A Death in Summer

by Benjamin Black

  “I don’t know-something like that, I suppose. There was a meeting at Sumner’s place in Wicklow and Richard Jewell stormed out in the middle of it.”

  “That sounds serious.”

  Sinclair was frowning into the dregs of his beer. He seemed distracted, and Quirke wondered if he knew more about that angrily terminated meeting in Roundwood than he was prepared to admit. But why would he hold something back? Quirke sighed. That niggle at the far end of his mind was growing more insistent by the minute. The itch to find things out would only be eased by being scratched, yet there was a part of him that would rather put up with the irritation than take on the burden of knowing other people’s sordid secrets. From personal experience he knew about secrets, and just how sordid they could be. “You said the girl, Dannie, has troubles?”

  Sinclair stirred himself out of his thoughts. “She had a breakdown. I don’t know the details.”

  “When was this?”

  “A few months ago. They put her in a place in London, some kind of nursing home. She was there for a long time-weeks. I didn’t know about it until she came back.”

  “She hadn’t told you where she was going?”

  Sinclair gave him a sideways look. “You don’t know Dannie,” he said. “Even when she was well she did things like that, going off without a word to anyone. Last year she went to Marrakech and no one knew where she was until she came back with a suntan and the look of someone who had been doing things she shouldn’t. She has her own money, inherited from her father. It’s probably not good for her.”

  “But she’s better now, yes?” Quirke asked. “I mean in her mind.”

  “Yes,” Sinclair said, but his look was troubled. “Yes, she’s better.”

  “But you’re wondering how she’ll react to her brother’s death.”

  “How did she seem today, when you saw her?”

  “I told you, she and Jewell’s wife put on a show of being cool, though in the end she couldn’t hide the fact of how upset she was. Maybe you should call her, go to see her. Where does she live?”

  “She has a flat in Pembroke Street,” Sinclair said, in a distracted voice. Quirke waited. “She’s a funny person,” Sinclair went on, “secretive, you know? She won’t talk about things, especially not herself. But there are demons there.” He laughed. “You should see her on the tennis court.”

  Quirke had finished his wine and was wondering if he might risk another glass. The taste of it, at once acid and fruitily ripe, had made him feel slightly sick at first, but the alcohol had pierced straight like a gleaming steel needle to some vital place deep inside him, a place that now was clamoring for more.

  “What happened when she had the breakdown?” he asked.

  “She crashed her brother’s car on the Naas dual carriageway. I wouldn’t be surprised if she did it deliberately.”

  “Was she injured?”

  “No. She ran the car into a tree and walked away without a scratch. She joked about it-‘Trust me,’ she said, ‘smashed up the bloody car and still couldn’t manage to do myself in.’”

  “You think that’s what she was trying to do-to kill herself?”

  “I don’t know. As I say, she has her demons.”

  Quirke fell silent, then signaled to the barman to bring the same again; one more glass would be safe enough, he was sure of it. Sinclair, it was clear, cared more deeply about Dannie Jewell than he was prepared to admit-about, or for? Quirke felt a protective pang for the young man, and was surprised, and then was more surprised still to hear himself inviting Sinclair to join him and his daughter for dinner on Tuesday night. “You’ve met Phoebe, haven’t you?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Sinclair said. He was looking uneasy. “Tuesday,” he said, playing for time, “I’m not sure about Tuesday…”

  “Eight o’clock, at Jammet’s,” Quirke said. “My treat.” Their drinks arrived; Quirke lifted his. “Well, cheers.”

  Sinclair smiled queasily; he had the slightly dazed look of a man who has been maneuvered into something without realizing until too late what was being done. Quirke wondered what Phoebe would make of him. He drank his wine; it was remarkable how the taste was softening with each new sip he took.

