A Death in Summer

by Benjamin Black

  “Pimm’s,” his wife said. “Tall and cool, as you ordered.” Sumner took a swig, swallowed, grimaced. “Sissy drink,” he said. “Look, can we all sit down? I’m bushed.”

  Quirke could not but admire the performance, the brash carelessness, the casual aggression.

  They sat, except for Gloria Sumner. “I’ll leave you men to your talk,” she said. She glanced at Quirke as she turned away, and there was something in her look that he found faintly unsettling. Had he kissed her once, back then, when they were young, kissed her in rain, under trees, in the dawn at the end of some party? Was it she or someone else he was thinking of? He had kissed many girls, in many dawns, back then.

  “Well, gents?” Sumner said when she had gone. He was unbuckling his spurs, and now he threw them, jingling and clattering, onto the low table in front of the sofa. “What can I do for you?”

  He sprawled back on the sofa with an ankle crossed on a knee and his tall drink lifted. Beads of moisture were squiggling down the side of the glass. His hair and the bristles of his mustache gleamed and glinted as if each strand had been gone over with dark-brown boot polish.

  “You had a meeting here with Richard Jewell a week or so before he-before he died,” Hackett said. “Is that right?”

  Sumner shut one eye and trained the other on Hackett as if he were aiming along the barrel of a gun. “I suppose you heard about him throwing a fit and walking out.”

  “We did,” Hackett said, “we heard that. What was the trouble?”

  Sumner lifted a hand and let it fall again. “Business,” he said. “Just business.”

  “You were making a takeover bid for his company,” Quirke said.

  “Was I?” Sumner drawled, not bothering to look at him. “I was negotiating a merger. Dick was reluctant. Words were spoken. He stormed out. That was it.”

  “You didn’t see him again, after that?” Hackett asked.

  “No. Or wait, yes, of course, I was forgetting: there was the day I went out to his place and blew his head off with his own shotgun.”

  “How did you know,” Hackett inquired in a conversational tone, “that it was his shotgun?”

  Sumner clamped a hand to his mouth and stared at the policeman with rounded eyes. “Oh, Lord,” he exclaimed, “now I’ve done it-I’ve let slip a vital clue.” He leaned back again and took a large gulp of his pink drink and smacked his lips. “In this country, everybody knows everything,” he said. “Haven’t you realized that yet, Mr. Holmes?”

  The water in Quirke’s glass had gone tepid and slightly cloudy. He was remembering Sumner as a young man, how he’d looked, the things he’d said. He was a bully then, too, the rich man’s son, cocksure and careless of his words. He had money when everyone else was penniless, and liked to flaunt it, drinks all round, flash suits, lunches lasting the afternoon, fast cars and fast girls; and then there was Gloria and the baby. Surprising that they were still together, if they were, in anything other than appearance.

  “Look,” Sumner said to Hackett, “I can’t help you with this. I don’t know what the hell happened to Dick. First they said he shot himself, then the rumor mill started and now it seems he was murdered. It was murder, yes?” Hackett said nothing, and Sumner turned to Quirke. “You’d know, even if he doesn’t, right? Given that you’re a pathologist and all.” He waited. “No? Nothing to divulge? Don’t tell me-you’re bound by a solemn oath.”

  He chuckled, and drank more of his drink, and plucked out the green sprig and ate it, the stem as well as the leaves, and they heard his teeth chomping. “What does it matter, anyway,” he said. “Dick is dead, the rest is noise.” He stood up and walked to the wall of glass and stood in the sunlight, vigorously scratching his groin. “Francoise would sell to me,” he said, looking out into the courtyard and the burned-up grass. “The brother, though, what’s his name, Rhodesia Ronnie, he won’t deal. But I’ll find a way round him.” He turned and looked at them. “I want those newspapers. I need a voice. I’ll get them.”

  A clock chimed in a distant room. With the cactuses and wolf’s fur and the beating light they might have been in some desert place, far away on the other side of the world.

  “Mrs. Sumner tells me,” Hackett said, “that you and her used to be great friends with the Jewells. Is that so?”

