Vengeance: A Novel (Quirke) Page 15

  Minor snickered. “This business with Clancy and Delahaye, the two of them gone within less than a fortnight of each other.”

  “A remarkable coincidence, all right,” the Inspector said mildly, and took a sip of his lemonade.

  Minor turned to him with an exaggerated stare of incredulity. “A coincidence?” he said. “Do you think I came down in the last shower, or what?”

  Hackett brought out a packet of Player’s and with pointed courtesy offered Minor a cigarette, which Minor was about to take when he realized he already had a Gold Flake going.

  “So tell me,” the Inspector said, “what do you think these two misfortunate deaths were due to, if not coincidence?”

  “There’s no such thing as coincidence.” Minor was waggling his empty glass, trying to catch the attention of the dreamy barman. “I think,” he said, “there’s something distinctly—another glass here!—something distinctly queer about the whole thing. I hear, for instance, that Clancy had half his head knocked off before the boat went down. He hardly did that to himself.”

  Hackett sighed. This, he reflected, was how things got about, to muddy the water and darken the air. “Half his head, you say? I hadn’t heard that.”

  It was clear that Minor did not believe him.

  “And furthermore,” Minor said, as the barman slid a second glass of Guinness across the counter to him, “I hear there’s something going on behind the stout high walls of Delahaye and Clancy, Limited.” He waggled his fingers. “Hands in tills, that kind of thing.”

  Inspector Hackett, taking a slow draw of his cigarette, leaned back on the stool and squinted at the ceiling. “Is that so?” he said, eyeing the light fixtures. “I must say, Mr. Minor, you seem to hear an awful lot of things, in the course of your day.” Two forty-watt bulbs in flowerpot-shaped lampshades made of that tallow-colored stuff that looked like stretched human skin. Mrs. Hackett, he thought, would not be impressed. “And do you hear,” he asked, “whose hand it was that got slammed in the till?”

  Minor drank his Guinness, giving himself another mustache of lather. “I’m guessing the late Mr. Clancy was involved.”

  “Ah, yes,” Hackett said, “that would be a reason for the poor man to put an end to himself, if he had been found out.”

  Minor stared at him sideways. “You think it was suicide?” he said incredulously.

  Hackett waved a hand in mild dismissal. “I don’t think anything,” he said. “You’re the one that’s doing all the thinking.”

  Minor was silent for a moment, watching the policeman out of a narrowed eye. “Look, Inspector,” he said, lowering his voice, “you and I could help each other in this.”

  “Could we?” Hackett asked, in a tone of large surprise. “How would that be, now?”

  Minor would have none of the policeman’s feigned innocence, and shook his head impatiently. “I hear things, you know things,” he said. “What’s wrong with a fair trade?”

  The Inspector smiled almost indulgently. “Ah, Jimmy my lad, I don’t think it works that way.” He took his hat from the bar and stepped down off the stool. “I don’t think it works that way at all.”

  He nodded, and put on his hat, and sauntered away, whistling softly.

  * * *

  It rained at first, a nasty drizzle that clung like grease to the windscreen, but once Maggie had got past Carlow the clouds broke and the sun struggled through. Drifts of cottony white mist clung to the tops of the mountains off to the left—hills, really, she could not remember what they were called—and everything shimmered and glowed, the trees and the wet green fields and the tarmac of the road before her. It would be so lovely at Ashgrove, the countryside there always looked so dramatic in weather like this. The only blemish on the day was the guilty niggle that she could not free herself of. Was she running away? But even if she was, what of it? They had hardly noticed her going, the twins and Mona, of course, but even her father, too. They were probably glad to be rid of her, the lot of them. After all, was she not, in her heart, glad to be rid of them?

  She tried to think of things to distract herself from these troubling matters. Her name, for instance. Marguerite Delahaye. It was a nice name, she thought. She should never have allowed herself to be called Maggie: it sounded so common. Miss Marguerite Delahaye, late of Dublin and now of Ashgrove House in the County of Cork.

