Vengeance: A Novel (Quirke) (25 page)

The young man again made a show of considering the question, then nodded. “Yes,” he said calmly, “that’s right.”

“Did your mother know you were intending to go to a party that night?”

For the first time something like a shadow passed over the young man’s features. “My mother?”

“Your stepmother.”

“Oh. Mona.” He gave a faint snicker. “Who can say what Mona knows or doesn’t know. Things go in”—he pointed to one ear—“and then”—pointing to the other—“out again, usually without pausing on the way.”

“You’re not fond of your stepmother?”

The young man pursed his lips and shrugged. “Are people ever fond of their stepmothers? Isn’t that what they’re for, to be feared and disliked?”

Hackett paused in his pacing. “Feared?” he said softly.

“Oh, you know what I mean,” Jonas snapped, with an impatient gesture. “Snow White, the poisoned apple, all that. Mona is not the wicked witch, she’s just Mona. We pay her no attention.”

Hackett sat down again. “But she’ll inherit the business, and so on?”

The young man placed his hands flat on the table before him and leaned back with a large, slow smile. “These are very personal questions, Inspector,” he said calmly. “Impertinent, I’d almost say.”

Hackett was wondering where this young man had gone to school; somewhere in England, surely, chosen probably by his Unionist grandfather. He too smiled broadly. “Sure, aren’t we in a police barracks,” he said jovially, “where all kinds of liberties are allowed?”

The young man, though maintaining his smile, was watching him with a certain narrowness now. “I’ve seen my father’s will,” he said. “It’s quite clear. Mona will be well provided for. The business stays with my brother and me.”

“Ah,” Hackett said, nodding. “I see. That sounds right and fair.”

“Yes. My father had his weak points, but he was always fair.” He widened his smile again. “It’s a family tradition.”

“And the Clancys?” Hackett asked quietly.

The corner of Jonas’s mouth twitched in faint amusement. “There’ll be some money for Mrs. Clancy. He—Jack—was a partner more in name than anything else. Did you know he’d been buying up shares in the business on the quiet? We’ve made sure to get them back, of course. Chap of ours, Duncan Maverley, handled that—what’ll we call it?—that readjustment.”

Hackett stubbed out his cigarette in the tin ashtray on the table and offered the packet to the young man again—“You’re sure you won’t join me?”—then lit a fresh one for himself. He sat back, rubbing a hand vigorously along the side of his jaw, making a sandpapery sound. “There’d be plenty of people would have seen you at the party,” he said, “that would remember you being there, yes?”

“Of course. In fact, your friend Quirke, the pathologist, his daughter was there, with her boyfriend, who’s Dr. Quirke’s assistant, as it happens.”

“Ah. Miss Griffin, and young Dr. Sinclair. I see. And you spoke to them?”

“I met them as they were arriving.”

“And did you see them later on?”

“I’m sure I did. I must have—it’s a tiny house, built for gnomes.”

“And your brother, he spoke to them?”

The young man bit his lip to stop himself smirking. “You’ll have to ask him that yourself,” he said, “won’t you, Inspector.”

Over at the door, young Jenkins’s stomach was rumbling again.

*   *   *

Each morning when she woke, Sylvia Clancy had to adjust herself anew to a transformed world. Shock, bewilderment, grief, these were the things she would naturally have expected after the death of her husband, and when they came she found she could cope with them more easily than she had ever thought she would. But this sense of everything having suddenly become unfamiliar left her feeling helpless and lost. Things looked skewed, tilted off balance; even the daylight had a sort of acid tinge that had not been there before.

She did not know how or why Jack had died. He was a master yachtsman, easily the best sailor in his class, here and in Cork, though Victor, of course, had imagined he was the more experienced and skilled of the two. What was Jack doing out on the bay that night, so late, and alone? Why had he not told her he was going out? Jack had his secrets, but he was considerate and always let her know when he was going to be away, or out sailing, even though she knew that “sailing” was often a cover for other activities. She had been careful not to give him any sense that she was keeping tabs on him. He had his freedom, and knew it; that had been how it was between them from the start. Had she been wrong? Should she have insisted on rules, limits, demarcations? She did not know; she was not sure of anything, anymore.

