A Death in Summer

by Benjamin Black

  What orphans?

  3

  Somehow Quirke had known that she would call. Although he had given her his home number, for some reason she chose to phone him at the hospital. “It’s Francoise d’Aubigny here,” she said, and then added, “Mrs. Jewell,” as if he could have forgotten. He had known who it was from the first word she spoke. That voice. After the initial exchange neither said anything for some moments. Quirke fancied he could hear her breathing. His forehead had gone hot. This was absurd; he was being absurd.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  The coroner had returned an open verdict on Richard Jewell-a travesty, of course, but not a surprise; the Clarion had reported the judgment in two paragraphs buried on an inside page.

  “I feel very strange, as a matter of fact,” Francoise d’Aubigny said. “As if I were in a hot-air balloon, floating above everything. Nothing has any weight.”

  The memory of her had been weaving itself around Quirke’s thoughts for days, elusive and insubstantial as a stray strand of cobweb, and as clinging, too. Even lying in Isabel Galloway’s bed he saw the other woman’s face suspended above him in the darkness, and felt guilty, and then resentful, since there was nothing he was guilty of, or nothing of substance, anyway. Or not yet, as a small voice whispered in his head.

  “Yes,” he said now, “grief is strange.”

  “Ah-you seem to know how it feels?”

  “My wife died. It was a long time ago.” She said nothing to that. Again there was a silence on the line. “And your daughter,” he asked, “how is she coping?”

  “Not badly. She is a very brave little girl. She’s called Giselle.” Now it was his turn not to know what to say. “She refused to go to the funeral.”

  “What age is she?”

  “Nine. Very young, and yet old enough to know her own mind. I can remember what it was like to be that age, and how sharp the pain of things was then.”

  Yet again that silence on the line, hollow, slightly unsettling.

  “Would you like to meet?” Quirke heard himself ask.

  Her reply was instant. “Yes,” she said, “I would.”

  ***

  They met for lunch in the Hibernian. There was the usual lunchtime bustle, and as the glass front door kept opening and shutting it threw a repeated flash of reflected sunlight along the length of the marble floor, among the feet of the people coming and going. She was already at the table when he arrived, sitting up very straight with her shoulders back and her eye fixed expectantly on the door. She wore a thin pale-blue summer dress with polka dots and a tiny scrap of a hat, stuck with a feather and a pin, that he suspected she might have bought in the Maison des Chapeaux, where his daughter worked-perhaps, indeed, Phoebe had sold it to her. She extended a hand palm down, as if for him to kiss, but he only shook it, and felt clumsy. “I’m a little sorry,” she said, glancing about, “that I suggested this place-Richard used to lunch here all the time. In fact, I think I have had one or two disapproving glances. Should I be wearing black, at least?”

  She ordered a salad and a glass of ice water. Quirke wistfully considered a half bottle of wine, but thought better of it. He scanned the menu uncertainly and settled for an omelette.

  “Yes,” Francoise d’Aubigny said, “Richard loved it here. He used to joke that it was his answer to the Kildare Street Club, where of course he would not have been welcome.” She looked at Quirke with a searching glint. “You know the family is Jewish. It is not something they speak of.”

  Had he known it? He was not sure. There was the fact of Jewell’s having been circumcised, but that was never conclusive evidence. He did not know what to think of this aspect of things, or what its relevance might be. And what of her? Was d’Aubigny a Jewish name? He could ask Sinclair, who might know. “I doubt the chaps at Kildare Street would have me, either,” he said, but did not meet her eye. He thought about wine again; maybe just a glass?

  She was still watching him, smiling a little. “I think, Dr. Quirke, you are not entirely at ease?”

  He experienced a sudden flash of impatience, of annoyance, even. She was right: they should not have come here for lunch; probably they should not have met at all. “The thing is, Mrs. Jewell, I’m not sure exactly what is happening-I mean, why we are here like this.” She was so lovely it almost pained him to look at her.

