Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

“What the hell’s this?” Sumner said, taking the glass from her and holding it up to the light and squinting at it.

“Pimm’s,” his wife said. “Tall and cool, as you ordered.” Sumner took a swig, swallowed, grimaced. “Sissy drink,” he said. “Look, can we all sit down? I’m bushed.”

Quirke could not but admire the performance, the brash carelessness, the casual aggression.

They sat, except for Gloria Sumner. “I’ll leave you men to your talk,” she said. She glanced at Quirke as she turned away, and there was something in her look that he found faintly unsettling. Had he kissed her once, back then, when they were young, kissed her in rain, under trees, in the dawn at the end of some party? Was it she or someone else he was thinking of? He had kissed many girls, in many dawns, back then.

“Well, gents?” Sumner said when she had gone. He was unbuckling his spurs, and now he threw them, jingling and clattering, onto the low table in front of the sofa. “What can I do for you?”

He sprawled back on the sofa with an ankle crossed on a knee and his tall drink lifted. Beads of moisture were squiggling down the side of the glass. His hair and the bristles of his mustache gleamed and glinted as if each strand had been gone over with dark-brown boot polish.

“You had a meeting here with Richard Jewell a week or so before he-before he died,” Hackett said. “Is that right?”

Sumner shut one eye and trained the other on Hackett as if he were aiming along the barrel of a gun. “I suppose you heard about him throwing a fit and walking out.”

“We did,” Hackett said, “we heard that. What was the trouble?”

Sumner lifted a hand and let it fall again. “Business,” he said. “Just business.”

“You were making a takeover bid for his company,” Quirke said.

“Was I?” Sumner drawled, not bothering to look at him. “I was negotiating a merger. Dick was reluctant. Words were spoken. He stormed out. That was it.”

“You didn’t see him again, after that?” Hackett asked.

“No. Or wait, yes, of course, I was forgetting: there was the day I went out to his place and blew his head off with his own shotgun.”

“How did you know,” Hackett inquired in a conversational tone, “that it was his shotgun?”

Sumner clamped a hand to his mouth and stared at the policeman with rounded eyes. “Oh, Lord,” he exclaimed, “now I’ve done it-I’ve let slip a vital clue.” He leaned back again and took a large gulp of his pink drink and smacked his lips. “In this country, everybody knows everything,” he said. “Haven’t you realized that yet, Mr. Holmes?”

The water in Quirke’s glass had gone tepid and slightly cloudy. He was remembering Sumner as a young man, how he’d looked, the things he’d said. He was a bully then, too, the rich man’s son, cocksure and careless of his words. He had money when everyone else was penniless, and liked to flaunt it, drinks all round, flash suits, lunches lasting the afternoon, fast cars and fast girls; and then there was Gloria and the baby. Surprising that they were still together, if they were, in anything other than appearance.

“Look,” Sumner said to Hackett, “I can’t help you with this. I don’t know what the hell happened to Dick. First they said he shot himself, then the rumor mill started and now it seems he was murdered. It was murder, yes?” Hackett said nothing, and Sumner turned to Quirke. “You’d know, even if he doesn’t, right? Given that you’re a pathologist and all.” He waited. “No? Nothing to divulge? Don’t tell me-you’re bound by a solemn oath.”

He chuckled, and drank more of his drink, and plucked out the green sprig and ate it, the stem as well as the leaves, and they heard his teeth chomping. “What does it matter, anyway,” he said. “Dick is dead, the rest is noise.” He stood up and walked to the wall of glass and stood in the sunlight, vigorously scratching his groin. “Francoise would sell to me,” he said, looking out into the courtyard and the burned-up grass. “The brother, though, what’s his name, Rhodesia Ronnie, he won’t deal. But I’ll find a way round him.” He turned and looked at them. “I want those newspapers. I need a voice. I’ll get them.”

A clock chimed in a distant room. With the cactuses and wolf’s fur and the beating light they might have been in some desert place, far away on the other side of the world.

“Mrs. Sumner tells me,” Hackett said, “that you and her used to be great friends with the Jewells. Is that so?”

Sumner drew himself away from the sunstruck glass and sat down on the sofa again. “Jesus,” he murmured, darting his nose towards one armpit and then the other, “I stink.” He looked up. “You fellows going to need me much longer? I’ve got to go have a shower.” Hackett gazed at him impassively, and Sumner heaved a sigh and flung himself back once more against the leather cushions. “Yes, we were friendly,” he said, in a weary voice. “I kept a couple of horses at Brooklands for a while, and we’d go over, Gloria and me, for dinner or whatever. The two wives got into charity work together-Dick was funding that kids’ place, St. What-do-you-call-it. We even went on holiday together one time, down to their place in the south of France.” He snickered. “Not a success. Dickie and I didn’t fit so easily together in a confined space.”

“Was there a fight?” Quirke asked.

“What, you mean with fists, the old one-two? Naw, of course not. Squabbles. Bickering. Francoise is very French, especially when she’s in France. There was”-he laughed incredulously, remembering-“there was a problem over towels. Imagine-towels! We left early, came home to the old homestead and vowed never to go anywhere as houseguests ever again. We realized we were homebodies, to the core-” He stopped. He had been studying Quirke, and now, frowning, he said, “Wait-I know you. Quirke. You were at college when I was there, weren’t you?” Quirke nodded. “Why didn’t you say? I knew I knew you when I came in, but I couldn’t place you. Quirke. Jesus. It must be, what, twenty-five years? More? So you made it through, you got your qualifications. None of us believed you would, you know.”

He laughed, and still Quirke said nothing. “Well,” Sumner said, lifting his glass, “here’s to old times, Doctor Quirke.” He turned to Hackett. “Look here, why don’t you fellows stay for lunch? You can regale us with tales of the sleuthing life, tell us about the master criminals you’ve tracked down, all that. What do you say?”

Marie the maid returned to collect the tea things. Sumner said, “Marie here knew Diamond Dick-didn’t you, Marie?” She gave him a startled look. “Mr. Jewell,” he said to her. “Your benefactor.” He liked the sound of this, and laughed and said it again. “Your beloved benefactor. Ha!”

She took up the tray with the teapot and Hackett’s empty cup on it. “Will you want anything else?” she asked of Sumner, and when he shook his head she scurried off.

“What was it that Jewell did for her?” Quirke asked.

“For Marie the mouse? Sprang her from that orphanage he funded-what’s it called?-St. Christopher’s. She was some sort of slavey there.”

“Did she work for him-for him and his wife?”

“For a while. Then something happened and Francoise dumped her on us. She’s all right-not too smart, but all right.”

“What was it that happened, Mr. Sumner?” Hackett asked. “Do you know?”

“Naw. Some kerfuffle. No one stays long with Francoise. You’ve met that guy who runs the place, him and his wife, the other mouse? Talk about long-suffering. What’s their name?”

“Maguire,” Quirke said.

“That’s it. Hey”-he lifted a finger-“I just remembered. Maguire killed a guy, years ago, broke his neck or something in a bar fight. Did you know that, Doc?”