Rose had introduced Quirke, and he had said he was a doctor, without specifying which kind. “Oh, yes,” Maggie said. “You were at my brother’s funeral, I saw you there.” As she moved about the kitchen she kept shooting quick, sidelong glances at him, in the way a dog would glance at a stranger it was suspicious of. Quirke wondered if she thought he had come to take her away somewhere, since he was a doctor. In fact, she had not asked them why they had come, unannounced, like this, and she behaved as if they were chance visitors whom she had little desire to see.
“Maggie, dear,” Rose said, “Dr. Quirke wants to talk to you about something.”
Maggie turned quickly to the stove, on which the kettle was coming to the boil. “Oh, yes?” she said. “My brother’s death, is it?” She looked over her shoulder at Rose. “Has he found out something?”
“It’s not about your brother’s death, Miss Delahaye,” Quirke said. “It’s about-it’s about Jack Clancy.”
She poured the boiling water into the coffeepot, moving her lips silently. “That’s what I was doing when you arrived,” she said, “I was clearing out the Clancys’ things, getting them ready for the removals men to collect. I rang up a firm in Cork and asked them to send down one of those big vans-what do you call them? — pantechnicons, is it? Odd word for something so ordinary. They were very nice on the phone. I spoke to a very polite girl who took all the details and said I was to let them know twenty-four hours before I want them to come. I didn’t realize there would be so much heavy work involved. I think I shall have to call them again and ask them to send down some men to help me. I don’t think I could get all those things down the stairs by myself, do you? There’s so much-you wouldn’t think three people would have needed so much furniture.” She brought the coffeepot to the table. “Do say if it’s too strong, won’t you, Dr. Quirke? Rose likes hers very strong, I know that.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?” Quirke said.
“No, no, of course not-please, go ahead. I don’t, myself, but Victor used to smoke Balkan Sobranie sometimes and I loved the smell.”
Quirke tasted the liquid in his cup and to his consternation discovered it was not coffee but some kind of beef broth or powdered gravy. He saw Rose tasting hers. She grimaced, and looked at him wide-eyed.
“Miss Delahaye,” he said, pushing his cup away from himself with a fingertip, “on the night Jack Clancy died, did you see your nephews-the twins, Jonas and James?”
She was standing beside the table, holding the coffeepot. She had fallen into a daze, and he was not sure the question had registered, and was about to ask it again when she stirred herself, and blinked. “Did I see them?” she asked. “How do you mean?”
“Were you with them-did you talk to them?”
She went to the cupboard and took down a cup and saucer for herself and filled it from the coffeepot and took a sip, and frowned. “Oh, dear,” she murmured, “this isn’t coffee at all.” She looked at Rose, at Quirke. “What did I do?” she asked, in helpless bafflement. “I must have put Bisto in the pot, instead of coffee.” She giggled, and bit her lip.
Rose went and took the cup and saucer from her and poured the contents into the sink, then held her by the arm. “Come, dear,” she said, “come and sit down with us. You shouldn’t be here on your own, you know. It’s not good for you.”
“Oh, but I love it here,” Maggie said. “This is my home now. I’m not going back to Dublin.” She let herself be led to the table. “How elegant you look, Rose. Blue always suited you.” She sat down on the chair that Quirke had placed for her opposite his own. “I was always happy here,” she said to him, as if explaining something to a child. “And now I’m going to settle down. I might work the land, you know. There are fifty acres, more. It’s good land, rich soil. I could keep cattle, sheep. And bees, I’d like to have bees. There were hives here once, down in the Long Meadow, I remember them. And I could grow crops.” She focused on Quirke. “Do you know anything about farming, Dr. Quirke?”
“No,” Quirke said. “I’m afraid I don’t.”
“It’s no matter. I can hire someone in. There are always farmers’ sons, wanting work.” She saw Quirke looking about for an ashtray. “Do use the saucer,” she said. “I’ll be washing up later. I always do the washing up last thing. It’s very soothing. I listen to the wireless while I’m doing it.” She pointed to the big wooden set on a shelf beside the fridge.
