Elegy For April Read online

  “Or?”

  “What would you medical men call it- a termination, is that the word?”

  9

  INSPECTOR HACKETT HAD ALWAYS BEEN INQUISITIVE, TOO MUCH so, as he sometimes thought and as it sometimes proved. He supposed it had to be a good trait in a policeman- he often thought it was the thing that had led him into the Force in the first place- but it had its drawbacks, too. “Snoop” had been his nickname when he was at school, and sometimes he would get a punch in the face or a kick in the backside for poking too eagerly into what was none of his business. It was not that he particularly wanted to get hold of secrets for their own sake, or to find out things that would give him an edge over those whose secrets they were. No, the source of his itch to know was that the world, he was sure, was never what it seemed, was always more than it appeared to be. He had learned that early on. To take reality as it presented itself was to miss an entirely other reality hidden behind.

  He clearly remembered the moment he was first given a glimpse into the veiled and deceptive nature of things. He could not have been more than eight or nine at the time. He was walking down an empty corridor one day in school and glanced into a classroom and saw a Christian Brother alone there, sitting at a desk, crying. Long ago as it was, he could still call up the entire scene in his memory, and it would be as if he were there again. It was morning, and the sun was shining in through all the big windows along the corridor; he remembered the way the sunlight fell on the floor in parallelograms with skewed, slender crosses inside them. Why there was no one around except for him and the Christian Brother, or why he was there or what he was doing, he did not recall. There must have been a football match or something on, and someone had sent him back to the school on an errand. He saw himself walking along and coming up to the open doorway of the classroom and looking in and glimpsing the Brother sitting there all by himself, not at his own desk at the top of the class but at one of the boys’ desks in the front row, although it was much too small for him. He was crying, bitterly, in silence, with his mouth slackly open. It was shocking, but fascinating, too. The Brother was one of the easier masters, young, with red hair brushed straight back like a cock’s comb, and he wore black, horn-rimmed glasses. He was holding something in his hand- a letter, was it?- and the tears were streaming down his face. Maybe someone had died, though he would hardly have got the news of a death by letter. Or was it a tele gram, maybe? Later, at the lunch break, he saw the same Brother in the school yard, supervising the boys, and he seemed as he always did, smiling and joking and making pretend swipes at fellows with the leather strap. How had he recovered his composure so readily, with not a sign of his earlier sorrow? Was he still grieving inside and covering it up, or had the tears been just the result of a passing weakness, and were they forgotten now? Either way, it was strange. It was disturbing, too, of course, but it was the strangeness that stayed with him, the out-of-the-ordinariness of the spectacle of a grown man sitting there at the too-small desk, crying his heart out, in the middle of an otherwise ordinary morning.

  From that day on he thought of life as a voyage of discovery- scant and often trivial discovery, it was true- and himself as a lone lookout among a shipful of purblind mariners, casting the plumb line and hauling it in and casting it again. All around lay the surface of the ocean, seeming all that there was to see and know, in calm or tempest, while, underneath, lay a wholly other world of things, hidden, with other kinds of creatures, flashing darkly in the deeps.

  The early twilight was coming on when he climbed the steps again to the house in Herbert Place and fetched the key from under the broken flagstone and let himself in. The hall was silent, and dark save for a faint glow from the streetlamp coming through the transom, but he did not switch on the light, out of a vague unwillingness to disturb the lie of things. The house was in the ownership of the estate of Lord Somebody- he had forgotten the name- who lived in En gland, an absentee landlord. He had looked up Thom’s Directory and found only two tenants listed, April Latimer and a Helen St. J. Leetch. Quirke’s daughter had told him which flat this other person, this Leetch person, lived in, but he could not remember what she had said. He knocked on the door of the ground-floor flat, but from the hollow sound his knuckles made he knew it was unoccupied. He climbed past April’s door on the first floor without stopping and continued on, leaning on the banister rail and breathing hard. The landing above was so dark that he had to feel along the walls for the light switch, and when he found it and flicked it no light came on. There was no light either under the door here, and when he leaned down and put an eye to the keyhole he could see nothing within but blackness. Yet one of his policeman’s extra senses told him this flat was not empty. He raised a hand to knock but hesitated. Something was near him, some presence; all at once he could feel it. He was not fanciful; it was by no means the first dark place he had stood in with a human presence nearby making not a sound, not even breathing, for fear of being found and pounced on. He cleared his throat, the noise sounding very loud in the silence.

