attractive. The coffee was execrable.
"It's not necessarily murder," said Miranda. "It could be a third party honouring their dying wishes. A ghoulish accomplice; except what would he — or possibly she — have done with the heads?"
"Could have been separate acts," said the policewoman. "They could have died embracing; then someone stole the heads for souvenirs and sealed the remaining remains in the wall."
"‘The young in one another's arms,'" said Morgan, delivering the phrase in quotation marks, catching up to her previous statement.
"Yeats. He wasn't talking about dying, Morgan. He was talking about sex." Miranda cast a conspiratorial glance at the young policewoman.
Morgan began compiling a list of doomed lovers in his mind, from Hero and Leander to Sean Penn and Madonna. Himself? No. Doomed elevated something that was simply sad.
The young woman seemed in no hurry to show off her charges, and for Miranda and Morgan it was a matter of pacing.
"So where're you from?" Morgan asked.
The officer flushed with anger. Miranda blanched. In an immigrant society you never ask people of colour where they're from. You either know, or it's not your concern.
"I'd guess southwestern Ontario," Morgan blithely continued. "Down past Waterloo County — that's where Miranda's from. Do you have a name?"
"Naismith. My family is from Halifax. Africville. Until they tore it down. I thought you were figuring maybe Jamaica. Dat girl, man, her come from de islands?"
The Caribbean cadence was derisive, but Morgan wasn't sure if she was mocking him or herself. That was the point, thought Miranda.
"Africville? United Empire Loyalists."
"Good stock, as they say in the people trade. We predate the Loyalists. Freed-men, before the Revolution, when Halifax was still called Chebucto by the Mi'kmaq. But I grew up within sight of Detroit; we're not from Africville anymore."
"And went to the University of Windsor," said Morgan, trying to connect.
"The University of Western Ontario. Where I was rushed by the African Club, the Afro-American Student Coalition, the West-Indian Association, the Moorish-American Movement. La Societé Franco-Afrique, you name it."
"Nothing Canadian?" said Morgan, unsure whether that was a good thing or bad. That is the point, thought Miranda. It was both.
"Nothing Canadian and black; they were mutually exclusive. I could be professionally black or honourary white. That was it! I was in demand socially by every white group on campus so they could pretend we were exactly the same."
"Cursed by the colour-blind," said Miranda.
"You've got it," said the young woman. "If you think invisibility is a bitch, try being the object of tolerance."
"So," Morgan asked, carefully, "is Toronto — the most cosmopolitan city in the world, as they say — any better?" He was fascinated by how much attitude she revealed, and how little was shown of what she actually felt.
"Well, sir, here I'm an ethnic minority. Before I was just a minority. You tell me."
Blowing steam across the top of his coffee, Morgan lapsed into personal reflection. He had never been invisible but he had certainly been isolated. By choice? Is it ever by choice?
Listening to the silence, Miranda realized that from the moment the front door opened she had been aware the young woman was black. She had admired her dark complexion, her gleaming hair, her bold face. Miranda was suddenly uncomfortable, knowing she would not have catalogued the features of a white officer unless the person was either extremely homely or outrageously beautiful.
Their eyes connected and for a brief moment each woman looked into the depths of the other, each at a loss as to what was revealed.
"What have you done for a toilet?" Miranda asked. "I see most of the plumbing is gone."
"Haven't had to. But I figure I'd just go outside."
The two women pushed at the back door, ratcheting it open against the drifted snow, and Miranda stepped out. She was back before the officer had even poured herself a refill.
"That," said Miranda, "was not pleasant."
"But quick," said Morgan.
The two women chatted for a while, sitting at the Arborite table, nursing their coffees. Morgan, standing, leaned against a counter, grinding his soles on the floor. He sat down. The women tried to open their conversation, to make it inclusive, but he only listened, and periodically glanced at the ceiling, trying to envision the macabre scenario overhead.
Miranda looked at her partner over the rim of her cup. She felt almost sorry for him. Delay somehow relieved his guilt for wanting to subvert professional disinterest and plunge into the Gothic depths of what promised to be a really good story.
"I'm going up," he finally announced, rising to his feet again.
The muted groan of his chair against the battered linoleum startled them. A faint moaning echo reprised as the other two slid out their chairs and joined him shuffling through rubble as they made for the stairs.
chapter two The Room Upstairs
Demolition had been arrested in its earliest phase, although the place must have been deteriorating through seasons of freezing and thawing for years. Thick layers of wallpaper had peeled off in great patchwork swathes, revealing plaster that looked pulpy or had crumbled away. Horizontal strips of hand-split cedar showed through gaps where a salvaging contractor had retrieved old fixtures and woodwork. The stair railing was gone, but the wood trim hadn't been touched yet.
As they spread out on the dilapidated stairs to distribute their weight, Officer Naismith explained how salvagers had discovered the hidden closet. In prying a hanging cabinet from one of the bedroom walls, a crowbar smashed through the pulpy plaster and revealed an unaccountable cavity. It wasn't so odd in a larger house for an awkward space to be covered over — Morgan knew that — but it was unusual in a cottage like this. They didn't build in closets; they would have used armoires and dressers, or pegs on the wall. There might be the occasional odd architectural nook. Covered over, it would be forgotten in a generation or two.
"Here we are," said Officer Naismith as if conducting a tour. "The largest bedroom, no less."
"It's still pretty small," Miranda observed. Then, moving forward, she gazed downward. "Oh, my goodness, they look so in love!"
The room filled with a hushed silence.
Officer Naismith was quietly jubilant. Morgan smiled enigmatically. Miranda's lack of professional propriety or affected indifference seemed a genuine relief. Candour from Miranda was not always forthcoming, especially in front of colleagues.
Miranda stifled what might have been laughter or a sneeze, the officer started to giggle, Morgan scowled. But the grisly scene, while eerie, was not oppressive. Death seemed so long in the past, solemnity was no more obligatory than grieving over displays at a waxworks museum.
Morgan kneeled to scrutinize the skin on the back of the male's