  ***

  In the papers next day the reports of Richard Jewell’s death were unexpectedly muted. The Clarion ran the story on its front page, of course, but confined it to a single column down the right-hand side. The leader page was cleared, however, and given over entirely to accounts of the late proprietor’s life and achievements, along with Clancy’s editorial, which Miss Somers had quietly knocked into more or less literate shape. The Times put the story into three paragraphs at the bottom of page 1, with an obituary inside that was out of date on a number of points. The Independent, the Clarion ’s main rival, which might have been expected to splash the story, instead ran a restrained double-column item on page 3, under a photograph of a distinctly furtive-looking Richard Jewell receiving the seal of a papal knighthood from the Pope in Rome three years previously. All the press, it seemed, was holding back out of nervous uncertainty. In none of the reports was the cause of death specified, although the Clarion spoke of a “fatal collapse.”

  Quirke read this and snorted. He was sitting up in bed in Isabel Galloway’s little house in Portobello, with a cigarette burning in an ashtray on the sheet beside him and a large gray mug of tea, which he had not yet touched, steaming on the bedside table. Morning sunlight streamed in at the low window, and, outside, the bluish air over the canal was hazed already with the day’s heat. Isabel, in her silk tea gown, was seated at the dressing table in front of the mirror, pinning up her hair. “What’s that?” she asked.

  Quirke looked up from the page. “Diamond Dick,” he said. “The papers don’t know what to make of it.”

  He was admiring the cello-shaped line of the woman’s back and the twin curves of her neat bum set just so on the red plush stool. She felt his eye on her and glanced at him sideways past the angle of her lifted arm. “And you?” she asked, with a faint smirk. “Do you know what to make of it?” He could not understand how she could hold three hairpins in her mouth and still manage to speak. The silk sleeve of her gown had fallen back to reveal a mauve shadow in the hollow of her armpit. The harsh sunlight picked out the tiny wrinkles fanning out from the corner of her eye and the faint soft down on her cheek.

  “Somebody shot him, that’s for sure,” he said.

  “His wife?”

  He put his head back and stared. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well”-she extracted one of the pins from her mouth and fastened a wave into place-“isn’t it always the wife? Goodness knows, wives usually have good cause to murder their ghastly husbands.”

  Quirke saw again Francoise d’Aubigny standing between the two tall windows with the softly billowing curtains and turning towards him, holding the snow globe in her left hand. “I don’t think Mrs. Jewell is the type,” he said.

  Catching something in his tone, she glanced at him again.

  “What type is she?”

  “Very French, very self-possessed. A bit on the cold side.” Was she cold, really? He did not think so.

  “And to cap it all, smashing-looking.”

  “Yes, she’s good-looking-”

  “Hmm,” she said to her reflection in the glass, “I don’t like the sound of this at all.”

  “-a bit like you, in fact.”

  “Alors, m’sieur, vous etes tres galant.”

  Quirke folded the newspaper and put it aside and got out of bed. He was in his underpants and a man’s old string vest, which Isabel had found for him at the bottom of a drawer, and which might or might not have been his originally, a point it was better not to dwell on. She asked if he wanted breakfast but he said he would get something at the hospital. “I wish you’d eat properly,” she said. “And besides, you need to go on a diet.”

  He glanced down at his gut. She was right; he was getting fat. Again he had that image of Richard
Jewell’s widow turning to look over her shoulder at him in gauzy sunlight.

  “Can we have lunch?” Isabel asked.

  “Not today, sorry.”

  “Just as well, I suppose-I have rehearsals in the afternoon.”

  She was doing something by Shaw at the Gate. She began to complain about the director. Quirke, however, had given up listening.

  ***

  On the way to work he stopped in at Pearse Street and called on Inspector Hackett. The detective came down from his office and they walked out into the sunlight together. As usual Hackett’s old soft hat was set far back on his head, and the elbows and knees of his blue suit gleamed in the sun’s glare, and when he put his hands in his trouser pockets his braces came into view, broad, old-fashioned, their leather button-straps clutching the waistband of his trousers like two pairs of splayed fingers. The Inspector suggested they should take a stroll by the river, seeing the day was so fine. The stalled traffic made Westmoreland Street look like a pen crowded with jostling sleek dark animals all bellowing and braying and sending up ill-smelling clouds of smoke and dust. It was half past ten by the Ballast Office clock, and Quirke said he should really be getting to work, but the policeman waved a dismissive hand and said surely the dead could wait, and chuckled. On Aston Quay a red-haired young tinker galloped past bareback on a piebald horse, disdainful of the clamoring cars and buses that had to scramble to get out of his way. A street photographer in a mackintosh and a leather trilby was snapping shots among the passing crowd. Seagulls swooped, shrieking.

