Elegy for April (19 page)

 

Abruptly she turned from the window and fairly raced to the kitchen and, without crossing the threshold, reached in and switched off the light. She waited a moment, then moved forward cautiously into the darkness, avoiding the outlines of the furniture yet managing to jar her hip on a corner of the stove, and peered down into the misty street. No one was there. Probably no one had been there in the first place; probably it had only been a shadow she had seen and thought it a person. Yet she did not believe that. There
had
been someone, standing in the darkness and the damp air, looking up, watching for her. But whoever it was that had been there was gone.

 

 

 

 

 

13

 

QUIRKE COULD NEVER QUITE ACCOUNT FOR HIS FONDNESS OF Inspector Hackett. After all, there were not many people he had a fondness for. Despite the many evident differences between them, they seemed to have something in common. Perhaps what he appreciated was the policeman’s amused, easygoing skepticism of the world in general. At one time Quirke had thought that Hackett, like him, must have spent his early years in an institution, but there was a pliancy to the detective’s personality, an essential amiability, that would not have survived a place such as Carricklea. The Quirkes and the Harknesses of this world were a closed and unwilling fraternity, whose secret handshake betokened not trust or fellowship, but suspicion, fear, coldness, remembered misery, unflagging rancor. Fellowship and trust, these were among the good things behind the cold glass of the great shop window against which they pressed their faces half in longing and half in angry contempt. The thing to do was to hide the damage. That was what they expected of each other, what they asked of each other, the maimed ones; that was their token of honor. What was it Rose Crawford had said to him once, a long time ago?
A cold heart and a hot soul— that’s us, Quirke
.
And yet the fact remained that he was fond of Hackett— how was that?

 

Nevertheless, when the telephone rang and he picked it up and heard the detective’s drawn-out, Midlands vowels, his heart sank. April Latimer, again. Quirke was in his office at the hospital, in his white coat, leaning back in his chair with his feet on the desk. Through the big plate-glass window of the dissection room he could see his assistant Sinclair working on a cadaver, busy with saw and scalpel. “Is there something new, Inspector?” he asked, wearily.

 

“Well now,” Hackett said, and Quirke pictured him, in his cubbyhole on the top floor of the barracks in Pearse Street, putting his head on one side and squinting up at the tobacco-colored ceiling, “it’s new, all right, but whether it’s a thing or not I’m not so sure.” Sinclair, Quirke noticed for the first time, had a peculiar way of approaching a corpse, sidewise, with his head tilted and his tongue stuck in a corner of his mouth, like a hunter stalking his prey. “I went around again to the house in Herbert Place,” Hackett said. “There’s a person there that lives in the top-floor flat, a very queer sort of a woman altogether. A Miss Helen St. John Leetch, no less.” He chuckled. “Isn’t that a grand name?”

 

“What had she to say?”

 

“I’d venture she’s a bit touched, the unfortunate creature, but she’s watchful, too, in her way, and doesn’t miss a thing.”

 

“And what did she see, on her watch?”

 

There was a wheezing sound on the line, which after a moment or two of puzzlement Quirke recognized as laughter. “You’re a very impatient man, Dr. Quirke,” the policeman said at last, “do you know that? I’ll tell you what, why don’t you jump in that grand new car of yours and drive down here and we’ll go out for a bite to eat? What do you say?”

 

“I can’t,” Quirke lied. “I already have a lunch engagement.”

 

“Ah, do you say a lunch engagement?” He liked the sound of that, it seemed, and there was another interval of wheezing. “Well, could you spare me ten minutes before you repair to your luncheon? Would that be at all a possibility, do you think?”

 

Quirke grudgingly said yes, that he would call at the Inspector’s office, but that it was too late now, it would have to be after lunch.

 

He put the phone down and sat for a long time leaning back with his hands behind his head, looking at Sinclair at work, but not seeing him. Isabel Galloway was still haunting his thoughts. The image of her, the cool, long, pale length of her, preyed on him. She was not like the women he was accustomed to. After that night in her house at Portobello, with the two swans gliding on the moonlit waters of the canal, something in him that had been locked all his life had begun to loosen, grinding and groaning, like a glacier on the move, or an iceberg breaking.

 

Now when he called her and gave his name she let a silence hang, then said, “Well, if it isn’t you. And I thought my one-night stand had been stood down.”

 

“I wondered,” he said cautiously, “if we might meet.”

