Vengeance: A Novel (Quirke) (32 page)

Maggie sat forward, birdlike, eager now to continue with her story. “James knew where Jack Clancy was, he had been following him. Clancy had been with another one of his”—she made a sour face—“of his girlfriends, in Sandycove. James had a cricket bat—” She broke off and laughed briefly. “Trust James, always the sportsman.” She frowned suddenly, bethinking herself, and looked at them both apologetically. “But I promised you coffee! Oh, dear, I’m hopeless. What my mother would have said, I can’t think. Mother was a stickler where manners were concerned. She used to keep a ruler in her lap at mealtimes, one of those old-fashioned wooden tubes, and would crack us on the knuckles with it, Victor and I, if we used the wrong knife, or didn’t offer things around before helping ourselves. Oh, yes, a real stickler.”

Quirke moved his chair closer to hers. “Please go on,” he said.

“What?” She blinked.

“You were telling us about that night, in Dun Laoghaire, with the full moon.”

“Oh, yes. We caught up with him at the bandstand”—she turned to Rose—“you know the bandstand, on the front? He was hiding there, I think he must have sensed James was following him. He saw me, coming towards him—I wanted to be there, when it happened. Then I heard it, the blow. It was very loud. He didn’t make a sound, though, just fell straight down, like an animal under the poleax.”

There was a silence, in which they could hear Maggie breathing, taking rapid, shallow breaths, like a sleeping child. Her eyes shone, and a small, perfectly circular spot of pink had appeared on each cheekbone.

Quirke leaned closer to her. “And this was because of Mona, yes—Mona and him? That’s why you—that’s why James—hit him on the head?”

“That, yes. And the other business.”

“What other business, Maggie?”

She looked straight into his face, again with that softly pitying expression, as if he were an idiot child. “Jack Clancy had been getting ready to take over the firm and push Victor out. Didn’t you know? The boys couldn’t have that. They were very cross, when Mr. Maverley told them about it. We had a little conference, the three of us, Jonas, James, and I—well, Jonas and I, really. James doesn’t think the way Jonas does. He’s not clever, like Jonas.”

Quirke had taken his cigarette case from his pocket, but did not think his hands would be steady enough for him to light a cigarette. He was slightly dizzy, and had a strange sensation; it felt like euphoria. “And that was when you decided, you and Jonas, what to do about Jack Clancy—yes?”

“Yes,” Maggie said. “That’s when we decided Jack Clancy could not be allowed to go on living, not when Victor was dead.”

“So you and James followed him that night, and James hit him, and then you put him in the boat, and one of you sailed it out, and the other followed, in another boat.”

“Yes, yes,” Maggie said, almost panting now. “James took him in his own boat—Jack’s boat, I mean, the
Rascal
—and I came along with him in one of ours, the
Maggie Dear
. My father named it after me, you know. I was always so proud, sailing in it, with my name on the side. Maggie Dear.”

“Was he still alive then?” Quirke asked softly.

“What?”

“Was he alive, Jack Clancy, when you put him in the boat?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t—I didn’t look at him. James did all that. He was always very kind to me, James, very considerate.
You leave it all to me, Auntie Maggie
, he said. He sounded so cheerful, like he used to when he was a little boy.” She paused, remembering. “I was upset, of course. Jack Clancy was a dreadful man, and deserved all he got, and yet—”

She put a hand up to her forehead and, feeling the bandanna there, untied it at the back and took it off. “Oh!” she said, with a wide-eyed smile. “What a relief! I’d forgotten I had it on.”

“So James scuttled the boat, the
Rascal,
” Quirke said, “and then the two of you returned in your boat, in the
Maggie Dear
.”

She nodded rapidly. “Yes, yes, we both came back together.” She looked at her hands on the table in front of her. “I can still see that moon, shining on the water, a long gold path leading out to the horizon.”

Rose Griffin had lowered her head, and sat motionless, her shoulders hunched. “Oh, Maggie,” she murmured.

Maggie turned to her. “Do you think we were very bad, to do what we did?” she asked. She looked to Quirke again. “Do you?”

“You killed a man,” he said. “You committed a murder.”

She nodded slowly, considering this. “Yes, we killed him,” she said. “But I don’t think it was murder, not really. It was more like something in the Bible, you know—my father was fond of quoting the Bible to us when we were little.” She lifted a finger, pointing upwards. “It was an act of justice.”

“No, Miss Delahaye,” Quirke said. “It was an act of vengeance.”

“Well,” she retorted quickly, in a petulant tone, “you can think that, if you like.
Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord
—yet they say,
An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth
.”

“They don’t,” Quirke said, shaking his head. “They say,
Love thy neighbor as thyself
. They say,
Turn the other cheek
.”

Suddenly the woman’s eyes narrowed and she drew her lips together into a wrinkled bud. “You’re a fool,” she whispered. “Jack Clancy tried to take everything my brother had, his business, his wife—”

“No,” Quirke said, “not his wife.”

She drew her head back and stared at him, her pinched nostrils flaring. “He was sleeping with that woman, I know he was.”