That night, the night of his death, she had sat in bed reading until quite late; it had been close to midnight when she put her book aside and turned out the bedside lamp and opened the curtains. She always slept with the curtains open, for she loved to see the lights of the harbor shining in the darkness like jewels, white, emerald, ruby red, laid out on a velvet cloth, and to hear the mast ropes clinking in the wind. Had she been awake while Jack was drowning? She had felt no intimation of it, no start of dread, no inexplicable shiver, no sigh or whisper on the air. She could not bear to think of him dying out there alone and helpless, with no hand to hold, no one to cling to, no one to bid him farewell on his final voyage, into the dark and silent depths. He had loved her in his way, as best he could, she knew that. What did she care, now, about his girlfriends, his flings, his “bits on the side,” as the wags in the club would say, smirking behind their hands?

It tormented her to think that she would never know the true circumstances of his death. Had it been an accident? That seemed impossible—though he was impulsive in many ways, when it came to boats he had never been one to take risks, to cut a corner. Perhaps he had been tipsy, and had stumbled somehow and fallen overboard and hit his head as he was falling. He was a strong swimmer, and would surely have survived if he had been conscious when he fell into the sea. It had been a summer night, the cold would not have hampered him and made his limbs cramp up. But what other possibility was there? She did not like to think about other possibilities, yet she was aware of them, thronging just beyond the borders of her mind, clamoring to be let in.

Despite everything she knew to be the case, she could not believe that Jack was gone. She knew he was dead, of course, yet she could not accept it. She kept thinking that he was being held up somewhere and prevented from coming back, and that if she did certain things, performed certain as yet unknown rites, and waited long enough, he would return. At moments in the day she would stop whatever she was doing and stand very still, listening, as if to hear his step in the hall, as if the door would open and he would come walking in, whistling, with the paper under his arm. At night especially she listened for him, for the small distant sound of his key in the front door lock, for the creak of the loose board on the first step of the stairs, for the bathroom tap to run, for the lavatory to flush, for the light switch to click off. It was all nonsense, she knew, this breathless waiting for the impossible to happen, yet she could not stop herself. It comforted her, imagining that he would come back.

She was glad of Davy’s presence in the house, infrequent though it was. He stayed out as much as he could, but when he was there he was some kind of company. They did not talk about his father, or the circumstances of his death. Death, she had discovered, causes an awkwardness, a kind of embarrassment, among the bereaved. The thing was too big to be dwelled on. It was as if some huge thing had been thrust into their midst, as if a great stone ball had come crashing through the roof and sat now immovable between them, so that they had to negotiate their way round it and at the same time pretend it was not there.

Davy shied from her, and would hardly meet her eye. He had been like that before his father died, throughout the week after Victor Delahaye’s death. She was reminded of when he was a boy and she had walked into his room one day without knocking—she could not believe she had been so careless—and found him lying on the bed with his trousers open and doing that thing to himself that men did. For weeks afterwards he would not look at her and blushed furiously if she came near him. Now it was like that again, only worse. Did he hold her responsible in some way for Jack’s death? She had read somewhere that when children lose a parent they sometimes blame the one who has survived, and Davy in so many respects was still a kind of child. But what about Victor’s death? How could he think she had any responsibility for that? It was Davy himself whom Victor had taken with him on that last terrible trip out to sea.

Did Davy know more than he was saying, about both deaths? Not that he said much. These days he was like an animal in hiding, folded into himself, showing nothing but sharp spines.

She tried her best to bring him out of himself, to make him talk to her, to tell her whatever things it was he knew and was keeping secret. She had him drive her to visit Jack’s grave every day. They ate lunch together, in the kitchen, in silence. She cooked dinner for him, too, but as often as not he stayed out until long after dinnertime, and she would make up a plate and leave it for him on top of the stove. It was an eerie sensation to come down in the morning and find the food eaten, the plate washed and put away. Her son was more of a ghost for her than Jack was. Unlike Davy, however, Jack was not a presence but a vast absence. She might wait in constant expectation for him to come back, but he would not come back, not ever again.

