The Silver Swan (17 page)

 

At that Hunt lowered his head and put up a hand and in a curiously dainty, almost feminine gesture wrapped it around his eyes, and when he spoke his voice was a despairing, teary gurgle. "I don't know—how would I know?"

 

"Well," the inspector said, and his voice was suddenly sharp as a knife, "how would anyone else?"

 

Billy dropped his hand from his eyes. He had gone slack all over, as if a skeletal support inside him had collapsed. "Don't you think," he said, with angry imploring, "that's the question I've been asking myself every minute of every day since it happened? Who would know, if not me? But I don't." He stared with stricken eyes past the inspector's big head to the window and the sunlit rooftops beyond. Through the open window could be heard, faintly but distinctly, the sounds of heavy hooves and the metal grind of cart wheels; a Guinness dray, the inspector guessed, going along the quays. "I thought she was all right," Billy said, seeming weary now, suddenly. He was, the inspector thought, a mass of changes, abrupt shifts, switches of temper; how, he wondered, had his wife coped with him? "I thought she was happy, or content, anyway," Billy said. "We had our ups and downs, like everyone does. We had rows—she was a terrible fighter when she got going, like a wildcat. I'd say to her, I'd say, 'You can take the woman away from Lourdes Mansions, but you can't take Lourdes Mansions away from the woman.' That would really set her off." He smiled, remembering. "And then she'd end up crying, sobbing on my shoulder, shaking all over, saying how sorry she was and begging me to forgive her." He came back from the past and focused on Inspector Hackett's large flat face and his unfailingly amused and seemingly friendly mild brown eyes. "Maybe she wasn't happy. I don't know. Do people fight and scream like that and then sob their hearts out if they're happy?" He lunged forward suddenly and took a cigarette from the inspector's pack where it lay on the desk. He fumbled in his pocket for a lighter but the inspector had already struck a match, and held it out to him. Billy was a nervous smoker, pulling in quick mouthfuls of smoke with a hiss and breathing them out again at once as if in exasperation. "I don't know," he said, "I just don't know what to think, I swear to Christ I don't."

 

The inspector leaned back again and put his feet up on the desk and folded his hands on his paunch. "Tell me about her," he said.

 

"Tell you what?" Billy Hunt snapped petulantly. "Haven't I told you?"

 

The inspector seemed unperturbed. "But tell me what way her life was. I mean, what sort of friends had she?"

 

"Friends?" He almost laughed. "Deirdre didn't go in for friends."

 

"No? There must have been women of her own age, women she'd talk to, confide in. I haven't come across the woman yet who didn't need someone to tell her secrets to."

 

Although he had hardly started on it, Billy Hunt now screwed the cigarette savagely into the ashtray.

 

"Deirdre wasn't like that. She was a loner, like me. I suppose that's what we saw in each other."

 

"She seldom went out, you tell me. Neither of you did. Is that so?"

 

Billy Hunt gave a sardonic nod and turned aside as if he might be about to spit. "Oh, she went out, all right." He stopped, as if realizing he had already said too much.

 

The inspector, seeing the other's sudden caution, decided to wait. He said, "But she was a homebody, so you said."

 

"No, I didn't—that's what
you
said
I
was."

 

"Did I? Ah, I'm getting very forgetful. It must be old age creeping up." He inserted a little finger delicately into his right ear and waggled it up and down, then extracted it again and peered to see what had lodged under the nail. "So where would she go, when she went out?"

 

Billy would not meet his eye. "I don't know."

 

"Was this when you were away?"

 

"Was what when I was away?"

 

"That she went out."

 

"I don't know what she did when I was working, traveling." He winced, as if at a stab of pain. "And now I don't want to know."

 

"And who would she see, do you think, when she went out?"

 

"She wouldn't say."

 

"And did you not press her to say?"

 

"You didn't press Deirdre. She wasn't the kind of person that you press. All you'd get is a wall of silence, or be told what to do with yourself. She was her own woman."

 

"But you must have wondered—I mean, who she saw, when she did go out. I take it it was at night? That she went out?"

 

"Not always. Sometimes she'd disappear for whole afternoons. There was some doctor fellow she would go to see."

