A Death in Summer Read online

  The room was hot and airless and smelled of himself. He found his cigarettes on the table, lit one. He got out of bed and drew the curtains all the way open. Three floors below, the long narrow garden that no one ever tended was a riot of sullen green under the gray light of day. The cigarette smoke made him cough; he doubled over, hacking and wheezing. He needed a drink-what he would not give for a drink, right now, despite the hour and his cotton-wool morning mouth. He sat down on the side of the bed and dialed her number. Engaged-she would have left it off the hook. He pictured her, in her silk tea gown with the big flowers printed on it, lying across the bed with her face in the pillows, sobbing, and cursing him between sobs.

  How did she know? How had she found out?

  ***

  He realized, later, what a mistake he had made in not going straightaway to her house in Portobello, however early it was when she had called him. Now it was his turn to curse himself. He was cutting open the rib cage of an old woman who had died under suspicious circumstances in the care of her spinster daughter when Sinclair came to tell him he was wanted urgently on the phone-the phone, again!-and something inside him instantly turned to ice.

  She had been brought to St. James’s. Of all the city’s hospitals it was the one he disliked most. Whenever he thought of the place he recalled with a shiver a night of storm and black rain when he had stood sheltering in a bleak porch under the wildly swaying light of an oil lamp-an oil lamp? surely he was mistaken?-and waited for a nurse who worked in the casualty department, who was supposed to be going on a date with him, but who in the end stood him up. How Isabel had got there he never discovered-maybe she had called for an ambulance herself, before she took the pills. He would not have put it past her.

  She was in a tiny room with a narrow brick window that looked down on a brick boiler house. The bed too was narrow, much too narrow, it seemed, to accommodate a normal-sized person, even one as trimly made as Isabel. Her face was drawn and had a greenish cast. She had on what he could see was a hospital smock. Her arms were outside the blankets, stretched rigid at her sides. At least, he thought, she had not cut her wrists.

  “You know,” he said, “this kind of thing is terribly bad for your health.”

  She gazed at him in silence. She had the look of an El Greco martyr. “That’s right, laugh,” she said. “A joke for every occasion.”

  She was hoarse, he supposed from the effect of the tubes they would have forced down her throat when they were pumping her stomach. He had spoken to the ward sister, a raw-faced nun in a white wimple, who had not met his eye but tightened her lips and said Miss Galloway had been very careless, swallowing all those pills by accident; no, she had not been in serious danger; yes, they would keep her in tonight and probably she could go home tomorrow.

  “Do you want me to open this window?” he asked her now. “It’s stuffy in here.”

  “Jesus,” Isabel said, “is that all you can say, that it’s stuffy?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  He felt sorry for her, and yet he felt remote from her, too, remote from everything here in this shabby little room, as if he were floating high up under the ceiling and looking down on the scene with no more than mild curiosity.

  “I didn’t think you could be so cruel,” she said.

  “I didn’t think you could be so stupid.” He winced; the words had come out before he could check them. He lifted his shoulders and let them droop again. “I’m sorry.”

  She stirred in the bed, as if something somewhere had delivered her a stab of pain. “Yes, well, you’re not half as sorry as I am.”

  “How did you find out? Who told you?”

  She tried to laugh, but coughed instead, drily. “Did you think you could climb into bed with the widow of what’s-his-name-Diamond Dick, is it?-while he was still fresh in his grave and that half the city wouldn’t know before you’d got your socks back on? You’re not only a louse, Quirke, you’re a fool, too.” She turned her face to the wall.

  He did not want to see her suffer, really, he did not, but he felt paralyzed and did not know how to help her. “I’m sorry,” he said again, more weakly than ever.

  She was not listening. “What’s she like, anyway?” she asked. “Which kind of French is she-sultry and smoldering or cool and detached?”

  “Don’t.”

  “You’d prefer cool, I imagine. You don’t go in much for passion, do you.”

  He wished she would stop; he did not want to be made to pity her. “I’m sorry I’ve hurt you,” he said. “These things happen. It’s no one’s fault.”

  “Oh, no,” she said bitterly, “no one’s to blame, of course, least of all you. Give me a cigarette, will you?”

  “I don’t think you should smoke.”

