Elegy For April

set me free in an odd way. Can you understand that? So I confronted him, confronted Pa. We were in the garden, by the summer house. I was crying, I couldn’t stop, it was so strange, the tears just kept flowing down my face, though I didn’t feel in any way sad, but angry, more like, and- and outraged. Pa said nothing, not a word. He just stood there, looking away. I remember a vein in his temple, beating- no, fluttering, as if there were something under the skin there, a butterfly or a wriggly worm. It was in the summer house that Ma found him, late that evening. The weather was so beautiful, I remember, high summer, and a golden haze, and the midges in it like champagne bubbles going up and down.” He picked up the revolver and looked at it. “I wonder why we didn’t hear the shot,” he said. “You’d think we’d have heard it, a gun this size, going off.”

They were on the long curve towards Sutton. Now and then a single snowflake would come flickering haphazardly through the air and melt at once to water on the windscreen. Phoebe had drawn herself into the corner of the seat with her arms crossed tightly, clinging onto herself.

“This is terrible, Latimer,” Quirke said, “a terrible thing to hear.”

“Yes, it is,” Latimer agreed, in a throwaway tone. “Terrible is the word. We were bereft, of course, April and I. Despite everything, we loved our father- does that seem strange? Ma didn’t count, of course, we took no notice of her, she might as well not have been there.” He heaved a whistling sigh. “But it was wonderful, then, what April and I developed between us. Pa had trained us for it, you see, and we were grateful to him for that. True, the world would have frowned on our- our union, if it had known about it, but somehow that made it all the more precious for us, all the more- sweet.” He broke off. “Have you ever loved, Quirke? I mean, really loved? I know what you feel about your”- he cupped a hand beside his mouth and lowered his voice to a stage whisper, as if to keep Phoebe from hearing- “about your darling daughter here.” He coughed, resuming a normal tone. “What I’m talking about is love, a love that is everything, a love that pushes everything else aside, a love that consumes- a love, in short, that obsesses. This is nothing like the stuff you read about in novels or nice poems. And poor April, I really think she was not up to it. It was too much for her. She tried to escape, but of course she couldn’t. It wasn’t just that I wouldn’t let her go- I paid for the rent in her flat, did you know that? oh, yes, I paid for all sorts of things- but that she couldn’t free herself. Some bonds are just too strong”- he glanced back at Phoebe-”don’t you think so, my dear?”

At Sutton Cross he directed Quirke to turn right, and they began the long ascent of the hill. There were cows in frosty fields and people trudging along at the side of the road in hats and heavy coats, like refugees fleeing a winter war. The flakes of snow were multiplying now, flying horizontally, some of them, while others seemed to be falling upwards.

“So the child was yours,” Quirke said.

Behind them Phoebe made a small, sharp sound and put a hand to her mouth. Latimer turned to her again.

“Are you shocked, Miss Griffin?” he asked. “Well, I suppose it is shocking. But there you are. God allows certain things to happen, seems even to want them to happen, and who are we, mere mortals, to deny a divine wish?”

“Did you know she was pregnant?” Quirke asked. He was leaning forward, peering hard past the clicking windscreen wipers into the snow.

“No,” Latimer said, “I didn’t know, but I can hardly say I was surprised, given my training. I could have done something to prevent it, I suppose, but somehow one doesn’t think clearly in the throes of such passion. Do I feel guilty? you’ll ask me. Guilt is not the word. There is no word for it. That was the thing, with April and me, there were no words adequate enough- ah, here were are!” They had gained the summit and pulled into the parking place. The dusty ground was whitened here and there with frost, and before them and on two sides the sea stretched away, pockmarked and pistol-gray. “You can stop here,” Latimer said. “This will do- no, leave the car facing that way, the view is so nice.”

Quirke brought the car to a stop and did not switch off the engine. Phoebe suddenly needed very badly to pee. She said nothing, only cowered back farther into the corner of the seat, her hands clasped in her lap and her elbows pressed to her sides. She shut her eyes; she thought she might scream but knew that she must not.

Quirke turned to Latimer. “What now?”

