“How did you find that out?”
“His wife told me.” He lifted his teacup by the handle, then put it back in its saucer, the tea untasted. “She came to see me, as you’ll recall, worried that someone was suspecting her husband of doing in his boss, the someone being you. ”
Hackett could not see the connection to St. Christopher’s, and said so.
“I don’t see it either,” Quirke said. He paused. “I went out there, talked to the head man, a Father Ambrose. Decent sort, I think, innocent, like so many of them.”
“Innocent,” Hackett said, and pursed his lips as if to whistle in doubt. “I’d have thought that running an orphanage in this country would be a thing that would put a few smears on the old rose-tinted specs, no?” He took a slurping drink of his tea.
“Like everybody else here, they know what goes on but also manage not to know. It’s a knack they share with many of our German friends.”
Hackett chuckled. “So what about Maguire?” he asked. “Is there a connection?”
“With Dick Jewell’s killing, you mean? I don’t know. Maybe. It’s just another piece of the jigsaw puzzle that doesn’t fit.”
“Another piece?”
Quirke’s cigarette was finished; he took a fresh one and lit it from the butt, a thing he did, Hackett had often noticed, when he was thinking hard. “This business with Sinclair,” he said, “that’s another conundrum.”
“You think there’s a connection there?”
“I don’t see how there can’t be,” Quirke said. He looked at the ceiling far above. “His finger that they cut off, they sent it to me.”
This time Hackett did whistle, very softly, making a sound like that of a draft sighing under a door. “They sent it to you,” he said.
“I came home and it was in an envelope tied to the door knocker in Mount Street.”
“You knew whose it was?”
“No. I didn’t know whose it was until I called you, last night. But I knew what it represented, after Costigan had his little chat with me.”
“And what was it?”
“A warning. A pretty crude one, this time-not Costigan’s style at all, I would have thought.”
Hackett was stirring his tea again, though he seemed unaware of it. “Should I have a chat myself with Mr. Costigan?”
“I don’t see the point. When he accosted me he covered himself well, never used a threatening word, the smile never faltered throughout. As an enforcer he’s very practiced, and covers his tracks-you found that out, didn’t you, last time? No”-he had finished his second cigarette and was reaching for a third-“Costigan is irrelevant. What matters is, who’s behind him.”
“Well? Who?”
The waitress came, a wizened personage with steely curls showing under her bonnet, and asked them if they wanted anything more, and Hackett requested a fresh pot of tea, and she tottered off, talking to herself under her breath.
“There was something the priest, Father Ambrose, said to me at St. Christopher’s,” Quirke said. “It’s been nagging at me ever since.”
“What did he say?”
“He said that Dick Jewell wasn’t the only benefactor they have, that Carlton Sumner, too, is involved.”
“How, involved?”
“In funding the place, I suppose. Or helping to fund it-it’s notionally a state institution, but by the look of the carpets on the floor and the sheen on the lawn, there’s a lot more money going into it than the government’s annual seven and sixpence.”
Hackett leaned back and massaged his belly thoughtfully with the palm of a large square hand. “Are we still talking,” he inquired, “about the demise of Mr. Richard Jewell?”
“I think we are,” Quirke said. “That is, we’re talking about it, but I’m not sure what we’re saying.”
“What you’re saying, you mean,” Hackett said. “I’m only trotting along behind you in the dark.” He took a sighting at his cup with one eye shut. “Why didn’t you tell me about them sending you that poor young lad’s finger?”
“I don’t know,” Quirke answered. “Really, I don’t. We’re both stumbling in the dark here.”
“Are we?”
Quirke lifted his eyes and they looked at each other in stillness for a moment.
“What do you mean?” Quirke said.
The detective heaved a slow and ample sigh. “I have the impression, Dr. Quirke, that you know a thing or two more than I do about this business. I suspect, for instance, you’ve been talking to the widow-am I right?”
Quirke felt his forehead flushing pink. Had he imagined Hackett would not know by now that he had doing far more than talking to Francoise d’Aubigny? “Conversing with Mrs. Jewell,” he said carefully, “is not necessarily an enlightening process. She tends to be somewhat opaque.”
