Elegy for April (10 page)

 

The door was opened to them by a red-haired girl who was already blushing. The old-fashioned maid’s uniform that she wore, black pinafore and a lace collar and a mobcap with lace trim, sat awkwardly on her, like a cutout dress on a cutout cardboard doll. She saw them into a drawing room off the hall and took their coats and hurried away, saying something that neither of them caught. The room was large and crowded with massive items of gleaming, dark-brown furniture. In the bay of the window there was a plant in a large brass pot that Quirke suspected was an aspidistra.

 

“So this,” said Hackett, “is how the other half lives.”

 

“This room looks to me,” Quirke said, glancing about dismissively, “like a priest’s parlor.”

 

They went and stood side by side at the big sash window. The fog was light today, and they could almost make out Howth, a flat dark shadow on the horizon. A foghorn boomed close by, making them jump.

 

Ten minutes had passed before the maid appeared again. She led them up the broad staircase. “Isn’t it terrible cold,” she said.
Hackett winked at her, and she blushed again, more deeply this time, stifling a giggle.

 

She showed them into a long, chill room with three great windows looking out on the sea. There were chintz-covered armchairs and a number of small, dainty tables dotted about bearing cut-glass vases of dried chrysanthemums; a long white sofa was positioned opposite the windows, seeming to lean back in dazed admiration of the view; there was also a grand piano, which somehow had the look of not having been played for a very long time, if ever. The air was scented with the slightly charred aroma of china tea. Mrs. Latimer was seated at an antique writing desk with a leather-bound appointments diary open before her. She wore a dress of scarab-green silk tightly cinched at the waist. Her fair, not quite red hair was carefully waved and set. A coal fire burned in the marble fireplace. Over the mantelpiece there was an oil portrait of a pale girl in a white blouse standing in a splash of sunlight in a summer garden, easily recognizable as a younger version of the woman sitting at the desk, who paused now and waited a moment before looking up at the two men standing by the doorway. She smiled with her lips. She held a silver propelling pencil poised in her fingers; Quirke had once possessed a pencil like that; it had been used to stab a man who richly deserved stabbing.

 

“Thank you, Marie,” Mrs. Latimer said, and the maid bobbed her head and shot out backwards, as if she had been jerked on the end of a rope.

 

“Mrs. Latimer,” Quirke said. “This is Inspector Hackett.”

 

The woman stood up from the desk and advanced, extending a hand. It was from her, Quirke saw, that her son had got his birdlike quickness. She still had something of the fine-boned delicacy of the girl in the portrait. Hackett was turning the brim of his hat in his fingers. Mrs. Latimer looked from Quirke to him and back again, seeming unimpressed by what she saw. “A
policeman and a doctor,” she said, “come to talk to me about my daughter. I feel I should be worried.” She gestured towards a small table before the fireplace where silver tea things were set out. “Can I give you some tea, gentlemen?”

 

They sat down on three straight-backed chairs, and Mrs. Latimer, wielding the teapot, spoke of the weather, deploring the fog and the February damp. Inspector Hackett watched her, lost in admiration, it seemed, of the woman’s poise, her measured cadences. “It’s particularly hard on the poor,” she said, “at this time of year, with coal so scarce still, all these years after the war, and everything so dear, as well. In the Society of St. Vincent de Paul we’re barely able to keep up with demand, and every winter it seems to get worse.”

 

Quirke was nodding politely. The tea in his cup smelled to him of boiled wood. Neither he nor Hackett had told Phoebe about the blood between the floorboards by April Latimer’s bed; they would not tell this woman of it, either.

 

She stopped speaking, and there was a silence. Hackett cleared his throat. Out in the bay the foghorn boomed again.

 

“My daughter, Phoebe,” Quirke said, “do you know her?”

 

“No,” Mrs. Latimer said. “She’s one of my daughter’s friends, I think?”

 

“Yes, she is. She tells me she hasn’t heard from April for the past two weeks. She’s worried. It seems she and your daughter see each other frequently, and if they don’t meet they talk on the telephone.”

