Vengeance: A Novel (Quirke) by Benjamin Black Read Free Book Online Page A

acquaintances and was intimate with important people at the highest levels of society, a notion that Quirke had long ago given up trying to disabuse him of. “I suppose I might have met Delahaye,” he said.
    “Has—had—a young wife. Number two.”
    “What happened to number one?”
    “Died, four or five years ago. Two sons, twins, grown up now.”
    They had passed the bottom of Grafton Street, and Quirke ducked into Kapp & Peterson’s to buy a packet of Senior Service. When he came out Hackett was waiting for him. Quirke offered him a cigarette and they lit up and walked on. The streets were crowded, this sunny summer day. “Mona Delahaye,” Hackett said, squinting across at the blue clockface above the gates of Trinity College. “That’s the widow’s name.” He hummed distractedly.
    Quirke sighed, then laughed. “All right,” he said in a tone of weary resignation. “I’ll come with you.”
    The Inspector turned to him in feigned surprise. “Would you do that?” It was another convention between them that Quirke had a silken tongue and could talk with ease to the gentry, while Hackett would be looked down on, laughed at, and lied to. “It might be handy, all right. Northumberland Road, big red-brick pile.”
    Quirke sighed again. “What time?”
    “I said I’d be out there at five.”
    “And how do we account for my presence?”
    Hackett gave a snuffly laugh. “I’ll introduce you as Dr. Watson,” he said.
    “Very funny,” Quirke said, turning away. “I’ll see you at five.”
    *   *   *
     
    In the event, Quirke got there early. He had taken a taxi and was waiting on the pavement in the broad canopy of shade under a beech tree when Hackett arrived. Hackett had walked from his office in Pearse Street. He liked to walk, and nowadays, thanks to his seniority on the Force, he had the time and leisure to indulge in this simple pleasure as often as he cared to. He had come all the way up the canal along the towpath from Grand Canal Dock and turned left at Lower Mount Street onto Northumberland Road. This moneyed part of the city was spacious and handsome, but he was a countryman at heart and he missed the fields and the big skies of the Midlands of his childhood. He owned a bit of land in South Roscommon and intended to build a cottage on it to retire to. This plan he had kept to himself, so far; he would have to judge carefully when to put it to May, for May was fond of the city. All these renovations and improvements she had him making to the house were, he knew, aimed at tying the two of them inseparably to the place. He, though, would want to be rid of the city when the time came for him to retire; it had too many soiled associations for him. No, he would not spend his declining years in Dublin.
    Quirke was leaning against the railing, his incongruously dainty feet crossed at the ankles and his black hat tipped over his left eye. The Inspector often wondered about Quirke’s life, what he did in the evenings, what people he saw at the weekends. A strange and solitary man. There was that actress he used to go around with—what was her name? Galloway?—and then, of course, more recently, the Frenchwoman, who had run off to France and would not be coming back.
    “The widow,” Quirke said, “what did you say her name was?”
    “Mona. Mrs. Mona Delahaye.”
    “Mrs. Number Two.”
    The red-brick house was large and plain, with tall, blank windows. They walked together along the graveled garden path and up the stone steps to the front door. A black crêpe bow was attached to the knocker. The story was in the evening papers—“ DEATH OF PROMINENT BUSINESSMAN,” “MYSTERY DEATH OF DELAHAYE ”—and the Commissioner had been on the phone to Hackett already. Hackett had got the desk sergeant to say he was out and could not be contacted; he did not feel like talking to Commissioner Brannigan, and anyway he had nothing to tell him.
    He pressed the bell.
    The maid was a raw-faced girl with