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woman in a tartan shawl accosted them, doing her piteous whine; Quirke gave her a coin, and she gabbled a blessing after them.
     
“Phoebe is worried,” Quirke said. “It seems they’re in the habit of speaking every day on the phone, she and the Latimer girl, but it’s been a week or more since she had a call from her.”
     
“Has she been at work, April Latimer?”
     
“No—sent in a sick-note.”
     
“Well then.”
     
“Phoebe is not convinced.”
     
“Yes,” Malachy said after a pause, “but Phoebe does worry.” It was true; for one so young, Phoebe had known a disproportion of misfortune in her life— betrayal, rape, violent deaths— and how would she not fear the worst? “What about the family?” Malachy asked. “Bill Latimer would be her uncle, yes? Our esteemed Minister.” They both smiled grimly.
     
“I don’t know,” Quirke said, “I don’t think Phoebe has spoken to them.”
     
“And the brother? Hasn’t he rooms in Fitzwilliam Square?”
     
“Oscar Latimer— is he her brother?”
     
“I think so.” Malachy was brooding again. “She has a bit of a reputation, so I hear,” he said, “the same Miss or I should say Doctor Latimer.”
     
“Yes? A reputation for what?”
     
“Oh, you know, the usual. Drinks a bit, goes about with a fast crowd. There’s a fellow at the College of Surgeons, I forget his name. Foreigner.” He paused, frowning. “And that one from the Gate, the actress, what do you call her?— Galway?”
     
“Isabel Galloway?” Quirke chuckled. “That’s fast, all right.”
     
They were crossing at the top of Merrion Street when a green double-decker bus appeared suddenly out of the fog, bearing down on them with a roar, and they had to skip in haste to thesafety of the pavement. A reek of porter from the doorway of Doheny & Nesbitts made Quirke’s stomach heave.
     
“So she might have gone to En gland, in that case,” Malachy said, and gave a little cough.
     
Quirke knew what “gone to En gland” was a euphemism for. “Oh, come on, Mal,” he said drily. “Wouldn’t she have got one of the likely lads at the hospital to help her with any little problem in that line?”
     
Malachy did not reply, and Quirke, amused, glanced at him and saw his mouth tightened in a deploring pout. Malachy was consultant obstetrician at the Hospital of the Holy Family and did not take kindly even to the suggestion that April Latimer or anyone else could have got an illegal abortion there.
     
At the Shelbourne, outside the revolving glass door, Quirke balked. “I’m sorry, Mal,” he muttered, “I can’t face it.” The thought of all that chatter and brightness in there, the winking glasses and the shining faces of the morning drinkers, was not to be borne. He was sweating; he could feel the wet hotness on his chest and on his forehead under the rim of his hat that was suddenly too tight. They turned and trudged back the way they had come.
     
Not a word was exchanged between them until they got to the Q and L. Quirke did not know why the shop was called the Q and L, and had never been curious enough to ask. The proprietor— or more properly the proprietor’s son, since the shop was owned by an ancient widow, bedridden these many years— was a fat, middle-aged fellow with a big moon face and brilliantined hair slicked flat. He always seemed dressed up for the races, in his accustomed outfit of checked shirt and bow tie and canaryyellow waistcoat, tweed jacket, and cream-colored corduroy slacks. He was prone to unpredictable, brief displays of skittishness— he might suddenly yodel, or grin like a chimp, and more than once Quirke had been present to witness him essay a fewdance steps behind the counter, clicking his fingers and stamping the heels of his chestnut-brown brogues. Today he was in undemonstrative mood, due to the dampening effects of the fog, perhaps. Quirke bought a Procea loaf, six eggs, butter, milk, two small bundles of kindling, a packet of Senior Service, and a box of Swan Vestas. The look of these things on