Latimer seemed not to have heard; he was gazing down the hillside, nodding to himself. “This is where I brought her, that night,” he said. “I stopped the car just here and lifted her out of the backseat, wrapped in a blanket. She felt so light, so light, as if all the blood she lost was half her weight. You’ll laugh at me, I know, Quirke, but the moment had a strong sense of the religious, of the sacramental, though in a pagan sort of way; I suppose I was thinking of Queen Maeve and the thunder on the stones and all that. Silly, I suppose, but then I can hardly have been in my right mind, can I, given all that had happened in the previous few hours- all that had happened, indeed, in all those years when April and I had only each other, and when it was enough.”

When he stopped speaking they could hear the wind outside, a faint, vague moaning.

Quirke said, “You went back and mopped up the blood, made the bed.”

“Yes. That too was a religious ceremony. I felt April’s presence very close-s he was with me- she’s with me still.”

“It was you who was watching my window, wasn’t it?” Phoebe said.

Latimer glanced at her, frowning. “Your window, my dear? Now, why would I do that? Anyway, enough questions, enough talk.” He lifted the pistol and pointed it at Quirke and then at Phoebe, waggling the barrel playfully. “Get out now, please,” he said, “both of you.”

“Latimer,” Quirke began, “you can’t-”

“Oh, shut up, Quirke,” Latimer said wearily. “You have nothing to say to me- nothing.”

They got out of the car, all three. Latimer held the gun down at his side to conceal it, though the place was deserted, except for, way off down the hill, a man in a duffle coat and cap, plodding along with a white dog at his heels. Quirke took Phoebe by an elbow and drew her in behind him, so that she was shielded by his bulk.

“Are you going to tell us what you did with the body?” he said. “Tell us that, at least.”

Latimer waggled the gun again limp-wristedly. “Stand over there, by those bushes,” he said. “Go on, go on.”

Quirke did not move. He said: “You didn’t bring her out here at all, did you? This is not where you left her. I know you’re lying.”

Latimer, still pointing the gun in their general direction, had opened the door on the driver’s side and was climbing in behind the wheel. He paused, and smiled, making a rabbit face and twitching that ridiculous mustache. “Obviously I can’t fool you, Quirke,” he said, shaking his head in rueful, mock admiration. “No, you’re right, I didn’t bring her here. In fact, I’m not going to tell you where she is. Let her be gone into the air, like dust, like- incense.”

“No!” Phoebe cried, stepping out from behind Quirke’s sheltering back and freeing her elbow from his grip. “You can’t do that,” she said. “It’s the last insult to her. Let her have a grave, or a place, at least, someplace where we can come and- and remember her.”

For the first time Latimer’s look hardened, and his mouth compressed itself into a narrow, bloodless line. “How dare you,” he said softly. He was behind the wheel now, with the door still open and one foot on the ground. “You think I’ll let her be anywhere, for you and the rest of her so-called friends to come and pretend to mourn her? She was mine, and she’ll stay mine. You were the ones who tried to take her from me, you and that Hottentot, and the guttersnipe reporter, and that other slut. But you couldn’t take her, and you can’t. She’s mine forever now.”

He drew in his foot and slammed the door, then rolled down the window. He was smiling again. “Really, this is such a nice car, Quirke,” he said. “I hope you aren’t too attached to it.” He winked then and turned to face the windscreen, and the engine roared as he trod on the accelerator and the great car leapt forward, over the frozen dust and through the gap in the low wall there. They walked forward, father and daughter, to the wall and stopped there and watched the Alvis bump and roll its way down the steep, slanting track. Then they heard the flat crack of a gunshot, and the car wallowed drunkenly to the right and the wheels on the driver’s side sank into the heather and the machine reared up sideways and seemed to hang for a long moment before pitching over on its roof and then turning in clumsy, lateral somersaults down the long, uneven slope, until they could see it no more. There were cliffs down there, and they waited, as if they might hear, from all that distance, the terrible splash of the car going into the sea, but there was nothing, only the gulls crying and the man’s white dog way off there in the bracken, barking.

IT WAS HARD GOING ON THE HILLSIDE, AND QUIRKE AND INSPECTOR Hackett had scrambled only halfway