Reflections on a familiar face caught his eye. Partially covered by several other pictures was a snapshot of Rachel Naismith in a country setting. He removed the picture from the board, expecting to see Miranda as well. It must have been taken when they were here in the spring. No, he thought, the background was the green of summer. They were here in March or early April. He held the picture into the light. It was a bit worn and faded. Rachel looked younger. Squinting, he recognized in the background a hill town in Tuscany, and the distinctive square towers of San Gimignano.
He scanned the other photographs on the board more carefully and found another of Rachel, this time rubbing the nose of the famous bronze boar in the Straw Market in Florence. Behind it there was a duplicate picture, only someone else was rubbing the bronze. He squinted. It was Shelagh Hubbard. Behind that was another, the same, only this time it showed Alexander Pope with the boar’s snout under curled fingers as if he were subduing a wild beast.
Methodically, Morgan began removing the photographs, which at some points were layered in clusters three and four deep. He was no longer concerned about leaving behind signs of his illicit search. He could feel his heart pounding and he had to consciously steady his hands. He lifted a framed photo from the wall and tilted it to the light.
Rachel had mentioned her interest in art as a student at Western. It was a long reach from London on the Ontario Thames to Florence on the Arno. But there she was, in a photograph lost among the pictures of reclaimed Ontario buildings, standing by the wall at riverside, with the Ponte Vecchio in the background looking more like a quaint architectural accident than a bridge. Her dark features were difficult to make out against the dazzling light of the Florentine sky. Beside her was a blond woman, Shelagh Hubbard, whose pale features were equally obscured by the brightness of the sun. It was an odd picture, and yet charming, with the ambiance of the city on full display.
As he expected, Morgan found a photograph with Rachel and Shelagh together. They were standing arm in arm like a couple of honeymooners in the Piazza del Duomo, posing near one of the Baptistery doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti, the “Gates of Paradise.” As myriad explanations swarmed through his mind, he could not help but respond to the beauty of the city that had brought this improbable threesome together. It must have been five or six years ago. Morgan had been there fifteen years before that. As personal memories surfaced, he suppressed them. This had to do with Miranda. How did she fit into the picture?
Rifling through the remaining photographs, Morgan found a Polaroid snap by a street photographer taken in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. Alexander Pope’s long arms were casually draped over each woman’s shoulders, drawing them close to his side. The intimacy of their embrace seemed to Morgan a public celebration that the three of them were lovers. In his mind, however, the images of four people, not three, wheeled in freefall as he struggled to assimilate their possible relationships.
Morgan scanned the room with renewed diligence. He reached out and touched the surface of a painting with his fingertips. What he had taken as reproductions were original copies. Several were in the style of Botticelli. All were of heads only, as if the artist had no interest in the subject matter. Alexander Pope had refined his skills with colour and style in Florence. Had he also perfected the art of the fresco?
As he was leaving the room, Morgan braced for a moment against the door frame to soak in as much as possible of what he was seeing. As he looked about, he ran his fingers along the spines of books at eye level on the shelves nearest the door. His hand stopped over several familiar volumes. He turned to look at them more closely. They were the same blue colour as Shelagh Hubbard’s journals, the same size, more like binders than books. Inhaling deeply, he withdrew one and opened it, finding, as he expected, blocks of passages in her handwriting, interspersed with familiar pen sketches, all in black ink, detailing aspects of the Madame Renaud’s murders. He quickly opened another volume and discovered what seemed an exact duplicate of her journal describing Morgan’s intended fate as a pile of desiccated bones in a Huron burial mound. The final volume inevitably offered a duplicate account of the Hogg’s Hollow tableau with the same sketches and horrifically clinical descriptions.
On closer examination, these seemed to be practice copies, as if Shelagh Hubbard had done them in preparation for the final edition that he and Miranda had found at her farm. There was another blue binder lying flat on the same shelf. It was not as large, but much thicker. Morgan opened it and saw immediately that it was a collection of handwriting exercises and practice sketches all in the same black ink as the other three binders. The journals found at the farm were done in various inks, suggesting that they had been written over an extended period of time. He glanced up at the wall on the other side of the door. The framed calligraphy was done in black ink. Written neatly in Roman script on the lower right corner of each was the name Rachel Naismith and a date.
Morgan sat down in the big armchair. Had Rachel forged Shelagh Hubbard’s journals? Had she written them in the first place? For the final versions did she use a variety of inks to create the illusion of authenticity? Handwriting analysis had not been done on the volumes found at the farm. A cursory comparison with Hubbard’s academic notes seemed sufficient verification of authenticity, since their authorship was never in doubt. Now it appeared, in all probability, Rachel Naismith, with the collusion of Alexander Pope, had created both sets. How much of the content were they responsible for? Was there a possibility Shelagh was innocent?
He rose abruptly and picked up the photograph of the three of them together in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. Now what he saw in their eyes was not a play of possession or submission but the sinister glee of conspirators. He looked again. Conspiracy? Lust? It was simply a street photographer’s snapshot of three friends — probably, by their demeanour, summer residents not tourists, leaning against each other in a piazza in the heart of the city.
Morgan set the picture down on the countertop with the others and shuffled them into neat, random piles. They would be there when he returned with a warrant, once things fell into place. He snapped off the light and was surprised that the room remained fully illuminated. The sun was well over the horizon; the day had begun.
He wasn’t sure whether Miranda and Rachel had planned to connect with Alexander Pope. He knew, now, with a certainty, the three of them would be together. His breath quickened and, after a quick tour of the house to fix it in place in his mind, he slipped out the side door, got into his car, took a deep breath, and drove down the long driveway, turning right on Lakeshore Road and then right again, up to the 401. After a few kilometres, he veered north to Highway 7 and cut across the top of Toronto to avoid the morning gridlock, then turned north. He was on his way to Penetanguishene. chapter sixteen
Wiarton
Miranda crawled from the tent just after dawn. She walked out onto the point of land, feeling the offshore breeze riffle her hair, and looked back along the sound to the east, where, from low on the horizon, the sun skimmed the waves like a red rubber ball. The whimsical images that bobbed in her mind belied her feelings of apprehension. She had not been diving in several years and while she was certified, she was far from confident. She had no experience in wreck-diving, which called for a whole different order of expertise. Being in enclosed spaces underwater ran counter to the freedom of movement that drew her to the sport in the first place.