Holy Orders A Quirke Novel Read online

  The old man cast a sharp look across the table. “Oh, aye,” he said, “all the fathers.” His manner had turned wary.

  Quirke grasped the glass again and this time drank from it. Jameson was his tipple, but the Powers tasted good, all the same. “There’s a Father Honan, I believe,” he said. “Would you know him?”

  “Father Mick, is it?” The old man smiled, though his eyes kept a guarded look. “He’s a grand man.”

  “So they say.”

  The old man waited, silent and watchful. What had he said his name was? Thaddeus—Thady. “Do you know him well?” Quirke asked.

  “Oh, I do. Sure wasn’t he living here for the past I don’t know how long. A good and holy man.”

  Quirke looked deep into Thady’s cloudy eyes. Was there something lurking in there that belied his warm words? “You say he was living here—where is he now?”

  “He’s going off to Africa, I hear.”

  “Yes, but where is he staying in the meantime?”

  The old man let his gaze drift. “I believe he’s visiting his home place.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Donegal.”

  “That’s a long way away.”

  “It is. It’s as far away as you can get.”

  A silence fell. They could hear rain whispering at the window now, yet at that very moment a swish of sunlight filled the room. April. The old man offered the whiskey bottle again but Quirke put his hand over his glass. He was convinced there were things the old man knew but was not saying about Father Mick. He was asking the wrong questions, obviously—but what were the right ones? If only he could get his head clear. Beyond the window, off in the trees, some small shiny thing kept flashing, as if it were sending him an urgent signal. He should leave. His pulse was beginning to race again. “I’d better be going,” he said. He tried to stand, but once more his knees would not obey him.

  “You’ll get wet,” the old man said. “Listen to that rain.” He was bent so far forward his chest was almost resting on the table. His head as well as his hands trembled slightly, and Quirke thought of a tortoise, its leathery skull waggling on a stalk of neck, its ancient eyes filmed over with a gray transparency. Thady. Thaddeus. He was gazing vacantly off to the side, and seemed to have forgotten Quirke was there. “He’s a great man for the good works,” he said, “the same Father Mick.”

  Quirke blinked; that flashing thing in the trees was making his eyes ache. What was it? Something in a magpie’s nest, perhaps, a stolen brooch or shard of colored glass? But did magpies really steal things, or was that only a myth? “Good works?” he said, trying to concentrate.

  Thady nodded. “Aye. With the kiddies, and the like. And the tinkers.”

  Quirke waited, fingering the whiskey glass that by now was empty. The rain was beating still on the window yet there was a wash of watercolor sunlight on the opposite wall that was making the pale tiles paler still. “Why is he going to Africa?” he asked. “Is he being sent?”

  The old man squinted up at him. “Sent?”

  “If he’s doing such great work here, why is he going away?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. Don’t they take a vow of obedience?”

  “So he is being sent.”

  The old man smiled softly. “Sure, who would send him?”

  “The Father Superior?”

  Thady frowned, his jaw working as if he were grinding some small thing between his teeth. Suddenly he cackled. “His Reverence? His Reverence hasn’t been in communication with anyone, only me, this many a year.” He put a finger to his temple and made a screwing movement. “He’s not the best up top, so he’s not. Father Dangerfield is the boss now. He’s the man in the saddle.”

  “I spoke to him. He seemed to know very little about Father Honan.”

  “Did he, now.” The old man shook his head, greatly amused. “He keeps his cards close to his chest, does Father Dangerfield.” A bell tinkled. There was a board of bells high up on the wall above the stove. The old man peered up at it. “That’ll be the Father Superior now,” he said, “wanting his pap.” He laughed again, a string of phlegm making a wet twang in his sunken chest; then he rose and went to a cupboard and took from it a tin of Ovaltine and carried it to the stove.

  “A young man was killed the other night,” Quirke said. “Murdered.”