  She lowered her gaze as if to hide her smile. “Yes, as I said, perhaps this was not a good idea.” Now she looked up again, and did smile. “But if I recall correctly it was you who issued the invitation.”

  Their food arrived. Quirke asked the waiter to bring him a glass of Chablis. To his surprise, Francoise d’Aubigny said she would have one too. Perhaps she was as nervous as he was, for all her air of coolness and poise.

  “That detective,” she said when the waiter had gone, “what is his name?”

  “Hackett.”

  “Yes. Hackett. All the policemen here, are they like him?”

  Quirke was glad of a reason to laugh. He leaned back in his chair. “No,” he said, “I don’t think so. But he’s not as dim as he seems.”

  “Dim?”

  “Dull. Slow.”

  “Ah, no-he did not seem like that to me. On the contrary.”

  “Yes, he’s a sly dog, is Hackett.” He was watching the waiter weaving towards them among the tables, bearing aloft a tray with two glasses on it.

  “I thought at first that you must be the detective from the city,” she said, “and that he was-I don’t know. Someone local, maybe, down there. I do not know much about Kildare, although we have been at Brooklands for many years.”

  The waiter set down their glasses. Twin stars of light from some far window glowed in their straw-colored depths. Quirke did not pick up the glass, but began counting to ten, slowly, in his head.

  “He’s not very adept on the social side of things,” he said, “which is why, I think, he brings me with him.” He had been thinking of the wine and not of what he was saying. Now he caught her eye and felt his forehead redden. “Not that I’m so very sophisticated.” He lifted his glass. He noted the faint tremor in his hand. He drank. Ah!

  “Do you believe as he does,” Francoise d’Aubigny was saying, “I mean, that my husband did not kill himself?”

  Quirke, turning the stem of the glass in his fingers, was trying not to smile for simple happiness. The euphoria that blossomed as the alcohol spread its filaments through him like the roots of a burning bush was irresistible. He must be careful now, he told himself, he must watch his words. “Mrs. Jewell,” he said, “I think it is beyond question that your husband was murdered.”

  She blinked, and he saw her swallowing. “What did you find,” she said, “when you-when you did whatever it is you do?”

  “The postmortem, you mean? It was hardly more than a formality. You saw how it was at the scene that day, the way your husband was lying across the desk, with the shotgun in his hands.”

  “Yes?”

  She waited, watching him, and he shifted his weight uneasily on the chair. Surely she could not be in doubt, surely she was just clutching at the hope that-that what? Would she really think it preferable that he should have killed himself?

  “This is very difficult to talk about, Mrs. Jewell.”

  Her look hardened. “Difficult for you, or for me?”

  “For you, of course, but for me, also.”

  They were silent, she with her black-eyed gaze fixed on him and he casting about uncomfortably. She had not tasted her salad, or the wine.

  “Mrs. Jewell,” he said, hunching forward over the table with the air of starting again to explain in still simpler terms something that was already obvious, “it’s not easy to kill yourself with a shotgun. Think of the length of the barrel, and the awkwardness of getting the gun in position. Certainly your husband couldn’t have done it and ended up with the gun held across his chest, as you saw it was-”

  “What did I see?” she snapped, and the couple at the next table stopped
in the midst of their conversation and looked at her, startled. “What do you think I saw? My husband lying there in that terrible way-what was I supposed to do, take a note of everything, as if I were someone like you?” Her eyes were fairly glittering. “Do you think I am a monster entirely, that I have no feelings, that I am incapable of being shocked?”

  “Of course not-”

  “Then please do not speak to me like that, as if you were discussing the matter with your Inspector Hackett.”

  She stopped, and they both looked down into their wine glasses, hers still full and his nearly empty.

  “Please forgive me, Mrs. Jewell,” he said. “You asked me what I had found, and I tried to explain.”

  “Yes yes yes,” she said, her voice hissing, “of course, I am the one who should say I am sorry.” She gave an apologetic shrug and forced the flicker of a smile. “Please, go on.”

