Vengeance

7

Inspector Hackett spotted Quirke before Quirke spotted him. They were among the crowd outside St. John’s, milling on the gravel in the sunshine in front of the church doors. Smell of warm dust, of hot metal from the parked cars, of the women’s face powder and the men’s cigarettes. Faint smell of death, too, of clay and lilies and the varnished wood of the coffin. Hackett was thinking what curious occasions they were, funerals, or this bit of them, anyway, the interval after the church service and before the burial, when no one seemed to know exactly what to do or how to behave, trying to keep a solemn demeanor yet feeling guiltily relieved, and almost lighthearted. They talked about all kinds of things, politics, the weather, who was going to win the match, but no one at this stage of the proceedings ever spoke of the person who was dead; it was as though a dispensation had been given for these few minutes, and everyone had been let off mentioning the one and only reason they were gathered here.

Hackett had arrived a minute or two before the service ended, having wanted to avoid going inside the church. When he was a lad the priests used to say that any Catholic who went into a Protestant church was committing a sin, and although he no longer believed in such things he still instinctively obeyed. Anyhow, it was not as if he was one of the family, or even a family friend.

He took himself off to the side and lit a cigarette and eyed the crowd, in their dark suits and black frocks and black hats with veils-a regular fashion show, it looked like-picking out the ones whose faces he knew and watching how they behaved. There were the Delahaye twins, uncannily alike. Which was which? That must be James, the one staying silent, while the other one, Jonas, talked and smiled. The dead man’s widow was with someone he did not recognize, a tall sleek man with ash-colored hair brushed back like an eagle’s plume-her brother, maybe, or was he too old? She wore a dark blue two-piece costume the skirt of which was very tight and emphasized the curve of her behind. Hackett looked at the seams of her stockings, and looked away.

The Clancys, parents and son, were in the crowd and yet seemed apart from it, surrounded as it were by an invisible enclosure. Jack Clancy was dragging on a cigarette as if he was suffocating and it was a little tube of oxygen. His son, looking more than ever like a bantamweight contender, was frowning at the sky, as if wistfully expecting something to swoop down out of it and carry him off to somewhere less grim than this balefully sunlit churchyard. Mrs. Clancy-what was her name? Celia? Sylvia? — held herself in that peculiar way that she did- standing on her dignity, Hackett thought-with her handbag on her wrist and her gaze turned elsewhere. The three of them looked as if whatever it was that was holding them together might loose its grip at any moment and send them flying asunder.

And then there was the sister, Miss Delahaye-Margaret, was it? — raw and red-eyed and coughing steadily like a motorcar with a faulty spark plug.

Trouble on all sides, Hackett told himself, and sighed.

It cheered him, seeing Quirke, skulking as it seemed beside the church door, also lighting up a furtive cigarette, glancing swiftly about as if expecting someone to be challenged, his black hat pulled down over his left eye. Quirke was probably the only one among all these people today who had not needed to change into a funeral suit.

“There you are,” Hackett said. He lowered his voice. “Grand day for a planting.”

Quirke did his crooked smile.

The mourners were drifting towards the graveyard, led by the vicar in his surplice and stole and walking behind the coffin carried on the shoulders of James and Jonas Delahaye and four of what must be their friends, curt-looking young men in expensive suits. The women in their high heels stepped over the grass carefully, like wading birds, while the men, concealing their half-smoked cigarettes inside their palms, took a last few surreptitious drags. Quirke and the Inspector joined the stragglers.

“There’s a sign somewhere in Glasnevin Cemetery,” Quirke said quietly. “‘Planting in this area restricted to dwarves,’ it says.” The Inspector’s shoulders shook. Quirke did not look at him. “I think,” he said mildly, “it’s trees that are meant.”

They went on, pacing slowly in the wake of the mourners.

“By God, Doctor,” Hackett said, catching his breath, “you’ve the graveyard humor, all right.”

The burial was quickly over with. The vicar droned, his eye fixed dreamily on a corner of the sky above the yew trees, a hymn was raggedly sung, someone-Delahaye’s sister, probably-let fall a sob that sounded like a fox’s bark, the coffin was lowered, the clay was scattered. The vicar draped a silken marker over the page of his black book and shut it, and with his hands clasped at his breast led the solemn retreat from the graveside. Hackett had been admiring the two gravediggers’ shapely spades-he was always interested in the tools of any trade-and now they stepped forward smartly and set to their work. Mona Delahaye, passing him by, smiled at Quirke and bit her lip. Quirke doffed his hat. Hackett watched the young woman, not looking at her nylon seams this time. “Mourning becomes her, eh?” he said, and cocked an eyebrow.

The cars were starting up and one or two were already creeping towards the gate. “Have you transport, yourself?” the Inspector asked. Quirke shook his head. “Fine, so,” Hackett said. “It’s a grand day for a walk into town.”

Hackett heard a step behind them on the gravel and turned to meet a pale, middle-aged man with a dry, grayish jaw and oiled black hair brushed slickly back.

