Vengeance: A Novel (Quirke) (29 page)

He tried to imagine himself bouncing a damp and odiferous infant on his knee. “Have another drink,” he said.

Isabel stood up. “No—I said just the one. Come on. I have to be at the Gate at half nine—I’m in the second act.”

They had left the snug and were making their way towards the door among the dim forms of the early drinkers when the barman spoke Quirke’s name. “Call for you, Doctor,” he said, holding up the receiver of the phone that stood beside the cash register. Quirke frowned. Who would be calling him here? Who would have known where to find him?

He took the receiver and crouched over it at the bar. Isabel waited, tapping her foot. She was uneasy, feeling eyes on her from the shadows, trying to see through her clothes. She had wanted Quirke to meet her in the Gresham but of course he had insisted on McGonagle’s. She could not think what he saw in the place. She imagined him sitting here like these other ones, lurking in the dimness with his drink and his cigarette, eyeing someone else’s woman. She banished the image. She tapped her foot. At last Quirke handed the receiver back to the barman and turned and took her by the elbow and steered her to the door.

“Sinclair,” he said. “Something about Phoebe.”

*   *   *

He put her into a taxi in the rank at the corner of the Green. Her face at the side window was white with anger. She had wanted to know what the “something about Phoebe” was, but he had said he did not know, that it was confused, that the line had been bad and he had not been able to hear Sinclair properly and what he had heard he had found hard to understand.

All this, most of it, was a lie. He had not mentioned Mona Delahaye. She had tried to call him at the hospital and the woman on the switchboard had put it through to the pathology lab and Sinclair had answered, and then Sinclair had phoned him. Phoebe was at the Delahayes’ house and was unwell, it seemed, and needed to be collected—Sinclair was working late, he was in the middle of a postmortem, he could not get away. Quirke would have to go. Sinclair gave the address. Yes, Quirke said, he knew the house. Then there had been a silence on the line. How much did Sinclair know about Quirke and Mona Delahaye? Sinclair had an uncanny knack of getting wind of things that no one else knew about. Quirke watched until the taxi with Isabel in it was out of sight, then climbed into the next car in the row.

It was Mona who opened the front door to him. “Oh, hello,” she said, as if his sudden appearance were an unexpected and mildly pleasant surprise.

“I’ve come for Phoebe,” he said.

“Yes, of course you have.”

She stood there with her hand on the door, looking him slowly up and down, in that way she did, as if measuring him for something, some garment into which he might have to be fitted. She smiled. “You’re the very picture of paternal concern,” she said.

He took a step forward. “Where is she?” he asked. “What happened?”

“Oh, she drank too much gin, that’s all.” Still she had not taken her hand from the door, and seemed indeed to be considering whether or not to let him come in. Then she shrugged and stood aside. “For God’s sake keep your voice down,” she said. “My father-in-law is on the warpath.”

She led him to the drawing room. Phoebe was lying full-length on the white sofa, her head propped on a cushion, and with another cushion under her feet. Her hands were crossed on her breast. In her black dress and white blouse with the white lace collar she looked alarmingly like the corpse of a maiden saint laid out on a bier. He went and lifted her wrist and took her pulse. It was slow. He smelled her breath.

As he leaned over her she suddenly opened wide her eyes and stared at him in a sort of happy disbelief. “Daddy,” she said softly, and her eyelids fluttered shut again. She had never called him Daddy before. She must think he was someone else.

He turned to Mona, who was standing in the doorway with her shoulder against the doorjamb and her ankles crossed, smoking a cigarette and watching him with a sardonic smile. “What happened?” he asked again.

“I told you—she drank too much and passed out.”

“What was she drinking?”

“Gin. I already said. Don’t you listen?”

He glanced about the room, saw the empty glasses, the open lid of the radiogram. “Who was here?”

“I was.”

“Who else?”

“The twins. Honestly, Quirke, you look terribly fierce—you’ll have me frightened of you in a minute.”

Quirke made a dismissive gesture, chopping at the air with the side of his hand. “Why was she here?” he asked. “What was she doing?”

Mona gave an exasperated sigh, expelling hasty cigarette smoke. “
I
don’t know. I arrived and here she was, knocking back gin by the bucketful and dancing. It was quite a party.”

