“I met him at a reception once, I can’t remember where.”
“Was I there?”
“I believe you were.”
“That’s odd. Surely I would have remembered meeting you.” She smiled slyly, then frowned again, and let her eyes slide away from his until she was gazing at nothing. “He had no sense of humor, that was the trouble-none at all. And that really is very boring, you know, if you’re married to the person.” She finished her drink and rolled the empty glass between her palms. The shadow of a cloud darkened the window for a second and then the brightness flooded back. “Honestly,” Mona said, glancing towards the window, “you’d think it was April, wouldn’t you.” She looked at him again. “He left a note, did I mention that?”
“No,” Quirke said, “you didn’t mention that.”
“Well, he did. But look”-she shook her head at him with pretended displeasure-“I wish you wouldn’t sit there like that, all tensed up like a corkscrew. Sit here, beside me-come on.”
“Mrs. Delahaye,” Quirke said, “I’m really not sure why you asked me here today.”
“No,” she said brightly, “neither am I. But it would be nice if you came and sat down.” She smiled. “We could discuss the matter,” she said, in a husky tone of mock solemnity. “You like discussing things, don’t you?”
He got to his feet and stood irresolute. His glass was empty again. He felt dizzy. What was he to do? The woman on the sofa sat at her ease, looking up at him, with what might have been a warmly sympathetic smile, as if she understood his dilemma. She held up her glass. “Get us both another drink,” she said. “I’d like one, and I think you need one.”
He took his time at the sideboard, pouring the drinks. When he carried them to the sofa Mona tasted hers and shook her head. “No,” she said, “I can’t drink another one without ice. Would you be a dear-? The kitchen is at the end of the hall.” She indicated with her thumb. “Sarah will be there, she’ll show you.”
He took the ice bucket and walked with it down the hall, into the dim recesses of the house. Sarah the maid was not to be found; he had once been in love with a woman named Sarah, who was dead, now. The kitchen was large and impersonal, and smelled faintly of gas. The squat refrigerator stood in a corner murmuring to itself, like a white-clad figure kneeling in rapt prayer. He extracted the crackling ice tray from its compartment and took it to the sink and struggled with it, the pads of his fingers sticking to the plump cubes sunk in their metal chambers. At last he thought of turning the tray over and running the tap on it, and then of course the cubes all fell out at once with a clatter and he had to chase them round the bottom of the sink with fingers that by now were turning numb.
At last he got the cubes into the bucket and set off back through the house. In the hallway he heard voices, and as he was passing by a door it opened suddenly and one of the Delahaye twins, coming out, stopped on the threshold and looked at him in surprise. He was dressed in white, as usual-white sports shirt, duck trousers, plimsolls-and carried a wooden tray with glasses on it. Quirke glanced past the young man’s shoulder into the room. There was a billiard table, and a darkly pretty girl was sitting on it, with her left foot on the floor and her right leg raised, her hands clasped around her knee. The other twin stood in front of her, with a hand resting on her hip. Impassive, they returned his stare. No one spoke. In a second or two the little tableau-Quirke in the hall, the twin in the doorway, and the couple at the table-was over, and Quirke passed on. He had a strange feeling of lightness, as if he were passing through a dream.
Mona Delahaye was reclining now against the back of the sofa. She uncrossed her legs slowly and leaned forward, holding up her glass, into which he dropped a handful of ice from the bucket. “You’re such a pet,” she said, watching the cubes jostle amid the tonic bubbles.
Quirke retrieved his whiskey glass and sat down again on the arm of the sofa. “You say your husband left a note,” he said.
“Yes.” She frowned, as if petulantly. “I threw it away. Burned it, actually. Or did I flush it down the you-know-what?” She twinkled at him. “You see? I’m such a scatterbrain.”
“May I ask what he said-what he wrote?”
“Oh, silly stuff. How much he loved me and how jealous he was-all that, the usual.” She sipped her drink thoughtfully. “There’s really nothing you can do for people who are jealous, is there. And they make such a-such a spectacle of themselves. It’s always too pitiful.” She looked at him. “Don’t you think?”
He drank his whiskey, then brought out his cigarettes and offered her one, and took one himself. Leaning down with his lighter he looked again into the front of her blouse. Her skin was so pale there, and would be so soft to touch. “Was he jealous of Jack Clancy?” he asked.
She gave a little silvery laugh. “Oh, he was jealous of everyone,” she said. She pushed out her lower lip and directed a thin stream of smoke upwards past his face.
“Is that why he tried to kill his son?”
She frowned in puzzlement. “What?”
“Because he was jealous, is that why he abandoned young Clancy in the boat miles offshore and left him to fry in the sun? To get back at his father?”
She gave him an odd look, tight-lipped and wide-eyed, as if he had said something richly funny at which she must not allow herself to laugh. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, blinking slowly, trying to show him how impressed she was by his perceptiveness. “I’m sure you’re right. In fact, I’m sure he intended to kill Davy, but lost his nerve at the last minute and shot himself instead. It would be just the kind of thing Victor would do. He really wasn’t very-he wasn’t very competent, you know. He had this reputation as a ruthless businessman”-she broke off for a second to laugh again, almost in delight-“but it was all nonsense. He hadn’t an idea. It was his father who kept the business going, even after he was supposed to have retired. Then when poor old Sam had his stroke that creep Maverley stepped in and took charge. And there was Jack, of course-Jack knew the business inside out.” She darted her cigarette in the direction of the ashtray that she had set on the floor beside her foot. “Victor’s trouble was his mother. You wouldn’t have known her-a real monster, hiding behind a mask of niceness. She ruined him, gave him ridiculous ideas of how clever and important he was, at the same time working away to undermine his confidence. Oh, Victor, don’t try to be like your father, she’d say, you couldn’t possibly be like him. And she’d smile, very sweetly, and pat his hand. It’s her he should have killed, though conveniently she died.”
Forgetting himself, he slid down from his place on the sofa arm until he was sitting beside her. She smiled, and it seemed for a moment she might move sideways and lean her head on his shoulder, or nestle against his chest. “Will you tell me what was in the note-the suicide note?” he asked.
She stared at him, again with that look of almost laughing. “I didn’t say it was a suicide note,” she said. “Just a note. He often wrote things down that he couldn’t bring himself to say.”
“And what was it he wrote that last time-what was it he couldn’t say?”
“I told you-about being jealous.”
“Of Jack Clancy?”
“Um.” She dipped a finger into her glass and stirred the gin and what was left of the ice cubes, then put the tip of the finger into her mouth and sucked it, looking at him sidelong. He held her gaze. He was acutely aware of the presence of others in the house, of Sarah the maid, of the twins, and that dark-haired girl. What had the three of them been up to in the billiard room? Nothing good, he was sure of that.
“Did you know what he was going to do?” he asked. She shook her head, still with her finger in her mouth. “But you weren’t surprised,” he said softly.
She took his glass from his hand and rose and walked to the sideboard and poured them each yet another drink. “What do you know about me?” she asked, busy with bottles, glasses, ice.