“Are you the detective?” the man asked.

“I am,” Hackett said. “Detective Inspector Hackett.”

The man nodded. He had a curious way of blinking very slowly and comprehensively, like a bird of prey. He wore a starched, high collar-who wore collars like that, anymore? His teeth were bad, and Hackett caught a whiff of his breath.

“Might I have a word?” the man said. He slid a glance in Quirke’s direction.

“This is Dr. Quirke,” Hackett said. “We-we operate together.”

Quirke shot him a glance but the policeman’s bland expression did not alter. Hackett did not often make a joke.

“Ah, yes,” the man said. “Garret Quirke. I’ve heard of you.”

“Not Garret,” Quirke said. Why had people lately started calling him by that name?

“Sorry,” the man said, though he did not seem to be. “Maverley-Duncan Maverley. I work-worked-for Mr. Delahaye.” He glanced over his shoulder at the dispersing crowd and gestured towards the gate. “Shall we-?”

The three men went out at the gate and turned right and walked slowly along the pavement in the shade of the plane trees. The Delahayes’ car passed them by and Hackett fancied he glimpsed a flash of Mona Delahaye’s eye, trained in Quirke’s direction. The bold doctor, he thought to himself, had better go carefully, where that brand-new widow is concerned.

“I’m the head bookkeeper with Delahaye and Clancy,” Maverley said.

He was walking between the other two. He wore a drab black suit slightly rusty at the collar and the cuffs, and there were speckles of dandruff on his shoulders. He was, Quirke thought, every inch what a head bookkeeper should look like.

“A very sad thing,” Hackett said, “Mr. Delahaye going the way he did.”

“Yes,” Maverley said, somewhat absently; his mind seemed elsewhere. “I wanted to talk to you, Inspector,” he said, “about certain-certain anomalies that I’ve encountered, in the affairs of Delahaye and Clancy.”

“Anomalies,” Hackett said, as if he were unfamiliar with the word.

“Yes. In the accounts. Certain movements, certain transfers, of fundings and shares. It’s a complex matter, not easily grasped by the layman.”

Quirke and Hackett, the two laymen, exchanged a glance past Maverley’s head. Maverley, caught up in his thoughts, appeared not to notice.

“Can you give us an idea,” Hackett said, “an outline, of what the effect is of these-these anomalies?”

They had gone on some way before Maverley spoke again, in a voice that seemed hushed before the enormity of the matter that was being contemplated. “The effect,” he said, “in essence, is that Mr. Delahaye-young Mr. Delahaye-Mr. Victor-was being-” He hesitated. “What shall I say? His position was being undercut, steadily, systematically, and, I may say, very skillfully, so that in effect he is-was-no longer in the position at the head of the firm that he believed he occupied.”

“You mean he was being edged out,” Quirke said, “without his knowing?”

“Not being edged out, Dr. Quirke; he was out. Or perhaps that is too strong.” They had come to a corner and there they stopped. To the right, at the end of a short stretch of the road, the sea was suddenly visible, a sunlit blue surprise. Maverley inserted an index finger under the starched collar of his shirt and gave it an agitated tug. He cleared his throat. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “The balance of power within the firm has shifted-has been shifted, so that Mr. Delahaye, Mr. Victor, who was the leading partner in the firm, has become, had become, very much the lesser. And all this without his knowing, until I”-a soft cough-“apprised him of it.”

A silence fell. Inspector Hackett was squinting down the road towards the sea; he took off his hat and ran his hand around the sweat-dampened inner band. Quirke watched him. There were occasions, not momentous or even especially significant, when it came to him how scant was his knowledge of this man, how little he knew of how his mind worked or what his deepest thoughts might be. The two of them, he reflected, could not have been less alike. Yet here they were, wading together into yet another morass of human cupidity and deceit.

“And who might it be,” the Inspector said, turning his gaze towards Maverley again, “that’s behind this bit of clever maneuvering?”

Maverley pursed his pale lips. “Well now, Inspector,” he said slowly, “I don’t believe I’m in a position to say.”

Hackett pounced. “You mean you don’t know or you’re not saying?”

“I mean,” Maverley repeated, in a chill thin voice, “that I am not in a position to say.” He brought out a handkerchief from the sleeve of his jacket and mopped a brow that to the other two seemed as dry as the handkerchief itself. “I simply felt that in the circumstances, in these tragic circumstances, I should bring this matter to the attention of the authorities. I’ve now done so, and I have nothing more to add. Good day to you.”

He began to turn away but Hackett laid a hand, as if lackadaisically, on his arm. Maverley looked at the policeman’s hand, and then at Quirke, as if calling him silently to witness this act of constraint.