 

"Oh?"

 

"A foreigner. Indian, I think."

 

"An Indian doctor."

 

"And there was that other long streak of mischief, of course. Her 'partner.'" He spoke that last word with venom.

 

The inspector had begun to hum softly under his breath; it sounded as if a bee were trapped somewhere in the room, inside a cupboard or a drawer. "And who," he said, "was this partner?" Quirke had told him the name but he had forgotten, and anyway, he wanted to hear Billy say it.

 

"Fellow called White. Some kind of an Englishman. Used to have a hairdressing place until it went bust. It was him that got Deirdre going in the beauty parlor. He had the premises and helped her to get set up; then something happened there, too—the money ran out, I suppose."

 

"What sort of help did he give Deirdre?"

 

"What?"

 

"You said he helped her to get set up. Did he put up the funds?"

 

"I don't know. I'm not sure. He must have had money from somewhere, to get the thing going. Maybe his wife kicked in—she has a business of her own. But Deirdre wouldn't have needed much assistance. She had a good head on her shoulders, Deirdre did."

 

"Had she money too, like this fellow's wife?"

 

"Not what you'd call real money. But we were doing all right, between us." He ruminated, a muscle working in his jaw. "I thought I might have gone in with her on something, give up the traveling and start a business together, but then White came along. I suppose she was a bit taken with him, what with the fancy accent and all."

 

"Were you jealous?"

 

He considered. "I suppose so. But he was such a—such a drip, you know. I always thought he was a bit of a pansy. But you can never tell, with women."

 

"True enough."

 

Billy Hunt looked at the policeman sharply again, as if suspecting he was being mocked; the inspector gazed back at him with unwavering blandness.

 

"If I thought," Billy Hunt said, in a strangely dull, distant tone, "if I thought it was him that drove her to do what she did, I'd . . ." He let his voice drift off, his imagination failing him.

 

The inspector, his head cocked to one side—
to do what she did
—studied him thoughtfully. "Was she in love with him, maybe, would you say?"

 

Billy Hunt put that hand over his eyes again, more in exhaustion than distress, it seemed, and slowly shook his head from side to side. "I don't know that Deirdre loved anyone. It's a harsh thing to say, but I've thought about it a lot over the past couple of weeks and I think it's true. I don't hold it against her. It just wasn't in her nature. Or maybe it was, to start with, and got knocked out of her. If you knew her father you'd know what I mean."

 

"Aye," the inspector said. "Life is hard, and harder for some than others." Abruptly he rose and extended a hand. "I won't take any more of your time, I'm sure you've things to do. Good day to you, Mr. Hunt."

 

Billy Hunt, taken by surprise, rose slowly, and slowly took the offered hand and slowly shook it. He mumbled something and turned to the door. The inspector remained standing behind his desk, expressionless, but when Billy had the door open he said, "By the way, this doctor that Deirdre used to see—what's his name, do you know?"

 

"Kreutz," Billy said. He spelled it.

 

"Doesn't sound Indian to me."

 

Billy looked as if this had not occurred to him. But he answered nothing, only nodded once and went out, shutting the door softly
behind him. For a long moment the inspector stood motionless; then slowly he sat down. He took a pencil from a cracked mug on the desk and in the looping, rounded handwriting that had not changed since he was in fourth class he wrote out the name on the back of a manila envelope:
Kreutz
.

14

 

 

PHOEBE HAD NOT SEEN LESLIE WHITE AGAIN AFTER THAT AFTERNOON in her flat when they had gone to bed together; nor had she telephoned him. Yet the thought of him haunted her. She had only to close her eyes to see his long, pale body suspended above her in the velvet dimness of her mind. Half a dozen times at least she had picked up the telephone and begun to dial his number but had made herself put the receiver down again. Was she in love with him? The notion was preposterous—it almost made her laugh. She cursed herself for her foolishness, yet there he was, the memory of him, the image of him, trailing her everywhere like that other phantom watcher she was convinced was following her in the streets. This was the state of mind she was in—on edge, bewildered, caught up in a tangle of half memories and weird fancies—when she stopped that night on the pavement in the grayish dark of eleven o'clock and peered at the crumpled figure on the steps.

