Even the Dead

10

That evening Quirke took Phoebe to dinner at the Russell Hotel. It was their favorite place in town, although Phoebe always fretted about the cost. They went through a routine each time they came there to dine. Phoebe would scan the menu and shake her head at the prices and say they were disgraceful, to which Quirke would reply that they were exactly the same as they had been the last time they were here, and that anyway a lady should never read a menu from right to left. If she persisted, he would close the exchange by pretending to take umbrage and saying that it was his money and he would spend it as he wished, and that one of the ways he wished to spend it was on treating his daughter to a decent dinner. And then they would smile at each other, and the evening would have officially begun.

The waiter came and they ordered, grouse for Quirke and fish for Phoebe.

“You remind me of your mother when you argue with me about money,” Quirke said to her. “You narrow your eyes and purse your mouth in just the way she used to do.”

“I wish you’d talk about her more,” Phoebe said.

“Do you? I don’t know what I could tell you. I remember her in a strange way.”

“Strange?”

“I’m not sure it’s really her I’m remembering. In my memory she has become a kind of — I don’t know — a kind of mythical figure.” He smiled, a touch sheepishly. “She’s my legend, you could say.”

“She’s very beautiful, in her photographs.”

“Yes, she was lovely.” He frowned, running his fingers over the tablecloth, feeling its texture. “She had the most wonderful skin, smooth as silk, and always cool, somehow, even in the hottest weather.”

The waiter brought the bottle of Chablis that Quirke had ordered, displayed the label and drew out the cork and tipped a drop into Quirke’s glass. Quirke tasted, nodded, the wine was poured, the waiter went away. Quirke always savored this little ritual; it was like a children’s game that grown-ups were still allowed to play.

Father and daughter clinked glasses. Phoebe had on her black dress with the lace collar. She never wore jewelry.

“This is the first drink I’ve had all week,” Quirke said; it was only a white lie. “I hope you’re proud of me.”

Their first course arrived. They were both having smoked salmon.

“Did you know the Russell started up as a temperance hotel?” Quirke said. “Sir Somebody Russell opened it in — I can’t remember when. He was very hot on the fight against the demon drink.”

Phoebe arched an eyebrow. “Well,” she said, “I imagine Sir Somebody has been doing a lot of turning in his grave in the meantime.”

Quirke pushed his plate away and leaned back in his chair, the wine already spreading its warm tendrils along his veins. “This is about the last place in Dublin that makes real turtle soup,” he said, “did you know that?”

He could see she wasn’t listening. Her mood had darkened suddenly. She too had pushed her plate away, and sat with her eyes lowered, fiddling with the remains of a bread roll.

“What are we going to do?” she said in a low, urgent voice. “Whatever that man said to you, Lisa does live there. I was in her flat — her things were there.”

He had told her how he and Inspector Hackett had gone to Rathmines, how they had talked to the young man in the dirty undershirt and afterwards to Abercrombie, and how both men had insisted they knew nothing of any Lisa Smith.

“If she does live there,” Quirke said, “she must have given you a false name. You said yourself her name didn’t sound convincing.”

They drank their wine. A waitress came and took away their plates, and the waiter returned and refilled their wine glasses. The dining room had no windows, and the air was close and uncomfortably warm. Quirke loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt collar. His thoughts went back to Delia and her pale, cool skin. His brief time with her had been a kind of ecstatic torment. She had been his obsession; he couldn’t get enough of her. She knew it, and would withhold herself, just for the pleasure of seeing him squirm, of having him plead. Had she ever loved him? For a brief time, he supposed; otherwise why would she have married him? He had never understood her. What he had said to Phoebe wasn’t really true. Delia wasn’t a legend; she was an enigma. His sphinx, beautiful, desperately loved, and malign.

Their main courses arrived.

“Will you see if you can get a list of the people who were in that course with you?” Quirke said. “Maybe one of the names will jog your memory.”

Phoebe hadn’t touched her main course. “I’m convinced something bad has happened to her,” she said.

“You don’t know that. Maybe she changed her mind about staying at the house. Maybe she was frightened there, more frightened than she already was, and left and went somewhere else — maybe she even came back to Dublin.”

“How could she? She had no car — I drove her down, remember.”

“She could have got a hackney cab.”

Phoebe shook her head. “No, no,” she said. “There wasn’t a trace of her having been there. She wouldn’t have done that herself, would she?”

“Maybe she’s obsessively tidy?”

“No,” Phoebe said again, more vehemently this time. “Someone had made sure there wasn’t a mark left to show she’d been there. She just disappeared, as if—”

A couple had appeared in the doorway, and stopped there a moment to survey the room. The man was in black tie. He was in his late twenties, perhaps, boyish-looking, with thin fair hair and a sharp, clever-seeming face. The woman was older, in her forties, a little on the heavy side, but attractively so, with a broad face and large, dark eyes. Her hair was prematurely streaked with gray, and cut in an untidy line just below her ears. She had, to Quirke’s eye, what he could only define as a dignified beauty. Her gaze fell on Phoebe, and she smiled.

“Oh,” Phoebe murmured, “it’s—”

The woman said something to the young man, and together they approached the table. Phoebe stood up. “Dr. Blake!” she said. “What a surprise!”

“Good evening, Phoebe,” the woman said. “How nice to see you.”

She had a slight foreign accent. She looked at Quirke. He stood up.

“This is — this is my father,” Phoebe said.

“Ah. How do you do, Mr. Griffin.”

