Read Online Christine Falls: A Novele by Benjamin Black - Free Book Online Page B

with—”
    “I know what a pathologist is.” She bristled, but then that veil of amusement fell again over her look. “So, what’s your interest in Chrissie Falls?”
    He ran a finger around the rim of his glass. The coiled fox on the table regarded him beadily. He said:
    “She was staying with you, wasn’t she?”
    “Who told you that?”
    He shrugged. “Born round here, were you?” he said. “In this part of the city?”
    The stool held, but it was much too small for him: he was overflowing it all round; too big for this world, too big and heavy and awkward. For some reason he thought of Delia, Delia his dead wife.
    Dolly Moran was laughing at him now, silently. “You sure you’re not a detective?” she said. She finished her drink and held out her glass to him. “Get me another and then tell me why you want to know about Chrissie.”
    He turned her empty glass in his hand, studying the dim lights reflected in it from the fireplace. “I’m just curious,” he said, “that’s all.”
    “Pity you weren’t curious about her before.” Her voice had suddenly gone hard. “She might be alive yet.”
    “I told you,” he said mildly, still studying the gin glass, “I’m a pathologist.”
    “Yes,” she said. “Dead ones. No trouble there.” She crossed her legs impatiently. “Do I get a drink, or not?”
    When he came back from the bar she had taken another cigarette from the silver case he had left on the table and was lighting it with his lighter. She blew a stream of smoke toward the already kippered ceiling.
    “I know who you are,” she said. He paused in the act of sitting down and looked at her in surprise. Her eyes, and the fox’s, watched him unblinking, alert, and shining. His expression of blank incomprehension seemed to gratify her. “I used to work for the Griffins,” she said.
    “Judge Griffin?”
    “Him, too.”
    “When was this?”
    “Long time ago. First the Judge, then I was with Mr. Mal and his missus, for a while, when they came back from America. I looked after the child, while they were settling in.”
    “Phoebe?”
    How was it, he wondered, that he did not remember her? She must have disappeared down the neck of a whiskey bottle, like so much else from that time.
    Dolly Moran was smiling, recollecting the past. “How is she, these days?”
    “Phoebe?” he said again. “Grown up. She’ll be twenty, next year. Has a boyfriend.”
    She shook her head. “She was a terror, the same Miss Phoebe. But quite the lady. Oh, yes, quite the little lady.”
    Quirke felt like a big-game hunter, cautiously parting the long grass, hardly daring to breathe—but what was it, exactly, that he was stalking? “Is that how you knew Christine Falls?” he asked, keeping his tone vague and carefully casual. “Through the Griffins?”
    For a moment she did not respond, but remained lost in the past. When she roused herself it was with a flash of anger. “Her name was Chrissie,” she snapped. “Why do you keep calling her Christine? No one called her that. Chrissie. Chrissie was her name. And my name is Dolly.”
    She glared at him, but he persisted. He said: “Did Mr. Griffin—Dr. Griffin—Malachy—did he get you to look after her?”
    She shrugged, turning aside. Her anger had turned to surliness. “They paid for her keep,” she said.
    “So he stays in touch with you, does he, Dr. Griffin?”
    A dismissive grunt. “When I’m needed.”
    She sipped her drink. He felt the momentum slipping.
    “I did a postmortem on her,” he said. “On Chrissie. I know how she died.” Dolly Moran was folded into herself, her arms crossed on her breast and her face still turned to the side. “Tell me, Miss Moran—Dolly—tell me what happened, that night.”
    She shook her head, and yet she told him. “Something went wrong. She was bleeding, the sheets were soaked. Jesus, I was terrified. I had to go three or four streets to the phone box. When I came back she was in a bad way.”
    He put