Eleanor, Molly, Jill, Miranda — she shuffled through names in her mind. Griffin? Had he written her a letter when he knew he was dying? But it was unlikely he had known that, especially if Jill’s second-hand diagnosis of sleep apnea was a factor. Could he have caused his own death? Not with enough certainty to write Miranda beforehand.
She could envision the manila envelope. It had been recycled — at least the label had been stuck on where another label had been removed. Lots of people reused envelopes. Millionaires? Maybe. Then, as Miranda studied the postmark in her mind, she thought perhaps it was the cancellation date that was being reused. She saw the deep creases in the envelope and realized it had been stuffed through her mail slot. The postman had a key. He always opened the whole panel of boxes and put the mail in without scrunching it up. Even her Victoria’s Secret catalogues, which the postman obviously thumbed through, came out folded but not creased. That meant the envelope had been delivered by someone else.
Miranda lost track of the darkness. Slumping down on the chair, she continued her interior discourse. People didn’t send posthumous mail. So who had access to his stationery? Who knew about his souvenir clippings? Who knew about her, could draft a document, witness it, and forge his signature? And then, to be authentic, in her own spidery handwriting label the envelope because she was, after all, his amanuensis, his accomplice and wicked familiar.
Miranda was ecstatic. She would have to discuss this with Morgan. He would like amanuensis.
The passageway light suddenly flashed through the door. Pressing close to the glass, she saw a shadow slip by, probably Eugene Nishimura again. She overrode the reluctance of muscles and joints that had begun to seize up as her body shut down, lurched back across the room, and collapsed onto her hands and knees, feeling for the bedpan in the murky gloom. Dumping its contents on the floor, she struggled to her feet and scrambled as fast as she could manage back to the door. She held the bedpan up where she could see the polished steel gleam and aligned it carefully, trying to mirror the light that penetrated her window back into the corridor, tilting the pan gently to make the beam dance. Peering around the bedpan through the glass, she waited for an interminable time. Then she spied a shadow moving across the opposite wall and cast her frail beacon against the stone and brick at eye level. But the shadow disappeared, and the light was suddenly extinguished. Miranda threw the bedpan into the darkness, strode over to her bed, lay back exhausted, and allowed herself for the first time to let tears drain precious fluids from the corners of her eyes.
When Morgan arrived back at Robert Griffin’s house, Eugene Nishimura was already on the scene. A woman dressed in jeans and a sweater was with him. She introduced herself.
“My name is Ikuko. You are Detective Morgan? I have come to see my husband’s mistress. She has many parts, all of them beautiful, like a geisha.”
Morgan and Ikuko sat on the limestone parapet, talking and observing the fish, while her husband worked around the pool and inside the house.
“I know that one is best,” observed Ikuko, pointing to the champion Kohaku when her husband was in the pump room. She lowered her voice to a whisper: “I like the Ochiba Shigura.”
“Me, too,” said Morgan. “Do you speak Japanese?”
“Oh, yes, I was born in Kyoto. I am issei, a true pioneer. My husband is yonsei. Our children are gosei when they will be born — old-style Canadian.”
“Can you translate Ochiba Shigura?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Doesn’t it mean anything?”
“Not in English.”
“In Japanese.”
“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes it is difficult to translate from one culture to another, Mr. Morgan.”
Her husband came out, bringing food that he divided among the three of them. They each leaned over and hand-fed the more confident fish. The Ochiba Shigura came directly to Morgan, trying to shunt aside the Chagoi, which was voraciously mounting his half-closed hand. It gave up and swam to Ikuko where it ate delicately from her open palm tilted almost to water level.
“Eugene,” Ikuko announced, “I do not like the Takai Kohaku best. I like the Ochiba Shigura.”
Miranda sat up suddenly, coming into consciousness in an upright position. Words tumbled through her mind. She was in mid-argument, anticipating the next twist in a convoluted rhetoric. “Thirdly,” she muttered with a throaty rasp into the darkness, “number three, Morgan, is why?” The words sounded less convincing outside her head where they floated hollowly in the thick air and dissipated into the darkness. “My third point …” she continued sub-vocally, trying to recover her composure, knowing illusion was everything in a debate and she had to seem to be in command of her inner voice. What were points one and two? “My third point, Morgan …” she ventured, a little reassured by the sound of his name reverberating inside her skull. “Morgan, the tertiary element to my deductive argument is —”
She must have passed out from the effort of sitting up, because when she became aware again she was sprawled across the bed with her knees on the floor. They were bruised as if she had fallen in a posture almost of prayer.
Without moving she drifted into a dream where everything was bright and beautiful but nothing was distinct or familiar.
Flung suddenly back into wakefulness, she crawled onto the bed and stretched out. She had to think. If she could think through the pain, the pain would leave.
One — it was as though she could see a number one shaped like a child’s giant birthday candle. Eleanor Drummond had come here to monitor Robert Griffin’s proclivities for nasty behaviour. She was his conscience; he had none of his own. She needed Jill to see his death as righteous, to restore innocence to her daughter. Ambiguous! To prove Jill’s innocence to herself.
Miranda rehearsed the scenario so that she could explain it to Morgan. Time passed.
Two. The number hovered over her head, crudely formed like a numeral made from a twisted balloon. The letter authorizing her as executor was delivered posthumously. Eleanor must have known she would figure that out and go along with it, anyway! The dead woman had known things about her even she didn’t fathom.
Number three must be coming up! Miranda waited for a numeral to appear. A constellation of stars hovered in the middle distance, forming the number. An image of three crosses on Calvary loomed into focus in the guise of a Roman numeral. Threes swarmed her like the aggressive graphics on Sesame Street, then faded to black.
Okay, she thought. Eleanor had recognized Miranda when Morgan and she were beside Griffin’s body. The woman had already planned to die. She had set up a scene where Griffin might have been reading, then had impulsively, on a morbid whim, walked out to the pond and ended it all. She had seeded obvious notions of suicide in his case, but why? So the police would suspect murder. Later they’d do the same when her body was discovered. Terrible crime, a double homicide. Distasteful perhaps, but not a disgrace. One problem: how could Eleanor guarantee her daughter’s inheritance?
And then Jill’s mother saw Miranda!
Miranda searched the darkness for numbers, but there were only a few strands of dazzling red surging against the insides of her eyelids.
What if they had driven Griffin to it?
No, Morgan, listen! You can’t leave me out of the equation.