  “Isn’t that river a living disgrace,” Hackett said. “The stink of it would poison a pup.”

  They crossed over and walked along by the low embankment wall. “You saw the papers?” Quirke said.

  “I did-I saw the Clarion, anyway. Weren’t they awful cautious?”

  “Did they speak to you?”

  “They did. They sent along a young fellow by the name of Minor, who I think you know.”

  “Jimmy Minor? Is he with the Clarion now?” Minor, a sometime friend of his daughter’s, used to be on the Evening Mail. Mention of him caused Quirke a vague twinge of unease; he did not like Minor, and worried at his daughter’s friendship with him. He had not noticed Minor’s byline on the Clarion report. “Pushy as ever, I suppose?”

  “Oh, aye, a bit of a terrier, all right.”

  “How much did he know?”

  Hackett squinted at the sky. “Not much, only what he put in the paper.”

  “A ‘fatal collapse’?” Quirke said with sarcasm.

  “Well, it’s the case, isn’t it, more or less, when you think about it?”

  “What about the inquest?”

  “Oh, they’ll fudge it, I suppose, as usual.” They paused just before the Ha’penny Bridge and rested with their backs to the wall and their elbows propped on the parapet behind them. “I’ll be interested to see,” the Inspector said musingly, “which will be the preferred official line, a suicide or something else.”

  “What about your report? What will your line be?”

  The Inspector did not answer, only looked down at the toes of his boots and shook his head and smiled. After a moment they turned from the wall and set off over the hump of the little bridge. Before them, a ragged paperboy on the corner of Liffey Street called out raucously, “Paper man’s tragic death-read all about it!”

  “Isn’t it a queer thing,” Hackett said, “the way suicide is counted a crime. It never made much sense to me. I suppose it’s the priests, thinking about the immortal soul and how it’s not your own but God’s. Yet I don’t see where the mortal body comes into the equation-surely that’s not worth much and should be left to you to dispose of as you please. There’s the sin of despair, of course, but couldn’t it also be looked at that a chap was in so much of a hurry to get to heaven he might very well put an end to himself and have done with the delay?” He stopped on the pavement and turned to Quirke. “What do you think, Doctor? You’re an educated man-what’s your opinion in the matter?”

  Quirke knew of old the policeman’s habit of circling round a subject in elaborate arabesques.

  “I think you’re right, Inspector, I think it doesn’t make much sense.”

  “Do you mean the act itself, now, or the way it’s looked on?”

  “Oh, I can see it making sense to put an end to everything.”

  Hackett was gazing at him quizzically, his big shapeless head on one side, the little eyes bright and sharp as a blackbird’s. “Do you mind if I ask, but did you ever contemplate it yourself?”

  Quirke looked away quickly from that searching gaze. “Doesn’t everyone, at some time or other?” he said quietly.

  “Do you think so?” Hackett said, in a tone of large surprise. “God, I can’t say I’ve ever looked, myself, into that particular hole in the ground. I think I wouldn’t trust myself not to go toppling in headfirst. And then what would the missus do, not to mention my two lads over in America? They’d be heartbroken. At least”-he grinned, his thin froggy mouth turning up at either corner-“I hope they would be.”

  Quirke knew that he was being mildly mocked; Hackett often used him as a sort of straight man. They walked on.

  “But then,” Quirke said, “Richard Jewell didn’t kill himself, did he.”

  “Are you sure of that?” Again the policeman struck a note of surprise, but whether it was real or feigned Quirke could not tell.

  “You saw the gun, the way he was holding it.”

  “Do you not think someone might have found him and picked up the gun and put it into his hands?”