“The thing is, Mr. Maverley, I’m wondering what it is you expect me to do with this information you’ve passed on to me in such a public-spirited way.” He released his hold on Maverley but then, to Maverley’s obvious consternation, slipped his arm through the bookkeeper’s and turned with him down the road towards the sea. Quirke followed, and Maverley looked back over his shoulder at him with an expression of outraged beseeching, as if urging him to remonstrate with the policeman. Quirke only smiled. He knew of old the Inspector’s playful methods of coercion.

“You see,” Hackett was saying, “what I’m trying to discover is why you’ve told me this stuff in the first place, especially in the light of the fact that you’re only prepared to tell me so much of it, and no more. Such as, for instance, the identity of the person who has been chicaning away at the heart of the firm of Delahaye and Clancy.” He chuckled, and waggled the arm that was still entwined with Maverley’s. “Would it be, Mr. Maverley, that you expect me to guess the identity of the certain party you’re unwilling to name?”

Hackett had quickened his pace, and Maverley hung back, so that it seemed the detective was dragging him along against his will. Maverley glanced back at Quirke again, with a deeper look of desperation. “Dr. Quirke-” he said, his voice squeaking, but Hackett was unrelenting. “Because,” the detective said, “I think I can guess who this gentleman is. Unless I’m greatly mistaken, in which case I’d be expecting you to put me right.”

At last Maverley, by a sudden violent maneuver, succeeded in freeing his arm from Hackett’s, and stopped short on the pavement like a balking horse, indignantly hitching up the lapels of his suit jacket and smoothing down his mourner’s narrow black tie. Hackett, whose momentum had sent him on a pace, stopped too, and turned and strolled back, smiling easily. Quirke took a step back, but Hackett flapped a lazy hand at him to draw him again into the little circle of the three of them. But Maverley would have no more of it. “I’m sorry, Inspector,” he said, lifting a hand and holding it up flat against the two men before him. “I’ve said all I have to say. And now, if you don’t mind, I have work to go to.”

He turned on his heel and strode away. Hackett, a hand in his pocket and his head on one side, stood with his lazy grin and watched him go. “Do you know what it is, Dr. Quirke,” he said, “but that fellow is the spitting likeness of a tax inspector that used to come and harass my father on the bit of a farm he had when I was a child. Mr. Hackett, he used to say, it is my duty to inform you that if you do not fill up the forms and pay your taxes I will be compelled to set the Guards on you. Oh, I can see him still, and hear him, that pinched voice of his.” He turned to Quirke. “Would you say no to a drink, Doctor?”

Quirke laughed. “I would not, Inspector.”

They went to a pub on the corner of Sandymount Green. They ordered wilted cheese sandwiches-“Isn’t the sliced bread a curse,” the Inspector sadly observed-and a glass of Guinness each. Strong sunlight slanted in at the doorway and down from the clear top of the painted-over front window. Down the bar from them a very old man was perched on a high stool, drowsing over a copy of the Independent, his eyelids drooping and his head lolling. They tackled their sandwiches. “Give me over that mustard there,” Hackett said, “for I declare to God this yoke tastes like two wedges of cardboard with a slab of mildewed lino stuck in between.”

Quirke sipped his stout and was sorry he had not asked for whiskey. He had been careful with his drinking in recent months, and felt quietly proud of himself for it. “So what,” he asked, “did you make of Bartleby the Scrivener and what he had to say?”

“Maverley, you mean?” The Inspector was munching bread and cheese with an expression of sour disgust. “I kept thinking I was my father and that I should run the bugger off the property.” He took a deep draught of his drink, and wiped away a cream mustache with the back of his hand. “It must be the partner, Clancy, that he’s talking about. Who else would there be?”

“Delahaye’s sons-the twins?”

“Arragh,” the Inspector said, flapping his lips disdainfully, like a horse, “they wouldn’t have the wit, those two.”

“Are you sure?”

The Inspector glanced at him askance. “Are we ever sure of anything, in this vale of tears?”

Quirke pushed his quarter-eaten sandwich away and brought out a packet of Senior Service and offered it to the policeman with the flap lifted and the cigarettes ranged like a set of miniature organ pipes. “What if it is Clancy that’s on the fiddle?” he asked.

Hackett shrugged. “Aye-what if? Am I supposed to think what he’s up to is against the law and not just the usual skulduggery that goes on in offices and boardrooms every day of the week?”

“It must be serious, for Maverley to buttonhole you like that and tell you about it.”

“Yes,” the Inspector said. “It must be serious.” He took another judicious drink of his stout. When he set the glass back on the counter the yellow suds ran down inside and joined what remained of the head. It was strange, Quirke reflected, but in fact he did not much like drink and its attributes, the soapy reek of beer, the scald of whiskey. Even gin, which he considered hardly a drink at all, had a metallic clatter in the mouth that made him want to shiver. And yet the glow, that inward glow, that was a thing he did not wish to live without, whatever the state of his liver or his brain.