  Everything felt strange. It was strange the way time went on, calmly as ever; it seemed shameful, somehow. Surely there should be another pace for things to move at, after all that had happened. Death had stepped so suddenly into her life, like a thief, no, like a robber, brutal and violent. She had wept for Victor so much and for so long that she felt dried up now. Arid, that was the word; she felt arid. The bitterness had not abated. She suspected it never would abate. She imagined it, a sort of knot inside her. She had thought it would shift after Jack Clancy died, but it had not, it was still there, a hard dry chancre of bitterness lodged under her heart. And yet she felt lightened, too, lightened in spirit. It was as if a burden had been set on her shoulders but she had managed to shrug it off. She was free. The road unwound before her as if it would never end. All that hate and horror was behind her. Yes, she was free.

  She closed her eyes for a second and when she opened them there was a child on a bicycle in the road in front of her. She pressed hard on the brake pedal and wrenched the wheel first to the right and then to the left, and the car bounced onto the grass verge and the engine gave a great roar, as if enraged, and abruptly cut out. There was a smell of exhaust smoke and hot rubber. She looked in the rearview mirror. The child had stopped too, a girl of eight or nine, with dirty curls and a dirtier face. It was an adult’s bike she had, much too big for her, so that she had to reach up to grasp the handlebars. Where had she come from, as if out of nowhere? Maggie in her mind saw with awful clarity what so easily might have been, the mangled bike on its side, its front wheel spinning, and beside it the motionless form lying on the road like a little pile of bloodstained rags. It’s following me, she thought. Death is following me.

  She stopped in the next town—she did not notice its name—and found a hotel, a dingy place smelling of boiled cabbage, and sat in a corner of the bar and drank a glass of brandy. It made her cough at first, for she was not used to spirits. A man came in and sat at the next table. He was a big florid fellow, with thick lips and starting eyes. He wore a tweed jacket and a yellow waistcoat, and gaiters—she had not seen anyone wearing gaiters since she was a child. He went to the bar and ordered whiskey—a ball of malt, she heard him say—and came swaggering back to the table, grinning at her as he went past.

  She tried to ignore him but there was something grossly fascinating about him. He sat at the table with his legs opened wide, showing off the big round bulge in the crotch of his trousers. Each time he took a sip of his drink he would let the whiskey flow back into the glass, mixed with spit that sank to the bottom of the glass, stringy and white. He spoke to her, remarking what a grand day it was, thank God, now that the rain had cleared. She did not answer, only gave a quick cool smile, nodding. He asked if she was staying in the hotel. No, she said; she was on her way to West Cork. “Cork!” he said. “Sure, I’m from Bandon, myself.” She nodded again. She had gone hot, and could feel a flush rising up from her throat. The man asked if she would care for another drink—“A bird never flew on one wing!”—but she thanked him and said no, that she would have to be on her way. He grinned again, and wished her a safe journey, and asked her, with a laugh, to say hello to Bandon for him, if she happened to be going in that direction.

  She gathered her things, her handbag, the car keys, her chiffon scarf, and stood up. She was afraid that he would reach out and touch her as she went past, would catch hold of her cardigan or try to grab her hand. But then she noticed that he was looking at her strangely; his expression had changed and he seemed surprised, even shocked. She must have said something to him, though she had no idea what. She often did that nowadays, blurted thin
gs out without thinking. Sometimes she even spoke without knowing she had done so, and she wouldn’t realize it until she saw people backing away from her, looking offended or frightened. Her father had threatened more than once to have her put away; especially now, she would have to be careful and guard her tongue.

  In the car she had to sit quite still for a minute to calm herself, but then it occurred to her that the man in the gaiters might come out and try to accost her again, and she started up the engine and drove away quickly.

  She could not wait to get to Ashgrove.

  10

  Mona Delahaye telephoned him at the hospital. The girl on the switchboard got the name wrong, and said there was a Mrs. Delaney wishing to speak to him. He knew no Mrs. Delaney, but asked for her to be put through anyway. When he heard Mona’s voice he felt a sudden tightness under his shirt collar that surprised him. As she spoke he pictured her thin wide crimson mouth, curved in a smile of malicious enjoyment—he had told her of the mix-up in the names, and she had laughed delightedly—and he could almost feel her hot breath coming to him all the way down the line. He asked what he could do for her and she suggested he might come to the house, as there were things she wanted to speak to him about. “No one will tell me anything,” she said, with a pout in her voice. He did not know what she meant by this. What were the things she was not being told, he wondered, and who were the people who were not telling them to her?