“ Opaque, now, that’s a grand word. And what about the other one-the sister?”
“To Miss Jewell,” Quirke said with sardonic emphasis, “I do not talk. Sinclair knows her, as I’ve said, and so, I believe, does my daughter. I gather she’s something of an enigma, and not without problems, even before her brother met his messy end. Trouble”-he touched a finger to his temple-“upstairs.”
The elderly waitress came quakingly with their new pot of tea. Hackett asked for a clean cup, but either she did not hear or chose to ignore him, and wandered off. A woman laden with parcels entered and sat down at a nearby table, and Quirke stared at her, for she had something of the look of Isabel Galloway. Isabel was still much on his mind. He knew that he must telephone her, and would, one of these days.
Hackett poured the dregs from his cup into an empty water glass, refilled from the new pot, added milk and sugar, tasted, and winced at the unexpected hotness. “So,” he said, gingerly smacking his scalded lips, “where are we?”
“Lost in the wilderness,” Quirke promptly answered. “Lost in the bloody wilderness.”
***
Dannie Jewell now saw what she had to do. She must make a true act of contrition. When she was little she was sent to school to the Presentation Convent, where unknown to her mother-her father would not have cared-she pretended that she was a Catholic like all the other girls and took religious instruction and learned about confession, absolution, and redemption. We are all sinners, she was assured, but even the blackest sins would be forgiven if the sinner showed to God that she was truly sorry for having offended Him and made a firm resolve never to sin again. She was not sure that she believed in God anymore-she did not give the matter much thought-but those profound early lessons had left a lasting impression on her. She had felt guilty all her life, or for as much of it as she could remember. Things that befell her, and even things that befell those around her and for which it did not seem she could be responsible, were, she knew, her fault, at the deepest level, for secretly she had been the cause of them, by a process so subtly wicked that it was not visible to the ordinary eye. If they had happened, she must have willed them to happen, for things did not happen unless someone wanted them to. That buried sense of being the cause of so much wickedness and the shame that followed on it were the twin roots of all her troubles. Because of all this she found herself, simply, disgusting, a soul besmirched.
How could she have thought that she could have David Sinclair for a friend? Had she not known that her mere presence in his life, the mere fact of her existence in relation to him, would inevitably cause him damage? Everyone she came in contact with was made to suffer in some way. When she heard the story of Typhoid Mary, who passed on the disease to others while she remained immune, she recognized herself in it at once. For she did not suffer, not really, or not enough, at any rate, as a result of the calamities for which she was responsible, as a result of the injuries of which she was guilty. Others suffered. Because of her silence, others were condemned to endure years of misery and abuse; because of her prattling, someone was knocked down in the street and had his finger hacked off, just as someone had to substitute for her and be tainted for
life, because she had grown up and stopped being a child. Meanwhile she was pampered and protected, had money and freedom, nice places to live in, a financially secure future-she was even beautiful! And the others suffered. That would have to end; at least one of the many wrongs of which she was the cause would have to be set right.
She did not know why David had been attacked. She knew how it had come about, but not the reason for it. Not that the reason mattered. It was a part of the pattern, of course, she knew that, the pattern that had been in place forever, so it seemed; she thought of it as a huge hidden thing propagating itself endlessly, throwing off millions and millions of spores, like a growth of mushrooms, unstoppably. All she could do was lop off one strand of it, the strand that had wrapped itself around the people who had the misfortune to be close to her.
Yes, a firm act of contrition, that was what was required of her now.
***
Carlton sumner had offices in the top two floors of one of the big old Georgian houses on Leeson Street, not far from the corner of St. Stephen’s Green. “You’d think,” he said savagely, “the god-damn air would be a little fresher up here, but it’s worse than at ground level. And of course, over here they’ve never heard of air-conditioning.”
