She led him to the drawing room. Phoebe was lying full-length on the white sofa, her head propped on a cushion, and with another cushion under her feet. Her hands were crossed on her breast. In her black dress and white blouse with the white lace collar she looked alarmingly like the corpse of a maiden saint laid out on a bier. He went and lifted her wrist and took her pulse. It was slow. He smelled her breath.
As he leaned over her she suddenly opened wide her eyes and stared at him in a sort of happy disbelief. “Daddy,” she said softly, and her eyelids fluttered shut again. She had never called him Daddy before. She must think he was someone else.
He turned to Mona, who was standing in the doorway with her shoulder against the doorjamb and her ankles crossed, smoking a cigarette and watching him with a sardonic smile. “What happened?” he asked again.
“I told you-she drank too much and passed out.”
“What was she drinking?”
“Gin. I already said. Don’t you listen?”
He glanced about the room, saw the empty glasses, the open lid of the radiogram. “Who was here?”
“I was.”
“Who else?”
“The twins. Honestly, Quirke, you look terribly fierce-you’ll have me frightened of you in a minute.”
Quirke made a dismissive gesture, chopping at the air with the side of his hand. “Why was she here?” he asked. “What was she doing?”
Mona gave an exasperated sigh, expelling hasty cigarette smoke. “ I don’t know. I arrived and here she was, knocking back gin by the bucketful and dancing. It was quite a party.”
“A party? Were there others?”
“What others?”
“ Any others.”
“The twins-I told you!”
“And that’s all? You and those two and Phoebe? What was going on?”
“Will you stop asking that? You sound like a broken record.”
“My daughter was in your house, comatose, and I was called to come and collect her. You made the call. I think you owe me an explanation.”
She sighed again and was silent for a moment, giving him a level look and shaking her head slightly from side to side. “I know what it is about you,” she said. “You think you’re living in the movies.” She put on a heavy voice, mimicking him. “ My daughter, in your house, what’s going on? Can’t young people have a little party now and then?”
“If they harmed her in any way…”
He did not go on, and Mona laughed. “You mean,” she said, “if they ‘dishonored her’? If they ‘ruined’ her? Now you’re playing the Victorian father-you should have mustaches to twirl.”
He shook his head, as if he were being bothered by some flying thing. “Will you call a taxi for me, please?”
“I could drive you somewhere-anywhere, in fact.”
“A taxi would be best. If you show me the phone I’ll call one myself.”
She was smiling at him with a wry expression. “You’re really being a bore,” she said. “Nothing happened. There were some drinks, we danced, she got dizzy.”
“A taxi,” he said.
She looked to heaven and turned and sauntered out, and a moment later he heard her in the hall, dialing. Then she came back, and stood where she had stood before, with her cigarette.
“Like a drink?” she asked.
On the sofa, Phoebe moaned faintly.
He took her to his flat in Mount Street. It required some effort to get her up the stairs: her legs were not working very well, and kept crossing and threatening to buckle. Once they were in the flat he walked her to the bedroom and put her to lie on his bed and drew the curtains. She spoke some unintelligible words and gave a burbling little laugh and then lapsed back into unconsciousness.
He went out to the kitchen and poured himself a whiskey-he had a bottle hidden at the back of one of the cupboards-and took it into the living room and lit a cigarette and sat down on the window seat. Late sunlight was dividing the street into halves of light and shadow. Lines of cars were parked at the curbs along both pavements, ranked side by side in two neat shoals, their roofs gleaming like the backs of dolphins. He sat there for a long time, thinking, then went to the telephone and called Sinclair.
He had finished his drink and wanted another, but instead he filled the coffee percolator and put it on the gas and watched it as it came slowly to the boil. He wondered what it was that Phoebe had taken, apart from the gin. There had been no smell of a drug on her breath. Some barbiturate, he supposed-Luminal? They would have put it in her drink and she would not have noticed. That would be their idea of fun. A nerve began to jump at the corner of his right eye.
He was at the window in the living room again, drinking a second cup of coffee, when Sinclair arrived. Quirke told of how he had found Phoebe unconscious at the Delahayes’. He said the twins had been there, and then was sorry that he had. Of Mona Delahaye he made no mention.
“What was going on?” Sinclair said, frowning in bafflement.
“I don’t know,” Quirke answered.
“What was she doing there, at that house, drinking?”
For a moment Quirke was silent. He was angry with Sinclair, he was not sure why. “She needs looking after, you know,” he said.
Sinclair considered the toecaps of his shoes. “She’s not a child,” he said mildly.
“In some ways she is.”
“She wouldn’t thank you for saying it.”
“I don’t ask for thanks.”
There was another silence. Quirke fetched a silver cigarette box from the mantelpiece and they lit up and stood smoking, looking at anything save each other.
“I don’t know what I could have done,” Sinclair said. “The woman on the phone, Mrs. Delahaye, seemed to think the whole thing was funny. I didn’t realize.”
You could marry her, Quirke thought, surprising himself. Did he want to see Phoebe married? Did he not have doubts about Sinclair? To whose benefit would it be if his daughter were to marry-hers, or his own? Was it not just his own peace of mind he was thinking of? Was it simply that he wanted to be rid of his daughter, rid of the responsibility of being the one nearest to her?
He turned away. In his mind he saw again Mona Delahaye standing at the door of the drawing room in Northumberland Road, in her green blouse and her little girl’s puffed-out skirt. That recent afternoon, in her shadowed bedroom, he had held her in his arms and she had pressed her mouth against his shoulder to stifle her moans and he had thought himself in love. Now he cursed himself for a fool.
The bedroom door opened and Phoebe appeared, in her stockinged feet, blear-eyed, with a hand to her forehead. “I heard voices,” she said dazedly. She saw Sinclair and frowned. “David? Why are you here?”
“I rang him,” Quirke said.
She stood blinking. “I must have-I must have passed out. I feel really peculiar.”
“I’ll make some tea,” Quirke said. “Tea will be good for you.”
He went into the kitchen and boiled the kettle and set out cups and saucers on a tray. When he returned to the living room Sinclair and Phoebe were sitting close beside each other on the sofa, and Sinclair was holding her right hand in both of his.
Phoebe looked at Quirke as he poured out the tea for her. “They invited me for a drink,” she said. “Why did I go?” She looked about herself helplessly. “My head feels as if it’s stuffed with wet wool.”
“Do you remember taking anything?” Quirke asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Tablets, pills-anything like that?”
“No.” She frowned, trying to concentrate. She shook her head. “No, there wasn’t anything. We drank gin. I don’t know what I was thinking of.” She put her other hand on top of Sinclair’s hands. “I’m sorry,” she said, and suddenly it seemed she might cry. “I’m so sorry.”
Sinclair looked up at Quirke and said nothing.
“Drink your tea,” Quirke said.
She looked at the cup and saucer balanced on the arm of the sofa beside her. “He told me I was his alibi,” she said. Both men watched her, waiting. She shook her head again and gave an incredulous laugh. “He sang it,” she said.