Even the Dead

11

Quirke bought the Sunday papers from the newsstand outside the church on Haddington Road, and strolled down to the canal in the sunshine by way of Percy Place. He walked along the towpath until he came to his favorite bench under the trees, and sat down. A crowd of boys were out already, swimming from the lock at Mount Street Bridge. He lit a cigarette and watched them idly for a while, skinny, dough-pale creatures in sagging togs, loud and cheerful, and foul-mouthed as dockers. The more daring ones preferred to jump feet-first from the parapet of the bridge, holding their noses and flopping into the water like frogs. They were often here at weekends, and he marveled at their resistance to the countless species of microbes that must be swarming in this filthy water, afloat as it was with assorted garbage and the odd dead dog.

He was reading a long report about improving relations between America and Hungary when he heard the sound of footsteps. Looking up, he was surprised to see Rose Griffin approaching along the towpath.

“Well,” she said, “don’t you look the picture of ease, sitting here among beechen shade and shadows numberless.” She sat down beside him. “That’s Keats, by the way, in case you didn’t recognize it.” She wore a pale cream sleeveless dress and gold-painted sandals, and was carrying a small, white leather handbag. “Got a cigarette?”

He held the lighter for her and she leaned down to the flame, touching the tip of one finger to the back of his hand and glancing up at him from under her lashes.

“Is this a coincidence?” he asked.

“Oh, no. I knew this was your haunt on Sunday mornings. Didn’t you use to meet Sarah here?”

Sarah was Mal’s late wife, whom Quirke had loved, or had thought he did.

“Yes, she used to come round sometimes, after she’d been to Mass.”

“That’s right — she was very devout, was Sarah. Her God rewarded her well, didn’t he, giving her that brain tumor.” She smiled at him. “You were awfully fond of Sarah, weren’t you. I was always a little jealous. You had all of us running after you, you cruel man.”

He laughed. “What was it you said to me once, about us being alike, you and I? Cold heart and a hot soul — that was how you described us.”

“Did I? I don’t remember. But I guess it’s about right. My Lord, look at that boy, how thin he is — don’t they feed their kids around here?”

“They come up from Ringsend. The unkillable children of the poor.” He glanced at her with a sly grin. “That’s Ezra Pound, by the way.”

“Touché, then. You always were well-read.”

“No, I’m not. I’m a magpie; I pick up bright scraps and store them away, to impress people later.”

“And, of course, we’re so easily impressed.”

They smoked their cigarettes and watched the boys at play. Rose crossed her knees and let one sandal dangle from her long-toed, shapely foot.

“Have you settled back into all your other old haunts?” she asked without looking at him. He could hear that she was still annoyed at him for moving out of the house on Ailesbury Road so abruptly.

“Settling in is not a thing I do very well,” he said.

“But you must be glad to be back in that apartment of yours,” she said. “So much livelier than our old place.” She paused. “Mal misses you, you know. He was shocked, the way you left like that.”

“I’m sorry,” Quirke said. “I suppose it seemed ungrateful.”

“Oh, we don’t require gratitude. We were glad to have you there — we were glad to help.”

He turned to her and studied her profile. Still she would not look at him, but kept her eyes on the raucous swimmers.

“What’s the matter, Rose?” he said. “It’s not just me moving out, is it?”

She said nothing for a while. There was something uncanny in the unwavering gaze she kept trained on the boys at the lock.

“Come round to lunch today,” she said at last. “We won’t try to hold on to you, or shut you into a room. Mal would like to see you. He has things to talk to you about.”

“What sort of things?”

“Oh, I’ll let him tell you himself.”

She dropped the butt of the cigarette on the gravel and trod on it with the heel of her sandal, then stood up. “By the way,” she said, “I almost forgot.” She unclasped her handbag and opened it. “I was going through some old things and found this.”

She handed him a photograph, faded and badly creased at one corner. It showed him and Mal, in tennis whites, each with an arm around the other’s shoulder, smiling into the camera. There were trees behind them and, in the distance, a tall white building. It had been taken in Boston, where Mal and he had studied medicine together.