  Sumner drew himself away from the sunstruck glass and sat down on the sofa again. “Jesus,” he murmured, darting his nose towards one armpit and then the other, “I stink.” He looked up. “You fellows going to need me much longer? I’ve got to go have a shower.” Hackett gazed at him impassively, and Sumner heaved a sigh and flung himself back once more against the leather cushions. “Yes, we were friendly,” he said, in a weary voice. “I kept a couple of horses at Brooklands for a while, and we’d go over, Gloria and me, for dinner or whatever. The two wives got into charity work together-Dick was funding that kids’ place, St. What-do-you-call-it. We even went on holiday together one time, down to their place in the south of France.” He snickered. “Not a success. Dickie and I didn’t fit so easily together in a confined space.”

  “Was there a fight?” Quirke asked.

  “What, you mean with fists, the old one-two? Naw, of course not. Squabbles. Bickering. Francoise is very French, especially when she’s in France. There was”-he laughed incredulously, remembering-“there was a problem over towels. Imagine-towels! We left early, came home to the old homestead and vowed never to go anywhere as houseguests ever again. We realized we were homebodies, to the core-” He stopped. He had been studying Quirke, and now, frowning, he said, “Wait-I know you. Quirke. You were at college when I was there, weren’t you?” Quirke nodded. “Why didn’t you say? I knew I knew you when I came in, but I couldn’t place you. Quirke. Jesus. It must be, what, twenty-five years? More? So you made it through, you got your qualifications. None of us believed you would, you know.”

  He laughed, and still Quirke said nothing. “Well,” Sumner said, lifting his glass, “here’s to old times, Doctor Quirke.” He turned to Hackett. “Look here, why don’t you fellows stay for lunch? You can regale us with tales of the sleuthing life, tell us about the master criminals you’ve tracked down, all that. What do you say?”

  Marie the maid returned to collect the tea things. Sumner said, “Marie here knew Diamond Dick-didn’t you, Marie?” She gave him a startled look. “Mr. Jewell,” he said to her. “Your benefactor.” He liked the sound of this, and laughed and said it again. “Your beloved benefactor. Ha!”

  She took up the tray with the teapot and Hackett’s empty cup on it. “Will you want anything else?” she asked of Sumner, and when he shook his head she scurried off.

  “What was it that Jewell did for her?” Quirke asked.

  “For Marie the mouse? Sprang her from that orphanage he funded-what’s it called?-St. Christopher’s. She was some sort of slavey there.”

  “Did she work for him-for him and his wife?”

  “For a while. Then something happened and Francoise dumped her on us. She’s all right-not too smart, but all right.”

  “What was it that happened, Mr. Sumner?” Hackett asked. “Do you know?”

  “Naw. Some kerfuffle. No one stays long with Francoise. You’ve met that guy who runs the place, him and his wife, the other mouse? Talk about long-suffering. What’s their name?”

  “Maguire,” Quirke said.

  “That’s it. Hey”-he lifted a finger-“I just remembered. Maguire killed a guy, years ago, broke his neck or something in a bar fight. Did you know that, Doc?”

  Quirke nodded. “I was involved in the case.”

  “Were you, now.” He drained the last of his drink. “What do you think? Maybe he’s the one that pulled the gun on old Dickie.” He looked from one of them to the other. “Have you thought of that? Couldn’t take the heat any longer and upped and shot the boss. Though I guess he would have gone for Francoise first.”

  “Mr. Sumner, I’d really appreciate it,” Hackett said, “if you’d tell us what the disagr
eement was that you had with Richard Jewell here that day.”

  “I told you-it was business. There’s always fights when business is being done-it’s the nature of the game.” He scratched at his mustache with a forefinger, making a rasping sound. “Okay,” he said then, and sighed. “I own a chunk of his company. I made him an offer of a partnership, he told me to go to hell, things got heated, he left. That was it. If you think I sat here brooding for a week and then went over to his place one morning and blew his head off-well, come on.”

  “You didn’t see him again, after that day?” Hackett asked.

  “No.” He stood up. “No, I didn’t see him again, or talk to him, or hear from him-nothing. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve really got to take that shower. I’m beginning to steam.”

  Hackett was still sitting, with his hat on the floor between his feet. He picked it up and examined the brim. “And I suppose you’ve no idea of who might have wanted him dead.”

