Holy Orders A Quirke Novel

by Benjamin Black

  “There’s someone here you should meet,” Phoebe said.

  “Who is it?”

  She cupped her hand around the mouthpiece. “Jimmy’s sister,” she whispered.

  There was a long moment of silence. “Jimmy Minor?” Quirke said, sounding almost suspicious. “I didn’t know he had a sister.”

  “Neither did I.” Again he was silent. “Meet us in the Shelbourne in half an hour,” she said. “We’ll be in the lounge.”

  She sensed him hesitating. “All right,” he said at last. “I’ll be there.”

  * * *

  The air in grand hotels, dense, warm, and woolly, always made Phoebe feel like a child again. Perhaps it was the nursery she was reminded of. The atmosphere in the lounge of the Shelbourne was particularly stuffy, with the mingled smells of coffee and women’s perfume and wood smoke from the big fireplace at the far end of the room. When they entered, she noticed Sally, at her side, hanging back a little—surely she was not intimidated by the place? Phoebe had been coming here all her life and was used to the calculated opulence of the carpets and the heavy silk curtains, the gilt mirrors, the antique silverware, and those forbidding brown-and-black portraits leaning out from the flocked walls.

  They were shown to a table in the bay of one of the high windows. On the other side of the street the trees behind the railings of St. Stephen’s Green thrashed in the wind and great gray spills of rain skidded along the pavement. Sally sat very straight in the broad armchair, perched on the outer edge of it, her hands clasped in her lap and her handbag on the floor by her feet. Phoebe thought of the gun in there, wrapped in its rag. It was almost funny to think of a visitor to the tea lounge in the Shelbourne Hotel armed with a loaded pistol.

  Quirke was late, of course. They went ahead and ordered: tea and biscuits and a selection of sandwiches. Phoebe asked about life in London and Sally said how much she liked it there, for all the crowding and the bustle and the rudeness of bus drivers and people on the Tube. As Phoebe listened to this account of life in the big city she had the impression of being ever so slightly patronized.

  “But don’t you sometimes consider coming back?” she asked. “To live, I mean, permanently.”

  “No!” Sally said, with a surprised little laugh. “I told you, my life is in London now. There’s nothing for me here.”

  “But if you were to marry—?”

  “I’ll never marry.”

  The sharp certainty of it was startling. Phoebe was curious and would have tried to explore the topic further, but Sally’s expression, blank and unyielding, stopped her.

  Their tea arrived, borne to the table with a flourish on a big gleaming silver tray. The waitress smiled at them. She was a plump girl with pink cheeks and fair hair tied back in a neat bun. Phoebe asked for a jug of hot water. “Certainly, miss,” the waitress said, sketching a kind of curtsy. Phoebe thought again of the pistol in Sally’s handbag and smiled to herself. She glanced about the room, at the people at the other tables. If only they knew!

  She was pouring a second cup of tea for them both when Quirke arrived. When the introductions were done he pulled up an armchair and sat down. He had not taken off his overcoat, as if to signal that he did not intend to stay for long. He wore corduroy trousers and a bulky pullover and his shirt collar was open. It was strange to see him without a tie and his accustomed funereal black suit. The casual clothes gave him a faintly desperate air, as if he had been woken from a troubled sleep and leapt up in a panic and thrown on the first garments that had come to hand. More and more these days he allowed himself to look disheveled like this.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” he said to Sally.

  Sally looked down, then raised her eyes again. “Did you know him?”

  “I met him,” Quirke said. “And of course I read him in the papers. But I wouldn’t say I knew him. He was a good reporter.”

  “Was he?”

  It was a question, not a challenge, yet Phoebe saw that it took Quirke by surprise. He blinked a couple of times and his eyes seemed to swell, as they always did when he was startled or at a loss. “Yes,” he said, “I think he was. He had courage, and he was persistent.”

  “The Clarion ran a big story about him,” Phoebe said, turning to Sally. “There was even an editorial, saying no one on the paper would rest until his killers were tracked down.”

