he would find out.
11
Phoebe could not get the Delahaye twins out of her thoughts. She had not really wanted to go to the party that night in Breen’s tiny gingerbread house under the railway bridge. She did not like parties, they always left her feeling unsettled and giddy for days afterwards, but she had felt she had to go, since that was what girlfriends did with their boyfriends.
Girlfriend. Boyfriend. The words brought her up short, and almost made her blush, not for shyness or bashful pleasure, but out of an embarrassment she could not quite account for.
What was it about the Delahaye brothers that made them so striking? Of course, twins were always a little bit uncanny, but with the Delahayes it was not only that. A fascinating aura surrounded them, fascinating, alarming, worrying. There was their coloring, so blond, with that dead-white skin, waxy and almost translucent, and their strange silvery blue eyes, transparent almost, like the eyes of a seagull. But mostly what drew her to them was their manner, remote, and with such stillness, as if they were always posing for their portraits, as if-
Drew her to them. Once again she was struck. Was that what she had meant to think? Was she drawn to them?
Gulls, yes, that was what they were like, those two, standing always at a remove, pale-eyed, watchful, disdaining.
She was thinking about them the day she met Inspector Hackett. It was lunchtime and she came out of the shop she worked in, on Grafton Street, the Maison des Chapeaux, and there was the detective, strolling along in his shiny blue suit with his hands in his pockets and his little potbelly sticking out, his braces on show and his battered old hat pushed to the back of his head. It seemed that every time she encountered Hackett he was out and about like this, at his ease, without a care. Today he was obviously enjoying the sunshine, and he greeted her warmly, with his elaborate, old-fashioned courtesy.
“Is it yourself, Miss Griffin!” he exclaimed, throwing back his head and puffing out his cheeks for pleasure. She believed he really was fond of her, but she could never understand why. She seemed to remember he had no children; maybe she made him think of the daughter he might have wished for.
“Hello, Inspector,” she said. “Isn’t it a lovely day.”
“It is that, indeed,” Hackett said, squinting at the sky and seeming at the same time to wink at her. She liked the way he exaggerated his quaintness for her amusement, playing the countryman come to town and exaggerating his thickest Midlands drawl. She knew very well how clever he was, how cunning. It occurred to her that she would not wish to be a miscreant upon whom Inspector Hackett had fixed his mild-seeming eye.
They went into Bewley’s. It was crowded, as it always was at lunchtime, and there were the mingled smells of coffee and fried sausages and sugary pastry. They sat at a tiny marble table at the back of the big scarlet-and- black dining room.
Hackett, with his hat in his lap, asked the waitress for a ham roll and “a sup of tea”-he was really putting on the clodhopper act today-and then turned back to beam at Phoebe, and inquired after her father. She was aware that of late the detective and Quirke had been seeing each other regularly again because of the Delahaye and Clancy business, so Hackett must know how her father was; nevertheless she said that Quirke was very well, very well indeed. This was a coded way of saying that Quirke was not drinking, or at least not drinking as he sometimes did, ruinously. Hackett nodded. He had a way of pursing his lips and letting his eyelids droop that always made her think of a fat old Roman bishop, a Vatican insider, worldly-wise, calculating, sly.
“Wasn’t it awful,” she said, “about that poor man, Clancy, who drowned. Such a terrible accident, and so soon after his partner had died.”
She watched him. Her breathless schoolgirl tone-he was not the only one who could put on an act-had not fooled him, of course. He nodded, his chin falling on his chest. “Oh, aye, terrible,” he said, and gave her a quick sharp glance from under those hooded lids.
“Do they know what happened to him?” she asked. She was not to be put off.
“They?” he asked, all puzzlement and mild innocence.
“The family,” she said. “The authorities.” She smiled. “You.”
The waitress brought their orders. Phoebe had asked for a cup of coffee and a slice of toast. Hackett eyed her plate dubiously. “You won’t grow fat on that, my girl,” he said.
She nodded. “That’s the point.”
Hackett slopped milk into his tea and added three heaped spoonfuls of sugar. The rim of his hat had etched a line across his forehead and the skin above it was as pink and tender-looking as a baby’s. His oily black hair was plastered flat against his skull-she wondered if he ever washed it. What did she know about him? Not much. He was married, she knew that, and he lived somewhere in the suburbs. Beyond these scant facts, nothing.
He reminded her of a dog she had once owned, when she was a little girl. Ruff was his name. He was a mongrel, with black-and-white markings and half an ear missing. He loved to play, and would fetch sticks she had thrown for him, and would drop them at her feet for her to throw again, sitting back on his haunches and grinning up at her, his impossibly long pink tongue hanging out. One day, when she was staying in Rosslare on a holiday, she had seen Ruff out on the Burrow, the strip of grass and sand between the hotel and the beach. He had caught something in the grass, a young hare, she thought it was, a leveret, and she had stood watching in horror as he tore the poor creature to pieces. Ruff had not seen her and, unsupervised, had reverted to being a wild creature, all fang and claw. At last she had called out his name, and he had glanced at her guiltily and then run off, with what was left of the baby hare in his mouth. Later, when he came back, he was once again the Ruff she knew, grinning and happy, with that ragged half ear flapping. No doubt he expected her to have forgotten the scene on the Burrow, the torn fur and the gleaming dark blood and the white, rending teeth. But she had not forgotten; she never would forget.
She did not know whether it was she or Hackett who had brought up the subject of the Delahaye twins. To be talking about them was like an extension of her thoughts, and she realized how much indeed they must be on her mind. She told of seeing them at the party at Breen’s house, and how surprised she had been that they were there, at a party, so recently after their father’s death.
“When was that, exactly?” the Inspector asked, stirring a spoon round and round in his tea.
“Saturday,” she said. “Saturday night.”
“Ah.”
She waited, but he seemed to have no more to say on the subject. Then she remembered. Saturday night was the night Jack Clancy had died, out in a boat too, on the lonely sea, like his partner.
She saw Jimmy Minor come in. He had stopped in the entrance to the dining room and was lighting a cigarette. Quickly, on instinct, she turned her face aside so that he might not see her. This surprised her, but then, she often found herself surprised by things she did. Yet why had she wanted to avoid Jimmy? He was supposed to be her friend.
Feeling guilty, she half rose from her chair and waved, so that he could not miss seeing her. He waved in return, and began to make his way through the crowded room, weaving between the tables and trailing smoke from his cigarette. She could not imagine Jimmy without a cigarette. He reminded her of a boat of some kind, a tramp steamer, perhaps, with his red hair like a flag and that plume of smoke always billowing behind him.
When he caught sight of Inspector Hackett he raised his eyebrows and hesitated, but Phoebe waved again and he came up. “Hello, Pheebs,” he said. “In the embrace of the long arm of the law, I see.”
Inspector Hackett nodded amiably. “Mr. Minor,” he said. “We meet again. Will you join us?”
Jimmy gave Phoebe another twitch of his eyebrows, and borrowed a chair from the next table, and sat down. He wore a ragged tweed jacket, a white shirt, or a shirt that had been white some days ago, and a narrow green tie with a crooked knot. His bright red hair was trimmed close to his skull and came to a point in the center of his pale, freckled forehead. His hands had a chain smoker’s tremor. Inspector Hackett was watching him, was inspecting him, with a sardonic expression. There was something between the detective and the reporter, that was clear: they had the air of two wrestlers circling each other, on the lookout for an opening.
The waitress came and Jimmy ordered a cup of black coffee. “No food?” the waitress said. She was a delicate
