A Death in Summer (30 page)

“Yes,” Teddy said, “I knew him slightly. He was a friend of my father—used to be a friend of my father.”

“Oh? Was there a falling out?”

“No, no. Or yes, yes there was. There was some business deal that Dick—that Mr. Jewell wouldn’t go along with.”

“So there was a row?”

Teddy felt the beads of sweat forming on his upper lip. He took out his own cigarettes—Marigny, a French brand he had recently discovered—and lit one. The presence of Jug-ears behind him by the door was like an itch that he could not scratch. He dropped the match in the ashtray. “I don’t know what happened,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “Why don’t you ask my father?”

“I could do that,” Hackett said, “I could indeed. But for the moment let’s turn back to you and your friend Miss Jewell, and her friend Dr. Sinclair. By the way”—he leaned forward, cocking an eyebrow—“you do know why you’re here, don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” Teddy snapped, and then wished he had bitten his tongue instead.

“Oh,” Hackett said, “I assumed you did, since you didn’t ask, at the start.”

“I tried to tell you I didn’t know why you had called me in like this. You said”—he curled his lip and mimicked Hackett’s accent—“that all would be revealed.”

“So I did—you’re right.” He signaled to the fellow at the door. “Sergeant, I think at this juncture what’s called for is a cup of tea. Or”—turning his attention back to Teddy—“would you prefer coffee? Mind you, I don’t believe we have the facilities for making coffee here at the station—have we, Sergeant?”

“No, Inspector,” the sergeant said, “I don’t believe we have.”

Oh, very droll, Teddy said to himself—they were like a music-hall turn, this pair, Mr. Bones and whatever the other fellow was called.

The sergeant went out, and Hackett leaned back comfortably on his chair and laced his fingers together over his paunch. He was smiling. He seemed to have been smiling without interruption since coming into the room. “Are you enjoying the good weather?” he inquired. “There’s some I’ve heard complaining about the heat wave, but they’re the same ones that’ll be complaining when it comes to an end. There’s no pleasing some people.”

Teddy was asking himself how he could have been such a fool as to think he would get away with the Sinclair business. Why
had
he done it, anyway? He did not even know Sinclair, had never met him, and had only seen him the one time, with Dannie in Searsons on Baggot Street during the Horse Show last year. He had not liked the look of him, with his swarthy face and his big Jew nose. He had started to go up to them, to say hello to Dannie, but something about Sinclair had put him off. He was, Teddy had recognized, the kind of fellow who would make smart jokes, jokes that did not seem jokes at all, jokes that Teddy would not get, and Dannie would see him not getting them, and the two of them, Sinclair and her, would stand there trying to keep a straight face while he floundered. He had been in that kind of situation with Dannie before, he knew what she could be like when she was with her clever friends, the ones she would not introduce him to. She was a Jew as well, of course. Imagine, a Jew called Jewell! He recalled the nickname they had for Dick at St. Christopher’s, it always made him laugh. He supposed Sinclair too would be circumcised. How would his thing look, with no skin, just the big purple helmet. No, no, it was gross—think of something else. Think of Cullen, the boy at St. Christopher’s, pale as an angel, with his straw-colored hair like a halo and his skin so soft and cool—

“This room,” Hackett said, looking about with a smile of happy nostalgia, his hands still clasped comfortably over his belly, “I wonder how many times I’ve sat in this room, in this very chair, and then, before that, how many times I stood there at the door, like young Jenkins, bored like him and dying for a fag, my poor feet aching and my innards rumbling for want of their dinner.” He paused to light another cigarette. “Did you notice the duty sergeant when you came in, the big fellow with the broken nose? Lugs O’Dowd, he’s called—isn’t that a great name for a Guard?” He chuckled, saying the name over again, to himself, and shaking his head. “Lugs was some man, when he was on the beat. He used to bring fellows down here to question them, he’d shut the door and first thing off he’d give them a good whaling, just to get them in the right mood, as he’d say. The Superintendent, he’d tell them, has his office directly above us here, and when they started to answer his questions he’d keep telling them to speak louder, that the Superintendent couldn’t hear them. ‘Come on,’ he’d shout, and give them another clatter across the jaw, ‘come on, bucko, speak up, the Super can’t hear you!’” He laughed, wheezing. “Yes indeed,” he said, “Lugs was some man, I can tell you.” He paused, and his look turned somber. “Then a young fellow died one night, and Lugs was taken off the beat and put on the desk up there, where he is not happy, no, he is not happy, at all.”

