Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

“Aye,” Hackett said, “I went back through the files on your man, the husband. You gave evidence at the trial.”

“Yes,” Quirke said, “I had forgotten.”

“He got a soft ride from you.”

“And from the judge. It was a bad affair-no one came out of it undamaged.”

The detective laughed shortly. “Especially the poor lummox that died.” He offered a cigarette and Quirke brought out his lighter and they lit up. “What did she want, the missus?”

“I don’t know,” Quirke said. “She asked me to talk to you, tell you it wasn’t her Billy that did in Diamond Dick.”

Hackett said nothing, only looked sideways at Quirke with a lopsided grin.

The Sumner place had the look of a ranch, a big ugly rectangle of flat-roofed one-story buildings ranged around a central courtyard with scrubby sun-browned grass. They entered by a wrought-iron gate that should have been surmounted by emblematic cow’s horns and a crossed pair of six-shooters. At the end of a short dusty drive they passed under a low archway into the courtyard, where a woman in slacks and a sky-blue blouse was waiting for them. Quirke recognized her. Gloria Sumner had not changed very much in the quarter of a century since he had last seen her. She was tall and blond and broad-shouldered, with a strong face that had once been beautiful in a squarish sort of way, and was handsome now. She came forward, extending a hand. “Inspector Hackett, yes?”

Hackett introduced Quirke. The woman’s bland smile of welcome did not alter: did she remember him and had decided not to show it? The time when they had known each other was probably not one she cared to recall-girls of her class and standing did not get pregnant before marriage-and anyway their acquaintance had been of the slightest. “Dr. Quirke,” she said, “you’re very welcome.”

She led the two men through a glass porch into the house-Jenkins had been ordered to wait in the car-and down a low, broad corridor to a kind of lounge, also glassed on one side, and furnished with low-slung armchairs and a big leather-upholstered sofa. There were cactuses in pots and a rug on the floor fashioned from the pelt of a wolf, complete with head and fiercely glaring glass eyes. Gloria Sumner saw Quirke looking at these things and gave him a droll smile. “Yes,” she said, “my husband likes to be reminded of the Canuck wilderness of his youth.” She turned to Hackett. “Tea, Inspector?” Her eye took on a playful light. “You look to me like a man in need of a good strong cuppa.”

She must have pressed a hidden bell, for almost at once there appeared a girl or young woman-it was difficult to guess her age-wearing rough corduroy trousers and a checked shirt. She was short and stocky and had fair, almost colorless hair and a bony sun-roughened face. She was no wraith yet moved with eerie soundlessness, trying to be invisible and looking at no one. “Ah, Marie,” Gloria Sumner said. “Tea, please.” She turned to Quirke. “And you, Dr. Quirke-tea, or something else?”

“Nothing, thank you,” Quirke said. “A glass of water, maybe.”

The girl Marie nodded once mutely and departed, as silently as she had come.

“Sit down, gentlemen,” Gloria Sumner said. The two men took to the armchairs while the woman settled herself, half reclining, on the sofa and regarded them with calm interest. She was wearing Greek sandals, with thongs crossed above her ankles. “My husband is riding,” she said. “He expected to be back by now. I hope he hasn’t fallen off.” Again she smiled drolly in Quirke’s direction. “He does that rather a lot, I’m afraid, though he wouldn’t want you to know it.”

They spoke of the weather, the great heat, the lack of rain. “The horses hate it,” Gloria Sumner said. “The dust is dreadful for them-I hear them coughing in their stables half the night. Do you know about horses, Dr. Quirke?”

By now Quirke had decided that she did remember him, and that for some reason it amused her not to admit it. “No,” he said, “I don’t. Sorry.”

“Oh, don’t apologize. I hate the brutes.” She turned to Hackett. “What about you, Inspector-are you a man of the turf?”

“Not really, ma’am,” Hackett said. He had taken off his hat and was balancing it on one knee; the rim had left a shallow red groove across his forehead under the hairline. His suit was a shade of electric blue in the room’s harsh light. “My uncle kept a couple of plow horses when I was young. And there was an old hinny on his place that we used to ride around on.”

The woman looked blank. “A hinny?”

Hackett smiled benignly on her ignorance. “A cross between, I believe, a stallion and a she-ass, ma’am.”

“Oh.”

Marie sidled in with the tea and the glass of water for Quirke. Still she was careful to meet no one’s eye. She handed the glass to Quirke and when he thanked her she blushed. She was quickly gone, seeming only with an effort to stop herself from breaking into a run as she went.

“I imagine,” Gloria Sumner said, looking from one man to the other, “you’re here to talk about Dick Jewell? What a thing. I couldn’t believe it, when I heard. I can hardly believe it now.”

“Did you know the man?” Hackett inquired. He had transferred his hat to the floor between his feet and held the cup and saucer balanced on his knee.

“Well, yes, of course. Believe it or not, we used to be quite friendly with the Jewells, Carl and I, at one time.”

“And what was it that upset that grand state of affairs, if I might ask?”

She smiled. “Oh, you’ll have to ask my husband that, Inspector.”

Quirke had been hearing, or feeling, rather, a slow set of heavy dull thumps approaching, and now suddenly in the blazing light just outside the glass wall there reared up a gold man on a huge black glistening horse. Gloria Sumner twisted about to look, a hand shading her eyes. “Here he is,” she said, “the chevalier himself. More tea, Inspector?”

Carlton Sumner was a large man with a head shaped somewhat like a shoebox and almost the same size. He had dark curly hair and a square-cut mustache and round, somewhat droopy eyes of a surprisingly soft shade of baby brown. He wore a short-sleeved gold-colored wool shirt and fawn jodhpurs and very tight, highly polished though now dusty riding boots, and spurs, real cowboy spurs, that clinked and jingled as he walked. His forearms were exceedingly hairy. “Christ,” he said as he entered, “this heat!”

His wife made the introductions, and had not finished when Sumner turned to Hackett and said, “You’re here about Dick Jewell-he was murdered, wasn’t he?”

“That’s how it seems, all right,” the detective said. He had risen to his feet and was holding the cup and saucer in his left hand. He smiled his thin-lipped froggy smile. “You don’t seem very surprised at that, Mr. Sumner.”

Sumner laughed, slowly, richly. “Surprised?” he said. “I’m surprised, all right-surprised someone didn’t do it years ago.” His Canadian accent gave his words a harsher edge than it seemed he had intended. He turned to his wife. “Where’s Marie-I need a drink, something long and cool, unlike Marie.”

Gloria Sumner sketched a small sardonic bow. “I’ll go and prepare it myself,” she said, “if Your Lordship can wait a moment or two.”

Sumner shrugged aside the irony and turned his attention to Quirke. “You are-?”

“Quirke,” Quirke said. “I’m a pathologist.”

“A what?” He looked to Hackett. “You work together?” he said, flicking a pointing finger from one of them to the other. “You’re some kind of a team, are you?” He turned again. “What’s your name-Quirke?-you’d be Dr. Watson, right? Backup for the sleuth here.” There was nothing to be said to that. Sumner was shaking his head and laughing to himself. “This country,” he said. His wife returned, bearing a tall glass of pale-pink stuff with ice cubes and a sprig of something green sticking out of it.