“My God,” he said, “that must be, what, nearly twenty-five years ago?”

“Yes, and don’t you two boys look happy.”

He glanced up at her from where he sat, the newspapers scattered on the dry ground at his feet.

“What time shall I come?” he asked.

“Oh, whenever. We tend not to keep fixed hours anymore, Mal and I. We just take things as they come.”

He tried to return the photograph to her, but she shook her head. “You keep it. Put it in your wallet and just keep it.”

They gazed at each other for a long moment, then Rose reached out a hand and touched his face. “The years run on,” she said, “don’t they.” Then she turned and walked quickly away, with her head down.

* * *

He went out on foot to Ailesbury Road. It was a walk of half an hour or so. By noon the heat of the day was intense, and he was glad of his straw hat and his light linen jacket. He had felt like a truant when he left Mal and Rose’s house, and a pleasurably guilty sensation of freedom still persisted. His time was his own, and he could do entirely as he wished. Not that Mal or Rose had required anything of him while he was staying with them, yet he realized now how oppressed he had felt in the weeks when he was there, at their house. Why had he given in and let them take him over in the first place? Fear, he supposed. He hadn’t quite trusted Philbin’s diagnosis of his mental confusions and blackouts, and if he was going to die, he didn’t want to die alone. But it seemed now that Philbin had been right, and that he wasn’t going to die, and despite himself he savored the quickened sense of life his reprieve had given him.

It was Maisie who answered the doorbell.

“Good day to you, Dr. Quirke,” she said. “And isn’t it a grand fine day?”

“It is, Maisie, it’s a beautiful day.”

She took his panama hat and led him through the house, along the absurdly ornate hallway.

“How are you getting on, Maisie?” he asked.

“Oh, I’m getting on grand, Doctor,” she said. “Dr. Griffin is a lovely man.”

The pointed avoidance of Rose’s name made Quirke smile to himself; he could guess what Maisie thought of the mistress of the house.

“Here,” he said, “I brought you something.” He handed her a packet of twenty Player’s. “You’re not to say I gave them to you, mind. You shouldn’t be smoking at all.”

Maisie blushed and grinned and slipped the cigarettes into the pocket of her apron.

“You have me spoiled, so you have, Dr. Quirke.”

Maisie’s child, hers and her own father’s, had been born in the Mother of Mercy Laundry and immediately taken away from her and sent she never knew where — to America, probably, for adoption by a Catholic family there. Quirke supposed it had been for the best. How would she have survived in the world, unmarried and with a child to look after, a child that was the product of an act of incest? Yet he wondered what she felt, now, and if she pined still for her lost infant.

Rose was in the conservatory that gave onto the extensive back garden. She was sitting at a wrought-iron table, in front of a miniature palm tree. She had changed into loose linen trousers and a linen shirt. She had a tall glass before her with ice cubes and a sprig of something green standing in it. “I made myself a mint julep,” she said, “just for old times’ sake. You want to join me, Quirke?”

“Thanks,” Quirke said, “but I think not. Maybe something cool, though.” He turned to Maisie. “A glass of tonic water would be good. Plenty of ice, please, Maisie.”

“Right you are, Doctor,” Maisie said. “I won’t be a tick.”

“Pull up a chair and sit down,” Rose said. “You look hot, all right.” There was a book lying on the table. “Ezra Pound,” she said, giving him a dry glance. She picked up the book and leafed through it. “Cantos, he calls this stuff. I guess they’re poems. I don’t understand them.”

“I don’t think anyone does,” Quirke said. “I suspect they’re not meant to be understood. Think of them as music.”

Rose shrugged, and tossed the book back onto the table. “Seems a lot of nonsense to me. No wonder they locked him up in a loony bin. And he sure doesn’t think much of the Jews.”

He picked up the book and leafed through the pages, stopped at one, and read aloud:

“What thou lovest well remains

the rest is dross

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee

What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage.”