  “Bad for my health?” She had turned from the wall and was watching him narrowly, searching for a way to wound, he could see. “You know she’s been through every half-presentable man in this town, don’t you? Or did you think you were the first? She hated that husband of hers-it’s probably her that shot him. She must have a taste for bastards, first him and now you. God, what are we like-women, that is. Such fools.”

  “I’ll come for you in the morning,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”

  “Don’t bother.” She struggled to sit up. He made to help her with the pillows but she slapped at him with both hands and told him to get away from her. “You never loved me, Quirke.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone,” he said mildly.

  “Except yourself.”

  “Myself least of all.”

  “What about that wife you had of yore that you talk about so much? What’s her name? Delia?”

  “She died.”

  “Oh, that’s not allowed, is it, dying?” She looked at him, the sad spectacle of what he was. “I almost feel sorry for you,” she said.

  “I’d rather you didn’t.”

  She turned her face aside again. “Good-bye, Quirke.”

  As he walked away down the long corridors he was aware of a faint sharp pain, as if he had been pierced by a bolt shot from another planet, a wounding so fine it could hardly be felt.

  The smell of hospitals, he realized, was the smell of his life.

  In the street he huddled in a telephone booth and called Francoise.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. He told her. There was a long silence on the line; then she said, “Come to the house.”

  9

  On Sunday mornings when the weather permitted Quirke bought an armful of the English newspapers and sat with them on a bench by the canal below Huband Bridge. There he read, and smoked, and tried to forget for a while the emotional complications into which over the years he had allowed himself to stumble. Today the papers were full of menacing news. It was some comfort to Quirke, but not much, that the world was in so much more of a sorry state than he was.

  The morning was hot still, but at least the cloud cover of recent days had lifted and the sun was shining out of what seemed a freshly lacquered sky. On the water a moorhen paddled busily about with five chicks veering in a line behind her like feathered balls of soot, and an iridescent dragonfly was prancing among the tall shoots of sedge. Gamal Abdel Nasser had been appointed president of Egypt. Polio was still on the increase. He lit another Senior Service and leaned back and closed his eyes. Gamasser appointed pres. Egypt on the increase. Gamdel Abel Nassolio…

  “Dr. Quirke-am I right?”

  He emerged with a start from his doze.

  Who?

  Blue suit, horn-rimmed specs, oiled black hair brushed fiercely back from a pockmarked brow. He was sitting at the other end of the bench, one arm laid easily along the back of it and one knee crossed on the other. Familiar, but who was he?

  There was an inch and a half of ash on Quirke’s forgotten cigarette; it detached itself now and tumbled softly to the ground.

  “Costigan,” the man said, and took his arm from the back of the bench and laced his fingers
together before his breast. When he smiled he bared the lower front row of his teeth; they were yellow, and overlapped. “You don’t remember me.”

  “Sorry, I don’t recall…?”

  “I knew your adoptive father, Judge Griffin. And Malachy Griffin, of course. And we had a drink together, once, you and I, in McGonagle’s public house, if I’m not mistaken. A drink and a chat.” Those teeth again.

  Costigan. Yes, of course.

  “I remember,” Quirke said.

  “Do you?” Costigan looked exaggeratedly pleased.

  Yes, Quirke remembered. Costigan had padded into the pub that day and delivered a warning that Quirke had ignored, and afterwards he had been attacked in the street and given a beating that had left him with a broken knee and a limp for life. He remembered, all right. Now he ground the butt of his cigarette under a heel and began gathering up the newspapers. “Nice to see you again,” he said, beginning to rise.

  “Very sad,” Costigan said, “about poor Dick Jewell.” Quirke slowly sat down again. He waited. Costigan had turned his attention to the moorhen and her brood. “Lovely spot, this. You live nearby, don’t you?” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Mount Street? Number thirty-nine?”

  “What do you want, Costigan?”

  Costigan put on a look of innocent surprise. “Want, Dr. Quirke? I was just strolling along here and saw you sitting and thought I’d stop and say a word. How are you, these days? Did you recover from that mishap you had? A fall, wasn’t it, down some steps? Very unfortunate.”

