Benjamin Black - Even the Dead

“You’ll keep me informed,” Corless said.

“Oh, I will indeed. What I’m going to do is, I’m going to shake the web. I’m going to give it a good shake, and see what might come running out.”

Corless was studying him, his head to one side. “What will you do if you find out for definite that my son was killed?”

They could hear the wireless playing in the shop beside them. This time Hackett couldn’t identify the tune.

“I’ll look for the killer, and bring him to justice,” he said. “What else would I do?”

Corless laughed shortly.

“Oh, right,” he said. “What else would you do.”

Hackett walked away. When he reached the corner and glanced back, Corless was still standing in the doorway, watching him. Hackett waved, he wasn’t sure why, and turned down North Frederick Street. Outside Findlater’s Church, a one-legged beggar leaned against the wall, playing a mouth organ.

Should he have told Corless that Lisa Smith was expecting his grandson? He judged the man had enough momentous things to deal with already.

Shake the web, yes; shake the web.

Phoebe was surprised when Dr. Blake asked if she could accompany her to lunch. Mr. Jolly had just left at the end of his session, looking secretive and conspiratorial. He paused as he passed by Phoebe’s desk and leaned down and whispered excitedly, “Oh, I’ve been a naughty boy — a very naughty boy!” She supposed he was harmless, although Mrs. Jolly, if there was one, probably wouldn’t agree. She was clearing up her desk when Dr. Blake came out and said to her, “Oh, Phoebe, are you going to that place you told me about, that nice café in that nice cool basement? Perhaps I will come with you. You’ll permit, yes?”

They walked along Fitzwilliam Square in the sun.

“We have a key to the gate here, haven’t we?” Dr. Blake said.

“Yes. I think they’re only supposed to be for residents, but there is one in the office.”

“Good. We should bring a picnic lunch one day and have it in there, in the square. It would be so nice. This fine weather will not last, and then we will be sorry.”

Phoebe glanced at her sidelong. She seemed to be smiling to herself. She was in a strange mood today. Maybe it was the effect of her hour with Mr. Jolly, for she was somewhat as he had been, as if she had a secret and was brimming over with it.

Phoebe wondered more and more keenly what exactly it was that went on behind the consulting room’s reinforced door. Surely it would be boring, sitting for hour after hour, listening to people pouring out their troubles, their obsessions, their manias. She supposed it must be part of a psychiatrist’s training to sit very still and just listen. In her deepest heart she believed that most of Dr. Blake’s patients had nothing wrong with them at all, apart from their ordinary eccentricities — everyone was eccentric, there was no such thing as absolute normality — and that all they were suffering from, if it could be called suffering, was a kind of inverted pride, the arrogance of the self-obsessed.

In the Country Shop they sat at Phoebe’s favorite table by the window. Dr. Blake read the menu with the same calmness and deep concentration she brought to everything she did. “Yes,” she said, “I shall have a salad with some cold chicken. That will be good.”

The waitress came, and they ordered. Phoebe had her usual ham sandwich. Then Dr. Blake leaned forward at the table with her fingers entwined in front of her.

“There is something I wish to talk to you about, Phoebe,” she said. “It is something that might affect our professional relationship, and so we should speak of it, and then”—she moved her hands to the right—“put it aside. Yes?”

Phoebe felt a chill along her spine. Had she done something wrong, was her work not satisfactory? She couldn’t bear the thought of having to give up her office, her desk, her routine that already, in the short time she had been in the job, had become so important for her. She would even miss her encounters with Mr. Jolly, and the thumb sucker, and all the other patients, except maybe the mother with the uncontrollable son.

Dr. Blake was looking at her expectantly, waiting for an answer. But what had the question been?

“I hope,” Phoebe said, “I hope there isn’t anything wrong?”

“No, no,” Dr. Blake said quickly. “There is nothing wrong at all. But last evening, after we left you, I went with your father for a drink. We sat in that nice pub, the one on Baggot Street.”

“Doheny and Nesbitt’s?”

“Yes, yes, that one. We drank whiskey with soda, very nice. Then I drove him to his flat and we sat outside in my car for a long time, talking about all sorts of things, his life, his upbringing, or”—she smiled—“his sad lack of upbringing, and after that we went for a little walk. We sat on a bench by the canal, and he told me — well, he told me about someone he knows who is gravely ill. This has upset him very much, but of course, you know your father — he is aware of so very little of what goes on inside him.” She paused while the waitress set out glasses and a jug of water. “So then, after our talk by the canal, we returned to your father’s flat, and there we went to bed together.”

Phoebe blinked. At once, as if the thing itself had popped up in front of her, she saw in her mind the photograph Quirke kept on his mantelpiece, of himself and Mal, and Sarah and Delia, together long ago, in Boston.

“I see,” she said, falteringly, and then, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what to say.”

Dr. Blake smiled. “Are you shocked? I hope not. There was nothing shocking about it, you know. He is a very sweet man, your father, very gentle, very kind, even. Oh, I know he thinks he is a terrible person, but that’s not so at all. Surely you know this?”

“Yes, I suppose I do,” Phoebe said. “But—”

“But? Yes?”

Phoebe groped for words. She felt so helpless. She was trying to picture Quirke in bed with this large, plain woman, with her baby’s fat upper lip and her cropped, graying hair, her huge, calm, dark eyes. But it was impossible.

“Will you — will you see him again?” she said. “I mean, are you—?”

“Will we be together for some time, is that what you want to ask? That I cannot answer. Certainly, yes, I will see him, it would be strange if I did not, and no doubt I will go to his flat again, and he may come to my house, too.” She paused. “I think I made him a little happy, last night. Oh, it was not just sex, you know, that’s not important, despite what everyone says, even Dr. Freud.” She smiled what for her was a mischievous smile.

“What, then?” Phoebe asked. By now she was genuinely curious — indeed, by now she was in a fever of curiosity.

“Well,” Dr. Blake said, “of that I am not sure. That is, I am not sure why I would have been able to make him happy, and why he would allow himself to be happy with me.” She looked aside, frowning. “That will be for me to consider. Yes, I shall have to think about that.”

My God, Phoebe thought, will Quirke become a case study, to be mulled over, analyzed, maybe even written up one day? The possibility was either appalling or comic; perhaps it was both.

The waitress brought their food. Phoebe didn’t know how she was going to manage to eat it, in this world turned upside down.

“I hope,” Dr. Blake said, “what I have told you will not affect how we are together in the office. Mmm, this chicken is very good. What is this sauce on the salad, though?”

“It comes out of a bottle,” Phoebe said.

“Ah. It does not taste of very much except — what is it? Vinegar?”

“Dr. Blake,” Phoebe said suddenly, “has Mr. Jolly really got a wife?”