Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

“I don’t know,” Quirke answered. “Really, I don’t. We’re both stumbling in the dark here.”

“Are we?”

Quirke lifted his eyes and they looked at each other in stillness for a moment.

“What do you mean?” Quirke said.

The detective heaved a slow and ample sigh. “I have the impression, Dr. Quirke, that you know a thing or two more than I do about this business. I suspect, for instance, you’ve been talking to the widow-am I right?”

Quirke felt his forehead flushing pink. Had he imagined Hackett would not know by now that he had doing far more than talking to Francoise d’Aubigny? “Conversing with Mrs. Jewell,” he said carefully, “is not necessarily an enlightening process. She tends to be somewhat opaque.”

“ Opaque, now, that’s a grand word. And what about the other one-the sister?”

“To Miss Jewell,” Quirke said with sardonic emphasis, “I do not talk. Sinclair knows her, as I’ve said, and so, I believe, does my daughter. I gather she’s something of an enigma, and not without problems, even before her brother met his messy end. Trouble”-he touched a finger to his temple-“upstairs.”

The elderly waitress came quakingly with their new pot of tea. Hackett asked for a clean cup, but either she did not hear or chose to ignore him, and wandered off. A woman laden with parcels entered and sat down at a nearby table, and Quirke stared at her, for she had something of the look of Isabel Galloway. Isabel was still much on his mind. He knew that he must telephone her, and would, one of these days.

Hackett poured the dregs from his cup into an empty water glass, refilled from the new pot, added milk and sugar, tasted, and winced at the unexpected hotness. “So,” he said, gingerly smacking his scalded lips, “where are we?”

“Lost in the wilderness,” Quirke promptly answered. “Lost in the bloody wilderness.”

Dannie Jewell now saw what she had to do. She must make a true act of contrition. When she was little she was sent to school to the Presentation Convent, where unknown to her mother-her father would not have cared-she pretended that she was a Catholic like all the other girls and took religious instruction and learned about confession, absolution, and redemption. We are all sinners, she was assured, but even the blackest sins would be forgiven if the sinner showed to God that she was truly sorry for having offended Him and made a firm resolve never to sin again. She was not sure that she believed in God anymore-she did not give the matter much thought-but those profound early lessons had left a lasting impression on her. She had felt guilty all her life, or for as much of it as she could remember. Things that befell her, and even things that befell those around her and for which it did not seem she could be responsible, were, she knew, her fault, at the deepest level, for secretly she had been the cause of them, by a process so subtly wicked that it was not visible to the ordinary eye. If they had happened, she must have willed them to happen, for things did not happen unless someone wanted them to. That buried sense of being the cause of so much wickedness and the shame that followed on it were the twin roots of all her troubles. Because of all this she found herself, simply, disgusting, a soul besmirched.

How could she have thought that she could have David Sinclair for a friend? Had she not known that her mere presence in his life, the mere fact of her existence in relation to him, would inevitably cause him damage? Everyone she came in contact with was made to suffer in some way. When she heard the story of Typhoid Mary, who passed on the disease to others while she remained immune, she recognized herself in it at once. For she did not suffer, not really, or not enough, at any rate, as a result of the calamities for which she was responsible, as a result of the injuries of which she was guilty. Others suffered. Because of her silence, others were condemned to endure years of misery and abuse; because of her prattling, someone was knocked down in the street and had his finger hacked off, just as someone had to substitute for her and be tainted for life, because she had grown up and stopped being a child. Meanwhile she was pampered and protected, had money and freedom, nice places to live in, a financially secure future-she was even beautiful! And the others suffered. That would have to end; at least one of the many wrongs of which she was the cause would have to be set right.

She did not know why David had been attacked. She knew how it had come about, but not the reason for it. Not that the reason mattered. It was a part of the pattern, of course, she knew that, the pattern that had been in place forever, so it seemed; she thought of it as a huge hidden thing propagating itself endlessly, throwing off millions and millions of spores, like a growth of mushrooms, unstoppably. All she could do was lop off one strand of it, the strand that had wrapped itself around the people who had the misfortune to be close to her.

Yes, a firm act of contrition, that was what was required of her now.

Carlton sumner had offices in the top two floors of one of the big old Georgian houses on Leeson Street, not far from the corner of St. Stephen’s Green. “You’d think,” he said savagely, “the god-damn air would be a little fresher up here, but it’s worse than at ground level. And of course, over here they’ve never heard of air-conditioning.”

It was another sweltering day under a hot white sky. The traffic in the streets jostled and clamored like a panicking crowd. There must have been a fire somewhere for there were sirens going in the distance and there was a faint acrid reek of smoke in the air. Quirke sat by one of two low windows in an uncomfortable chair made of steel and canvas, nursing a half-empty glass of orange juice that had been ice-cold but had now turned tepid. “I drink this stuff by the quart,” Sumner had told him, holding aloft his frosted glass. “One of the girls buys the oranges on her way in and squeezes them with her own fair hand. Why is the concept of fresh juice another thing unknown to you people?” He wore a pair of white deck trousers and slip-on shoes with tassels, and a white silk shirt that had a large damp patch where he had been leaning against the back of the black leather chair behind his desk. He had put his glass down on his desk and was pacing the carpet now, tossing a sweat-darkened baseball from one hand to the other. Quirke remembered the snow globe Francoise d’Aubigny had been holding in her hand that Sunday at Brooklands, and wondered idly where it was now.

“I didn’t see an orange until I was in my twenties,” Quirke said. “Then the war came and they disappeared.”

“Yeah,” Sumner said with heavy sarcasm, “you guys sure had it hard.”

“It wasn’t so bad. We were neutral, after all.”

Sumner stopped at the window and looked down into the street, frowning. He pitched the ball with increased force and caught it in each cupped palm with a loud thwack. He had expressed no surprise when Quirke telephoned and asked if he might come and talk to him. It would take a lot, Quirke supposed, to surprise Carlton Sumner, and a lot more to make him show it. “That’s right,” he said now, darkly. “Neutral.” He turned to Quirke. “You want a real drink? I’ve got Scotch, Irish, vodka, gin-you name it.”

“Juice is fine,” Quirke said.

Sumner left the window and crossed to his desk and sat back with one haunch perched against a corner of it. The desk was vast and old and made of dark oak, with brass fittings and many drawers, and the top was inlaid with green leather. There were three telephones, one of them white, a large square crystal ashtray, a mug of pens stenciled with the badge of the Vancouver Mounties-Sumner saw Quirke looking at this last and said, “The baseball team, not the cops on horses”-a roller blotter with a wooden handle, an antique silver cigarette box, and a fancy Ronson lighter the size of a potato. “So,” the owner of all this said, “what can I do for you, Dr. Quirke?” managing to put a faintly comical inflexion on the word Doctor.