It was another sweltering day under a hot white sky. The traffic in the streets jostled and clamored like a panicking crowd. There must have been a fire somewhere for there were sirens going in the distance and there was a faint acrid reek of smoke in the air. Quirke sat by one of two low windows in an uncomfortable chair made of steel and canvas, nursing a half-empty glass of orange juice that had been ice-cold but had now turned tepid. “I drink this stuff by the quart,” Sumner had told him, holding aloft his frosted glass. “One of the girls buys the oranges on her way in and squeezes them with her own fair hand. Why is the concept of fresh juice another thing unknown to you people?” He wore a pair of white deck trousers and slip-on shoes with tassels, and a white silk shirt that had a large damp patch where he had been leaning against the back of the black leather chair behind his desk. He had put his glass down on his desk and was pacing the carpet now, tossing a sweat-darkened baseball from one hand to the other. Quirke remembered the snow globe Francoise d’Aubigny had been holding in her hand that Sunday at Brooklands, and wondered idly where it was now.
“I didn’t see an orange until I was in my twenties,” Quirke said. “Then the war came and they disappeared.”
“Yeah,” Sumner said with heavy sarcasm, “you guys sure had it hard.”
“It wasn’t so bad. We were neutral, after all.”
Sumner stopped at the window and looked down into the street, frowning. He pitched the ball with increased force and caught it in each cupped palm with a loud thwack. He had expressed no surprise when Quirke telephoned and asked if he might come and talk to him. It would take a lot, Quirke supposed, to surprise Carlton Sumner, and a lot more to make him show it. “That’s right,” he said now, darkly. “Neutral.” He turned to Quirke. “You want a real drink? I’ve got Scotch, Irish, vodka, gin-you name it.”
“Juice is fine,” Quirke said.
Sumner left the window and crossed to his desk and sat back with one haunch perched against a corner of it. The desk was vast and old and made of dark oak, with brass fittings and many drawers, and the top was inlaid with green leather. There were three telephones, one of them white, a large square crystal ashtray, a mug of pens stenciled with the badge of the Vancouver Mounties-Sumner saw Quirke looking at this last and said, “The baseball team, not the cops on horses”-a roller blotter with a wooden handle, an antique silver cigarette box, and a fancy Ronson lighter the size of a potato. “So,” the owner of all this said, “what can I do for you, Dr. Quirke?” managing to put a faintly comical inflexion on the word Doctor.
It was a straightforward question but one that always left Quirke feeling in a quandary. All his life he had struggled with the unhandiness of concepts, ideas, formulations. Where to begin putting all that chaotic material into short strings of words? The task always baffled him.
“I went out to St. Christopher’s,” he said.
Sumner looked blank. “St. What’s?”
“The orphanage that Dick Jewell funded-”
“Oh, yes, right.”
“-and that you fund, too.”
This Sumner frowned over for a moment in silence. “Me, fund an orphanage? You’ve got the wrong rich man’s son, Doc. Haven’t you heard? I don’t give to others, I take from them. It’s a grand old family tradition.” He put the baseball on the desk, where it rolled a little way and stopped. He flipped open the lid of the cigarette box and selected a cigarette and took the lighter in his fist and made a flame. “Who told you I bankroll motherless boys?” he asked.
“The man who runs the place,” Quirke said. “A priest. Father Ambrose.” Who smoked the same cigarettes Sumner did.
“Never met him, never heard the name. What’s he like?”
“He said that you and Jewell had set up something called the Friends of St. Christopher’s.”
Sumner suddenly pointed a finger. “St. Christopher’s, now I remember-that’s the place where Marie Bergin used to work, right, before the Jewells took her on?”
“Yes.”
“Right, right.” A thoughtful look had come into Sumner’s eyes, and he was frowning again. “St. Christopher’s. Dick Jewell’s pet project. So-what about it?”
The white telephone rang, making Quirke start, and Sumner plucked up the receiver and listened a moment, said “No,” and hung up. He produced a large handkerchief from the breast pocket of his shirt and used it to wipe the back of his neck. “Jesus,” he said, “isn’t there supposed to be a temperate climate here? I can’t take this heat-I grew up in a place of cool, pine-scented air and snowcapped peaks, you know?” He stood with his cigarette and walked to the window again. “Look at it,” he said. “It could be summertime in downtown Detroit.”