“Nice,” Rose said, with a skeptical look. “You believe that kind of thing, Quirke? You believe anything remains, when we’re gone?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. Children, maybe?”

“Hmm. I haven’t got any of them, so I wouldn’t know.”

“Sorry, Rose.”

“For what? I’m not. I didn’t want them — too selfish.”

Quirke lit a cigarette. The air inside these glass walls was warm and sluggish; he could feel it on his lips and on his eyelids, a heavy, moist lacquer.

“Where’s Mal?” he asked.

Rose waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the garden beyond the many panes of glass. “Oh, somewhere off among his beloved flowers. Sometime soon, I think, he’s going to turn into a plant himself.”

Maisie came back with Quirke’s drink. When she leaned down to set his glass on the table he caught a whiff of tobacco smoke. He thanked her, and she smirked and bit her lip and went away again. Rose watched her go. “That girl,” she said, “was not born to be a domestic servant.”

“Is anyone?” Quirke said.

She gave him a hard look. “You’re not going to get all political on me, are you, Quirke?” she said. “The rights of the downtrodden masses and all that stuff?”

“No, Rose,” Quirke said, smiling, “I wouldn’t dare to lecture you.”

“Good.” She took a sip of her drink and made a face. “Doesn’t taste the same here, somehow,” she said. “You’ve got to be sitting by the bayou, listening to the frogs and the crickets and those old hound dogs a-howling.”

“Where exactly was it you were born, Rose?” Quirke asked. It was a thing he had never thought to ask her before.

“Oh, here and there. I don’t much like to think about those old times. My daddy was a drunk, and my mother — well, the less said about her, the better.”

“Do you miss it, America?”

“Do I miss it?” She thought about that for a while. “I guess I do. It’s a crazy country, the folks are mad as mules, but it’s exciting. I thought I’d had enough of excitement, which is why I came here.”

“And now you’re bored?”

She laughed, and leaned over and made a playful slap at him. “You’re a mischief-maker, you know that, Quirke? You say these things to me in that butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth voice, but I know what you’re up to, I know you’re trying to get me to compromise myself with some injudicious remarks about this green and pleasant land of yours.”

“That’s Blake,” Quirke said, “and he was talking about an altogether different land from this one.”

“Oh, you’re so smart, ain’t you,” she said, making another playful slap at him. Then she drifted into silence again, and looked out at the garden. “I wish you hadn’t left us so abruptly, Quirke,” she said. “I liked having you here. So did Mal — Mal especially. He’s real fond of you, you know.” She looked at him. “Or do you?”

His glance veered quickly away from her. “I don’t think I ever understood him,” he said. “And I don’t think he understood me, either.”

“Oh, he understands you, Quirke. He recognizes that sadness in you, that — oh, that nameless longing.” She smiled at him, amused and mocking. “He shares some of it himself. Don’t you see that?”

Quirke shifted uneasily on the metal chair. He could feel the perspiration on his back, between his shoulder blades. He had taken off his jacket but he was still too hot. “I don’t know, Rose,” he said. “I’m no good with this sort of thing. I don’t understand myself, much less others. Surely you’ve realized that by now.”

“Well, you’ve told me, often enough. So often, in fact, that I wonder if it’s not just a way of assuring yourself that you don’t need to make an effort. Making an effort with people is so tedious, wouldn’t you say, Quirke?”

She put her head to one side and gazed at him wide-eyed, smiling. Then abruptly she smacked her palms on the table and stood up. “Let’s go find Malachy,” she said. “I told him you were coming.”

They walked out into the day. After the oppressive air of the glassed-in room, the sky seemed higher than usual and of a richer blue, speckled with motionless small white clouds. The grass underfoot, burnished by a light that seemed not sunlight, was more silvery than green. Birds unseen whistled in the bushes all around.

“Nature,” Rose said gloomily. “Doesn’t it get you down?”

They found Mal standing in the midst of a clump of exotic-looking shrubs hung with great bundles of purple blossoms. He was wearing his lamp-shade hat, a khaki shirt, and corduroy trousers balding at the knees.