Sergeant Jenkins came back with two big thick gray mugs of thick gray tea and set them down on the table and went back to his post by the door. Teddy swiveled in his chair to look at him but the sergeant stared ahead stonily, his hands behind his back now. Teddy turned to Hackett again. Hackett was stirring his tea pensively. “I believe,” he said, “you and Mr. Jewell used to do good works together.” He looked up. “Is that right? Out at that place in Balbriggan, the orphanage—what do you call it?” Teddy only gazed at him, wide-eyed, as if in fascination. “St. Christopher’s, is that right? I think it is. The Friends of St. Christopher’s, isn’t that what you called yourselves? And Mr. Costigan, he’s another one, isn’t he another Friend of St. Christopher’s. Hmm?”

So he knew about Costigan, too. He must know everything, and all this, this cross-examination or whatever to call it, was just a charade. He was being played with; toyed with. He would have to protect himself, that much was clear.

It was Costigan who had put him in touch with the Duffys. He had not told Costigan what he wanted them for, and Costigan had not asked. Costigan was careful like that, not wanting to know things that might get him in trouble. Then, when he heard what had happened, what the Duffys had done to Sinclair, he went into one of his rants. Teddy did not know why he should be so angry—it was only a prank, after all, and a good one, too; he would tell Pooh Bear about it, someday. Sinclair was a smug bastard and deserved a lesson in what the world could do to you. Costigan did not understand what it was like to be Teddy, always being sneered at and made to feel small, and stupid. All the same, it was Costigan’s idea, when he had cooled down, to send the envelope with Sinclair’s finger in it to Phoebe’s old man. “Quirke can do with a caution,” Costigan had said, and had even laughed that laugh of his—Teddy had pictured him baring his crooked bottom teeth—despite being so annoyed at Teddy.

Should he say, now, that it was all Costigan’s doing? He could claim Costigan had put him up to it, that it was Costigan’s idea, cutting off Sinclair’s finger and sending it to Quirke because Quirke had been asking questions about St. Christopher’s. And as for St. Christopher’s, he could blame Dick Jewell for all that.

“Will you share the joke, Teddy?” Hackett asked.

Teddy had not realized he was laughing. “Baldy Dick,” he said. “That was Jewell’s nickname at St. Christopher’s. It’s what all the boys called him, Baldy Dick.”

“Why was that, Teddy?”

Teddy gave him a pitying look. “Because he was a Jew!… Get it? Baldy Dick?”

“Ah. Right. And you used to go out there with him, to see the boys?”

All this, Teddy suddenly thought, was a waste of time. He wanted to be gone, wanted to get out of this room and into the Morgan and motor off somewhere pleasant, Wicklow or somewhere. “We all did,” he said, “we all went along—Costigan, too.” He laughed again. “He was a regular visitor.” He might even drive out to Dun Laoghaire and book himself onto the mail boat and take a little jaunt down to London, that would be nice.

“Costigan, too?”

Hackett was staring at him.

“What?”

“You said Costigan was a regular at St. Christopher’s, along with you and Mr. Jewell.”

“Yes. Costigan, and the others”—he grinned—“all the good Friends of St. Christopher’s.” He sat up straight on the chair and boldly returned the detective’s look. “But Costigan is your man, Inspector,” he said. “Costigan is your man.”

Hackett leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table again, and smiled, almost tenderly. “Go on, Teddy,” he said. “Tell me all about it. Speak up, now, so the Super can hear you.”

*   *   *

An hour later they telephoned Carlton Sumner and he came in shouting for his son and threatening to get everybody in the place fired. Hackett drew him to one side in the dayroom and spoke to him for a little while, and Sumner stared at him, and grew quiet, turning pale under his yachtsman’s tan.