He thought of Isabel last night, the warm gin and tonic, the scummy chips and putrid rissole-he would remember that rissole for a long time-then the ritual of the tea, the faint taste of her lipstick on his cigarette, and the stronger taste when she kissed him. He thought of lying in the faint glow of her bedroom, and of her sleeping, her heavy head cradled in the crook of his arm. Was it a mistake to take up with her again? Probably. And yet in a sequestered corner of what he called his heart the fact of her glowed like an ember he had thought was ash but that the mere sight of her had quickened again into warm life. What everyone told him was true: he was too much among the dead. But who was going to venture down into the underworld and fetch him up into the light? Isabel? Well, why not? Why not she, as good as any other? If it was not too late.

“I suppose,” the Inspector said thoughtfully, leaning his elbows on the bar, “we might go and have a word with him, the same Mr. Clancy.”

“‘We’?”

Hackett looked at him in surprise and feigned dismay. “Ah, now, Doctor, you wouldn’t think of abandoning me at this stage of the proceedings, would you? I’m not up to these fancy folk, you know that. You’re the one that speaks their lingo.”

Quirke toyed with his glass, revolving the bulbous knob at the base between his fingers. “You know, Inspector,” he said, “you really have some peculiar ideas about me.”

Now that the funeral was over, Maggie Delahaye wondered if she might return to Ashgrove and finish her holiday. It shocked her a little that she should entertain such a notion, with her brother hardly cold in his grave, and yet why should she not go back to Cork? In fact, since Victor’s death it had crossed her mind more than once that really there was nothing to stop her from moving permanently to Ashgrove.

When she looked at the thing dispassionately she had to ask what was keeping her here. When Victor’s first wife had died, Maggie had sold her own little house in Foxrock and moved into the red-brick barn on Northumberland Road to look after her brother. She supposed now it had been a mistake. She had grown up in that house, and should have known she could not go back there without encountering ghosts. But her father, after his stroke, was becoming increasingly difficult, and the twins were still in college and were running wild, as young people often did after the loss of their mother. Victor simply would not have been able to cope on his own. But then, after only a couple of years, Victor out of the blue had announced his intention to remarry.

Nothing had been the same after Mona’s arrival in the household. Victor was besotted with her, to an extent that to Maggie seemed, she had to admit, to border on the indecent. He had adored Lisa, and now he adored her successor even more. That could not be right. It was not that Maggie would have expected Victor to spend the rest of his days pining for his lost wife, but there was such a thing as moderation.

She did not hold Victor responsible for this state of affairs. Victor was only a man, after all, and Mona, though a vixen, was beautiful and probably-Maggie had to search delicately for the word-probably very passionate, and that was important for a man like Victor, well into his forties yet vigorous still. For Victor was just as childish as his wife, though in a different way, of course. Mona was greedy and grasping, and had a child’s instinctive cleverness when it came to getting her own way; poor Victor, on the other hand, was like one of those schoolboy heroes in the books he used to read when he was young, full of high ideals and silly romantic notions of what other people were like. He was entirely taken in by Mona’s little-girl act, and could not see how she was manipulating him, making him hop to her every command and laughing at him behind his back. Oh, yes, Maggie had the measure of Mona. Her brother, her lovely, brave, silly brother, was wasted on that woman.

And yet for all Victor’s besottedness, Maggie was still convinced that deep down he had recognized something unpleasant in his wife, something cheap and ugly and in some way-yes, in some way soiled. She wondered if that was part of the attraction for him. Some men liked that kind of thing, liked to think of women being dirty and depraved. Maggie knew how possessive Victor had been of Mona, and how jealously he had watched over her. He had tried to hide his vulnerability behind the famously sophisticated facade he maintained, but he could not deceive his sister. They had always been close, she and Victor. They had grown up together as allies against their father’s bullying and their mother’s neglectfulness. One day, in their hiding place among the trees at Ashgrove, they had made a solemn vow that when they grew up they would marry each other, no matter what anyone said. And, in a way, Maggie had always felt that they were married, if only in spirit.

It had been hard for her when Victor actually did marry, and harder still when he married a second time, but she had said nothing, on either occasion-what could she have said? — yet it had pained her to watch him throwing himself away on those two women who were worth so much less than he was. Lisa at least had been harmless, a timid, rather gawky girl always anxious to please, who when she fell ill had surprised everyone by putting up a brave, uncomplaining, but in the end useless fight for survival. Mona, however, was not timid; Mona was not harmless.

Maggie had been as baffled as anyone by her brother’s death. She could not accept that he had taken his own life. People had assured it was the case, but still she could not accept it. She had tried at first to convince herself that Davy Clancy must have done it-why had he thrown away the gun? — but it was no good; she knew that Davy was weak and incapable surely of killing anyone, least of all a Delahaye. But why had Victor taken him out in the boat-why him? It had been Victor’s way of sending a message, of leaving a signal as to why he had done what he had done. But what message was it, and to whom did he think he was directing it?