  The old man brought forward a sort of footstool and set it in front of the stove and stepped up onto it. He opened the tin and shook a measure of the dull-brown powder into a small saucepan. “Would you do me a favor,” he said, “and go into the scullery there and bring me the bottle of milk that’s in the safe? I’m sick to my soul of climbing up and down on this bloody yoke.”

  Quirke did as he was asked. The green-meshed food safe was set into a rectangular hole in the wall so that the air from outside could circulate through it. There were raindrops on the milk bottle. He carried it back to the kitchen and gave it to the old man. “Are you a detective?” the old man asked, watching himself pour the milk into the saucepan.

  “No,” Quirke said. “I’m a doctor, sort of.”

  “What sort would that be?”

  “Pathologist. Dead people.”

  The old man nodded, stirring the mixture in the saucepan with a tarnished metal spoon. “Who was the poor fellow that died?” he asked.

  “A reporter—a newspaper reporter.”

  “That’s right. I saw it in the papers. Was he some relation of Father Honan’s?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Well well, the poor chap.”

  Quirke’s brain was buzzing. He knew he should not have drunk whiskey at this hour of the day. That must be what was wrong with him, that’s what was making his heart pound and his thoughts turn in circles. He wondered again where Hackett was—surely he was not still with Father Dangerfield?

  The rain had stopped, and the sun was shining in more strongly at the window now. Faintly from outside came the fluting calls of a blackbird—was it the same one he had seen earlier, digging for worms on the lawn? For some reason he thought of Isabel, sitting up in bed in her room above the canal, enthroned there in her silk tea gown, his regal lover. She was a beautiful, clever, and talented woman, too good for him, far too good. Sometimes he forgot what she looked like. He would remember the color of her hair and her eyes, the shape of her nose, the curve of her mouth, but he would not be able to summon her image to his mind, hard as he might try. That must mean something. It must mean he did not love her, as she would wish him to love her, however that was.

  The old man lifted the saucepan off the stove. “I’d better not let it boil,” he muttered. “He always knows when it’s after being boiled.”

  He stepped down from the stool and bore the saucepan to the left-hand sink and set it on the draining board. He turned to Quirke. “Will you get us that mug up there?” he said, pointing to a high cupboard on the wall. Quirke took down the thick enamel mug. “Thanks,” the old man said. He grinned. “I could put in a word and get you a job here, maybe. Chief assistant to the head bottle washer.” He did his cackle, and poured the steaming beverage into the mug. His chin was on a level with the draining board. “What was his name again?” he asked.

  “Who?”

  “The young fellow, the one that was killed.”

  “Minor. Jimmy Minor.”

  “That’s a queer name, Minor. I never heard of anybody called by that name before. Where was he from?”

  “Somewhere down the country, I don’t know. The Midlands.”

  “Ah, well, God rest him anyway.” He stood, holding the mug. “Minor,” he murmured. “Minor. No, that’s a new one on me.”

  “Did he ever come here?” Quirke asked.

  The old man glanced at him quickly. “Here? Why would he come here?”

  “To see Father Honan.”

  “What would he want to see Father Honan for?”

  “I don’t know. He might have been writing a story about him, an article about his g
ood works with the kiddies, and the tinkers.”

  The old man pondered. “No, I don’t remember anybody of that name. And now I’d better bring His Reverence up his hot drink or he’ll start his roaring again.” He swiveled his head up sideways as far as it would go and looked at Quirke. “You’d want to take care yourself,” he said. “The old nerves can be a killer, worse than the bronicals.”

  * * *

  More tiles, pale gray like the ones in the kitchen. A window was open; he could feel cool damp air on his face. He was standing by it, by the window; it was small and square and looked out onto a concrete yard. The top half of the sash was pulled all the way down. The concrete outside, with the rain on it, was the color of wet sand.