 

Her first thought was to turn and flee. Then she saw who it was. She hesitated. She was sure he was dead, lying there like that, like something broken.
Why did you come here?
she wanted to ask him. And what was she to do? The Garda station was not far: should she go there now, straightaway, summon help? The street was deserted.
For a moment she was back again in the car on the headland with the steel blade against the vein that was beating in her throat and that maddened creature gasping foul endearments in her ear. Her hands were shaking.
Why did you come to my door, why?
She held her breath and forced herself to take a step forward. She knew instinctively he would not want her to call the Guards. She reached out a hand and touched his shoulder. He flinched, then groaned. Not dead, then; she was conscious of a fleeting pang of regret. Her fright was abating. Perhaps he was only drunk.

 

"Leslie," she said softly—how strange it felt to say his name!—"Leslie, what is it, what happened to you?" With another, long-drawn groan he lifted his head and tried to focus on her, licking his swollen lips. She drew back with a gasp. "My God—have you been in an accident?"

 

His face was so badly battered she would hardly have recognized it. The narrow gleam of his eyes between the puffed-out lids seemed to her devilish, as if there were someone else crouched inside him, someone different, peering furiously out. "Get me inside," he muttered hoarsely.
"Get me inside."

 

It was a grim coincidence that in the film she had been to see, a violent tale about the French Resistance, there had been a scene in which a young woman, a member of the Maquis, had helped a wounded English soldier out of a burning building. Draping his arm over her shoulders, the dauntless girl, scornful of falling rafters and blazing floors, had walked the Tommy with unlikely ease and dispatch out into the night, where a band of her comrades was waiting to receive them both with cheers. Now Phoebe learned just how heavy a weight an injured man could be. By the time she got to the fourth floor, with him clinging to her and her arm supporting him about his waist, she had an agonizing ache across her back and her face was dripping sweat. In the flat she kicked the door shut behind them and they hobbled to the sofa and fell down on it together in a scramble, and his right knee bashed her left knee and they both cried out in pain simultaneously.

 

When she was able to stand upright at last she limped into the kitchen and found the gin bottle in the cupboard and poured a quarter of a tumblerful and brought it back to him. He took a greedy swig, wincing as the liquor hit his broken lips. She busied herself finding a cushion for his head and helping him to stretch his legs out on the sofa, not only in an effort to make him comfortable but also to avoid having to look directly at his bashed and bleeding face. When she bent over him she could feel the heat from his bruises. He finished the gin and let the glass fall to the carpet, where it rolled in a half circle, drunkenly. She felt that she was about to cry, but stopped herself. Leslie put his head back against the cushion and closed his eyes and lay there breathing with his mouth open. She hoped he would not go to sleep, for she did not want to be alone in the room with him, and for a moment she even considered slapping his face to keep him awake, but she could not bear the thought of even touching those terrible bruises. All sorts of things crowded together in her mind, a jumble of random thoughts, jagged and senseless. She must get control of herself, she must. She rose and went to her handbag for her cigarettes, lit two, and fitted one between Leslie's lips. He mumbled something from the side of his mouth, blowing a bubble of bloodied spittle, but did not open his eyes. She stood over him, smoking nervously, an elbow clutched in a palm.

 

After a while he began to speak, with his head thrown back against the cushion and his eyes still closed, and slurring his words. There had been a gang of them, he said, three at least. They had set on him in a laneway beside the College of Surgeons. They must have been following him since he left the Stag's Head, where he had been drinking with a pal. One of them had stuck a solid rubber ball into his mouth to gag him; then he had been hustled into a doorway down the lane and they had gone to work on him with fists and some kind of sticks, or bats. Not a word had been spoken. He did not know who they were, or why they were beating him. But they had known who he was.

 

They had known who he was. And at once she thought:
Quirke
.

 

She wanted to ask why he had come to her, and he read her mind and said hers was the nearest place he could think of, and anyway he had been on the way here when his attackers caught up with him. He closed his swollen eyelids. "Christ," he said, "I'm tired," and fell asleep at once.