  “Yes, I read that,” Sally said. “I wondered how sure they could be there was more than one killer.”

  “No one is sure of anything,” Quirke said. “That’s the trouble. There’s no apparent motive, and no clues.” He paused. “Did Jimmy talk to you about his work?”

  “Sometimes. When he wrote to me it was usually about generalities, about his life outside the office and the things he was doing, but”—she glanced at Phoebe—“he used to phone me from work sometimes, late at night, and then he’d often talk about what he was working on.”

  Quirke nodded. Phoebe noticed that he was sweating. Yet he did not seem to be hungover. She wondered if it was something to do with Isabel. This thought cast a small shadow over her mind. She was fond of Isabel, but she was not sure how she would feel if Quirke and she were to marry. But no, no, it was not possible: Quirke, like Sally, would never marry.

  “Are you going to have something?” she asked him now. “This tea is cold, but I could order a fresh pot.”

  He looked at her, frowning, as if she had posed a difficult conundrum and he was trying to solve it. “I’ll have coffee,” he said at last. She could see, however, that coffee was not what he really wanted. She signaled to the waitress.

  Quirke was leaning forward tensely in his chair with his hands clasped before him. He looked, Phoebe thought, like a man on the verge of collapse, barely managing to hold himself together. Should she be worried about him? This was something new in her experience of him. She had seen him drunk and she had seen him in the aftermath of drunkenness; she had seen him in a hospital bed, bruised all over from a beating; she had seen his hands shaking as he confessed to her the truth of who her real parents were; but she had never known him to be in quite this kind of nervous distress. What was the matter?

  He had turned to Sally again. “Did Jimmy ever talk about the people he was writing stories on? Did he mention names?”

  “Well, yes,” Sally said. “Sometimes he did.”

  “What about a Father Honan, Father Michael Honan? Father Mick, as he’s known. Do you remember that name?”

  Sally shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Or Packie Joyce? Packie the Pike Joyce.”

  “He sounds like a tinker—is he?”

  “Yes. Deals in scrap metal. His name was in Jimmy’s notebook.”

  Sally glanced at Phoebe, then turned to Quirke again. “James—sorry, that’s what the family calls him—he did talk about tinkers, the last couple of times he phoned me. He was working on a story about them, I believe.”

  “What sort of story?”

  “I don’t know.” She glanced again in Phoebe’s direction. “He said it was something big. But then”—she drew down the corners of her mouth in a rueful, upside-down smile—“James’s stories were always big, according to him.”

  “But he mentioned no names.”

  “No. He said he’d been to a campsite somewhere.”

  “Tallaght?”

  She frowned in the effort of recollection. “Maybe that was what he said. I’m sorry, I can’t remember. It was always late when he phoned—once or twice I fell asleep while he was talking.”

  The waitress brought Quirke’s coffee. He drank some of it and made the same wincing face that he did when he took a first sip from a whiskey glass. “Are you all right?” Phoebe asked him, trying not to sound overly concerned.

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” he said with a trace of impatience. She noted that he did not meet her eye.

  Sally excused herself and stood up and set off towards the ladies’, but then stopped and came back; throwing Phoebe a quick
, conspiratorial look, she picked up her handbag and took it with her. When she had gone, Phoebe leaned forward and peered at Quirke closely. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked.

  Still he avoided her eye. “Of course I am,” he said brusquely. “Why do you ask?”

  “You look—I don’t know. Were you drinking last night?”

  He shook his head. Phoebe smiled—how boyish her father looked when he lied. “I had a bad night,” he said, passing a hand over his face. “I didn’t sleep well.” He took up his coffee cup again. There was, she saw, a tremor in his hand. “How did she”—he jerked a thumb in the direction of the ladies’—“how did she contact you?”

  Phoebe laughed. “She followed me.”

  “She what?”

  “I kept having the feeling there was someone behind me, watching me, and then one day she overtook me in Baggot Street and we began to talk. She works in England, in London. She’s a reporter, like Jimmy.”

  “Why was she following you?”