 

Mrs. Latimer sat very still, gazing at a point of reflected light on the lid of the teapot, with a cold smile dying on her lips. “Do I understand you to say, Mr. Quirke, that you called in the Gardai because your daughter hasn’t heard from one of her friends for a week or two?”

 

Quirke frowned. “If you want to put it that way, yes,” he said.

 

Mrs. Latimer nodded, the last of her smile becoming a
faint, wry grimace of amusement. She stood up from the table and crossed to the piano and fetched an ebony cigarette box and came back and sat down again. She opened the box and offered it, and the men each took a cigarette, and Quirke brought out his lighter. Mrs. Latimer accepted a light, bending down to the flame and touching the back of Quirke’s hand with a fingertip.

 

“As you can see,” she said, “I’m not as surprised or puzzled by your visit as I might have been. My son told me, of course, Mr. Quirke, that you and your daughter went to see him. Tell me”— she turned a penetrating stare full on Quirke; her eyes were green and seemed to glitter—”is your daughter all right? I mean, does she suffer from nerves, that kind of thing? My son seems to think she does. I’ve heard she has had some … some troubles in her life.”

 

Before Quirke could reply Hackett cleared his throat again and leaned forward. “The thing is, Mrs. Latimer,” he said, “no one else has heard anything from your daughter either. She hasn’t been in work for the past fortnight. And her flat is empty.”

 

Mrs. Latimer transferred her green gaze to him and smiled her icy smile. “Empty?” she said. “How do you mean? Has April moved out?”

 

“No,” the policeman said, “her things are all still there. There doesn’t even seem to be a suitcase gone. But there’s no sign of your daughter.”

 

“I see.” She sat back on her chair and folded one arm and cupped an elbow in a palm, holding her cigarette beside her cheek. “And where do you think she’s gone to?” she asked, in a tone of no more than polite inquiry.

 

“We were hoping,” Quirke said, “that you might know.”

 

Mrs. Latimer laughed, making a hard, small sound, like the tinkling of a silver bell. “I’m afraid I know very little about my daughter’s doings. She doesn’t … she doesn’t confide in me.” She glanced at them both and shrugged. “She’s something of a
stranger to us, I mean the rest of the family, and has been for some time. She leads her own life. It’s how she wants it, it seems, and that’s how it is.”

 

Hackett sat back, frowning. Quirke put down his cup— he had not touched the tea.

 

“So you have no idea where she might have gone, or”— he paused a second—”or who she might be with?”

 

He could see her turning over the implications of his question, the second part of it in particular.

 

“I’ve told you,” she said, “she leads her own life.” Becoming brisk suddenly, she stubbed her half-smoked cigarette into the glass ashtray on the table before her. “I can’t afford to let myself be concerned about her. April hardened her heart against us, rejected all we stand for, gave up her religion. She lives among God knows what kind of people, gets up to things I dare not speculate on. Of course, I’m not indifferent. She is my daughter, I have to love her.”

 

“Would you rather you didn’t?” Quirke said, before he could stop himself.

 

“Didn’t what— love her?” Again that green glitter. “You’re impertinent, Mr. Quirke.”

 

“Doctor.”

 

“Forgive me. Doctor. I’m used to a different kind of medical man. Besides, from what I hear, you’re not exactly in a position yourself to challenge anyone on the duties of a parent.”

 

Quirke only looked at her, almost but not quite smiling, and Hackett half lifted his hand as if to forestall some violent movement. They heard from downstairs the sound of the front doorbell ringing. Mrs. Latimer turned aside and set down her cup on the tray. “That will be my brother-in-law,” she said. “I asked him to call in.”

 

 

 

BILL LATIMER CAME INTO THE ROOM CHUFFING LIKE A STEAM train, his hand already out, smiling his broad, cold smile. He was large and heavy, not fat, with a wide, bony face and thick, brown, wavy hair; he was much favored, it was said, by women voters. He moved with surprising lightness, even grace, and Quirke recalled that he had been some sort of athlete in his college days. “God!” he said, “isn’t the weather dire.” He shook hands with both men, addressing Quirke by name. His sister-in-law he greeted with a glancing peck to the cheek and walked past her to the table by the fireplace. “I’d kill for a cup of tea,” he said. “Will you ring for Maisie or Mary or what ever she’s called, and tell her to bring up an extra mug.”