  He opened his hands to show her how empty they were. “What else is there for me to say? Your husband did not kill himself, Mrs. Jewell. Inspector Hackett told you that already, and he’s right. This was a murder. I’m sorry.”

  She gazed at him for a long moment, a tiny vein twitching at the side of her chin, then snatched up her glass and drank off half of the wine in one draught. Now it was her hand that was trembling. “What am I to do, Dr. Quirke?” she asked. “Tell me, what am I to do. My life seems suddenly shattered. I cannot pretend that Richard and I were-that we were in the first flush of love, as they say. But he was my husband, he was Giselle’s father. And now we are without him.”

  Her eyes were shining and he was afraid that she was going to weep. His mind squirmed in helplessness. How was he to tell her what to do, how to live? His own life was a mystery to him, an insoluble mystery; how was he to know about the lives of others?

  “Have you heard,” she said, “of a man called Sumner, Carlton Sumner?”

  “Yes, of course. I know of him.” He felt his heartbeat slowing.

  “You should talk to him; Inspector Hackett should interview him.”

  “Why?”

  She looked about the room, frowning, as if in urgent search of something. “If my husband had enemies-and surely he had-Carlton Sumner was the chief of them.”

  Everything had slowed down now, along with his heartbeat, and he had a sense of being suspended in some heavy but marvelously transparent, sustaining substance. “Are you saying,” he said, “that you think Carlton Sumner may have had something to do with your husband’s death?”

  She gave her head a quick impatient shake. “I cannot say. But I think that you should know-that your detective friend should know-how things were between that man and my husband.”

  He looked at the omelette half eaten on his plate, at the single remaining drop of wine glinting in the bottom of his glass. He put his hands to the armrests of his chair and pushed himself to his feet. “Excuse me,” he said, “I must-” He walked quickly away from the table and out to the lobby. Where was the lavatory? He saw the sign and headed towards it. Two clergymen, a vicar and what must be his bishop, were conferring by a potted palm. A bellboy in his jaunty little hat caught Quirke’s eye and for some reason grinned, and winked. Quirke pushed through the swing door into the gents’. The place was empty. He went and stood in front of the big mirror behind the hand basins and gazed for some moments steadily into his own eyes, until the look in them, which seemed not to originate in him, made him flinch and turn aside. The dribble of a faulty cistern seemed the sound of the thing talking to itself.

  He took a deep breath, then another, hardly noticing the fetid air he was drawing in. Then he washed his hands and dried them on the towel, risked another glance at himself in the glass, and walked out to the lobby again. At the door of the dining room he paused for a second to look across to where Francoise d’Aubigny sat. She was lighting a cigarette; he thought, with dull inconsequence, that he must ask Phoebe if it was she who had sold her that hat. He took another deep breath, pressing a hand briefly to his breastbone, then made his way forward between the tables. Francoise d’Aubigny looked up at him, blowing cigarette smoke sideways.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes.” He sat down. “I shouldn’t drink wine.”

  “Oh?”

  He did not feel like elaborating on that topic, even as an evasion tactic. “Sumner and your husband,” he said, “were they in business together?” His voice in his own ears sounded thin and wispy.

  Francoise d’Aubigny was leaning forward with her elbows on the table and the cigarette held aloft to one side. Her lipstick was a deep and almost violent shade of scarlet. She still had not touched her salad, and the lettuce had already begun to wilt. “Carlton Sumner,” she said, “was trying to take my husband’s business.”

  “You mean, he was trying to move in on his market, or-?”

  “He was trying to take the business over. He wanted-wants-especially the Clarion. He bought some shares in it secretly.”

  “How many?”

  “I do not know-I cannot remember. Very many, I think. Richard was worried. I believe he was afraid of Sumner.” One corner of her mouth lifted in a faint ironic smile. “There were not many people Richard was afraid of, Dr. Quirke.”

