Vengeance: A Novel (Quirke)

by Benjamin Black

  Quirke smiled and shook his head. “No, not really. I did the—em—the postmortem, this morning, on your husband.” She waited, wide-eyed but inexpectant—in fact, giving the impression that at any moment she might close her eyes and drift off into sleep, like a cat. “It seems he—well, it seems he shot himself,” Quirke said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh,” she said, “I know that—I mean, I know he was shot. They told me all that.” She was looking about now for an ashtray. Quirke fetched one from the sideboard and she took it from him and set it on her knee and tipped an inch of ash into it. He stepped away from her and sat down, perching on the broad arm of the sofa. Although the room was large he felt disproportionate to everything in it, which gave him a giddy, toppling sensation. Mona Delahaye’s loveliness seemed to pervade the room, heavy and sweet, like the smell of the roses.

  Hackett tried another tack. “Tell me, Mrs. Delahaye,” he said, “your husband’s business—is everything all right in that regard?”

  Mona Delahaye’s eyes grew rounder still. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” the detective said, shifting on his chair, “there’s not any—any financial problem, is there?”

  Quirke looked from the woman to the detective and back again. She was leaning forward, gazing searchingly into Hackett’s face. “I don’t know,” she said simply. “How would I know? Victor wouldn’t have talked to me about things like that. You see”—she leaned still more intently forward—“Victor and I didn’t really know each other, not in that way, not in a way that we would talk about his work or anything serious like that. He kept that kind of thing to himself.” She paused, and glanced at the floor, then looked up again, and now switched her gaze to Quirke where he sat on the arm of the sofa, a large man in black, watching her. “When we got married, three years ago, Victor’s wife, Lisa, his first wife, had died only a couple of years before, and I don’t think he realized what he was doing—marrying me, I mean.” She had the earnest air of a schoolgirl explaining that by some anomaly she had not been taught long division, or how to parse a sentence. Quirke thought he had never before encountered such a striking mixture of artlessness and calculation. “I’ve been thinking about all this since yesterday,” she said, “since the news came. I suppose it sounds very strange, to say he didn’t know what he was doing when we got married, but that’s how he always seemed to me. Like a sleepwalker.”

  There was a pause. Far off in the house somewhere someone was whistling; that would be the redheaded maid, Quirke thought.

  “Does that mean,” the Inspector said, “that he might have been neglecting the business?”

  Mona Delahaye stared at him and then shook her head and gave a little laugh. “Oh, no,” she said. “He would never do that, he would never neglect the business. He was very good at what he did.” She gestured with her cigarette at the surrounding room, with its plush upholstery, its pictures, its padded quiet. “He was rich, as you can see,” she said. She might have been speaking of someone she had not known personally but had only heard of, the absent proprietor of all these polished possessions.

  They heard voices in the hall. Mona Delahaye stubbed out her cigarette hastily, as if she were afraid to be caught smoking. The door opened and a young man with blond hair put in his head. “Oh, sorry,” he said, seeing Quirke and the Inspector. He came in, followed by a young man who was his double. They were tall and slim, with long, slightly equine heads. Their hair was of a remarkable shade, almost silver, and very fine, and their eyes were blue. They had the look of a pair of fantastically realistic shop-window manikins. They were dressed in white, down to their white plimsolls, and brought with them a suggestion of sun-warmed grass and willow bats and scattered applause drifting across a trimmed, flat sward. “You must be the police,” the young man said, and advanced on Quirke with a hand extended. “I’m Jonas Delahaye. This is my brother, James.”

  Quirke took the young man’s hand and introduced himself. “He’s a coroner,” Mona Delahaye said. Both her stepsons ignored her.

  “Pathologist,” Quirke said to the twins. “This is Inspector Hackett.”

  Jonas Delahaye gave Hackett the merest glance, then turned back to Quirke and gazed at him with frank and faintly smiling interest. “Dr. Quirke,” he said. “I think I know your daughter.”