 

Mrs. Latimer was wearing her chilly smile again. “This is china,” she said. “I’ll get Marie to make some indian for you.”

 

He laughed, turning to her. “Christ, Celia,” he said, “it’s far from china tea we were reared.” He rubbed his hands and held them out to the fire, then turned and lifted the flap of his jacket and offered his backside to the heat. He looked at Hackett and then at Quirke. “So,” he said, “that niece of mine is causing heartache again, is she? What is it this time— another boyfriend from the criminal classes?”

 

Mrs. Latimer had tugged a bellpull on the wall beside the fireplace, and now Marie the maid entered and was told a pot of tea was required—”Real tea, mind!” Latimer said with mock severity— and she went off again, grinning from the effect of the Minister’s jovial charm. When she had closed the door behind her they sat down all four at the little table, and Latimer accepted a cigarette from the ebony box. Hackett briefly repeated what he and Quirke had already said to Mrs. Latimer. The Minister sat back on his chair and laughed loudly; it was a laugh without humor or warmth, a noise only. “For the Lord’s sake!” he said, “she’s probably off down the country somewhere with some fellow”— he broke off and turned to his sister-in-law—”I’m
sorry, Celia, but you know as well as I do what she’s like.” He turned back to Quirke again. “A terrible tearaway, I’m afraid, the same April. Our very own black sheep.”

 

Quirke and the policeman said nothing. The silence yawned, and then Mrs. Latimer, as at a signal, tapped her hands briskly on her knees and stood up, smoothing the pleats of her dress. “Well,” she said, “I have things to be doing. I’ll leave you three gents to it.” She crossed to the desk and took up the diary and her propelling pencil and, casting back at them a brittle, brilliant smile, left the room, shutting the door softly behind her.

 

Latimer sighed. “It’s hard on her, you know,” he said. “She doesn’t show it, but it is. That daughter of hers was wild from the start.” He sat back and gave the two men a hard look each. “So: what have you to tell me?”

 

Hackett shifted on his chair. “We went to the young woman’s flat,” he said. “To have a look.”

 

“How did you get in?”

 

“She leaves a key under a stone, for her friends,” Quirke said. “My daughter came with us, to show us where the key was.”

 

“And? “

 

Hackett hesitated. “I think, Mr. Latimer, there’s cause for concern.”

 

Latimer glanced at his watch. “Concern over what?”

 

“It didn’t look to us like she’s gone away,” Hackett said. “There are two suitcases in the wardrobe in her room. And all her makeup and stuff is there— I can’t imagine a girl going off without her lipstick.”

 

“Maybe she’s staying with a friend? Or as I said already, maybe she’s shacked up somewhere with some fellow.”

 

“Either way she’d have taken her things with her.”

 

The politician and the policeman eyed each other levelly.

 

“Then where the hell is she?” Latimer demanded angrily.

 

They all had finished their cigarettes, and now Quirke brought
out his silver case and offered it round. Latimer rose with a sigh and went to the fireplace and stood leaning an elbow on the mantelpiece, looking into the burning heart of the coals. “That little bitch has caused nothing but trouble since the day she was born. Her father dying didn’t help— she was only nine or ten, I think it was. Who knows what it does to a child when she loses her father? That’s the charitable view. I’m inclined to think she’d have been the same even if Conor had lived.” He put a hand into his trousers pocket and nervously jingled coins. “It’s in the blood,” he said. “Her grandfather, my father, was a gambler and a drunkard.” He gave his empty laugh again. “The sins of the fathers, eh?” He looked at Hackett. “What else did you find?”

 

Again Hackett hesitated. “There was a bloodstain beside her bed.”

 

Latimer stared. “Blood?”

 

“Cleaned up,” the policeman said. “But of course you can’t ever really get rid of blood, as I’m sure you know. It always leaves a telltale trace”—he glanced at Quirke—”isn’t that so, Doctor?”