  “No,” Quirke said, “I don’t imagine there were.” He lit one of his own cigarettes. He wanted another glass of wine. “So Sumner was making an attempt to take over?”

  “I think so. There was a meeting at Sumner’s house in the country. Something went wrong, and Richard left.”

  “Why?”

  “I do not know. Richard did not speak to me of these things.” Her eyes narrowed and she tilted her head an inch to one side. “You know about this, don’t you, about the argument, and Richard walking out.”

  “Do I?”

  “I can see it in your face.”

  He signaled to the waiter, and held up his empty glass and waggled it. “My assistant, at the hospital, knows your sister-in-law.”

  She drew back a little, frowning. “Dannie? She has been treated, at your hospital?”

  “No, no. He knows her socially. They met at college.” It occurred to him to wonder how they had met, for Sinclair was surely two or three years older than Dannie Jewell. Was Sinclair one of those opportunists who prey on younger women in their starting year? “They play tennis together.”

  “Yes, Dannie is a good player,” she murmured; it was apparent she was thinking of something else. “What is his name, your assistant?”

  “Sinclair.” He paused. “He’s a Jew.”

  “Oh, yes?” she said vaguely. The information did not interest her; indeed, he was not sure that she had properly registered it. “Poor Dannie,” she said, frowning into space, “this has been very hard for her, this death.”

  His second glass of wine arrived. This time he counted to twenty, but counted faster than before.

  “Tell me about the war,” he said. She blinked, momentarily baffled. “You said your brother was killed.”

  “Ah. Yes.” She turned her face aside briefly. “They took him to Breendonk-it was a camp, a prison fortress, in Belgium.”

  “Because he was a Jew?”

  She stared. “What? No, no, he was not a Jew.” Her face cleared. “Ah, I see. You thought-” She broke off and laughed; it seemed to him it was the first time he had heard her laugh. “We are not Jews. What an idea!” She laughed again, shaking her head. “My father was a great Jew hater.”

  “And yet…”

  “… And yet I married a Jew, yes?” She nodded, her smile turning bitter. “That was the greatest crime I could have committed. My father-what do you say?-disowned me. I was no longer his daughter, he said. That was a pity, really. He had liked Richard, before he found out that he was Jewish. They are-were-very alike, in so many ways. I did not attend his funeral. I regret that now. It’s why I could not bring myself to insist that Giselle should be there when Richard was buried. I understood.”

  They were silent. Quirke drank his wine. He sho
uld have eaten more of the omelette, it would have helped with the alcohol, but the eggs were cold now, and were developing a sheen, like sweat. It was always the way with him: drink soured his appetite and made him bilious, though it sang so sweetly in his veins. “Your brother,” he said, “what happened to him?”

  She was lighting another cigarette. Her hand was steady now, he noted. “We never heard from him again,” she said, “nothing. Probably he was taken to the East. I do not know which was the greater sorrow for my father, that his son had died or that he had died among the Jews.” She glanced at Quirke and away again swiftly. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, “I should not say such a thing. My father could not help being what he was, after all. None of us can help what we are.”

  They let some moments pass in silence, a mark of respect, of sorts, for the dead, it might be, the father as well as the son. Then Francoise d’Aubigny stirred herself, and stubbed out her cigarette in the glass ashtray on the table. “I think I should go now,” she said. Quirke signaled to the waiter again. The woman was watching him, weighing something up. “Will you speak to the Inspector about Carlton Sumner?” she asked.

  Quirke did not look at her. “Yes, I’ll mention it. Be warned, he may need to ask you questions-Hackett, I mean.”

  She shrugged, but he could see she was not as unconcerned as she pretended. “If my husband was murdered,” she said, “then someone did it. We must find out who it was”-she arched an eyebrow, seeking his assent-“must we not?”

  ***

  The day was blindingly bright when they came out of the hotel, and the glare reflected from the roofs and windows of the passing cars made them squint. They said good-bye on the pavement.