At last he got the cubes into the bucket and set off back through the house. In the hallway he heard voices, and as he was passing by a door it opened suddenly and one of the Delahaye twins, coming out, stopped on the threshold and looked at him in surprise. He was dressed in white, as usual—white sports shirt, duck trousers, plimsolls—and carried a wooden tray with glasses on it. Quirke glanced past the young man’s shoulder into the room. There was a billiard table, and a darkly pretty girl was sitting on it, with her left foot on the floor and her right leg raised, her hands clasped around her knee. The other twin stood in front of her, with a hand resting on her hip. Impassive, they returned his stare. No one spoke. In a second or two the little tableau—Quirke in the hall, the twin in the doorway, and the couple at the table—was over, and Quirke passed on. He had a strange feeling of lightness, as if he were passing through a dream.
Mona Delahaye was reclining now against the back of the sofa. She uncrossed her legs slowly and leaned forward, holding up her glass, into which he dropped a handful of ice from the bucket. “You’re such a pet,” she said, watching the cubes jostle amid the tonic bubbles.
Quirke retrieved his whiskey glass and sat down again on the arm of the sofa. “You say your husband left a note,” he said.
“Yes.” She frowned, as if petulantly. “I threw it away. Burned it, actually. Or did I flush it down the you-know-what?” She twinkled at him. “You see? I’m such a scatterbrain.”
“May I ask what he said—what he wrote?”
“Oh, silly stuff. How much he loved me and how jealous he was—all that, the usual.” She sipped her drink thoughtfully. “There’s really nothing you can do for people who are jealous, is there. And they make such a—such a spectacle of themselves. It’s always too pitiful.” She looked at him. “Don’t you think?”
He drank his whiskey, then brought out his cigarettes and offered her one, and took one himself. Leaning down with his lighter he looked again into the front of her blouse. Her skin was so pale there, and would be so soft to touch. “Was he jealous of Jack Clancy?” he asked.
She gave a little silvery laugh. “Oh, he was jealous of everyone,” she said. She pushed out her lower lip and directed a thin stream of smoke upwards past his face.
“Is that why he tried to kill his son?”
She frowned in puzzlement. “What?”
“Because he was jealous, is that why he abandoned young Clancy in the boat miles offshore and left him to fry in the sun? To get back at his father?”
She gave him an odd look, tight-lipped and wide-eyed, as if he had said something richly funny at which she must not allow herself to laugh. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said, blinking slowly, trying to show him how impressed she was by his perceptiveness. “I’m sure you’re right. In fact, I’m sure he intended to kill Davy, but lost his nerve at the last minute and shot himself instead. It would be just the kind of thing Victor would do. He really wasn’t very—he wasn’t very competent, you know. He had this reputation as a ruthless businessman”—she broke off for a second to laugh again, almost in delight—“but it was all nonsense. He hadn’t an idea. It was his father who kept the business going, even after he was supposed to have retired. Then when poor old Sam had his stroke that creep Maverley stepped in and took charge. And there was Jack, of course—Jack knew the business inside out.” She darted her cigarette in the direction of the ashtray that she had set on the floor beside her foot. “Victor’s trouble was his mother. You wouldn’t have known her—a real monster, hiding behind a mask of niceness. She ruined him, gave him ridiculous ideas of how clever and important he was, at the same time working away to undermine his confidence. Oh, Victor, don’t try to be like your father, she’d say, you couldn’t possibly be like him. And she’d smile, very sweetly, and pat his hand. It’s her he should have killed, though conveniently she died.”
Forgetting himself, he slid down from his place on the sofa arm until he was sitting beside her. She smiled, and it seemed for a moment she might move sideways and lean her head on his shoulder, or nestle against his chest. “Will you tell me what was in the note—the suicide note?” he asked.
She stared at him, again with that look of almost laughing. “I didn’t say it was a suicide note,” she said. “Just a note. He often wrote things down that he couldn’t bring himself to say.”
