“Assertive,” said Crossan.
“Come on now, Alo,” Howard snorted and sat up again. “You can do better than that. You knew her too. She wasn’t a man-eater, no. That wouldn’t be fair to say that of her, now.”
“I think,” Crossan said momentously, “that perhaps she was so exciting because she gave the impression that she could do what she liked. She wasn’t stuck to the land. She was a free spirit.”
Howard smiled with a tired look and he held two fingers to his forehead in mock salute. “There you have it,” he said. “Bachelor wisdom that can’t be beat.”
“But you had plenty of eggs,” Minogue said. “Or do I mean baskets?”
“Baskets,” said Crossan.
“Whereas Jamesy Bourke had but the one. Or thought he had.”
Howard nodded, serious again. “At the time, yes,” he murmured.
Minogue struggled to keep up a momentum whose direction he couldn’t determine.
“What did ye talk about in the pub, though?”
“Well, a lot of it was about Jane Clark,” Howard said wearily. “There were other lads there too, and I was hoping we could get Jamesy off the subject of you-know-what or you-know-who. There was crack and music and plenty of drink. I remember him talking to me about some poetry and a plan he had to go to the States for a while so he could make money to live on.”
More details came to Howard, but none of them sparked Minogue to intervene. While Howard talked and Crossan stared into the fire, Minogue’s eyes strayed to the windows. From his earliest days in school, the Inspector had realised that he was a better listener when he wasn’t intent on the talk. As though, by looking to the side, one could see a star better, Minogue had come to depend on this faculty of understanding without the effort of listening closely, this keen reverie. The window facing away from the town was a panel of violet where the absolute country night pressed on the glass.
Howard’s voice stopped and then resumed. Minogue listened, heard and waited, but he allowed his inner eye to leave through the window. He imagined the ghostly heights of the Burren. The names on the huddles of houses and villages came to him: Carron and Gortleca, Kilshanny and Rinnamona. Reciting their names within gave him an odd pleasure. He tried to list more villages from memory but the names drifted away. Ruins of fort, village and church: Corcomroe Abbey, he remembered, Holy Mary of the Fertile Rock. Those scarred terraces crowning the landscape above Ailwee Cave which had caused Kathleen to stare at them that day they had the puncture on the way to the farm. Howard continued.
Sheila Howard was backing in the door with a tray of tea things and a plate of biscuits. Howard sat forward in the sofa and began rubbing his hands together. He stopped after several moments and looked at his hands with a frown as if they were new to him. Crossan coughed and crossed his legs.
“This may sound corny,” said Howard. “But I will always regret to my dying day that I pushed drink at Jamesy that night. I thought it would…”
“Incapacitate him?” Minogue prodded. “Settle him down?”
Howard’s voice fell lower to a monotone.
“I suppose.”
He watched his wife sit down beside him as though it were for the first time.
Minogue said thanks to Sheila Howard. He was keenly aware of her in the room, near to him. Was she still annoyed? He was relieved that he had gained some control over himself. Still, he felt the restlessness return as a sag somewhere in his chest, the heat at his collar. At least he wasn’t sitting here glowing like a beetroot, flustered and dripping from the jowls, he thought with sour gratitude. She shoved the plate across the table toward him and he saw that her hands were big. There was no daintiness about her nails. Some surprise twisted at his mind: she wasn’t a bird in a gilded cage.
“We talked about anything and everything,” Howard was saying. Minogue watched him pour tea for his wife. “The way two lads who are drunk can talk.”
“Huh,” said Crossan.
“What kind of order was he in by the time you left the pub?” asked Minogue.
“Drunk.”
“Was he on his feet at least?”
“Barely,” said Howard. “To tell you the truth, I wasn’t paying much attention at that stage myself.”
“Tell me,” said the Inspector in a tone he hoped didn’t sound too urgent, “did Bourke leave the pub very annoyed at her yet?”
Howard shrugged and then sat very still. A frown came to his face.
“I couldn’t honestly tell you now. I seem to remember him saying things at some point during the night, but I can’t tell you when, I just know it was in the pub, that that was how they are over there.”
“‘They’ meaning Canadians, is it?” Minogue asked.
“Canadians, Americans, I suppose,” Howard murmured.
Minogue stirred his tea without allowing the spoon to touch the inside of the cup.
“Did he tell you that he might try to make up with Jane Clark that night?”
Crossan had moved in to the table. Howard reflexively pushed a cup and saucer toward him.
“I’m trying to remember, now,” said Howard.
“He did,” said Sheila Howard.
Minogue hid his surprise.
“I forgot, Mrs Howard,” he said. “You met up with them late in the evening.”
“That’s right. I came in late from Galway. And I stopped in at the Hotel to listen to a bit of music and see the girls before heading home.”
“Yes,” said her husband, “there was a mighty session on that night. Tourists all over the place. The weather was good, strange to say.”
“The place was packed, all right,” Sheila Howard added.
“Strange how you remember things when you get reminders, even a word or two,” said Howard. He shook his head slowly before sipping at his tea. Minogue noticed Crossan poised with his own cup. He was struck by Crossan’s alertness as the lawyer eyed Dan Howard.
“That’s it,” Howard said then. “St. John’s Eve, do you know it?”
“The midsummer’s night,” replied Minogue. “Yes.”
Howard sipped more tea and looked into the fire.
“The bonfires and everything,” he murmured. “They don’t do it so much nowadays.”
Minogue turned to Sheila Howard.
“May I ask you something, Mrs Howard?”
His voice sounded small in the room. The Inspector swallowed and glanced at her eyes.
“You may indeed,” she replied.
Minogue was struck again by her poise and stillness. Mona Lisa- Mona Sheila… Minogue’s gargoyle flung an image at his brittle composure: Sheela-na-gig. An image of those pagan carvings and statues of women came to Minogue. These statues of women and goddesses, with their knees up and their fingers tugging the lips of their vulvas apart, were widely regarded as grotesque and had been quarantined in the back rooms of the National Museum in Dublin.
“Were you aware…” He struggled through the question and swallowed again. “Were you aware that night of what had gone on out at Jane Clark’s house?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I became aware of it.”
The formality struck Minogue: ‘became aware.’ A rebuke to him for a phrase which did not belong in this chat, in her home? A phrase used in law, in court. He looked over to Crossan and again doubt came to him.
“The girls had heard about it,” she went on. “And you know what that would mean in town. It was no doubt the way Jamesy was acting that got them wondering. Word travels fast, especially inside a pub.”
He looked over at Howard.
“Well, I don’t doubt that I let something slip,” Howard said. “With everyone coming and going in the pub and all the chatting and what have you. And sure once one knew, they’d all know in a matter of minutes. There was a funny side to it, I’d have to admit. Before what happened later, I mean.”