Elegy for April by Benjamin Black Page A

with another ugly laugh. “I don’t imagine you got much out of him.” He came back to the fireplace again and stood facing Quirke and the policeman. “Look,” he said, “you know what we’re dealing with here. We can’t control this young woman; we have no hold over her. She’s a stranger to us. God knows what she’s been getting up to in that flat— a black Mass or something, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
     
“So you don’t know,” Hackett said, “who she might have been friendly with?”
     
Latimer stared at him. “What do you mean, friendly?”
     
“Going with— you know.”
     
“A boyfriend?” His look darkened. “A lover? Listen, Inspector— what’s your name again? Hackett, sorry, yes. I don’t knowhow many other ways you want me to say this— April cut herself off from us. She blamed the family for everything, trying to run her life, keeping her from being free, being too respectable— the usual stuff, and all an excuse to get out from under any authority and live it up, doing what ever she liked—”
     
“I’m told she’s a good doctor,” Quirke said. “I asked about her at the hospital.” It was not true, but Latimer was not to know it.
     
Latimer did not like to be interrupted. “You did, did you?” he said. “So now you’re carrying out surveys, are you, issuing questionnaires? What are you— a pathologist, isn’t that right? I’ve heard of you. I thought you had retired, on health grounds.”
     
“I was in St. John of the Cross,” Quirke said.
     
“Nerves, was it?”
     
“Drink.”
     
Latimer nodded, smiling nastily. “Right. Drink. That’s what I heard.” He was silent for a moment, looking Quirke up and down with a contemptuously measuring eye. Then he turned to Hackett. “Inspector,” he said, “I think we’ll call it a day. I can’t help you about April; no one in this house can. Let me know what you find out about the bloodstain or what ever it was. I’m sure there’s some simple explanation.” Again he consulted his watch. “And now I’ll say good day to you.”
     
He stood before them, waiting, and they got to their feet slowly and turned towards the door. The foghorn once more sounded its blaring note. Outside on the road again Quirke would not speak and kicked the Alvis hard in one of its rear wheels, for which show of fury he got nothing save a bruised toe.
     
     
     
     
     
    8
     
THE SHAKESPEARE WAS ONE OF THE FEW PUBS WHERE TWO UNEScorted women could meet for a drink without being stared at or even asked to leave by the barman. “Well, it is the works canteen, you know,” Isabel Galloway would say. All the actors from the Gate Theatre round the corner drank there, and during intervals half the men in the audience would come hurrying down and throw themselves into the crush in order to get a real drink, instead of the sour wine and ersatz coffee on offer in the theater bar. The place was small and intimate and easygoing, and in certain lights, with enough people in, and enough drink taken, it could seem the height of sophistication, or at least as high as could be hoped for, in this city.
     
Phoebe and Isabel met by arrangement at seven o’clock. At that hour there were few customers, and they sat at a table in a corner by the window and were not disturbed. Phoebe had a glass of shandy; Isabel was drinking her usual gin and tonic. “I’m resting for the next fortnight,” she had said in her weariest drawl, “so this is going to have to be your treat, darling.” She was wearing a green feather boa and the little pillbox hat that Phoebe had got for her at a discount from the Maison des Chapeauxwhere she worked. Her unnervingly long nails were painted scarlet, and her lipstick was scarlet to match. Phoebe as always was captivated by her friend’s extraordinary complexion, its porcelain paleness and fragility set off by the merest touches of rouge placed high on her cheekbones, and those vivid lips, sharply curved and glistening, that looked as if a rare and exotic butterfly had settled on her mouth