  He put his head in at the door of the dissecting room. Sinclair was there, getting ready to operate on the corpse of a tinker girl who had drowned herself in the sea off Connemara. “Have to go out,” Quirke said. “You’ll hold the fort?” Sinclair looked at him. Sinclair was used to holding the fort. “Mrs. Victor Delahaye wants to see me,” Quirke added, thinking an explanation was required. Sinclair had the gift of making him feel guilty.

  Sinclair considered the scalpel in his hand. “Maybe she’s going to confess to killing Jack Clancy,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m sure,” Quirke said. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  On Northumberland Road the recently rained-on pavements were steaming in the sun, and the humid perfume of sodden flowers and wet loam hung heavy on the air. The maid with the rusty curls opened the door to him. With her grin and her green eyes she reminded him of a young woman he had encountered years before, in a convent. Maisie, she was called. He wondered what had become of her. Nothing good, he suspected. He had not even known her surname.

  He was shown into the drawing room, where he stood in front of the sofa with his hands in his pockets, looking idly at the Mainie Jellett abstract and rocking back and forth on his heels. The window and the sunlit garden beyond were reflected in the glass, so that he had to move his head this way and that to see the picture properly. He did not think much of it but supposed he must be missing something. Around him the house was drowsily silent. It still did not feel like a house in mourning.

  Mona Delahaye entered. She shut the door and stood leaning against it with her hands behind her back, her head lowered, smiling up at him. Today she wore black slacks and a green silk blouse and gold-painted sandals. Her toenail polish matched her scarlet lipstick. “Thanks for coming,” she said. “Like a drink?” She went to the big rosewood sideboard, where bottles were set out in ranks on a silver charger. “Gin?” she said. “Or are you a whiskey man?”

  “Jameson, if you have it.”

  “Oh, we have everything.” She glanced over her shoulder, doing her cat smile. “I’ll join you.”

  She came to him bearing two glasses and handed one to him.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Chin chin.” She drank, and grimaced. “God,” she said hoarsely, “I don’t know how you drink this stuff—liquid fire.”

  She stood very close to him, half a head shorter, her civet scent stinging his nostrils. The top three buttons of her blouse were open, and he looked down between her small pale breasts and saw the sprinkling of freckles there. “There was something you wanted to speak to me about?” he said.

  “Did I?”

  “That’s what you said on the phone.”

  “Oh, yes.” She was gazing vaguely at his tie. “It’s just that no one tells me anything.” She lifted her eyes to his. “Your friend the detective—what’s his name?”

  “Hackett. Inspector Hackett.”

  “That’s it. He has a way of talking without saying anything. Have you noticed?”

  “Yes,” Quirke said, “I’ve noticed that. What would you like him to say?”

  She was looking into her glass now. “I think I’ve had enough of this, thank you,” she said. She returned to the sideboard and put down the undrunk whiskey and took another glass and poured into it an inch of gin and a generous splash of tonic. She lifted the lid of a silver bucket and swore under her breath. “No ice, again,” she said.

  There were certain women, Quirke was thinking, who seemed doubly present in a room. It was as if there was the woman herself and along with her a more vivid version of her, an invisible other self that emanated from her and surrounded her like an aura. It came to him that he very much wanted to see Mona Delahaye without her clothes on. His grip tightened on the whiskey glass. Her husband was hardly cold in his grave.

  “The thing is,” she said, turning with her glass and moving towards the white sofa, “people think I’m stupid.” She glanced back at him. “You, for instance—you think I’m completely brainless, don’t you.” He could see no way of replying to this. She sat down on the sofa with a not unhappy little sigh. “That’s why you’d like to go to bed with me.” She smiled and drank at the same time, looking up at him merrily. “Come,” she said softly, patting the place beside her, “come and sit down.” He hesitated. It was the playful lightness of her tone that made the moment seem all the more dangerous. “Oh, come on,” she said, “I won’t bite you.”

