Holy Orders A Quirke Novel (8 page)

Harry shrugged. “I don’t think we can call her a mystery woman.”

“Sure you can! Or make the boss a mystery man. ‘
RIDDLE OF COUPLE ON RIVERBANK
.’ It’s perfect.”

“The thing is—”

Sumner made a sudden lunge forward, planting his big hands on the desk in front of Harry and looming at him menacingly. Harry could smell the lingering mundungus stink of his breath.

“Harry, look,” Sumner said. “Do this—do it for me, if you like. Find the girl, talk to her, talk to her boss—”

“He won’t—”

“He will. You’ll make him talk. I bet he has a wife, and if he has I bet she didn’t know about little Miss Secretary being out with him for a midnight stroll and stumbling on a body and the cops coming and taking down her particulars—yes? All anybody needs is a little persuasion, Harry. Lean a little on the two of them and they’ll sing like songbirds.” He smiled, those white teeth genially agleam. “You’ll see—you’ll see I’m right.” He straightened, and turned and went to the door, then paused again. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, glancing up at a corner of the ceiling, “I’m really getting to like this business. I should have gone into newspapers years ago.”

He nodded then, and went out, whistling. Harry sat for a long time gazing stonily at the door.
“Noospapers,”
he said, with deep disgust, spitting out the word.

7

McGonagle’s had a new barman, a cocky young fellow with a quiff. His name was Frankie—“like Frankie Sinatra,” as he was fond of telling anyone who would listen. He was all energy, diving and dashing about behind the bar like an acrobat, tossing tumblers from hand to hand and operating the beer pulls with a fancy flick of the wrist. He had a smart mouth, and made wisecracks, addressing the older customers facetiously as Your Honor, or Squire, or Captain, depending on what he thought they looked like. More than one of the regulars had complained about him to Paschal, the manager, but Paschal had told them to have a heart, that Frankie was only a young fellow and would soon settle down. Quirke, however, was inclined not to have a heart in the matter of Frankie, for he did not like the look of him at all, and not just the look of him, either. Quirke scowled when he came near. He found particularly irritating the way the young man had of throwing up his chin and yanking his fake bow tie to the end of its elastic and letting it snap back with a sharp smack. No, as far as Quirke was concerned, Frankie was exactly what McGonagle’s did not need.

Quirke had been in an irritable mood even before he arrived at the pub, having been caught in yet another shower of rain on his way up Grafton Street, and the sight of Frankie’s cheeky grin set his teeth on a sharper edge. He ordered a glass of whiskey, and when Frankie asked if he wanted ice in it—ice, in a Jameson!—he gave back such a look that Frankie quailed, and only said right-oh, and skidded off to fetch the order.

This evening Quirke had even more things than the rain and Frankie to annoy him. For a start, Isabel Galloway was coming back—in fact, she was back already, her tour having ended the previous night. She had telephoned from the railway station in Mullingar to say her train would be in by six, but that she was tired, having been up till dawn at the last-night party—“To tell you the truth, darling, I think I’m still a bit squiffy”—and would go to bed for a few hours, and see him later. He was surprised at how his heart sank when he heard her voice and realized her return was imminent. Isabel, he reminded himself again, was a splendid woman in many ways, yet he could not deny that he had found the weeks of her absence restful and undemanding. This made him feel guilty, of course, and now he felt guiltier still as he settled down to savor his last few hours of what he could not but think of as freedom.

He spotted Hackett as soon as the detective came in the door. He had his hat on, and the shoulders of his gabardine raincoat were splashed with rain.

“That’s a soft evening,” Hackett said, settling himself on the stool next to Quirke’s. He had struggled out of his raincoat and now he folded it on his knees and set his hat on the bar beside his elbow.

“What will you have?” Quirke asked.

“A small port.”

Quirke stared. “A what?”

“A small port,” Hackett said again, unruffled. “If it’s all right with you.”

“Sure. Certainly.” There was a pause. “Since when did you become a port drinker?”

“I take a glass sometimes. It’s very calming. You should try it.”

Quirke lifted a finger to Frankie. “A glass of port for my friend here.” He shook his head, watching as the young man took down the dusty bottle of Graham’s from a high shelf. “I suppose next it’ll be Wincarnis tonic wine.”