No: if Davy Clancy had not been the cause of Victor’s death, then Maggie was convinced that Mona must have been involved, in some way that she could not explain or account for. She would have to get away from this house, the horrible, oppressive atmosphere, the awful sense of there being some secret in the air, hidden from her but known to others. Yes, she would go back to Ashgrove. She would have peace there.

She put her book away-pages of it had gone by without her registering a word-and went and sat in front of the mirror of her dressing table and took up a tortoiseshell brush and applied it fiercely to her hair. Brushing her hair was usually a thing that soothed her, but today she went at it almost violently, with hard long strokes that drew the skin of her forehead tight and made her eyes widen, so that in the glass she looked a little mad. But then, she thought, perhaps she was a little mad. There was a streak of insanity in the family, on her mother’s side, and neither had her father’s people been the sanest, with their Bible-thumping and their furious hatred and fear of Catholics. They had never forgiven her father for moving south and going into business with a Taig, which was what they would have called Phil Clancy-a dirty Taig.

She put down the hairbrush and stared at her reflection, her eyes still wide. Maybe that was what had happened to Victor, maybe it had been an attack of temporary insanity. But no, Victor had not been mad. Passionate, yes, and fanciful, with all kinds of wild notions about himself and the people around him, but not mad. Something or someone had driven him to take himself and Davy Clancy in that boat out of Slievemore Bay that day with a gun in his pocket and despair in his heart.

When she came downstairs she found her father in the drawing room, slumped in his wheelchair at the window above the garden. She thought at first he was asleep but when she approached him she saw that was not so. She saw too that his eyes were damp. This startled her. She did not think she had ever seen her father in tears before-he had not wept even at the funeral of his only son. “Are you all right, Daddy?” she asked, but it was not until she put a hand lightly on his shoulder that he responded, jerking himself away from her touch and glaring up at her, first in surprise and then in fury. He had been away somewhere in his thoughts.

He did not speak, and she could not think what else to say to him. She felt compassion for him, but in a detached way; it was as she would feel for someone whose misfortune she had been told about, or had read about in the papers. She had never been close to her father. He had not welcomed closeness, in fact had discouraged it, by his remoteness, his wounding sarcasm, his sudden rages. Yet, for all that, she admired him. He was tough, self-sufficient, unforgiving, which were qualities she held in high regard. As for love, well, love did not come into it.

Tea arrived, wheeled in on a trolley by Sarah the red-haired maid. The taking of afternoon tea was something Victor’s first wife had instituted-poor Lisa, she had been so thrilled to find herself married into the grand and mighty Delahayes. Sarah maneuvered the trolley into the bay of the big window. Maggie said that she would take over, and the maid smirked-a brazen girl, with scant respect for anything, but a good worker-and sauntered away, humming. Maggie poured a cup of tea for her father, adding milk and two spoonfuls of sugar as she knew he liked, and brought it to him. He waved it away with a violent sweep of his arm. “Don’t want tea,” he growled. “I’m sick of drinking tea.”

Maggie sighed. “Have you taken your pill?”

“No I have not!”

“You know what the doctor said about-”

“Ach, to blazes with that. What do the doctors know? Look at the state they’ve left me in”-he had got himself convinced somehow that his stroke was due to medical incompetence-“stuck in this blasted contraption and wheeled around like an infant.”

Maggie might have laughed at that-the idea of her father letting anyone wheel him anywhere! She waited patiently, standing back a little, then proffered the cup again. “Take your tea,” she said.

He let her put the cup and saucer into his hands. She was afraid he would spill the tea, scald himself perhaps, but one of the things the doctors had told her was that he must be allowed to fend for himself as much as possible. He set the saucer in his lap, the cup clattering. He did not drink; he was glaring into the garden.

“Are you sure you didn’t take your pill?” Maggie said.

He turned his head and looked at her with furious contempt. “What was the good Lord thinking,” he said, “to take my only son from me and leave me you?”

He watched her, almost smiling, eager to see the barb strike home. Maggie was thinking how remarkable it was that his accent had never softened, though he had lived down here in the Republic for half a century. It was another of the things he clung to, unrelenting, that Northern growl. “Drink your tea,” she said again, mildly.

She brought a chair and sat down by the trolley and poured a cup of tea for herself. They both turned their eyes now to the garden. How strange to see everything in bloom and the sun shining so gloriously. But then, why was it strange? Death did not come only in times of dark and cold. It must have been beautiful, out in the bay, when Victor turned the gun against himself and fired. What would have been going through his mind, what terrors, what memories? She felt tears welling in her eyes but held them back by force of will. Her father was furious that he had let her see him weeping; she would not allow him to have redress by weeping herself, now.

“I was watching the birds,” the old man said. “Thrushes, blackbirds. There’s a robin, too, that comes and goes. Fierce creature, the robin-did you know that? Courage a hundred times his size. Aye, he holds on, that bird, doesn’t weaken and let go.” He made a fist of his left hand and brought it down with a thump on the arm of the wheelchair, making the cup in his lap joggle and slopping the tea.

