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pressing them to the desk and leaning forward heavily on them. “I’m sorry, Miss Griffin, that you’re worried, but I’m afraid I can’t help you. As I’ve said, my sister and her doings stopped being of any consequence to me a long time ago.”
     
Quirke rose, turning his hat slowly in his hands. “If you do hear from her,” he said, “will you call us, either Phoebe or me?”
     
Latimer looked at him again with that disdainful almost-smile. “I won’t be the one to hear from her,” he said purringly. “You can be certain of that, Dr. Quirke.”
     
On the step outside, Phoebe violently pulled one glove and then the other. “Well,” she said through her teeth to Quirke, “you were a great help. I don’t think you even looked at him.”
     
“If I had,” Quirke said mildly, “I think I’d have picked up the little squirt and thrown him out of the window. What did you expect me to do?”
     
They walked along the square under the silent, dripping trees.There was some morning traffic in the street now, and muffled office workers hurried past them. The dawn seemed to have staled before it had fully broken, and the gray light of day seemed more a dimness.
     
“Is he a good doctor?” Phoebe asked.
     
“I believe so. Good doctoring doesn’t depend on personality, as you’ve probably noticed.”
     
“I suppose he’s fashionable.”
     
“Oh, he’s that, all right. I wouldn’t care to have him pawing me, but I’m not a woman.”
     
They stopped on the corner. “Malachy is going to give me a driving lesson today,” Quirke said. “In the Phoenix Park.”
     
Phoebe was not listening. “What am I going to do?” she said.
     
“About April? Look, I’m sure Latimer is right; I’m sure she’s off on an adventure somewhere.”
     
She stopped, and after walking on a pace he stopped too. “No, Quirke,” she said, “something has happened to her, I know it has.”
     
He sighed. “ How do you know?”
     
She cast about, shaking her head. “When we went in there first, into that room of his, I felt such a fool. The way he looked at me, I could see he thought I was just another hysterical female, like the ones I suppose he sees every day. But as he talked I became more and more— I don’t know— frightened.”
     
“Of him?” Quirke sounded incredulous. “Frightened of Oscar Latimer?”
     
“No, not of him. Just— I don’t know. I just had this feeling, I’ve had it all week, but in that room it became— it became real .” She looked down at her gloved hands. “Something has happened, Quirke.”
     
He put his hands into the pockets of his overcoat and looked at the toe caps of his shoes. “And you think Latimer knows what it is that’s happened?”
     
She shook her head. “No, it’s nothing to do with him, I’m sure it’s not. It wasn’t anything he said or did. Just this certainty got stronger and stronger inside me. I think—” She stopped. A coal cart went past, drawn by an old brown nag, the black-faced coalman with his whip perched atop the piled, full sacks. “I think she’s dead, Quirke.”
     
     
     
     
     
    6
     
THE LOUNGE OF THE HIBERNIAN HOTEL WAS ALMOST FULL AT MID-morning, but Quirke found a table in a corner, beside a palm in a tall, Ali Baba urn standing on the floor. He was ten minutes early and was glad he had brought a newspaper to hide behind. After only six weeks in the cotton-wool atmosphere of St. John’s he had become accustomed to the regulated life there, and now he wondered if he would ever readjust to the real world. Two pinstriped businessmen at a table next to his were drinking whiskey, and the sharp, smoky smell of the liquor came to him in repeated wafts, suggestive and blandishing. He had not thought of himself as an alcoholic, just a heavy drinker, but after the latest, six-month binge he was not so sure. Dr. Whitty at St. John’s would offer no judgment—”I don’t deal in labels”— and probably it did not matter what his condition was called, if it was a condition. Only he was afraid. He was already past the