Benjamin Black - The Silver Swan

Kreutz came crowding forward and tried to thrust his hand above Leslie's under the gushing water, making a high-pitched, nasal, whining noise.

"Oh, stop the racket, will you?" Leslie snapped. "You'll have the rozzers in on us. Aren't you supposed to be some sort of Buddhist who can put up with pain?"

"You have destroyed my hand!" the Doctor cried. "My hands are my living!"

"Serves you right-teach you to keep them to yourself." Leslie was examining his own hand; it was mottled with angry red patches but not blistering. By now he really was very cross indeed. He grabbed Kreutz by the shoulder and spun him around to face him and got him by the throat with his good hand and pressed him backwards until his back was arched against the draining board. He was all skin and bone, like a long, brown bird. "Listen, you nigger or kraut or whatever it is you're supposed to be-did you think you could blackmail me? Did you?"

Kreutz, in his pain and fright, was making gargling sounds, his eyeballs popping whitely in a swollen face growing ever darker with congested blood. Leslie released him and stepped back, wiping the palm of his hand on the side of his jacket and grimacing in disgust.

"I want the negative of that picture," he said, "and any prints you've made. If I see it anywhere, in anybody's hands but mine, I'll come back here and break your fucking neck for you, you black bastard. Understand?" The Doctor had his hand under the tap again. Leslie moved forward quickly and stamped hard with the heel of one of his tasseled shoes on the instep of the fellow's bare left foot. " Do you understand? " Kreutz did his stifled scream again, and despite his annoyance Leslie had to laugh, so comical did the old boy look, hopping on one leg and flapping his blistered hand in the air, more than ever like a stringy old bird with a damaged wing.

"Come on," Leslie said, "get those pictures."

THERE WERE HALF A DOZEN PRINTS, AND THE NEGATIVE. HE HANDED the lot to Deirdre when she came to Percy Place that evening, and she burned them in the mean little fireplace, filling the room with a scorched, chemical stink. He did not tell her what he had done with the first print, the one Kreutz had sent him, or that he had kept another one for himself, for old times' sake , he thought, and then caught himself up, startled-old times? But when he considered the matter he realized it was true: their time together was up, his and Deirdre's. It had been fun, and she was a good girl in many ways, but it was over. He lolled on the bed with a cigarette and contemplated her where she squatted in front of the grate, poking with the blade of a table knife at the still smoldering remains of the photographs. He admired absently the taut, full curve of her behind, the pert, freckled nose, the plump bosom. She was saying something to him but he was not hearing her; it was as if she was too far away, as if she was out of earshot. Suddenly he hardly knew her-she might have been a stranger, a servant tending the room, or a waif who had wandered in from the street; she might have been anyone. Strange, the way things had of resolving themselves while a body was blissfully unaware of what was going on. He had used her up without knowing it, and now it was done. There would be the usual fuss, tears and pleas, screams, recriminations, but all that would not last long. He was an old hand at ending things.

MAISIE HADDON TELEPHONED QUIRKE AND SAID SHE WANTED TO SEE him. She suggested they go to the Gresham Hotel, for a change. He tried to get her to say what it was she had to tell him but she would not. "Just meet me there," she said, in her truculent way. "In the bar." It was midafternoon when he got to the hotel and when he came in out of the sunlight he was half blinded at first, but there was no missing Maisie Haddon. Today she wore a white suit with padded shoulders and broad lapels, large white high-heeled shoes, a crimson blouse, and a scarf of gauzy, lime-green silk. She had a hat, too, a boat-shaped concoction of green felt sailing at a jaunty angle above the waves of her bright-yellow perm. She was sitting on a stool at the bar with her legs crossed. Today, in deference to the venue, she was drinking a brandy and port. "For the innards," she said. "They're very delicate, the innards." He complimented her on her hat and she gave an angry laugh. "It should be nice," she said. "It cost a bloody fortune. How she gets away with it, that old hake Cuffe-Wilkes, as she calls herself, I don't know. Maison des Chapeaux, how are you. Maison de Clappo, more like." Despite the accustomed raucous tone she seemed subdued; Quirke suspected she was intimidated by the hotel's grand appurtenances, the chandeliers and high, gleaming mirrors, the polished marble floors, the soft-footed waiters in morning coats and the waitresses in white bibs and black stockings and little silk mobcaps.

"Mickey Rooney stayed here, you know," Maisie said, looking about herself appraisingly. "And Grace Kelly."

Quirke lifted an eyebrow. "Together?"

She gave him a shove with her elbow.

"No, you clown," she said, laughing. "But I saw the Aga Khan and Rita Hayworth here one time, when they were married."

"Aly," Quirke said. She glowered at him. "It was Aly Khan that was married to Rita Hayworth," he said, "not Aga."

She bridled. "Aly, Aga, what does it matter? If you know so much, Mr. Smarty-Pants, tell me this-what other film star was Rita Hayworth a cousin of?"

"I've no idea."

She grinned triumphantly, showing most of her large, slightly yellowed teeth. "Ginger Rogers!"

"Maisie, you're a walking encyclopedia."

At that she scowled. Maisie was touchy, and never more so than when she thought she was being mocked. He ordered another drink for her, and for himself a glass of plain water.

"Are you still off the gargle?" she demanded. "Would you not have something, to keep a girl company?"

He shook his head. "If I have one I'll have another, and then another, and another after that, and then where will I be?"

"Christ, Quirke, you're no fun anymore, do you know that?"

When, Quirke wondered idly, had he and Maisie had fun together?

"That one you were asking me about," Maisie said. "The one that topped herself."

"Yes?"

He had paused before responding. Maisie liked everyone to keep a leisurely pace. She was gazing into the ruby depths of her second and already half-drunk drink.

"I inquired around," she said. "No one knew anything, or not anything that would be likely to interest you, anyway. Then I spoke by chance to a former client of mine, that lives out in Clontarf. A former nun, she is, living with a former priest-would you believe it? Came over from England, the two of them, on the run from the bishops, I suppose, or the peelers, I don't know which. She bought a ring, or got one out of a Halloween cake, and they set up house together, as respectable as you like."

"How did you come to know her?"

She gave him a look. "How do you think? A ring is one thing, but a bouncing babby is another. Anyway, here's the thing, here's the coincidence. When I asked her about this one, Deirdre Hunt, had she known her or heard of her, she gave a laugh and said, 'Deirdre Hunt, is it? Sure, doesn't she live across the road from me.' "

"In Clontarf," Quirke said.

"St. Martin's something-Avenue, Gardens, Drive, I can't remember. Isn't that a queer thing, though, me ringing her up and asking her about someone who turns out to be her neighbor opposite?"

Quirke waited again, and took a lingering sip of water. "Did she know her?" he asked. "I mean, to talk to."

"They kept themselves to themselves."

"Which, the nun and her priest or the Hunts?"

She turned and studied him for a long moment, shaking her head slowly from side to side. "I sometimes wonder, Quirke, if you're as slow as you seem, or are you only pretending?"