It occurred to Maggie that what pained her father most about his son’s death was the shame of it, the disgrace. Or was she being unfair? He was as capable of grief as she was. She speculated as to whether he might know what had driven Victor to do what he had done. Should she ask him? Surely a time such as this should permit them to speak as otherwise they never would? She glanced at her father, his carved profile, his poet’s shock of silver hair. She knew nothing about him, next to nothing. He had never bothered with her; a daughter was nothing to him. And now he had no son. How would he not be furious? And heartbroken, perhaps; perhaps that, too.

Jonas came in. Automatically she looked to the door to see James entering behind him, as always. But Jonas was alone. This was so unusual that she gave him a questioning look, which he ignored. “Any tea in that pot?” he asked.

Maggie laid her hand against the teapot’s cheek. “It’s gone cold. Sarah can bring a fresh pot.”

Jonas shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. It’s too hot to drink tea anyway.” He threw himself down in an armchair. He had changed out of the black suit he had put on for the funeral, and wore dark slacks and a white silk shirt and loafers with no socks. His slender ankles were tanned. He had not wept at the graveside either. The suspicion came to Maggie sometimes that she allowed herself to feel things far too deeply. Her brother’s death had set going in her a rushing underground river of grief that would in time slow down but that would be there always, running under everything. There were other streams from the past that were still flowing. Billy Thompson, a boy she had been sweet on when she was young-he had died, and she mourned him yet, all these years later. She looked at Jonas draped there in the armchair, a dazzling creature, so seemingly at ease. Surely he too was grieving for his father, in his own, subterranean fashion.

“How are you feeling, Grandad?” he asked.

The old man lifted a hand and let it fall again limply in a gesture of weary dismissal. “I’m no better than the rest of us,” he said, still eyeing the garden, his jaw working.

Jonas turned to Maggie. “And what about you, Auntie?” he inquired, jaunty and ironical. He addressed his aunt always in a tone of half-fond raillery. He seemed, she thought without rancor, to find her something of a joke. But then, she supposed she was a joke-the spinster sister living in the home she had always lived in, despised by her father, mocked by her nephews, abandoned now by her beloved brother; even Sarah the maid paid her no regard. Yes, she should retire to Ashgrove, live there alone, keep cats, and become the local eccentric. “By the way,” Jonas said, in an undertone, “you and I need to have a talk.”

“Yes? What about?”

He frowned, and glanced in the direction of his grandfather. “I’ll tell you later.”

Mona too had changed out of black, into a silk dress of dark sapphire that set off her milky pallor and the rich bronze textures of her hair. When she entered the drawing room she paused in the doorway, seeing the three of them-Maggie, her father-in-law, one of the twins-in their separate places at the far end of the big bright room, posed there like actors awaiting the entrance of the leading lady.

She came forward, stopping at the sideboard to take a cigarette from the box and light it with the fat heavy lighter. She was conscious of the three of them watching her. She was accustomed to being the center of attention, but this was different. Becoming a widow had given her a new role. It was a curiously pleasant, light-headed feeling. A widow, at her age! It seemed absurd, like something in a stage musical. The merry widow. She was still herself, of course, and yet she was someone else at the same time, the Mona Vanderweert she had always been and now Mrs. Victor Delahaye, whose husband was dead. It made her feel-well, it made her feel grown-up, in a way she had not felt before.

“Oh,” she said, “am I late for tea?”

It was not tea she wanted, anyway, but a drink, though she supposed she had better not ask for one. It had been a trying day and did not seem set to get any easier. Everything felt flat. She would have liked the mourners to come back to the house after the funeral but her father-in-law had not wanted it. It would have been interesting to stand here being sad but brave among all those people.

Maggie had risen from her chair by the tea trolley. “How are you, my dear?” she asked. As if she cared, Mona thought.

“I’m fine, thank you. I seem to be a bit-dizzy.” Her sister-in-law stood before her with her hands clasped under her bosom, what there was of it, gazing at her with a forlorn expression. All at once she had a vision of time stretching before her like a tunnel, or no, like an avenue in a cemetery, lined with dark trees, and a person standing mournfully under each tree, looking at her in just this way. A silent scream formed inside her. Boredom was one of her acutest fears. “Really,” she said, turning away, “I’m fine.”

None of them liked her. She had taken their precious Victor away from them, which was bad enough, but now they seemed to think she was somehow responsible for his death. They would not say so, of course, but she could feel them thinking it. She looked at the twin-was it James? for she was never quite sure which of them was which, even after all this time-and wondered what he knew. Both twins had been very cold towards her at the funeral, not that they were ever exactly warm where she was concerned. She would have to be careful. She supposed she had been foolish, had taken a foolish risk. Had Victor done it just because…? No: she would not let herself think that, she would not, it was too absurd.

She turned to the young man in the armchair. “Where’s Jonas?” she asked.

He sighed, and his mouth tightened. “I’m Jonas.” He held up his left hand and showed her the ring on his little finger. “Jonas is the one who wears this, remember?”

