A Death in Summer

by Benjamin Black

  They played amusing games. They would stop outside a house where a pensioner was mowing the lawn, and simply sit and stare at him until he took fright and fled indoors, where they would see him, a reddened old nose and one wild eye, lurking behind the lace curtains like some burrowing creature scared into its hole. Or they would fix on a housewife coming home from the shops loaded down with bags of groceries, and drive along in first gear at a walking pace a couple of yards behind her. Children they tended to leave in peace-it was not so long since they had been children themselves, and they remembered what it was like-but now and then they would pull up at a curb and Dannie would ask the way of a fat boy in bulging short pants, or a washed-out girl in pigtails, speaking to them not in English but in French, and pretending to be puzzled and offended that they did not understand her. When they tired of these games they would drive back into the city and stop for afternoon tea at the Shelbourne or the Hibernian, and Teddy would amuse himself by submerging halfpennies in the sugar bowls and the little pots of jam, or squashing out cigarette butts under the little vases of flowers that adorned the tables.

  Today Teddy was agog to hear every detail of the afternoon in Howth. He knew David Sinclair slightly, and professed to think him altogether too slippery and sly, “like all the Jews,” as he said darkly; Phoebe he had not met, but he clapped his hands and crowed in delight at Dannie’s malicious description of her, the little pale pinched face and the mouse claws, the bobbed black hair, the sort of dirndl thing she had worn with the elasticated bodice and convent girl’s lace collar.

  “But weren’t they on a date?” Teddy asked. “Why did Sinclair bring you along?”

  Dannie paused. She did not like the dismissive way he said it. Why would David not ask her to come with him and Phoebe, even if it was a date? “It wasn’t like that,” she said sulkily. “It wasn’t a date date.”

  They were driving slowly down a long road of featureless houses somewhere in Finglas, she thought it was, or Cabra, maybe, on the lookout for likely victims to follow and stare at.

  “Do you think they’re-you know-doing it?” Teddy asked.

  “She doesn’t seem the type. Besides, I think something happened to her, in America.”

  “What sort of something?” Teddy asked. He was wearing a blue yachting blazer with brass buttons and a crest on the pocket, and fawn slacks. She had noticed that he had begun to use perfume, though she supposed he would say it was shaving lotion.

  “I think she might have been…” She hesitated. This was too much, too much; she should stop now and say not another word on the subject.

  “Might have been what?” Teddy demanded.

  “Well”-she could not stop-“ravished, I think.”

  Teddy’s brown eyes widened to the size of pennies. “Ravished?” he said, in a hoarse whisper. “Do tell.”

  “Can’t,” she said. “Don’t know. It was just a remark she made, about being caught in a car with somebody when she was over there. It was years ago. As soon as she saw I was interested she changed the subject.”

  Teddy pouted disappointedly. “Did you ask the Rabbi Sinclair?”

  “Did I ask him what?”

  “If they’re doing it or not!”

  “Of course I didn’t. I suppose you would have.”

  “I certainly would.”

  There was nothing Teddy would not ask about, nothing he would not ferret into, no matter how private or painful. He had got her to describe to him that Sunday morning at Brooklands, the blood, and the horror. He had envied her; she had seen it in his eyes, the almost yearning expression in them.

  “Oh, look,” he said now, urgently, “look at the fat lady hanging up her bloomers on the clothesline-let’s pull over and have a good gander at her.” He drew the car to the curb and stopped. The woman had not noticed them yet. She had a clutch of clothes-pegs in her mouth. “A laundry line on the front lawn,” Teddy murmured. “That’s a new one.”

  Dannie was glad that he was diverted. She was feeling more and more guilty for talking as she had. She liked Phoebe; Phoebe was funny, in a clever, understated way, a way that Dannie could never be. And Phoebe was fond of David Sinclair, that was obvious, and perhaps he was fond of her, though it was always hard to tell, with David. She wanted him to be happy. She wondered if she might be a little in love with him herself. But in that case would she not be jealous of Phoebe? She knew she did not understand these things, love, and passion, and wanting someone. That had all been stopped in her, long ago, tied off, the way a doctor would tie off her tubes so as to keep her from having babies. In fact, that was a thing she was going to have done as soon as she could find somewhere to go; it would have to be in London, she supposed. She would ask Francoise; it was the kind of thing Francoise would know about.

  The fat woman was a disappointment; when she had finished hanging up the laundry she merely threw them a look and chuckled and waddled off into the house.

  “Cow,” Teddy said in disgust, and drove them away.

  ***

  They did not go for tea that day, but went to the Phoenix Park instead. Teddy parked the car by the Wellington Monument and they strolled over the grass, under the trees. The sunlight seemed vague somehow and diffused, as if it were weary after so many hours of shining without stint. A herd of deer grazing in a cloud of pale dust stopped at their approach and lifted their heads, their nostrils twitching and stumpy ears waggling. Stupid animals, Dannie thought, and only pretty from a distance; up close they were shabby, and their coats looked like lichen.

