He took himself off to the side and lit a cigarette and eyed the crowd, in their dark suits and black frocks and black hats with veils-a regular fashion show, it looked like-picking out the ones whose faces he knew and watching how they behaved. There were the Delahaye twins, uncannily alike. Which was which? That must be James, the one staying silent, while the other one, Jonas, talked and smiled. The dead man’s widow was with someone he did not recognize, a tall sleek man with ash-colored hair brushed back like an eagle’s plume-her brother, maybe, or was he too old? She wore a dark blue two-piece costume the skirt of which was very tight and emphasized the curve of her behind. Hackett looked at the seams of her stockings, and looked away.
The Clancys, parents and son, were in the crowd and yet seemed apart from it, surrounded as it were by an invisible enclosure. Jack Clancy was dragging on a cigarette as if he was suffocating and it was a little tube of oxygen. His son, looking more than ever like a bantamweight contender, was frowning at the sky, as if wistfully expecting something to swoop down out of it and carry him off to somewhere less grim than this balefully sunlit churchyard. Mrs. Clancy-what was her name? Celia? Sylvia? — held herself in that peculiar way that she did- standing on her dignity, Hackett thought-with her handbag on her wrist and her gaze turned elsewhere. The three of them looked as if whatever it was that was holding them together might loose its grip at any moment and send them flying asunder.
And then there was the sister, Miss Delahaye-Margaret, was it? — raw and red-eyed and coughing steadily like a motorcar with a faulty spark plug.
Trouble on all sides, Hackett told himself, and sighed.
It cheered him, seeing Quirke, skulking as it seemed beside the church door, also lighting up a furtive cigarette, glancing swiftly about as if expecting someone to be challenged, his black hat pulled down over his left eye. Quirke was probably the only one among all these people today who had not needed to change into a funeral suit.
“There you are,” Hackett said. He lowered his voice. “Grand day for a planting.”
Quirke did his crooked smile.
The mourners were drifting towards the graveyard, led by the vicar in his surplice and stole and walking behind the coffin carried on the shoulders of James and Jonas Delahaye and four of what must be their friends, curt-looking young men in expensive suits. The women in their high heels stepped over the grass carefully, like wading birds, while the men, concealing their half-smoked cigarettes inside their palms, took a last few surreptitious drags. Quirke and the Inspector joined the stragglers.
“There’s a sign somewhere in Glasnevin Cemetery,” Quirke said quietly. “‘Planting in this area restricted to dwarves,’ it says.” The Inspector’s shoulders shook. Quirke did not look at him. “I think,” he said mildly, “it’s trees that are meant.”
They went on, pacing slowly in the wake of the mourners.
“By God, Doctor,” Hackett said, catching his breath, “you’ve the graveyard humor, all right.”
The burial was quickly over with. The vicar droned, his eye fixed dreamily on a corner of the sky above the yew trees, a hymn was raggedly sung, someone-Delahaye’s sister, probably-let fall a sob that sounded like a fox’s bark, the coffin was lowered, the clay was scattered. The vicar draped a silken marker over the page of his black book and shut it, and with his hands clasped at his breast led the solemn retreat from the graveside. Hackett had been admiring the two gravediggers’ shapely spades-he was always interested in the tools of any trade-and now they stepped forward smartly and set to their work. Mona Delahaye, passing him by, smiled at Quirke and bit her lip. Quirke doffed his hat. Hackett watched the young woman, not looking at her nylon seams this time. “Mourning becomes her, eh?” he said, and cocked an eyebrow.
The cars were starting up and one or two were already creeping towards the gate. “Have you transport, yourself?” the Inspector asked. Quirke shook his head. “Fine, so,” Hackett said. “It’s a grand day for a walk into town.”
Hackett heard a step behind them on the gravel and turned to meet a pale, middle-aged man with a dry, grayish jaw and oiled black hair brushed slickly back.
“Are you the detective?” the man asked.
“I am,” Hackett said. “Detective Inspector Hackett.”
