He knew there was a connection between these feelings of dread and the fax from London that had come through just before he left headquarters for the night. Scotland Yard was reopening their inquiry into the Renaud’s murders. Their medical examiners were convinced the cadavers under their wax veneers predated original assumptions by a number of years. Forensic identification of the bodies verified their revised findings. They wanted Morgan to suggest an alternate timeline in Shelagh Hubbard’s career. Might she have been in London earlier than previously supposed, perhaps working at Madame Renaud’s in some anonymous capacity that would have given her access to the facilities but left no records of her presence?
That seemed something more likely to be determined in London. A quick check through her file, the very same file that had been forwarded to Scotland Yard more than a month previous, suggested she had pursued an academic career on the fast track without a break between doctoral studies at Oxford, a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of London, and her appointment at the wax museum. Renaud’s had no record of her employment there before the dates indicated in her journal. Her undergraduate and masters work in Vancouver, at the University of British Columbia, combined with her relative age at each stage of her evolving career, left no time for earlier employment in any capacity whatsoever in the Chamber of Horrors. He had faxed back, suggesting the arcane procedures of post-mortem preparation might have contaminated the normal measures determining time of death.
He also suggested they switch to email and, on a hunch, he requested a scan of Madame Renaud’s employment records extending back at least ten years. There might be anomalies Scotland Yard wouldn’t see.
Drifting into a troubled sleep, he had been thinking about Shelagh Hubbard, but he woke up with Alexander Pope looming in his mind. Pope would be the key to resolving the anomalies of Shelagh Hubbard’s activities among the perpetual dead. His first thought had been to call Miranda. He couldn’t call her. She had declared with conviction that she was going to leave her cellphone at home.
“We’re going camping, Morgan. No phone — ”
“No pool, no pets.”
“You get the idea. I haven’t been inside a tent since I was a student.”
“Yeah, I knew that. I think I did.” Sometimes when she told him things, he was not sure whether he’d heard them before, or whether the cadence of her voice was so familiar it only seemed like he had.
A surprising number of trucks were competing for space on the road. A succession of eighteen wheelers roared up behind him and veered into the passing lane at the last moment. He was driving above the speed limit. He was thinking.
He tried to imagine Alexander Pope as a sinister figure — the villain in a strangely elusive drama, perhaps by Shakespeare, perhaps Hitchcock. He didn’t fit. In spite of Morgan’s apprehension about the danger inherent in Miranda’s relationship with Pope, Morgan found the man too much absorbed in his own predilections to be a proactive scoundrel. Shelagh Hubbard, in comparison, fit the bill to a T. She frightened him, even now, after death. It wasn’t the crimes; mostly, it was how he had been manipulated in a gruesome entertainment where he didn’t know the rules, where he wasn’t even sure of the game. He had been played for a fool.
The thought of Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel, reducing her ridiculous admirer to ruin, and of Mildred in Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, how she led her lover into the depths of despair. These images skirted along the edge of his mind, drawing him into their company. Yet, he saw those doomed men as victims in scenarios crafted by misogynous men, while he had been the victim of his own emotional ambivalence.
He loved women. He wanted to be free, he wanted to be loved — but the two seemed incompatible. Mutually exclusive desires. Himself, alone, caught between.
He thought about Lucy as he turned off the 401 on the outskirts of Port Hope. She had drawn him inexorably into an abyss of anguish, and yet, strangely, he missed her in his life. No, what he missed was the intensity of his unhappiness; the way, like the pain of a phantom limb, she had reminded him of what wasn’t there.
Morgan clambered out of the car, admired the looming outlines of Alexander Pope’s house etched against the predawn sky, and made his way to the side door with its antique lock, which he managed to pick open in seconds. The house was huge inside — larger than he had expected from its outside dimensions — and rambling, despite the severe exterior. There were country antiques everywhere and he could not tell in the dull light of early morning which were original and which were what Alexander Pope described as “authentic reproductions.” Running his hands over a sideboard with raised panels, he thought he could feel something in the wood suggesting it was new, despite the layers of chipped and worn paint with oxblood showing through like wounds. It did not have the feel of old wood — it felt cool and dense. If it was a fake, though, it was, to his eye, brilliantly accomplished.
Lying everywhere against the walls and on top of tables and hutches were odds and ends of forged iron and articulated wood that spoke of pioneer life now as remote as the most ancient of times. He realized in a brief thought that he had no more access to his own heritage than the people on Rapa Nui had to theirs. Less, in fact, for although they might not fully understand their cultural legacy, they lived among its monuments, they replicated historical texts they could no longer read, and honoured the past in ways we have forgotten how to do.
He became annoyed with himself for dawdling; nothing would have pleased him more than to linger over each artifact and item of furniture, and to explore the interior spaces of the house itself. But working against that was a diffuse sense of urgency about Miranda’s well-being and a more immediate concern with being arrested for break-and-enter.
It was still too dark to see clearly, so Morgan decided to run the risk of turning on lights — which, of course illuminated the diverse colours of the painted furniture and made him yearn to examine each piece more closely. He forced himself to keep moving through what seemed like a vast wunderkammern, a live-in cabinet of curiosities. He found two studies, one on the main floor off the central hallway and one upstairs, adjoining the master bedroom. The downstairs study was an office and general workspace, with building plans and business files strewn casually about. The upstairs study was even more cluttered and much more personal. This was obviously Pope’s sanctum sanctorum, where only the most intimate of visitors would likely be admitted.
On display were private mementos, including clusters of photographs on a massive corkboard, numerous framed pictures and diplomas, souvenirs of extensive travel. Innumerable books littered the floor, obscuring the patterns of antique Persian carpets. As soon as Morgan entered the room, he felt he was being intrusive. That was what made him sure it was the best place to start his search. Whatever it was he was looking for, it was here.
He slumped down in a leather armchair and gazed around, taking inventory. The carpets overlapped with casual eloquence but the paintings on the walls were Renaissance reproductions. There were two works of Japanese calligraphy, done with the florid discipline of a master. The framed photographs were in pairs, the left ones of log and clapboard houses as crumbling derelicts and the right ones of the same houses rebuilt as showpieces, looking more authentic than they might have appeared to their original owners. He got up and walked about, circling, as he often did, registering everything, waiting for his gathering perceptions to give up a pattern, a revelation, something he could work with. Outside, the sky was taking on colour. The stars had faded with the promise of morning. Turning away from the window, Morgan scanned the constellations of photographs pinned to the corkboard.