Benjamin Black - A Death in Summer

Quirke wanted a drink. The bottle of picpoul was three-quarters empty. He offered it to Francoise but she shook her head, and he filled his own glass. The wine had warmed up; it did not matter.

The tortoise was gone, and in its place on the counter was a snow globe; he recognized it, with the little town inside it, the miniature streets and the chateau and its pointed tower. They went into the other room and sat down on the sofa where the child had sat. Quirke offered his case and Francoise took a cigarette. It was so strange, Quirke thought, so strange to be here, in these rich surroundings, drinking wine and smoking, as if there were nothing except that, two people sitting in a white room in a sunny town, being themselves, being together.

Francoise said, “That Sunday she told me, Dannie told me, what had gone on between her and Richard for so many years. Richard must have been-I don’t know.” She leaned forward and dashed the tip of her cigarette at an ashtray standing on the low table. “Is it possible to be addicted to such things?”

“It’s possible to be obsessed, yes,” Quirke said.

“But with him, you know, I do not think- obsession does not seem the right word. He was like a man with a-a pastime, a hobby. It amused him, it entertained him, to use these children, the boys at the orphanage, young people at the newspaper, poor little Marie our maid, Dannie his sister-his sister. Yes, it amused him. Can you understand this? Him and those other devils, destroying lives, destroying souls, for their amusement. ”

They were silent for a time; then Quirke spoke. “Do you know a man called Costigan?”

She waved a hand in a dismissive gesture, as if pushing aside a cobweb. “I do not know names. There was a group of them.”

“The Friends of St. Christopher’s.”

She gave a bitter laugh. “Yes, that is what they called themselves.” She turned herself sideways on the sofa to look at him. “You know they used that place as a brothel, yes? The priest, Ambrose, he was the-what is the word?-the souteneur. ”

“The pander?”

“Yes, the pander-the pimp.”

Quirke stood up and went to the counter again and poured the last of the wine, and walked with his glass to the window with the palm in it and looked down towards the bay. The child was down there, with her nurse, walking along by the water. He heard Francoise approach and stop behind him.

“Why did you leave like that,” he asked, not turning to her, “without even a telephone call?”

She was behind him now; he could feel the warmth of her and smell her perfume. “I told you,” she said. “That night in the garden, when Giselle went back to the house and we had to search for her-I thought I had lost her. I thought they had got her.”

“‘They’?”

“Richard’s people. I was so frightened, in such a panic. You do not know what they are like, what they are capable of.”

He saw himself again in Mount Street, staring into the gutter, at what was lying there. He had not told her about Sinclair.

He turned to face her. “Tell me what happened, that Sunday.”

There was a silence. She was looking at him now as she had not looked at him before, as if for the first time, her head tilted to the side and her eyes narrowed. “You know,” she said softly, “don’t you.”

He nodded.

“When?” she whispered.

“The day we had lunch, that first time, at the Hibernian. You tried to get me to suspect that Carlton Sumner had killed your husband.”

“But-how?”

“I don’t know. But I knew it had to be you.”

“And Dannie-?”

“Dannie couldn’t have done it, I was certain of that. Maguire? No. Carlton Sumner? Possible, but very unlikely. His son, Teddy? No. So that left you.”

“You knew, and yet you-we-”

“Yes.”

Yes, he thought, I knew, and still I went with you, over to the side of night.

The shore was a pebbled slope running sharply down into a sluggish sea. Directly before them a huge yellow-gold moon sat fatly just above the horizon, its broadening track shimmering and swaying upon the inky water. Fishing boats were out there, they could see their bobbing lights, and more than once they thought they heard the fishermen calling to each other. The night air was soft and cool. They sat on a wooden bench at the edge of the pebbles. Quirke was smoking a cigarette, and Francoise lay against him with her head on his shoulder and her legs drawn up under her. Maria had put the child to bed, and they had come down the hill to walk by the sea. Now they sat listening to the waves at their ceaseless small turning.

“She told me that day, you see,” Francoise said. “Dannie told me not only about what Richard had done to her for all those years when she was a child, but what Richard was doing now with Giselle. She had spoken to him that morning, had pleaded with him, but of course he only laughed in her face. I had you when you were young, he said to her, now I have a new one, all of my own. When I arrived at Brooklands I found her lying on the floor-on the floor, yes-curled up, you know, like a little baby. At first she would say nothing; then she told me. She had his shotgun on the floor beside her. She said she had tried to make herself go up to the office again and confront him, threaten him-shoot him, even. But she was not strong enough.”

“And you were.”

“Yes, I was.” She took the cigarette from his fingers and drew on it with a quick, hissing sound and then gave it back to him. How eerie the smoke looked when she exhaled it, like ectoplasm dispersing into the darkness. “Will you believe me,” she said, “if I tell you that I have no memory of doing it? Or no, no, I have one memory. It is of Richard’s face when he heard me behind him and turned. He was sitting at his desk, going through papers. He was wearing his old tweed jacket with-what do you call them?-patches, yes, leather patches on the elbows. It was what he always wore when he was dealing with the horses, he thought it brought him luck. When he turned and saw me, with the gun, do you know what he did? He smiled. Such a strange smile. Did he think I was playing a joke? No-no, I think he knew very well what I was going to do. And he smiled. What did it mean-can you say?”

But Quirke said nothing.

“And then,” Francoise said, “I must have fired the gun, straight into his face.”

They walked up the hill slowly, laboriously, as if they had suddenly become old. By now the moon had swung itself higher above the bay, and below them its gold track on the sea had narrowed. There were night birds of some kind, pale things, swooping in silence furtively among the palms. Music was playing somewhere, dance-band music, tiny and gay in the distance. They could hear the faint swish of traffic, too, far off down on the Promenade. Quirke looked up and saw a strew of stars like a smear of mist down the center of the sky.

As they came through the gates they could see the lights of the house up on the rock, burning behind the glass sidewall.

“He used to taunt me, you know,” Francoise said. “He never admitted anything, of course, but he knew I knew, and he would tease me. He brought Marie from the orphanage to work for us. She had been a child when she started there, and now she was too old for him, but still he wanted to keep her, as he wanted to keep them all, as if they were trophies, to display before his friends, before me.” She leaned against Quirke as if she suddenly felt faint. “How could I have let him do such things? How could I? And how could I let him go on doing them?”

They went up in the little lift together, not speaking. The sense of her, the smell of her, so near to him. The gate of the lift clattered open.