A Death in Summer

by Benjamin Black

  Sergeant Jenkins came back with two big thick gray mugs of thick gray tea and set them down on the table and went back to his post by the door. Teddy swiveled in his chair to look at him but the sergeant stared ahead stonily, his hands behind his back now. Teddy turned to Hackett again. Hackett was stirring his tea pensively. “I believe,” he said, “you and Mr. Jewell used to do good works together.” He looked up. “Is that right? Out at that place in Balbriggan, the orphanage-what do you call it?” Teddy only gazed at him, wide-eyed, as if in fascination. “St. Christopher’s, is that right? I think it is. The Friends of St. Christopher’s, isn’t that what you called yourselves? And Mr. Costigan, he’s another one, isn’t he another Friend of St. Christopher’s. Hmm?”

  So he knew about Costigan, too. He must know everything, and all this, this cross-examination or whatever to call it, was just a charade. He was being played with; toyed with. He would have to protect himself, that much was clear.

  It was Costigan who had put him in touch with the Duffys. He had not told Costigan what he wanted them for, and Costigan had not asked. Costigan was careful like that, not wanting to know things that might get him in trouble. Then, when he heard what had happened, what the Duffys had done to Sinclair, he went into one of his rants. Teddy did not know why he should be so angry-it was only a prank, after all, and a good one, too; he would tell Pooh Bear about it, someday. Sinclair was a smug bastard and deserved a lesson in what the world could do to you. Costigan did not understand what it was like to be Teddy, always being sneered at and made to feel small, and stupid. All the same, it was Costigan’s idea, when he had cooled down, to send the envelope with Sinclair’s finger in it to Phoebe’s old man. “Quirke can do with a caution,” Costigan had said, and had even laughed that laugh of his-Teddy had pictured him baring his crooked bottom teeth-despite being so annoyed at Teddy.

  Should he say, now, that it was all Costigan’s doing? He could claim Costigan had put him up to it, that it was Costigan’s idea, cutting off Sinclair’s finger and sending it to Quirke because Quirke had been asking questions about St. Christopher’s. And as for St. Christopher’s, he could blame Dick Jewell for all that.

  “Will you share the joke, Teddy?” Hackett asked.

  Teddy had not realized he was laughing. “Baldy Dick,” he said. “That was Jewell’s nickname at St. Christopher’s. It’s what all the boys called him, Baldy Dick.”

  “Why was that, Teddy?”

  Teddy gave him a pitying look. “Because he was a Jew!… Get it? Baldy Dick?”

  “Ah. Right. And you used to go out there with him, to see the boys?”

  All this, Teddy suddenly thought, was a waste of time. He wanted to be gone, wanted to get out of this room and into the Morgan and motor off somewhere pleasant, Wicklow or somewhere. “We all did,” he said, “we all went along-Costigan, too.” He laughed again. “He was a regular visitor.” He might even drive out to Dun Laoghaire and book himself onto the mail boat and take a little jaunt down to London, that would be nice.

  “Costigan, too?”

  Hackett was staring at him.

  “What?”

  “You said Costigan was a regular at St. Christopher’s, along with you and Mr. Jewell.”

  “Yes. Costigan, and the others”-he grinned-“all the good Friends of St. Christopher’s.” He sat up straight on the chair and boldly returned the detective’s look. “But Costigan is your man, Inspector,” he said. “Costigan is your man.”

  Hackett leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table again, and smiled, almost tenderly. “Go on, Teddy,” he said. “Tell me all about it. Speak up, now, so the Super can hear you.”

  ***

  An hour later they telephoned Carlton Sumner and he came in shouting for his son and threatening to get everybody in the place fired. Hackett drew him to one side in the dayroom and spoke to him for a little while, and Sumner stared at him, and grew quiet, turning pale under his yachtsman’s tan.

  ***

  Although he had not been away for much more than a couple of days, Sinclair felt almost a stranger in the flat. It was because of his hand that everything had a new and problematical aspect. Right-handed all his life, he felt now like a left-hander being forced clumsily to use his right. It was a strange sensation, very confusing. He could not get a grip on things, or no, it was not that he could not get a grip, but that he did not know quite how to come at things, what angle to approach them from. When he held the kettle under the tap in his right hand he had to turn on the tap with his left, in a series of minute calibrations, for even the tiniest effort caused the stump of his missing finger to flare and throb. He thought of his hand as an animal, a feral dog, say, slouched on its hunkers with its fangs bared, and himself frozen in front of it, fearful of giving the brute the slightest provocation. It was not so much the pain that hampered him as the fear of pain, the paralyzed anticipation of it. And if such a simple action as filling a kettle was so awkward, how was he going to use a tin opener, or a corkscrew, or a bread knife, or any of the ordinary things that life required the use of?

  He would have to have help, it was as simple as that. He would have to get someone to come and assist him, or just to be there, at first, until he got the hang of things, until he got over being afraid all the time of starting up the pain again. He sat down at the kitchen table while the kettle boiled. How would he get the tea caddy open? He felt like a child, an infant. Yes: he would have to call someone.

