They are all devils, there.”
Quirke recalled Father Ambrose’s wispily gentle voice, the way he drew close, how his gaze seemed to reach out blind fingers to feel all over what was before him. He recalled too the boys sidling past in the corridors, their downcast eyes. How could he have missed what was plain to see, what his own experiences as a child in places like this should have taught him never to forget?
“And Dannie,” he said. “Did you know about Dannie, too, what Richard did to her?”
“No!” She slapped both her hands down hard on the rail. She was glaring at him with eyes ablaze, and then, as suddenly as it had flared up, the fire in her went out, and her shoulders slumped, her face grew slack. “I thought it was only little boys he cared for,” she said, almost in a whisper. “I did not know it was little girls, too. He wanted the young, you see, always and only the young. Fresh meat, that is what he would say, fresh meat. And he would laugh.”
“When did you find out?”
“About Dannie? Not until-not until that day, that Sunday, at Brooklands. The thing had broken in her, had snapped. She could not keep it secret any longer. Because of Giselle, you see.” She glanced back in alarm towards the glass doors and the room where the child was, and her voice again became a whisper. “Because of Giselle.”
Quirke heard voices faintly, and he too turned to the glass, behind which a shadowed form was approaching. The door slid open and a young woman stepped onto the verandah. She was dark as a Gypsy, with hooded eyes and a shadowed upper lip. She wore a blue housecoat and white shoes like a nurse’s. Seeing Quirke, she hesitated. “Ah, Maria,” Francoise said. “Cet homme est Docteur Quirke.” The girl smiled uncertainly and put her hands behind her back. Francoise turned to Quirke. “Maria takes care of Giselle in the afternoons,” she said. She went forward and took the young woman by the elbow and steered her back indoors.
Quirke extricated himself from the low chair and, lighting a cigarette, walked to the rail where Francoise had stood. Despite having removed his jacket and then his tie he was hot, and could feel himself sweating, the beads of moisture running down and stopping at the small of his back. Below in the valley the cicadas had started up, draping the air with their crepitant drone. He fancied he could hear too the noise of traffic on that distant white road, the blare of trucks, the insect whine of a motorcycle.
He should not have come.
After some minutes Francoise returned. “They have gone out,” she said. “Will you come back inside?”
Quirke wanted a drink. The bottle of picpoul was three-quarters empty. He offered it to Francoise but she shook her head, and he filled his own glass. The wine had warmed up; it did not matter.
The tortoise was gone, and in its place on the counter was a snow globe; he recognized it, with the little town inside it, the miniature streets and the chateau and its pointed tower. They went into the other room and sat down on the sofa where the child had sat. Quirke offered his case and Francoise took a cigarette. It was so strange, Quirke thought, so strange to be here, in these rich surroundings, drinking wine and smoking, as if there were nothing except that, two people sitting in a white room in a sunny town, being themselves, being together.
Francoise said, “That Sunday she told me, Dannie told me, what had gone on between her and Richard for so many years. Richard must have been-I don’t know.” She leaned forward and dashed the tip of her cigarette at an ashtray standing on the low table. “Is it possible to be addicted to such things?”
“It’s possible to be obsessed, yes,” Quirke said.
“But with him, you know, I do not think- obsession does not seem the right word. He was like a man with a-a pastime, a hobby. It amused him, it entertained him, to use these children, the boys at the orphanage, young people at the newspaper, poor little Marie our maid, Dannie his sister-his sister. Yes, it amused him. Can you understand this? Him and those other devils, destroying lives, destroying souls, for their amusement. ”
They were silent for a time; then Quirke spoke. “Do you know a man called Costigan?”
She waved a hand in a dismissive gesture, as if pushing aside a cobweb. “I do not know names. There was a group of them.”
“The Friends of St. Christopher’s.”
She gave a bitter laugh. “Yes, that is what they called themselves.” She turned herself sideways on the sofa to look at him. “You know they used that place as a brothel, yes? The priest, Ambrose, he was the-what is the word?-the souteneur. ”
“The pander?”
“Yes, the pander-the pimp.”
Quirke stood up and went to the counter again and poured the last of the wine, and walked with his glass to the window with the palm in it and looked down towards the bay. The child was down there, with her nurse, walking along by the water. He heard Francoise approach and stop behind him.
“Why did you leave like that,” he asked, not turning to her, “without even a telephone call?”
She was behind him now; he could feel the warmth of her and smell her perfume. “I told you,” she said. “That night in the garden, when Giselle went back to the house and we had to search for her-I thought I had lost her. I thought they had got her.”
“‘They’?”
“Richard’s people. I was so frightened, in such a panic. You do not know what they are like, what they are capable of.”
He saw himself again in Mount Street, staring into the gutter, at what was lying there. He had not told her about Sinclair.
He turned to face her. “Tell me what happened, that Sunday.”
There was a silence. She was looking at him now as she had not looked at him before, as if for the first time, her head tilted to the side and her eyes narrowed. “You know,” she said softly, “don’t you.”
He nodded.
“When?” she whispered.
“The day we had lunch, that first time, at the Hibernian. You tried to get me to suspect that Carlton Sumner had killed your husband.”
“But-how?”
“I don’t know. But I knew it had to be you.”
“And Dannie-?”
“Dannie couldn’t have done it, I was certain of that. Maguire? No. Carlton Sumner? Possible, but very unlikely. His son, Teddy? No. So that left you.”
“You knew, and yet you-we-”
“Yes.”
Yes, he thought, I knew, and still I went with you, over to the side of night.
The shore was a pebbled slope running sharply down into a sluggish sea. Directly before them a huge yellow-gold moon sat fatly just above the horizon, its broadening track shimmering and swaying upon the inky water. Fishing boats were out there, they could see their bobbing lights, and more than once they thought they heard the fishermen calling to each other. The night air was soft and cool. They sat on a wooden bench at the edge of the pebbles. Quirke was smoking a cigarette, and Francoise lay against him with her head on his shoulder and her legs drawn up under her. Maria had put the child to bed, and they had come down the hill to walk by the sea. Now they sat listening to the waves at their ceaseless small turning.
“She told me that day, you see,” Francoise said. “Dannie told me not only about what Richard had done to her for all those years when she was a child, but what Richard was doing now with Giselle. She had spoken to him that morning, had pleaded with him, but of course he only laughed in her face. I had you when you were young, he said to her, now I have a new one, all of my own. When I arrived at Brooklands I found her lying on the floor-on the floor, yes-curled up, you know, like a little baby. At first she would say nothing; then she told me. She had his shotgun on the floor beside her. She said she had tried to make herself go up to the office again and confront him, threaten him-shoot him, even. But she was not strong enough.”
“And you were.”
“Yes, I was.” She took the cigarette from his fingers and drew on it with a quick, hissing sound and then gave
