Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

“Hermann. My parents were great admirers of the Germans and all things Germanic. I am surprised they did not call me Franziska.” She spoke the name as if to spit on it.

“What happened to him, to Hermann?”

“He was in the Resistance. I was, too, but not like him. He was very brave, very-very strong. He was high up, too-one of the leaders, in the early days.”

“Your father and your mother, did they know?”

“That we were resistants? No-they would not have believed their children capable of such a thing, such a trahison. Even when the Germans captured Hermann and took him away, my father refused to believe it was not a mistake. He knew someone in the Boche army, one of their commanders-that was how I was able to visit Hermann in that terrible place where they were keeping him.” She dropped her cigarette onto the gravel and ground it slowly under her heel. “He knew a great many things-not just names but secrets, secret plans, places where there would be attacks, targets that had been decided upon. They should not have let him know so much, it was too dangerous for him. And then, when he was captured, they did not believe he would not break under torture and betray everything. So they sent me to visit him.” She paused. She was still looking at the foot that had crushed the cigarette, gazing at it unseeing. “At first I would not agree. They warned me of what would happen if Hermann betrayed us, that our cell would all be rounded up and shot, including me, that other leaders would be captured, that everything would be lost. So I took the German commandant’s pass that my father had got for me and I went to Breendonk. It was the night train. I shall never forget that journey. They had given me, the leaders in our cell-they had given me a capsule to deliver to Hermann. I knew what it was, of course. I sewed it into the lapel of my coat. I was not thinking, I did not believe I would give it to him, I told myself that at the last minute, before I arrived at that place, that I would take the capsule and throw it from the train window. But I did not.” She shivered, and Quirke took off his jacket and draped it over her shoulders; she seemed not to notice him doing it. “Hermann knew, of course, when he saw me-somehow he knew why I had come, what I was bringing. He was so gay, you know, I mean pretending, for my sake, laughing and making jokes. Already they had begun torturing him. When I saw him first, in that empty room where they put us together, I hardly recognized him, he was so thin, so pale. I remember the darkness under his eyes”-with her fingertips she touched the places on her own face-“and the fear in them, you know, which he tried to hide but which I remembered, the same fear that was there when he was a little boy and had done something to anger our father, only so much more strong, now. That is what he was like that day, like the little boy I remembered. I gave him the capsule and he put it in his mouth straightaway, without hesitating a moment. I think the-what do you call it?-the casing, yes, I think the casing was made of glass, some very thin kind of glass. He pressed it down here”-again she lifted a finger and pointed, to her jaw this time-“and kept it there while we talked. What did we talk about? The time when we were children, I think, when we were happy. Then they took him away, and made me leave. By the time I got back to Paris my father had heard through his contacts that Hermann was dead. They did not suspect me-they thought someone else had given him the capsule, one of the other prisoners.” She shivered again, and pulled the lapels of his jacket tight around her throat. “My poor beautiful brother,” she said. “My poor Hermann, so brave.”

They sat quietly for some moments. Quirke heard himself swallow, felt his throat expand and close again. He did not want to look at Francoise, did not want to see her suddenly gaunt and ashen features. The sun had fallen below the treetops and the lawn was in shadow. He felt chilly without his jacket. He looked for the child, and could not see her. He stood up. “What is it?” Francoise said. She too peered across the darkling grass. “My God,” she whispered, “where is she?”

“You go around the pathway,” Quirke said, “I’ll run direct across.”

She stood up quickly and whipped the jacket from her shoulders and thrust it into his hands and turned and set off along the path, tottering a little even as she hurried. Quirke, struggling into his jacket, ran across the grass, feeling the dew wetting his ankles. He reached the far path only seconds before Francoise did, he saw her rounding the corner by the big oak and running towards him with her arms stretched out incongruously at either side, as if she were attempting to fly. “Where is she?” she cried, “where is she?”

Quirke could feel the panic rising in him, a hot heavy wave surging up through his chest. He must be calm. The gardens were empty by now. Was there a gatekeeper? Would the gates be locked? He cursed himself for his inattention; he cursed himself for many things.

They searched for a long time, running separately here and there, fleeting through the gathering shadows of night like a pair of frantic ghosts, calling the child’s name. At a turn in the path they almost collided with each other, coming from opposite directions. Francoise was weeping in fear, great desolate sobs tearing themselves out of her like grotesque hiccups. Quirke grabbed her arms above the elbows and shook her.

“There must be somewhere that she went,” he said. “Think, Francoise-where would she go?”

She shook her head, and flying strands of hair that had come loose from the net at the back of her neck turned her for a second into a Medusa. “I don’t know-I don’t know!”

Quirke looked about wildly. He was gasping-had he run so far, so fast? In the dark the now deserted garden was a looming presence, spiked with shadows and seemingly sourceless glints of phosphorescent radiance. The trees above them had set up an excited vague whispering. A thought came to him. “Is there a way into the garden, into the garden of the house? Is there a door, or a gate?”

She made a gulping, choking sound. “No,” she said, and then “-yes! Yes there is-there is a gate, I think.”

They ran along where they knew the boundary wall of the domestic gardens must be, and there it was, a little wooden gate, as quaint as on a postcard, with a wild rosebush on one side and a clump of woodbine on the other. In the darkness they could smell the perfume of the woodbine blossoms, sweetly cloying. Francoise thrust open the gate and went sprinting through. Quirke followed along a narrow clay pathway, and then through another gate, this one metal, with a lock on it that was unlocked, into the Japanese garden. The child’s bicycle was there, resting against the wall of the house beside the french windows, which were open. Once inside the windows Francoise stopped, and leaned forward with her hands braced on her knees, panting. Quirke thought she was going to be sick, and tried to put a hand under her forehead to help her, but she jerked her head away. She was muttering to herself in French, he could not make out the words. He went on, past the kitchen and along the corridor to the front of the house, and without hesitation veered into the big high-ceilinged drawing room to the left of the front door. A chandelier with electric bulbs was burning above the big mahogany table, its light reflected in the depths of the polished wood. The child was sitting in the chair where she had sat the first time he saw her here; she had her book open and was sucking her thumb. She took her thumb out of her mouth and looked at him. He could not see her eyes behind those opaquely reflecting lenses.

“There is a leaf in your hair,” she said.

Teddy Sumner arrived at the Pearse Street Garda barracks looking cocksure and disdainful. He parked his little shiny green motor at the pavement, where it made the surrounding staff cars seem like so many heaps of scrap metal, and announced himself at the desk in a loud firm voice. While he waited for someone to come and fetch him he walked about the dayroom with his hands in his pockets, ignoring the duty sergeant’s minatory eye and idly scanning the notices-a rabies alert, warnings against unchecked ragweed, a couple of missing persons posters with grainy photos that he made a show of examining closely, smirking. Then he lit a cigarette and dropped the spent match on the floor. “Pick that up,” the sergeant said. He was a red-faced bruiser with a broken nose and hands the size of hams. Teddy looked at him, then shrugged and bent and retrieved the match and put it in a waste bin in the corner. He was wearing his navy-blue blazer with the Royal St. George Yacht Club crest, dark trousers, a white shirt, and a cream-colored cravat. He had taken off his sunglasses and hooked them casually by one earpiece over the top button of his shirt. He was wondering idly how it would feel to be put in handcuffs and given a beating by someone like the sergeant, in his blue uniform and his broad shiny belt. He was not worried. Why would he be worried?