  This put Quirke momentarily at a loss. “Oh,” he said lamely, “Phoebe, yes.” He had never heard his daughter mention Jonas Delahaye, or not that he could recall; but then, he was not much of a listener.

  “At least, I know a friend of hers—your assistant, I believe. David Sinclair.”

  “Oh,” Quirke said again, nodding. He felt acutely this young man’s almost invasive presence. “Yes, David is my assistant,” he said. “How do you know him?” Jonas ignored this question, as if he had not heard it, and went on gazing almost dreamily into Quirke’s face. His brother had wandered to the table in the middle of the room, on which there was a pewter dish with apples. He took an apple and bit into it, making a crisp, cracking sound. He seemed dourly disaffected, compared to his smiling brother. Of the two, it was apparent that Jonas was the dominant twin. Neither one of them had given the slightest sign of acknowledgment of their stepmother, who had turned her face away and was gazing out into the sunlit garden.

  “So,” Jonas said, throwing himself down in an armchair and hooking one leg over the side of it, “what happened to my father?” He looked from Quirke to the Inspector and then at Quirke again.

  “Your father died of a gunshot wound,” Hackett said. “It seems he fired the shot himself.”

  Jonas pulled a dismissive face. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “Davy Clancy was with him on the boat. Have you spoken to him?” He was looking at Quirke. “He should be able to tell you what happened.”

  James Delahaye was watching them, leaning against the table and eating his apple. Mona Delahaye sighed, and leaned back on the sofa and closed her eyes. For a moment Quirke had a notion of the five of them, himself and the Inspector, the twins, the woman on the sofa, in a scene onstage, each one placed just so by the director, and all of them waiting for their cue.

  Inspector Hackett swiveled about to look at Jonas Delahaye sprawled in the armchair. “Would you have any idea”—he glanced towards James—“either of you, why your father would kill himself?”

  Jonas shrugged, lifting one shoulder and pulling down his mouth at the corners. His brother, crunching the last of the apple, looked towards his stepmother and laughed.

  * * *

  “I suppose,” Hackett said, “if you were of a charitable disposition, you could say they were obviously suffering the aftereffects of the great shock they’ve had.”

  He and Quirke were walking back along Northumberland Road towards the canal. The sun was still shining but the evening shadows were lengthening; twilight was gathering itself deep in the foliage of the beeches set at intervals along the pavement. They had been discussing the Delahaye twins, their remarkable attitude to their father’s death, their cool insouciance. “Aye, they didn’t seem exactly heartbroken,” Hackett went on. “And neither did she.” He glanced sidelong at Quirke. “What do you think?” But Quirke said nothing, only paced along in silence, frowning at his toecaps.

  4

  Sylvia Clancy was afraid of both her husband and her son. She had tried for a long time to deny to herself that this was so, but it was. She did not feel menaced by them or believe they would do her physical harm. What she most feared was their potential to harm themselves, to damage their lives, and hers; to—the word shocked her but she had to admit it—to contaminate the little world the family shared together. They were not wicked, either of them, and probably they loved her, in their way, though it would not be the same as the way she loved them. She had them, as she always thought, in her care. They were her charges. She had to protect them, from the world but, much more, from themselves. She was aware of how outlandish this would sound if her husband were to hear her say it, and she was careful neve
r to let slip the slightest hint of how she felt, how she thought. All the same, she wondered if they did know what she thought and felt, if they knew without knowing, in that way the Irish were so adept at doing.

  She knew about her husband’s infidelities. She was hurt, of course, each time she found out about a new one—and probably the ones she learned about represented only a fraction of the real number—but she had come to accept his affairs as a condition of her life, as unalterable as the pain she suffered constantly in her back. It was because of her back, she supposed, that Jack had strayed in the first place. It must have been hard on him, being married to a woman who flinched and drew in her breath every time he put his arms around her. She could hardly blame him for seeking comfort and release elsewhere. Yet she did blame him, she did—she accepted, but she blamed; she could not stop herself. He might have helped her reconcile herself to his waywardness, he might at least have tried. But he was too impatient for that.