  “I thought of that-but why? Why would anyone do that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. To make everything neat and tidy, maybe?” He gave a little laugh. “People do the queerest things when they come upon a dead body all of a sudden-have you not found that yourself, in the course of your work?”

  On O’Connell Bridge the photographer in his greasy leather hat was taking a picture of a woman in a white dress and sandals who was holding by the hand a small boy wearing a toy cowboy gun strapped to his hip; the mother was smiling self-consciously while the boy frowned. Quirke watched them covertly; orphaned early, he had never known his mother, was not even sure who she had been.

  “Anyway,” Inspector Hackett was saying, “it makes no odds to me what they say about it in the papers, or what they speculate might have happened. I have my job to do, same as ever.” He chuckled again. “Like I say, Dr. Quirke, aren’t we a queer pair? Connoisseurs of death, that’s us, you in your way, me in mine.” He pushed his hat farther to the back of his skull. “Will we chance a cup of tea in Bewley’s, do you think?”

  “I have to get to the hospital.”

  “Oh, aye, you’re a busy man-I forgot.”

  ***

  Quirke could not understand why, but the dinner with Sinclair and Phoebe was not a success. Sinclair was at his stoniest and hardly spoke a word, while Phoebe throughout looked as if she were trying not to laugh, though not because she was amused. The food was good, as it always was at Jammet’s, and they drank two bottles of a fine Chablis, premier cru -or Quirke drank, while Phoebe took no more than a glass and Sinclair sipped and sniffed at his as if he thought the chalice might be poisoned-but it seemed that nothing could lift the pall that had settled over the table as soon as they sat down. Then Sinclair left early, mumbling something about having to meet someone in a pub, and Quirke sat nursing his wine glass in a fist and gazing off bleakly at the opposite wall.

  “Thank you for dinner,” Phoebe said. “It was lovely.” Quirke said nothing, only shifted morosely, making the little gilt chair creak under him in protest. “I liked your Dr. Sinclair,” his daughter went on determinedly. “Is he Jewish?”

  Quirke was surprised. “How did you know?”

  “I’ve no idea. It just came to me that he was. Funny, I never think of there being Irish Jews.”

  “He’s from Cork,” Quirke said.

  “Is he, now. Sinclair-is that a J
ewish name?”

  “Don’t know. Changed from something else, probably.”

  She gazed at him with a hapless smile. “Oh, Quirke,” she said, “don’t sulk. It makes you look like a moose with a toothache.” She never called him anything but Quirke.

  He paid the bill and they left. Outside, a soft gray radiance lingered in the air. Phoebe had recently moved from the flat in Haddington Road that she had not liked and was now living in one room in Baggot Street. Quirke had urged her to find something better and had offered to pay half the rent, or even all of it, but she had insisted, gently but with a warning firmness, that the little room suited her perfectly. The canal near her place was lovely, it was a ten-minute walk to work, and she could get all her provisions at the Q amp; L-what more did she need? He hated to think of her, he said, cooped up in so small a place, with nothing to cook on but a Baby Belling and having to share the bathroom with two other tenants. But she had only looked at him, smiling with her lips compressed in the stubborn way that she did, and he had given up. Once he had suggested that she might come and live with him, but they both knew that was impossible, and she was glad that the subject had been dropped. She was a solitary, as he was, and they would both have to accept it was so.

  They walked up Kildare Street, past the National Library and the Dail. A bat, a quick speck of darkness, flittered above them in the violet air. “You should phone him,” Quirke said. “You should phone Sinclair.”

  She linked her arm in his. “What are you trying to do?” she said, laughing. “You’d make a terrible matchmaker.”

  “I’m just saying you should-”

  “Besides, if anyone is to do the phoning, it will be him. Girls can’t call fellows-don’t you know that?”

  Despite himself he smiled; he liked to be made fun of by her. “I’m sorry he was so quiet,” he said. “He’s had a shock. He knows Richard Jewell’s sister.”

  “The man who killed himself?”

  He turned his head and looked at her. “How do you know?”