  Costigan was a leading light in the Knights of St. Patrick, a shady and powerful organization of Catholic businessmen, professionals, politicians. It was the Knights, among others, that Quirke had provoked, which was why he had ended up with a smashed knee at the bottom of those steps that night-three years ago, was it, four? He said, “Why don’t you say what you have to say, Costigan?”

  Costigan was nodding, as if he had come to an agreement with himself on something. “I was just thinking,” he said, “walking along here this lovely morning in the sunshine, how different things often are to the way they seem. Take the canal, there. Smooth as glass, with those ducks or whatever they are, and the reflection of that white cloud, and the midges going up and down like the bubbles in a bottle of soda water-a picture of peace and tranquillity, you’d say. But think what’s going on underneath the surface, the big fish eating the little ones, and the bugs on the bottom fighting over the bits that float down, and everything covered in slime and mud.”

  He turned his bland gaze to Quirke, smiling. “You might say that’s how the world is. You might say, in fact, that there are two distinct worlds, the world where everything seems grand and straightforward and simple-that’s the world that the majority of people live in, or at least imagine they live in-and then there’s the real world, where the real things go on.”

  He took out a gold cigarette case and opened it on his palm and offered it to Quirke. Quirke shook his head. “No, thanks.” He should stand up now, he knew, he should stand up and walk away from here. But he could not.

  Costigan struck a match and lit his cigarette, and dropped the spent match on the ground beside Quirke’s right shoe.

  “I needn’t ask which is your world,” Quirke said.

  “Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Dr. Quirke. That’s where you’re wrong. I don’t operate in either world exclusively, but somewhere in between the two. I acknowledge them both. I have, you might say, a foot in both. People must have sunshine and calm water with baby ducks on it, if they’re not to sink into despair. Deep down they know how things really are, but they pretend not to, and manage to convince themselves, or to convince themselves enough to keep the pretense going. And that’s where I come in, me, and a few others of a like mind. We move between the worlds, and it’s our job to make sure the appearances are kept up-to hide the dark stuff and emphasize the light. It’s quite a responsibility, I can tell you.”

  There was silence then between them. Costigan seemed quite calm, cheerful, almost, as if he were greatly pleased with his little speech, and were thinking back over it admiringly.

  “Did you know Dick Jewell?” Quirke asked.

  “I did.”

  “I wouldn’t have thought he was the kind of person you and your cronies would find congenial. You’re not going to tell me he was a member of the Knights, and him a Jew?”

  “I didn’t say I knew him well.”

  “He certainly lived in the second world, among the big fish.”

  “And he was also a benefactor of many of our projects.”

  “Such as St. Christopher’s?”

  Costigan smiled and slowly nodded. Quirke wondered if he might be a spoiled priest, for he had a priestly manner, bland and soft but with an interior hard as stone. “Such as St. Christopher’s,” he said, “yes. Where I believe you spent a little time when you were small, and where I believe you visited again the other day. Might I ask, Dr. Quirke, what exactly it was you were after?”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  “Just curious, Dr. Quirke, just curious. Like yourself, I imagine. For I know you are an inquisitive man-you have that reputation.”

  Quirke made himself stand up. The bundle of newspapers under his arm was the size and heft of a schoolbag, and he felt for a dizzying moment as if he were a small boy again, standing accused before the Head Brother or the Dean of Discipline. “Have you come to threaten me, like the last time?” he asked.

  Costigan lifted his eyebrows and his hands in unison. “Quite the contrary, Dr. Quirke,” he said. “Like the last time, I’m giving you a friendly tip, so you can avoid getting into-what shall we say?-a threatening situation.”

  “And what is it, this tip?”

  Costigan was gazing up at him with what seemed a lively and sympathetic air, though stifling a smile. “Leave off this amateur detective stuff, Dr. Quirke. That’s my tip. Leave it to the real detective, to-what’s his name?-Hackett. Dick Jewell, St. Christopher’s, the Sumners-”

  “The Sumners? What about the Sumners?”

  “I’m telling you”-a touch of weary exasperation had come into his voice-“you’d be best advised to lay off. You’re a very inquisitive man, Dr. Quirke, very inquisitive. It got you in trouble before, and it’ll get you in trouble again. And speaking of trouble: what is it the French say- cherchez la femme? Or should I say, give up cherchez ing la femme. If you’ll take my advice. Which I hope you will, if you’re wise.”

