Elegy For April

“The thing is,” Phoebe said, ignoring the implications of that word again, “I haven’t heard from her, and none of her other friends have either, since a week from last Wednesday. That’s nearly… what is it?… nearly twelve days.”

There was a silence. She wished that Quirke would say something to help her. He was studying a large photograph hanging among framed degrees on the wall behind the desk, showing Oscar Latimer, in a dark suit and wearing some kind of sash, shaking hands with Archbishop McQuaid. What was it Jimmy Minor had called McQuaid? That whited sepulchre in his palace out in Drumcondra. The Archbishop wore a sickly smile; his nose was almost as sharp and bleached as that of Latimer’s nurse.

Oscar Latimer drew back the cuff of his jacket and looked pointedly at his watch. Sighing, he said, “I haven’t seen my sister since- well, I don’t remember when it was. She long ago cut herself off from the rest of us and-”

“I know there was- there was tension between her and your mother,” Phoebe said, in an effort to sound conciliatory.

Latimer gave her a look of cold distaste. “She as good as disowned her family,” he said.

“Yes, but-”

“Miss Griffin, I don’t think you understand what I’m telling you. As far as we’re concerned, I mean the family, April is a free agent, beyond our influence, outside of our concern. She’s gone twelve days, you say? For us, she left much longer ago than that.”

The room was silent again. Quirke was still gazing distractedly at the photograph.

“I didn’t say she was gone,” Phoebe said quietly, “only that I haven’t heard from her.”

Latimer let fall another sharp little sigh and again consulted his watch.

Quirke at last broke his silence. “We wondered,” he said, “if April might perhaps have been in touch with her mother. Girls tend to cleave to their mothers, in times of difficulty.”

Latimer regarded him with amused disdain. “Difficulty?” he said, as if holding the word up by one corner to examine it. “What do you mean by that?”

“As Phoebe says, your sister hasn’t been heard from, that’s all. Naturally her friends are worried.”

Latimer fairly hopped where he sat. “Her friends?” he cried- it was almost a bleat. “Don’t talk to me about her friends! I know all about her friends.”

Quirke let his gaze wander again over the walls and then refixed it on the little man behind the desk. “My daughter is one of those friends,” he said. “And your sister is not beyond their concern.”

Latimer set his small, neat hands flat before him on the desk and took a long breath. “My sister, since she became an adult, and indeed for long before that, has caused nothing but distress to our family, and to her mother in particular. Whether she’s in difficulty, as you put it, or just off somewhere on one of her periodic romps I frankly don’t care. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a patient waiting.” He stood up, making two tripods of his fingers and pressing them to the desk and leaning forward heavily on them. “I’m sorry, Miss Griffin, that you’re worried, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. As I’ve said, my sister and her doings stopped being of any consequence to me a long time ago.”

Quirke rose, turning his hat slowly in his hands. “If you do hear from her,” he said, “will you call us, either Phoebe or me?”

Latimer looked at him again with that disdainful almost-smile. “I won’t be the one to hear from her,” he said purringly. “You can be certain of that, Dr. Quirke.”

On the step outside, Phoebe violently pulled one glove and then the other. “Well,” she said through her teeth to Quirke, “you were a great help. I don’t think you even looked at him.”

“If I had,” Quirke said mildly, “I think I’d have picked up the little squirt and thrown him out of the window. What did you expect me to do?”

They walked along the square under the silent, dripping trees. There was some morning traffic in the street now, and muffled office workers hurried past them. The dawn seemed to have staled before it had fully broken, and the gray light of day seemed more a dimness.

“Is he a good doctor?” Phoebe asked.

“I believe so. Good doctoring doesn’t depend on personality, as you’ve probably noticed.”

“I suppose he’s fashionable.”

“Oh, he’s that, all right. I wouldn’t care to have him pawing me, but I’m not a woman.”

They stopped on the corner. “Malachy is going to give me a driving lesson today,” Quirke said. “In the Phoenix Park.”

Phoebe was not listening. “What am I going to do?” she said.

“About April? Look, I’m sure Latimer is right; I’m sure she’s off on an adventure somewhere.”

She stopped, and after walking on a pace he stopped too. “No, Quirke,” she said, “something has happened to her, I know it has.”

He sighed. “How do you know?”

She cast about, shaking her head. “When we went in there first, into that room of his, I felt such a fool. The way he looked at me, I could see he thought I was just another hysterical female, like the ones I suppose he sees every day. But as he talked I became more and more- I don’t know- frightened.”

“Of him?” Quirke sounded incredulous. “Frightened of Oscar Latimer?”

“No, not of him. Just- I don’t know. I just had this feeling, I’ve had it all week, but in that room it became- it became real.” She looked down at her gloved hands. “Something has happened, Quirke.”

He put his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and looked at the toe caps of his shoes. “And you think Latimer knows what it is that’s happened?”

She shook her head. “No, it’s nothing to do with him, I’m sure it’s not. It wasn’t anything he said or did. Just this certainty got stronger and stronger inside me. I think-” She stopped. A coal cart went past, drawn by an old brown nag, the black-faced coalman with his whip perched atop the piled, full sacks. “I think she’s dead, Quirke.”

6

THE LOUNGE OF THE HIBERNIAN HOTEL WAS ALMOST FULL AT MID-morning, but Quirke found a table in a corner, beside a palm in a tall, Ali Baba urn standing on the floor. He was ten minutes early and was glad he had brought a newspaper to hide behind. After only six weeks in the cotton-wool atmosphere of St. John’s he had become accustomed to the regulated life there, and now he wondered if he would ever readjust to the real world. Two pinstriped businessmen at a table next to his were drinking whiskey, and the sharp, smoky smell of the liquor came to him in repeated wafts, suggestive and blandishing. He had not thought of himself as an alcoholic, just a heavy drinker, but after the latest, six-month binge he was not so sure. Dr. Whitty at St. John’s would offer no judgment-”I don’t deal in labels”- and probably it did not matter what his condition was called, if it was a condition. Only he was afraid. He was already past the middle of his life; up to now there had seemed nothing that he could not influence or alter, with more or less effort; to be an alcoholic, however, was an incurable state, whether he were to drink or not. That is a sobering thought, he told himself, and grinned behind his paper and bared his teeth.

When he saw Inspector Hackett come into the lounge he knew he had chosen the wrong meeting place. The detective had stopped just inside the glass doors and was scanning the room with an air of faint desperation, nervously clutching his old slouch hat to his chest. He was wearing a remarkable overcoat, more a longish jacket, really, black and shiny, with toggles and epaulets and lapels six inches wide with sharp tips. Quirke half rose and waved the newspaper, and Hackett saw him with evident relief and made his way across the room, weaving between the tables. They did not shake hands.

“Dr. Quirke- good day to you.”

“How are you, Inspector?”

“Never better.”