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Stephen’s Green. Because the other street musicians called Maugham the King of theBuskers, she became the Queen. Although McGarr had often tossed her a few pence for her drawings, which were remarkable, he had never known her name. But it occurred to him now that he had not seen her or him for quite some time, even though he walked up Grafton Street at least once a week after visiting his tobacconist on College Green.
    “How old a woman?” he now asked McKeon, meaning the woman out in the dayroom.
    “Forty-five, fifty, though she looks like seventy.”
    No, that couldn’t be the wife, who was still only a girl. “Show her in then.” McGarr sorely hoped that nothing had happened to Maugham.
    “Well, I’d say it’s more a matter for Hogan’s which was a pub not far from the Castle that some of the squad frequented. “She looks scared to death, and she’s asked me twice if we ‘do be holding’ her if she was to help us ‘shades.’ Maybe she’d be more forthcoming in another setting. And then…” McKeon glanced at the clock. It was time for him to leave, and his first stop was always Hogan’s.
    McGarr saw no harm in the change, and the woman seemed relieved when McKeon told her she could have her chat with the chief superintendent in a pub. “It’s that time of day, and he thinks you might be more comfortable there. This isn’t much of a room.”
    McGarr asked Ban Gharda Ruth Bresnahan, who was the squad’s newest recruit, to accompany them and take notes.
    “But when will I get this done if I’m off to a pub?” As the least senior and still-uniformed officer she had been assigned clerical duties, which she had railed at, wondering aloud more than once about the implications “of one woman pickin’ up the dorty details for a pack of men. Can’t someone else do a piece of work around this place now and then?”
    By whom she meant Hugh Ward, who had only climbed out from under the mountain of paperwork with her coming and was not about to dive back in.
    “Think of it this way, Rut’ie,” McKeon now observed in the pancake accent that marked him as a Dubliner; he was a stocky man with a full head of corn blond hair and dark, mischievous eyes. “It’s an investigation, what you’ve been telling me all along you joined us to do. And afterwards, why, you’ll have the office virtually to yourself—to type up your notes and get on with all that bother. Without us !”
    Which was cruel, really, but every new man (or, here, person ) had gone through the unofficial hazing process. And if she could not take it, then she wasn’t fit for the job, and there would always be somebody else willing to fill her…well, shoes.
    McKeon now watched Bresnahan rise reluctantly from her chair and reach for a steno pad and pencil. A big red country girl from Kerry, she filled out her light blue blouse and dark blue uniform dress rather amply. Otherwise she was pretty, and McKeon imagined that with some care taken, the fiery young woman might have some potential in the way of form.
    But far be it from him to suggest it. Father of an even dozen himself, he had met WOMAN enough for one lifetime, and the decision was still in daily doubt as to who would supervene.
    Down in Hogan’s, McGarr ordered three whiskeys and a lemon soda for Bresnahan, who was in uniform and could not drink. The Traveler woman had no qualms. She tossed hers off in a swallow and turned to McGarr.
    “My name is Maggie Nevins, and I was born in Tuam, County Galway, forty-eight year ago come December first. Me da was given a waste house when I was young, and they’ve stayed there ever since.”
    McGarr thought he knew what she meant. During the fifties, emigration from places in the West had resulted in a number of abandoned houses, some of which were awarded to Travelers in an effort—largely successful there in Tuam—to settle them. He tasted his drink.
    “But I married a Travelin’ man who fancied the road, and we’ve been on it ever