“And what was it he wrote that last time—what was it he couldn’t say?”
“I told you—about being jealous.”
“Of Jack Clancy?”
“Um.” She dipped a finger into her glass and stirred the gin and what was left of the ice cubes, then put the tip of the finger into her mouth and sucked it, looking at him sidelong. He held her gaze. He was acutely aware of the presence of others in the house, of Sarah the maid, of the twins, and that dark-haired girl. What had the three of them been up to in the billiard room? Nothing good, he was sure of that.
“Did you know what he was going to do?” he asked. She shook her head, still with her finger in her mouth. “But you weren’t surprised,” he said softly.
She took his glass from his hand and rose and walked to the sideboard and poured them each yet another drink. “What do you know about me?” she asked, busy with bottles, glasses, ice.
“Know about you?”
“Yes. Where I’m from, for instance. Can you tell from my accent?” He had not noticed an accent. “Maybe I’ve lost it,” she said.
She brought their drinks and gave him his and sat down again beside him.
“We’ll both be drunk,” Quirke said.
She folded one leg under herself with balletic grace. “Yes,” she said gaily, “that’s my aim.” She clinked her glass against his. “Bottoms up.”
The whiskey this time burned his throat. He needed to eat something. He was beginning to hear himself breathe, and that was always a bad sign. Drink seemed not to affect Mona Delahaye, except to lend her expression a brightly impish gleam.
“So,” he said, “where are you from?”
“You really can’t tell? I don’t know whether to be glad or not—I mean about having lost my accent. I’m from South Africa. My name, my”—she giggled—“my maiden name, used to be Vanderweert.” Quirke nodded. He could not imagine this woman ever having been a maiden. “I was born in Cape Town,” she said. “Ever been there? Very beautiful.”
“You’re a long way from home, then.”
Her look became pensive. “Yes, I suppose so. Though it’s hardly home, anymore.” She glanced at him, smiling. “I suppose you’re thinking of diamond mines, and kaffirs being flogged, and so on, while I loll on the verandah in the cool of evening drinking something tall with ice in it and admiring the sun setting behind Table Mountain. Not like that, I’m afraid, not like that at all. My father was—is—a civil servant, third class, as they say. I grew up in a bungalow in Parow.”
“Where’s that?”
“Suburb of Cape Town. Not the loveliest spot on earth.”
“How did you meet your husband?”
“Victor?” she said, as if she had forgotten that she had once had a husband. “He was visiting Cape Town, pretending to be on business—he loved to travel about the world, being the high-powered executive—and I was working as a typist in the office of one of the firms he called in to. He took me to dinner, we danced, the moon rose, and by morning the deal was clinched.” She was watching him, ironical and amused. “The way things really happen is always grubby, isn’t it. I could have lied to you, you realize that. I could have said I was a De Beers heiress, and that Victor had to plead for my hand with my father the plutocrat, and you wouldn’t have known any better. But I thought you’d prefer the truth. I thought you deserved the truth, dull as it is.” She chuckled. “Victor would be furious—he liked to pretend I was the daughter of some grand colonial family. Poor Victor.”
She looked convincingly sad for a moment. Quirke had an urge to take her hand; he must not drink any more, he must not. “I’m sorry,” he sai
d, “I never properly offered you my condolences.”
She brightened. “Oh, how sweet!” she said. “But really, it’s all right. In fact, at times like this you need someone absolutely heartless around, to buck you up.” She turned her head and peered at him, looking deep into his eyes. “You do want to go to bed with me, don’t you?” she said. “I wasn’t wrong about that, was I?”
He did not know how to reply. The feline candor of her gaze both unnerved and excited him. He was sweating a little. He was glad of the commonplace things around them, the room, the sunlight in the garden, the presence of other people in the house. Surely she was teasing him, being scandalous to see how he would take it.