  He went to the sideboard and poured another whiskey, trying not to let the neck of the bottle rattle against the glass. He could feel her watching him, smiling. He went and perched on the arm of the sofa, at the opposite end from where she sat, as he had done the first time he was here, with Hackett. “What is it you want to know?” he asked. “The reason why your husband killed himself?”

  “Oh, no,” she said, “I know that, more or less.” She crossed her legs and draped one arm along the back of the sofa. She lifted her glass to her lips, but did not drink, and wrinkled her nose instead. “Gin without ice is sort of disgusting, isn’t it.” Quirke thought of another woman, sitting on another sofa, with a glass of warm gin in her hand. Mona Delahaye was watching him, reading his mind. “Are you married, Dr. Quirke?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “You have a sort of married look about you.”

  “I was married, a long time ago. My wife died.”

  Mona nodded. “That’s sad,” she said, with calm indifference. She went on scanning his face, her thin mouth lifted at the corners. “So you’re a gay bachelor, then.”

  “More or less.” He swirled the whiskey in his glass. “Why did your husband kill himself?”

  She took her arm from the back of the sofa and leaned forward. “Oh, I didn’t mean that I know,” she said dismissively. “I sort of do.” She paused, looking at the narrow gold band on the third finger of her left hand. “He was terribly—well, terribly jealous, in a ridiculous sort of way. He used to worry that I had a lover”—she smiled—“or lovers, even.”

  “And did you?”

  She ignored the question. “He was forever going on about it,” she said, “until I got bored, and then of course I’d start to tease him. Awful of me, I know, but I couldn’t resist it.” She looked at him again, frowning. “Did you know my husband?”

  “I met him at a reception once, I can’t remember where.”

  “Was I there?”

  “I believe you were.”

  “That’s odd. Surely I would have remembered meeting you.” She smiled slyly, then frowned again, and let her eyes slide away from hi
s until she was gazing at nothing. “He had no sense of humor, that was the trouble—none at all. And that really is very boring, you know, if you’re married to the person.” She finished her drink and rolled the empty glass between her palms. The shadow of a cloud darkened the window for a second and then the brightness flooded back. “Honestly,” Mona said, glancing towards the window, “you’d think it was April, wouldn’t you.” She looked at him again. “He left a note, did I mention that?”

  “No,” Quirke said, “you didn’t mention that.”

  “Well, he did. But look”—she shook her head at him with pretended displeasure—“I wish you wouldn’t sit there like that, all tensed up like a corkscrew. Sit here, beside me—come on.”

  “Mrs. Delahaye,” Quirke said, “I’m really not sure why you asked me here today.”

  “No,” she said brightly, “neither am I. But it would be nice if you came and sat down.” She smiled. “We could discuss the matter,” she said, in a husky tone of mock solemnity. “You like discussing things, don’t you?”

  He got to his feet and stood irresolute. His glass was empty again. He felt dizzy. What was he to do? The woman on the sofa sat at her ease, looking up at him, with what might have been a warmly sympathetic smile, as if she understood his dilemma. She held up her glass. “Get us both another drink,” she said. “I’d like one, and I think you need one.”

  He took his time at the sideboard, pouring the drinks. When he carried them to the sofa Mona tasted hers and shook her head. “No,” she said, “I can’t drink another one without ice. Would you be a dear—? The kitchen is at the end of the hall.” She indicated with her thumb. “Sarah will be there, she’ll show you.”

  He took the ice bucket and walked with it down the hall, into the dim recesses of the house. Sarah the maid was not to be found; he had once been in love with a woman named Sarah, who was dead, now. The kitchen was large and impersonal, and smelled faintly of gas. The squat refrigerator stood in a corner murmuring to itself, like a white-clad figure kneeling in rapt prayer. He extracted the crackling ice tray from its compartment and took it to the sink and struggled with it, the pads of his fingers sticking to the plump cubes sunk in their metal chambers. At last he thought of turning the tray over and running the tap on it, and then of course the cubes all fell out at once with a clatter and he had to chase them round the bottom of the sink with fingers that by now were turning numb.