Benjamin Black - The Silver Swan

Now she laid her knife and fork side by side across her plate-she had hardly touched her steak-and brought out a slim gold cigarette case and a cylindrical gold lighter, not much fatter than a pencil, that Quirke had not seen before. He felt a pang. She must have bought these things herself, for who else would have done so? He pictured her in the shop, poring over the glass cases, the shop assistant watching her with spiteful sympathy, a girl buying presents for herself. He looked at her wrists, at her sharp cheekbones, at the hollow of her throat: everything about her seemed deliberately thinned out, as if she were bent on refining herself steadily until at last there should be nothing of her left but a hair's-breadth outline sketched from a few black and silver lines.

"I had a funny experience today," she said. "Well, not funny, not funny at all, in fact, but strange. I can't stop thinking about it." She frowned while she selected a cigarette; Passing Cloud, he noticed, was still her brand. He went on studying her sidelong, covertly. The more he saw of her the more he saw her old, sitting in some shabby hotel dining room like this one, in her black dress, poised, wearied, desiccated, incurably solitary. She lit the cigarette and blew a thin stream of smoke and leaned on her elbows on the table, turning the lighter end over end in her fingers. "I called up someone in a place around the corner from the shop who had ordered something for me from America-Kiehl's rose water, you can't get it here. She wasn't there and so I telephoned her home number-she had given me her number and said to call her anytime I needed something. I'd been waiting for the thing and was surprised it hadn't come and I wondered what had happened to it. Her husband answered-at least, I assume it was her husband. He sounded very odd. He said she wasn't available. That's the way he said it: 'She's not available.' Then he hung up. I thought maybe he was drunk or something. By now I was intrigued, so I called her business partner, the man who runs the place with her. He wasn't at home either, but I got his wife. I said how I had been trying to get in touch with this person, and had spoken to her husband or whoever it was, and how he had said in that peculiar way about her being not available . At that the woman gave a laugh-not a happy laugh, more a sort of angry snigger-and said, 'Well, it must be the first time in a long time that that bitch isn't available'-and by the way she said 'available' I knew what she meant. It gave me a start, I can tell you. 'Sorry,' I said, 'I've obviously called at a bad time,' and tried to hang up. But she must have been waiting for someone to come on the telephone so she could have a rant about 'that rat,' which is how she described her husband. She proceeded to tell me the most amazing things. I think she was a bit hysterical-well, more than a bit, in fact. She said she had found a hoard of dirty pictures-I don't know what that meant, exactly-and letters from this woman to her husband, which apparently were pretty filthy too. It was obvious, she said, they'd been having an affair under her nose, the rat and this woman. She went on about it for ages. Some of the time I think she was crying, but as much in rage as anything else. Yes, definitely hysterical. But who wouldn't be, I suppose, after making that kind of a discovery?"

While she spoke Quirke had felt something stretching in him and gathering force, like a bowstring being drawn back slowly, quivering and humming. Phoebe was still turning the lighter in her fingers. "This woman," he asked, "what's her name?"

She looked at him. "Which one?"

"The one who wasn't available."

He knew what she would say before she said it.

"Deirdre somebody, but her professional name is Laura Swan-why?"

THEY LEFT THE HOTEL AND CROSSED THE ROAD TO THE GREEN AND strolled along by the railings in the direction of Grafton Street. Dusk was thickening in the air but the sky above them was still light, a clear dome of whitish blue with one star palely burning low above the rooftops. "What do you do in the evenings," Phoebe asked, "now that you don't go boozing anymore?" He did not answer. But what did he do nowadays with his time? He feared becoming a nightwalker, one of those solitaries who paced the city's streets at evening, keeping close by the walls, or stood in shop doorways or sat in their cars with the engines running, blurred, faceless fellows glimpsed in the flare of a match or by the light from a dashboard, nursing their obscure sorrows. Phoebe said, "You're the one who should be looking for romance."

They went to the Shelbourne, their old haunt, and sat in the lounge and drank coffee. When she was a schoolgirl he used to take her here of an afternoon and give her tea with little sandwiches and chocolate éclairs and scones with jam and cream. It seemed an age ago-it was an age ago. Tonight the place was empty save for a trio of blue-suited politicians from the nearby government buildings who were conspiring together in a corner beside the empty fireplace. The light at nightfall in this large room was always strange, more a grainy shadowiness than a radiance, drifting down from two enormous, eerily motionless chandeliers. Quirke for his part was wondering what Phoebe did with her evenings. She lived alone in a three-room flat in Harcourt Street. She had no boyfriend, of that he was sure, but did she have friends, people she saw? Did people invite her out, call round to visit her? She would tell him nothing of her life.

She was smoking again, sitting upright on a little gilt chair with one knee crossed on the other. There was lace at the cuffs of her dress as well as at the throat. It gave her a faintly antique aspect: she might have been a governess, he idly thought, in the olden days, or a rich lady's paid companion. She asked: "Why are you so interested in Laura Swan?"

He lifted an eyebrow. "Am I?"

"I saw how you looked when I mentioned her name. Do you know her?"

"No. No, I don't. I knew her husband, a little, a long time ago."

"What's he like? He sounded a bit mad on the phone."

Quirke hesitated. "He's had a loss," he said. He let another momentary silence pass. "The fact is, his wife is dead."

She stared at him, the cigarette lifted halfway to her mouth. "Who?"

"His wife. Deirdre-Deirdre Hunt. The one calling herself Laura Swan."

Something flickered in her eyes, a childlike uncertainty, and a flash almost of fear. For some time she did not speak; then she asked: "How? I mean, what happened?"

"They found her body one morning last week, on Dalkey Island, washed up on the rocks. I'm sorry-did you know her well? Was she a friend of yours?" She sat frowning now, staring before her blankly. "I'm sorry," he said again, and she gave herself a rapid shake, or it might have been a shiver.

"I knew her," she said, "but I wouldn't say I knew her well. She stopped to chat sometimes when she was passing by, and I bought cosmetics at the place she has in Anne Street. The Silver Swan, she calls it." She paused. "Drowned. The poor thing." A thought struck her and she looked at him quickly. "Was it suicide?"

"That will be the coroner's verdict," Quirke said carefully. She caught his measured tone. She said: "But you think otherwise?" He did not answer, only lifted one shoulder and let it fall again. She persisted. "Did you deal with the body-did you do the postmortem?" He nodded. "And what did you find?"

He looked in the direction of the three politicos in the corner, not seeing them. He asked: "What was she like?"

Phoebe considered. "I don't know. She was just… ordinary. Pretty, but ordinary. I mean, there was nothing special about her that I could see. Very serious, hardly ever smiled. But always polite, always helpful. I had the impression there was something going on between her and the fellow she runs the place with."