  “You know,” she said, “they’re saying now that Richard was murdered.”

  Teddy did not seem surprised, or even much interested, and she was sorry she had spoken. It was when she was bored that she blurted things out. She remembered how when she was a child, at Brooklands, she would squat by the pond at the bottom of the Long Field and poke a stick into the muddy shallows and watch the water bugs swimming and scurrying frantically away. How nice it was the way the mud would swirl up in chocolaty spirals, and then spread itself out until all the water was the color of tea, or turf, or dead leaves, and nothing more was to be seen of all that life down there, all that squirming, desperate life.

  “Who did it?” Teddy inquired casually. “Do they know?”

  He seemed so calm, indifferent, almost. Had he known about Richard, what he was like, the things he did? Perhaps everyone knew. She felt a little thrill of terror. She remembered at school those curious periods of suspended waiting, after she had done something bad and before it was found out. They gave her the same kind of thrill, those breathless intervals, and she would feel as if she were floating weightlessly in some medium lighter even than air and yet wonderfully sustaining. But what, now, had she done, that she was waiting to be discovered? And how would they punish her, since she was not guilty, not really?

  “No,” she said, “they don’t know who killed him. At least no one has said, if they do.” She giggled; it was a real giggle; it startled her. “Francoise is trying to make them think it was your father.”

  Teddy stopped and bent to detach a twig from the leg of his slacks. “Trying to make who think?”

  “The police. And that doctor fellow, Quirke, that David works with.”

  “Quirke.”

  “Yes. He’s Phoebe’s father, as a matter of fact.”

  He straightened. “Didn’t you say her name was Griffin?”

  “She was adopted or something, I don’t know.”

  “He’s a doctor?”

  “A pathologist. He came down with the Guards, that day.”

  “But why would your sister-in-law be trying to convince him of anything?”

  Dannie stopped and made him stop with her, and they stood facing each other.

  “Teddy Sumner,” she said, “tell me why you aren’t shocked that Francoise should be trying to make people think your father murdered my brother?”

  “Were you trying to shock me?”

  “Yes-of course.”

 
He smiled his sly smile. “You should know by now that I’m unshockable.”

  “Your father didn’t, by the way-do it.”

  “Well, I hardly thought he had.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. He might have. They were always fighting, Richard and your father.”

  But Teddy was thinking of something else. “Do you talk about all this to Sinclair?”

  “A little. Not much. He doesn’t ask.”

  “But you do talk to him about it.” She walked on and he trotted after her. “You do tell him secrets, I’m sure you do.”

  “I don’t. I don’t tell anyone my secrets.”

  “Even me?”

  “Especially you.” They stopped on a rise from where there was a view over the roofs of the city sweltering in the quivering heat haze. “I wish this weather would break,” Dannie said.

  “You know I knew your brother quite well,” Teddy said, in a tone of studied diffidence.

  “Did you? How?”

  “There’s a sort of club we were in-I mean, that he was in, and that I’m still in, I suppose.”

  “What club?”

  “It doesn’t matter. More a sort of an organization. He got me in, Richard did. He said it would be”-he gave a bleak little laugh-“just the thing for me.”

  “And was it-is it?”

  He kicked moodily at the grass with the toe of his two-toned shoe. “I don’t know. I feel a bit out of my depth, to tell the truth.”

  “What do they do, in this club?”

  “Nothing much. They visit places…”

  “Like, abroad?”

  “No, no. It’s a charity thing. Schools.” He whistled briefly, softly, squinting out over the city. “Orphanages.”

  “Yes?” She felt herself grow pale. What did he mean? “I wouldn’t have thought that was quite you, Teddy,” she said, forcing a light tone, “visiting schools and being nice to orphans.”

  “It isn’t me,” he said. “At least, I didn’t think it was. Until your brother convinced me.”

  She could not go on looking at him, and turned her face towards the city. “When did you join this club?” she asked, her voice wobbly.

  “When I left college. I was at a loose end, and Richard-Richard encouraged me. And I joined up.”

  “And started visiting places.”

  “Yes.”

  He turned to her, and there was something in his look, a kind of anguish, and suddenly she understood, and now she did not want him to say any more, not another word. She turned on her heel and set off back in the direction of the car. There were those deer again, in their moth-eaten pelts, with those disgusting black channels at their eyes as if since birth they had been weeping, weeping, weeping.

  “Pooh Bear,” Teddy called after her softly, pleadingly, in his Eeyore voice, “oh, Winnie!” But she went on, and did not look back.

  ***

  She was glad he did not try to catch up with her. She hurried down the hill to the park gates and crossed the river and got a taxi outside the railway station. Her mind was blank, or rather it was a jumble of things-like an attic in an earthquake, was how she thought of it. For she knew this state well, the state that she always got into when one of her anxiety attacks, or whatever they were, was coming on.

