The Silver Swan Read online

  She was looking forward to seeing Mr. Quirke. She was fond of him and always had been, even when he had taken drink. He was off the booze now, so he said. It was a pity, for when he was half cut he used to tease her and make her laugh. No laughing in this house, these days.

  She nearly fell over the dog when she was carrying up the tray of sandwiches. She got a kick in at the beast, and it scuttled off, whimpering. She had a plan to get hold of a tin of rat poison from the chemist's on Rathgar Road one of these days and put that animal out of its misery. Nobody wanted it here, not even Mr. Griffin, who was supposed to be its master. Young Phoebe it was that had got it for him, to keep him company when he came home from America after Missus had died. Company! The thing was more of an annoyance than anything else. This family had a fondness for taking in strays. First, years ago, there was that one Dolly Moran that later on got killed, and then the other one, Christine somebody, the brazen hussy, that had died too. And Mr. Quirke himself had been an orphan that old Judge Griffin had rescued from the poorhouse somewhere and brought to live here as if he was one of his own. Maggie, shuffling along the dim hallway with the tray in front of her, chuckled. Aye, she thought-as if he was one of his own.

  IN THE DRAWING ROOM QUIRKE TOOK THE TRAY FROM MAGGIE AND thanked her and asked her how she was. The french windows were open onto the garden, where a brooding lilac light lay on the grass under the drooping trees. Rose Crawford, wine glass in hand, stood in the window with her back turned to the room, looking out. Mal, in a funereal dark-gray suit and dark-blue bow tie, stood with her; they were not speaking; they had never had much to say to each other. Phoebe was sitting in an armchair by the empty fireplace, idly turning over the pages of a leather-bound photograph album. Quirke set the tray down on the big mahogany table, where there were bottles and glasses, and bowls of nuts, and plates of sliced cucumber and celery sticks and quartered carrots. It was the second anniversary of Sarah's death.

  He carried his glass of soda water across the room and sat down on the arm of Phoebe's chair and watched as she turned the pages of the album. "So sad," she murmured, not raising her eyes. "How quickly it all goes." He said nothing. She had stopped at a page of photographs of Sarah on her wedding day, stiff, formal pictures taken by a professional. In one she stood in her long white dress and bridal veil beside a miniature Doric pillar, holding a clustered posy of roses in her hands and peering into the camera lens with a faintly pained smile. Despite the obvious fakery of the setting the photographer had achieved a real suggestion of antiquity. Phoebe was right, Quirke thought; it had all gone so quickly. He remembered the day that photograph was taken-which was a wonder, considering how deeply he had drowned his sorrow that day at having thrown away his chance with her.

  Rose Crawford turned from the window and walked to the table and refilled her glass. She wore a tight-fitting frock of night-blue silk that shimmered in angled shapes like metal when she moved. Her shining black hair-she must be dyeing it by now, Quirke thought-was cut short and swept back from her face in two smooth wings, which emphasized the classic sharpness of her profile and gave her a fierce, hawklike look. He left his place on the chair arm and went to her. She had bitten the corner from a crustless triangular sandwich, and as he approached she stopped chewing and put down her wine glass and with her fingers extracted from her mouth a long, gray hair.

  "Oh, my," she wailed faintly, "it's the maid's, I recognize it."

  "Maggie?" Quirke said. "She's half blind."

  Rose sighed, and put down the bitten sandwich and took up her glass. "I don't understand you," she said. "The things you accept, as if there was nothing to be done about anything."

  "Do you mean just me, or all of us in general?"

  "You people, in this country. I've been amazed since I've been here."

  "What in particular amazes you?"

  She shook her head slowly from side to side. "The quietness of everything," she said. "The way you go about in a cowed silence, not protesting, not complaining, not demanding that things should change or be fixed or made new." She looked at him. "Josh wasn't like that."

  "Your husband," he said, "was a remarkable man."

  She laughed; it was no more than a sniff. "You didn't admire him."

  "I didn't say he was admirable."

  At that, for no obvious reason, they both turned and looked across at Mal, as if it were he and not Josh Crawford they had been speaking of. He stood somewhat stooped, seeming in faint pain, with a vague, helpless look, the light from the garden giving him a grayish pallor. Rose turned her attention to Phoebe where she sat in the armchair by the fireplace, with the photograph album. "How is she?" she asked quietly.

