Snow

by John Banville

  ‘Are you sure you should be out?’ Strafford said. ‘You don’t look well.’

  Radford shrugged.

  ‘What was that everyone was drinking?’ he asked peevishly. ‘Punch? And I suppose it’s all gone.’

  He took charge, splitting up the search party into pairs and assigning them directions. The Colonel went off to the stables, saying he had to tend to the horses, and that he would join the search later. He didn’t fancy plodding the fields with a crowd of locals. He had a position to maintain, after all.

  Doctor Hafner arrived as the party was moving off. He rolled down the window of his car and called out to Strafford to know what was going on. Strafford told him.

  ‘That’s awkward,’ Hafner said, ‘losing a man. Should I borrow a pair of boots and join in? Not that I’m much good in open country. Anyway, I’m here to see her ladyship.’

  Strafford wondered if he came every day. Such assiduous attentiveness to a single patient was surely beyond the call of duty. He looked at the fellow’s bristling eyebrows, his sharply knowing eyes, his burly hands clutching the steering wheel. Would Sylvia receive him, too, in her parlour, reclining on the yellow sofa, with a blanket over her bare knees? Would she show him, as she had shown Strafford, the chilblain on her little toe?

  Strafford and Sergeant Radford set off down the drive together. Radford was smoking a cigarette, which of course made him cough.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ he panted, when the coughing fit had passed. He wiped his mouth with the back of a gloved hand.

  ‘You don’t like—?’

  ‘Searching, like this.’

  ‘You needn’t have come.’

  Radford was looking about and scowling.

  ‘It’s a couple of months since we lost our lad,’ he said, with seeming inconsequence. He began to cough again, and threw the cigarette away half-smoked.

  ‘How did he die?’ Strafford asked.

  ‘He rode his bicycle over to Curracloe strand one evening and walked into the sea. We searched for him all night.’

  ‘What age?’

  ‘Nineteen. He was going to be an engineer, had a scholarship to the university.’

  They were passing by the line of parked vehicles. The fire engine smelled of oil and cooling metal.

  ‘Do you know why he did it?’ Strafford asked, and wondered if it had sounded callous.

  Radford didn’t answer, only shook his head.

  They came to the gate at the end of the drive. Strafford looked to right and left. The flakes of snow were more numerous now, blowing this way and that on the blued air. Some of them were managing to fall upwards. The wind was light. A brumous glow lay on the fields. Strafford saw the figure of a young man walking into waves, striding forward effortfully and swinging his arms.

  ‘Which way do you want to go?’ Radford asked.

  ‘I don’t know. What do you think?’

  ‘It doesn’t make much difference. We’re not going to find him, you know that as well as I do.’

  ‘You found your son.’

  Radford shook his head again. He was gazing off in the direction of Mount Leinster, a squat white cone on the horizon. He turned left, and Strafford turned with him.

  ‘As a matter of fact, we didn’t find him,’ Radford said. ‘Someone reported seeing him in Curracloe earlier that night, so we searched the shoreline, the dunes, the road up to the village. Three days we kept at it. I knew there was no hope. A week later he was washed up on the shore out at the Raven Point. I had to identify him.’ He glanced sideways at Strafford. ‘Ever seen a body that’s been in the water that long? No? Count yourself lucky.’

  Reck’s van approached behind them, its springs and mudguards rattling. Strafford glimpsed through the misted side window a big pallid face and a shock of red hair. It was Fonsey. He kept his eyes on the road as he drove past, and didn’t slow down.

  Radford tramped along, stoop-shouldered. His coat was so bulky he had to hold his arms out at an angle from his sides. He looked like a retired boxer, punch-drunk and exhausted.

  ‘Laurence was his name,’ he said.

  ‘Your son?’

  ‘Wouldn’t let us call him Larry. His mother used to tease him. Gentleman Jim was her name for him. Told him he thought he was too good for us. They were close, the boy and his mother.’ He pointed a thumb back over his shoulder. ‘He used to go up there, to the House. Played tennis in the summer – there’s a court out at the back – parties at Christmas. The Osborne girl used to invite him. She was sweet on him – what’s her name?’