“Oh, hello, Quirke,” he said, looking surprised. “Back again?”

“I told you he was coming, honey,” Rose said. “For lunch? Remember?”

“Oh, yes, yes, that’s right, so you did.” He smiled at Quirke apologetically. “I’m so forgetful, these days.”

“How are you, Mal?” Quirke said.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. You look well too, if a little hot.”

“I decided to walk out from town. This sun is a killer — you should be careful.”

Mal smiled again, wistfully, and glanced at his wife. “Yes, I should, I should take care.”

“Well,” Rose said, “I’m going to leave you two fine gentlemen to your manly conversings, while I go and check on what that girl has fixed on to burn for our lunch.”

The two men watched her walk away. “Poor Rose,” Mal said, sighing.

Quirke glanced at him sharply. “What’s wrong?” he said.

“What?” Mal’s gaze had a groping quality, as if his shortsightedness had suddenly grown worse. “Oh, I feel she has so much to — so much to put up with.”

“Such as?”

Mal chuckled. “Such as me, for a start!”

He put a pair of secateurs he had been holding into the breast pocket of his shirt and took off his gardening gloves. “Did you get something to drink?” he asked.

“Yes. I’m fine. I hope Rose really did tell you I was coming, did she?”

“Oh, she did, she did. As I said, I forgot. Sorry, does that seem rude, to forget you were expected? Everything these days is just—” He lifted his hands in a helpless gesture and let them fall again. “Come,” he said, “let’s sit. You’re right, the sun is tiring.”

They crossed the lawn to where there was a wooden bench, the legs of which were overgrown with ivy. It was shady here, a cool, greenish spot. They sat down. Mal took off his spectacles and began to polish them with the flap of his shirt.

“The garden looks well,” Quirke said. “You’ve done a lot with it.”

“Yes, it’s not too bad. We have some nice things, despite our Mr. Casey’s best efforts to thwart me and kill off everything that can’t be eaten. I’m putting in ornamental grasses now. They’re much undervalued, grasses.” He smiled, ducking his head shyly. “But all this bores you, I know.”

“It’s just my ignorance,” Quirke said. “I can’t tell one flower from another.”

“Oh, you’d soon learn. It’s not so difficult.” He paused, looking about at the plants and the bushes with vague satisfaction. “I planted some new roses, too. I don’t think they’ll blossom this year — it’s too late in the season already.” He nodded slowly. “It all goes so quickly.”

Quirke was watching him. “What is it, Mal?” he said. “What’s wrong?”

“Wrong?”

“Rose came in this morning to summon me here. It was for a reason, wasn’t it?”

For a long moment Mal said nothing, and seemed almost not to have heard. Then he put his glasses on again and squinted at the sky, as if searching for something up there, in the blue, among those little floating cloudlets. “Fact is, Quirke,” he said, “I’m not well.”

How strange it was, Quirke thought, the way certain things, the most momentous, seemed to come not as something new and unexpected but as mere confirmations of things already known. “Tell me,” he said.

Mal was still looking at the sky. “Cancer,” he said. “The pancreas.”

“I see.” Quirke let go a long, falling breath. “When did you hear?”

“The other day. I had the tests done last week.”

“How bad is it?”

Mal smiled. “It’s in the pancreas,” he said. “What do you think?”

“Does Rose know?”

“Of course. She’s been very good. No tears, no histrionics — well, you know Rose.”

Not right now, Quirke thought; right now I don’t know anything.

“We’re too young for this, Mal,” he said. “It’s too soon.”

“Yes, well, it always is, I imagine. When we were student doctors, in Boston all those years ago, I treated an old fellow for something or other, I can’t remember what. Something trivial, an ingrown toenail, that kind of thing. He told me he was ninety-seven. ‘You know, young man,’ he said to me, ‘people say, “Oh, I wouldn’t want to live to be your age, to be ninety-seven,” but all that changes when they get to be ninety-six.’”

