IT WAS ANOTHER MISTY MORNING WHEN QUIRKE IN HIS BLACK COAT and carrying his hat stepped out of the front door of the house in Mount Street and encountered Detective Inspector Hackett, also hatted and in his policeman’s gabardine, loitering on the footpath, smoking a cigarette. At the sight of the policeman, with his big flat face and deceptively affable smile, Quirke’s heart gave a guilty joggle. Three young nuns on high black bicycles went past, three sets of shrouded legs churning demurely in unison. The wettish morning air reeked of smoke and the fumes of car exhaust. It was winter, Quirke gloomily reflected, and he was on his way to cut up corpses.
“Good morning Mr. Quirke,” the detective said heartily, dropping the last of his cigarette and squashing it under his boot. “I was just passing, and thought I might catch you.”
Quirke descended the steps with measured tread, putting on his hat. “It’s half past eight,” he said, “and you were just passing.”
Hackett’s smile broadened into a lazy grin. “Ah, sure, I’ve always been an early riser.”
They fell in step and turned in the direction of Merrion Square.
“I suppose,” Quirke said, “you used to be up at five to milk the cows when you were a boy.”
Hackett chuckled. “Now, how did you know that?”
Quirke, thinking to get away, was covertly scanning the street for a taxi. He had been in McGonagle’s the night before and did not trust himself or know what he might be led into saying, and Hackett was at his most insinuatingly friendly. But there were no taxis. At Fitzwilliam Street they found themselves among a crowd of mufflered office workers making their way towards the government buildings. Hackett was lighting another cigarette. He coughed, and Quirke closed his eyes briefly at the sound of the strings of mucus twanging in the fellow’s bronchioles.
“Have there been any developments in the Dolly Moran case?” Quirke asked.
For a moment Hackett was silent and then began to laugh wheezily, his shoulders shaking. The tall, high-windowed housefronts seemed to peer down upon him in surprise and cold disapproval. “Ah, God, Mr. Quirke,” he said with rich enjoyment, “you must go to the pictures an awful lot.” He lifted his hat and with the heel of the same hand wiped his brow and resettled the hat at a sharper angle. “Developments, now-let me see. We have a full set of fingerprints, of course, and a couple of locks of hair. Oh, and a cigarette butt-Balkan Sobranie, I recognized the ash straightaway-and a lucky monkey’s paw dropped by a person of Oriental origin, a lascar, most likely.” He grinned, showing the tip of his tongue between his teeth. “No, Mr. Quirke, there have been no developments. Unless, of course, you’d call it a development that I’ve been directed to drop the investigation.” Quirke stared at him and he tapped a finger to the side of his nose, still smiling. “Orders from on high,” he said softly.
Before them was the domed bulk of the parliament building; it had to Quirke’s eye suddenly a malignant aspect, squatting behind its gates, a huge stone pudding.
“What do you mean,” he said, and swallowed. “What do you mean, orders from on high?”
The detective only shrugged. “Just what I say.” He was looking at his boots. “You’re on your own, Mr. Quirke, in the matter of Dolly Moran, deceased. If there are to be developments in the case, as you call them, then somebody else will have to do the developing, I’m afraid.”
They came to the corner of Merrion Street. From across the road the policeman guarding the parliament gates was eyeing them with lax curiosity where they had halted in the midst of the morning crowd of functionaries and typists hurrying to their desks. He had probably recognized Hackett, Quirke thought, for Hackett was famous in the force.
“I wonder, Mr. Quirke, have you anything you might want to tell me?” the detective said, squinting off to the side. “For the fact is, you seem to me a man burdened with a secret.” He swiveled his eyes and fixed them on Quirke’s face. “Would I be right?”
“I’ve told you all I know,” Quirke said, sounding almost sulky, and looked away.
“Because here’s the thing,” Hackett went on. “Before I was called off the case-and maybe, for all I know, it was the reason I was called off it-I discovered that Dolly Moran used to work for the family of Chief Justice Griffin himself. It’s something you omitted to mention, when we had our little talk at the hospital that day, but I’m sure it just slipped your mind. Anyway, now here you are, that used to be married into that same family, asking after developments in the investigation of Dolly’s murder. Not at all elementary, I’d say, Dr. Quirke. Eh?” He smiled. “But I’ll let you get on to your work, now, for I’m sure you’re a busy man.” He made to move away, stopped, turned back. “By the bye,” he said in a conversational tone, “did Dolly Moran mention anything to you about the Mother of Mercy Laundry?” Quirke shook his head. “Place up in Inchicore. They take in girls that have got themselves in trouble and work them till they’ve-what’s the word?-expiated their sin. There was some talk of Dolly Moran being connected with the place. I had a word with the head nun up there, but she swore she’d never heard of anyone of that name. I’m ashamed to say I was almost inclined to disbelieve the holy woman.”
Quirke cleared his throat. “No,” he said, “Dolly didn’t say anything about a laundry. In fact, she said very little. I think she didn’t trust me.”
Hackett, his head on one side, was studying him with the careful but detached attention of a portrait painter measuring up his subject. “She was good at keeping secrets, all right, it seems,” he said, and sighed. “Ah, God rest her, poor old Dolly.”
He nodded once and turned and strolled away in the direction in which they had come. Quirke watched him go. Yes, poor old Dolly. A gust of wind caught the skirts of the detective’s overcoat and made them flap around him like furling sails, and for a moment it was as if the man inside the coat had vanished, vanished entirely.
“…I’M SORRY, MR. QUIRKE,” THE NUN SAID, “BUT I CAN’T HELP YOU.” Her look was distracted and flickering, and she kept passing an invisible set of Rosary beads agitatedly through her fingers, which were bony and tapered, like pale twigs. He had been startled to see, despite the wimple, that she was, or had once been, beautiful. She was tall and angular of frame, and the floor-length black habit that she wore, falling from her waist in fluted folds like a classical column, gave her an aspect of the statuesque. Her eyes were blue and so clear it seemed that if he peered deeply enough he would see all the way through into the narrow white chamber of her skull. She was called Sister Dominic; he wondered what her own, her given, name had been. “You tell me that she died,” she said, “this girl?”