"How did you know I knew?"
The detective grinned and bit at the inside of his jaw. "Ah, there's no catching you out, Mr. Quirke." He twirled his hat in his hand. "Billy Hunt mentioned him."
"Then I suppose he must have mentioned him to me, too."
Hackett nodded. "Right," he said. "Right. His wife knew him, it seems-Billy's wife. There's a coincidence, what? First she dies, and now this poor fellow is killed. And"-he wagged a finger to and fro, as if counting sides-"here's you, and me, and the grieving widower, and God knows who else, and all of us somehow connected. Isn't that strange?"
Quirke did not respond. Instead he asked again: "What happened?"
"Must have been someone he knew. No locks were forced, no windows broken, as far as I can see."
Something struck Quirke. "You haven't called in forensics?"
The inspector gave him a sly smile. "I thought I'd have a word with you first," he said, "seeing as you were the one who came to me about Deirdre Hunt, and now Deirdre Hunt's pal here is after being knocked into the next world."
"I don't know anything about this," Quirke said flatly. "I never saw this fellow before-what's his name again?"
"Kreutz. Hakeem Kreutz. It's written on the board out on the railings."
"Do you know anything about him?"
"Aye, I did a bit of investigating. He claimed to be Austrian, or that his father was Austrian, anyway, and that his mother was some class of an Indian princess. In fact, he was from Wolverhampton. Family kept a corner grocery shop."
"How did he come to be Kreutz?"
"It's just what he called himself. I suppose he liked the sound of it, 'Dr. Kreutz.' Real name Patel."
Quirke hunkered down beside the body and touched the cheek; it was cold and stiff. He got to his feet, brushing his hands together, and said:
"I don't see what the connection could be between this and Deirdre Hunt's suicide."
Hackett took it up sharply. "Her suicide?" He waited, but Quirke said nothing. "Are you sure, Mr. Quirke, there isn't something you're not telling me? You're a fierce secretive man, I know that of old."
Quirke would not look at him. "As I've already said, I don't know anything about this." He was studying a dried puddle of blood, gleaming darkly like Chinese lacquer against the red-painted floorboards. "If I did, I'd tell you."
There was a lengthy silence. Both men stood motionless, each turned somewhat away from the other.
"All right," the inspector, sighing, said at last, with the air of a chess player conceding a game, "I'll believe you."
LESLIE WHITE HAD THE JITTERS SO BADLY THAT EVEN A HEFTY TOOT OF Mrs. T.'s poppy juice, administered in the basement lavatory of the Shelbourne, had not steadied him. He nosed the little car in and out of the evening traffic, clutching the wheel and blinking rapidly and shaking his head as if trying to dislodge an obstruction from his ear. He had been driving round and round the Green for what seemed hours. He did not know what to do, and could not think straight. The dope had strung scarves of greenish gauze in front of his eyes, like a forest of hanging moss, behind which he could still see blood, and the copper bowl on the floor, and Kreutz dead. He desperately wanted to be inside, away from the streets and the cars and the hurrying crowds. Was the daylight as dim as it seemed? Was it later than he thought? He longed for nightfall and the concealing dark. It was not so much that he was afraid, but this inability to decide what to do next was awful. He veered into the path of a bus and it trumpeted at him like an elephant, so that he wrenched the wheel and almost ran into a big Humber Hawk that had been waddling along beside him. He knew he should stop and park the car, go into a pub, have a drink, try to calm down, try to think. And then, suddenly, he knew what he should do, where he should go. Of course! Why had he not thought of it before? He sped along to the corner of Grafton Street and turned with a squeal of tires and headed west.
PHOEBE HAD GOT INTO THE HABIT OF STOPPING IN THE FRONT DOORway and looking carefully in all directions before venturing into the street. The feeling of being watched, of someone spying on her and following her, was stronger than ever. She would have believed it was all in her imagination-an imagination, after all, that had been for so long a house of horrors-had it not been for the telephone calls. The phone would ring, at any hour of the day or night, but when she picked it up there would be nothing but a crackling silence on the line. She tried to catch the sound of breathing-she had heard of other women's experiences of heavy breathers-but in vain. Sometimes there was a muffled sensation, when she thought that he-and she was certain it was a he-must have his hand over the mouthpiece. Once, and only once, she had caught something, a very distant faint tiny clinking sound, as of the lid of a small metal box being opened and shut again. It was maddeningly familiar, that clink, but she could not identify it, try as she would. She had become used to these calls, and although she knew it was perverse of her, she sometimes welcomed them, despite herself. They were by now a constant in her life, fixed pinpricks in the bland fabric of her days. Sitting there on the bench seat at the wide-open window with the phone in her lap and the receiver pressed to her ear, she would forget to feel menaced, and would sink down almost languorously into this brief interval of restful, shared silence. She had given up shouting at whoever it was; she no longer even asked who was calling or demanded that he identify himself, as she used to do in the early days. She wondered what he thought, what he felt, this phantom, listening in his turn now to her silences. Perhaps that was all he too wanted, a moment of quiet, of emptiness, of respite from the ceaseless din inside his head. For she was sure he must be mad.
In the street this evening there was the old man walking his dog whom she had seen many times before-man and dog were remarkably alike, short and squat in identical gray coats-and a couple going along arm in arm in the direction of the Green, the girl smiling at the man, showing her upper teeth all the way to the gums. A boy bent low on a racing bike went past, his tires sizzling on the tarred roadway that was still soft from the day's heat. A bus stopped, but no one got off. She stepped out into the gloaming. A waft of fragrance came up from the flower beds in the park. Why did flowers put out so much scent at evening? she wondered. Was that the time when the insects came out? So many things she did not know, so many things.
She got on a bus at Cuffe Street, and just missed seeing the lowslung apple-green roadster cross the junction and speed on up in the direction from which she had just come.
2
FOR A LONG TIME MAGGIE THE MAID HAD BEEN HIDING THE FACT THAT she was going blind. She was convinced that Mr. Griffin would get rid of her if he knew-what good would a blind maid be to him? That was one reason why she pretended not to hear the doorbell, for she was afraid that if she opened the door she would not be able to make out who it was that was there, and if it was someone she was supposed to know by sight she would be shown up. So that evening she hid in the basement pantry and let Mr. Griffin answer the door himself, and did not come out until she had counted in his three guests. These were Mr. Quirke and Phoebe and that one from America, the old hake trying to be young, Rose whatever-she-was-called. It would be a dismal sort of occasion. Not like the parties there used to be when Missus was still here. Not that Missus was much of a live wire, but at least she got in decent food and drink and dressed herself up nicely when there were people coming.
She was looking forward to seeing Mr. Quirke. She was fond of him and always had been, even when he had taken drink. He was off the booze now, so he said. It was a pity, for when he was half cut he used to tease her and make her laugh. No laughing in this house, these days.