They rose from the bench and walked back together towards the house. They were silent; then Quirke, to be saying something, spoke of Leon Corless’s death and Phoebe’s strange encounter with Lisa Smith. He could see Mal was only half attending. He had an air about him of soft, slightly dazed amazement; he was like a man who after a long and dreamless sleep awakes to find himself in a world he doesn’t recognize.

“Is Phoebe all right?” Mal asked.

“She’s concerned, that’s all.”

Mal nodded. “It must be upsetting for her, the young woman disappearing like that. Phoebe is a good girl. She cares about people, always did. Of course, it gets her into trouble.”

Quirke hesitated. “Have you told her—?”

“No, not yet. I’ve so many things to think about, to consider. I should make a list. But I will tell her.”

“I could do it for you, if you like.”

“No, thank you, Quirke. I’ll do it myself, soon.” He paused. “It’s all so — so new.”

They were approaching the conservatory. They could see Rose inside, an indistinct figure behind the shadowy reflections on the glass. They stopped.

“What’s it like, Mal?” Quirke said. “I mean — knowing.”

Mal smiled gently. “Quirke, you’re the only person I can think of who’d have the nerve to ask such a question.”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Don’t apologize. It’s what everyone wants to know.” He looked up at the sky yet again, thinking. “It’s strange,” he said. “I haven’t got used to it yet. I feel a kind of — a kind of lightness, as if everything has just fallen away. There’s only me, now, facing myself. Does that make sense? I feel almost relieved. It’s all suddenly simple.”

“You have religion. That must help.”

“No, no. That’s one of the things that have fallen away. Oh, I suppose I still believe, in some fashion. I’m sure something of me will go on, somehow, I’m sure I won’t be entirely annihilated. But all the old stories, God and Saint Peter and the pearly gates, all that stuff, that’s gone.”

They were silent, standing there on the grass. Quirke noticed how the air seemed to have dimmed, though the sun shone as brightly as ever; it was as if a speck of ink had been dropped into a bowl of clear water.

“This poor chap who died,” Mal said. “What did you say his name was? Corless?”

“Yes. Leon Corless. Sam Corless’s son.”

“The politician? Ah. And you think there was foul play involved?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“It sounds like a murky business,” Mal said. “I presume your friend Inspector Hackett is investigating? And you’ll be helping him, of course.” He smiled. “I must say, you didn’t take long to get back into the swim.”

“You know I’m grateful to you and Rose for putting me up for so long — and for putting up with me for so long, too.”

“Of course, I know that,” Mal said. He paused, seeming to cast about for words. “We’ve had our difficulties, over the years, you and I, Quirke. Some things I did wrong, some very bad things, and I regret them now, bitterly. I hope you understand that.”

Quirke looked away. Years ago Mal had tried to shield his father from the consequences of his wrongdoings, wrongdoings that Quirke had been instrumental in exposing, or that he had attempted to expose. It was all still there in Quirke, the outrage, the frustrated anger, the unexpressed recriminations, but what did any of that matter, now? Mal and he had grown up as brothers, with the jumble of emotions that brotherhood entailed. From here on they would have to find a new accommodation with each other; they wouldn’t have much time in which to do it.

As they went through the French doors, into the conservatory, Mal stepped to one side and put a hand on Quirke’s shoulder to let him go ahead, and for a moment Quirke saw himself stumble, not actually, but inwardly.

“Well, boys?” Rose said with forced gaiety, rising from the table, glass in hand. “Have you been having a heart-to-heart?”

“Let’s go and eat our lunch,” Mal said. “I’m hungry, all of a sudden.”

* * *

They ate in the small dining room at the back of the house, overlooking the garden. The wallpaper was gold flock with dark blue stripes, and the domed ceiling was painted with a scene of gods and garlanded maidens and frolicking cherubs that always set Quirke’s head spinning when he made the mistake of looking up at it. Maisie served them vichyssoise and, after that, smoked salmon garnished with slices of cucumber, and potato salad on the side. There was a bottle of dry Riesling in a bucket of ice. Mal, Quirke noticed, wasn’t drinking. He spoke of his sweet peas and his flowering shrubs, and Rose teased him in a bright, brittle tone, determinedly smiling, and avoiding Quirke’s eyes.

