think your mother was involved in Robert Griffin’s death, but I don’t know that she killed him. We’ll have to see.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“They’re both dead.”
“We have to know what happened.”
“It won’t make any difference. She’s dead.”
“We’ll sort everything out.”
“I told you what happened.”
“Yes.”
“So why not leave her alone?” She said this as if it were a test.
Miranda moved toward the door. Jill pulled her back.
“No,” said Jill. There was an indefinable urgency in her voice. “Let’s just stay for a minute.”
They returned to the bed, and Miranda sat down. Jill walked to the shower curtain and stood with her fingers running along its slippery folds, almost leaning into it for support. She looked back at Miranda, who was slumped over on one elbow, anxious, exhausted, wanting to escape, but also feeling patience, compassion, and the desire to protect this girl from the terrors within.
“I don’t want it like this,” said Jill. There was an edge of hysteria in her voice. “I shouldn’t have told you. She wanted me to know. I thought she wanted you to know, too. Please, Miranda, you have the power. Why can’t we leave the past in the past? Wouldn’t that be best for all of us — to bury the past?”
“I understand,” said Miranda. “But even if we could, the law won’t let us. There’s a lot at stake here, Jill. Two deaths under mysterious circumstances. And a huge estate. You’re an heiress, you know. You stand to gain a great deal from all this.”
Jill glowered at her from across the room. “All this?” She gazed around, almost cowering within the confines of the cell, despite surface bravado.
“Griffin’s estate —”
“I don’t want anything!”
“It’s not your choice, I’m afraid. I’m sorry, Jill.”
“I’m a rich orphan,” Jill said with disdain.
“Come sit down, Jill. Let’s talk.”
“No, I’ve got to figure this out by myself, Miranda.” She spoke her name as a challenge, like a barrier between them. Her eyes flicked furtively about, and the bleak walls seemed proof of her guilt for having been raped, evidence of her shame for being her father’s child, a horrific reminder of her burden as the keeper of her mother’s secrets. A shadow of defiance and rage crossed her face, giving way to the pallor of quiet despair.
“Miss Quin, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. My mom didn’t want anyone to know about this place, about what he did to us, to all of us. You’re the only one who can put it together.”
Jill stepped backward through the doorway out into the corridor, drawing the huge door closed behind her, all before Miranda could assimilate what was going on. The girl turned the key in the lock and switched off the overheads.
Miranda was engulfed in a stifling absence of light, too stunned to move. After what might have been only seconds, she saw the small, glowing rectangle in the door disappear, and she gasped in astonishment, like a diver plunging into absolute darkness in the depths of the sea.
13
Ochiba Shigura
Morgan spent Saturday shopping. He called Miranda in the morning, but there was no answer. He dictated a rambling memo, explaining to her voice mail that maybe Eleanor Drummond for some reason had raised the spectre of Griffin’s suicide not to conceal murder but to reveal it. Stumbling, he apologized for his incoherence, then added that he would call her again on Monday.
After a brunch of scrambled eggs, back bacon, and toast — he kept the bacon in the freezer and usually allowed himself no more than three slices a week, sometimes four — he got dressed and wandered over to Bloor Street and Avenue Road, refusing to admit to himself that he was going to Yorkville.
But he needed a winter coat.
Morgan thought he might check out the early stock in a few of the Yorkville shops while he was in the area and get an idea of what he was up against. He hadn’t bought a coat in almost a decade, and he had no idea of the prices. Morgan was pretty much committed to sheepskin, probably in natural suede, possibly like something Pierre Trudeau would have worn, down to his ankles, but more likely not, most likely conservative; and double-breasted, to keep out the vicious cold of a Toronto winter. He liked the way natural suede weathered, getting better-looking as it got older.
By the time he went into the first shop in Hazelton Lanes, the complex that marked one end of Yorkville like a flagship forging ahead of the fleet, he had decided exactly what he wanted. The price wasn’t outrageous. They didn’t have precisely the right fit, but the main bulk of their stock for the coming season wasn’t on display. He said he would come back later.
Walking east along Yorkville Avenue itself, he went into a coffee bar where the old Penny Farthing had been, or near where it had been, where Neil Young and Joni Mitchell had once sung for their suppers. Bohemian Yorkville was before his time, but he liked the small-scale quality the area retained, despite haughty pretensions. Some of the galleries were museum-quality, and he had always found them amenable to browsing, even though he seldom bought anything.
Morgan sat by the window, sipping a cappuccino molto grande, as it was described in commercial Italian on the blackboard, and watched the world go by. The coffee was made with whole milk. He hadn’t asked for skim, which was what Miranda usually did. He had waited to see what they would give him, and had felt guilt-free because it hadn’t been his decision.
Leaning back, he withdrew the silver lighter from his pocket that he had picked up with loose change from the table in his foyer. He flicked it a couple of times and stared into the orange-blue flame, marvelling at what a simple instrument it was, and how seductively well it was made. It was chrome, actually, or nickel, not silver. For a moment he was charmed by its unfamiliarity, then remembered having found it at the morgue.
From where he was sitting he could see the play of shadows and light through the windows of a prestige gallery across the side street. In front of the gallery there was a huge rampant bronze, the preternatural abstraction of an animist nightmare. Paradoxically, it cast an aura of excitement over its setting that was strangely appealing.
Morgan remembered the time he and Miranda had wandered into the same gallery and he had threatened to buy an exorbitant sculpture by the same artist as the piece outside, which he had described then as “the preternatural abstraction of an animist nightmare” and was impelled to explain what his words were obscuring.
The artist was from Peterborough. Morgan had noted from a brochure that he was apparently doing well enough to have a perfect studio in the Kawartha Lakes, built with timbers and boards salvaged from ancient buildings and reassembled by Alexander Pope who, as the brochure had affirmed, was an oblique descendant of the poet.
So fulsome was the description of the builder that Morgan recalled wondering whether the