  Porcelain, the chill smooth thick feel of porcelain. It was a bathroom he was in, no, a lavatory, with a small hand basin under the small window. How had he got here, how had he come to be standing here, with the air of outside in his face and his left hand gripping the porcelain basin to support him? He had an extraordinary sense of well-being. His heart was calm, his mind was clear. He could smell the rain in the yard, and there was the scent of wet grass, too, and of unseen trees. Beside him on the wall there was a little rectangular mirror with a crack running diagonally across it from top left to bottom right. He looked at his face reflected in the glass, severed in two from temple to chin. Faintly he heard again the blackbird whistling.

  He found Hackett in the hall, sitting on a thronelike chair next to the front door, with his hat on his knees. The chair, of age-darkened oak, had a high back topped with wooden spires and heavy, carved armrests.

  “You’d make a good bishop,” Quirke said. He thought his voice sounded very loud again; it seemed to reverberate between the walls and the high ceiling.

  “Not a cardinal?” Hackett said.

  “Scarlet wouldn’t suit you,” Quirke answered, and laughed, and his laughter also sounded strangely loud, a falsely hearty, bogus booming, a sound that not he but someone else must have produced. He carried himself carefully, still with that sense of being a large frail vessel with something frailer inside it.

  The detective rose from the chair with a grunt. “Are you all right?” he said.

  “Yes, I’m fine, I’m fine—why?”

  “You look a bit shook.”

  Quirke heard someone approaching behind him and turned. “Ah, Thady,” he said. “There you are.”

  The old man peered up at him warily. “Beg pardon, sir?” he said.

  Quirke turned to Hackett again. “Thady and I had a long chat in the kitchen—didn’t we, Thady?”

  The old man frowned. “The name is Richie, sir,” he said.

  “But…” For a moment it seemed to Quirke that the floor had tilted under his feet. “But you told me…”

  The old man stepped past him and opened the door, drawing it back with an effort. “Good day, sir,” he said, addressing Hackett.

  Quirke and the detective stepped out into the air. Scuds of rain were blowing across the shadow-skimmed lawn. Feeling suddenly cold, Quirke drew the collar of his overcoat close against his throat. His innards seemed to quiver, as if he had been struck by lightning a moment ago and were still vibrating from the shock.

  “Tell me,” he said, “how long was I gone?”

  “Oh, five minutes or so.”

  “That’s all?”

  “About that.”

  “Five minutes…”

  The policeman was watching him sidelong. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Yes, yes. I felt a bit—a bit nauseous, that’s all. It’s passed, now.” They walked towards the car, the wet gravel squeaking under their shoes. “What did he say?”

  “Who?”

  “The priest, Dangerfield.”

  “Not much more than you heard. He was not”—he made a sucking sound with his teeth—“he was not forthcoming, shall we say.”

  “What about Jimmy Minor’s letter?”

  “That was not to be found. A filing error, according to the good Father Dangerfield.”

  Quirke was trying to order his thoughts. It was like wrestling with the wheel of a car that had spun out of control. “And Father Honan is gone off to Donegal, it seems,” he said.

  “Is that so? Strange—Father Dangerfield says he’s here, in Dublin.”

  Quirke was about to speak again, but said nothing, only frowned.

  Detective Sergeant Jenkins was lolling in a bored trance behind the wheel of the squad car. Seeing the two men approach, he straightened hurriedly and started up the engine. Hackett, about to climb into the back seat, stopped and turned and looked up at the gray, forbidding frontage of the house. With the clouds racing above the roof, it seemed for all its bulk to be surging forward massively, almost as if it might topple over onto them, crushing the car and the three of them with it. “Do you ever think,” he said to Quirke, “that some things might be better left undisturbed?”

  “What?” Quirke said, as if he had not heard.

  Hackett sucked his teeth again. “I have a bad feeling about this business,” he said. “That young fellow’s death, that won’t be the end of it.”

  They got into the car, and Jenkins engaged the gears and the big machine rose up off its haunches and lumbered forward, its tires crunching the stones. When it had gone, and the smell of exhaust smoke had dispersed, the blackbird alighted on the lawn again and began to dig with its beak in the rain-soaked loam. From a bough above, a magpie looked down at the questing bird out of glossy, blue-black eyes and stirred one wing, flexing its brittle feathers.