“No,” Quirke said again. “Not the father.”

“Not the father? What do you mean?”

“Not the father. The son.”

“What?” She lifted her hands and slapped them down hard on the table once more. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that Jack Clancy wasn’t sleeping with Mona Delahaye. His son was.”

“Oh, Lord,” Rose Griffin said, a sort of moan, and stood up with her cup and rinsed it at the sink and filled it with water and drank deep, then stood there with her back turned, staring out the window into the garden.

Maggie was struggling to take it in. “Davy?” she said, in a tone of disbelief. “Davy, and Mona? But Jonas said Mona had told him—”

“Whatever she told him was a lie.”

Maggie was staring at him. “The boy,” she said softly, “not the father—the boy…”

“Yes. Your brother had found out about him and Mona at the same time he found out that Jack Clancy was scheming to take over the business. That’s why he took Davy out in the boat and left him stranded. That was your brother’s attempt at vengeance. He meant to kill Davy, I think, but I suppose couldn’t bring himself to do it. Perhaps he thought Davy would die anyway, of exposure, or that he would drown.”

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not lying, Miss Delahaye.”

“How do you know—how do you know it wasn’t Jack?”

“She told me.”

“Mona?”

“Yes. Mona.”

She looked away. “That filthy little—! The two of them, filthy animals.”

Abruptly, and as if she did not realize it, she began to cry, big shining tears rolling down beside her nose and dripping from either side of her chin onto the table. She stood up, pressing her fingertips to the worn wood to balance herself. “I must—” she said. “I feel—” She shook her head, crossly, it seemed, and turned away, and walked out of the room, stiffly, head erect, her arms rigid at her sides. Quirke looked at the blood-red bandanna on the table. Rose turned from the sink. “You should have told me,” she said.

He nodded. “Yes, I should have. I’m sorry.”

“Sometimes, Quirke,” she said, walking slowly towards the table, “sometimes I don’t understand you at all. I don’t understand what goes on in your head.”

He lifted his eyes to hers. “Nor do I,” he said.

From somewhere off at the side of the house came the sound of a car engine starting up. Quirke rose and went to the window, in time to see a station wagon slewing across the gravel and heading off along the drive, towards the front gate. Rose came and stood at his shoulder. “It’s Maggie,” she said. “Look, she’s gone.”

“Yes.”

“Shouldn’t we follow?”

Quirke shrugged. “No, I don’t think so.”

*   *   *

The last of daylight was a dense pink-gold sheen on the seemingly unmoving waters of the bay. A lobster boat was coming in past the harbor mouth, and on the quayside two fishermen were gathering up nets that had been drying there all day long. A man was throwing a ball into the water for his dog. The dog would scamper down the stone steps of the jetty and dive in and paddle frantically out and snatch the ball in its jaws and then paddle back again, snorting.

In half an hour the dark would be complete. She wondered if she should wait until then. But, no, the sooner she set out, the better. What she felt most strongly now was a kind of angry impatience—an impatience to be away, to be done with all this.

The rowboat was moored at the far end of the jetty, and she had to untie it and drag it behind herself to the steps. The man called his dog, and put it on its lead, and bade her good evening. She did not respond.

She and Victor used to sail in this boat when they were children and staying at Slievemore. Of the two of them she had always been the stronger, and on more than one occasion had fought bigger boys on his behalf. No one was allowed to hit her brother. Strange to think that some trace of Victor would still be here, the memory of his hand on the oar, the mark of his fingers on the tiller, undetectable but real, something of him, enduring.

When she stepped into the little boat it rocked in giddy fashion from side to side, as if for pleasure, as if it recognized her and was glad of her familiar weight. She sat down on the thwart and took up the oars. She had always loved the moist cool texture of varnished wood; it was the very feel of boats and boating, for her. Amid soft plashings she steered out from the jetty. Each time she lifted the oars from the water thick strings of molten gold cascaded from their lower edges. The man on the quayside was watching her. He wore a flat cap and a sleeveless jerkin made of green felt; a hunter’s coat. His dog sat beside him, and it, too, seemed to watch her, one pointed ear standing upright and the other lying flat.

Off to her right a cormorant suddenly surfaced, shaking itself, and so quiet was the evening that she could hear its wetted oily feathers rattling. The moon hung above the hill and, not far off it, Venus glittered, impossibly bright. The sky low down was a tender shade of greenish blue, and seemed as breakable as the shell of a bird’s egg. Everything was impossibly lovely. The cormorant dived again, and the ripples left by its going expanded outwards on all sides, each ripple smoothly flowing, swift as an eel. She pulled harder on the oars and the little boat bounded forward eagerly.

The man and his dog were gone from the quayside; the lobster boat had docked. She could hear faint strains of dance music—the lobstermen must have their wireless tuned to some English station. She could see the light of the lamp in the cabin, and the shadows of the men moving about. It seemed to her she had never been so vividly alive to the sights and sounds of this watery world. On she went, and on, into the gathering dark.

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.