The Silver Swan Read Online Free PDF Page A

school for girls on the first two floors of the building, and at fixed times of the day—midmorning, lunchtime, the four o'clock end of lessons—the pupils' voices in raucous medley rose up as far as the third floor. At that sound a tense and concentrated look would come into the Judge's eyes, hard to interpret; was it indignation, nostalgia, sorrowful remembrance—or just puzzlement? Perhaps the old man did not know where he was or what he was hearing; perhaps his mind—and those eyes left little doubt that there was a mind at some kind of work behind them—was trapped in a state of continuous bewilderment, helpless doubt. Quirke did not know quite what to think of this. Part of him, the disappointed, embittered part, wanted the old man to suffer, while another part, the part that was still the child he had once been, wished that the stroke might have killed him outright and saved him from these final humiliations.
     
Quirke passed these visits in reading aloud to the old man from the Irish Independent . Today was a Monday in midsummer and there was little of interest in the news pages. Eighty priests had been ordained in ceremonies at Maynooth and All Hallows— More clerics ,Quirke thought, that's all we need . Here was a picture of Mr. Tom Bent, manager of the Talbot Garage in Wexford, presenting the keys of a new fire engine to the town's mayor. The Summer Sale was on in Macy's of George's Street. He turned to the foreign page. Dozy old Ike was harrying the Russians, as usual. "The German people cannot wait eternally for their sovereignty," according to Chancellor Adenauer, addressing a North Rhine–Westphalia state election rally in Düsseldorf the previous night. Then Quirke's eye fell on a paragraph on the front page, under the headline GIRL'S BODY FOUND.
     
The body of Mary Ellen Quigley (16), shirt factory worker, who had been missing from her home in Derry since June 17th, was recovered yesterday from the River Foyle by a fisherman pulling in his net. An inquest will be held today.
     
He put the paper aside. He needed a cigarette. Sister Agatha, however, did not allow smoking in the sickroom. For Quirke this was an added annoyance, but on the other hand it did give him the excuse to escape at least twice in every hour to pace the echoing, tiled corridor outside, tensely dragging on a cigarette like an expectant father in a comedy.
     
Why did he persist in coming here like this? Surely no one would blame him if he stayed away altogether and left the dying man to his angry solitude. The Judge had been a great and secret sinner, and it was Quirke who had exposed his sins. A young woman had died, another woman had been murdered, and these things had been the old man's fault. What impressed Quirke most was the cloak of silence that had been drawn over the affair, leaving him standing alone in his indignation, exposed, improbable, ignored, like a crackpot shouting on a street corner. So why did he keep coming dutifully each week to this barren room below the mountains? He had his own sins to account for, as his daughter could attest, the daughter whom he had for so long denied. It was a small atonement to come here twice a week and read out the court cases and the death notices for this dying old man.
     
His thoughts turned again to Deirdre Hunt. There had been noquestion of not performing a postmortem, after he had chanced on that needle mark in the woman's arm. He had his professional duty to carry out, but that was not what had made him take up the knife. He had been, as always, simply curious, though Quirke knew there was nothing simple about his curiosity. He had cut open the cadaver, palped the organs, measured the blood, and now, with the Judge for silent witness, he had it all out for himself again and viewed it from all the angles he could think of. Still it made no sense.
     
He turned. "What do you think, Garret?" he asked. "Just another lost girl?"
     
The Judge, propped against pillows, his mouth awry,