Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

Francoise d’Aubigny lifted an eyebrow. “Oh, yes?” she said.

Hackett was aware of Maguire’s wife eyeing him from the stove with a startled and frowning look. “Yes,” he said to Francoise d’Aubigny, “a few things have come up that got us interested in the place.”

“Things?” the woman said. “What things?”

“Oh, nothing definite, nothing specific.” He paused, smiling. “You know Mrs. Maguire’s husband was there when he was a child. And so, as it happens, was Dr. Quirke. Isn’t that a coincidence, now?”

He watched to see what her response would be to this mention of Quirke. There was none. So, then, what he had suspected was the case: she and Quirke were-what was the way they would put it?-seeing each other. This amused and interested him in equal measure. It went some way to explaining the oddity of Quirke’s attitude to the case of Richard Jewell’s murder-some of the way, but not all.

“They were not there at the same time, surely?” Francoise d’Aubigny said.

“No, no. Dr. Quirke has a good few years on your yard manager.”

“That is what I meant.” She was gazing at him coolly. It was plain that she knew what he had just guessed about her and Quirke, and plain, too, that she did not care that he had. “He is not with you today, Dr. Quirke?”

He did not answer, only smiled again. Maguire’s wife brought the teapot in a woolen cozy and set it down near him on a cork mat. Now she would not meet his eye, and went back to the stove, wiping her hands on her apron. She was a high-strung poor creature, Hackett thought. He did not wish to add to the burdens she was carrying. Being married to a man like Maguire could not be easy. Francoise d’Aubigny turned to her. “Sarah, you may go.”

Mrs. Maguire looked surprised, perhaps offended, too; nevertheless she took off her apron meekly and hung it on a hook by the stove and went out and closed the door softly behind her. “And now, Inspector,” Francoise d’Aubigny said, “I think I must go for my ride. I can tell you that I know nothing about this orphanage, or why you are interested in it. I believe my husband was killed for business reasons, though I cannot say why, or by whom, exactly, although I have my suspicions. And I think it would be much more profitable for you to follow that line of investigation, yes?”

“Which line is that, ma’am?”

“I recommended to Dr. Quirke that you should both talk to Carlton Sumner.”

“And that we did,” Hackett said calmly, pouring tea into his cup. “But that line of investigation did not lead far, I’m afraid, Mrs. Jewell.”

She gave him a narrow stare. She was about to say something further about Sumner, he could see, but changed her mind. “I really must go, Inspector, my poor Hotspur will be growing impatient.”

Hackett smiled at her, nodding. “I apologize for taking up your valuable time, ma’am-although of course, as I said, it was Mr. Maguire I came to talk to, in the first place.”

She too smiled, but thinly, her lips twitching. “Thank you, Inspector,” she said. “And now good-bye.”

She gave him a curt nod, glanced briefly in Jenkins’s direction, and went out by the back door, fitting on her hat and veil as she went. When she was gone there was silence but for the hum of the refrigerator and the ticking of the big wooden clock on the wall beside the sink.

Jenkins, who seemed to have been holding his breath since they came into the kitchen, now expelled it in a rush. “What was all that about, boss?” he asked eagerly.

Hackett sighed, a contented sound. “Sit down here,” he said to the young man, “come on, sit down and have a cup of tea.”

Quirke on the phone sounded annoyed. He had been calling all afternoon, he said. Hackett told him where he had been, and that he had just got back. That shut Quirke up. Hackett was sitting behind his desk in his attic office, trying to get his boots off. He wedged the receiver between his shoulder and his jaw and reached down and got a finger in at the back of the right one and jimmied his foot free. An unpleasant odor came up. His missus had bought him a pair of shoes with crepe soles and no laces but he could not wear them. Granted, hobnailed boots, not to mention gray woolen socks, were hardly the thing for a heat wave, but this had been his footwear since he was a boy and he was too long in the tooth to change now.

Quirke spoke at last “Was Fra-was Mrs. Jewell there?” Yes, Hackett said. He was working on the left boot, clawing at the back of it with the toes of his right foot and trying to get a finger down the side. His feet, he supposed, must be swollen from the heat.

Quirke was waiting for him to speak but he would not speak; Quirke was not alone in being able to keep his own counsel. The boot came off at last, and Hackett closed his eyes in a brief moment of bliss. Quirke was asking now what Maguire had said, when of course the person he really wanted to hear about, Hackett knew, was not Maguire at all.

“The same Maguire,” Hackett said, “is not the most talkative.” He was holding the receiver in his hand again-it had begun to stick unpleasantly to his jaw-and at the same time trying to waggle a cigarette out of the packet on the desk. “He was not forthcoming on the topic we’re both interested in. The Cage, as he calls it.”

“The what?”

“The Cage. St. Christopher’s-was that not the name they had for it in your day?”

“Yes,” Quirke said quietly after a moment. “I’d forgotten.”

“I’d say there’d be quite a few things you’d prefer to forget about that particular institution.” He got the cigarette to his lips, and now to get it lit he had to wedge the phone under his jaw again. “Though Maguire said it wasn’t such a bad place.”

“I don’t remember much about it. But listen, anyway-I went to see Sumner again.”

“Oh?”

“He wasn’t forthcoming either, but I think it’s that he really hasn’t much to be forthcoming about. I think it’s his son we should be concentrating on.”

“The son?”

“Yes. Teddy.”

Hackett swiveled in his chair and looked out the window behind the desk at the rooftops and the jumble of chimneys baking in the sun. Half past five and still as hot as midday out there. Teddy, now, the bold Teddy, eh? This was interesting. “What did Sumner say about him?”

“Nothing. But I think it’s this Teddy Sumner, and not his father, who was involved in St. Christopher’s with Dick Jewell.”

“Involved, now, in what way?”

“The priest out there, Father Ambrose, said that ‘Sumner’ was one of the Friends of St. Christopher’s, along with Jewell and others he didn’t identify. I thought he meant the father, but now I think it was the son.”

“I suppose that would make sense, all right. I can’t see Mr. Carlton Sumner as the orphan’s savior.”

A pigeon came and perched on the windowsill and through the glass regarded Hackett with a beady and speculative eye. Not for the first time Hackett wondered at the iridescent plumage of these birds that were universally disregarded. Another age might prize them beside peacocks and parrots. This one was slate blue with shimmers of pink and pale gray and an intense acid green. Could it see him behind the glass, or was the directed focus of its one-eyed gaze an illusion? The bird had probably alighted in hope of being fed, for sometimes, when he brought sandwiches to work, Hackett would put the crusts out on the sill.

He was curious about the note of eagerness in Quirke’s voice. Obviously he wanted Teddy Sumner to be involved in all this, but why? Was Teddy perhaps to be a substitute for someone else?

“And you know what I think too?” Quirke was saying now. “I think it was Teddy Sumner who sent that pair of thugs to attack my assistant.”