  Quirke frowned. "Phoebe? She's all right, I think. Why do you ask?"

  "She's not all right."

  "What do you mean?"

  "She has a secret. And it's not a nice secret."

  "What secret? How do you know? Has she spoken to you?"

  "Not really."

  "Then-"

  "I just know."

  Quirke wanted Rose to tell him how she could "just know" things, about Phoebe or anybody else. He never knew anything until he had dismantled it and examined the parts.

  "You're her father," Rose said. "You should speak to her. She needs someone's help. I can't do it. Maybe no one can. But you should try."

  He looked down. What could he say to Phoebe? Phoebe would not listen to him. "Sarah could have done it," he said.

  "Oh, Sarah!" Rose snapped. "Why you all go on so about Sarah I don't know. She was a nice woman, harmless, did her best to be pleasant. What else was there to her? And don't look at me like that, Quirke, as if I'd kicked your cat. You know me, I say what I mean. I so hate your Irish mealymouthedness, the way you treat your women. You either makes saints of them and put them on a pedestal or they're witches out to torment and destroy you. And you of all people shouldn't do it. I'm sure your wife-what was her name, Delia?-wasn't the Jezebel you pretend she was, either."

  "Why me," he asked, "'of all people'?" She considered him in silence for a moment.

  "I told you before, a long time ago," she said. "You and I are the same-cold hearts, hot souls. There aren't many like us."

  "Maybe that's just as well," Quirke said. Rose only put back her head and smiled at him with narrowed eyes.

  Mal joined them. He tapped a fingertip to the bridge of his spectacles. "Did you get something to eat?" he asked of them both. He looked doubtfully at the tray of wilting sandwiches. "I'm not sure what Maggie has prepared. She gets more eccentric every day." He gave a faint, hapless smile. "But then, what can I expect?"

  Rose shot Quirke a look, as if to say, You see what I mean? "You should sell this house," she said briskly.

  Mal looked at her in slow astonishment. "Where would I live?"

  "Build something else. Buy an apartment. You don't owe anyone your life, you know."

  It seemed he might protest, but instead he only turned aside, in an almost furtive way, the lenses of his glasses shining, which somehow made him seem to be weeping.

  The evening crawled on. Maggie came back and cleared the table, muttering to herself. She appeared not to notice that no one had eaten the sandwiches. They drifted into the garden two by two, Mal with Rose, Quirke with Phoebe, like couples progressing towards a dance.

  "Rose says you have a secret," Quirke said quietly to his daughter.

  Phoebe was looking at her shoes. "Does she? What kind of secret?"

  "She doesn't know, only she knows you have one. So she says. When I hear women talking about a secret, I always assume the secret is a man."

  "Well," Phoebe said, with a cold little smile, "you would, of course."

  The soft gray air of twilight was dense and grainy. It would rain later, Quirke thought. Rose had stepped away from Mal and now turned about to face the others, and looked askance at the ground, turning the stem of the wine glass slowly on the flattened palm of her hand. "I suppose," she said, raising her voice, "this is as
good a moment as any to make my announcement." She glanced up, smiling oddly. They waited. She touched a hand to her forehead. "I feel shy, suddenly," she said, "isn't that the darnedest thing? Quirke, don't look so alarmed. It's simply that I've decided to move here."

  There was a startled pause; then Quirke said, "To Dublin?"

  Rose nodded. "Yes. To Dublin." She laughed briefly. "Maybe it's the biggest mistake I've ever made, and the good Lord knows I've made many. But there it is, I've decided. I have"-she looked at Quirke-"no illusions as to what to expect of life in Ireland. But I suppose I feel some kind of-I don't know, some kind of responsibility to Josh. Perhaps it's my duty to bring his millions back to the land of his birth." This time she turned to Mal, almost pleadingly. "Does that seem crazy?"

  "No," Mal said, "no, it doesn't."

  Rose laughed again. "I can tell you, no one is more surprised than I am." She seemed to falter, and cast her eyes down again. "I guess the dead keep a hold on us even after they've passed on."

  And at that, as if at her summoning, Sarah's voice spoke in Quirke's head, saying his name. He turned without a word and walked into the house. In the past long months of sobriety he had never wanted a drink so badly as he did at that moment.