“So you’re not a Friend of St. Christopher’s, then,” Quirke said.
“Listen, pal, I’m not a ‘friend’ of anywhere. I’m a businessman. Businessmen can’t afford to be friendly.” He looked at Quirke over his shoulder. “You want to tell me why you’re really here, Doc?”
Quirke straightened himself with an effort in the baggy canvas chair and put his glass down on a low table before him. “I’m really here, Mr. Sumner, because I’m coming to believe that St. Christopher’s, not to mention the Friends of St. Christopher’s, is somehow connected with the death of Richard Jewell.”
Sumner turned his gaze back to the window and the street below. He nodded slowly, drawing up his mouth at one corner and sucking thoughtfully on his side teeth. His lavishly pomaded dense dark hair glistened in many points, a miniature constellation. “Where’s your sidekick today,” he asked, “old Sherlock? Does he know you’re here, or are you off on a frolic of your own?” He turned, a hand in a pocket and the cigarette lifted. “Listen, Quirke, I like you. You’re a miserable sort of guy, I mean you specialize in misery, but all the same, I do like you. Since you came down to Roundwood I’ve been rummaging through my memories of those golden days full of gaiety and full of truth when we were young and fair and roamed like panthers around this poor excuse for a city. You were quite the boy then, as I remember. Many a young lady, even including, if I’m not mistaken, the present Mrs. Sumner, had an eye for you. What happened to you in the meantime I don’t know and, frankly, don’t care to hear about, but it sure knocked the fun out of you. This game of gumshoe that you’re playing at, I don’t mind it. We all have to find ways of passing the time and relieving the taedium vitae, as that old bastard who was supposed to teach us Latin at college-what was his name?-used to call it. Where’s the harm in you and your cop friend flat-footing around and asking questions and searching after clues? None. But listen”-he pointed with the hand that held his cigarette-“if you think for a minute that I had anything to do with Diamond Dick Jewell getting popped, I’ve got to tell you, my friend, you
’re barking up the wrong suspect.”
Sumner walked around his desk and threw himself down sprawlingly in the leather swivel chair, his linen-clad legs out to one side and widely splayed. “I’m a tolerant sort of chap, Doctor Quirke,” he said, “despite what you hear to the contrary. Live and let live, that’s my motto-not original, I grant you, but sound, all the same. So I don’t mind how you choose to amuse yourself or what sort of games you like to play. That’s your business, and I make it a rule not to interfere in other people’s business, unless, of course, I have to. But lay off the suspicion, right? Where I’m concerned, lay off.”
The white telephone rang again, as if on cue, and Sumner snatched it up angrily this time and shoved it against his ear and without listening to whoever was calling said, “I told you, no!” and hung up, and smiled at Quirke with his perfectly even, perfectly white big teeth. “They never listen,” he said in a tone of mock distress, “never, never listen.”
Quirke was lighting one of his own cigarettes. “A young man who works with me,” he said, “was attacked in the street last night.”
When Sumner frowned, his entire forehead crinkled horizontally, like a venetian blind being shut, and the line of his shiny brown hair lowered itself by a good half inch. “So?” he said.
“Someone had already rung him up and called him names-Jewboy, that sort of thing. He’s a friend of Dannie Jewell, as it happens.”
Sumner sat forward and planted an elbow on the desk and rested his jaw on his hand. “You’re losing me again, Doc,” he said, and once more did his film star’s toothily lopsided smile.
“Also,” Quirke went on, “a fellow called Costigan came to me a few days ago, after I’d been to St. Christopher’s, and warned me to mind my own business. You wouldn’t know him, I suppose, this Mr. Costigan? He’s one of the Knights of St. Patrick, and probably a Friend of St. Christopher’s too, for good measure.”
Sumner gazed at him for a long moment, then laughed. “The Knights of St. Patrick?” he said. “Are you serious? Is there really an outfit called the Knights of St. Patrick?”
A Death in Summer Page 19