  Impatience, she thought, was what drove him, was what had always driven him; impatience and the awful resentment that went with it. She remembered the occasion, years, many years before, when she had seen these traits in him for the first time. That night, at the Delahayes’ party, he had snatched the car key out of her hand and walked out into the rain with that look on his face, his mouth twisted all to one side and his eyes blazing. What was it she had said? Something about Victor and Lisa, about what a handsome couple they made, and how happy they seemed together. Had Jack been jealous of Victor? Had he wanted Lisa for himself? Perhaps he had got her—perhaps that was why he was so upset that night. Yes, perhaps Lisa and Jack had been lovers. It amazed her that she could admit this possibility with such dispassion.

  Yet these speculations did weary her. Often she wished she could just walk away from everything, say nothing to anyone and just walk away. How much would they miss her, her husband and her son? She closed her eyes. If only she could empty her mind, dull her brain, kill her thoughts. That would be a kind of walking away.

  How lovely the sunlight was this evening; how heartless.

  She was climbing the stairs and had stopped on the landing a moment to look out of the high window there to Howth Head, far off on the other side of the bay. Below, in the garden, the blossoms of the peony roses were all falling over, dragged low by their own full-blown weight. She had tried to pin them up but they had drooped anyway, as if they wanted to hang their heads like that, as if that was how they saw themselves at their best. It was strange, she thought, to be thinking of flowers at such a time. But life, ordinary life, would not stop, even for a death.

  The flowers were not the only things that needed attention. The big old house, in one of Dun Laoghaire’s more stately terraces, was showing the signs of years of neglect. Jack was not interested in the house. Why would he be? He was rarely there. Jack had never got used to being married—tied down was what he would have said, she supposed—and could always find an excuse not to be at home. But that was Jack, take him or leave him.

  She went on up the last flight. She had squeezed six big Outspan oranges and poured the juice into a jug, and was carrying the jug together with a glass on a wooden tray spread with a table napkin. Davy was in bed, suffering still from the effects of being out in that boat for hours with no protection from the sun. Who would have thought the sun would be so strong, even in June? When she came into his room she caught the warmish smell of his poor scorched flesh. He lay sprawled on the bed in his pajama bottoms, the sheet kicked aside. He was wearing the black sleep mask that she had not known the house possessed, and she could not tell if he was asleep or awake. She stood over him, listening to him breathe. The sun blisters on his arms had broken and the skin on the bridge of his nose was beginning to peel already. She felt a twinge of embarrassment, standing in his room like this, and thought of setting the jug of orange juice down on the bedside table and tiptoeing away. But then he woke, and pulled off the mask and struggled to sit up, blinking and coughing, and drew the sheet over his knees.

  The tray, she realized, was the same one on which she used to bring up his good-night glass of milk when he was a child. How quickly the years had flown!

  Davy was twenty-four but seemed younger, or seemed so to her, anyway. Maybe, she reflected, mothers always think their sons will never quite grow up. He was working for the summer as a storeman at the Delahaye & Clancy garage in Ringsend. He seemed to like the work and was diligent, Jack said, a thing that surprised Jack, and surprised her, too. She supposed he was trying to impress them. He had confided to her his plan to train to be a mechanic and get a permanent job, but not at Delahaye & Clancy. He had not told his father yet, and neither had she. Jack would make a fuss, but she knew there would be no point in arguing; Davy was as stubborn as his father, and would not be told, or cajoled, but would go his own sweet way. She had asked him what he wanted to work at, if he was not going to continue at college, but he would not tell her.

