Read Online The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black - Free Book Online

spoken to her husband or whoever it was, and how he had said in that peculiar way about her being not available . At that the woman gave a laugh—not a happy laugh, more a sort of angry snigger—and said, 'Well, it must be the first time in a long time that that bitch isn't available'—and by the way she said 'available' I knew what she meant. It gave me a start, I can tell you. 'Sorry,' I said, 'I've obviously called at a bad time,' and tried to hang up. But she must have been waiting for someone to come on the telephone so she could have a rant about 'that rat,' which is how she described her husband. She proceeded to tell me the most amazing things. I think she was a bit hysterical—well,more than a bit, in fact. She said she had found a hoard of dirty pictures—I don't know what that meant, exactly—and letters from this woman to her husband, which apparently were pretty filthy too. It was obvious, she said, they'd been having an affair under her nose, the rat and this woman. She went on about it for ages. Some of the time I think she was crying, but as much in rage as anything else. Yes, definitely hysterical. But who wouldn't be, I suppose, after making that kind of a discovery?"
     
While she spoke Quirke had felt something stretching in him and gathering force, like a bowstring being drawn back slowly, quivering and humming. Phoebe was still turning the lighter in her fingers. "This woman," he asked, "what's her name?"
     
She looked at him. "Which one?"
     
"The one who wasn't available."
     
He knew what she would say before she said it.
     
"Deirdre somebody, but her professional name is Laura Swan—why?"
     
     
THEY LEFT THE HOTEL AND CROSSED THE ROAD TO THE GREEN AND strolled along by the railings in the direction of Grafton Street. Dusk was thickening in the air but the sky above them was still light, a clear dome of whitish blue with one star palely burning low above the rooftops. "What do you do in the evenings," Phoebe asked, "now that you don't go boozing anymore?" He did not answer. But what did he do nowadays with his time? He feared becoming a nightwalker, one of those solitaries who paced the city's streets at evening, keeping close by the walls, or stood in shop doorways or sat in their cars with the engines running, blurred, faceless fellows glimpsed in the flare of a match or by the light from a dashboard, nursing their obscure sorrows. Phoebe said, "You're the one who should be looking for romance."
     
They went to the Shelbourne, their old haunt, and sat in the lounge and drank coffee. When she was a schoolgirl he used to takeher here of an afternoon and give her tea with little sandwiches and chocolate éclairs and scones with jam and cream. It seemed an age ago—it was an age ago. Tonight the place was empty save for a trio of blue-suited politicians from the nearby government buildings who were conspiring together in a corner beside the empty fireplace. The light at nightfall in this large room was always strange, more a grainy shadowiness than a radiance, drifting down from two enormous, eerily motionless chandeliers. Quirke for his part was wondering what Phoebe did with her evenings. She lived alone in a three-room flat in Harcourt Street. She had no boyfriend, of that he was sure, but did she have friends, people she saw? Did people invite her out, call round to visit her? She would tell him nothing of her life.
     
She was smoking again, sitting upright on a little gilt chair with one knee crossed on the other. There was lace at the cuffs of her dress as well as at the throat. It gave her a faintly antique aspect: she might have been a governess, he idly thought, in the olden days, or a rich lady's paid companion. She asked: "Why are you so interested in Laura Swan?"
     
He lifted an eyebrow. "Am I?"
     
"I saw how you looked when I mentioned her name. Do you know her?"
     
"No. No, I don't. I knew her husband, a little, a long time ago."
     
"What's he like? He sounded a bit mad on the