priorities.
He waited.
“Zinc and copper on Baffin Island, problems of sovereignty. The Arctic and problems of sovereignty can be quite pressing.”
“Enough, apparently, to leave his wife on ice.” He smiled at the droll connection between ice and the Arctic, but she showed no emotion. “Can you track him down?”
“No.”
“Surely there is no place in the world where a man like Harrington D’Arcy cannot be reached.”
“There is, and he is there.”
“That sounds sinister.”
“Not yet. Now if you will excuse me. If I hear from him, I will call.”
“Promise?”
“What? Oh, yes, Detective, I promise. I am glad you like your job; you find it amusing.”
“Yes,” said Morgan and walked back to the elevator on his own. Her most memorable trait was her hair, which draped in a honey-blonde cascade to her shoulders and shimmered when she moved as if it were constantly under studio lights.
He went straight to the D’Arcy home in Rosedale. It was a charming stone cottage tucked away on a curving side street, reminiscent of a small seigneurial manor along one of the more remote rivers of Quebec. Only when he was up close did it seem imposing — from the street it made neighbouring houses appear pretentious and ill at ease.
He had expected something more lavish from a Brazilian heiress and a lawyer legendary for his success managing corporate takeovers. Discreetly legendary; an heiress of what?
The woman who answered the door was older, and she had evidently been crying.
“I don’t suppose Mr. D’Arcy is here?” Morgan asked after introducing himself.
The woman looked at him warily.
“I am here only. The señora, she is deceased. Mr. D’Arcy, he is not at home at this time.”
“Was he here last night?”
“Last night, yes. This morning no. He is go.”
“Do you know where?”
“I do not know where to. There have been calls from his office, looking for Mr. D’Arcy.”
“Could I come in, do you think?” asked Morgan.
“You are police? You have the warrant?”
Morgan was startled by her confidence; she was certainly not an illegal immigrant.
“No, I do not,” he said. “I’m trying to discover what happened to Mrs. D’Arcy. I am trying to help find her husband.”
“She was not murdered by Mr. D’Arcy.”
“No, you’re quite possibly right. And he may be in danger himself.” That thought had not occurred to him before, that the wife’s murder might presage the husband’s, assuming he hadn’t killed her.
“You may come in. What do you wish?”
Morgan simply asked to look around. He was not sure what he was looking for, just something, whatever, an entry into the labyrinth.
In the library, there were photographs on the mantle in silver frames, some of the Pemberly under full sail and at anchor. In the centre of the mantle, there was a piece of wood the shape of a paddle blade, inscribed with hieroglyphs. Morgan immediately recognized Rongorongo, a script devised by the people of Easter Island, which they reproduced for the tourist trade although, now, sadly, no one was able to read it. This example is particularly good, he thought. The wood was riddled with wormholes and the surface appeared very old, not weather-worn, but had a powdery sheen, creating an illusion of authenticity. He reached out and touched it. The surface was surprisingly hard. He traced a line of glyphs with his fingertip.
This was the second time he had touched an original piece of Rongorongo. Only the previous year he had come across another in private ownership that was peripheral to a murder investigation. It belonged to the original owner of Miranda’s Jaguar, a nasty man capable of unspeakable crimes; a low-profile lawyer like D’Arcy, but unremarkable as a consequence of limited achievement, not professional strategy.
Morgan surveyed the room until his eyes came to rest on a stone carving sitting in the shadows, also from Easter Island. The ubiquitous moai with furrowed brow, pursed lips, and eyes gazing vacantly into the emptiness. He marvelled at how such a remote place, so distant from the Western world, could have had such an impact on cultural consciousness. He guessed that Miranda would bring him either a smaller replica of Rongorongo or a diminutive moai, modest enough to be carried in her hand luggage.
The library seemed, like the rest of the house, to be without gender and with no indication of children, although there was ambient warmth to the furnishings. It was clearly a room frequented by the D’Arcys. In addition to books, there were magazine and newspaper racks, a small stack of the Guardian Weekly and The Economist, a tray with decanters of madeira and port, and kindling to start a good fire once autumn set in.
Wandering into a study off the library, he saw an answering machine blinking and touched the play button. There were calls from a nail salon, a dry cleaner, and two from Maria D’Arcy’s husband, asking her to call him, without saying where. The office was hers. It was more distinctively an expression of personality than the library, not feminine in any recognizable way, yet it clearly bore the imprint of a woman. For one thing, there is the faint scent of Fleurs de Rocaille, Morgan thought. Also stacked neatly, were back issues of Vogue, Architectural Digest, The Walrus, and Vanity Fair.
He played the machine again, this time he focused on her own message. It was warm but precise, first in English then repeated in her native language — he assumed it was the same greeting as he did not speak Portuguese.
He slipped the tape from the machine and put it in his pocket.
When the woman he had described to himself as older let him out, he wondered, older than what?
He walked out of Rosedale past the subway station and turned south on Yonge Street. Morgan walked everywhere when he could. He knew the D’Arcys better now, enough to know how little he knew of them. The lives of strangers were simple to understand, summed up by an item of clothing, a vocal inflection, the twist of a smile, incongruous movement — but the more someone was revealed, the more impenetrably complex they became. At the death scene, the D’Arcys were stereotypes; in their empty study, they became real.
Wherever Harrington D’Arcy was, it was not illegal to grieve in seclusion. Unless, of course, being a widower was a self-inflicted condition.
When Morgan got back to headquarters, he took the tape to a technician and they listened together until the technician got bored. Morgan wrote down what Maria said in English. He checked out the nail salon — she had missed her appointment, and the dry cleaners, who wanted him to pass on the message that the stain on her cashmere sweater would not come out. He listened to her voice over and over, and the more he listened the more empathy he felt for her, although he couldn’t determine why, exactly, except that she had been alive.
He asked a colleague with