“A party? Were there others?”

“What others?”

“
Any
others.”

“The twins—I told you!”

“And that’s all? You and those two and Phoebe? What was going on?”

“Will you stop asking that? You sound like a broken record.”

“My daughter was in your house, comatose, and I was called to come and collect her. You made the call. I think you owe me an explanation.”

She sighed again and was silent for a moment, giving him a level look and shaking her head slightly from side to side. “I know what it is about you,” she said. “You think you’re living in the movies.” She put on a heavy voice, mimicking him. “
My daughter, in your house, what’s going on?
Can’t young people have a little party now and then?”

“If they harmed her in any way…”

He did not go on, and Mona laughed. “You mean,” she said, “if they ‘dishonored her’? If they ‘ruined’ her? Now you’re playing the Victorian father—you should have mustaches to twirl.”

He shook his head, as if he were being bothered by some flying thing. “Will you call a taxi for me, please?”

“I could drive you somewhere—anywhere, in fact.”

“A taxi would be best. If you show me the phone I’ll call one myself.”

She was smiling at him with a wry expression. “You’re really being a bore,” she said. “Nothing happened. There were some drinks, we danced, she got dizzy.”

“A taxi,” he said.

She looked to heaven and turned and sauntered out, and a moment later he heard her in the hall, dialing. Then she came back, and stood where she had stood before, with her cigarette.

“Like a drink?” she asked.

On the sofa, Phoebe moaned faintly.

*   *   *

He took her to his flat in Mount Street. It required some effort to get her up the stairs: her legs were not working very well, and kept crossing and threatening to buckle. Once they were in the flat he walked her to the bedroom and put her to lie on his bed and drew the curtains. She spoke some unintelligible words and gave a burbling little laugh and then lapsed back into unconsciousness.

He went out to the kitchen and poured himself a whiskey—he had a bottle hidden at the back of one of the cupboards—and took it into the living room and lit a cigarette and sat down on the window seat. Late sunlight was dividing the street into halves of light and shadow. Lines of cars were parked at the curbs along both pavements, ranked side by side in two neat shoals, their roofs gleaming like the backs of dolphins. He sat there for a long time, thinking, then went to the telephone and called Sinclair.

He had finished his drink and wanted another, but instead he filled the coffee percolator and put it on the gas and watched it as it came slowly to the boil. He wondered what it was that Phoebe had taken, apart from the gin. There had been no smell of a drug on her breath. Some barbiturate, he supposed—Luminal? They would have put it in her drink and she would not have noticed. That would be their idea of fun. A nerve began to jump at the corner of his right eye.

He was at the window in the living room again, drinking a second cup of coffee, when Sinclair arrived. Quirke told of how he had found Phoebe unconscious at the Delahayes’. He said the twins had been there, and then was sorry that he had. Of Mona Delahaye he made no mention.

“What was going on?” Sinclair said, frowning in bafflement.

“I don’t know,” Quirke answered.

“What was she doing there, at that house, drinking?”

For a moment Quirke was silent. He was angry with Sinclair, he was not sure why. “She needs looking after, you know,” he said.

Sinclair considered the toecaps of his shoes. “She’s not a child,” he said mildly.

“In some ways she is.”

“She wouldn’t thank you for saying it.”

“I don’t ask for thanks.”

There was another silence. Quirke fetched a silver cigarette box from the mantelpiece and they lit up and stood smoking, looking at anything save each other.

“I don’t know what I could have done,” Sinclair said. “The woman on the phone, Mrs. Delahaye, seemed to think the whole thing was funny. I didn’t realize.”

You could marry her,
Quirke thought, surprising himself. Did he want to see Phoebe married? Did he not have doubts about Sinclair? To whose benefit would it be if his daughter were to marry—hers, or his own? Was it not just his own peace of mind he was thinking of? Was it simply that he wanted to be rid of his daughter, rid of the responsibility of being the one nearest to her?

He turned away. In his mind he saw again Mona Delahaye standing at the door of the drawing room in Northumberland Road, in her green blouse and her little girl’s puffed-out skirt. That recent afternoon, in her shadowed bedroom, he had held her in his arms and she had pressed her mouth against his shoulder to stifle her moans and he had thought himself in love. Now he cursed himself for a fool.