  She must get back now to her own place, and be among her own things.

  So hot, the evening, so hot and close, she could hardly breathe.

  The taxi man had bad breath; she could smell it from the back seat. He was talking to her about something over his shoulder but she was not listening.

  Orphanages.

  When she got to the flat in Pembroke Street she filled a tepid bath and lay in it for a long time, trying to calm her racing mind. There were pigeons on the sill outside the window, she could hear them, cooing in that soft secretive way that they did, as if they were exclaiming over some amazing piece of scandal that was being told to them.

  After her bath she sat in her dressing gown at the kitchen table and drank coffee, cup after cup of it. She knew it was bad for her, that the caffeine would make her thoughts race all the faster, but she could not stop.

  She went into the living room and lay on the sofa. She felt cooler now, after bathing in the cool water. She wished she had something to hold on to, to hug. Phoebe Griffin had confessed she still had her teddy bear from childhood. Something like that would be good-but what? She had nothing like that; she had never had anything like that.

  Thinking of Phoebe’s bear made her think of Teddy Sumner, even though she did not want to. Silly name, Teddy. And yet somehow it suited him, even though he was nothing like a teddy bear.

  In the end she called David Sinclair. She knew it was not fair, calling him when she was like this. It was not as if she were anything more to him than a friend. David was kind-what other man would come and take care of her, as he did, without getting something in return?

  He was not at home, so she looked up the number of the hospital where he worked and phoned him there. When he heard who it was he said nothing for a moment or two, and she was afraid he might hang up. She could hear him breathing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can never think who else to call.”

  He arrived at the flat an hour later, and sat with her and held her hand. He gave her the old lecture about “seeing” someone, about “talking” to someone, but what good would seeing or talking do? The damage had been started so long ago, and the marks of it were scored so deeply into her that she pictured them like jagged grooves gouged in some kind of stone-marble or what was that other one, alabaster? Yes, alabaster. She liked the sound of it. Her alabaster skin. For she was beautiful, she knew it, everyone had always told her she was. Not that it helped her, being beautiful. A doll could be beautiful, a doll that people could do anything with, love or cuddle or beat or-or anything. But David was so good to her, so patient, so kind. He prided himself on being a tough guy, she knew, but he was not tough, not really. Guarded, that was what he was, wary of showing what he felt, but behind the hard front that he put up he had a soft heart. Someday she would tell him all the things that had happened to her, that had made her as she was, this shivering creature huddled on a sofa with the curtains pulled while everyone else was outside enjoying the summer evening. Yes, someday she would tell him.

  ***

  He stayed, as he always did, until she was asleep. She did not take long to drop off-he was her sedative, he ruefully told himself-and it was still early, not yet nine, when he slipped out of the house and turned left and walked up towards Fitzwilliam Square. The car that had been parked on the other side of the road when he arrived-a green Morgan, with the top up and someone inside it, a shadow behind the wheel-was no longer there. He walked on.

  There was a hazy green glow over the square and mist on the grass behind the black railings. The whores were out, four or five of them, two of them keeping each other company, both skinny and dressed in black and starkly pale as the harpies in Dracula’s castle. They gave him a look as he passed by but made no overture; maybe they thought he was a plainclothes man out to trap them. One of them had a limp-the clap, most likely. One day, not so far in the future, he might fold back the corner of a sheet and find her before him on the slab, that thin face, the bluish eyelids closed, her lip still swollen. He wondered, as he often wondered, if he should leave this city, try his luck somewhere else, London, New York, even. Quirke would never retire, or by the time he did it would be too late to be his successor; something that was in him now would have been used up, a vital force would be gone.

  He had walked up this way, rather than going down to Baggot Street, to avoid being tempted to call on Phoebe. He did not know why he was reluctant to see her. She was probably not at home, anyway, he thought; he remembered Quirke saying he would be taking her to dinner tonight. It struck him that he had no friends. He did not mind this. There were people he knew, of course, from college days, from work, but he rarely saw any of them. He preferred his own company. He did not suffer fools gladly and the wor
ld was full of fools. But that was not what was keeping him from Phoebe, for Phoebe was certainly no fool.

  Poor Dannie. Was there to be no help for her? Something had happened in her life that she would not speak about, something unspeakable, then.

  He walked around two sides of the square and turned up towards Leeson Street. Maybe he would call into Hartigan’s and drink a beer; he liked to sit on a stool in the corner and watch the life of the pub going on, what people took to be life. As he was passing by Kingram Place a fellow in a windcheater stepped out, waggling a cigarette at him. “Got a match, pal?” He was reaching for his lighter in his jacket pocket when he heard a rapid step behind him, and then there was a crash of some kind, and a burst of light, and after that, nothing but blackness.