  ‘Lettie?’

  ‘I couldn’t see anything there for him. A Garda sergeant’s son and His Lord High Majesty Osborne’s daughter? Ah, no.’

  ‘Could that have been the reason why he—?’ Strafford began, but stopped.

  ‘Why he did away with himself? No. She was sweet on him, but I don’t think’ – he hesitated a second – ‘I don’t think it worked the other way.’

  They came to the bend in the road where the barn owl had flown into Strafford’s headlights. It was snowing steadily now. They stood together in the shelter of a thorn tree. Mount Leinster had disappeared in the falling whiteness.

  ‘This is a waste of time,’ Radford said.

  ‘Yes, I know. I imagine the others will have given up by now, anyway.’

  They turned and set off back the way they had come.

  ‘I’m sorry about your son,’ Strafford said.

  ‘Aye. He was a good lad. I don’t think his mother will ever get over it.’

  Neither spoke again until they had come to the gate and were walking up the drive. The firemen had returned, and were gathered around the engine, peeling off their oilskins and cursing the snow, preparing to depart.

  Strafford spoke to the driver. They had combed through Ballyglass Wood, the man said, and had found nothing. They would come out tomorrow again, if the snow cleared. Strafford thanked him, and waved farewell to the other men.

  Radford had got behind the wheel of his ancient Ford. ‘Sorry about your man,’ he said. ‘We’d never have found him in this weather, and anyway the daylight will be gone soon. Probably he took shelter somewhere.’

  Strafford shook his head.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

  ‘You think he’s gone?’

  ‘Yes. I shouldn’t have called out all these men. It was a waste.’ The snow was getting under the collar of his coat. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  Still Radford made no move to shut the car door. He had started the engine and was giving the accelerator little jabs with his foot, making the engine whine.

  ‘What will you do?’ he asked.

  Strafford looked away, frowning. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Will we try again tomorrow?’

  ‘I doubt it would be worthwhile.’

  Radford, facing the windscreen, nodded. He was thinking of something else – his son again, probably.

  ‘You know you said about the priest being popular?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He was – and a lot of people were popular with him.’ He revved the engine again, sharply this time, and it gave a shriek of protest. The wipers were having a hard time dealing with the snow. He turned them off, and Strafford leaned over the bonnet and used his glove to make a clear patch in the glass. ‘My son, my boy, he was popular with him,’ he said, still looking straight ahead. ‘Very popular, with the reverend father, he was. That I know for a fact.’

  He put the car into gear then, slammed shut the door, and drove off down the potholed drive, the car rocking on its springs.

  23

  Strafford arrived in the hall just as Doctor Hafner was getting ready to leave. His black bag was at his feet, and he was knotting a tartan scarf at his throat.

  ‘What’s it like out there?’ he asked. ‘Bad as it looks?’ Strafford said it was. The doctor was eyeing the big black coat that he wore. ‘I thought you were the Colonel, when you came in the door.’

  �
�Oh, yes, the coat,’ Strafford said. ‘He lent it to me.’

  Hafner was adjusting the brim of his hat. He had already put on his galoshes. ‘No luck with the search, I take it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sorry to hear it.’ He moved towards the door, then turned back. ‘By the way, why didn’t you tell me yesterday what happened to Father Tom?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me he was stabbed, and thrown down the stairs?’

  ‘He wasn’t.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He wasn’t thrown down the stairs.’

  ‘What I meant,’ Hafner said coldly, ‘was that you didn’t say he was murdered.’ He stepped closer, and lowered his voice. ‘Is it true they cut his balls off?’

  ‘“They”?’

  ‘I assume it was burglars. That’s what the Colonel says. Is he wrong?’

  ‘Yes, he is wrong. It wasn’t burglars.’

  ‘Then—?’

  ‘How is Mrs Osborne? How is she feeling?’

  ‘This business hasn’t done her nerves any good.’