  The two men gazed at each other, Costigan calm as ever, Quirke turning pale with outrage and anger. Costigan chuckled. “As you see,” he said, “you find out a lot of things, moving between the two worlds.”

  Quirke began to walk away. Behind him, Costigan called his name, and despite himself he stopped and turned. The man on the bench made an undulant swimming motion with one hand. “Remember,” he said, “the little fish, and the big fish. And the mud at the bottom.”

  ***

  Dannie Jewell had known Teddy Sumner since they were children, when the Sumners and the Jewells were still friends. She did not like Teddy, really-he was not an easy person to like-but she felt something for him. They both had things to cope with: their respective families, for a start. But Teddy was peculiar, with peculiar ways. There was the fact that he had no interest in girls. Dannie often asked herself if it was just that he had no interest in her, but no, she believed it was a general indifference. This she considered a point in his favor. It was positively restful to have someone around that you did not have to watch every word with, and who, when you did say something, did not take it as significant in the way that fellows almost always did. In fact, she, for her part, had not much interest in boys. They were all right for playing tennis with, or calling up when you felt low, as she did with David Sinclair, but when they started getting soppy or, worse, when they tried something on and were rebuffed and then got angry, they were either frightening or a bore.

  But she did not think Teddy was the ot
her way inclined, either.

  He was hirsute and muscular, like his father, but about two-thirds the size, a hairy little fellow with a low forehead and a square chin. He had meltingly soft brown eyes, again like his father, and a bandy gait that was oddly endearing. His temper was terrible and he was quick to take offense, which made him impossible, sometimes. He despised himself, Dannie supposed, but that hardly made him unique.

  He was wicked, she knew, wicked, and probably dangerous. She indulged herself in him, as she might in some awful, secret sin. He made her feel gleeful-that was the only word-and at the same time ashamed. Even the shame, though, was enjoyable. Just to be with Teddy was already to have gone too far. He was like a child, willful and cruel, and in his company she allowed herself to be childish, too. Teddy was dirty, and she could be dirty with him.

  She knew she should not have told him about the afternoon on Howth Head with David Sinclair and Phoebe Griffin. But she also knew that Teddy was fascinated by the things other people did, the simple things that make up a life, for those who are capable of living. He was like a creature from another planet, charmed and baffled by the doings of these earthlings among whom he was forced to carry on his precarious existence.

  They were on an outing of their own, she and Teddy, when she described the visit to Howth to him in hilarious detail. She knew she was betraying David Sinclair by talking like this but she could not stop herself-it was a guilty pleasure, like wetting the bed when she was little.

  Teddy had a Morgan that his parents had given him for a present on his twenty-first. It was a gorgeous little car, green like a scarab beetle, with cream-colored leather upholstery and spoked wheels. In it they would spend happy afternoons cruising the outskirts of the city with the top down, Dannie with a wind-blown silk scarf at her neck and Teddy wearing a cravat and Italian sunglasses. They favored the more characterless suburbs for these expotitions, as they called them-she was Pooh Bear and he was Eeyore-where the lower classes lived, dreary new housing estates of pebble-dashed three-ups, two-downs that were all alike, or prewar council estates struggling to become gentrified, in which the Morgan must have appeared as outlandish and expensive as a spaceship. They would point out to each other the more pathetic efforts the householders had made to add a bit of class to their properties, the fancy nameplates screwed to wrought-iron gates, with names like Dunroamin, or Lisieux, or St. Jude’s; the venetian blinds proudly displayed in every single window, no matter how tiny or narrow; the preposterous built-on porches, with leaded panes of stained glass and miniature plaster statues of the Sacred Heart or the Blessed Virgin or the Little Flower presiding in niches over the front door. And then there were the garden ornaments, the fake fountains, the plastic Bambis, the jolly, red-cheeked gnomes peeping out among the beds of hydrangeas and snapdragons and phlox. Oh, how they laughed at all this, a hand pressed over their mouths and their eyes bulging. And how soiled this made Dannie feel, how gloriously soiled.