The Motion of Puppets(17)

“To see if it is her?”

The two policeman looked at each other and then back at Theo. “Oui,” Foucault said, and laying a hand on Theo’s shoulder, he helped him to his feet.

They rode in silence to the morgue, Foucault at the wheel, Thompson keeping company with Theo in the backseat. A seagull lolled in the blue summer sky, as though it was following them. As they pulled into the parking lot, Theo could no longer bear the suspense.

“Am I a suspect? Do you think I could possibly harm my wife?”

“You’re not under arrest, Mr. Harper. There’s no crime, as such, that’s been committed. We don’t even know if this is your wife. But you should steel yourself, just in case. A body taken from the water after so long is not a pretty sight.”

When the attendant pulled back the sheet, the corpse was as sad and gruesome as Thompson had warned. Theo cried out involuntarily and looked away quickly from the body on the slab. For the first time since Kay’s disappearance, he broke into tears, a ragged sobbing that would not stop. The ruined creature was not his wife but some other poor soul quit of this world. Asked if he was certain, could he look again, Theo shook his head, saying, “No, no, that is not her.”





6

The drowned girl accompanied him to the circus. After the emotional tumult of the interrogation by Thompson and Foucault and his afternoon at the morgue, Theo did not want to be alone, but he had nowhere to go, so he headed instead to the plaza where the free theater played. The dead girl who walked beside him was the spit and image of his wife; he could see how they had mistaken the corpse for Kay. Water dripped from her body and her footsteps squelched on the pavement. Blue at her extremities, the skin on her face slack, she no longer looked like a woman in her twenties but a horror beyond all hope.

“Where have you been?” she asked. Now the voice, that was identical to his wife’s, and he was surprised to hear it. “Why didn’t you come save me?”

He did not know how to answer her, so he said nothing, and he did not want the passersby on the street to think him crazy for talking to a ghost, but no one seemed to notice her along the way, despite the fact that she wore nothing but the white sheet from the morgue and that she smelled of fish and the brackish water of the Saint Lawrence. He wished she would go away and leave him alone.

At the lot leading up to the stage, the crew and actors bustling about did not see her either, though those people who recognized him had a kind word or gesture of sympathy for his troubles. He saw Sarant limbering and unkinking her spine. She seemed embarrassed that he had approached her. “Any word?”

Theo shook his head. “But the police came by to question me, if you can imagine, about her clothes. Two detectives, Thompson and Foucault.”

“Yes, they were here as well,” Sarant said. “Loose ends, more questions. What was she wearing, that sort of thing. I really didn’t have anything more to say.” She was unnerved by Theo’s sideways glances and kept trying to determine what he was looking for or what he might be trying to convey. At last she touched him lightly on the shoulder and hurried off to the dressing rooms. The drowned woman watched forlornly as Sarant departed. Theo wandered through the crowd, looking for a familiar face, watching Reance pace the length of the stage, but he could not catch his attention. Dusk was sneaking up on them, and as the first patrons began to arrive, Theo found Egon in a spot near the front entrance.

“Two, please,” he joked.

Egon smiled at him. “You’re here for the show?”

“I thought we could watch together, if you are free.”

Egon found two milk crates for them in the wings. He offered him a swig from his flask, and Theo took a discreet tug. The dead girl stood between them, absentmindedly watching the last of the crowd make its way onto the grounds, and then she suddenly took off, picking her way through the clots of people milling about, although not a soul responded to her sepulchral presence. Theo lost sight of her at last and was greatly relieved. Out in the audience, Reance was working his preshow shtick, giving the folks a close-up before it all began.

“Police came by today,” Egon said. “Asking a lot of questions. You would like these two blokes, Thompson and Foucault, salt and pepper.”

“We’ve met. They came by the apartment. It seems I’m under suspicion.”

A gong was struck. The overture blasted away any chance for further conversation. House lights down, stage lights up, and descending from a platform the slumberland bed with the sleeping boy, the phantasmagoria of dreams commenced once more. Theo nearly broke down in tears when Sarant and the flowers came around, imagining Kay instead of her understudy in the role. As they watched Sarant balance atop the silver ball and contort her body into an arch, he poked Egon in the ribs and asked in a hoarse whisper, “Why would they think I had anything to do with her disappearance?”

“It’s always the husband.” The little man shrugged. “They wondered if I had seen you that night. But how would I know to look for you? We hadn’t even met.”

“But I wasn’t here. I was working that night and only stepped out for dinner.”

Illuminated by the footlights, Sarant wobbled, threatening to fall, and a gasp raced through the crowd. Theo wondered if the contortionist had been distracted by the presence of a corpse peering out of the darkness, but she recovered and slowly unwound herself back to the stage to welcome applause. As the show went on, he kept trying to find the ghost, but she proved elusive, blending in with the spectators ringing the stage. Theo and Egon sat in silence through the entr’actes and the grand tumbling finale. He could not resist the temptation to watch for Kay, though he knew that she would not appear.