  ‘When you say “her nerves”, what do you mean, exactly?’

  Hafner chuckled. ‘Now you expect me to give you information? Aside from the fact that it’s none of your business, there is such a thing as the Hippocratic Oath.’

  Strafford nodded. ‘I just wondered what kind of treatment you were giving her. Which kind of drugs, for instance.’

  Hafner’s already florid brow had turned to a shade of brick red. ‘I don’t like your tone, Inspector. What’s it to you, anyway, what I’m prescribing?’

  ‘I noticed the pupils of Mrs Osborne’s eyes.’

  ‘Did you, now? You got close enough to have a good look?’

  ‘They were contracted.’

  Somewhere in the house someone was playing music on a gramophone.

  ‘Do a bit of doctoring on the side, do you?’ Hafner enquired nastily.

  Strafford was imagining him as a student, flushed and sweating in crowded bars, always with a different girl on his arm, shouting at Saturday afternoon rugby matches, cheating in his exams.

  The distant music stopped abruptly, as the needle was lifted from the groove.

  Hafner said, ‘Listen, Inspector – what’s your name again?’

  ‘Strafford.’

  ‘Strafford, right – I’ll remember it next time. A word of advice: stick to finding out whoever it was that murdered the priest, and keep your nose out of other people’s affairs.’

  He put on his hat and went to the door. Opening it, he stopped and turned, with a hand on the knob, gave Strafford a last bold stare, and was gone.

  There was stillness all around. Strafford could hear Mrs Duffy and Kathleen the maid talking together far off in the kitchen. He stood motionless, listening. The music started up again, upstairs. He went into the drawing room. It was deserted, and the fire was out. Snow billowed against the tall windows. He thought of Jenkins. They weren’t close. Hadn’t been.

  Ambrose Jenkins. He saw the name in his mind, the letters of it carved as if on a tombstone.

  He tapped on the door of Sylvia Osborne’s little parlour, and got no response. He put his head into the room. The only sign of her was the blanket, left in a heap on the sofa. Since Hafner had been here he supposed she would be upstairs, in her room, sleeping. He wondered what kind of drug it was that Hafner was giving her. Whatever it was, everyone would turn a blind eye, the family, the servants, the chemist, Sergeant Radford. Nowhere as discreetly forbearing as a small town.

  He should phone Hackett and tell him about Jenkins, that he hadn’t turned up, that most likely he was dead.

  The music stopped again.

  He went up by the back stairs, and into the corridor along which the priest had walked to his death. He knew by now, more or less, which bedroom was which. Dominic’s was next to the window, and Lettie’s was on the other side, two doors along. The little room where the priest had slept was on that side too.

  That left three vacant bedrooms. He tried the doors. Two of them were locked, the third one, opposite Lettie’s room, was not. He stepped inside.

  The shutters were fastened, and in the gloom he made out the shapes of a bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a chair. The air was dank. He searched his pockets and found the box of Swan Vestas he had forgotten to put back on the mantelpiece in Mrs Osborne’s parlour. He struck one, and crouched down and scanned the threshold. On the inner side of it there was a deposit of dust, smooth and undisturbed. No one had been in this room for a long time.

  He walked back down the corridor, stepped through the narrow passageway – the missing bulb hadn’t been replaced – and stopped again, looking back along the corridor. He tried to imagine the priest coming out of his room, fastening the button at the back of his clerical collar. Why had he put it on? Three paces would have brought him from the door to the entrance to the passageway. There would have been a light on in the corridor, but not in the passage – would he have noticed the missing bulb?

  Maybe he hadn’t been coming from his room. Maybe he’d been returning there, from somewhere else. He might have been downstairs. He might have been meeting someone. Sylvia Osborne had been awake, wandering the house, in a drugged stupor, but sleepless. He was thinking of the semen stain Harry Hall had found on the priest’s trousers. Who could know all that goes on in an old house late at night?

  The sound of the gramophone started up yet again, close by. It was coming from Lettie’s room. He knocked on the door.

