Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

“Then you must eat. There is cheese, and salad, and this picpoul ”-she had gone to the big American-style fridge and was taking out a bottle-“is quite good, unless you would prefer red?”

“The white is fine.”

He was angry, he realized; that was what he felt most strongly, a sullen anger, not directed solely at her but at so many other things as well, too numerous to try to trace and identify. He was tired of thinking of all this, this ghastly sordid mess. But it must have been anger, after all, that had brought him to her, that had propelled him into the sky and flown him over seas and land and dumped him here-at her feet, he caught himself about to think, at those shapely feet of hers in their exquisite gold sandals, her feet that he had clasped and kissed, while his conscience made a hum in his head, like the hum of travel that was at last, now, beginning to diminish.

She set two glasses on a white countertop and poured the wine. “I should have called you before I left,” she said. “It was wrong of me not to, I know. But after that night when I thought I had lost Giselle… It was impossible. You do see that, that it was impossible for me, yes?”

What was he to answer? He should not have come. She handed him the wine, and he tipped the glass against hers. “What does one say?” he asked. “Sante?”

They drank, and then stood facing each other, in a sudden helplessness that was, Quirke thought, almost comic. Life’s way of blundering into bathos never ceased to catch him out.

“Let me show you this place,” Francoise said. “Richard was so proud of it.”

Originally it had been a complex of four apartments that her husband had bought up and refashioned into one large living space. He had taken down the walls of the two apartments at this end to make the great room where they stood and another room, not quite as large, separated off by pillars, where there were sofas and low armchairs and a big table of pale wood standing in the central well, strewn with books and magazines and record covers. The walls were white, and the paintings on them were originals, three or four Mediterranean landscapes by artists Quirke did not recognize, a garden scene that must be by Bonnard, and a small portrait by Matisse of a woman sitting by a window with a palm tree.

After he had inspected and admired these and numerous other things Francoise led him from the second room towards an open doorway giving onto a cool corridor where one wall was another set of tall glass panels. As they were crossing the threshold she paused. “Those rooms,” she said, pointing back, “are for daytime living, and these others are for night-you see?” She indicated the lintel, on this side of which was stenciled in large black letters the legend THE DAY SIDE. They stepped through into the corridor, and above them here was written THE NIGHT SIDE. “Richard liked to label everything,” Francoise said with a faint grimace of amusement. “He had that kind of mind.”

She showed him the bedrooms, the bathrooms, the linen cupboards. Everything down to the smallest detail had been finished, smoothed, polished with meticulous judgment and care. “Richard did all this,” she said. “It was his project. He had good taste, yes? You look surprised.”

She drew open a broad glass panel in the wall and they stepped out onto the silvery-smooth boards of the verandah. Out here it was suddenly hot. “There is a natural flow of cool air through all the rooms,” Francoise said. “It might be sweltering out here but inside it’s always comfortable. That was another of Richard’s gifts, to know how to adapt things.”

She led him to the edge of the balcony and they stood at the wooden rail and looked down to where below there was an outdoor swimming pool cut into the rock. The jade-green water was veined in its depths with quivering white outlines, as if giant transparent amoebas were floating and flickering there. The child Giselle knelt at the pool’s edge, playing with a tortoise. She wore a checked pink swimsuit with a scalloped hem and an enormous pair of sunglasses. Her hair was in pigtails and tied with checked pink bows. Feeling their eyes on her she turned and looked up at them, lifting a hand to shade her eyes. “She likes it here,” Francoise said.

“And you? Do you like it? Do you feel at home here, among the grown-up people?”

Her hand was beside his on the rail. “I did hope you would come, you know,” she said. “I could not ask you to come, but I hoped you would.”

“Why couldn’t you ask me?”

His hand wanted to close over hers but he held it back.

“Come,” she said, “let’s have our salad.”

They ate sitting on high stools at the white counter. Through the window they could see down to the blue bay far below. The sea was roughly paved with flakes of shimmering white-gold light. “Villefranche is one of the deepest bays along the Cote d’Azur,” Francoise said. “After the war it was crowded with American warships; I saw them. I remember thinking how heartless everything seemed, the sun and the light and the gay people, and so many millions dead.”

Quirke refilled their glasses from the bottle of the sharp and almost colorless picpoul. Francoise turned to him suddenly. “You saw her, yes-you saw Dannie?”

He set down the bottle and kept his gaze fixed on it. “I saw her,” he said.

“How was she?”

He shrugged. “As you would imagine.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“No,” Quirke said, “I’m sure you can’t.”

She looked away.

Giselle came in, still in her swimsuit and carrying the tortoise under her arm. The creature had withdrawn into its shell, and in the shadows there its ancient eyes glinted.

“Say bonjour to Docteur Quirke,” Francoise said.

The child gave him her accustomed skeptical glance. “Hello,” she said.

“What’s he called?” Quirke asked, indicating the tortoise.

“Achille.” She pronounced it in the French way.

“Ah. Achilles. That’s a good joke.”

She gave him that glance again and set the tortoise on the counter. In the back of its shell, in the center, a small white jewel was inset. Francoise spoke to the child in French, and the child shook her head and turned and walked off into the other room and threw herself down on one of the sofas and began to read a comic book. Francoise sighed. “She is on hunger strike,” she murmured. “I cannot get her to eat.”

“She must be very upset, still,” Quirke said. “It’s hardly more than two weeks since her father died.”

Francoise went to the fridge and brought back a dish of small dark olives. “Try these,” she said. “They are from the region, and very good.” He dipped his fingers into the dish and brought up three or four of the oily beads. She was watching him again. “How is your friend, the detective-?”

“Hackett.”

“He will take care of Dannie, yes?”

“Oh, yes,” Quirke said, “he’ll take care of her, all right.”

“What will they do to her? They will let her off, surely?”

He lifted a cold eye to hers. “They’ll put her away for life,” he said, “in the Dundrum Hospital for the Criminally Insane. That’s what they’ll do.”

Her eyes once more skittered away from his. She picked up her glass; it trembled slightly in her hand. “Is it a terrible place?” she asked.

“Yes.” He held his gaze steady on her. “Yes, it is.”

She gathered up their plates; she had eaten almost nothing. “Come,” she said softly, glancing over her shoulder in her daughter’s direction, “let’s go outside again-there are chairs, in the shade.”

The chairs were low and wide, their wood weathered silver-gray like the flooring. Quirke set down his glass at the side of his chair and lit a cigarette. From the angle here they could see through a gap in the landscape all the way to the sea, a wedge of mirage-blue stillness in the distance. The breeze coming down from the hills was soft and carried the perfumes of lavender and wild sage.