She laughed, and put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, sorry, yes, I didn’t look.” His angry sarcasm amused her. Did they really expect her to check their little fingers every time she met them? It was not her fault that he and his brother were a pair of freaks. “Sorry,” she said again, and looked around for an ashtray.

Samuel Delahaye sat slumped in the wheelchair with his chin sunk on his breast, glowering out into the garden. Mona went and stood beside him. He was the only one of them she had any time for. She had tried to get him to like her, and believed she had been successful, though of course he would never let on. He was such a grouch, shouting at everyone, insulting everyone. Often, when he was in one of his rages, she had an awful urge to laugh, but knew that if she did he would probably come rearing up out of that chair and slap her face. It would be interesting, to be hit like that. Old Sam was still handsome, and rather cruel-looking, like his grandsons only not weak like them; when he smiled, if what he did could be called a smile, he bared his lower teeth, just as Victor used to do.

Suddenly, at the thought of Victor, she felt sad. It was hard to grasp that he was actually gone, that he was in that wooden box, in the ground, already beginning to rot. She shivered. She had liked Victor. He had been handsome too, more handsome than his father, in fact, but in a different way: softer around the edges, she thought. Yes, that was it, softer around the edges.

He had known nothing about her, she knew that. She had preferred it that way. Being married to Victor had been like living inside a fine, sound, well-appointed house, a house that was not hers but that gave her shelter and protected her and yet left her free to come and go as she pleased, a little gold key safe in her palm. She recalled his smell, of tobacco and pomade and that special soap he used to wash his hands with-the skin of his hands was sensitive and chapped easily. She tried now to see those hands in her mind, and was slightly shocked to realize that she could not. Had she ever really looked at them? Had she ever paid genuine attention to her husband? These were not questions that troubled her, but it was odd to find herself asking them. She was always careful how she positioned herself in front of things, looking, and being looked at. Sometimes she thought of herself as a separate object, a figure outside herself that she could regard from a distance, appraising, approving, admiring.

Victor had thought she loved him. It would have been unfair to let him think otherwise.

“Look,” her father-in-law said suddenly, dragging himself up in the wheelchair and pointing beyond the window to the garden with a trembling finger. “Robin Redbreast! Aha, the wee warrior.”

It was nearly midnight when he left Bella’ s house, after his second visit. It was not two weeks since Victor had died, but it seemed far longer ago than that. Bella stood in the doorway watching him go. When he was turning the corner at the bottom of the road and glanced behind him she was still there, he could see her figure silhouetted in black against the light from the hall. He stopped, and stood looking back at her, hearing himself breathe. Why was she still there? The night was calm and mild, and the soft feel of the air made him think of summer nights in the past, and of himself walking away from some other girl’s door, smelling the dew on the privet and the salt reek of the sea and hearing the birds far out in the bay calling and crying. He had an urge suddenly to hurry back, before Bella closed the door, and make her take him inside again, and lie down with him and hold him in her arms. He did not want to be out here, alone.

He went on, and turned the corner.

There was a big moon shining above the bay, it seemed to him a huge gold eye watching him askew. He hoped Sylvia would be asleep, but probably she would not be. She knew he was in trouble, and that the trouble was connected with Victor Delahaye’s death. She had not challenged him, of course, had not made even the mildest inquiry. That was his wife’s way, ever careful, ever discreet.

He knew he should have told her what was going on, what he was up to, surely he had owed her that. Instead he had kept it all to himself. It was not that he did not trust her, only how could he have told her, what would he have said-how would he have phrased it? Well, you see, dear, the thing is, over the past couple of years I’ve been positioning myself to elbow Victor aside and take over the jolly old firm-what do you think of that? He knew what she would think of it. He knew very well. Would she leave him? She was English, and the English had a funny sense of what was right and proper and what was not. He could say to her it was just business-and what was it except business? — but she would throw that back in his face. Yet what did she expect? Did she think he should be content to spend the rest of his working life with his neck under Victor Delahaye’s boot-no, under the heel of his John Lobb penny loafer with the hand-stitched seams and scalloped tongue?

Victor Delahaye was what Sylvia would have called an ass: stupid, smug, conceited, and lazy. All his life Victor had coasted in the shelter of the business that both their fathers, Samuel Delahaye and his partner, Phil Clancy, had built up through hard work, shrewdness, and unremitting ruthlessness. Had Victor been in sole control, the thing would have done no more than drift and, who knows, might have foundered, if Jack had not been there to keep a firm grip on the tiller.

