girl with the face of a Madonna. Jimmy shook his head and she went off. Jimmy, it seemed, rarely noticed girls.
“Tell me, Mr. Minor,” Hackett said, “have you been hearing anything interesting since last we met?”
Jimmy Minor shot him a look. “A thing or two,” he said. “A thing or two.”
“Any one of which you might care to share?”
“Well now, Inspector, I doubt I’d have anything to tell you that you don’t know already.”
“You could try me with something.”
Jimmy winked at Phoebe. He was rolling the tip of his cigarette along the edge of the ashtray, shedding ash neatly into the cup. It occurred to Phoebe that if you smoked as much as Jimmy did you would always have something to do. Perhaps that was why he did it.
Years before, when she was little, her father, her supposed father, Malachy Griffin, had smoked a pipe for a while. She had envied all the things he had to play with, the tobacco pouch of wonderfully soft leather with a buttoned flap, and the little knife with the tamper on the end of it, and paper packets of woolly white pipe cleaners, and those special imported matches-Swan Vestas, they were called-that could only be got from Fox’s on College Green. She had liked the smell of the tobacco he smoked, one that he had made up specially, also at Fox’s, a blend of Cavendish and Perique-how was it she could remember so many of these names from the past? — and more than once when he had set down his pipe and gone off to do something she had pretended to take a puff from it, not minding the sour wet feel of the stem in her mouth. How warmly the bowl sat in her palm, how smooth it felt. The silver ring where the stem was fitted into the bowl had a tiny hallmark on the underside; it was like the silver band Malachy wore on his little finger, that had once belonged to his father-
She frowned, staring at her empty cup. Something had snagged in her mind, like a ragged fingernail catching in silk. Something to do, again, with the Delahaye twins-what was it? She remembered one of them, James, she thought it was, leaning over the girl in the doorway upstairs at Breen’s house, his head turned to look at her, at Phoebe, his arm lifted and his hand pressed against the doorjamb.
What? What was it? No: gone.
Jimmy was saying something about the firm of Delahaye amp; Clancy. A clerk there had told him-what had he told him? She had missed the beginning of it. “-a whole trail of transfers,” he was saying, “thousands of shares shifted between one place and another, and nobody knowing what was going on.”
Inspector Hackett, listening, nodded slowly, in an absentminded way, once more stirring the spoon in his tea, which by now must have gone quite cold. “Tell me,” he said, “are you doing a story about this?”
Jimmy gave a scoffing laugh. “Are you joking?” he said. “Do you think my rag would print anything that might suggest something peculiar was going on at the highly respected firm of Delahaye and Clancy?”
“I don’t know,” the Inspector said, playing the innocent again. “Would it not?”
Jimmy turned to Phoebe. “You know who we’re talking about?”
“Oh, she does,” the Inspector said. “She knows the family, in fact. Don’t you, Miss Griffin?”
An eager light had come into Jimmy’s eye. “Do you?” he asked.
“I’ve met the twins, Jonas and James, and Jonas’s girlfriend, Tanya Somers. And Rose Griffin knows their aunt.”
Jimmy whistled, shaking his head. “The small, tight world of the gentry,” he said. He turned back to Hackett. “Big fleas have little fleas, eh, Inspector? And so ad infinitum.”
Phoebe felt her forehead go red. Jimmy had a nasty side to him that he really should not let be seen. “That’s not a very nice image,” she said sharply, “me as a flea, hopping on people’s backs.”
Jimmy only grinned at her, the sharp tip of his dark red tongue appearing briefly and then quickly withdrawing. Phoebe thought of a lizard on a rock.
“As a matter of fact,” Hackett said blandly, as if he had registered nothing of this sharp exchange, “Miss Griffin was at a party with the Delahaye lads the night their father’s partner died.”
Jimmy looked at her with a speculative light. Yes, she thought, Jimmy really could be ugly when he was after a story. She realized she was blushing again, not because of Jimmy’s nastiness this time, but at the mention of the Delahayes. She felt a twinge of annoyance. What was the matter with her? “It was at Andy Breen’s place,” she said to Jimmy. “I’m surprised you weren’t there.”
“Down the country,” Jimmy said offhandedly. “Following a lead.”
Phoebe smiled to herself. Jimmy had seen too many movies with hard-bitten newsmen in them-he even had a trace of a Hollywood accent sometimes. She pictured him in a trench coat and a fedora with a PRESS sign stuck in the band. The image amused her, and she felt the blood subsiding from her face.
Inspector Hackett was watching her, amused in turn by her amusement. “And was it a good party?” he asked.
Phoebe looked at him. The more innocent the detective’s questions sounded, the more pointed they seemed to be. She shrugged. “Not particularly. But then, I don’t much like parties.”
“Is that so?” the Inspector said. Suddenly he stood up, and fished in his trouser pocket and brought out a florin and put it on the table. “I’ll say good day to you,” he said. “Miss Griffin. Mr. Minor.” And carrying his hat, he turned and sauntered away.
Jimmy sat back on his chair and watched him go. “He’s a cute hoor, that one,” he said, almost admiringly.
Sunlight through the stained-glass window above them gave the big room a churchly aspect, and the people at the tables roundabout might have been a congregation. Smoke as of incense drifted on the heavy air. Jimmy drank off the dregs of his coffee and then he too stood up. “Go for a stroll?” he said.
Phoebe smiled up at him thinly. “Haven’t you things to do?” she asked sweetly. “Leads to follow, that kind of thing?”
Jimmy’s pale brow turned paler; other people flushed when they were angry, but Jimmy turned chalk white. He was a tiny person, almost a miniature, with dainty little hands and feet, and he was easily offended.
Phoebe rose briskly and took his arm. “Yes,” she said, “come on, let’s go for a stroll.” From her purse she took a shilling and added it to Hackett’s florin. That’s threepence for a tip, she thought, and for some reason wanted to laugh.
They went up to Stephen’s Green and walked in the cool inky shadows under the trees. They could hear the voices of children at play out on the grass. Somewhere above them an airplane was circling, making an insect drone.
It was almost time for Phoebe to be back at work. She looked up into the sea-green light under the dense canopy of leaves. At moments such as this, rare and precious, the possibility of happiness came to her with all the breathtaking force of something suddenly remembered from the past. Would she always be ahead of her own life, looking backwards?
“What are they like,” Jimmy said, “the Delahayes?”
“Why do you ask?”
He had paused to light yet another cigarette. For a moment he had the look of a greedy baby, leaning over the match with the cigarette clamped in his pouted lips like a soother. He never seemed to have a girlfriend. She wondered, not for the first time, if he might be-that way inclined. It would explain the bitter brittleness of his manner, behind which she could always sense a tentativeness, a yearning, almost. She felt a sudden rush of compassion for him, this fearsome, discontent, babyish little man. She linked her arm in his.
“There’s a story in this business,” he said, staring hard ahead, “if only I could tease it out.” He glanced at her. “What does your father think?”
“You mean, does he think there’s a story in it for you?”
Jimmy frowned at the tip of his cigarette. “You know, Pheebs,” he said, “humor really isn’t your strong suit.”
“Well,” Phoebe said cheerfully, “at least I try, not like some I could name.”
They went on, Jimmy scowling and Phoebe smiling at her shoes. Were there any men, anywhere, she wondered, who were really grown up?
“You know Jack Clancy was murdered,” Jimmy said. It seemed not quite a question.
A black-stockinged nanny went past, wheeling a black pram with enormous wheels and high, humped springs.
“Do I?” Did she? It shocked her a little to realize that she did not care about Jack Clancy and how he had
