Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

“This is what I don’t remember from when I was here,” Quirke said, “the sea. And yet it must have been a constant presence.”

He felt Father Ambrose beside him scrutinizing him again. “I hope you’ll forgive me saying it, Dr. Quirke,” the priest said, “but you seem to me a troubled spirit.”

Quirke was surprised not to be surprised. He said nothing for a moment, then nodded. “Do you know any spirits that aren’t troubled, Father?”

“Oh, yes, many.”

“You move in different circles to the ones I move in.”

The priest chuckled. “I’m certain that’s true. But you’re a medical man-you must know nurses, nuns, fellow doctors whose souls are at peace.”

“I’m a pathologist.”

“Even so. There is great peace to be found, after all, among the dead, whose souls have gone to their eternal reward.”

“If there is, I haven’t found it.” He watched a gannet dive like a white dart and pierce the water’s surface and disappear with hardly a splash to mark the spot. “Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place, or from the wrong angle.”

Far out, a pallid sun broke through the clouds and set two burly pillars of light standing astride the sea.

“Maybe you are, indeed,” the priest said. They turned back towards the house. “This young woman, this Marie Bergin-is she in trouble?”

“No, not that I know of.”

The green turf underfoot was as taut and resilient as the skin of a trampoline. The sea mists must water it, Quirke thought.

“May I ask why you’re inquiring after her?”

They were on the graveled pathway. Quirke stopped, and the priest stopped, and they stood facing each other. “It seems, Father, that Richard Jewell didn’t kill himself, but was killed.”

“Killed?”

“Murdered.”

The priest put a shriveled hand quickly to his mouth. “Oh, dear heaven. And you think Marie Bergin is in some way involved?”

“Not directly, no. What I’m trying to understand, Father, is why Dick Jewell was killed.”

“But surely some poor maid that once worked for him…?”

“She didn’t kill him, of course she didn’t. But she might be part of the reason why someone else did.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Quirke, I don’t understand.”

“No, neither do I.”

Presently he was walking down the dusty drive. The iodine smell of the sea was stronger now, or perhaps he had not taken note of it when he was walking up, earlier. At the gate he thought of asking the old man with the key if he had known Marie Bergin, but from the guarded look in the fellow’s rheumy eye he did not think he would get much out of him even if he had known who she was. The hackney driver, whom Quirke had asked to wait, was asleep behind the wheel, his head lolling to one side and his mouth partway open and trailing a dribble of dried spit. The air inside the car was heavy with the man’s stale reek. They set off along the coast. That far rent in the clouds had been mended and the sky was once again a seamless gray-blue upside-down plain stretching all the way to the horizon.

Why had Carlton Sumner not said he was one of the Friends of St Christopher’s? And who, apart from him and Dick Jewell, might the other Friends be?

Rose Crawford, or Rose Griffin, as she was now, took Phoebe to lunch in a little wine bar off Dawson Street that Rose had discovered and treated as a secret to be jealously guarded. Phoebe, although she would not say so, did not think much of the place. It was poky and dim, and there was a distinct smell of drains. The decor was heavily nautical, with lengths of fishing nets draped about the walls, and seashells glued everywhere, and a real ship’s wheel attached to the desk on which the cash register stood. The owner, or perhaps she was just the manager, a blowsy blonde in a black wool dress and fishnet stockings, herself exuded an air of the waterfront, and even moved with something of a sailor’s bowlegged roll. Rose sat in the midst of this marine fantasy with a satisfied, proprietorial air. It all made Phoebe feel slightly seasick. Rose, she had to admit to herself, was prone to surprising lapses of judgment.

Phoebe ordered steak, not because she wanted it but because it was the only alternative to fish on the menu.

“Well, my dear,” Rose said in her twangiest southern-belle drawl, “tell me all about him.”

Phoebe stared, beginning to laugh. “All about who?”

“Don’t act the innocent with me, young lady. I know that look. You have a beau, haven’t you.”

Phoebe put down her fork. “Oh, Rose, there’s no hiding anything from you.”

“There. I knew it. Who is he?”

Stalling, Phoebe took a slow draught from her wine glass. There were other people at the tables around them, couples, mostly, but in the dimness-the red-shaded lamps on the tables seemed to shed not light but lurid shadows only-they were indistinct and somewhat sinister-looking, crouched over their plates and speaking in what sounded like nothing but asides. “He’s nobody very exciting, I’m afraid,” she said.

“I’ll be the judge of that. Come-tell.”

“He works with Quirke.”

“Does he? He’s a doctor, then.”

“Yes, a pathologist, or training to be, I’m not sure. He’s Quirke’s assistant.”

“Oh, so he’s that young man, what’s his name…?”

“David Sinclair.”

“That’s the one. Well.”

Now it was Rose’s turn to lay down her fork. She sat back on her chair, straightening her spine and elongating her already long slender neck. Rose’s exact age was a matter of sporadic speculation in the family, though no conclusion was ever reached. Phoebe suspected that even her latest and very recent husband, Malachy Griffin, did not know the figure for certain. Rose’s choice of Malachy had surprised many and appalled not a few, including Phoebe, though she had covered up her dismay. They were an unlikely match-Rose the mature blossom of old Dixie and Malachy the mole. He was consultant obstetrician at the Hospital of the Holy Family, a position from which he had been ditheringly and for what seemed a very long time in the process of retiring. He was also the man who for the first nineteen years of her life had passed as Phoebe’s father, for Quirke had secretly handed her over to him and his wife after her mother died giving birth to her. This subterfuge, after the vicissitudes she had suffered since it had been revealed to her-by Quirke, as it happened, one horribly memorable snowy day in that house south of Boston-seemed to Phoebe now not so much a cruel and unnatural betrayal but, rather, an aspect of the design, of the blueprint, of Quirke’s conception of life and how it might be conducted.

Rose had drawn her mouth down at one corner in a clownish grimace. “I don’t know,” she said, “that I approve.”

“You mean you don’t approve of David, or of my seeing him?”

“I haven’t said I dis approve. I haven’t decided.”

“Do you know David?” Phoebe asked gently.

“Do I? I may have met him. I’ve certainly heard him spoken of.”

“He’s Jewish.”

“Ah. Is he.”

This brought a brief and thoughtful hiatus, during which Phoebe addressed herself to the rather tough and overcooked piece of beef on her plate. She drank more wine; she felt in need of its fortifying effect. “Do you disapprove of that?” she asked, keeping her eyes lowered.

“Of what?”

“You know very well what-of David’s being a Jew.”

“I have nothing but regard for the Jewish people,” Rose said piously. “Industrious folk, careful with money, clever, resourceful, ambitious for their children. I confess I didn’t know you had any, in this country.”

“I didn’t either, really,” Phoebe said, laughing, “but we have.”