“Tell me what you think about Jack Clancy,” he said, to be saying something.
“What I think about him?” she said. The light in her eye was more erratic now, and when she frowned it was as if she had lost the thread of something and was having trouble finding it again. The gin having its effect at last; he was faintly relieved.
“About what happened to him, in the boat,” he said.
“Don’t you know? I thought you knew everything, you and your detective friend.”
He leaned forward and put his glass carefully on the floor and clasped his hands before him. He could clearly hear the air rushing in his nostrils, in his chest, and knew he was drunk. Not seriously drunk, not drunk drunk, but drunk, all the same.
“Jack Clancy drowned,” he said, “but before he did, someone or something hit him on the head.”
“Oh, yes?” she said absently. He was not sure she had been listening. She leaned down to pick up his glass from where it stood on the carpet between his feet. He moved to stop her. “Come on,” she said, “just one more, and then we can go and see if there’s anything to eat for lunch.”
He would not let her have his glass, but took hers and walked with both to the sideboard. He had intended to leave them firmly there, yet found himself refilling them. Just one more, as she had said; a last one. The skin of his forehead had tightened alarmingly, and there seemed a very faint mist in front of his eyes that would not clear no matter how often he blinked. He carried the glasses back to the sofa. Something was scratching at the back of his mind, insistently, but he ignored it. Just this one, and then he would leave.
He realized he was leaning over her, she seated and he standing, grinning, and swaying a little. A great wash of happiness, childish and vacant, swept through him like a thrilling gust of wind. Quirke, he told himself, you are a damned fool.
* * *
He woke with a start and did not know where he was. The light in the room was shadowed, but there was a rich warm tint to it of old gold. High ceiling, a plaster cornice on four sides, the walls painted apple green. Two windows, lofty, the curtains of heavy yellow silk, drawn, with sunlight in them. Wardrobe, dressing table, a hinged screen, silk again, swooping birds painted on it. He lay amid tangled sheets, under a satin eiderdown, much too hot. There was sweat on his upper lip and in the hollow above his clavicle. His tongue burned, whiskey-raw. He remembered, of course. Oh, Lord.
She lay at his side, her back turned to him, her hair splashed like a rich dark stain on the pillow. She was snoring softly. He eased himself out of the bed, sliding his legs sideways under the eiderdown and setting his feet cautiously on the floor, and crossed the room at a crouch, looking for his clothes.
“Going already?” she said behind him. He straightened, turned, his heart sinking. She was lying on her back now, with an arm under her head, looking at him along the lumpy length of the eiderdown. “Give us a fag before you go,” she said.
When he bent to pick up his clothes from where he had discarded them on the floor something began beating angrily in his head. He pulled on his trousers. His jacket was draped over the back of a little gilt chair in front of the dressing table. He found his cigarettes and his lighter and returned with them to the bed. Mona still lay with her head resting on her arm. One pale small breast was exposed.
“Sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“I should be at the hospital.”
“Oh, of course you should. Busy busy busy.” She pulled herself up in the bed, leaning on her elbows. He put a cigarette between her lips and held the lighter for her. “Anyway,” she said, “I’m used to men creeping out of my bed.” She laughed, a subdued little hoot. “That sounds awful, doesn’t it. What a slut I must seem.” She peered more closely at him in the curtained gloom. “You are a big fellow, aren’t you,” she said. “All muscle and fur. Come back to bed—come on.”
He brought an ashtray from the dressing table and put it on the bed where she could reach it. Her breasts, palely pendent, made him think of a small soft big-eyed animal—a lemur, was it? He sat down and the mattress springs gave a faint, distant jangle of protest. She had scrambled higher still in the bed and was lying back against a mound of pillows, watching him—no, surveying him, he thought—as if she were measuring him against a model in her head and finding him sadly though perhaps not hopelessly wanting. The ashtray bore the legend HÔTEL MÉTROPOLE MONTE CARLO. She saw him looking. “Stolen,” Mona said. “By me. I like to steal things. Nothing valuable, just things that take my fancy. People’s husbands, for instance.”
