Benjamin Black - Even the Dead

“It’s a serious matter,” Hackett said. “Did you hear it on the news, or see it in the paper, about that crash in the Phoenix Park on Thursday night? Lisa Smith was acquainted with the young man who died.”

Abercrombie’s expression did not change. Quirke and the detective watched him closely. “I told you,” Abercrombie said, “there’s no one by that name in number seventeen. Now, can I finish my dinner?”

Hackett sighed. He knew this moment well: the frustrating, the infuriating, moment when, convinced he was being lied to, he could do nothing about it except retreat and try to devise some way of catching out the liar another time, by some means other than straightforward questioning.

“Thanks for your time,” he said, turning away.

Abercrombie made no move to accompany them to the door, only stood there at a stoop in the middle of his foul-smelling domain and watched them with a sardonic eye as they filed out. The last thing Quirke saw as he shut the door behind them was the sickly, candy-pink glow of the Sacred Heart light and the soft-bearded image above it, following him with its sorrowfully accusing gaze.

They went down the steps to the street, and Hackett looked about. “We forgot about Wallace,” he said. “He’s probably after driving around half of south County Dublin, looking for us.”

They walked back to the corner and turned into the street of red-brick houses. The squad car was double-parked outside No. 17. Wallace, spotting them in the rearview mirror, hopped out eagerly and began opening doors for them.

“Did you believe him — Abercrombie?” Quirke asked, as they settled themselves again in the back seat.

“No. Did you?”

They turned away from each other, as the car pulled ahead, and each gazed out of his window, wondering why they had been lied to.

“Abercrombie,” Hackett said. “If you’d seen that joker in the street, now, would you have imagined he had a name like that?”

Quirke smiled, and didn’t bother to reply.

That evening Quirke took Phoebe to dinner at the Russell Hotel. It was their favorite place in town, although Phoebe always fretted about the cost. They went through a routine each time they came there to dine. Phoebe would scan the menu and shake her head at the prices and say they were disgraceful, to which Quirke would reply that they were exactly the same as they had been the last time they were here, and that anyway a lady should never read a menu from right to left. If she persisted, he would close the exchange by pretending to take umbrage and saying that it was his money and he would spend it as he wished, and that one of the ways he wished to spend it was on treating his daughter to a decent dinner. And then they would smile at each other, and the evening would have officially begun.

The waiter came and they ordered, grouse for Quirke and fish for Phoebe.

“You remind me of your mother when you argue with me about money,” Quirke said to her. “You narrow your eyes and purse your mouth in just the way she used to do.”

“I wish you’d talk about her more,” Phoebe said.

“Do you? I don’t know what I could tell you. I remember her in a strange way.”

“Strange?”

“I’m not sure it’s really her I’m remembering. In my memory she has become a kind of — I don’t know — a kind of mythical figure.” He smiled, a touch sheepishly. “She’s my legend, you could say.”

“She’s very beautiful, in her photographs.”

“Yes, she was lovely.” He frowned, running his fingers over the tablecloth, feeling its texture. “She had the most wonderful skin, smooth as silk, and always cool, somehow, even in the hottest weather.”

The waiter brought the bottle of Chablis that Quirke had ordered, displayed the label and drew out the cork and tipped a drop into Quirke’s glass. Quirke tasted, nodded, the wine was poured, the waiter went away. Quirke always savored this little ritual; it was like a children’s game that grown-ups were still allowed to play.

Father and daughter clinked glasses. Phoebe had on her black dress with the lace collar. She never wore jewelry.

“This is the first drink I’ve had all week,” Quirke said; it was only a white lie. “I hope you’re proud of me.”

Their first course arrived. They were both having smoked salmon.

“Did you know the Russell started up as a temperance hotel?” Quirke said. “Sir Somebody Russell opened it in — I can’t remember when. He was very hot on the fight against the demon drink.”

Phoebe arched an eyebrow. “Well,” she said, “I imagine Sir Somebody has been doing a lot of turning in his grave in the meantime.”

Quirke pushed his plate away and leaned back in his chair, the wine already spreading its warm tendrils along his veins. “This is about the last place in Dublin that makes real turtle soup,” he said, “did you know that?”

He could see she wasn’t listening. Her mood had darkened suddenly. She too had pushed her plate away, and sat with her eyes lowered, fiddling with the remains of a bread roll.

“What are we going to do?” she said in a low, urgent voice. “Whatever that man said to you, Lisa does live there. I was in her flat — her things were there.”

He had told her how he and Inspector Hackett had gone to Rathmines, how they had talked to the young man in the dirty undershirt and afterwards to Abercrombie, and how both men had insisted they knew nothing of any Lisa Smith.

“If she does live there,” Quirke said, “she must have given you a false name. You said yourself her name didn’t sound convincing.”

They drank their wine. A waitress came and took away their plates, and the waiter returned and refilled their wine glasses. The dining room had no windows, and the air was close and uncomfortably warm. Quirke loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt collar. His thoughts went back to Delia and her pale, cool skin. His brief time with her had been a kind of ecstatic torment. She had been his obsession; he couldn’t get enough of her. She knew it, and would withhold herself, just for the pleasure of seeing him squirm, of having him plead. Had she ever loved him? For a brief time, he supposed; otherwise why would she have married him? He had never understood her. What he had said to Phoebe wasn’t really true. Delia wasn’t a legend; she was an enigma. His sphinx, beautiful, desperately loved, and malign.

Their main courses arrived.

“Will you see if you can get a list of the people who were in that course with you?” Quirke said. “Maybe one of the names will jog your memory.”

Phoebe hadn’t touched her main course. “I’m convinced something bad has happened to her,” she said.

“You don’t know that. Maybe she changed her mind about staying at the house. Maybe she was frightened there, more frightened than she already was, and left and went somewhere else — maybe she even came back to Dublin.”

“How could she? She had no car — I drove her down, remember.”

“She could have got a hackney cab.”

Phoebe shook her head. “No, no,” she said. “There wasn’t a trace of her having been there. She wouldn’t have done that herself, would she?”

“Maybe she’s obsessively tidy?”

“No,” Phoebe said again, more vehemently this time. “Someone had made sure there wasn’t a mark left to show she’d been there. She just disappeared, as if—”

A couple had appeared in the doorway, and stopped there a moment to survey the room. The man was in black tie. He was in his late twenties, perhaps, boyish-looking, with thin fair hair and a sharp, clever-seeming face. The woman was older, in her forties, a little on the heavy side, but attractively so, with a broad face and large, dark eyes. Her hair was prematurely streaked with gray, and cut in an untidy line just below her ears. She had, to Quirke’s eye, what he could only define as a dignified beauty. Her gaze fell on Phoebe, and she smiled.