How many dangers had Jack steered them past? There had been that strike the dockers went on after the war, the strike old Samuel thought he could break and that Jack had been left to fix, by paying off the union bosses and cracking the heads of a few hard chaws who would not be brought on board. And what about the time Clem Morrissy and his brothers had tried to set up that rival chain of garages and once again Jack had been called on to send in the muscle and keep the monopoly safe for Delahaye amp; Clancy? Always it was Jack who had done the dirty work, while Victor preened and boasted and played the gentleman. And then-

And then. Who would have thought Victor would have it in him to go out that way? Who would have thought it would affect him so disastrously, to discover himself sidelined? Who would have thought. There must have been something else; something else must have driven him to put a bullet through his heart, Jack was convinced of it. But what? If he could find out, maybe all was not lost, maybe something of all he had been working for could be saved.

Should he make one last try? Did he have it in him? He had always been a fighter, unlike Victor, who had everything handed to him on a silver platter. Yes, he would keep on, he would not be done down by that bastard Maverley and Victor’s wastrel sons. That was what would keep him going, the thought of the twins and Maverley using Victor’s death to defeat him. For they would get shot of him entirely if they could-oh, yes, they would. Already Maverley was putting the machinery in place that would grind him up and spit him out on the street. Did he imagine Jack had not seen him, after the funeral, sloping off for a quiet word with that detective, the one with the cow shit still on his boots, and his sidekick in the black suit? Jack could imagine the bookkeeper, with his gray jaw and his brown breath, counting out the insinuations like so many pounds, shillings, and pence, blackening the name of Jack Clancy, accusing him by innuendo and trying to undo by stealth all that he had put in place with such care, such finesse, such inventiveness.

The front was deserted, and yet, as he walked along, it seemed to him somehow that he was not alone. More than once he stopped, and turned, and peered back along the path beside the sea. Was it a shadow that had slipped behind that bush? He stood, his nerves tingling, and strained to see into the gloom, listening past the washing of small waves against the seafront wall. There was nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard.

The grass was silver in the moonlight. He walked on, wanting to hasten his steps yet dreading the thought of reaching home. He pictured himself at the front door, easing the key into the lock and wincing at the crunch it made, and then standing in the shadows in the hallway, taking the measure of the house, trying to guess if Sylvia was asleep or if Davy was in, and feeling, too, the lingering damp warmth in his groin. The guilt that he felt was part of the thrill, always had been, although being thrilled by his guilt made him feel guiltier still. Such a tangle his life had always been. But who was it that had made it tangled? Who was there to blame, but himself?

He came to the house and stopped, and stood with his hands on the coolly clammy top bar of the gate, looking up at his own bedroom window, where a faint light glowed. Sylvia would be awake, propped up in bed, with her spectacles on the end of her nose, reading, or at her sewing. Since Victor’s death she had been sleeping badly-well, who had not? She would know, of course, or guess what he had been up to tonight. She would not know the details-she was not aware of Bella’s existence, he was confident of that-but she would not need to. He sometimes thought she was glad to be rid of him for so much of the time. She had her own life. He was not a prime requirement in it.

He lit a cigarette, turning away in case the match flame might be visible from that far window, and then walked aimlessly on, musing on his wife, of whom, if truth were told, he knew so little. He had loved her, once, this cool pale slender distant woman. He had wanted her because she was so different from the women he had known before he knew her, and whom he continued to know, despite being married. And she had loved him-loved him still, probably. Despite everything.

He passed by the bandstand. It looked eerie, a filigreed iron gazebo standing in the moonlight, silent and brooding.

Stop. Listen. There was definitely someone behind him.

He was suddenly hot with fear, and the skin on the back of his neck crawled. He dared not turn, but then he did turn. Still there was no one to be seen, yet he knew there was someone, the same someone who had started up after him when he left Bella’s house. “Who’s there?” he called out softly, feeling foolish, his voice unsteady. “Who is it? Show yourself!”

Silence, with the sense in it of stifled, jeering laughter. He slipped into the bandstand and stood in the webbed shadows there under the wrought-iron canopy. The concrete floor gave off a mingled smell of piss and fag ends. He thought with desperate yearning of how it would have been here earlier, when the mail boat was getting ready to set out, the passengers hurrying and people shouting farewells, the porters bumping luggage up the gangplank and the ship sounding its grave, portentous note. He could have lost himself in all that bustle, could have slipped away, and been safe.

A woman was approaching along the pavement. He shrank back into the shadows. Why had he come in here? The bandstand offered no protection, it was open on all sides. He turned his head this way and that. The woman’s footsteps were closer now. He seemed to hear his name spoken, very softly, but thought he must have imagined it. He was looking all around, trying to see in all directions. He almost laughed to think of himself, like a wooden doll, his head spinning and his eyes starting in fright. Always, behind everything, there was a part of him that stood back skeptically. Now he told himself he was being ridiculous, that there was no one after him, that all this fear and foreboding was the product of a fevered and guilty mind.

The woman had drawn level with the bandstand. He stepped forward, lifting a hand, ready to speak to her. He knew her! What was she doing here, at this hour? He began to say her name. The blow landed behind his right ear. He felt it distinctly, a dull shock without pain, and thought of a felled tree crashing to the ground. As he pitched forward he saw the moon slide sideways down the sky and disappear in darkness.