On Davy’s twenty-fifth birthday she took him for a treat to lunch at the Hibernian Hotel. She could see he did not want to go, but she insisted he should put on a suit and tie, while she wore a dark blue suit that she did not think looked too much like widow’s weeds—the occasion was supposed to be a celebration, after all—and together they took a taxi in from Dun Laoghaire. They were late, but they still managed to get a good table, by the window, looking out on Dawson Street. She had fish while Davy ate a steak. She persuaded him to drink a glass of wine, although usually he drank only beer, and not much of that.

She watched him across the table as he ate, and a lump came to her throat to see how much like his father he was becoming, with the same deftness, the same attentiveness to the smallest things. He was a good boy, she thought—and was glad he was not able to hear her refer to him as a boy—even if he could be difficult at times. She knew so little about him, what he did, where he went, who his friends were. Did he mean to be secretive, to keep things from her, or was that just the way all grown-up sons were with their mothers? Lonely though her own life would be from now on, she must not attempt to pry into his affairs, or make him think she expected him to share things with her. After all, he was not a boy, he was a man, and his own man, at that. Just like his father.

Glancing about, she caught sight of someone at a table on the other side of the dining room whose face she knew although for a moment she could not put a name to it. He was large, and wore a double-breasted black suit. There was a woman with him, who was also somewhat familiar, though Sylvia was sure she had never met her. When the couple had finished their lunch they passed close by on their way out, and the man stopped, and a second before he spoke she remembered who he was.

“Mrs. Clancy,” he said, “how are you? My name is Quirke. I’m a—I’m an associate of Detective Inspector Hackett’s. I was at your husband’s funeral. I’m very sorry for your loss.”

She thanked him, and introduced Davy, who gave him an openly hostile stare and turned away and glared out the window into the sunlit street. Quirke’s lady friend had gone on a few paces, and stopped now and looked back with a polite vague smile. She was that actress; Sylvia suddenly recognized her—what was her name? Galligan? Galloway? She was good-looking, in an actressy sort of way.

Quirke was still standing there, beside the table, as if he expected her to say something more, to do something more. She was keenly aware of his dark bulk, which seemed to lean over her a little, and suddenly something gave way inside her, and she thought she might be about to weep. What was the matter with her? She did not know this man, had only glimpsed him once before, in the churchyard, and now here she was, ready to clasp his hand and bury her face in his sleeve and shed hot tears. She tried to speak. “I—I wonder if—” She snatched up her handbag from the floor where she had left it leaning against the leg of her chair and opened it and rummaged in it for a handkerchief. She must not cry, not here, in front of these people, this man, this stranger!

He had started to move on. She twisted about on the chair, looking up at him urgently. What did she want of him? He paused, seeing the silent appeal in her look. He frowned and smiled, seeming to understand. But to understand what? She did not herself understand what was happening, why she wanted him not to go but to stay here beside her. “I’ll come back,” he said. “Just a minute.” He stepped away, and touched a finger to the actress’s elbow, and they went on, moving between the tables, and a moment later Sylvia saw them outside on the pavement, Quirke speaking and the actress looking at him with a quizzical smile and then shrugging and turning to walk away. Quirke, feeling himself watched, glanced back and caught Sylvia’s eye through the window, and they continued gazing at each other for a long moment.

*   *   *

They sat in armchairs in the lobby with a little table between them on which a waitress had set out a pot of coffee and cups and saucers and plates of biscuits and thin square sandwiches. When Quirke had come back into the dining room, Davy had put down his napkin and gone off, angrily, it seemed to his mother. What was there for him to be angry about? Surely she could speak to whomever she liked.

She no longer felt like crying, and anyway the tears that had threatened would have been tears not of sorrow but relief. Yes, relief. There was something about this man sitting before her that she felt she could trust. It was not that he seemed particularly warm or sympathetic. Quite the opposite, in fact. She felt he was the kind of man she could speak to precisely because of a certain coolness, a certain stoniness, she detected in him. She could tell him her secrets and he would keep them, not out of discretion or consideration for her, but out of—what? Disinterest? Indifference? Well, that would be fine. Indifference would be fine.