  “Jimmy had talked to her about me and she wanted to see what I was like.” She paused. “She’s afraid, I think.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “She doesn’t say. I think she thinks she’s being followed.”

  “Who by?”

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t know.”

  “Then why—?”

  “Oh, Quirke,” Phoebe said—she never called him anything but Quirke—“you’re so literal-minded! Her brother was murdered and no one has the faintest idea who did it—why wouldn’t she be nervous? Why wouldn’t she imagine she was being followed?”

  Quirke sat and gazed at her stonily, thinking. She could almost hear his mind turning over, like a car engine on a winter morning. “Do you think she’s told us everything she knows?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Phoebe said stoutly, with more conviction than she felt. Should she tell him about the pistol? “She’s very straight—straight as a die.”

  Sally came back and sat down again. Quirke smiled at her, though Phoebe saw what an effort it cost him.

  “Have you any idea,” he said to Sally, “who might have wanted to harm your brother? Any idea at all?”

  Sally shook her head slowly. “No,” she said, “no, I haven’t. You see, I didn’t know much about James’s life, the things he did, the people he knew and went around with—if there were people he went around with. He was always a loner.”

  “But you say he wrote to you regularly, that you talked to each other on the phone. He told you about Phoebe—weren’t there others he mentioned?”

  Sally looked aside, smiling her upside-down smile. “You have to understand, Dr. Quirke, James lived so much in a world of his own invention. You knew him, you said—”

  “I met him—I didn’t say I knew him.”

  “Even so, if you knew anything about him you’d know how he—well, how he exaggerated. There was a side of him that was always a little boy who loved the movies. It was one of the things that made him so lovable.”

  Her eyes glistened. Frowning, Quirke glanced towards Phoebe, then turned back to Sally. “You realize,” he said, “we may never find out who killed your brother.”

  Sally looked at him. The light in her eyes had turned cold, and there was no sign of tears now. “I’ll find out,” she said. “I won’t rest until I do.”

  Phoebe gazed at her, wondering at the sudden hardness in her voice, at that icy light in her eye. It occurred to her that she might have misjudged Sally Minor. She thought yet again of the hidden pistol wrapped in its red rag, and this time there was nothing amusing about it.

  “Miss Minor—” Quirke began, but the girl interrupted him.

  “Call me Sally, please,” she said. “I always think ‘Miss Minor’ sounds like the name of a car.” She smiled, though something brittle remained in her look.

  Quirke nodded. “All right—Sally.” He paused. “The police have a hard time of it, in this city,” he said. “You know how it is—the authorities are not trusted, it’s part of our colonial heritage. People by instinct won’t talk to the Guards, and so—”

  Sally interrupted him again. “You don’t think I’m holding something back, do you?” she said, her smile growing all the more brittle.

  A faint flush appeared on Quirke’s brow. “No, of course not,” he said, in a thickened voice. “I just thought there might be something you’re not aware of, that you haven’t thought of. Phoebe”—he glanced towards his daughter—“Phoebe says you have the feeling someone might be following you.”

  Phoebe frowned at him but he ignored her. Sally looked down, and fingered the clasp of her handbag. “I’m sure I’m just imagining it. I suppose I was frightened, when I heard of James’s death—”

  “How did you hear?” Quirke asked.

  Sally made a small grimace. “My brother phoned me—I mean Patrick. He had that much decency, at least.” The subject of her family was obviously an embarrassment to her, and she blushed. But was she blushing, Phoebe wondered, or was she angry?

  “It must have been a great shock,” Quirke said.

  Sally gave a doleful shrug. “My hands were shaking for days afterwards,” she said. Then she looked up. “But I’m not afraid now, Dr. Quirke.”

  “I’m glad to hear it,” Quirke said.

  “Oh, I am afraid, in a way. It’s frightening not to know what happened to James, and why.”

  “And you wonder,” Quirke said, “if you’re in danger too?”

  Sally turned to Phoebe. “Do you think we could have some more tea?” She smiled apologetically. “I’m thirsty all of a sudden.”