  When he knocked on the door it was immediately wrenched open with a bang, and a waft of dead, cold air came out at him. “What do you want?” a hoarse voice demanded, rapid and urgent. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

  He could see her dimly against a vague glow that must be coming in from the street through a window behind her. She was a stark, stooped form, leaning on something, a stick, it must be. She gave off a stale smell, of old wool, tea leaves, cigarette smoke. She must have heard him coming up the stairs and waited for him, pressing herself against the door inside, listening.

  “My name is Hackett,” he said, in a voice deliberately loud. “Inspector Hackett. Are you Mrs. Leetch?”

  “Helen St. John Leetch is my name, yes yes- why?”

  He sighed; this was going to be a tricky one. “Do you think I could come in, Mrs.-”

  “Miss.”

  “-just for a minute?”

  He heard her fingers scrabbling along the wall, and then a weak bulb above her head came on. Halo of tangled gray hair, face all fissures, a sharp, black, gleaming eye. “Who are you?” Her voice now was surprisingly firm, commanding, he might have said. She had what he thought of as a refined accent. Protestant; relic of old decency. Every other house in these parts would have a Miss not Mrs. St. John Leetch, waiting behind the door for someone, anyone, to knock.

  “I’m a detective, ma’am.”

  “Come in, then, come in, come in, you’re letting in the cold.” She shuffled a step backwards in a quarter circle, making angry jabs at the floor with her stick. She wore a calf-length skirt that seemed made of sacking, and at least three woolen jumpers that he could count, one over the other. Hen’s claw, agued, on the handle of the stick. She spoke headlong, staccato, her dentures rattling. “If it’s about the rent, you’re wasting your time.”

  “No, ma’am, it’s not about the rent.”

  Tentatively he stepped inside. He had a glimpse of a darkened kitchen with lurking furniture shapes and a tall sash window, curtainless. The air was very cold and felt damp. He hovered uncertainly. “In there, in there!” she said, pointing. “Go on!”

  She shuffled after him into what he supposed was the living room and turned on the light. The place was a chaos. Things were dumped everywhere, clothes, pairs of shoes, outmoded hats, cardboard boxes overflowing with jumbles of ancient stuff. There was a strong smell of cat, and when he looked closely he saw a sort of slow billowing in a number of places under the dumped rags, where stealthy creatures crept. When he turned he was startled to find the woman standing immediately at his shoulder, scrutinizing him. “You’re not a detective,” she said with broad contempt. “Tell the truth- what are you, some sort of a salesman? Insurance, is it?” She scowled. “You’re not a Jehovah’s Witness, I hope?”

  “No,” he said patiently, “no, I’m a policeman.”

  “Because they come here, you know, knocking at the door and offering me that magazine- what is it?-The
Tower? I took it once, and the fellow had the cheek to ask me to pay sixpence for it. I told him to be off or I’d call the police.”

  He took out his wallet and showed her his dog-eared identity card. “Hackett,” he said. “Inspector Hackett. You see?”

  She did not look at the card but went on peering at him with deep suspicion. Then she pressed something into his hand. It was a box of matches. “Here,” she said, “I’ve been trying to get that blasted fire going; you can do it for me.”

  He crossed to the fireplace and crouched by the gas fire and struck a match and turned the spigot. He looked up at her. “There’s no gas,” he said.

  She nodded. “I know, I know. They turned it off.”

  He got to his feet. He realized he had not taken off his hat, and did so now. “How long have you lived here, Miss Leetch?”

  “I can’t remember. Why do you want to know?”

  A scrawny black-and-white tomcat came slinking out from under a pile of yellowed newspapers and wrapped itself sinuously around his ankle, making a deep gurgling sound.

  “Did you- do you know Miss Latimer,” he asked, “in the flat below? Dr. Latimer, I mean.”

