Quirke produced his cigarette case and held it aloft inquiringly. “Do you mind?”
“Please, go ahead,” the priest said, his tone distracted. He seemed to be thinking hard.
Quirke lit his cigarette. Hackett noticed that the hand holding the lighter trembled slightly. As the smoke drifted across the desk, the priest’s nostrils quivered. From outside came the ratcheting chatter of a magpie, followed by a blackbird’s sentinel pipings.
“When,” Father Dangerfield asked, “did I write to him?”
“The letter was dated last week. The seventeenth.”
“Last week.” The priest looked down at the desktop with its inlay of green leather. Then he lifted his eyes again. “Have you got it, this letter?”
“We have,” Hackett said. He had set his hat on his knees.
“And may I see it?”
Hackett passed over this blandly. “You don’t remember writing it?” he asked.
“Yes yes,” the priest said, “of course, I remember now. I didn’t connect the name. You must understand, a great deal of correspondence crosses my desk. He asked if he could see Father Honan. If he could interview him, I believe.” He was watching Quirke take a second long drag at his cigarette.
“Did he say,” Hackett inquired, “what it was he wanted to interview Father Honan about?”
“What?” The priest dragged his eyes away from Quirke’s cigarette and gazed at Hackett with his big pale eyes, seeming at a loss.
Hackett smiled tolerantly. He brought out a packet of Player’s and offered it across the desk, with the top open. “Would you care for a smoke, Father?” he asked in a kindly tone.
Father Dangerfield shook his head. “No, thank you,” he said, with a tense, pained frown. “I’ve given them up.”
“Ah.” The detective began to take a cigarette for himself but thought better of it and closed the packet and put it away. He clasped his fingers together and twiddled his thumbs. “Did Jimmy Minor say,” he asked again, “what it was he wanted to talk to Father Honan about?”
“When he wrote to me, you mean? No, I don’t think so. I can check his letter, if you wish.” He looked down at the desk again, as if the letter might magically appear there.
“That would be helpful,” Hackett said.
Suddenly Quirke stirred and got to his feet, seemingly with a struggle, and stood swaying. The other two men stared at him. “Sorry,” he said, with a wild look. His face was gray and filmed with sweat. “Sorry, I—”
He hurried to the door, but had trouble opening it. Hackett and Father Dangerfield stood up together, as if to rush to his aid. They hovered irresolutely, looking at each other. At last, with a great wrench, Quirke got the door open and plunged through it and was gone.
“Good heavens,” the priest said, and looked at Hackett again. “Is he—?”
Slowly the heavy oak door, impelled by a draft, swung to and shut itself with a sharp click.
* * *
It took him a long time to find his way through the house. He stumbled along what he took to be the hallway down which the crippled old man had led him and Hackett after he had first let them in, but instead of arriving at the front door he found himself facing a floor-to-ceiling stained-glass window, or wall, rather. Behind it was a chapel, for he could dimly see through the lurid panes the pinprick ruby-red glow of what must have been the sanctuary lamp. He turned and blundered back the way he had come. The silent building seemed deserted — where could they be, the priests, the people who worked here, the officials, the secretaries, the cleaners, even? Yet how familiar it was, this poised stillness all about him, familiar from long ago, longer than he cared to remember. His heart was beating very fast; it felt as if it had come loose somehow and were joggling about inside his rib cage. It occurred to him that he might be having a heart attack, or suffering a stroke — that he might, in fact, be dying. Far from being frightening, the idea was almost funny, and despite his distressed state he gave a wheezy laugh, which made his pulse beat all the faster and started up a burning sensation in his chest. He put a hand to his face. His cheeks and forehead were chill and stickily moist. The word infarction came to him, but for the moment he could not think what it meant, which was absurd — was his memory going, too?
What seemed to be an electric bell was dinning somewhere nearby; he could not decide if it was in his head or if a telephone was ringing. Here, around a corner, was another hallway, or corridor, with heavy-framed paintings on the walls, large, muddy, and very bad portraits of venerable clerics interspersed with martyred saints writhing in picturesque agony. His heart, still hammering, now seemed to be swelling and rising slowly up through his chest, pressing from beneath against his esophagus, robbing him of breath. He stopped and stood still and shut his eyes, pressing the lids together tightly. He told himself he must stay calm. This would pass. It was a seizure of some kind, but he was sure now it would not kill him. In the darkness inside his head great whorls of multicolored light formed and burst, like fireworks going off in silent slow motion. He opened his eyes and stumbled on. Was there no one to help him? Then suddenly there was the front door, at last. Panting, he dragged it open and almost fell through it, onto the stone step outside, gulping mouthfuls of air.
The sky was overcast now, yet the light was as intense as a magnesium flare, and he had to shut his eyes again for a moment. He felt exhausted, as if he had all at once become very old and infirm, and he sat down on the step, slowly and carefully. The granite was comfortingly cool to the touch. Through slitted eyelids — the light was searing still — he peered this way and that about the grounds. The yellow-green grass now had an even more unnaturally acid cast, and the stark branches of the trees looked like so many arms flung upwards in surprise or horror or both. He put a hand to his heart; it was still struggling behind his ribs like a big heavy bird in a too-small cage. Yet he was aware of a calm descending on him, as if a veil of some transparent, gossamer stuff were being laid gently over him from head to foot. Was he dying, after all? Was this how it would be, not violence and terror but a calm, slow sinking into oblivion?
A blackbird alighted on the lawn just beyond the ring of gravel and began busily stabbing at the turf with its orange beak, its rounded gleaming blue-black head moving jerkily, like the head of a clockwork toy. He watched it at its delving. The bird seemed to mean something, to be something, something beyond itself. He had a sense of dawning wonderment, as if he had never really looked at the world before, had never before seen it in all its raw vividness.
The door opened and he heard a step behind him. It was the old man with the crooked back. “Ah, Lord, sir, what ails you at all?” he said.
The blackbird flew off, sounding a shrilly urgent, repeated note.
Quirke tried to scramble to his feet but his knees refused to work. They felt as if they were made not of bone but metal, as if they were two hinged metal boxes that the rivets had fallen out of, and he was afraid the loose flanges would tear the skin covering them and break through and bleed and begin to rust in the harsh April air. The old man was bent so far forward that although he was on his feet his face was at the same level as Quirke’s where he sat. The eyes were a whitish-blue color — cataracts, Quirke thought distractedly.
“Felt a bit queer,” Quirke said, his voice sounding unnaturally loud. “Just having a rest here for a minute.”
He tried again to get his legs to work, flexing the muscles gingerly, afraid that those hinges in his knees would come asunder if he put pressure on them. It was a novel sensation — comical, yes — sitting here in a heap on the stone step with the old man’s face in front of him on a horizontal and so close up to his own that he could see the gray stubble on the other’s ancient, wrinkled chin.