“You may mock,” Hackett said complacently. “It doesn’t trouble me.” He glanced at Quirke’s tie of blue and white stripes. “You’re not wearing it today, I see.”

“Wearing what?”

“The dickey bow.”

Frankie set the glass of ruby syrup in front of Hackett. “There you are, Captain,” he said. “One port.” He lifted a hand towards his throat but caught Quirke’s look and left his own bow tie unplucked.

Hackett sipped his port. “It seems it’s getting very popular, these days,” he said, nodding towards Frankie’s departing back, “the dickey bow.”

Quirke scowled but said nothing. He glanced towards the phone booth at the end of the bar. Should he call Isabel? She would probably be awake by now.

“See the
Clarion
this morning?” Hackett asked.

“No. Why?”

From the pocket of his raincoat Hackett pulled out a wadded-up and slightly damp copy of the paper and unfolded it on the bar. Across the top of page 1 the headline read,
GIRL SOUGHT IN MINOR CASE.
There was a photo of Jimmy Minor. The story had no byline. “Christ almighty,” Quirke said.

Hackett nodded. “Some splash.”

“That’ll be Carlton Sumner,” Quirke said. “He thinks he’s William Randolph Hearst. Who is the girl supposed to be?”

“The one that found the young fellow’s body. She was courting along the canal bank with her fancy man. He happens also to be her boss.”

“Then what does it mean, ‘girl sought’?”

“It means nothing,” Hackett said dismissively. “The fellow, Wilson, the girl’s boss, asked to be kept out of it for”—he sucked his teeth—“domestic reasons. He has a wife.” He shifted his backside on the stool. “She’s going to be finding out more than she wants to know, if the
Clarion
has its way.”

“And will it? Have its way?”

The detective lifted his shoulders to the level of his earlobes and let them drop again. “The
Clarion
won’t have far to seek for ‘the girl,’” he said drily. “Or for Mr. Wilson, either.” He drank his port, pouting his froggy lips and licking them after he had swallowed. “I went around to his place,” he said. “Jimmy Minor, where he lives. Lived.”

“Oh, yes? And?”

“Nothing much. I sent Jenkins and a couple of lads up there this morning, to see what they could turn up. I’m awaiting their report. I haven’t a high expectation of results.” He drank again from his glass. Between the rows of bottles behind the bar they could see their fragmented reflections in the speckled mirror; the mirror had an advertisement for Gold Flake emblazoned in gilt on its upper half, a tarnished sunburst. Frankie was energetically polishing a glass with a dirty tea towel and whistling faintly through his teeth.

“He was a gardener,” Hackett said.

Quirke frowned. “A gardener? Who?”

“Jimmy Minor. Out the back of the house in Rathmines where his flat is he had a bit of a garden going, a plot, like. Spuds, beans, carrots too, I think. They were just starting to come up.”

Quirke wanted another whiskey and was trying to catch the eye of Paschal the manager, but Frankie spotted his empty glass and put away the rag and came down behind the bar, cracking his knuckles and grinning. “Same again, Captain?”

Quirke nodded sourly.

“Did he own the place?” he asked Hackett.

“No. The landlord let him at it. Nice little plot, well tended. Good soil there, plenty of leaf mold laid down over the years. He’d have had a tidy crop. The potatoes, I’d say, would do particularly well.”

They fell silent, the two of them. Frankie brought Quirke’s drink, but sensing some darkening of their mood he set it down without flourishes and said nothing, only took the ten-shilling note Quirke proffered and turned to the till.

Quirke cleared his throat. “So otherwise you found nothing,” he said.

Hackett did not answer, but reached inside his jacket and brought out from the breast pocket a creamy-white envelope and placed it on the bar. It had Jimmy Minor’s name and address typed on it, and in the top left-hand corner, in dark blue lettering, was stamped the legend:

Fathers of the Holy Trinity

Trinity Manor

Rathfarnham

County Dublin

“It was with his stuff,” Hackett said.

