Vengeance

14

They strolled together in St. Stephen’s Green, as so often before. The day was warm and overcast. There was rain coming, Hackett said, he could smell it in the air, and, sure enough, the tip of a cloud as dark as vengeance itself appeared behind the trees to the west.

They stopped to watch a group of children sailing toy boats on the duck pond. Sodden crusts of bread that even the ducks would not eat floated in the brownish water. Hackett was talking about strip lighting. He asked if that was what Quirke had in the dissecting room, and how did he find it. Quirke said it was hard on the eyes. Hackett nodded. “The wife has me tormented about the bloody lights in the living room,” he said. “Now she’s thinking of strip lighting. Is that, like, neon, those long bulbs with gas in them?” Quirke said he was not sure how they worked, but he supposed it was gas. “I think there’s a kind of filament in them,” Hackett said, “that makes the gas glow.” He shook his head. “I’ll tell her it’s not good for the eyes.”

The children had begun to squabble-someone had capsized someone else’s boat, and mothers had to intervene. The two men walked on. They crossed the little humpbacked bridge. The fragrance of flowers, wallflowers, mostly, came to them from the numerous beds roundabout. A terrier had got into the concrete basin of the fountain and was swimming about in circles, snapping at the water cascading around it and barking madly. In the bandstand the army brass band had finished a recital. The players were packing up their instruments, and the audience was drifting away, scattering in all directions across the grass.

They came to two empty deck chairs beside a bed of asters, and Hackett suggested they might sit. As soon as they did, the park attendant popped up out of nowhere, with his leather purse and his roll of tickets, and took thruppence from each of them. “We’d have been better off on a bench,” Hackett grumbled. He squirmed his bottom against the canvas, making the joints of the chair legs groan. “I can never get comfortable in these things.”

The cloud was a quarter way up the sky by now.

Marguerite Delahaye’s boat had been found the previous morning adrift in Slievemore Bay. Of the woman herself there was still no trace. Missing, presumed drowned. “Isn’t it a queer thing,” Hackett said, “the three of them, Delahaye, Clancy, and then Delahaye’s sister, all of them gone in boats? Do you ever sail, yourself?”

“No,” Quirke said. “I’m nervous of the sea.”

“As any sensible man would be. I don’t much care for it myself, either.” He paused. “Would you say she jumped?” Quirke did not reply. He was keeping a wary eye on the cloud. They both had their hats in their laps. “A tragic waste of lives,” Hackett said.

Quirke offered him a cigarette, but Hackett was a Player’s man, and preferred his own. They smoked in silence for a while. The smoke would rise a little way and then the breeze would catch it and whip it off at an angle to the side.

“What about the Delahayes?” Quirke asked. “The twins.”

“Oh, a fine pair of rogues. I should have paid more attention to those boyos from the start. They were thrown out of school-Clongowes Wood, you know-when they were lads, for tying one of the junior kids to a tree and leaving him all night. The poor little fellow was asthmatic, and had an attack and died. The grandfather got them off that particular hook.”

“How did he do that?”

“The Commissioner was a Freemason. No charges were pressed.”

Quirke nodded; such things happened. “They drugged my daughter.”

“Did they?” Hackett turned in the chair to look at him. “Why did they do that?”

Quirke shrugged. “As a warning, maybe, since she was supposed to be their alibi. But more for fun, I think. They’re fond of fun.” He squinted at the darkening sky. “Where are they now?” he asked.

“One of them, the one we’re particularly after-James, is it? — skedaddled down to Cork, to his auntie. Too late, though, his auntie being gone. He’s still in the house-the boys down there spotted him, and I’ve asked them to pick him up.”

“And the other one?”

“Not a trace. I imagine he’s in England somewhere, or maybe America.” He chuckled. “I’m thinking of getting Interpol on the job. Wouldn’t that be a thing, now.”

“And the girl-what’s her name? Somers?”

“Aye-Tanya Somers. I had a word with her. Nothing there.”

“But she had to be in on it. The night of the party, when there was only one of them but they pretended it was two, she played along with them.”

“She says they told her it was for a bet. She’s not the brightest ticket, the same Miss Somers. A grand-looking girl but”-he tapped his forehead-“not much up top.”

“And she doesn’t know where Jonas is.”

“If she does, she’s not saying.”

“You think she does know?”

Hackett shook his head. “No. He wouldn’t have told her. He would have been planning it-he knew your daughter suspected. He took a load of money out of the bank and had a ticket booked to London. That’s the last trace we had of him.” He shifted again awkwardly in the chair, swearing under his breath at the discomfort. “He’ll turn up, sooner or later,” he said. “Clever as he is, he didn’t think far enough ahead. It’s no life, being on the run. He’ll get careless, and make a mistake, and then we’ll have him. Or he’ll just get lonely, and come back-you’d be surprised how many do.” He paused, and looked sideways at Quirke, and gave a small cough. “The widow, Mrs. Delahaye, is selling up, I hear.”

Quirke was still looking at the cloud. “Selling up?” he said.

“Getting rid of the house-the houses — and moving to South Africa. I believe it’s where she’s from, originally.” He paused again, coughed again. “A cool customer, that lady.”

Quirke said nothing. It was starting to rain; they felt the first stray drops.

“Well,” Hackett said, struggling up from the chair, “that’s three good pennies wasted.” He put on his hat. Quirke remained seated. He steepled his fingers and tapped them against his lips. “A bad business,” Hackett said.

“Yes,” Quirke answered.

The detective looked down at him, his head tilted. “Are you all right?” he asked. Quirke lifted his head.

“I’m all right,” he said. “I’m fine.”

Hackett nodded, smiled lopsidedly, and touched one finger to the brim of his hat. “I’ll be seeing you, then,” he said, and turned away.

Quirke stood up and walked off in the opposite direction. The rain was falling harder now.

It was a summer deluge. It beat on the roadway and drummed on the roofs of cars, and the gutters raced. By the time he found a phone box he was drenched-the water had even soaked through the shoulder pads of his jacket, and he could feel the chill damp on his skin. He took off his sodden hat, but there was nowhere to set it down so he put it back on. He lifted the receiver off the hook and fumbled in his pockets for change. The park attendant had taken his last coppers. He dialed zero and the operator came on, and he gave her Isabel Galloway’s number. “I’m sorry, caller,” the woman said, not sounding sorry at all, “please insert three pennies or I can’t connect you.” He told her it was an emergency, that he was a doctor and that she must put him through. “I’m sorry, caller,” she said again, in her singsong voice. “Look,” Quirke said, thumping his fist softly against the phone’s big black metal box, “please, I’m telling you, it’s an emergency-it’s life or death.” But it was no good, the operator did not believe him, and broke the connection.

He stood for a long time listening to the pips sounding on the empty line. The rain beat against the small glass panes all around him. He hung up the phone and blundered out into the storm.