Quirke had been in an irritable mood even before he arrived at the pub, having been caught in yet another shower of rain on his way up Grafton Street, and the sight of Frankie’s cheeky grin set his teeth on a sharper edge. He ordered a glass of whiskey, and when Frankie asked if he wanted ice in it — ice, in a Jameson! — he gave back such a look that Frankie quailed, and only said right-oh, and skidded off to fetch the order.
This evening Quirke had even more things than the rain and Frankie to annoy him. For a start, Isabel Galloway was coming back — in fact, she was back already, her tour having ended the previous night. She had telephoned from the railway station in Mullingar to say her train would be in by six, but that she was tired, having been up till dawn at the last-night party—“To tell you the truth, darling, I think I’m still a bit squiffy”—and would go to bed for a few hours, and see him later. He was surprised at how his heart sank when he heard her voice and realized her return was imminent. Isabel, he reminded himself again, was a splendid woman in many ways, yet he could not deny that he had found the weeks of her absence restful and undemanding. This made him feel guilty, of course, and now he felt guiltier still as he settled down to savor his last few hours of what he could not but think of as freedom.
He spotted Hackett as soon as the detective came in the door. He had his hat on, and the shoulders of his gabardine raincoat were splashed with rain.
“That’s a soft evening,” Hackett said, settling himself on the stool next to Quirke’s. He had struggled out of his raincoat and now he folded it on his knees and set his hat on the bar beside his elbow.
“What will you have?” Quirke asked.
“A small port.”
Quirke stared. “A what?”
“A small port,” Hackett said again, unruffled. “If it’s all right with you.”
“Sure. Certainly.” There was a pause. “Since when did you become a port drinker?”
“I take a glass sometimes. It’s very calming. You should try it.”
Quirke lifted a finger to Frankie. “A glass of port for my friend here.” He shook his head, watching as the young man took down the dusty bottle of Graham’s from a high shelf. “I suppose next it’ll be Wincarnis tonic wine.”
“You may mock,” Hackett said complacently. “It doesn’t trouble me.” He glanced at Quirke’s tie of blue and white stripes. “You’re not wearing it today, I see.”
“Wearing what?”
“The dickey bow.”
Frankie set the glass of ruby syrup in front of Hackett. “There you are, Captain,” he said. “One port.” He lifted a hand towards his throat but caught Quirke’s look and left his own bow tie unplucked.
Hackett sipped his port. “It seems it’s getting very popular, these days,” he said, nodding towards Frankie’s departing back, “the dickey bow.”
Quirke scowled but said nothing. He glanced towards the phone booth at the end of the bar. Should he call Isabel? She would probably be awake by now.
“See the Clarion this morning?” Hackett asked.
“No. Why?”
From the pocket of his raincoat Hackett pulled out a wadded-up and slightly damp copy of the paper and unfolded it on the bar. Across the top of page 1 the headline read, GIRL SOUGHT IN MINOR CASE. There was a photo of Jimmy Minor. The story had no byline. “Christ almighty,” Quirke said.
Hackett nodded. “Some splash.”
“That’ll be Carlton Sumner,” Quirke said. “He thinks he’s William Randolph Hearst. Who is the girl supposed to be?”
“The one that found the young fellow’s body. She was courting along the canal bank with her fancy man. He happens also to be her boss.”
“Then what does it mean, ‘girl sought’?”
“It means nothing,” Hackett said dismissively. “The fellow, Wilson, the girl’s boss, asked to be kept out of it for”—he sucked his teeth—“domestic reasons. He has a wife.” He shifted his backside on the stool. “She’s going to be finding out more than she wants to know, if the Clarion has its way.”
“And will it? Have its way?”
The detective lifted his shoulders to the level of his earlobes and let them drop again. “The Clarion won’t have far to seek for ‘the girl,’” he said drily. “Or for Mr. Wilson, either.” He drank his port, pouting his froggy lips and licking them after he had swallowed. “I went around to his place,” he said. “Jimmy Minor, where he lives. Lived.”
“Oh, yes? And?”
“Nothing much. I sent Jenkins and a couple of lads up there this morning, to see what they could turn up. I’m awaiting their report. I haven’t a high expectation of results.” He drank again from his glass. Between the rows of bottles behind the bar they could see their fragmented reflections in the speckled mirror; the mirror had an advertisement for Gold Flake emblazoned in gilt on its upper half, a tarnished sunburst. Frankie was energetically polishing a glass with a dirty tea towel and whistling faintly through his teeth.
“He was a gardener,” Hackett said.
Quirke frowned. “A gardener? Who?”
“Jimmy Minor. Out the back of the house in Rathmines where his flat is he had a bit of a garden going, a plot, like. Spuds, beans, carrots too, I think. They were just starting to come up.”
Quirke wanted another whiskey and was trying to catch the eye of Paschal the manager, but Frankie spotted his empty glass and put away the rag and came down behind the bar, cracking his knuckles and grinning. “Same again, Captain?”
Quirke nodded sourly.
“Did he own the place?” he asked Hackett.
“No. The landlord let him at it. Nice little plot, well tended. Good soil there, plenty of leaf mold laid down over the years. He’d have had a tidy crop. The potatoes, I’d say, would do particularly well.”
They fell silent, the two of them. Frankie brought Quirke’s drink, but sensing some darkening of their mood he set it down without flourishes and said nothing, only took the ten-shilling note Quirke proffered and turned to the till.
Quirke cleared his throat. “So otherwise you found nothing,” he said.
Hackett did not answer, but reached inside his jacket and brought out from the breast pocket a creamy-white envelope and placed it on the bar. It had Jimmy Minor’s name and address typed on it, and in the top left-hand corner, in dark blue lettering, was stamped the legend:
Fathers of the Holy Trinity
Trinity Manor
Rathfarnham
County Dublin
“It was with his stuff,” Hackett said.
Quirke picked up the envelope, opened it, and took out the letter, feeling as he did so a sort of click in the region of his breastbone. Was it the look of the paper, the smell of it that had set something going in him? Then he remembered: he had been given a letter like this to carry with him when he was being sent to Carricklea; strange, how clearly he remembered it, after all these years. We are directed to entrust this boy into your care … He blinked the thought away. The letter, this letter now in his hands, was typed, in very black ink, on a single sheet of embossed paper — the fathers, it was clear, did not stint themselves in the matter of stationery. The Rathfarnham address was stamped here, too, and underneath it the letter began.
Dear Mr. Minor,
We are in receipt of your letter addressed to Father Michael Honan, to which I have been directed to reply by Monsignor Farrelly, our Father Superior.