After a lull in the conversation, if it could be called a conversation, Mal said to Rose, “Did you know Quirke is off on another of his investigations?”

“Oh, yes?” Rose said, turning to Quirke with that steely smile. She had drunk three glasses of wine in quick succession and there was a giddy glitter in her eye. “Is that why you left us so suddenly — the call of the chase?”

“A young man was killed in a car crash, in the Phoenix Park,” Mal said. “The Guards suspect foul play.”

“How awful,” Rose exclaimed. She turned to Quirke again. “Why, you must be so excited. Though I always find it peculiar, that phrase: ‘foul play.’ Sounds like something you’d have to give a kid a whipping for.”

Quirke knew enough to be wary of Rose when she was like this, drinking too fast and putting on her southern drawl.

“Phoebe is involved too, in a sort of way,” Mal said.

Rose was still concentrating on Quirke. “Is that so?” she said. “That girl sure is your daughter, Quirke. What has she done to get herself mixed up in the murder of a young man — I take it murder is what we’re speaking of here?”

Quirke told her about Lisa Smith, and how Phoebe had taken her to the house in Ballytubber. Rose widened her eyes exaggeratedly. “Well, I declare!” she said. “I do think she might have checked with us before she started offering a stranger the hospitality of our vacation home.”

“Maybe you’ve forgotten, my dear,” Mal said quietly, “I’ve left the Ballytubber place to Phoebe, so it’s almost hers.”

“Oh, wonderful,” Rose said sourly. “Now we’re going to discuss wills, are we?”

Mal reached out and laid a hand on hers. She twitched, and seemed about to snatch her hand away, but didn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Mal said; it might have been a general apology, aimed at no one in particular.

Rose turned her face away from him, twisting her mouth to one side as she did so. Quirke sat very still, as if to move would be to shatter something. Then Rose relaxed her mouth, and nodded, and turned up her hand under Mal’s and squeezed his fingers. “I’m sorry too, old darling,” she said. “So sorry.”

Maisie came to take their plates away, and Mal smiled at her. “Maisie,” he said, “sit down with us for a minute.” Maisie stared at him, and so did Rose. “No, no,” he said, undaunted, “sit down, just for a little while. Take a glass of wine.”

By now Maisie looked terrified. “I have things to do in the kitchen, Doctor,” she said in a faltering voice.

“Yes,” Rose said to Mal, with a warning glint, “there’ll be all sorts of things waiting for her down there.”

“Yes, I know,” Mal said, still looking at Maisie. “But they can wait for five minutes. Sit, Maisie.”

Maisie cast a wildly questioning look at Rose, who only shrugged in resignation, then drew a chair forward and set it a yard short of the table and sat down, her face ablaze. She would not look at Quirke at all now.

“Let’s see,” Mal said. “Have we got a glass for you?”

“Oh, no, Doctor,” Maisie said quickly. “I never touch the drink.”

“No? What a pity. But I suppose you’re right — better not to start.”

There was silence. They could hear Maisie’s rapid breathing. Someone would have to speak, and the task fell to Rose. “Tell me, Maisie,” she said, “how is your mother? Do you hear from her?”

Maisie shook her head rapidly. “She’s not very good at the writing, ma’am. But I do hear from my brothers, like, and they tell me she’s grand.”

Rose was about to speak again, but Mal interrupted her. “And your father,” he said, “do you hear from him?”

Maisie shook her head again, wringing her red-knuckled hands. “Ah, God, no, Doctor,” she said. “Sure, he wouldn’t be having anything to do with me at all.”

“Where is he now?” Mal asked. “Is he at home?”

“No, Doctor. I believe he’s in Wolverhampton. He do be working on the building sites.”

“Oh, yes? And what does he do?”

“He’s a plasterer, sir.”

“That’s a skilled trade, isn’t it?”

“I believe so, Doctor.”