“It’s Quirke, actually,” Quirke said. “How do you do.”

They shook hands. He hadn’t met her before. Her eyes, up close, were extraordinary, two great still pools of darkness. Quirke felt he had never been looked at in this way before; indeed, it was as if he were being looked at for the first time in his life, and he was unnerved.

“This is Paul Viertel,” the woman said, indicating the young man. “Paul, this is Phoebe, the person I told you about, who works with me. And this is Mr. — Mr. Quirke.”

Paul Viertel had a surprisingly firm handshake, though his fingers were long and slender, like a woman’s.

“How do you do, Mr. Quirke,” he said. He too had an accent, more pronounced than the woman’s. German, Quirke thought, or else Austrian; he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. The young man turned to Phoebe. “Miss — Griffin, yes?”

“Yes,” Phoebe said, stammering a little, “Phoebe, Phoebe Griffin.”

“I knew your late husband,” Quirke said to the woman.

“Yes, you did, of course. I had forgotten.”

It was strange, Quirke thought afterwards, how for that moment it seemed as if there were only the two of them in the room, himself and this large, dark-eyed, oddly lovely woman, gazing at him out of what seemed a vast, inner stillness.

The headwaiter appeared, chafing his hands anxiously, and apologized to the newcomers for not having been there to greet them on their arrival. The woman, Dr. Blake, turned to him, faintly smiling. “It’s nothing,” she said, and he too, Quirke saw, felt himself singled out, and marked, somehow, fleetingly. Dr. Blake glanced back at the others. “I’m sorry, we have interrupted your meal.” She touched a fingertip to Phoebe’s elbow. “Please, do sit. Perhaps we shall see you later, before you leave.”

As they moved away, Paul Viertel turned back for a second and smiled at Phoebe and gave a small, quick bow.

Seated again, Quirke felt oddly discomposed. It was as if a sudden gust of wind had blown through the room, leaving everything slightly disturbed in its wake, including him.

“I didn’t realize you’d never met her before,” Phoebe said.

“Yes,” Quirke said distractedly. “I only knew her husband from the hospital, and not very well anyway. He was a surgeon, so our paths didn’t cross very often. He drank, I think.” He picked at what remained of the grouse; the meat was tough and had little taste. He drank his wine. He should have had red, to go with the game. His hand, he noticed, was not quite steady. “Is she — is she easy to work for?” he asked.

Phoebe raised her eyebrows. “Easy? I suppose she is.” She smiled. “She’s certainly a change from Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes and her awful hats.”

“Are they awful, the hats? I thought you liked them.”

“They’re just silly, like Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes. Dr. Blake, on the other hand, is certainly not silly.”

“Yes, she seems”—he groped for the word—“she seems formidable.” He pushed his plate aside, feeling slightly queasy now at the look of it, the mess of meat and smeared blood and tiny, dark bones. He lit a cigarette. “Who’s the young man?”

“I don’t know. A relative, don’t you think?”

“He sounded foreign.”

“Yes. Austrian, probably, like Dr. Blake.”

“What did she say his name was?”

“Feertel, something like that.” She looked at him closely. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Why?”

“You look — I don’t know. Peculiar.”

“The food didn’t agree with me.” He glanced about for the waiter. “I think I’ll have a brandy — it always settles my innards.”

She made a comically accusing face, letting her shoulders and the corners of her mouth droop. “Oh, Quirke,” she said, “you’re such a child.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you want a brandy, have a brandy. I think you shouldn’t, I really think you shouldn’t, but if you do, at least don’t lie to yourself about it.”

Stung, he glared at her, then shrugged, and smiled ruefully.

“All right,” he said, “I won’t have a brandy.”

“You’ve done so well,” she said, smiling, “please don’t give in now.”

He looked into her face, into her eyes, her mother’s eyes, and felt a slow, wavelike spasm in the region of his diaphragm, and something heavy and warm welled up in him, as if he might be about to burst into tears. The feeling lasted no more than a second or two, but he recognized it. It was something that happened to him now and then, at unexpected moments. Anything could provoke it, a soft word spoken kindly, a sudden poignant memory, a woman’s voice heard from another room, or just the look of things, a splashy sunset, a view on a winter morning of some known place transfigured in a mist, a gleam of April light on a rained-on road — anything. It was as if, deep inside him, deep beyond his knowing, there was a still, bottomless pool of longing, of sorrow, of tenderness, out of which on these occasions there rose up, unbidden, a bright and irresistible splash, rose, and fell back again, back into those secret and forever hidden depths.

A stranger; he was a stranger to himself.

But oh, how he yearned for a real drink: for many real drinks.

When they had finished and were leaving, the way out led past the table where Dr. Blake and the young man were seated. Dr. Blake looked up at them out of those dark, calm eyes. She had the air, Quirke thought, of some large, locked place, a castle keep, or a sequestered monastery where vigils were held, and nightlong meditations, and silent ceremonials at dawn.

He caught himself up. Where were such fanciful thoughts coming from?

“I hope you enjoyed your dinner?” Dr. Blake said, looking up at him.

“Yes, yes,” Quirke answered, “it was fine, it was very good.”

At this she only smiled, as if gently dismissing something superfluous. Her large hands were folded on the tablecloth in front of her, one on top of the other, like a pair of slumbering animals. The fair young man smiled too, but at Phoebe. “Good evening,” he said to her, in his clipped accent. “I hope we meet again.”

They were at the front door of the hotel before Phoebe’s blushes finally began to fade.