  HE WALKED WITH PHOEBE ALONG THE TOWPATH BY THE CANAL. NIGHT had fallen and the smell of coming rain was unmistakable now; he even fancied he could feel a breath of dampness against his face. Beside them the water shone blackly, like oil. They passed by courting couples huddled in pools of darkness under the trees. A bearded tramp was asleep on a bench, lying on his side in a nest of newspapers with a hand under his cheek. Neither Quirke nor Phoebe had spoken since they had left the house in Rathgar. The shock at Rose's announcement had lingered, and the party, such as it was, had come to an abrupt end. Rose had taken a taxi back to the Shelbourne, and had offered Quirke and Phoebe a lift, but they had preferred to walk. Quirke was still feeling the effect of Sarah's sudden presence, after Rose's words had somehow conjured her for him in that moment in the twilit garden, under the willow tree that she had planted. He said now: "A man was killed today. Murdered."

  For the space of half a dozen paces Phoebe gave no response, then only asked, "Who?"

  "A man called Kreutz. Dr. Kreutz, he called himself."

  "What happened to him?"

  In the light of a streetlamp a bat flickered crazily in a ragged circle about the crown of a tree and was gone.

  "He had a place not far from here, in Adelaide Road. He was a healer of some sort-a quack, I'm sure. And someone beat him to death." He glanced sidelong at her, but she had her head bent and he could not make out her expression in the darkness. "He knew Deirdre Hunt-Laura Swan-and her business partner, Leslie White." He paused. The sound of their footsteps startled a moorhen and it scrambled away from them, making the dry reeds rattle. "And you've been with him, haven't you, Leslie White?"

  She showed no surprise. "Why do you say that?"

  "I saw you together one day, in Duke Street, near where Laura Swan had her beauty salon. It was by chance, I just happened to be there. I guessed you'd been with him, in a pub."

  She made an impatient gesture, flicking a hand sideways in a chopping motion. "Yes, I know, I remember."

  They came to the bridge at Ranelagh and crossed over. Below, the reflection of a streetlight in the water crossed with them.

  "Is he your secret," Quirke asked, "Leslie White?"

  It was again a long time before she answered. "I don't think," she said at last, "that's any of your business." He made to speak but she prevented him. "You have no rights over me, Quirke," she said evenly, in a low, hard, calm voice, looking straight before her along the deserted roadway. "Whatever right you might have had, whatever authority, you forfeited years ago."

  "You're my daughter," he said.

  "Am I? You hid that fact from me for so long, and now you expect me to accept it?" She still spoke in that level, almost detached tone, without rancor, it might be, despite the force of the words. "You're not my father, Quirke. I have no father."

  They turned the corner and walked down Harcourt Street. The darkness seemed more dense here in this canyon between the high terraces of houses on either side.

  "I worry about you," Quirke said.

  Phoebe stopped, and turned to him. "There's no need for that," she said, suddenly fierce. "I forbid you. It's not fair."

  A low-slung sports car, painted green but seeming black in the dim light, was parked on the opposite side of the road. Neither of them noticed it.

  "I'm sorry," Quirke said. "But I think Leslie White is a dangerous man. I think he killed Deirdre Hunt. I think he killed this fellow Kreutz, too."

  Phoebe's eyes glittered in the shadows. She was smiling almost savagely, and he could see the tips of her teeth. "Good," she said. "Maybe he'll kill me, too."

  She turned then and walked swiftly away. He stood on the pavement, watching as she went. She stopped at the house and found her key and climbed the steps and let herself in at the front door and shut it behind her without a backwards glance.

  He lingered awhile, and then went on, in the direction of the Green. At the junction he paused at the traffic lights, and heard behind him the flurried cry and the brief, winglike rushing in the air and then the clang and crunch and he turned and in the streetlights' sulfurous glow saw the man in the white suit impaled through the chest on the spears of the black railings, his arms and legs still weakly moving and his long, silver hair hanging down.

  SHE HAD FELT THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG FROM THE MOMENT SHE shut the front door behind her, and as she climbed the stairs the feeling grew stronger with every step. She supposed she should have been frightened but instead she was strangely calm, and curious as well, curious to know what it was that awaited her. On the second landing she stopped and stood a moment, listening. It was a quiet house at all times. The other tenants were an elderly spinster on the ground floor who kept cats, the smell of which permeated the hall, and on the first floor an elusive couple she suspected of living in sin; an artist had her studio in the second-floor flat but was rarely there, and never at night, and the third-floor flat had been empty for months. Now she could hear nothing, not a sound of any life, strain as she would. A faulty cistern above her gurgled, and from away off somewhere in the streets there came the wail of an ambulance siren. She looked up through the well of the stairs, into the upper dark. There was someone up there, she was sure of it. She went on, avoiding those places where she knew the stairs would creak.