 

“What were you thinking of?”

 

“I thought we might have lunch.”

 

“Yes, you like your lunch, don’t you?”

 

He held the receiver to one side and frowned at it, then put it back to his ear. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“A rather large and painted bird—
two
rather large birds, in fact— told me they spotted you in Jammet’s in the company of a
femme mysterieuse
, a lady
d’un certain age
but handsome withal, and, my two chickadees surmised, moneyed, to boot.”

 

Although he was in the basement of the building he knew that it was raining outside; he could sense rather than hear it, a sort of far-off, general, moist humming. “Her name,” he said, “is Rose Crawford. She used to be married to my father-in-law.”

 

“Ah. Complicated. So she would be your … what? Your stepmother-in-law?” She laughed softly.

 

“She lives here now,” he said. “In Wicklow. She has fallen for the romance of the place— the wind in the heather, the rain on the crag, that kind of thing.” With his free hand he eased a cigarette out of the packet on the desk and fumbled in the pocket of his white coat for his lighter. “I’m angling for a mention in her will.”

 

“From what my feathered friends had to say, she’s far from on her last legs. In fact dear Mícheál— who, surprisingly, has an eye for these things— remarked particularly on the shapeliness of the lady’s ankle.” She gave another low laugh. “You wouldn’t try to deceive a simple player-lass on the nature of your relations with this in-law, would you?”

 

“I probably would,” he said.

 

“You don’t have to be so frank, you know. Frankness is a much overrated quality, in my opinion.”

 

“So what about it?— lunch, I mean.”

 

“Yes. But not Jammet’s, I think. Too many associations already.”

 

She said she would meet him in the Gresham Hotel. “I’m rehearsing, darling. It’ll be just a tripping step for me from here”— where now in the somber, mock grandeur of the place, Quirke felt ill at ease. Some film star was expected from the airport, and the place was abuzz with reporters and flash photographers and dozens of what must be fans milling outside on the pavement despite the wind and the scudding rain. Isabel was waiting for him in the bar. “It’s Bing,” she said, indicating the crowd outside. “They’re mad for a crooner.” She had her stage makeup on—”It’s a full-dress rehearsal, Gawd help us”— and was wearing a mackintosh which she had not unbuttoned. She had not had time to change out of her costume, she said,
and made a pained face. “We’re doing Maeterlinck,
The Blue Bird
. I’m afraid I’m a fairy.”

 

She was drinking Campari and soda. He said he would settle for a soda by itself, and lit a cigarette. He must have been staring at her, for she blushed a little now and lowered her long eyelashes. “You make me self-conscious,” she murmured, smiling. “Imagine that, an actress, and self-conscious—have you ever heard of such a thing?”

 

He would have liked to be in bed with her now, this minute, while she was like this, not brittle and smart, but shy, confused, almost defenseless.

 

“Do you know what his full name is, Maeterlinck’s?” she said, looking into her drink and pretending to be busy stirring it with a plastic cocktail stick. “Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard, Count Maeterlinck.” She looked at him from under those lowered lashes. “What do you think of that?”

 

He took the cocktail stick from her and put it on the bar. “You’ve been on my mind,” he said. “I don’t know what to— I don’t know how to—” He shrugged. “I’m not good at this.”

 

She leaned forward and kissed him, lightly, on the cheek. “As if,” she whispered, “anyone is.”

 

“Why don’t you open your coat,” he said, “and let me see your fairy costume.”

 

In the lobby there was cheering; Bing had arrived at last.

 

SITTING IN HACKETT’S OFFICE QUIRKE MIGHT HAVE BEEN IN THE wheel house of a trawler battling its way through a stormy sea. The stunted window behind the detective’s desk was grimy at the best of times, but on this day of wind and driving rain the daylight itself had to fight its way through the streaming, misted panes. There was a coal fire burning in the grate, and the air in
the room was hot and leaden. Now and then a backdraft would send a ball of smoke rolling across the threadbare carpet, to mingle with the general fug of cigarette smoke. Hackett was in his shirtsleeves, with his tie loosened and his collar-stud undone. The upper half of his forehead, usually hidden by his hat, was baby-pink and soft-looking, and his hair, pomaded with what seemed to be boot polish, was brushed fiercely back; it was, Quirke noted, beginning to go gray around the edges.

 

“That girl of yours,” the policeman said, “seems to attract trouble.”

