LITMIR.BIZ

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unlock the secrets of their morbid embrace.

      Annoyed by the Globe article, Morgan grabbed his coat and set out for Cabbagetown. As he walked along Harbord Street into the heart of the U of T campus, he tried to stabilize the source of his ire, which hovered somewhere between amused irritation and genuine anger. The publicity was proprietary, a declaration by the forensic anthropologists of ownership. Good for them; damn their sense of entitlement.

      In front of Hart House, he stopped to dump snow from a shoe, balancing precariously on one foot. He stared intently at a gritty lump of ice. His father had taught him the secret of balance, how to put on socks in a standing position: fix your gaze on a particular spot and the wavering stops. His father taught him to splash cold water on the back of his neck in the morning to eliminate grogginess, to spit on his shoes for the final polish, to savour the taste of authentic ginger beer, to discriminate among newspaper comic strips, to use chopsticks, to blow his nose without a tissue — snorting through one nostril at a time, pressing the other — when no one was watching.

      Morgan looked around at the architectural dissonance that skirted University Circle. Nothing had changed in twenty-two years. In this season, the buildings looked bleak, the flowerbeds were like burial mounds, and the shrubs were tangles of dried sticks or clumps of bedraggled green. After a night of sleet, followed by a cold turn that left the air crisp, the sky an intense winter blue, and the white a translucent gathering of all the colours in the spectrum, the snow-covered lawn glistened in comical contrast.

      The main door into the anthropology laboratories was locked but Morgan called building maintenance on a campus emergency phone and when someone showed up he flashed his badge and was admitted without being asked for an explanation. He was not expecting so much activity behind closed doors on a weekend, as he searched for the forensics lab — graduate students at their Sisyphean labours, earning their meagre stipends. Time off, he surmised, is for faculty — unless they have just been presented with disentombed cadavers in pristine period dress.

      A slightly manic young man in a lab coat directed him to the location of Professor Birbalsingh's newest project, chuckling as he walked off in the other direction. Morgan had attended graduate school for a week before dropping out to study criminology at a community college. With a novitiate's grasp of academic procedures and obligations, he felt a tenuous connection to the young man's vaguely demented detachment. For years he had imagined returning to university, with the idea of eventually teaching. He knew that his brain was too restless, however. He liked having a mind with a mind of its own.

      He pushed the door open without knocking and entered a room that, despite the gruesome paraphernalia, was quite unlike Ellen Ravenscroft's austere aerie in the heart of the city. Death, here, was not an end in itself, as it was at the morgue. It was an object of conjecture, subsumed by the conventions of an academic discipline. While cool, the room was almost cheerful. The blinds were only half drawn. Dust motes swirled in sunlight reflected from the snow outside. The bodies, which were lying on autopsy trays, had been separated and stripped of their clothing. Both Dr. Hubbard and Professor Birbalsingh were intent on the male at the moment. A graduate assistant was meticulously cleaning plaster dust and debris from the hands of the female on the adjoining table. On a stainless-steel counter behind them, a wooden box the size of a valise sat ominously.

      Before his observation of the scene could be considered a covert activity, Morgan coughed to announce his presence. The professor didn't look up and the student focused more intently on her work, but Shelagh Hubbard turned around and, recognizing who it was, smiled warmly.

      "Sorry to bother you," Morgan said.

      "No bother," she answered. "The Inquisitive Detective," she declared, as if it were a title. "You couldn't resist."

      "Actually, I wanted to know about the newspaper story."

      "The newspaper?"

      "There was a write-up in the Globe this morning, with just enough detail to promise a follow-up. I assume you were the source, Dr. Hubbard."

      "Shelagh, please. We're not formal around here."

      Her eyes swept the room, then she nodded in the direction of the naked bodies and whispered, "Except for him, the Obsessive Professor."

      "I heard that, Miss Hubbard."

      "He is disciplining me, detective. I am ‘doctor' at the museum, ‘professor' at the university, and ‘Shelagh' to my friends. I am ‘Miss' only when proclaiming my marital status or incurring the wrath of my mentor."

      "Shelagh, the story?"

      "Didn't they mention you? I'm so sorry."

      "To get into the early edition, you must have called before you got to the scene."

      "A romance doomed to endure beyond death. It seemed opportune —"

      "Or opportunistic."

      "If you'd prefer. In museums and anthropology, he or she who hesitates doesn't get the grant. Shape the story and the money comes in — a straightforward equation. We're not curing cancer here; we're recovering the past."

      "Isn't it beyond recovery, by definition?"

      "We illuminate the past from a present perspective — is that better? Isn't that what you do, as well, in the detecting business?"

      Morgan smiled.

      "You haven't been here all night, have you?" he asked.

      "We have," said the stolid professor, without looking up.

      Shelagh Hubbard glanced at her mentor, then addressed Morgan. "I virtually dictated the story from the way Professor Birbalsingh described it. I was precise — perhaps a little inventive, but not dishonest."

      "And yet, surprisingly vivid," said Morgan.

      "Read carefully, Detective," said Sheila Hubbard with a modicum of pride. "You'll find mostly the piece is about atmosphere, the grotesque in our midst, death at the doorstep. It's tabloid melodrama, upgraded for the Globe with good grammar and compound sentences."

      Morgan regarded the woman with a begrudging admiration. She was not about to apologize.

      "And the clothes," he asked her, shifting direction. "They seem remarkably well-preserved."

      "They are museum quality," she said, and she smiled enigmatically. "I'm hoping we can spruce them up a little and steal them away from Professor Birbalsingh for the museum's permanent collection."

      The graduate student came over to where they were looking down at the articles of clothing laid out on a table. "I'm betting they were put on after mummification occurred," she said.

      "Impossible," said Dr. Hubbard. "The drying-out process took place because they were sealed into an airless closet, Joleen. They may have been dressed after they were dead, but their crypt was clearly undisturbed until we opened it yesterday."

      The graduate student did not appear intimidated, nor particularly dissuaded, but said nothing. Morgan considered the implications of a lengthy delay between death and the memento mori tableau. He wondered: was the arrangement meant to inflict humiliation on the dead? To provide grisly satisfaction for the killer? To symbolize the transcendence of love for the lovers' accomplice? To taunt posterity with an impenetrable mystery?

      Shelagh Hubbard had rejoined her colleague, and the two of them huddled over the headless corpses, conferring in whispers. The graduate student lingered beside Morgan. He introduced himself.

      "And where are you from, Joleen?"

      It was his favourite question, the way others will ask a stranger, What do you do? or, How do you like the weather? He needed to know where people were from. He was so completely a creature of one city, it connected him to the larger world.

      "Cabbagetown," she said. "That's right here in downtown Toronto."

      "I know where Cabbagetown is," he said quickly, staring at her for a moment, trying to place her within the social spectrum — tenement or townhouse?

      "Working class,

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