Benjamin Black - The Silver Swan

"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.