  10

  She told herself she was imagining it, yet all the same she could not get rid of the feeling that she was being followed, being followed and watched. More than once, at work, she had glanced up and felt sure that someone in the street outside, among the crowd of passing shoppers, had been looking in at her intently, and had moved on a moment before she lifted her head. In the evenings, on her way home, she would draw to a halt suddenly and pretend to be absorbed in looking into a shop window while scanning the street out of the corner of her eye. At night, before she went to bed, she would turn off the light and stand in the darkness monitoring the pavement below her window. There were usually a few working girls out, loitering under the streetlamp or walking up and down, smoking, eyeing the cars going past, but they were familiar to her, and she paid no heed to them or the men who stopped to bargain with them. She did not see anyone who seemed suspicious, not once; yet the feeling persisted that there was someone out there, someone whose only interest was her.

  She was not frightened, not exactly—a little apprehensive, perhaps, but what she felt most strongly was curiosity, and a kind of eager expectancy. It was not the first time she had found herself in this condition. After her friend April Latimer had disappeared someone had watched outside her flat night after night, a shadowy presence under the streetlight. Often she had thought it might be April herself, in trouble and wanting to talk, yet not daring to cross the road and ring the bell. April had died, had been murdered, or so the authorities had concluded; she, though, had never quite believed that April was gone, and could not let go of the wistful hope that her friend might return someday. And now maybe she had come back—maybe it was April who was watching her, shadowing her, waiting for the right moment to reveal herself.

  But it was not April.

  She was walking over Baggot Street Bridge in the rain. It was Friday, but she had the afternoon off—Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes was having her hair done, an elaborate and lengthy procedure, which meant the shop had to be closed, for Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes trusted no one, not even Phoebe, and was not willing to leave her alone with the cash register for an entire afternoon. A wind was blowing along the canal, and just at the crest of the bridge her umbrella turned inside out, and as she struggled with it she dropped her handbag, and someone walking behind her stopped to pick it up for her. The umbrella was difficult to control—the wind was blowing a terrific gale—and one of the spokes nearly poked h
er in the eye, but at last she got it righted.

  “Oh, thank you,” she said, taking the proffered handbag, “thank you!”

  She was flustered and felt a little foolish. The young woman who had picked up her bag was about her own age. She wore a plastic raincoat and a green woolen tam with a bobble, from under which waves of red hair, darkened by the rain, flowed to her shoulders. She had a broad face with freckles, her skin was milky white and her eyes were a shade of shining, chestnut brown. Those eyes, the big soft irises flecked with gold, were her most striking feature. The lids were elongated at the outer corners and had a little lift that gave her face an Oriental cast. Phoebe thanked her again, and the young woman smiled, and said it was all right and wasn’t the wind a terror. There was, Phoebe felt, something faintly familiar about her—was she someone she had been at school with, maybe?

  The young woman walked on, but had to stop at the traffic lights at the corner where the bank was, so that Phoebe, who had furled the recalcitrant umbrella, caught up with her. Standing side by side, they smiled at each other again. Phoebe felt shy, suddenly, and was surprised to hear herself say, “I’m sorry, but have we met before?” The young woman glanced away. The lights had turned red and the traffic had stopped yet they did not cross, but remained standing on the edge of the pavement.

  “No,” the young woman said. She was still looking away. “But I know who you are.”

  * * *

  They went to a café a few doors up from Searson’s. The window was steamed over, and when they sat down at a table beside it the young woman rubbed a clear circle in the mist and looked out, leaning back and forth to see both ways along the street. Her name was Sally. “Sally Minor,” she said, and smiled.

  The waitress came to take their order, but for a moment all Phoebe could do was stare at the young woman before her. Sally Minor ordered a pot of tea and a plate of scones. How peculiar it sounded to Phoebe when she said it—a plate of scones—as if she had asked for a serving of consecrated hosts.