Quirke picked up the envelope, opened it, and took out the letter, feeling as he did so a sort of click in the region of his breastbone. Was it the look of the paper, the smell of it that had set something going in him? Then he remembered: he had been given a letter like this to carry with him when he was being sent to Carricklea; strange, how clearly he remembered it, after all these years.
We are directed to entrust this boy into your care …
He blinked the thought away. The letter, this letter now in his hands, was typed, in very black ink, on a single sheet of embossed paper—the fathers, it was clear, did not stint themselves in the matter of stationery. The Rathfarnham address was stamped here, too, and underneath it the letter began.

Dear Mr. Minor,

We are in receipt of your letter addressed to Father Michael Honan, to which I have been directed to reply by Monsignor Farrelly, our Father Superior.

You do not make it clear in what connection you wish to interview Father Honan, but in any case it is not possible for you to do so. Father Honan is extremely busy at present, as he is about to embark for the mission fields in Africa, and is therefore unable to comply with your request.

If you require information about the work of the Trinitarian Fathers, here or abroad, please address your questions directly to Msgr. Farrelly, or to me.

Yours in the Grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ,

Daniel Dangerfield, FHT

Quirke read it over twice, then looked at Hackett. “‘Daniel Dangerfield,’” he said. “That’s a mouthful.” He put the paper down on the bar, where it slowly closed itself along its folds, like a fly-eating flower. “What’s it mean?”

“Don’t know,” Hackett said shortly.

“Then why…?”

“The name was familiar,” Hackett said. He took out a packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, offered one to Quirke, took one himself, and flipped up the lid of his Zippo lighter. He thumbed the blackened wheel to make a spark. “Honan,” he said, narrowing one eye against a cloud of cigarette smoke.

“Familiar in what way?”

“I couldn’t think, at first, only I knew I knew the name. Then I remembered.” He drank the last of the port, smacking his lips, and held the darkly smeared glass up to the light and peered through it. “There was a complaint made against him—this was a few years ago. Father of one of the young fellows at Windsor College—it’s run by the Holy Trinity order—came in with some story about his son being mistreated by this same Father Honan—or I presume it’s the same.”

“Mistreated?” Quirke said.

“Aye. It wasn’t clear what was meant—the boy, it seems, wouldn’t go into details about it, even to his father. The Super at the time, Andrew O’Gorman—do you remember him? Not the most imaginative fellow, our Andy—he tried his best to get out of the father what the whole business was about, but it was all very vague.”

“And what happened?”

Hackett shrugged. “Nothing. There was nothing to go on. I think the Super sent someone out to talk to the lad, but he still wasn’t forthcoming, so the thing fizzled out.” He chuckled. “You can imagine how eager Andy would have been to start quizzing the reverend fathers—next thing there’d be a thunderbolt from the Archbishop’s Palace, asking”—here he put on a sepulchral voice—“
by what right did the Garda Síochána think it could bring unfounded accusations against a hard-working and well-respected priest of this parish
, blah blah blah and Yours in Christ Our Savior. So it was dropped.”

Quirke beckoned to Frankie again, pointing to Hackett’s empty glass, and the young man came with the bottle of Graham’s and poured another measure.

“What was your involvement?” Quirke asked of Hackett.

“Hmm?” Hackett was attending to his port.

“With this business about the priest—about the complaint.”

“I wasn’t involved,” the detective said, “not directly.”

“But what? You had a hunch?”

“No no. Not really. But I asked around a bit. You know.”

Quirke smiled thinly, nodding. “And what did you hear?”

The detective pressed the butt of his cigarette into an ashtray on the bar, grinding it in slow half circles, thoughtfully. An angry flare of smoke rose quickly and dispersed. “A busy fellow, the same Father Honan. Ran a boys’ club out of one of the tenements in Sean McDermott Street. Athletics, swimming, boxing, that sort of thing. Got local businesses to cough up, persuaded Guinness to sponsor equipment, jerseys, football boots, so on. Made him very popular with the locals.”

“No complaints like the other one?”

“No fear! The man was a saint, as far as Sean McDermott Street was concerned. Set up a temperance society too, bringing the men in and persuading them to take the pledge. There was a tontine society that he got going, to pay for the funerals of the poor. Oh, aye, Father Mick was the local hero. Did work for the tinkers, too, trying to get them to settle down and quit stravaiging the country. A busy man, as I say.”