  She was looking past him at the dead gas fire, scowling. “I could die,” she said. “I could die of the cold, and then what would they do?” She started, and stared at him, as if she had forgotten he was there. “What?” Her eyes were black and had a piercing light.

  “The young woman,” he said, “in the flat downstairs. April Latimer.”

  “What about her?”

  “Do you know her? Do you know who I mean?”

  She snorted. “Know her?” she said. “Know her? No, I don’t know her. She’s a doctor, you say? What kind of a doctor? I didn’t know there was a surgery in this house.”

  Rain had begun to fall again; he could hear it hissing faintly in the trees across the road. “Maybe,” he said gently, “we could sit down for a minute?”

  He put his hat on the table and drew out one of the bentwood chairs. The table was round, with bowed legs the ends of which were carved in the shape of a lion’s claws. The top of it had a thick, dull sheen and was sticky to the touch. He offered the chair to the woman, and after a moment of distrustful hesitation she sat down and leaned forward intently with her hands clasped one over the other on the knob of her stick.

  “Have you seen her recently?” Hackett asked, taking a second chair for himself. “Miss Latimer, that is- Dr. Latimer?”

  “How would I see her? I don’t go out.”

  “You’ve never spoken to her?”

  She put her head back and looked at him with incredulous disdain. “Of course I’ve spoken to her; how would I not have spoken to her? She lives down there below me. She does my shopping.”

  He was not sure that he had heard her correctly. “Your shopping?”

  “That’s why I have nothing in the house- I’m practically starving.”

  “Ah, I see,” he said. “That’s because she’s been gone for the last while?”

  “That, and the cold in here, I’m surprised I haven’t perished already.” Her clouded gaze had turned cloudier still. There was a lengthy silence, then she came back to herself. “What?”

  In a corner of the room under a pile of what might be blankets there was a brief, violent scuffle accompanied by hissings and spittings. Hackett sighed again; he might as well give up; he would get nothing here. He took up his hat. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, rising. “I’ll be on my way and leave you in peace.”

  She too stood up, with effortful, corkscrewing motions on the pivot of her stick. “I suppose she’s off with that fellow,” she said.

  Hackett, who had begun to turn in the direction of the door, stopped. He smiled. “Which fellow would that be, now?” he asked softly.

  It took a long time, and even then he did not really know what it was he had got hold of, or even if it was anything. Gradually it became clear, if that was the word, that in the chaotic lumber room that was Miss St. John Leetch’s understanding, the fellow that April might have gone off with was not one but many. The words came out in a tumble. She was by turns indignant, mocking, aggrieved. There were names, a person called Ronnie, it seemed-”Ridiculous, awful!”- and figures coming and going at all hours of the day and night, men, women, too, shadowy and uncertain, a gallery of phantoms flitting on the stairs while she hid on the lightless landing, watching, listening. Yet one figure in particular she kept returning to, indistinct as the rest and yet to her, it seemed, singular.

  “Creeping about and hiding from me,” she said, “thinking I would not see him, as if I were blind- pah! I was noted for my clear sight, always, always noted for it, my father used to boast of it, My Helen, he would say, my Helen can see the wind, and my father did not boast of his children lightly, I can tell you. Lurking there, down on the stairs, skulking in the shadows, I’m sure there were times when he took the bulb out of the socket so I could not turn on the light, but even when I didn’t see him I could smell him, yes, with that perfume he always wears, dreadful person, some kind of pansy I’m sure, trying to conceal himself in the space under the stairs, oh, quiet as a mouse, quiet as a mouse, but I knew he was there, the brute, I knew he was there-” Abruptly she stopped. “What?” She stared at Hackett in a puzzled fashion as if he too were an interloper who had suddenly materialized in front of her.

  “Tell me, now,” he said, very softly, cajoling, as if to a child, “tell me who it was.”

  “Who was who?”

  She tilted her head to one side and squinted at him sidelong, her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed. He could see the grime of years lodged in the wrinkles of her cheeks. He tried to picture her young, a long-boned beauty, walking under trees in autumn, leading a bridled bay. My Helen, my Helen can see the wind. “Was it a boyfriend, do you think?” he asked. “Or maybe a relative?- a brother, maybe?- or an uncle, calling on her?”