“I told you,” Quirke said, “I’m not married.”
“Yes. Pity.” She squirmed a little, making a face. “Ach—I’m leaking.” She saw him flinch, and smiled. “Why are you so afraid of women?” she asked, with no hint of accusation or disapproval, but seeming curious only. “I suppose your mother is to blame.”
“I have no mother,” Quirke said. “Had no.”
“She died?”
He shrugged. “I never knew her. Or my father.”
“Dear dear,” she said, with an odd, harsh edge to her voice, “a poor little orphan boy, then. Let me picture it. There was the workhouse, and the beatings, and the bowls of gruel, and you a little lad scrambling up chimneys for tuppence and a rub of soap, yes?”
He did not smile. “Something like that, yes.”
“So how did you get from there to here?”
“That’s a long story—”
“I like long bedtime stories.”
“—and a boring one.”
She drew on her cigarette. “I suppose we shouldn’t risk another drink? No, no, you’re right, goodness knows what we’d be driven to do.” She leaned forward, draping her bare arms over her knees. “So,” she said. “No mummy, and afraid of women ever since.”
“Why do you think I’m afraid of women?”
She shook her head mock-ruefully. “A girl can always tell things like that. It’s not so bad, you know, being nervous. Quite appealing, in its way.” She ran a fingertip over the back of his hand where it rested on the sheet. “Quite attractive, sometimes.”
The sweat had dried on his skin and he felt chilled suddenly. He went and found his shirt and pulled it on, then returned to the bed. “Tell me what’s going on,” he said.
She stared. “How do you mean? What’s going on where?”
“Here. All this. Your husband killing himself, then Jack Clancy dying too. The business. Davy Clancy. Your sister-in-law—”
“My sister-in-law?” She was staring at him incredulously. “You mean Maggie?”
“Your husband’s sister, yes.”
“What about her?”
“What about any of you? There’s something behind all this. It’s tangled up together, somehow.”
“Well, of course it is. How would it not be? Two families, in business together and living in each other’s ears. How would it not be tangled?”
Of the many things this young woman might be, he reflected, brainless was not one of them.
Suddenly she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips, hard, almost violently, almost in anger, it seemed. Her mouth tasted of cigarette smoke and, faintly, of gin. So many things that were happening had happened before, in identical circumstances, with another woman, other women. He felt the tre
mulous coolness of her breasts against his skin. She drew back a little way and stared at him. Her eyes seemed huge at such close range. “What a fool you are,” she said, as if fondly. “What a hopeless, foolish man.”
* * *
He went on tiptoe along the hallway towards the front door with his hat in his hand. There were indistinct voices behind him in the house. He hoped he would not have to encounter again the twins or the girl. They were so cool, that trio, so seemingly detached, looking at him in that amused, measured way, tossing their secret knowledge from one to another, like a tensely springy, soft-furred tennis ball. He would find out what it was, that secret, the secret they were all playing with.
As he drew open the front door—still no sign of Sarah the maid, thank God—he saw himself as a kind of clown, in outsize trousers and long, bulbous shoes, staggering this way and that between two laughing teams of white-clad players, jumping clumsily, vainly, for the ball they kept lobbing over his head with negligent, mocking ease. Yes, he would find out.
11
Phoebe could not get the Delahaye twins out of her thoughts. She had not really wanted to go to the party that night in Breen’s tiny gingerbread house under the railway bridge. She did not like parties, they always left her feeling unsettled and giddy for days afterwards, but she had felt she had to go, since that was what girlfriends did with their boyfriends.
Girlfriend. Boyfriend. The words brought her up short, and almost made her blush, not for shyness or bashful pleasure, but out of an embarrassment she could not quite account for.
Vengeance: A Novel (Quirke) Page 16