was pregnant with Jill, the girl waiting for her at the morgue. But why would she think to check out other mill locations?”
“I’m getting ahead of myself.”
“Then back up a bit.”
“Molly must have found information in township records, through the public library computer system, about the house where she grew up. She would have discovered it belonged to Robert Griffin. You with me?”
“Did it?”
“Yes.”
“I’m with you.”
“Elizabeth Clarke lived there rent free.”
“And she is?”
“A lovely old woman who drinks tea that tastes like pavement. It’s imported from England.”
“Lapsang Suchong.”
“We know Griffin bought her house in 1972, the year Molly was born. It was Elizabeth’s ancestral home. But she didn’t work and she was on her own. Maybe the doctor helped her out, but when Griffin offered to buy and to let her live there free for the duration of her life, she would have jumped at the chance. In turn she looked after the baby. That was the deal.”
“And Molly figured out the arrangement?”
“More so than her grandmother. Elizabeth Clarke may never have known that Griffin was the child’s father. She didn’t want to know. The baby was a godsend to a lonely woman.”
“Not all single women are heartbroken if a baby doesn’t turn up on their doorstep, Morgan.”
“No, but some might be. Let’s say she had a tragic love affair with the old guy, Dr. Howell. Maybe he married the wrong person, knocked up his housekeeper, and did the right thing. Then Molly became a bond between them. Genetics superseded by love. She was their child, as the certificates say. But she wasn’t. When Molly left, Elizabeth knew she had never really been hers.”
“That’s a very sad story.”
“Molly needed something more than a real-estate deal to explain the connection between Griffin and Elizabeth. She must have guessed she was the link between them. Her own name was a good place to start. That was the only thing she had from her natural mother. She had to find a Bray girl who would have been at a vulnerable age and within Griffin’s reach.”
“So he could seduce her?”
“Griffin didn’t seduce. He raped.”
“He raped the mother and he raped the daughter, and he made them both pregnant. That’s quite despicable.”
“It makes you want to weep for what happens in the world,” Morgan said. “And it makes you enraged.”
“I wonder what happened to the original mother. Do you think her name was Eleanor?”
“Probably. And her own mother’s maiden name was likely Drummond. There’s a strange continuity here between mothers and daughters, some related by blood, some by affection, and it’s not over yet. I’d say Eleanor Bray, Molly’s mother, moved on, with her past tucked away in remission. She’s out there somewhere living her life. She would have checked out Elizabeth Clarke — maybe old Dr. Howell made the actual arrangements. He might even have been involved in forcing Griffin to buy the old house. Sixteen years later I don’t imagine Molly much cared about tracking down her birth mother. She had no reason to be sentimental. And fourteen years after that she hoped the