  “Are you kidding? I could give you a list of names as long as your arm. But listen”-he lifted a hand and laughed-“maybe Francoise did it? Christ knows she hated him.”

  Quirke was standing now, and Hackett too got to his feet at last, turning his hat in his hands. “How is your son, Mr. Sumner?” he asked.

  Sumner went very still, and lowered his boxy head and glowered out from under his thick black brows. “He’s fine-why?”

  The air between the two men seemed to crackle, as if a strong charge of electricity had passed through it. Quirke watched them, looking from one to the other.

  “I just wondered,” Hackett said. “He’s in Canada now, is he?”

  “No, he’s back.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Working for me.”

  “That’s good,” the detective said. “That’s very good.” He smiled. “Well, we’ll leave you to go and have your wash. Maybe you’d say good-bye to Mrs. Sumner for us.”

  But Gloria Sumner was already in the doorway. “These guys are leaving,” Sumner said to her. His mood had turned; all the arrogant brightness had gone and his voice was thick with rancor.

  “I’ll show you to the door,” Gloria Sumner said, and led the two men along the low corridor to the glassed-in porch, where the heat hammered. “Goodness,” she said, “your driver will have baked, poor fellow. I could have sent Marie out with a cool drink.”

  “How long,” Quirke asked, “has she been with you, the maid?”

  “Marie? Funny, I never think of her as ‘the maid.’ Three, four years, I suppose. Why do you ask?”

  Quirke did not answer, only shrugged.

  “Good day to you now, ma’am,” Hackett said, and put on his hat.

  “Good-bye. And good-bye Dr. Quirke. Nice to see you again, after all these years.” She smiled into his face. “You thought I hadn’t remembered you, but I did.”

  ***

  Jenkins had moved the squad car into the scant shade of a birch tree and had all the windows wide open, but he was sweating and had taken off his jacket and his tie. He greeted Hackett with a wounded look and started up the engine. Gloria Sumner was still standing in the doorway of the porch, and waved one hand slowly as they departed.

  “What was that about the son?” Quirke asked.

  “Teddy Sumner,” Hackett said. “A bit of a boyo. He has a record. Gave a girl a hiding after a party over at Powerscourt one night. Would have done time if his father wasn’t who he was. They packed him off to the family’s place in Canada. Now, it seems, he’s back.”

  They passed through Roundwood village. Among trees off to the right the reservoir was a glint of pewter. Quirke was eyeing the backs of Jenkins’s large pink ears. “Sumner didn’t like being asked about him,” he said.

  “No, indeed, I noticed that.”

  Quirke waited, but nothing more was forthcoming. “You think there might be a connection, with Dick Jewell?”

  “Oh, hardly,” Hackett said, putting on the mild and vacant look that he did when he was doing his hardest thinking. “But I wonder if Teddy was there the day that Jewell and Sumner had their row. I should have asked.”

  “Yes,” Quirke said. “You should have.”

  7

  Even as it was occurring to Sinclair the idea seemed crazy, and yet it had a peculiar and a nagging appeal. He had gone out a third time with Phoebe, on what he afterwards supposed must have been their first real date, for although she did not invite him in, the evening had ended with a prolonged and serious, indeed, a solemn, kiss on her doorstep, and now he found that the thought of her was never far from his mind. He had come to see her unconventional prettiness-it was in the delicacy of her slim hands, in the slightly feline angle of her jaw, in the almost transparent paleness of her skin. Also he had begun to appreciate her humor, the amused and subtle mockery in her attitude to things, him included, perhaps him especially. She had a bright mind; he wondered how she had ended up working in a hat shop. He could not stop himself imagining her without her clothes, reclining on a bed and turning towards him on the pivot of one braced arm, a lock of hair across her cheek, all her bared flesh agleam like a knife blade. Yes, all that was on his mind, and more. But now the wild thought had occurred to him that he would introduce her to Dannie Jewell, he did not know why. Perhaps he wanted to see what the two of them would make of each other. Or perhaps, a sly voice said in his head, you want to make mischief.