The man nodded. He had a curious way of blinking very slowly and comprehensively, like a bird of prey. He wore a starched, high collar-who wore collars like that, anymore? His teeth were bad, and Hackett caught a whiff of his breath.
“Might I have a word?” the man said. He slid a glance in Quirke’s direction.
“This is Dr. Quirke,” Hackett said. “We-we operate together.”
Quirke shot him a glance but the policeman’s bland expression did not alter. Hackett did not often make a joke.
“Ah, yes,” the man said. “Garret Quirke. I’ve heard of you.”
“Not Garret,” Quirke said. Why had people lately started calling him by that name?
“Sorry,” the man said, though he did not seem to be. “Maverley-Duncan Maverley. I work-worked-for Mr. Delahaye.” He glanced over his shoulder at the dispersing crowd and gestured towards the gate. “Shall we-?”
The three men went out at the gate and turned right and walked slowly along the pavement in the shade of the plane trees. The Delahayes’ car passed them by and Hackett fancied he glimpsed a flash of Mona Delahaye’s eye, trained in Quirke’s direction. The bold doctor, he thought to himself, had better go carefully, where that brand-new widow is concerned.
“I’m the head bookkeeper with Delahaye and Clancy,” Maverley said.
He was walking between the other two. He wore a drab black suit slightly rusty at the collar and the cuffs, and there were speckles of dandruff on his shoulders. He was, Quirke thought, every inch what a head bookkeeper should look like.
“A very sad thing,” Hackett said, “Mr. Delahaye going the way he did.”
“Yes,” Maverley said, somewhat absently; his mind seemed elsewhere. “I wanted to talk to you, Inspector,” he said, “about certain-certain anomalies that I’ve encountered, in the affairs of Delahaye and Clancy.”
“Anomalies,” Hackett said, as if he were unfamiliar with the word.
“Yes. In the accounts. Certain movements, certain transfers, of fundings and shares. It’s a complex matter, not easily grasped by the layman.”
Quirke and Hackett, the two laymen, exchanged a glance past Maverley’s head. Maverley, caught up in his thoughts, appeared not to notice.
“Can you give us an idea,” Hackett said, “an outline, of what the effect is of these-these anomalies?”
They had gone on some way before Maverley spoke again, in a voice that seemed hushed before the enormity of the matter that was being contemplated. “The effect,” he said, “in essence, is that Mr. Delahaye-young Mr. Delahaye-Mr. Victor-was being-” He hesitated. “What shall I say? His position was being undercut, steadily, systematically, and, I may say, very skillfully, so that in effect he is-was-no longer in the position at the head of the firm that he believed he occupied.”
“You mean he was being edged out,” Quirke said, “without his knowing?”
“Not being edged out, Dr. Quirke; he was out. Or perhaps that is too strong.” They had come to a corner and there they stopped. To the right, at the end of a short stretch of the road, the sea was suddenly visible, a sunlit blue surprise. Maverley inserted an index finger under the starched collar of his shirt and gave it an agitated tug. He cleared his throat. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “The balance of power within the firm has shifted-has been shifted, so that Mr. Delahaye, Mr. Victor, who was the leading partner in the firm, has become, had become, very much the lesser. And all this without his knowing, until I”-a soft cough-“apprised him of it.”
A silence fell. Inspector Hackett was squinting down the road towards the sea; he took off his hat and ran his hand around the sweat-dampened inner band. Quirke watched him. There were occasions, not momentous or even especially significant, when it came to him how scant was his knowledge of this man, how little he knew of how his mind worked or what his deepest thoughts might be. The two of them, he reflected, could not have been less alike. Yet here they were, wading together into yet another morass of human cupidity and deceit.
“And who might it be,” the Inspector said, turning his gaze towards Maverley again, “that’s behind this bit of clever maneuvering?”
Maverley pursed his pale lips. “Well now, Inspector,” he said slowly, “I don’t believe I’m in a position to say.”
Hackett pounced. “You mean you don’t know or you’re not saying?”
