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 should 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