“Isn’t there a woman who comes?” Rose said. “A local woman, who does the housekeeping?”
“Mrs. Hartigan, yes. But I’ve let her go. I intend to keep house myself, from now on.”
“But-but you’ll need help. In the winter. There’ll be fuel to get in, and-” But here Rose’s imagination failed her; it was a very long time since she had tended personally to the everyday running of a house.
Quirke finished his cigarette and lit another. “Which one of the twins was with you that night?” he asked. “Because one of them was with you, isn’t that so?”
She was looking at him in that glazed way again, with her head lowered. He noticed that her mouth was slack at one side, as if she had suffered a slight stroke. The red rag tied around her forehead might be a bandage.
“I always favored James,” she said, smiling wistfully. “Jonas was everybody’s darling, being so intelligent and charming, but I took to James. I suppose it’s because he’s not like the others, and neither am I.” She leaned forward suddenly and set both her hands flat on the table before her and looked hard at Quirke. “Do you think there might be something wrong with my mind, Doctor? I think I haven’t been right since Victor died. The strangest things come into my head, all kinds of strange thoughts. Down here, I sometimes find it hard to know whether I’m awake and having fantasies or asleep and dreaming. Do you ever have that feeling?” She turned to Rose. “Do you?”
Rose put a hand over one of Maggie’s. “Yes, dear, of course,” she said. “We all feel like that at times. Life can be very puzzling.”
“Yes, yes,” Maggie said eagerly, gazing into Rose’s eyes. “That’s what I think too, that life is-is puzzling. That’s exactly the word. Puzzling, and so wasteful, don’t you feel? Think of Victor, dying. That was a waste.” She turned back to Quirke. “Wasn’t it? A waste?”
Rose was looking hard at Quirke now, sending him some signal. He supposed she wanted him not to ask any more questions, to leave this poor frantic creature in peace. But he could not do that.
“Tell us,” he said to Maggie, “tell us what happened, that night.”
She smiled that wistful smile and her eyes slipped out of focus again. “Dun Laoghaire,” she said. “James and I had driven out there, to find him, to find Jack Clancy. Such a lovely night. There was a moon, remember? Huge-bigger than I’ve ever seen the moon. You could have read a newspaper by it.”
She stopped, and took her hands from the table and put them in her lap and sat there smiling to herself.
“Go on,” Quirke said softly.
“What?” She looked at him and frowned, as if she had never seen him before in her life.
“Tell us what happened.”
“What happened,” she said. “Yes.” Her eyes went vague, and Quirke was about to prompt her again when she spoke. “Jonas had got it out of Mona, you see.”
“Got what out of her?” Quirke asked.
She gave him a pitying look. “Why, about being unfaithful. To Victor.”
“With whom?”
“She wouldn’t say, but we knew, of course.”
“You knew?”
“We guessed. It had to be him. You know what he was like, Clancy.” She gave her head a little shake in disgust. “Jack couldn’t keep his hands off any woman. And as for Mona-well.”
Rose was gazing at Maggie as if mesmerized.
“Go on,” Quirke said. “Go on about that night.”
Maggie sat forward, birdlike, eager now to continue with her story. “James knew where Jack Clancy was, he had been following him. Clancy had been with another one of his”-she made a sour face-“of his girlfriends, in Sandycove. James had a cricket bat-” She broke off and laughed briefly. “Trust James, always the sportsman.” She frowned suddenly, bethinking herself, and looked at them both apologetically. “But I promised you coffee! Oh, dear, I’m hopeless. What my mother would have said, I can’t think. Mother was a stickler where manners were concerned. She used to keep a ruler in her lap at mealtimes, one of those old-fashioned wooden tubes, and would crack us on the knuckles with it, Victor and I, if we used the wrong knife, or didn’t offer things around before helping ourselves. Oh, yes, a real stickler.”