  “I brought you some orange juice,” she said. She showed him the jug and the glass. “It’s freshly squeezed.” Looking exhausted, he sat slumped forward, with his head hanging and his arms draped over the mound of his knees. He was very fair—he had her coloring, which was why he had burned so badly under the sun. She looked down at him. A spur of hair stood up on the crown of his head, and she remembered how when he was little she used to have to wet the comb under the tap to get that same recalcitrant curl to lie flat. Was she wrong to dwell on the past like this? She should be treating him like an adult, not all the time harking back to how things were when he was still her little boy. “How do you feel?” she asked. He shrugged, still slumped over his knees. “Drink some of this juice,” she said. “It will help to cool you down.”

  She poured the juice and tapped the glass gently against his shoulder, and with a shuddery sigh he took it from her and drank, and had to stop to cough again, and drank again. “That’s good,” he said. “Thanks.”

  She sat down on the side of the bed. Since she had come into the room he had not once met her eye. “How are you feeling?” she asked again.

  “I can smell myself,” he said. “I can actually smell my skin where it got burned. It’s like fried pork.”

  She smiled, and he smiled too, ruefully, although he still would not look at her. He finished the juice and handed her back the glass. She asked if he would like more and he shook his head, and rubbed a finger rapidly back and forth under his nose. It was no good trying not to see these little things—the way he was sitting on the bed, the way he rubbed his nose, that springy curl sticking up—that made her think of him as a child again. The boy was still there, inside the young man’s body. It was the same with all of them, all the men she had ever known, in her family or outside it; they reverted to childhood when they were hurt, or sad, or in trouble.

  “A policeman telephoned,” Sylvia said. “A detective. He wants to talk to you. I said you weren’t well, and that you were sleeping.” Davy did not respond to this, only sat with his head hanging, his lower lip thrust out, and picked at a loose thread in the seam of the sheet. “What will you tell him?” she asked. “I mean, what will you say?” Oh, that look, she remembered that, too, the brows drawn down and the lip thrust out and his neck sunk between his shoulders. “Tell me, will you?” she said. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I told you already,” he said, with the hint of a whine in his voice. That sullenness, she thought, that resentment, just like his father. He tugged with miniature violence at the thread, drawing in his lip now and tightening his mouth. “There’s nothing more to say.”

  “Well,” she said patiently, “why don’t you tell me again. What did—what did he say?”

  “He said nothing.”

  “He must have said something.”

  A ship was leaving Dun Laoghaire Harbor, they heard the sound of its siren shaking the stillness of the sunlit evening. Once when they were crossing to Holyhead they had been on deck when the horn went off like that, like the last trump, and Da
vy, her Davy, who was four or five at the time, had been so frightened by the terrible sound he had burst into tears and clung to her legs and buried his face in her skirts. They had been so close in those days, the two of them; so close.

  “He told me a story,” Davy said, “about when he was a child and his old man took him out in the car one day and gave him money to buy an ice cream and drove off when he was in the shop.”

  “Drove off?”

  “And left him there. To teach him self-sufficiency, self-confidence, something like that—I can’t remember.”

  Sylvia pursed her lips and nodded. “Yes, I’m afraid that would be the kind of thing old Sam Delahaye would do, all right. What else?”

  “What what else?” That whining note again.

  “Was that all Victor said? What happened then?”

  “‘What happened then,’” Davy said with heavy sarcasm, mimicking her and waggling his head, “was that he produced this pistol, a huge thing, like a cowboy’s six-shooter, and stuck the barrel up to his chest and fired.”

  Now it was she who began picking at the sheet. “Do you think—do you think he meant to do it—”

  “Jesus, Ma!”

  “—that he didn’t just mean it as a joke, or something, that went wrong?”

  Davy laughed grimly. “Some joke.”

  “He could be so—odd, at times. Unpredictable.”

  “He meant to do it, all right,” Davy said. “There was no mistake about it.”

  “But why?” she almost wailed.

  Her son closed his eyes and heaved a histrionic sigh of exasperation and annoyance. “I told you. I—don’t—know.”

  And why, she wanted to ask, why did he take you for a witness—why you? “Something must have been terribly wrong with him.”

  Davy snorted. “Well, yes, I’d say so. You don’t put a bullet through your heart unless there’s something fairly seriously the matter.”