  They had arranged a Sunday afternoon outing, Phoebe and he, to go and see the rhododendrons on the slopes behind Howth Castle. They would take a picnic, and a bottle of wine. As the day approached he dithered as to whether he dared ask if Dannie might come with them, and more than once he dialed the number of the telephone in the hallway of the house where Phoebe had her bedsit, but hung up before anyone answered. The idea was crazy, surely. What was it supposed to achieve, what purpose was it supposed to serve? Phoebe would most likely resent Dannie’s presence, and Dannie would not much care to be a gooseberry. Probably Dannie would not come, anyway, even if Phoebe were to say that she could. Finally he worked up the courage and telephoned them both, Phoebe first, then Dannie. They both said yes. And straightaway of course he regretted the whole thing, and cursed himself for his foolishness.

  ***

  He called for Dannie first, and they walked together to Phoebe’s place. The morning was sunny and hot but a faint fresh breeze was coming down from the mountains and the air had lost some of the heaviness that had weighed on it in recent days. Dannie was hardly recognizable as the girl he had last seen curled forlornly on her bed in a drugged sleep that night after her brother had died and she had phoned him for help. Today she wore a white dress that the breeze made balloon around her, and a light cashmere sweater was draped over her shoulders with the sleeves knotted loosely in front. She had put on lipstick, and wore perfume. When she had answered the door to him she had seen the anxiousness in his eyes and had put a hand reassuringly on his arm and said, “Don’t worry, I’m all right, I won’t break down or anything.” Now they stopped outside the front door of the house where Phoebe lived, and stood smiling at each other vaguely as they waited for her to come down, and the plane trees on the other side of the street rustled their leaves excitedly as if they were discussing these two young people standing there in the midst of a Sunday morning in summer.

  To his surprise, they got on together from the start, Phoebe and Dannie. As he was introducing them he saw how alike they were. Not that they looked alike, but there was something definite that they shared, though he could not say exactly what it was-a quality of things endured, perhaps, of troubles not surmounted but absorbed, with grit and determination, painfully.

  They took the bus to Sutton and then mounted the little tram that whirred and rattled its way up the long slope of Howth Head. Phoebe had packed the picnic, ham sandwiches on brown bread with lettuce and sliced tomatoes, and a cucumber cut in four lengthways, and pickles in a jar, and a fancy tin of biscuits from Smyths on the Green. Sinclair and Dannie had each brought a bottle of
wine, and Dannie had a basket with three glasses wrapped in napkins. They kept meeting each other’s eyes and smiling, a little bashfully, for they felt suddenly childish and exposed, to be on an outing, like ordinary people, and ordinarily happy. Seagulls were circling above them in the blue, and far in the distance the sun sparkled on the sea, and no one mentioned Richard Jewell.

  They got off near the summit and walked down the road, but no one knew the way to the castle, and for a while they got lost, and in the end gave up on the rhododendrons and sat down at the corner of a field and unwrapped their sandwiches and opened the wine. Sinclair’s bottle of liebfraumilch had lost its chill but they did not mind; they drank it first and then drank the much grander Bordeaux Dannie had brought. When the wine was finished the girls went off to find a secluded place to pee, and Sinclair lay back in the soft lush grass and shielded his eyes with his arm and briefly dozed, and had a sort of dream in which Phoebe and Dannie, merged into a single person, came to him and touched his face and confided to him some profound piece of knowledge that he forgot the moment the voices of the real girls woke him. He sat up and watched them picking their way towards him through the grass. They had found the wood with the rhododendrons in it; it was just across the next field. “The blossoms are nearly finished, though,” Phoebe said, sitting down beside him, and smiling at him with a particular intent that he could not fathom, and he thought again of his strange little dream.

  He lit a cigarette and offered the packet around, but Dannie shook her head, and Phoebe reminded him that she had given up smoking.

  There were cows at the other side of the field, black and white, some standing and some lying down. A black bird, rook or crow, flew across in a ragged sort of way, cawing.

  “Look,” Phoebe said, “those boats are in a race.” They shaded their eyes to peer down to where the yachts were plying their way against the wind, and sure enough there came to them up the length of the hillside, delayed by distance, the boom of the starting signal. “Such white sails,” Phoebe murmured. “Like wings, look.”