Quirke moved his chair closer to hers. “Please go on,” he said.
“What?” She blinked.
“You were telling us about that night, in Dun Laoghaire, with the full moon.”
“Oh, yes. We caught up with him at the bandstand”-she turned to Rose-“you know the bandstand, on the front? He was hiding there, I think he must have sensed James was following him. He saw me, coming towards him-I wanted to be there, when it happened. Then I heard it, the blow. It was very loud. He didn’t make a sound, though, just fell straight down, like an animal under the poleax.”
There was a silence, in which they could hear Maggie breathing, taking rapid, shallow breaths, like a sleeping child. Her eyes shone, and a small, perfectly circular spot of pink had appeared on each cheekbone.
Quirke leaned closer to her. “And this was because of Mona, yes-Mona and him? That’s why you-that’s why James-hit him on the head?”
“That, yes. And the other business.”
“What other business, Maggie?”
She looked straight into his face, again with that softly pitying expression, as if he were an idiot child. “Jack Clancy had been getting ready to take over the firm and push Victor out. Didn’t you know? The boys couldn’t have that. They were very cross, when Mr. Maverley told them about it. We had a little conference, the three of us, Jonas, James, and I-well, Jonas and I, really. James doesn’t think the way Jonas does. He’s not clever, like Jonas.”
Quirke had taken his cigarette case from his pocket, but did not think his hands would be steady enough for him to light a cigarette. He was slightly dizzy, and had a strange sensation; it felt like euphoria. “And that was when you decided, you and Jonas, what to do about Jack Clancy-yes?”
“Yes,” Maggie said. “That’s when we decided Jack Clancy could not be allowed to go on living, not when Victor was dead.”
“So you and James followed him that night, and James hit him, and then you put him in the boat, and one of you sailed it out, and the other followed, in another boat.”
“Yes, yes,” Maggie said, almost panting now. “James took him in his own boat-Jack’s boat, I mean, the Rascal — and I came along with him in one of ours, the Maggie Dear. My father named it after me, you know. I was always so proud, sailing in it, with my name on the side. Maggie Dear.”
“Was he still alive then?” Quirke asked softly.
“What?”
“Was he alive, Jack Clancy, when you put him in the boat?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t-I didn’t look at him. James did all that. He was always very kind to me, James, very considerate. You leave it all to me, Auntie Maggie, he said. He sounded so cheerful, like he used to when he was a little boy.” She paused, remembering. “I was upset, of course. Jack Clancy was a dreadful man, and deserved all he got, and yet-”
She put a hand up to her forehead and, feeling the bandanna there, untied it at the back and took it off. “Oh!” she said, with a wide-eyed smile. “What a relief! I’d forgotten I had it on.”
“So James scuttled the boat, the Rascal, ” Quirke said, “and then the two of you returned in your boat, in the Maggie Dear.”
She nodded rapidly. “Yes, yes, we both came back together.” She looked at her hands on the table in front of her. “I can still see that moon, shining on the water, a long gold path leading out to the horizon.”
Rose Griffin had lowered her head, and sat motionless, her shoulders hunched. “Oh, Maggie,” she murmured.
Maggie turned to her. “Do you think we were very bad, to do what we did?” she asked. She looked to Quirke again. “Do you?”
“You killed a man,” he said. “You committed a murder.”
She nodded slowly, considering this. “Yes, we killed him,” she said. “But I don’t think it was murder, not really. It was more like something in the Bible, you know-my father was fond of quoting the Bible to us when we were little.” She lifted a finger, pointing upwards. “It was an act of justice.”
“No, Miss Delahaye,” Quirke said. “It was an act of vengeance.”
“Well,” she retorted quickly, in a petulant tone, “you can think that, if you like. Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord — yet they say, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.”
“They don’t,” Quirke said, shaking his head. “They say, Love thy neighbor as thyself. They say, Turn the other cheek.”
Suddenly the woman’s eyes narrowed and she drew her lips together into a wrinkled bud. “You’re a fool,” she whispered. “Jack Clancy tried to take everything my brother had, his business, his wife-”
“No,” Quirke said, “not his wife.”
She drew her head back and stared at him, her pinched nostrils flaring. “He was sleeping with that woman, I know he was.”
“No,” Quirke said again. “Not the father.”
“Not the father? What do you mean?”
“Not the father. The son.”
“What?” She lifted her hands and slapped them down hard on the table once more. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that Jack Clancy wasn’t sleeping with Mona Delahaye. His son was.”
“Oh, Lord,” Rose Griffin said, a sort of moan, and stood up with her cup and rinsed it at the sink and filled it with water and drank deep, then stood there with her back turned, staring out the window into the garden.
Maggie was struggling to take it in. “Davy?” she said, in a tone of disbelief. “Davy, and Mona? But Jonas said Mona had told him-”
“Whatever she told him was a lie.”
Maggie was staring at him. “The boy,” she said softly, “not the father-the boy…”
“Yes. Your brother had found out about him and Mona at the same time he found out that Jack Clancy was scheming to take over the business. That’s why he took Davy out in the boat and left him stranded. That was your brother’s attempt at vengeance. He meant to kill Davy, I think, but I suppose couldn’t bring himself to do it. Perhaps he thought Davy would die anyway, of exposure, or that he would drown.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not lying, Miss Delahaye.”
“How do you know-how do you know it wasn’t Jack?”
“She told me.”
“Mona?”
“Yes. Mona.”
She looked away. “That filthy little-! The two of them, filthy animals.”
Abruptly, and as if she did not realize it, she began to cry, big shining tears rolling down beside her nose and dripping from either side of her chin onto the table. She stood up, pressing her fingertips to the worn wood to balance herself. “I must-” she said. “I feel-” She shook her head, crossly, it seemed, and turned away, and walked out of the room, stiffly, head erect, her arms rigid at her sides. Quirke looked at the blood-red bandanna on the table. Rose turned from the sink. “You should have told me,” she said.
He nodded. “Yes, I should have. I’m sorry.”
“Sometimes, Quirke,” she said, walking slowly towards the table, “sometimes I don’t understand you at all. I don’t understand what goes on in your head.”
He lifted his eyes to hers. “Nor do I,” he said.
From somewhere off at the side of the house came the sound of a car engine starting up. Quirke rose and went to the window, in time to see a station wagon slewing across the gravel and heading off along the drive, towards the front gate. Rose came and stood at his shoulder. “It’s Maggie,” she said. “Look, she’s gone.”
“Yes.”
“Shouldn’t we follow?”
Quirke shrugged. “No, I don’t think so.”
The last of daylight was a dense pink-gold sheen on the seemingly unmoving waters of the bay. A lobster boat was coming in past the harbor mouth, and on the quayside two fishermen were gathering up nets that had been drying there all day long. A man was throwing a ball into the water for his dog. The dog would scamper down the stone steps of the jetty and dive in and paddle frantically out and snatch the ball in its jaws and then paddle back again, snorting.