The Silver Swan

skeletal support inside him had collapsed. 'Don't you think,' he said, with angry imploring, 'that's the question I've been asking myself every minute of every day since it happened? Who would know, if not me? But I don't.' He stared with stricken eyes past the inspector's big head to the window and the sunlit rooftops beyond. Through the open window could be heard, faintly but distinctly, the sounds of heavy hooves and the metal grind of cart wheels; a Guinness dray, the inspector guessed, going along the quays. 'I thought she was all right,' Billy said, seeming weary now, suddenly. He was, the inspector thought, a mass of changes, abrupt shifts, switches of temper; how, he wondered, had his wife coped with him? 'I thought she was happy, or content, anyway,' Billy said. 'We had our ups and downs, like everyone does. We had rows-she was a terrible fighter when she got going, like a wildcat. I'd say to her, I'd say, 'You can take the woman away from Lourdes Mansions, but you can't take Lourdes Mansions away from the woman.' That would really set her off.' He smiled, remembering. 'And then she'd end up crying, sobbing on my shoulder, shaking all over, saying how sorry she was and begging me to forgive her.' He came back from the past and focused on Inspector Hackett's large flat face and his unfailingly amused and seemingly friendly mild brown eyes. 'Maybe she wasn't happy. I don't know. Do people fight and scream like that and then sob their hearts out if they're happy?' He lunged forward suddenly and took a cigarette from the inspector's pack where it lay on the desk. He fumbled in his pocket for a lighter but the inspector had already struck a match, and held it out to him. Billy was a nervous smoker, pulling in quick mouthfuls of smoke with a hiss and breathing them out again at once as if in exasperation. 'I don't know,' he said, 'I just don't know what to think, I swear to Christ I don't.'

The inspector leaned back again and put his feet up on the desk and folded his hands on his paunch. 'Tell me about her,' he said.

'Tell you what?' Billy Hunt snapped petulantly. 'Haven't I told you?'

The inspector seemed unperturbed. 'But tell me what way her life was. I mean, what sort of friends had she?'

'Friends?' He almost laughed. 'Deirdre didn't go in for friends.'

'No? There must have been women of her own age, women she'd talk to, confide in. I haven't come across the woman yet who didn't need someone to tell her secrets to.'

Although he had hardly started on it, Billy Hunt now screwed the cigarette savagely into the ashtray.

'Deirdre wasn't like that. She was a loner, like me. I suppose that's what we saw in each other.'

'She seldom went out, you tell me. Neither of you did. Is that so?'

Billy Hunt gave a sardonic nod and turned aside as if he might be about to spit. 'Oh, she went out, all right.' He stopped, as if realizing he had already said too much.

The inspector, seeing the other's sudden caution, decided to wait. He said, 'But she was a homebody, so you said.'

'No, I didn't-that's what you said I was.'

'Did I? Ah, I'm getting very forgetful. It must be old age creeping up.' He inserted a little finger delicately into his right ear and waggled it up and down, then extracted it again and peered to see what had lodged under the nail. 'So where would she go, when she went out?'

Billy would not meet his eye. 'I don't know.'

'Was this when you were away?'

'Was what when I was away?'

'That she went out.'

'I don't know what she did when I was working, traveling.' He winced, as if at a stab of pain. 'And now I don't want to know.'

'And who would she see, do you think, when she went out?'

'She wouldn't say.'

'And did you not press her to say?'

'You didn't press Deirdre. She wasn't the kind of person that you press. All you'd get is a wall of silence, or be told what to do with yourself. She was her own woman.'

'But you must have wondered-I mean, who she saw, when she did go out. I take it it was at night? That she went out?'

'Not always. Sometimes she'd disappear for whole afternoons. There was some doctor fellow she would go to see.'

'Oh?'

'A foreigner. Indian, I think.'

'An Indian doctor.'

'And there was that other long streak of mischief, of course. Her 'partner.'' He spoke that last word with venom.

The inspector had begun to hum softly under his breath; it sounded as if a bee were trapped somewhere in the room, inside a cupboard or a drawer. 'And who,' he said, 'was this partner?' Quirke had told him the name but he had forgotten, and anyway, he wanted to hear Billy say it.

'Fellow called White. Some kind of an Englishman. Used to have a hairdressing place until it went bust. It was him that got Deirdre going in the beauty parlor. He had the premises and helped her to get set up; then something happened there, too-the money ran out, I suppose.'

'What sort of help did he give Deirdre?'

'What?'

'You said he helped her to get set up. Did he put up the funds?'

'I don't know. I'm not sure. He must have had money from somewhere, to get the thing going. Maybe his wife kicked in-she has a business of her own. But Deirdre wouldn't have needed much assistance. She had a good head on her shoulders, Deirdre did.'

'Had she money too, like this fellow's wife?'

'Not what you'd call real money. But we were doing all right, between us.' He ruminated, a muscle working in his jaw. 'I thought I might have gone in with her on something, give up the traveling and start a business together, but then White came along. I suppose she was a bit taken with him, what with the fancy accent and all.'

'Were you jealous?'

He considered. 'I suppose so. But he was such a-such a drip, you know. I always thought he was a bit of a pansy. But you can never tell, with women.'

'True enough.'

Billy Hunt looked at the policeman sharply again, as if suspecting he was being mocked; the inspector gazed back at him with unwavering blandness.

'If I thought,' Billy Hunt said, in a strangely dull, distant tone, 'if I thought it was him that drove her to do what she did, I'd…' He let his voice drift off, his imagination failing him.

The inspector, his head cocked to one side-to do what she did-studied him thoughtfully. 'Was she in love with him, maybe, would you say?'

Billy Hunt put that hand over his eyes again, more in exhaustion than distress, it seemed, and slowly shook his head from side to side. 'I don't know that Deirdre loved anyone. It's a harsh thing to say, but I've thought about it a lot over the past couple of weeks and I think it's true. I don't hold it against her. It just wasn't in her nature. Or maybe it was, to start with, and got knocked out of her. If you knew her father you'd know what I mean.'

'Aye,' the inspector said. 'Life is hard, and harder for some than others.' Abruptly he rose and extended a hand. 'I won't take any more of your time, I'm sure you've things to do. Good day to you, Mr. Hunt.'

Billy Hunt, taken by surprise, rose slowly, and slowly took the offered hand and slowly shook it. He mumbled something and turned to the door. The inspector remained standing behind his desk, expressionless, but when Billy had the door open he said, 'By the way, this doctor that Deirdre used to see-what's his name, do you know?'