He shook his head. “I don’t know.” It was the truth.
“What about your French amour? Is she gone for good?”
Francoise d’Aubigny. He said the name to himself and felt a click of pain, as if a tiny bone in his breast had snapped. He had loved Francoise, despite all she had done, despite all that she had turned out to be. “Gone, yes,” he said, tonelessly. “Gone for good.”
“And you’re back.”
She was still smiling but the smile had a flaw in it, like a crack across a mirror.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m back.”
What else could he say?
7
Inspector Hackett spotted Quirke before Quirke spotted him. They were among the crowd outside St. John’s, milling on the gravel in the sunshine in front of the church doors. Smell of warm dust, of hot metal from the parked cars, of the women’s face powder and the men’s cigarettes. Faint smell of death, too, of clay and lilies and the varnished wood of the coffin. Hackett was thinking what curious occasions they were, funerals, or this bit of them, anyway, the interval after the church service and before the burial, when no one seemed to know exactly what to do or how to behave, trying to keep a solemn demeanor yet feeling guiltily relieved, and almost lighthearted. They talked about all kinds of things, politics, the weather, who was going to win the match, but no one at this stage of the proceedings ever spoke of the person who was dead; it was as though a dispensation had been given for these few minutes, and everyone had been let off mentioning the one and only reason they were gathered here.
Hackett had arrived a minute or two before the service ended, having wanted to avoid going inside the church. When he was a lad the priests used to say that any Catholic who went into a Protestant church was committing a sin, and although he no longer believed in such things he still instinctively obeyed. Anyhow, it was not as if he was one of the family, or even a family friend.
He took himself off to the side and lit a cigarette and eyed the crowd, in their dark suits and black frocks and black hats with veils-a regular fashion show, it looked like-picking out the ones whose faces he knew and watching how they behaved. There were the Delahaye twins, uncannily alike. Which was which? That must be James, the one staying silent, while the other one, Jonas, talked and smiled. The dead man’s widow was with someone he did not recognize, a tall sleek man with ash-colored hair brushed back like an eagle’s plume-her brother, maybe, or was he too old? She wore a dark blue two-piece costume the skirt of which was very tight and emphasized the curve of her behind. Hackett looked at the seams of her stockings, and looked away.
The Clancys, parents and son, were in the crowd and yet seemed apart from it, surrounded as it were by an invisible enclosure. Jack Clancy was dragging on a cigarette as if he was suffocating and it was a little tube of oxygen. His son, looking more than ever like a bantamweight contender, was frowning at the sky, as if wistfully expecting something to swoop down out of it and carry him off to somewhere less grim than this balefully sunlit churchyard. Mrs. Clancy-what was her name? Celia? Sylvia? — held herself in that peculiar way that she did- standing on her dignity, Hackett thought-with her handbag on her wrist and her gaze turned elsewhere. The three of them looked as if whatever it was that was holding them together might loose its grip at any moment and send them flying asunder.
And then there was the sister, Miss Delahaye-Margaret, was it? — raw and red-eyed and coughing steadily like a motorcar with a faulty spark plug.
Trouble on all sides, Hackett told himself, and sighed.
It cheered him, seeing Quirke, skulking as it seemed beside the church door, also lighting up a furtive cigarette, glancing swiftly about as if expecting someone to be challenged, his black hat pulled down over his left eye. Quirke was probably the only one among all these people today who had not needed to change into a funeral suit.
“There you are,” Hackett said. He lowered his voice. “Grand day for a planting.”
Quirke did his crooked smile.
The mourners were drifting towards the graveyard, led by the vicar in his surplice and stole and walking behind the coffin carried on the shoulders of James and Jonas Delahaye and four of what must be their friends, curt-looking young men in expensive suits. The women in their high heels stepped over the grass carefully, like wading birds, while the men, concealing their half-smoked cigarettes inside their palms, took a last few surreptitious drags. Quirke and the Inspector joined the stragglers.
“There’s a sign somewhere in Glasnevin Cemetery,” Quirke said quietly. “‘Planting in this area restricted to dwarves,’ it says.” The Inspector’s shoulders shook. Quirke did not look at him. “I think,” he said mildly, “it’s trees that are meant.”
They went on, pacing slowly in the wake of the mourners.
“By God, Doctor,” Hackett said, catching his breath, “you’ve the graveyard humor, all right.”
The burial was quickly over with. The vicar droned, his eye fixed dreamily on a corner of the sky above the yew trees, a hymn was raggedly sung, someone-Delahaye’s sister, probably-let fall a sob that sounded like a fox’s bark, the coffin was lowered, the clay was scattered. The vicar draped a silken marker over the page of his black book and shut it, and with his hands clasped at his breast led the solemn retreat from the graveside. Hackett had been admiring the two gravediggers’ shapely spades-he was always interested in the tools of any trade-and now they stepped forward smartly and set to their work. Mona Delahaye, passing him by, smiled at Quirke and bit her lip. Quirke doffed his hat. Hackett watched the young woman, not looking at her nylon seams this time. “Mourning becomes her, eh?” he said, and cocked an eyebrow.
The cars were starting up and one or two were already creeping towards the gate. “Have you transport, yourself?” the Inspector asked. Quirke shook his head. “Fine, so,” Hackett said. “It’s a grand day for a walk into town.”
Hackett heard a step behind them on the gravel and turned to meet a pale, middle-aged man with a dry, grayish jaw and oiled black hair brushed slickly back.
“Are you the detective?” the man asked.
“I am,” Hackett said. “Detective Inspector Hackett.”
The man nodded. He had a curious way of blinking very slowly and comprehensively, like a bird of prey. He wore a starched, high collar-who wore collars like that, anymore? His teeth were bad, and Hackett caught a whiff of his breath.
“Might I have a word?” the man said. He slid a glance in Quirke’s direction.
“This is Dr. Quirke,” Hackett said. “We-we operate together.”
Quirke shot him a glance but the policeman’s bland expression did not alter. Hackett did not often make a joke.
“Ah, yes,” the man said. “Garret Quirke. I’ve heard of you.”
“Not Garret,” Quirke said. Why had people lately started calling him by that name?
“Sorry,” the man said, though he did not seem to be. “Maverley-Duncan Maverley. I work-worked-for Mr. Delahaye.” He glanced over his shoulder at the dispersing crowd and gestured towards the gate. “Shall we-?”
The three men went out at the gate and turned right and walked slowly along the pavement in the shade of the plane trees. The Delahayes’ car passed them by and Hackett fancied he glimpsed a flash of Mona Delahaye’s eye, trained in Quirke’s direction. The bold doctor, he thought to himself, had better go carefully, where that brand-new widow is concerned.
“I’m the head bookkeeper with Delahaye and Clancy,” Maverley said.
He was walking between the other two. He wore a drab black suit slightly rusty at the collar and the cuffs, and there were speckles of dandruff on his shoulders. He was, Quirke thought, every inch what a head bookkeeper should look like.