Read Christine Falls: A Novele for Free Online Page B

now, Malachy,” the Judge called across the room to his son, in a voice that was all innocence, “I didn’t know you were letting that young lady at the hard stuff?” Mal went a whiter shade of white, as those around him fell silent and looked at him. The Judge ostentatiously put a hand to his mouth and said to Quirke sideways in a stage whisper, “Indeed, by the look of her she’s had a few already.”
    Mal crossed the room and spoke to Phoebe in an undertone, but she turned aside from him as if he were not there. He hesitated a moment, clenching his fists—Mal was, Quirke thought, the kind of man who really does clench his fists—then whirled about and bore down grimly on Quirke and the Judge. Sarah made a movement as if to intercept him, and Quirke held up a hand. “Yes, Mal, yes,” he said, “I confess, I was the occasion of sin. She made me take her to McGonagle’s.”
    Mal, his forehead pale and glistening, was about to spit out a violent word but Sarah spoke up quickly. “Shall we have something to eat?” she said, with desperate brightness. She turned to the guests, who had been watching avidly, while trying to seem not to, this little succession of familial confrontations. There was not always such rich entertainment to be had at the Griffins’. “If everyone will step into the dining room,” Sarah said loudly, her voice cracking a little, “we can start the buffet.”
    But Mal persisted. “Do you think,” he said to Quirke in quiet fury, “that it’s funny to bring a girl of her age to a pub?”
    Quirke took a breath, but the Judge put an arm around his shoulders again and turned him firmly out of the line of Mal’s anger, saying: “McGonagle’s, is it?” He chuckled. “Lord, I haven’t set foot in that den of iniquity since I don’t know when…”

     

    QUIRKE DID NOT EAT, BUT DRANK MORE WHISKEY INSTEAD. SUDDENLY he found himself in the kitchen, with Maggie. He looked about in dazed surprise. He seemed to have come to, somehow, just at that moment, leaning against the cupboard beside the sink, with his ankles crossed, nursing his whiskey glass to his midriff. What had happened to the intervening time, from when he was standing with the Judge to now? Maggie, bustling about, was speaking to him, apparently in reply to something he had said, though what it might have been he could not think. Maggie looked like the witch in a fairy tale, stooped and wizened, with a hooked nose and a tangled nest of steel-colored hair; she even had a cackling laugh, on the rare occasions when she did laugh.
    “Anyway,” Quirke said, thinking to start the conversation afresh, “how are you getting on, Maggie?”
    She paused by the stove and glanced at him, grinning archly on one side of her face. “You’re a terrible man,” she said. “You’d drink it off a sore leg.”
    He lifted the whiskey glass before his eyes and looked from it to her and back again with a mock-offended air, and she shook her head at him and went on with her work. She was cooking something in a steaming pot, into which she peered now, screwing up her face. Grimalkin, he thought: was that a witch’s name? From the drawing room came the sound of the Judge’s voice; he was making a speech to the company. “…And I hope you’ll believe me when I say that I consider myself unworthy of this great honor that the Holy Father has bestowed on me, and on my family. You all know where, and what, I came from, and how fortunate I’ve been, both in public and in private life…”
    Maggie gave a low, sardonic snort. “I suppose you’re here about the girl,” she said.
    Quirke frowned. “Phoebe?”
    “No!” Maggie said, with another snort. “The one that’s after dying.”
    There was a burst of applause outside as the Judge finished his speech. Sarah entered carrying a stack of used plates. Seeing Quirke she hesitated, then came and set the plates on the table among the other piles of washing-up waiting to be done. With weary