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cigarette into his saucer and saw Malachy’s nostrils twitch in distaste. “Listen, Mal, I’m going to buy a car; why don’t you come and help me pick one out.”
     
Now it was Malachy’s turn to stare. He could not take it in. “But you can’t drive,” he said.
     
“I know I can’t,” Quirke answered wearily. “Everyone keeps telling me that. But I can learn. In fact, I’ve already decided the model I have my eye on.” He waited. “Aren’t you going to ask me what it is?”
     
Malachy was still staring at him owlishly. “But why?” he asked.
     
“Why not? I have a sack of money I’ve been accumulating all these years; it’s time I bought something with it, for myself. I’m going for an Alvis.”
     
“What’s that?”
     
“Best car the British ever built. Beautiful thing. I knew a fellow that had one— Birtwhistle, at college, remember, who died? Come on, we’ll go up to Crawford’s. There’s a chap there, Protestant, dependable. I did a P.M. last year on his aged mother, who unaccountably fell downstairs and broke her neck the day after she’d made her will.” He winked. “Shall we go?”
     
     

     
     
MALACHY DROVE THE HUMBER AS IF IT WERE NOT A MACHINE but a large, fuming, unpredictable beast he had been put in unwilling charge of, holding the steering wheel at arm’s length and groping about with his feet after the pedals down in the dark. He muttered to himself, under his breath, bemoaning the fog and the poor visibility and the recklessness of the drivers of the other vehicles they encountered along the way. At the corner of St. Stephen’s Green, as they were turning onto Earlsfort Terrace, they narrowly missed colliding with a CIE delivery cart drawn by a high-stepping Clydesdale, and were followed for twenty yards and more by the drayman’s bellowed curses.
     
“You know,” Malachy said, “I used to take pride in my job of helping mothers to bring their babies into the world. Now I look at the world and I wonder if I did more harm than good.”
     
“You’re a fine doctor, Mal.”
     
“Am I?” He smiled at the windscreen. “Then why can’t I heal myself?”
     
They went on a little way in silence, then Quirke said, “Isn’t despair one of the big mortal sins? Or do you not believe in that kind of thing anymore?”
     
Malachy said nothing, only smiled again, more bleakly than ever.
     
They parked on Hatch Street— it took Malachy fully five minutes to maneuver into a space twice the length of the Hum ber— and Quirke, shaken after the short but harrowing drive, was wondering if he should reconsider the idea of owning a car. On the pavement he put on his hat and turned up the collar of his coat. The sun somewhere was trying to shine, its weak glow making a sallow, urinous stain on the fog. As they walked towards the showrooms on the corner Malachy said worriedly, “This fellow’s mother, the one that fell downstairs— when you did the postmortem on her, you didn’t— I mean, you wouldn’t—?”
     
Quirke heaved a sigh. “You never really did have much of a sense of humor, did you, Mal.”
     
The showroom smelled of steel and leather, fresh paintwork, clean engine oil. A number of small, gleaming cars stood about the floor, looking self-conscious at the incongruity of being indoors but all the same conveying a bright and eager impression, like puppies in a pet shop. The salesman’s name was Lockwood, and he was indeed, Mal saw, every inch the image of a Protestant, which probably meant that he was not one at all. He was tall and painfully thin— it seemed his long bones must rattle when he moved— wearing a gray, chalk-striped, double-breasted suit and brown suede shoes with arabesques of holes punched in the toe caps. He had pale, poached eyes and a mustache that might have been painted on with an extrafine water-color brush; he was young but balding already, his high forehead giving him a startled, harelike look. “Good morning, Dr. Quirke,” he said, “though it’s not very good, I suppose, with that blessed fog