“Yes.”
She waited. “And?”
Quirke looked through the window behind her to the sky’s darkening blue over Iveagh Gardens. “He said you and your husband used to be friends with him and his wife. That they stayed with you, at your place in the south of France.”
She made a quick, sweeping gesture with her left hand. “That was not a successful occasion.”
“Something about towels.”
“Towels? What do you mean, towels? Carl Sumner tried to make love to me. Now I am going to cook our food.”
She stood up and walked from the alcove and quickly across the dining room and out, shutting the door behind her. She had left her cigarette half smoked in the ashtray. A lipstick stain on a cigarette: that was another thing that excited him, every time, whatever the circumstances. He thought of Carlton Sumner’s bristling mustache, the sweat stains at the armpits of his gold-colored shirt. He rose from the table and went to the door through which Francoise had gone. Silence hung in the hallway like a drape. He remembered coming through the kitchen the day of the memorial party, and set off again in that direction.
She was standing by the sink, holding a glass of white wine with the fingers of both hands wrapped around the stem. The veal was on a plate by the stove, and there were carrots and broccoli on a wooden chopping board, waiting to be prepared. She did not turn when he came in. Blue-black night was in the window now. “I do not know what we are doing,” she said, still without turning.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It was a stupid thing to say, to ask.” He went and stood beside her and looked at her in profile. There were tears on her face. He touched her hands holding the glass and she flinched away from him. “Forgive me,” he said.
She took a sharp breath and wiped at the tears with the heel of a hand. At last she turned. He saw that she was angry. “You know nothing,” she said, “nothing.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “I know a great deal. That’s why I’m here.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. But I am here.”
She put down the wine glass and took a step towards him and he held her in his arms and kissed her, tasting the wine on her breath. She moved her face aside and leaned her cheek against his shoulder. “I do not know what to do,” she said.
He did not know, either. With Isabel he had been free, or as free as it was possible to be with anyone; but now, here, what had seemed silk cords had turned out to be the rigid bars of a cage in which he was a captive.
He led her to a small plastic-topped table and they sat down, he on one side and she on the other, their hands entwined in the middle. “Tell me about Sumner,” he said.
“Oh, what is there to tell. He tries his luck with every woman he meets.”
“But you were friends, you and Richard and he.”
She laughed. “You think that would make a difference, to a man like Carlton Sumner?”
“Did Richard know about this pass that Sumner made at you?”
“I told him, of course.”
“And what did he do?”
“He asked them to leave.”
“And they left.”
“Yes. I don’t know what Carl told Gloria, how he explained the sudden departure. I imagine she guessed.”
“Could this be the cause of the fight your husband had with Sumner at that business meeting?”
She gazed at him for a moment, then suddenly laughed. “Ah, cheri, ” she said, “you are so quaint and old- fashioned. Richard would not care about such a thing. When I told him, he was amused. The truth is, he was glad of a reason to ask them to leave, for he was bored with their company. I suspect, by the way, that Gloria had made a pass, as you say, at him. They were, they are, that kind of people, the Sumners.” She took her hands from his, and he brought out his cigarettes. “What did he say to you, when you spoke to him?” she asked. “You tell me the policeman was there too? Carlton would have enjoyed that, a visit from the police.”
“He said very little. That he had made your husband an offer of a partnership that day, and that your husband walked out.”
“A partnership? That is a lie. He wanted-he wants -to take over the business entirely. He wanted Richard out, with some silly title-executive director or something; that was his idea of a partnership.” She turned and gestured vaguely towards the food on the counter. “We should eat…”
“I told you, I’m not hungry.”
“I think you live on cigarettes.”
“Don’t forget alcohol-that, too.”
They left the kitchen and went back to the nook in the dining room. The night was pressing its glossy back against the window. The candle had burned halfway, and a knobbly trail of wax had dripped down the side and onto the table. Quirke lifted the bottle of Bordeaux. “You were drinking white, in the kitchen…?”
“Red will do, it doesn’t matter-I never notice what I am drinking.” She watched him pour. “Why did you ask about Marie Bergin? Did you see her at the Sumners’? Did you speak to her?”
“I saw her, yes. I didn’t speak to her. She doesn’t seem to say much. She looked frightened, to me.”
“Frightened of what?”
“I don’t know. Sumner, maybe. Why did you let her go?”
“Oh, you know what servants are like-”
“No, I don’t.”
“They come and they go. They always think they are being treated badly, and that things will be so very much better elsewhere.” She was leaning forward with her hands clasped on the table before her and as she spoke her breath made the candle flame waver, and phantom shadows leapt up the walls around them. “Marie was nice, but a silly girl. I don’t know why you are interested in her.”
He too leaned forward into the wavering cone of candlelight. “I’m trying to understand,” he said, “why your husband was killed.”
It struck him that each of them rarely spoke the other’s name.
“But what has this servant girl to do with it?” Francoise demanded.
“I don’t know. But there has to be a reason why he died.” To that she said nothing. The prancing shadows around them grew still. “I think,” he said, “I should go home.”
His hand was resting on the table; she touched the back of it with her fingertips. “I hoped you would stay.”
He thought of that sprite lying in her white room, staring into the darkness, attending.
“I think it’s better that I go,” he said.
She pressed her nails lightly into his skin. “I love you,” she said, as matter-of-factly as if she were telling him the time.
His footsteps echoed on the granite pavement as he walked along by the side of the Green. Behind the railings the trees were still; they stood in the light of the streetlamps, these vast living things, seeming to lean down as if watchful of his passing. What was he to do? His mind was a swirl of doubts and confusion. He did not know himself, he never had; he did not know how to live, not properly. He put a hand to his face and caught a trace of her perfume on his fingers, or was he imagining it? He could not get the woman out of his head, that was the simple fact of the matter; the thought of her had infected him, like a worm lodged in his brain. If only he could shake free of her, if somehow she were to cease to exist for him, even for a minute or two, he would be able to think clearly, but he was at the middle of a maze, and whichever way his thoughts turned her image was there before him, blocking all paths. What was he to do?
The Shelbourne was lit up like an ocean liner. He walked along Merrion Row past Doheny amp; Nesbitt’s, and
