The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black

I'm sure I should know," he said, laughing apologetically, "but you are . . . ?"
     
"Phoebe Griffin. I was a customer, in the shop."
     
"Ah." His look darkened. "You'll have known Laura, then."
     
"Yes. You gave me your card, once."
     
"Of course I did, I remember now." He was lying, of course. He took a sip of his gin. The evening sunlight in the doorway was a wedge of solid gold. "Did you know what happened to her—Laura, I mean?"
     
"Yes." She felt ridiculously giddy, as if she had already consumed half a dozen drinks.
     
"How did you hear?"
     
"Someone told me."
     
"Ah. I was afraid there might have been a story in the papers. I'm glad there wasn't. It would have been unbearable, seeing it in cold print." He looked at his shoes. "Christ. Poor Laura." He knocked back the last of his drink and caught the barman's eye and waggled his empty glass. He looked at hers and said, "You're not drinking."
     
"I don't, really."
     
He gazed at her for a moment in silence, smiling, then asked suddenly, "What age are you?"
     
"Twenty-five," she said, and was surprised at herself: why had she lied, adding two years to her age? "And you?"
     
"Oh, now," he said. "A girl doesn't ask a gentleman his age."
     
She smiled back at him, then looked into her glass.
     
The barman brought the second drink and Leslie turned the tumbler this way and that in his hand, making the ice cubes chuckle. For the first time since he had spoken to her he seemed momentarily at a loss. She asked: "Are you closing up?"
     
"Closing up . . . ?"
     
"The Silver Swan. I thought, when I saw you with the cardboard box . . ."
     
"No, I was just taking away some of—some of Laura's things." He paused, with an exaggeratedly mournful expression. "I don't know what I'll do with the place, really. It's complicated. There are a number of interests involved. And the finances are a little—well, tangled, shall we say."
     
Phoebe waited, then said, "Her husband, is he one of the 'interests'?"
     
For a second he was struck silent. "Do you know him, the husband?" he asked, a hint suspiciously.
     
"No. Someone I know knows him—used to know him."
     
He shook his head ruefully. "This city," he said. "It's a village, really."
     
"Yes. Everyone knows everyone else's business."
     
At that he gave her a sharp look from under his eyebrows. "It's true, I'm sure," he said, letting his voice trail off.
     
A couple came into the pub then and greeted him. The man was dressed in a remarkable ginger-colored suit made of a coarse, hairy material. The woman with him had dyed shiny black hair that was gathered in a topknot and tied tightly with a ribbon, which gave her a look of wide-eyed, fixed astonishment. Leslie White excused himself and sauntered over to them. She watched him as he talked to them in his languidly animated way. If Laura Swan had been more than his business partner, as Phoebe had suspected, it was clear that her death had not broken his heart. All at once she saw in her mind with unnerving clarity Laura Swan's—Deirdre Hunt's—broad face with its slightly flawed features, the saddle of faint freckles on the bridge of her nose, her purplish-blue eyes and the look in them, eager, anxious, excited, and she felt a stab of pity—was it?—so piercing that it made her catch her breath. She was surprised at herself, and even a little shocked. She had thought she had grown out of the way of such feelings.
     
Leslie White came back looking apologetic again and urged her to have another drink, but she said no. She stepped down from the stool. She was uncomfortable. It was so hot and airless in here and the stuff of her thin dress clung briefly to the backs of her thighs and she had to reach a hand down quickly and peel the material from her skin. Leslie—was she really thinking of him already by his first name?—laid two long, slender fingers on her wrist to detain her. She fancied she could feel the faint rustle of his blood beneath the pads of his fingertips. Life