Quirke 06 - Holy Orders

the best up top, so he’s not. Father Dangerfield is the boss now. He’s the man in the saddle.”
    “I spoke to him. He seemed to know very little about Father Honan.”
    “Did he, now.” The old man shook his head, greatly amused. “He keeps his cards close to his chest, does Father Dangerfield.” A bell tinkled. There was a board of bells high up on the wall above the stove. The old man peered up at it. “That’ll be the Father Superior now,” he said, “wanting his pap.” He laughed again, a string of phlegm making a wet twang in his sunken chest; then he rose and went to a cupboard and took from it a tin of Ovaltine and carried it to the stove.
    “A young man was killed the other night,” Quirke said. “Murdered.”
    The old man brought forward a sort of footstool and set it in front of the stove and stepped up onto it. He opened the tin and shook a measure of the dull-brown powder into a small saucepan. “Would you do me a favor,” he said, “and go into the scullery there and bring me the bottle of milk that’s in the safe? I’m sick to my soul of climbing up and down on this bloody yoke.”
    Quirke did as he was asked. The green-meshed food safe was set into a rectangular hole in the wall so that the air from outside could circulate through it. There were raindrops on the milk bottle. He carried it back to the kitchen and gave it to the old man. “Are you a detective?” the old man asked, watching himself pour the milk into the saucepan.
    “No,” Quirke said. “I’m a doctor, sort of.”
    “What sort would that be?”
    “Pathologist. Dead people.”
    The old man nodded, stirring the mixture in the saucepan with a tarnished metal spoon. “Who was the poor fellow that died?” he asked.
    “A reporter—a newspaper reporter.”
    “That’s right. I saw it in the papers. Was he some relation of Father Honan’s?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “Well well, the poor chap.”
    Quirke’s brain was buzzing. He knew he should not have drunk whiskey at this hour of the day. That must be what was wrong with him, that’s what was making his heart pound and his thoughts turn in circles. He wondered again where Hackett was—surely he was not still with Father Dangerfield?
    The rain had stopped, and the sun was shining in more strongly at the window now. Faintly from outside came the fluting calls of a blackbird—was it the same one he had seen earlier, digging for worms on the lawn? For some reason he thought of Isabel, sitting up in bed in her room above the canal, enthroned there in her silk tea gown, his regal lover. She was a beautiful, clever, and talented woman, too good for him, far too good. Sometimes he forgot what she looked like. He would remember the color of her hair and her eyes, the shape of her nose, the curve of her mouth, but he would not be able to summon her image to his mind, hard as he might try. That must mean something. It must mean he did not love her, as she would wish him to love her, however that was.
    The old man lifted the saucepan off the stove. “I’d better not let it boil,” he muttered. “He always knows when it’s after being boiled.”
    He stepped down from the stool and bore the saucepan to the left-hand sink and set it on the draining board. He turned to Quirke. “Will you get us that mug up there?” he said, pointing to a high cupboard on the wall. Quirke took down the thick enamel mug. “Thanks,” the old man said. He grinned. “I could put in a word and get you a job here, maybe. Chief assistant to the head bottle washer.” He did his cackle, and poured the steaming beverage into the mug. His chin was on a level with the draining board. “What was his name again?” he asked.
    “Who?”
    “The young fellow, the one that was killed.”
    “Minor. Jimmy Minor.”
    “That’s a queer name, Minor. I never heard of anybody called by that name before. Where was he from?”
    “Somewhere down the country, I don’t know. The Midlands.”
    “Ah, well, God rest him anyway.” He stood, holding the mug. “Minor,” he murmured. “Minor. No, that’s a new one on me.”
    “Did he ever come here?” Quirke asked.
    The old man glanced at him quickly. “Here? Why would he come here?”
    “To see Father Honan.”
    “What would he want to see Father Honan for?”
    “I don’t know. He might have been writing a story about him, an article about his good works with the kiddies, and the tinkers.”
    The old man pondered. “No, I don’t