Benjamin Black - Elegy For April

Latimer set his small, neat hands flat before him on the desk and took a long breath. “My sister, since she became an adult, and indeed for long before that, has caused nothing but distress to our family, and to her mother in particular. Whether she’s in difficult y , as you put it, or just off somewhere on one of her periodic romps I frankly don’t care. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a patient waiting.” He stood up, making two tripods of his fingers and pressing them to the desk and leaning forward heavily on them. “I’m sorry, Miss Griffin, that you’re worried, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. As I’ve said, my sister and her doings stopped being of any consequence to me a long time ago.”

Quirke rose, turning his hat slowly in his hands. “If you do hear from her,” he said, “will you call us, either Phoebe or me?”

Latimer looked at him again with that disdainful almost-smile. “I won’t be the one to hear from her,” he said purringly. “You can be certain of that, Dr. Quirke.”

On the step outside, Phoebe violently pulled one glove and then the other. “Well,” she said through her teeth to Quirke, “you were a great help. I don’t think you even looked at him.”

“If I had,” Quirke said mildly, “I think I’d have picked up the little squirt and thrown him out of the window. What did you expect me to do?”

They walked along the square under the silent, dripping trees. There was some morning traffic in the street now, and muffled office workers hurried past them. The dawn seemed to have staled before it had fully broken, and the gray light of day seemed more a dimness.

“Is he a good doctor?” Phoebe asked.

“I believe so. Good doctoring doesn’t depend on personality, as you’ve probably noticed.”

“I suppose he’s fashionable.”

“Oh, he’s that, all right. I wouldn’t care to have him pawing me, but I’m not a woman.”

They stopped on the corner. “Malachy is going to give me a driving lesson today,” Quirke said. “In the Phoenix Park.”

Phoebe was not listening. “What am I going to do?” she said.

“About April? Look, I’m sure Latimer is right; I’m sure she’s off on an adventure somewhere.”

She stopped, and after walking on a pace he stopped too. “No, Quirke,” she said, “something has happened to her, I know it has.”

He sighed. “ How do you know?”

She cast about, shaking her head. “When we went in there first, into that room of his, I felt such a fool. The way he looked at me, I could see he thought I was just another hysterical female, like the ones I suppose he sees every day. But as he talked I became more and more- I don’t know- frightened.”

“Of him?” Quirke sounded incredulous. “Frightened of Oscar Latimer?”

“No, not of him. Just- I don’t know. I just had this feeling, I’ve had it all week, but in that room it became- it became real .” She looked down at her gloved hands. “Something has happened, Quirke.”

He put his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and looked at the toe caps of his shoes. “And you think Latimer knows what it is that’s happened?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s nothing to do with him, I’m sure it’s not. It wasn’t anything he said or did. Just this certainty got stronger and stronger inside me. I think-” She stopped. A coal cart went past, drawn by an old brown nag, the black-faced coalman with his whip perched atop the piled, full sacks. “I think she’s dead, Quirke.”

THE LOUNGE OF THE HIBERNIAN HOTEL WAS ALMOST FULL AT MID-morning, but Quirke found a table in a corner, beside a palm in a tall, Ali Baba urn standing on the floor. He was ten minutes early and was glad he had brought a newspaper to hide behind. After only six weeks in the cotton-wool atmosphere of St. John’s he had become accustomed to the regulated life there, and now he wondered if he would ever readjust to the real world. Two pinstriped businessmen at a table next to his were drinking whiskey, and the sharp, smoky smell of the liquor came to him in repeated wafts, suggestive and blandishing. He had not thought of himself as an alcoholic, just a heavy drinker, but after the latest, six-month binge he was not so sure. Dr. Whitty at St. John’s would offer no judgment-”I don’t deal in labels”- and probably it did not matter what his condition was called, if it was a condition. Only he was afraid. He was already past the middle of his life; up to now there had seemed nothing that he could not influence or alter, with more or less effort; to be an alcoholic, however, was an incurable state, whether he were to drink or not. That is a sobering thought, he told himself, and grinned behind his paper and bared his teeth.

When he saw Inspector Hackett come into the lounge he knew he had chosen the wrong meeting place. The detective had stopped just inside the glass doors and was scanning the room with an air of faint desperation, nervously clutching his old slouch hat to his chest. He was wearing a remarkable overcoat, more a longish jacket, really, black and shiny, with toggles and epaulets and lapels six inches wide with sharp tips. Quirke half rose and waved the newspaper, and Hackett saw him with evident relief and made his way across the room, weaving between the tables. They did not shake hands.

“Dr. Quirke- good day to you.”

“How are you, Inspector?”

“Never better.”

“I wish I could say the same.”

They sat. Hackett put his hat on the floor under his chair; he had not taken off his coat, which at close quarters was even more extraordinary; it was made of a synthetic, leather-like material and squeaked and creaked with every move he made. Quirke signaled to a waitress and ordered tea for them both. The detective had begun to relax, and sat with his knees splayed and his hands clamped on his thighs, regarding Quirke in that familiar, genially piercing way of his. These two had known each other for a long time.

“Were you away, Doctor?”

Quirke smiled and shrugged. “Sort of.”

“Have you not been well?”

“I was in St. John of the Cross, since Christmas.”

“Ah. That’s a hard place, I hear.”

“Not really. Or at least it’s not the place that’s hard.”

“And you’re out, now.”

“I’m out.”

The waitress brought their tea. Hackett looked on dubiously as she set out the silver pots, the bone-china cups, the plates of bread-and-butter, and an ornamental stand of little cakes. “By the Lord Harry,” he said, “here’s a feast.” He stood up and struggled out of his coat; when the waitress made to take it from him he instinctively resisted, clutching it to him, but then bethought himself and surrendered it, his forehead reddening. “Herself at home makes me wear it,” he said, sitting down again, not looking at Quirke. “The son sent it to me for a Christmas present. He’s in New York now, making his fortune among the Yanks.” He picked up the silver tea strainer and held it gingerly between a finger and thumb, inspecting it. “In the name of God,” he murmured, “what is this yoke?”

In all the time that Quirke had known Inspector Hackett he had not ever been able to decide if what he presented to the world were truly himself or an elaborately contrived mask. If it was, then it was fashioned with cunning and subtlety- look at those boots, those farm laborer’s hands, that shiny blue suit of immemorial provenance; look at those eyes, merry and watchful, that thin-lipped mouth like a steel trap; look at those eyebrows. Now he lifted his teacup with a little finger cocked, took a dainty slurp, and set it down again in its saucer. There was a shallow pink dent across his forehead where his hatband had pressed into the skin. “It’s grand to see you, Dr. Quirke,” he said. “How long has it been now?”