There was a brief pause; then Mal spoke again: “And do you miss them, your family?” he asked.

“I miss my mother, sir, and some of my brothers.”

“And would you like to go and see them?”

Maisie’s face grew redder still and seemed to swell, and tears swam in her eyes. “Oh, no, Doctor,” she said, with a note of terror in her voice. “I’m grand here.”

“It’s all right, Maisie,” Rose said. “What Dr. Griffin means is, maybe you’d like to pay your family a visit.”

Maisie pressed her lips tightly together and gave her head another rapid shake. “No,” she said, “no, thanks, I’m grand.” She suddenly smiled wildly. “Sure, they’d get the fright of their lives if I turned up on the doorstep out of the blue.”

Probably the last time any of her family had seen her, Quirke reflected, was the day she was delivered to the Mother of Mercy Laundry, pregnant with her father’s child. He looked hard at Mal, trying to warn him to stop tormenting the poor creature, however unwittingly, and let her go back to her lair in the kitchen. It was clear she thought that for some reason beyond her understanding she was being threatened with the sack.

Mal sat and gazed at her with a vague, distracted smile. Rose turned to her and said firmly, “Maisie, dear, I think maybe it’s time we took our coffee. You can run along now.”

Maisie fairly sprang to her feet and, casting a last, fearful glance at Mal, hurried from the room.

Rose sighed, and turned to her husband. “Oh, my dear,” she said, “you just frightened that poor thing half to death.”

He looked at her, blinking. “Why would she be frightened?” he said, genuinely puzzled.

“She thought you were letting her go — don’t you see?”

“No,” Mal said, laughing a little. “She can’t have thought that. I just wanted to talk to her, to ask her about her people, if she missed them.” He looked out of the window at the sunlit garden. “There were always so many people that I never spoke to, never even thought about. Nurses, porters, other doctors — my patients, too — them most of all.”

“You were always good with patients,” Quirke said. “You were known for it.”

Mal shook his head slowly. “It was all a performance,” he said, “nothing more.”

“We’re all performers, Mal,” Quirke said. “The trick is to make it convincing. What else can we do?”

Mal got up from his chair and went and stood at the window with his hands in his pockets and his back to the table.

“Such growth, this year,” he murmured, as if to himself. “So much life.”

Quirke and Rose looked at each other, expressionless. Rose said, “Give me a cigarette, will you?”

* * *

They returned for their coffee to the conservatory. The sunlight had lost its noonday intensity and the day was a little cooler now, though the air was as heavy and moist as ever. They sat around the little wrought-iron table and Maisie, who seemed to have calmed down after her earlier fright, came and served them, avoiding all eyes. When she had gone, Rose turned to Quirke and said, “Let’s hear more about this business Phoebe has got herself involved in.”

Quirke told her of Leon Corless, and of his own and Sinclair’s suspicions about the circumstances in which the young man had met his death.

“And the girl,” Rose said, “the one Phoebe brought down to Ballytubber?”

“Corless’s girlfriend. She’s pregnant by him, it seems.”

Rose leaned back in the chair and sipped her coffee. She seemed not tipsy anymore, as she had been at the lunch table, and her mood was almost languid now. “My,” she said, “I thought that kind of thing only happened where I come from, girls getting in a family way and boys ending up in a burning automobile crashed against some big old cottonwood tree. I guess if you had Negroes here you’d be lynching them, too, just like we do.”

Quirke was lighting a cigarette. “I’m going to ask a favor of you again, of both of you. I’m going to try to persuade Phoebe to come and stay here for a while.” He smiled wryly. “She can have my old room.”

Rose glanced at Mal, then turned back to Quirke. “We’d sure be pleased to have her here with us,” she said, “but is there a reason?”

“You think she might need protecting?” Mal asked.

Quirke avoided his eye. If Phoebe was in danger, it wouldn’t be the first time, as Mal well knew. In the past she had suffered at the hands of people Mal and his father had been associated with. Mal hadn’t been to blame for the harm that had been done to her, but he hadn’t been entirely innocent, either. This was all old business now, but that didn’t mean it was forgotten, or fully forgiven.

