from.”
The other three exchanged uneasy glances. The Prince was right, the family should be alerted. Then Phoebe had an idea. “I’ll ask my father,” she said. “He probably knows the Minister, or Oscar Latimer, or both. He could speak to them.”
Isabel and Jimmy still looked doubtful and exchanged a glance. “I think one of the four of us should do that,” Jimmy said, avoiding Phoebe’s eye. “April is our friend.”
Phoebe looked at him narrowly. They all knew where Quirke had been for the past six weeks. They knew too of her and Quirke’s history together, or not together, rather. Why should they trust him to approach the Latimers? “Then
She stopped. She did not feel half as brave or decisive as she was pretending to be. The thought of confronting the famously prickly Oscar Latimer made her quail. And from the way Jimmy and Isabel shrugged and looked away it seemed they were no more enthusiastic for her to talk to him than they had been when she offered her father as a spokesman. Of the three, Patrick Ojukwu had the most enigmatic expression, smiling at her in a strange way, broadening his already flat, broad nose and drawing back his lips to show her those enormous white teeth of his all the way to the edges of gums that were as pink and shiny as sugarstick. He might almost have been mocking her. Yet behind that broad smile he, too, she sensed, was uneasy.
Despite her misgivings, that night when she got home she called Oscar Latimer, from the telephone in the hallway. His office number was the only one she could find in the directory, and she was sure he would not be there, at eleven o’clock at night. She knew very well that she was calling him now in the certainty that she would not get him, and she was startled when the receiver was picked up after the first ring and a voice said softly, “Yes?” Her impulse was to hang up immediately, but instead she went on standing there with the phone pressed to her ear, hearing her own breath rustling in the mouthpiece, a sound like that of the sea at a great distance, the waves rising and falling. She thought it must be the wrong number she had dialed but then the voice again said, “Yes?” as softly as before, and added, “Oscar Latimer here. Who is this, please?” She could not think what to say. The hall around her suddenly seemed unnaturally quiet, and she was afraid that as soon as she began to speak the fat young man would come storming out of his flat to rail at her for making noise and disturbing him. She said her name and had to repeat it, more loudly, though still speaking barely above a whisper. There was another silence on the line- perhaps he did not recognize her name, for why should he?- then he said, “Ah. Yes. Miss Griffin. What can I do for you?” She asked if she could see him in the morning. After the briefest pause he said she might come at half past eight, that he could give her five minutes, before his first patient was due. He hung up without saying goodbye, and without asking what it was she wanted to see him about. She supposed he thought she must be in trouble; probably girls in trouble phoned him all the time, at all hours of day and night, since he was the best-known doctor, in his line, in town.
She was halfway up the stairs when she stopped and came back down again, and fished more pennies out of her purse, and put them in the slot and dialed Quirke’s number. She could not think if there had been an occasion before in her life when, as now, she craved so much the sound of her father’s voice.
NEXT MORNING AT TWENTY MINUTES AFTER EIGHT SHE ARRIVED on foot at the corner of Pembroke Street and Fitzwilliam Square and spotted the unmistakable figure of Quirke, enormous in his long black coat and black hat, waiting for her in the half-light of dawn. Got up like this, he always made her think of the blackened stump of a tree that had been blasted by lightning. He greeted her with a nod and touched a fingertip to her elbow through the sleeve of her coat, the only intimacy between them he ever seemed willing to permit himself. “You realize,” he said, “it’s not everyone I’d venture out for, at this hour of the morning, in this weather.” He turned, and together they set off diagonally across the road, the fog clutching wetly at their faces. “And to call on Oscar Latimer, into the bargain.”
“Thanks,” she said drily. “I appreciate it, I’m sure.” She was remembering the look that Jimmy and Isabel had exchanged at the Dolphin last night, but she did not care; she needed Quirke with her today, to give her support and keep her from losing her nerve.
They climbed the steps of the big four-story terraced house, and Quirke pressed the bell. While they waited Phoebe asked him if he had telephoned the hospital, and he looked blank. “To inquire about April,” she said, “the sick-note she sent in- did you forget?” He said nothing but looked stonily contrite.
There was a smell of coffee in the hallway; Oscar Latimer not only had his consulting rooms but also lived here, Phoebe recalled now, in a bachelor apartment on the two top floors, in what April used to describe scornfully as unmarried bliss. Why had she not remembered that? It accounted of course for his answering the phone so late last night.
The nurse who let them in had a long, colorless face and large teeth; her bloodless nose narrowed to an impossibly sharp, purplish tip that was painful to look at. When Quirke introduced himself she said, “Oh,
“How are you?” Phoebe asked him.
He shook his head. “I don’t know yet, it’s too early in the day.”
“I mean, since you… since you came home.”
“I bought a car.”
“You did?”
“I told you I was going to.”
“Yes, but I didn’t believe you.”
“Well, I did.” He looked at her. “Don’t you want to know what it is?”
“What is it?”
The nurse with the nose put her head in at the door- it was as if a hummingbird had darted in its beak- and told them Mr. Latimer would see them now. They followed her up the stairs to the first floor, where her master had his rooms.
“An Alvis,” Quirke said to Phoebe, as they climbed. “I suppose you’ve never heard of an Alvis.”
“Have you learned to drive?”
He did not answer.
Oscar Latimer was a short, slight, brisk young man, smaller somehow than it seemed he should be, so that when she was standing in front of him, shaking his hand, Phoebe had the peculiar impression that she was seeing him at some distance from her, diminished by perspective. He had an air of extreme cleanliness, as if he had just finished subjecting himself to a thorough going-over with a scrubbing brush, and exuded a sharp, piney scent. His hand in hers was neat and warm and soft. He had freckles, like April, which made him seem far younger than he must be, and his boyish fair hair was brushed sharply away on both sides from a straight, pale parting. He had the beginnings of a mustache, it was no more than a few bristling, ginger tufts. He glanced at Quirke with faint surprise. “Dr. Quirke,” he said. “I didn’t expect you this morning. You’re well, I hope?” He had stepped back and with an adroit little dive had got in behind his desk and was already settling himself before he had stopped speaking. “So, Miss… Griffin,” he said, and she caught the slight hesitation; she had never considered abandoning the name Griffin and calling herself Quirke instead-why should she have, when Quirke had not given her his name in the first place? “What can I do for you?”
She and Quirke had seated themselves on the two small chairs to the right and left in front of the desk. “It’s not about me that we’ve come,” she said.
The little man looked sharply from her to her father and back again. “Oh? Yes?”
“It’s about April.”
Quirke was smoking the last of his cigarette, and Latimer with one finger pushed a glass ashtray forward to the corner of the desk. He was frowning. “About April,” he said slowly. “I see. Or rather I don’t see. I hope you’re not going to tell me she’s in trouble again.”