 

For a giddy moment Quirke thought he meant Isabel Galloway, and wondered how he could possibly know about her; then he realized his mistake. “Oh, Phoebe,” he said. “Trouble seems to find her, you mean— not quite the same thing.”

 

Hackett nodded, doing his froggy grin. “Either way, she keeps herself busy— and keeps me busy, too. I suppose there’s been no word of her friend?”

 

“Not that I know of. And I’m coming to believe there won’t be.”

 

This time Hackett sighed, and riffled through the papers that cluttered his desk, a sign of frustration, as Quirke well knew. “It’s a fine old mess, so it is,” the policeman said.

 

“Yes, that’s what her uncle says.”

 

“He’d know a mess when he sees one, all right.”

 

Quirke watched the crowding raindrops on the windowpanes shaking and shivering in the pummeling gusts of wind. “The woman in the flat above April’s, what did she say?”

 

“Miss Helen St. John Leetch,” Hackett said, rolling it on his tongue. “I never knew before the right way to pronounce that name St. John. Queer.”

 

“Did she know April?”

 

“She kept tabs on her, shall we say. Lonely people always make the best eyewitnesses.”

 

“And what did she see, while she was keeping tabs?”

 

“Not much. By the way”— he leaned forward eagerly—”I’m coming up in the world— look at this thing.” It was an electric bell set in a Bakelite bulb that was fixed to the corner of his desk. “Watch this now.” He pressed the bell and sat back and waited, a finger lifted in the air. After a few moments the door opened and a young Guard came in. He was tall and gangly with a shock of carroty hair and a pustular chin. “This is Garda Tomelty,” Hackett announced, in a tone of pride, as if he had personally conjured the young man into existence. “Terence,” he said to the Guard, “would you ever be so good as to bring us up a pot of tea and a few biscuits?”

 

“Right, sir,” Garda Tomelty said, and withdrew.

 

The detective beamed at Quirke. “Isn’t that impressive now, what?”

 

He had finished his cigarette, and he fished about on the desk again and came up with a packet of Player’s and lit a new one. Outside, a swooping gust of wind struck so strongly it sent a tremor through the entire building.

 

“The woman in the flat,” Quirke prompted. At lunch with Isabel he had drunk a glass of claret that had gone straight to his head, and even yet he was feeling the afterglow of it. Was it a good sign or a bad, that a single glass would have so much of an effect?

 

“Aye, the woman in the flat,” Hackett said. “Miss Leetch— Miss St. John Leetch. But wait”— he cupped a hand behind his ear—”do I hear the dainty footsteps of the law?”

 

The door was opened again, and Garda Tomelty came in bearing a small wooden tray on which were a teapot, a milk jug and sugar bowl, and two large, blue-striped mugs. “Good lad,” Hackett said, pushing to one side the jumble of papers on his desk. “Put it down there, now, and many thanks.”

 

The young man set the tray on the desk and clattered out in his big black shoes and shut the door behind him.

 

Hackett slopped tea into the mugs and passed one of them to Quirke. “Milk? Sugar?”

 

“I’ll take it black.”

 

“Oh, of course,” the detective murmured, smirking to himself. Into his own mug he poured a generous dollop of milk and added four heaped spoonfuls of sugar, then plunged the sugar spoon into the tea and began to stir. “Miss Helen St. John Leetch,” he said again softly, musingly. He watched with a slack eye the spoon going slowly round and round in the mug. “She saw her with a black man,” he said.

 

“A what? “

 

“A black man. A Negro.”

 

“Who—April?”

 

“Aye. So she says, Miss Leetch.” He tossed the wet spoon back into the sugar bowl and heaved himself sideways in his chair and put one foot up on the desk. The weathered leather of his hobnailed boots was finely cracked all over like the surface of an old painting. “Hanging around, she says he was.”

 

“Did she see them together, April and this fellow, whoever he is?”

 

The detective took a slurping drink of his tea and considered. “She wasn’t the clearest, I have to say. I thought she was talking about one of the girl’s relatives, but the lady laughed at me and said she hardly thought Miss Latimer would have a relative who was black.” He paused, lifting his eyes and squinting at a corner of the ceiling. He smoked, he drank, he smoked. “And that was as much as I could get out of her.” He swiveled his squinting eye in Quirke’s direction. “Do you know of any black man she might know, Dr. Quirke?”