“The girl, Lisa Smith, disappeared, without a trace,” Quirke said. “That’s enough to make me concerned for Phoebe, too.”

“Maybe she didn’t ‘disappear,’” Rose said. “Maybe she just changed her mind and went off. It’s what girls do, you know.”

“She was frightened,” Quirke said. “According to Phoebe, she was terrified. There must have been some threat, one she believed in.”

“Oh, girls imagine things,” Rose said scoffingly. “Especially when they’ve just found out they’re pregnant and lacking a husband.”

“No,” Quirke said. “There’s something wrong here, something badly wrong.”

“And of course,” Rose said with a teasing smile, “you’re going to find out what it is. You and that little man, the detective, what’s his name?”

“Hackett.”

“That’s it. You and Detective Hackett. What a pair you make. Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.”

Quirke smiled tolerantly. Rose had always liked to tease, but there was a new bitterness in her tone now, an intent to wound. Well, it was understandable. She had attended the dying of one husband, and now she would have to do the same all over again for another.

“You should definitely speak to Phoebe, then,” Mal said, “and encourage her to come to us. She’ll be welcome.”

“She surely will,” Rose said. She hadn’t taken her eyes off Quirke. “But what makes you think she’ll be safer here than anywhere else? At your place, for instance.”

“I thought of that,” Quirke said calmly. “But there isn’t room.”

“No. And you wouldn’t want to be inconvenienced in any way, would you?”

She smiled at him sweetly, showing the tips of her teeth. Certainly she was trying to start a fight, but he had no intention of fighting with her. He stood up.

“I should go,” he said.

“Things to do?” Rose said, looking up at him, still with that brightly provoking smile. He made no reply, and she turned away, to the garden and the sunshine.

Mal walked with Quirke through the house, to the front door.

“You mustn’t take any notice of her,” Mal said quietly. “She’s doing her best to cope.”

“Maybe it would be a bad idea, your taking Phoebe in,” Quirke said. “You both have a lot to manage, now, you and Rose.”

“No, no. It would be good to have her here.” He paused. “Do you really think she’s in danger?”

“I don’t know,” Quirke said. “But I’m afraid she might be.” He supposed Mal imagined he had suggested Phoebe should take shelter here as a diversion, to take Mal’s thoughts off his own mortal plight, if only for a little while. And maybe it was true, maybe he had. “She’s very fond of you, Mal,” he said.

“Yes, I know that.”

They were at the front door, and Maisie appeared, with Quirke’s straw hat. She thrust it into his hand and scuttled away. “Mal,” Quirke said, “I think you frightened the daylights out of poor Maisie.”

“Oh, Lord, did I, really?” Mal said ruefully. “Everything I do these days seems wrong. I seem to have lost the knack of being normal. I’m sure it’s temporary. Nothing stays strange for very long. I imagine death will be just as ordinary and dull as everything else.” He laughed softly. “I certainly hope so.”

They were standing on the doorstep, under the great slanted shadow of the roof. The sunlight beyond seemed cold and without intensity, a heartless glare.

“I’m sorry, Mal,” Quirke said. “I don’t know what to say to you.”

Mal gazed out at the Sunday-deserted street. “You don’t need to say anything. What is there to say? You asked me what it felt like. It’s like discovering that all along you’ve been walking on a tightrope, and suddenly the end of the rope is in sight. You want to get off, but you can’t, and you can’t stop or retrace your steps, you just have to go on, until you can’t go on any farther. Simple as that.” He turned to Quirke, earnest yet smiling. “It’s no great thing, believe me. That’s what I have to tell you. It’s no great thing.” He stepped back, into the doorway. “Good-bye, Quirke. We’ll see you soon. Bring Phoebe — we’ll look after her, we’ll take care of her.”

Quirke said nothing, only nodded, and turned and went down the steps. When he reached the gate he looked back. Mal was still there, in the doorway, under that wedge of shadow.