  Lettie was wearing a pink and blue kimono. She flung open the door and stood in the doorway, a lock of hair fallen over one eye. ‘This is my Dietrich look,’ she said, in a sultry voice. ‘What do you think?’

  He tried to see past her, into the room. There was a narrow wooden bed with a crimson eiderdown, a desk by one wall, a table by another, with a cheap gramophone on it, the turntable spinning. The song was ‘Falling in Love Again’.

  ‘I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ he said.

  ‘Yes you did.’ She smiled, cocking an eyebrow. Her breath smelled of cigarette smoke. ‘But you’re not disturbing me, as a matter of fact. Or if you are, I don’t mind.’ She put her head out and glanced right and left along the corridor. ‘What are you doing? I heard you poking about, thought it must be the Ballyglass ghost.’

  ‘I wanted to check again – are you sure you heard nothing yesterday morning, when Father Lawless was attacked? There must have been a scuffle, a cry – something.’

  She groaned, assuming a look of agonising boredom.

  ‘I told you, I was asleep. Someone could have fired off a shotgun out here and I wouldn’t have woken up. Do you not believe me?’

  ‘I do, I do believe you. But people often hear things without realising it. Concentrate, and try to remember?’

  ‘Concentrate how? Concentrate on what? I’ve told you. I – was – asleep.’

  He nodded.

  ‘If you’re going to remain standing here, why don’t you come in? What if Ma Duffy spotted you, loitering at the bedroom door of the daughter of the house? A girl has to look out for her reputation, you know.’

  The song had ended; the needle clicked and clicked in the turning groove.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Strafford said, and turned aside.

  She stepped out into the corridor to watch him walk away. He could see her faintly reflected in the glass of the French window at the end of the corridor. She put out her tongue at him and flung open her kimono. Underneath, she was naked.

  He went downstairs. Colonel Osborne met him in the hall.

  ‘Any luck with your colleague?’ The Colonel was wearing his shooting jacket, and still had on his leather leggings.

  ‘No,’ Strafford answered. ‘We abandoned the search – the snow was coming on too heavily.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a fair old blizzard, all right. If it keeps up like this there’ll be a foot of it by morning.’

  It seemed to Strafford the snow w
as falling not only on the world but in his head, too. It might go on falling for ever, steadily, silently, muffling all sound, all movement. He shut his eyes and pressed a fingertip hard against the bridge of his nose. Explorers at the poles often imagined there was an extra person walking beside them.

  ‘Look,’ the Colonel said, being the bluff uncle now, ‘seeing the night that’s in it, why don’t you stay and have a bite to eat with us? We’re dining early, since the children are going to some party or other – though I’m blessed if I know how they’ll get there, with the state of the roads.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Strafford said, caught off guard and without a ready excuse. So often a polite upbringing proved a disadvantage.

  *

  There was rabbit stew for dinner.

  In the modestly sized dining room an enormous chandelier, converted to electricity, dangled oppressively over a mahogany table. The table was so vast it hardly allowed space enough for Mrs Duffy, going around with pot and ladle, to get past the backs of the diners’ chairs. The Algerian rotgut made its second appearance of the day, in two cut-glass decanters, one at either end of the table. The wine gave off an evil rubious glitter. Everything on the table was old, the plates, the knobbly silver cutlery, the frayed linen napkins, the dented salt cellar. Strafford sighed. The old home, again.

  The Colonel presided at the head of the table. He had changed into a dinner jacket. On the left breast was pinned an array of army decorations. Sylvia Osborne languished at the other end of the table. She wore an evening gown of dark-green silk, which gave her a shimmering, sylph-like aspect, or would have, if it hadn’t been for the Colonel’s tweed hunting jacket draped over her shoulders, inside which she huddled for warmth. Dominic looked handsome in a black silk jacket and an open-necked white shirt. Lettie was in her kimono still, under a heavy black overcoat, buttoned at the throat. She also had on woollen fingerless gloves, knitted in shades of purple and orange. The room was very cold.