  He got her at last at the hat shop. It was where he should have called first, had he been able to think straight. It was the middle of a weekday afternoon, so of course she would be at work. Two days in hospital, a mere two days of being plied with cups of tea and having his pillows plumped for him, and he had forgotten the simplest facts about life outside the ward.

  Even dialing the phone was a problem; he had to put the receiver on the table and dial with his right hand and then snatch it up again when the number started to ring.

  She sounded surprised to hear his voice. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I couldn’t think who else to call. I mean, you were the first person I thought of calling, when I realized I had to call someone.” He paused; the kettle was about to boil. “I feel a fool, I feel like a big baby. Can you come?”

  ***

  She came, as he knew she would. “It’s all right,” she said, “I was due time off, and Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes was in a good mood.” Mrs. Cuffe-Wilkes was the owner of the hat shop. Phoebe smiled. “Though you’re lucky-she’s not in a good mood very often.” She was wearing the black dress with the white collar that was her working outfit, and a black cardigan, and patent-leather pumps. Her hair was tied with a red ribbon; it went over the crown of her head and down past her ears and was tied somehow at the back of her neck. Her face with the dark hair drawn away from it seemed made of porcelain, delicate and fine and pale.

  They were shy of each other, and tried not to touch at all yet only succeeded in bumping into each other at every turn. He had given up in his attempt to make tea and now she filled the kettle with fresh water and set it to boil, and put out cups, and found the sugar bowl and the butter dish, and sliced the bread.

  “Does it pain you all the time?” she asked.

  “No, no. It just makes me clumsy. I thought, since there’s nothing wrong with my right hand, I wouldn’t have any problem, or not much, but everything seems to be the wrong shape and the wrong way up. It’s all in my mind; it’ll fade.”

  “I could stay and make you some dinner,” she said, not looking at him. “If you’d like.”

  “Yes, I’d like you to stay. Thank you.”

  They were sitting at the table, and when the kettle was boiled and she got up to make the tea the sleeve of her dress brushed against his cheek.

  “Phoebe,” he said. She was at the stove, busy with the teapot and the tea. She said nothing, and did not turn to meet his gaze. “Thank you for coming.”

  She brought the teapot to the table, and when she put it down he t
ook her left hand in his right. She looked at their two hands, entwined. “I thought you hadn’t-” she said. “I thought you didn’t-”

  “Yes,” he said. “So did I. We were both wrong, it seems.”

  He smiled up at her but she did not smile in return. He still had hold of her hand. He gave off, she noted, a very faint hospital smell. He stood up then and kissed her. She did not close her eyes. A curling wisp of steam rose from the spout of the teapot, as if the genie, the genie who would grant all wishes, were about to materialize, with his turban, and his big mustache, and his stupid, his wonderfully stupid grin.

  David at last drew his face back from hers. “Phoebe-” he began, but she cut him off.

  “No, David, wait,” she said. “I have something to tell you. It’s about Dannie.”

  ***

  Dannie could have gone to David Sinclair; even though he was in the hospital she could have gone to him. But instead it was to Phoebe, her new friend, that in the end she came. And it was a new version of Dannie, too, that Phoebe met. For Dannie was in a state, oh, a royal state, as she said herself, with almost a laugh. It was one of the refinements of her mysterious condition-the doctors, it seemed, were baffled by her-that even when she was in the deepest distress there was a part of her that was able to stand off to the side, observing, commenting, judging, mocking. She said, “Not bad enough to feel so bad, I have to see myself feeling it, too.”

  Phoebe had been returning from work, strolling thoughtfully along Baggot Street through the summer dusk, when she had spied Dannie sitting in a huddle on the steps in front of the house with her arms around her shins and her forehead resting on her knees. It was the evening of the day that she had made that painful visit to David Sinclair at the hospital. Dannie seemed in a daze, and Phoebe had to help her up, and when they were inside, in Phoebe’s room, Dannie made at once for the bed and sat down on it, with her feet flat on the floor and her hands palm upwards in her lap and her head hanging. “Dannie, please, tell me what’s the matter,” Phoebe said, but Dannie only shook her head slowly, moving it from side to side like a jerky pendulum. Phoebe knelt beside her and tried to see into her face. “Dannie, what is it? Are you ill?”

  Dannie muttered something but Phoebe could not make out the words. Phoebe stood up and went to the little stove in the corner and filled the coffee percolator and set it on the heat. She did not know what else to do. Her own hands were shaking now.

  When the coffee was made Dannie drank a little of it, clutching the cup tightly with both hands, her head still bent and her hair hanging down. At last she cleared her throat and spoke. “You know I’m Jewish.”

  Phoebe frowned. Had she known? She could not remember, but thought it best to pretend. She went back and stood by the stove. “Yes,” she said, “yes, I know.”

  “I went to a Catholic school, though. I suppose my parents wanted me to learn how to fit in.” She lifted her head, and Phoebe was shocked by the look of her, the expression in her eyes and the deep mauve shadows under them, the slack and bloodless lips. “What about you, where did you go to school?”

  “I went to the nuns, too,” Phoebe said. “Loreto.”