*   *   *

Although he had not been away for much more than a couple of days, Sinclair felt almost a stranger in the flat. It was because of his hand that everything had a new and problematical aspect. Right-handed all his life, he felt now like a left-hander being forced clumsily to use his right. It was a strange sensation, very confusing. He could not get a grip on things, or no, it was not that he could not get a grip, but that he did not know quite how to come at things, what angle to approach them from. When he held the kettle under the tap in his right hand he had to turn on the tap with his left, in a series of minute calibrations, for even the tiniest effort caused the stump of his missing finger to flare and throb. He thought of his hand as an animal, a feral dog, say, slouched on its hunkers with its fangs bared, and himself frozen in front of it, fearful of giving the brute the slightest provocation. It was not so much the pain that hampered him as the fear of pain, the paralyzed anticipation of it. And if such a simple action as filling a kettle was so awkward, how was he going to use a tin opener, or a corkscrew, or a bread knife, or any of the ordinary things that life required the use of?

He would have to have help, it was as simple as that. He would have to get someone to come and assist him, or just to be there, at first, until he got the hang of things, until he got over being afraid all the time of starting up the pain again. He sat down at the kitchen table while the kettle boiled. How would he get the tea caddy open? He felt like a child, an infant. Yes: he would have to call someone.

He got her at last at the hat shop. It was where he should have called first, had he been able to think straight. It was the middle of a weekday afternoon, so of course she would be at work. Two days in hospital, a mere two days of being plied with cups of tea and having his pillows plumped for him, and he had forgotten the simplest facts about life outside the ward.

Even dialing the phone was a problem; he had to put the receiver on the table and dial with his right hand and then snatch it up again when the number started to ring.

She sounded surprised to hear his voice. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I couldn’t think who else to call. I mean, you were the first person I thought of calling, when I realized I had to call someone.” He paused; the kettle was about to boil. “I feel a fool, I feel like a big baby. Can you come?”

*   *   *

She came, as he knew she would. “It’s all right,” she said, “I was due time off, and Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes was in a good mood.” Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes was the owner of the hat shop. Phoebe smiled. “Though you’re lucky—she’s not in a good mood very often.” She was wearing the black dress with the white collar that was her working outfit, and a black cardigan, and patent-leather pumps. Her hair was tied with a red ribbon; it went over the crown of her head and down past her ears and was tied somehow at the back of her neck. Her face with the dark hair drawn away from it seemed made of porcelain, delicate and fine and pale.

They were shy of each other, and tried not to touch at all yet only succeeded in bumping into each other at every turn. He had given up in his attempt to make tea and now she filled the kettle with fresh water and set it to boil, and put out cups, and found the sugar bowl and the butter dish, and sliced the bread.

“Does it pain you all the time?” she asked.

“No, no. It just makes me clumsy. I thought, since there’s nothing wrong with my right hand, I wouldn’t have any problem, or not much, but everything seems to be the wrong shape and the wrong way up. It’s all in my mind; it’ll fade.”

“I could stay and make you some dinner,” she said, not looking at him. “If you’d like.”

“Yes, I’d like you to stay. Thank you.”

They were sitting at the table, and when the kettle was boiled and she got up to make the tea the sleeve of her dress brushed against his cheek.

“Phoebe,” he said. She was at the stove, busy with the teapot and the tea. She said nothing, and did not turn to meet his gaze. “Thank you for coming.”

She brought the teapot to the table, and when she put it down he took her left hand in his right. She looked at their two hands, entwined. “I thought you hadn’t—” she said. “I thought you didn’t—”

“Yes,” he said. “So did I. We were both wrong, it seems.”

He smiled up at her but she did not smile in return. He still had hold of her hand. He gave off, she noted, a very faint hospital smell. He stood up then and kissed her. She did not close her eyes. A curling wisp of steam rose from the spout of the teapot, as if the genie, the genie who would grant all wishes, were about to materialize, with his turban, and his big mustache, and his stupid, his wonderfully stupid grin.