  She was still fixed on him with that sly, sideways regard, and now suddenly she laughed, in delight and derision. “A relative?” she said. “How could he be a relative? He was black!”

  10

  QUIRKE PARKED THE ALVIS AT THE CORNER OF THE GREEN AND was halfway across the road when he remembered that he had not locked it, and had to go back. As he approached the car he had the distinct impression, as he frequently had, that it was regarding him with a baleful and accusatory aspect. There was something about the set of the headlamps, their cold, alert, unblinking stare, that unnerved him and made him feel defensive. No matter how respectfully he treated the machine, no matter how diligently he strove to make himself familiar with its little ways- the slight yaw that it did on sharp right turns, the extra pressure on the accelerator it called for when going into third- the thing resisted him, maintaining what seemed to him a sullen obstinacy. Only on occasion, on certain open stretches of the road, did it forget itself and relinquish its hauteur and leap forward with eagerness, almost it seemed with joy, setting up that distinctive, muffled roar under the bonnet that made people’s heads turn. Afterwards, however, when he pulled up at the garage in Herbert Lane, the idling engine seemed to him to be smoldering with renewed, pent-up rancor. He was not good enough to be an Alvis owner; he knew it, the car knew it, and there was nothing to do but gloomily acknowledge the fact and take care that the damned thing did not turn on him and kill him.

  Could it be this evening that the car was aware he was in a more than usually vulnerable state of mind? It was the end of his first, dried-out day back at work, and it had not been easy. Sinclair, his assistant, had been unable to hide his displeasure at his boss’s return and the consequent eclipsing of the powers that he had wielded, and enjoyed wielding, in these past two months. Sinclair was a skilled professional, good at his job- brilliant, in some ways- but he was ambitious, and impatient for advancement. Quirke had felt like a general returning to the battlefield after an emergency spell of rest and recuperation who finds not only that his second-in-command has been running the campaign with
ruthless efficiency but that the enemy has been thoroughly routed. He had walked in that morning confidently enough, but somehow his helmet no longer quite fitted him and his sword would not come out of its scabbard. There had been slips, vexations, avoidable misunderstandings. He had carried out a postmortem- his first in many months- on a five-year-old girl and had failed to identify the cause of death as leptomeningitis, hardly a subtle killer. It was Sinclair who had spotted the error and had stood by, coolly silent, examining his nails, while Quirke, swearing under his breath and sweating, had rewritten his report. Later he had shouted at one of the porters, who went into a sulk and had to be elaborately apologized to. Then he cut his thumb on a scalpel- a new one and unused, luckily- and had been compelled to suffer the smirks of the nurse who bandaged the wound for him. No, not a good day.

  In the Russell Hotel as always a mysterious quiet reigned. Quirke liked it here, liked the stuffy, padded feel of the place, the air that seemed not to have been stirred for generations, the blandishing way the carpets deadened his footsteps, and, most of all, the somehow pubic texture of the flocked wallpaper when his fingers brushed against it accidentally. Before he had gone on the latest drinking bout, when he was supposed not to be taking alcohol in any form, he used to take Phoebe to dinner here on Tuesday nights and share a bottle of wine with her, his only tipple of the week. Now, in trepidation, he was going to see if he could take a glass or two of claret again without wanting more. He tried to tell himself he was here solely in the spirit of research, but that fizzing sensation under his breastbone was all too familiar. He wanted a drink, and he was going to have one.

  He was glad to find himself the only customer in the bar, but no sooner had he got his glass of Mйdoc and settled himself at a table in one of the dimmer corners of the room- it was not, he told himself, that he was hiding, only that wine drunk in a shadowed, cool place somehow gained in depth- than a party of four came in, making a commotion. They had been drinking already, by the look and sound of them. There were three men and a woman. They gathered at the bar and began at once to call for gins and vodkas and bloody marys. Two of the men were the famous Hilton and Mнcheбl, the queer couple who ran the Gate; the third was a handsome, hopeful youth with curls and a sulky mouth. The woman was smoking a cigarette in a long ebony holder, with which she made much ostentatious play. Quirke opened wide his newspaper and slid down behind it in his chair.