Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

But Quirke was not with him today.

The summer weather that was a torment in town made the countryside a pleasure. Sitting beside young Jenkins as they drove out of the city and along the upper reaches of the Liffey on the way to Kildare, Hackett admired the dense greenness of the trees lining the roads and, behind them, the squared fields where wheat and barley moved slowly, constantly, in polished waves. And then there were the rich warm smells, of grass and hay and beasts; he even savored the stink of slurry. He regretted when they had to leave this river landscape behind for the flat yellow plains of Kildare. This featureless land had its own austere charm, he supposed, but he had been brought up in hilly country, among woods and water, and always he preferred the closer view; out here on the Curragh the horizons were too distant, too flat, too ill-defined. He liked things that could be touched.

Maguire the yard man had tried to put him off, saying he was too busy with the horses, that there was a big race meeting coming up and he was run off his feet. Hackett had insisted, however, in his usual cheerfully dogged way, and now when they drove into the yard Maguire was there waiting for them, though in a sullen pose.

“I told you all I had to tell you,” he said straight off, getting in first before the detective had said no more than a hello. “I was out on the gallops, I wasn’t even here to hear the shot.”

“Aye,” Hackett said, “you told me that, you did.”

They went into the stables and walked down the long central aisle between the boxes. The horses watched them, snorting softly and rolling their great glossy eyes. The dust and the dry reek of hay gave Hackett the wobbly sensation of wanting to sneeze while not being able to. “In here,” Maguire said, and led the way into the harness room, where the smells were of leather and oil and horse feed. There was a calendar tacked to the wall, open at the page for August the previous year. Jenkins had made to come in with them but Hackett had motioned to him to stay outside.

“So,” Maguire said, “what do you want?”

He wore a sleeveless leather jerkin and corduroy trousers tied under the knee with binder twine and cracked working boots. His big head, Hackett noted, was somewhat the same shape as Carlton Sumner’s.

“I was wondering,” Hackett said, in his most diffident manner, “about that orphanage-St. Christopher’s, is it?”

Maguire frowned, taken by surprise. “What about it?” he asked darkly.

“How long were you there for?”

“How do you know I was?”

The detective smiled, his thin-lipped mouth seeming to stretch from ear to ear. “We have our methods, Mr. Maguire,” he said with happy satisfaction; he never missed an opportunity to play up his role as a flat-footed copper.

“My Da put me in there, after my mother died,” Maguire said.

“That must have been rough.”

“I didn’t mind. There were seven others at home, and my Da was out of work. At least in the Cage they fed you.”

“The…?”

“It’s what we called it. That’s what it was always called-if you’d been in there you’d know why.”

Hackett brought out his cigarettes, but Maguire shook his head. “That’s one habit I never got,” he said. “And mind where you put that match, this place is a tinderbox.”

The detective shook the match to extinguish it and put the spent stub back into the box.

“It must have been a hard enough time, right enough,” he said. “What age were you when you went in?”

“Seven. I told you, I didn’t mind it. There were harder stations.”

Hackett walked to where a small square window looked out into the yard. The four panes were grimed, and wreathed all over with ancient cobwebs, and some that were newer; in the toils of one a bluebottle was feebly struggling. There was a Land Rover in the yard that had not been there when he and Jenkins arrived.

“Mr. Jewell, your late boss, was a patron of the place, I believe?”

“A what?”

Hackett turned his head from the window. “He raised funds, and put in some of his own money-is that right?”

“Why are you asking me? You know already, don’t you?”

“He must have talked to you about the place, consulted you about it, you being an old boy, so to speak?”

Maguire shook his head. “I never heard him mention it.”

Hackett was still looking at him sidelong. “Did you know Marie Bergin?”

One of the horses along the corridor set up a high-pitched neighing, and immediately others joined in, stamping their hooves and banging their muzzles against the bars of the boxes. Maguire’s frown deepened, and Hackett could see him struggling to cope with this switch in the line of questioning.

“I knew her when she was here, yes.”

“And at St. Christopher’s? She worked there.”

“What age do you think I am, seventeen? I was long gone before her time.”

“But you knew she worked there?”

Maguire gave a sort of laugh and cast about him in forced exasperation. “Look,” he said, “I’m a busy man, I have work to do. Tell me what it is you want here, or let me get on, will you?”

Hackett remained unruffled. He finished his cigarette and dropped it on the ground and trod on it, then bent and picked up the crushed butt and pressed that, too, into the matchbox. “I’m just interested in Mr. Jewell’s connection with the-what did you call it?-the Cage?”

“Why?” Maguire snapped. “And why do you want to know about my time there, and if I knew Marie Bergin, and all the rest of it? What are you after?”

Hackett had his hands in his trouser pockets and was contemplating the broad toe caps of his black boots. “A murder was committed here, Mr. Maguire,” he said. “What I’m after is the person that committed it.”

“Then you’re wasting your time,” Maguire said, grinding the words out harshly. “You’re certainly wasting it talking to me-I don’t know who pulled that trigger, if it wasn’t Mr. Jewell himself. I wasn’t here when it happened, and I’ve heard nothing since to-”

He stopped. He was looking past Hackett to the doorway, where Francoise d’Aubigny had silently appeared. She wore gleaming black riding boots and jodhpurs of cream-colored worsted and a narrow-waisted black velvet riding jacket. In one hand she carried a slender braided-leather crop and in the other a bowler hat with a stiff veil attached to the brim in front. Her dark hair was pulled back severely from her face and held at the nape of her neck in a netted bun, which gave an Oriental tautness to the outer corners of her eyes. Her lipsticked mouth was a narrow straight scarlet line.

“Inspector,” she said. “What a surprise.”

She made him come into the house and sit down in the kitchen. “Are you hungry, Inspector?” she asked. “I am sure we could prepare a sandwich for you, or an omelette, perhaps?” Hackett thanked her and said no, that he would have to be getting back to town shortly. But he would have a cup of tea, she said-an Irishman would not refuse a cup of tea, surely? She went to the door that led into the house and called Sarah Maguire. Jenkins was standing stiffly at a sort of attention by the sideboard, holding his hat in his hands. Maguire’s wife came in, her mouth set in a crooked line, and put a kettle on the stove and brought a cup and saucer and spoon to the table and set them down brusquely in front of the detective. She said to him, casting a glance in Jenkins’s direction, “What about him, will he have a cup too?” Hackett turned to the young man. “What do you say, Sergeant? Are you thirsty?” Jenkins swallowed hard and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “No thank you, Inspector-ma’am.” Hackett nodded approvingly and turned back to the woman in the riding jacket. “I was asking Mr. Maguire,” he said, “about St. Christopher’s-the orphanage, that your husband was a patron of?”