Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

heaped high with crushed butts that gave off an acrid smell.
    Hackett stood in the middle of the floor and looked about. Nothing here; nothing for him. In one corner there was a tiny hand basin with a rim of dried gray suds halfway up the side; looking closer, Hackett saw reddish bristles embedded in the scurf.
    He went to the window. There was a straggly garden at the back, mostly overgrown except for a plot at the near end that had been recently dug and planted—he could make out potato drills, and bamboo tripods for beans, and seedbeds where shoots were already showing.
    He returned to the front room. Grimes was at the sideboard now, going through a sheaf of documents there.
    “Who’s the gardener?” Hackett asked.
    Grimes barely glanced at him. “Minor was. He asked if he could plant out some things. It didn’t matter to me. I suppose it’ll all go to waste now.”
    Hackett nodded. “I’d be grateful,” he said mildly, looking pointedly at the papers Grimes was searching through, “if you’d leave that stuff alone.”
    “What?” Grimes paused in his search. It was plain he was not accustomed to being told what and what not to do. “I’ll have to clear the place,” he said. “I can’t leave it standing idle.” He smiled, though it seemed more a sneer. “Space is money, you know.”
    “All the same,” Hackett said. “Just leave things as they are for the moment. I’ll want a couple of my fellows to have a look around.”
    “What for?” Grimes’s sneering smile broadened, which made the sharp end of his big nose dip so far it nearly touched his upper lip. “Searching for clues, is it?”
    “Something like that.”
    Grimes tossed the papers back onto the sideboard. “There’s a letter there from a priest,” he said, with a sniff of amusement. “Would that be the kind of clue you’re after?”

6

    Carlton Sumner’s rare visitations to the offices of the newspapers he owned burst upon the place like summer storms. First a prophetic and uneasy hush would fall throughout the building, then a distant disturbance would be felt, a sort of crepitation in the air, to be followed swiftly by the irruption of the man himself, loud and terrible as the coming of Thor the thunder god. That Wednesday morning Harry Clancy hardly had time to get his feet off of his desk before the door burst open and Sumner came striding in, smelling of horse leather and expensive hair oil. He was a big man, with a big square head and a black, square-cut mustache and large, slightly drooping, and surprisingly soft brown eyes. He was dressed like the businessman he was, in a three-piece suit of light brown herringbone tweed, a white shirt with a thin blue stripe, and a blue silk tie, yet as always he gave the impression of just having dismounted after a long, hard gallop over rough terrain. He was Canadian but spoke and moved and acted like an American out of the movies.
    “All right, Clancy,” he said, “what’s going on?”
    Harry, although still seated in his swivel chair, had a vision of himself cowering on his knees with his fingers clamped on the edge of his desk and only the top of his head and his terrified eyes visible. He licked his lower lip with a dry tongue. “How do you mean, Mr. Sumner?” he asked warily.
    Sumner gave his head an impatient toss. “I mean what’s going on about this reporter of yours who got himself murdered? What are you doing about it?”
    Harry forced himself upright in his chair, straightening his shoulders and clearing his throat. His wife often lectured him about his craven attitude to his boss. Sumner was only a bully, she would say, and threw his weight around to entertain himself. She was right, of course—Sumner always showed a glint of amusement, even in his stormiest moods—but the bastard had a mesmerizing effect, and Harry, steel himself though he might, felt like a frightened rabbit trapped in the glare of those big and deceptively melting, glossy brown eyes. “Well, the police were here,” he said. “Detective Inspector Hackett…” He faltered, remembering, too late, that Hackett had been instrumental in having Sumner’s son deported to Canada for his involvement in a recent series of nefarious doings.
    Sumner frowned, but either he had not recognized Hackett’s name or was pretending to have forgotten it. “So what are they going to do,” he said, “the cops?”
    “They’ve launched a murder investigation.”
    Sumner gazed down at him, his