  “Would you like something stronger?” Quirke asked. He turned about in his chair and caught the waitress’s eye. “What will you have?” he said, turning to Sally again. “A sherry, maybe?”

  “No, no,” she said. “Tea will be perfect.”

  The waitress came, and Quirke asked her to bring another pot of tea, and added, conscious of Phoebe’s eye on him, that he would have a glass of wine. Phoebe smiled at him grimly, lifting an eyebrow, but he would not look at her. At least, she thought, he had not asked for whiskey.

  “What about that thing in the paper,” Sally asked, “that splash in the Clarion? Did the couple come forward, the couple who found James’s body?”

  “I’m afraid,” Quirke said, “that was just the Clarion making noise, as usual.”

  “But what about the couple?”

  “There was no mystery about them—they gave their details to the Guards on the night that Jimmy’s body was found. They knew nothing, they only happened on the—on the body.”

  Quirke was watching the waitress making her way towards them, bearing a tray with their tea and his glass of wine. She handed him the glass and he took it in both hands, almost reverently, and set it on the table. Phoebe tried not to let him see her watching him. His little rituals always fascinated her, fascinated and appalled her, but most of all they made her feel sorry for him. Poor Quirke: he was so transparent. He sat there, making himself not look at the glass, and she counted off the half dozen beats before he picked it up, trying to seem nonchalant, and failing. He took a long sip, followed by a grimace and a quick drawing in of breath. He set the glass down on the table again and cleared his throat.

  “Do you think you might be in danger?” he said to Sally.

  Phoebe poured the tea, while Sally watched her. A gust of rain clattered against the window above them, and something outside, an awning, perhaps, flapped in the wind and made a noise like distant thunder.

  “My brother,” Sally said slowly, still with her eyes on Phoebe’s hands distributing the cups, “my brother used to be involved with—he used to be involved with a bad crowd.”

  “You mean Jimmy?” Quirke asked, sounding puzzled.

  “No, no, my other brother—Patrick.”

  “Ah, yes. I met him. A bad crowd, you say?” He looked doubtful.

  “Yes,” Sally said, and hesitated. “Well, you know what it’s like, up t
here on the border.”

  Quirke frowned. “Do you mean the IRA?”

  “Yes,” Sally said, and nodded, pressing her lips tightly together, and for a second Quirke had a vivid memory of her mother, standing in his office that day, with her son’s body laid out on the slab in the next room, her mouth small and wrinkled. “It was a long time ago,” Sally said, “and he was young.” She laughed. “You wouldn’t think it, would you, seeing Patrick now, that he was ever young.”

  Quirke dipped his head and took another quick go from his glass, as if, Phoebe thought, he imagined that if he did it quickly enough no one would notice. “Did he”—he hesitated—“did he take part? I mean, was he active?”

  “No,” Sally said, “I’m sure he wasn’t.”

  Phoebe was looking from one of them to the other. “The IRA?” she said to Sally. “Are you joking?” She turned to Quirke. “They’re not—they’re not serious, are they? I mean, the IRA is just a bunch of hotheads, aren’t they? Crackpots and hotheads?”

  “Well, they take themselves seriously,” Quirke said mildly.

  “I used to think they were a joke,” Sally said quietly, “until they blew up a Customs post a few miles from where we lived. One of their own men died in the explosion—he’s held up as a martyr in the locality, now. But it gave our Patrick the fright he needed, and before we knew it he had packed himself off to Dublin to study for the law.” She laughed coldly. “And now he’s a thoroughly respectable pillar of the community.”

  “I remember that bombing,” Quirke said, “but it’s a long time ago now. Do you really think Jimmy’s death might have been in some way—?”

  “No,” Sally said, “I’m sure it wasn’t. Only, when something as dreadful as that happens, you imagine all sorts of things”—she turned to Phoebe—“don’t you?”

  “I’m sure it’s true,” Phoebe said. Yes, it was true; she knew from experience that it was.

  Sally turned back to Quirke. “What about this priest you mentioned,” she said. “Have the Guards talked to him?”