The bedroom door opened and Phoebe appeared, in her stockinged feet, blear-eyed, with a hand to her forehead. “I heard voices,” she said dazedly. She saw Sinclair and frowned. “David? Why are you here?”

“I rang him,” Quirke said.

She stood blinking. “I must have—I must have passed out. I feel really peculiar.”

“I’ll make some tea,” Quirke said. “Tea will be good for you.”

He went into the kitchen and boiled the kettle and set out cups and saucers on a tray. When he returned to the living room Sinclair and Phoebe were sitting close beside each other on the sofa, and Sinclair was holding her right hand in both of his.

Phoebe looked at Quirke as he poured out the tea for her. “They invited me for a drink,” she said. “Why did I go?” She looked about herself helplessly. “My head feels as if it’s stuffed with wet wool.”

“Do you remember taking anything?” Quirke asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Tablets, pills—anything like that?”

“No.” She frowned, trying to concentrate. She shook her head. “No, there wasn’t anything. We drank gin. I don’t know what I was thinking of.” She put her other hand on top of Sinclair’s hands. “I’m sorry,” she said, and suddenly it seemed she might cry. “I’m so sorry.”

Sinclair looked up at Quirke and said nothing.

“Drink your tea,” Quirke said.

She looked at the cup and saucer balanced on the arm of the sofa beside her. “He told me I was his alibi,” she said. Both men watched her, waiting. She shook her head again and gave an incredulous laugh. “He sang it,” she said.

Again the two men exchanged glances.

“Sang what?” Sinclair asked.

“About my being his alibi. He said the Guards had questioned him”—she looked to Quirke—“your friend Inspector Hackett brought both twins in to ask them about the night when that man died, that Clancy man. So Jonas said. I think he’s mad.” She looked from one of them to the other. “I really think he
is
mad. They both are, both the twins.”

Quirke drew up a chair and set it in front of the sofa and sat down and leaned forward with his hands clasped. “Which one was it that spoke about an alibi?”

“Jonas.” She turned to Sinclair. “He was talking about the party at Breen’s house, you remember? We saw them there, the twins. Only—”

She stopped.

“Only what?” Quirke said.

“Only I noticed something. You know they have a joke that Jonas wears a ring on his little finger and that’s the only way people can tell them apart. But that night, at the party, they were both wearing rings, I saw them. Jonas met us when we arrived, remember, he was with Tanya Somers? And then, later, we saw James upstairs, talking to that girl in the doorway. But they both had the identical signet ring on the little fingers of their left hands.”

Sinclair was frowning. “I don’t understand,” he said.

Quirke watched Phoebe. “How were they dressed?” he asked.

“One of them had on a black blazer, the other was wearing—I don’t know—something pale, a linen suit, or jacket.”

“And Tanya Somers was there, with one of them?”

“Yes.”

The room had grown very quiet. Distantly in the city an Angelus bell was dully tolling.

“There was only one of them,” Quirke said. “They pretended they were two, but there was only the one.”

“But why?” Phoebe said. “They would have had to switch clothes. And Tanya Somers would have had to go along with the pretense.”

Quirke stood up. “One of them needed to be somewhere else,” he said. “That was the reason for the trick. That’s why you, and whoever else was at the party that knew them, would be their alibi. There was only one twin, masquerading as two.”

He walked to the mantelpiece and took another cigarette from the silver box and lit it, and drew the smoke deep into his lungs. Phoebe and Sinclair sat and watched him.

“I still don’t see it,” Sinclair said.

Quirke turned, and stood with his back to the fireplace, wreathed in cigarette smoke that gave him for a moment the look of a magician about to make himself disappear. “Phoebe said it. That night, the night of the party, was the night Jack Clancy died. The night he was murdered.”

*   *   *

The lights shining down from the big windows on the ground floor seemed to darken the twilight beyond their reach, and in the front garden, behind the railings, shadows congregated among the flowerbeds and under the boughs of the big beech reaching towards the house like tentacles from the road. At the gate Quirke hesitated. What would he say to the twins if they were there? What would he say to Mona Delahaye? Should he not have called Hackett, and told him Phoebe’s story of the signet ring?