Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

The fat woman was a disappointment; when she had finished hanging up the laundry she merely threw them a look and chuckled and waddled off into the house.

“Cow,” Teddy said in disgust, and drove them away.

They did not go for tea that day, but went to the Phoenix Park instead. Teddy parked the car by the Wellington Monument and they strolled over the grass, under the trees. The sunlight seemed vague somehow and diffused, as if it were weary after so many hours of shining without stint. A herd of deer grazing in a cloud of pale dust stopped at their approach and lifted their heads, their nostrils twitching and stumpy ears waggling. Stupid animals, Dannie thought, and only pretty from a distance; up close they were shabby, and their coats looked like lichen.

“You know,” she said, “they’re saying now that Richard was murdered.”

Teddy did not seem surprised, or even much interested, and she was sorry she had spoken. It was when she was bored that she blurted things out. She remembered how when she was a child, at Brooklands, she would squat by the pond at the bottom of the Long Field and poke a stick into the muddy shallows and watch the water bugs swimming and scurrying frantically away. How nice it was the way the mud would swirl up in chocolaty spirals, and then spread itself out until all the water was the color of tea, or turf, or dead leaves, and nothing more was to be seen of all that life down there, all that squirming, desperate life.

“Who did it?” Teddy inquired casually. “Do they know?”

He seemed so calm, indifferent, almost. Had he known about Richard, what he was like, the things he did? Perhaps everyone knew. She felt a little thrill of terror. She remembered at school those curious periods of suspended waiting, after she had done something bad and before it was found out. They gave her the same kind of thrill, those breathless intervals, and she would feel as if she were floating weightlessly in some medium lighter even than air and yet wonderfully sustaining. But what, now, had she done, that she was waiting to be discovered? And how would they punish her, since she was not guilty, not really?

“No,” she said, “they don’t know who killed him. At least no one has said, if they do.” She giggled; it was a real giggle; it startled her. “Francoise is trying to make them think it was your father.”

Teddy stopped and bent to detach a twig from the leg of his slacks. “Trying to make who think?”

“The police. And that doctor fellow, Quirke, that David works with.”

“Quirke.”

“Yes. He’s Phoebe’s father, as a matter of fact.”

He straightened. “Didn’t you say her name was Griffin?”

“She was adopted or something, I don’t know.”

“He’s a doctor?”

“A pathologist. He came down with the Guards, that day.”

“But why would your sister-in-law be trying to convince him of anything?”

Dannie stopped and made him stop with her, and they stood facing each other.

“Teddy Sumner,” she said, “tell me why you aren’t shocked that Francoise should be trying to make people think your father murdered my brother?”

“Were you trying to shock me?”

“Yes-of course.”

He smiled his sly smile. “You should know by now that I’m unshockable.”

“Your father didn’t, by the way-do it.”

“Well, I hardly thought he had.”

“Oh, I don’t know. He might have. They were always fighting, Richard and your father.”

But Teddy was thinking of something else. “Do you talk about all this to Sinclair?”

“A little. Not much. He doesn’t ask.”

“But you do talk to him about it.” She walked on and he trotted after her. “You do tell him secrets, I’m sure you do.”

“I don’t. I don’t tell anyone my secrets.”

“Even me?”

“Especially you.” They stopped on a rise from where there was a view over the roofs of the city sweltering in the quivering heat haze. “I wish this weather would break,” Dannie said.

“You know I knew your brother quite well,” Teddy said, in a tone of studied diffidence.

“Did you? How?”

“There’s a sort of club we were in-I mean, that he was in, and that I’m still in, I suppose.”

“What club?”

“It doesn’t matter. More a sort of an organization. He got me in, Richard did. He said it would be”-he gave a bleak little laugh-“just the thing for me.”

“And was it-is it?”

He kicked moodily at the grass with the toe of his two-toned shoe. “I don’t know. I feel a bit out of my depth, to tell the truth.”

“What do they do, in this club?”

“Nothing much. They visit places…”

“Like, abroad?”

“No, no. It’s a charity thing. Schools.” He whistled briefly, softly, squinting out over the city. “Orphanages.”

“Yes?” She felt herself grow pale. What did he mean? “I wouldn’t have thought that was quite you, Teddy,” she said, forcing a light tone, “visiting schools and being nice to orphans.”

“It isn’t me,” he said. “At least, I didn’t think it was. Until your brother convinced me.”

She could not go on looking at him, and turned her face towards the city. “When did you join this club?” she asked, her voice wobbly.

“When I left college. I was at a loose end, and Richard-Richard encouraged me. And I joined up.”

“And started visiting places.”

“Yes.”

He turned to her, and there was something in his look, a kind of anguish, and suddenly she understood, and now she did not want him to say any more, not another word. She turned on her heel and set off back in the direction of the car. There were those deer again, in their moth-eaten pelts, with those disgusting black channels at their eyes as if since birth they had been weeping, weeping, weeping.

“Pooh Bear,” Teddy called after her softly, pleadingly, in his Eeyore voice, “oh, Winnie!” But she went on, and did not look back.

She was glad he did not try to catch up with her. She hurried down the hill to the park gates and crossed the river and got a taxi outside the railway station. Her mind was blank, or rather it was a jumble of things-like an attic in an earthquake, was how she thought of it. For she knew this state well, the state that she always got into when one of her anxiety attacks, or whatever they were, was coming on.

She must get back now to her own place, and be among her own things.

So hot, the evening, so hot and close, she could hardly breathe.

The taxi man had bad breath; she could smell it from the back seat. He was talking to her about something over his shoulder but she was not listening.

Orphanages.

When she got to the flat in Pembroke Street she filled a tepid bath and lay in it for a long time, trying to calm her racing mind. There were pigeons on the sill outside the window, she could hear them, cooing in that soft secretive way that they did, as if they were exclaiming over some amazing piece of scandal that was being told to them.

After her bath she sat in her dressing gown at the kitchen table and drank coffee, cup after cup of it. She knew it was bad for her, that the caffeine would make her thoughts race all the faster, but she could not stop.

She went into the living room and lay on the sofa. She felt cooler now, after bathing in the cool water. She wished she had something to hold on to, to hug. Phoebe Griffin had confessed she still had her teddy bear from childhood. Something like that would be good-but what? She had nothing like that; she had never had anything like that.

Thinking of Phoebe’s bear made her think of Teddy Sumner, even though she did not want to. Silly name, Teddy. And yet somehow it suited him, even though he was nothing like a teddy bear.