  Dannie’s features realigned themselves; it took Phoebe a moment to realize that she was smiling.

  “We might have known each other. Maybe we even met at a hockey match, or some choir thing. Do you think that’s possible?”

  “Yes,” Phoebe said, “it’s possible, of course. But I’m sure I would have remembered you.”

  “Do you think so, really?” The look in Dannie’s eyes turned vacant. “I’d like to have known you. We could have been friends. I would have confessed to you about being a Jew and you wouldn’t have minded. Not that anyone was taken in; they all knew I was different-an outsider.” She blinked. “Have you a cigarette?”

  “Sorry, no. I gave up.”

  “It doesn’t matter, I don’t really smoke. Only I get so fidgety I try to find something to do with my hands.”

  “I could go out and buy some-the Q amp; L is probably open still.”

  But Dannie had lost interest in the subject of cigarettes. She moved her blurred gaze about the room. She seemed exhausted, exhausted and in desolation-the word came to Phoebe and seemed the only one that fitted. Desolation.

  There was shouting outside in the street, a couple arguing; they sounded drunk, not only the man but the woman, too.

  “Have you been to see David?” Dannie asked. She sounded vague, as if she were thinking of something else, as if this were not quite the question she had meant to ask. The man in the street was cursing now, and calling the woman names.

  “Yes,” Phoebe said. “I went to see him this morning, at the hospital.”

  “How is he?”

  “His hand is very painful, and they had given him some drug, but he’s all right.”

  “I’m glad,” Dannie said, more vague than ever. She was still clutching the coffee cup, though she had taken no more than a couple of sips of the coffee. “So this is where you live. I wondered.”

  “It’s terribly small. Hardly room enough for one.”

  Dannie made a flinching movement and lifted up her face with its stricken look. “I’m sorry,” she said, “do you want me to go?”

  Phoebe laughed and went and sat beside her on the bed. “Of course not-that’s not what I meant. It’s just that I don’t realize how tiny the place is until there’s someone else here. My father keeps trying to get me to move. He wants to buy a house for the two of us to share.”

  Dannie had turned her head and was gazing at her now in what seemed a kind of dreamy wonderment. “Your father is Dr. Quirke.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But your name is Griffin.”

  Phoebe smiled and lowered her gaze awkwardly. “That’s a long story.”

  “I hardly remember my father; he died when I was very young. I remember his funeral. They say he was a terrible man. I’m sure it’s true. Everyone in our family is terrible. I’m terrible.” More striking than the words was the mildly pensive way in which she spoke them, as if she were stating a truth known to all. She looked into the coffee cup. “You know that what happened to David was my fault.”

  “Your fault? How?”

  “Everything has been my fault. That’s why I’ve come here-do you mind?”

  Phoebe shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  Dannie set the cup on the floor and lay back abruptly on the bed. She folded both her arms over her eyes. Phoebe had not switched on a light and the last of the dusk was dying in the room. Dannie looked so strange, lying there, with her feet on the floor and her head almost touching the wall behind the bed. When she spoke, her words seemed to be coming out of a covered hollow in the air. “Do you remember,” she said, “at school when we were little, how they used to tell us to prepare ourselves mentally before going to confession? I used to go, you know, even though I wasn’t supposed to. I always liked examining my conscience and making a mental list of my sins.” She lifted her arms and squinted along the length of herself at Phoebe. “Did you invent sins?”

  “I’m sure we all did.”

  “Do you think so? I thought I was the only one.” She put her arms back over her face and her voice became muffled again. “I used to pretend to have stolen things. I’m sure now the priests knew I was lying, though they never said. Maybe they weren’t interested-I often thought they weren’t even listening. I suppose it was boring, a string of little girls whispering in the dark about touching themselves and talking back to their parents.”

  She stopped. The couple in the street had gone, swearing and shrieking as they went.

  Phoebe spoke. “What did you mean when you said that what happened to David was your fault?”

  There was no reply for a long time; then Dannie dropped her arms away from her face and put her elbows behind her and pushed herself up until she was half lying, half sitting on the mattress. She coughed, and sat up fully, and with both hands pushed her hair a
way from her face.

  “Phoebe,” she said, “will you hear my confession?”

  ***

  It was dark in the room when Dannie fell asleep. She had drawn up her legs and lain down on her side and joined her hands as if for prayer and placed them under her cheek, and within moments her breathing had become regular and shallow. All the tension had drained from her and she seemed at peace now. Phoebe sat by her, not daring to move for fear of waking her. She wondered what she should do. The things she had heard in the past hour seemed a sort of fairy tale, a dark fantasy of injury, loss, and revenge. Some parts of it, she supposed, must be true, but which parts? If even a little of it was the case, she must do something, tell someone. She was frightened, frightened for Dannie and what she would be like when she woke up, what she might attempt; she was frightened for herself, too, though she did not know what it was exactly that she feared might happen to her. Yes, it was like a fairy tale, and she was in it, wandering lost by night in a dark enchanted forest, where strange night birds whistled and shrieked, and beasts moved in the thickets, and the brambles with their terrible thorns reached out to twine themselves around her limbs and hold her fast.