  On the third floor she pressed the switch that lit the yellow-shaded light on the landing above, outside her door. She paused again, and again looked up, but saw no one. Outside her flat, to the right, there was a dark alcove where a small door gave onto the attic stairs. She did not look into the alcove. She could feel the small hairs prickling at the nape of her neck. She was trying to remember the name of a girl she had known at school who had walked out of her parents' house one morning in her school uniform and was never seen or heard of again. There had been stories that she had eloped. Her schoolbag had been found discarded in a front garden in the next street.

  She opened the door to the flat.

  The first thing to strike her was how odd it was that Quirke should somehow have managed to get into the house in front of her and hurry up the stairs to hide in the alcove. It seemed impossible, but there he was, rushing past her in the doorway, just as Leslie White came out to meet her from the living room, with a cigarette dangling between his middle and third fingers, saying something. When he saw Quirke he put up both hands, still holding the cigarette, and retreated the way he had come. Quirke rushed at him, head down, like a rugby player charging into a scrum. Leslie gave a squeak of alarm and the two of them disappeared into the room, Leslie going backwards with Quirke's arms thrown round him and Quirke bent double. She had trouble getting her key out of the lock-she was trying to pull it out at a bias-and she abandoned the struggle and hurried after the two men. She heard Leslie cry out again,
much more piercingly this time. When she came into the room there was only one man there, leaning out of the wide-open window with his hands braced on the window seat.

  "Quirke?" she said, feeling more puzzlement than anything else.

  When the man straightened up and turned to her she saw that it was not Quirke but someone she had never seen before. He was almost as big as Quirke, and had a large, square-shaped head and thinning, rust-red hair. His mouth hung open like the mouth of a tragic mask, though the effect was not tragic but comic, rather, in an odd, grotesque way. She noticed the beads of sweat glistening in his hair like tiny specks of glass. And at that moment, simultaneously, and with fascinating inconsequence, she remembered the surname of the girl in school who had disappeared-it was Little, Olive Little-and realized that the clinking sound she had heard that time behind the phantom telephone caller's silence was the sound of the lid of a cigarette lighter being flipped open and shut.

  The doorbell began to buzz, and went on buzzing for fully ten seconds, and then in shorter but no less insistent bursts. She had an image of someone down on the front step with a finger on the bell button, dancing in impatience and fury, and that, too, was comical, and she almost laughed. The red-haired man advanced on her, holding out his hands before him as if to show her something in them, though his palms were empty. He stopped and stood still in a curiously supplicatory pose. She felt no fear, only continuing surprise and lively puzzlement, and still that tickle of incipient laughter.

  She did not realize what she had been searching for in her handbag until she found it. She ran forward lightly, almost trippingly-fleet was the word that came to her mind-with an elbow raised against him for protection and lifted high her arm and plunged the silver spike into the hollow place where his chest met his left shoulder. The tissue was more resistant than she had expected and she felt the metal go in grindingly and meet something, bone perhaps, or gristle, and stop. The man drew back with a grunt, more surprised it seemed than anything else, goggling. She pulled the weapon free of where she had stabbed him and dropped it on the table. It landed with a metallic, joggling sound, rolled quickly to the edge, and fell to the floor, leaving a bloodstain on the table in a fan shape. The man sat down suddenly, heavily, on a bentwood chair-it gave a loud and seemingly indignant crack-and looked from his wounded shoulder to the girl and back again. She dodged past him, and went and leaned out of the window. The lower sash was lifted all the way up; she had left it that way when she went out. The doorbell was still shrilling. The night air was damply cool against her face. She still felt no fear, though for all she knew the wounded man might be creeping up behind her, bleeding and in a murderous rage and ready to kill her. She did not care. She peered down into the street. Quirke was there, standing on the step, looking up at her. It was he who was ringing the bell. His arm was extended sideways and he was pressing it even now, and this, too, seemed wonderfully comic, him being there pressing on the bell that was ringing behind her. He called up to her, but she could not make out what he was saying. Then she saw the thing on the railings.