Benjamin Black - Even the Dead

“‘The dead arose and appeared to many’!” he exclaimed, with a broad smile. “Dr. Quirke — is it yourself, or am I seeing things?”

“Hello, Inspector,” Quirke said, stopping in front of him and smiling too, though not so broadly.

“Do you know what it is,” Hackett said. “When I saw you I nearly swallowed the teaspoon, I was that surprised. ’Tis fresh and well you’re looking.”

Quirke was pleased to see his old companion-in-arms, more pleased than he had expected he would be. He was amused, too: he had noticed before how Hackett, when he was startled or unsure, fell at once into his stage-Irish act, lisping and winking, bejapers-ing and begorrah-ing, all his usual stealth and watchfulness shrunk to a gleam in the depths of his colorless little eyes.

“May I sit?” Quirke inquired. It was always the way: when Hackett started Syngeing, Quirke’s response was to turn into Oscar Wilde. Well, they were a pair, no doubt of that, though what they were a pair of, he wasn’t sure.

He sat down.

“What will you have?” Hackett asked. “A glass of wine, maybe, or a ball of malt — or is it too early in the day for the juice of the barley?”

“I’m afraid it’s always too early, these days,” Quirke said, putting his hat on the floor under his chair.

Hackett threw himself back with an exaggerated stare of amazement. “What? You’re not telling me you’re after taking the pledge?”

“No, of course not. I have a glass of dry sherry at Christmastime, and on my birthday a snipe of barley wine.”

The Inspector laughed, his paunch heaving, and flapped a dismissive hand. “Get away with you,” he said, “and stop pulling my leg. Miss!” He waved to a passing waitress, who veered towards them. “This man,” he said to her, “will take a glass of the finest white wine you have in the shop — am I right, Dr. Quirke? A nice Chablis, now, if I remember, would be your lunchtime preference.”

Quirke smiled at the waitress. She was tall and fair with pale pink eyelids and pale blue eyes. “Tomato juice,” he said. “With Worcester sauce and—”

“Is it a Virgin Mary you’re after?” she said tartly.

“The very thing.” A Virgin Mary, no less! He wouldn’t have thought such a drink was known on this side of the Atlantic. What next? Gin slings? Whiskey sours? Highballs? Maybe the country was changing, after all.

Hackett was still regarding him with his broadest frog grin, the arc of his mouth stretching almost from ear to ear. He seemed to have, of all things, a suntan — below the line of his hat brim, anyway, above which his high, flat forehead was its accustomed shade of soft and faintly glistening baby pink.

“Have you been away?” Quirke asked.

Hackett stared. “How did you know?”

“The bronzed and fit look.”

“Ah. Well. Now. I was off,” he said, his pale forehead flushing and even his tan darkening a little, “in a place called Málaga, down in the south of Spain. Have you been there?” Quirke shook his head, and Hackett, glancing to right and left, leaned forward conspiratorially. “To tell you the truth, Doctor,” he murmured, “it’s a terrible place. People rooking you right and left, and all the women half naked on the beach and even in the streets. I couldn’t wait to get home. Mrs. Hackett”—he gave a discreet little cough—“Mrs. Hackett thought it was grand.” He poured cold tea into his cup and took a slurp of it. “And what about yourself?”

“Oh, I was away too,” he said. “Not in the sunny south of Spain, however.”

Hackett frowned. “You weren’t off again in — in that drying-out place, I hope?”

“John of the Cross?” The Hospital of St. John of the Cross was where Quirke had sequestered himself on more than one occasion to give his liver a chance to recover from the alcoholic insults he had been subjecting it to for more years than he cared to count. “No, not there. I was in a cottage hospital, out beyond the Strawberry Beds. Small, quiet, nice. Very restful.”

The Inspector was still regarding him with concern. “Nerves, was it?”

“Sort of. It seems my brain took a bit of a bashing that time those two knocked me down the area steps and kicked the stuffing out of me.”

“But sure that was years ago!”

“That’s the past for you: it comes back to haunt.”

The waitress brought Quirke’s drink, and Hackett asked her if he could have a jug of boiling water to revive the tea leaves in the pot. She offered to bring a fresh pot, but he wouldn’t hear of it. “‘A pot of tay will take two goes’—that’s what my old mother always said.”

Quirke smiled, covering his mouth; Hackett by now was well on his way down the Old Bog Road. The eyes, though, were sharp as ever.

“By the way,” Hackett said, when the waitress had gone, “how did you know where to find me? Or was it just a happy coincidence?”

“I went round to Pearse Street. Your man, Sergeant Jenkins, whispered to me that you might be here. He made me swear not to tell you it was him gave you away, so not a word, right? I must say, you do yourself well. Lunch at the Gresham, no less!”

“Ah, now you’re teasing me, Dr. Quirke, I know you are.”

The hot water came and he slopped it into the pot. Quirke was always fascinated by Hackett’s clumsiness, which, mysteriously, tended to come and go, depending on the circumstances. Did he put it on, as a diversionary tactic, or was it a sign of mental agitation? No doubt he was itching to know just what it was that had brought Quirke here to seek him out. Right now he was watching Quirke over the rim of his refilled cup, those little eyes glinting.

“I came to consult you about something,” Quirke said. “There was a crash in the Phoenix Park early this morning. You heard about it?”

“I did. Some poor young fellow, ran into a tree and got burnt to a crisp. Suicide, by the look of it, my fellows are saying.”

He put down his cup. No clumsiness now.

“Well, my second-in-command,” Quirke said, “and probably soon to be commander in chief, young Sinclair, came to see me earlier.”

“Did he go all the way out to the Strawberry Beds?”

“No, no, I wasn’t in hospital. I’m staying for the moment with my — with Malachy Griffin and his wife, at their place on Ailesbury Road. They very kindly offered to take me in and look after me while I convalesced from whatever it is I’m supposed to be convalescing from.”

“Ah, right. And how is Dr. Griffin? Is he enjoying his retirement?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you tell me? That’s a pity, now, a real pity.”

“He has taken up gardening,” Quirke said.

“Gardening, is it! That’s a fine pastime. Will you give him my best regards? He’s a decent man, the same Dr. Griffin.”

They eyed each other in silence for a moment. Mal Griffin had not always been the decent man he had since become, and for a long time had covered up things that should not have been covered up. Old water, Quirke thought, under old bridges.

“Anyway,” he said, taking a sip of his glutinous, brownish-red drink, “what Sinclair had come to talk to me about was this poor chap who hit the tree up in the park.”

“Is that so?” Hackett said mildly, looking into his cup. Cautious, now, Quirke thought, cautious yet keen, an old dog sniffing blood on the air.

“There’s a contusion on the side of the skull, just here.” He pointed to a spot behind his temple and just above his ear. “Sinclair thought it seemed suspicious, and called me in to have a look at it.”

“And did you?”

“I did. And I agreed with him.”

Hackett leaned back slowly in his chair, with his lips pursed and his chin lowered. “Suspicious in what way? In a way that made it seem the poor fellow didn’t come by it due to his unfortunate meeting with that mighty oak?”