Free Elegy for April by Benjamin Black

her, but a friend of hers.”
     
The detective produced a packet of Player’s and offered it across the table; the look of the cigarettes, arrayed in a grille, made Quirke think, uneasily, of the Alvis.
     
“Would that,” Hackett asked delicately, “be a female friend, now, or … ?”
     
Quirke took one of the offered cigarettes and brought out his lighter. The men at the next table, who had been sitting forward almost brow to brow and murmuring, suddenly threw themselves back in their chairs, purple-cheeked and raucously laughing. One of them wore a bow tie and a wine-colored waistcoat; both had a shady look about them. Strange to think, Quirke thought, that the likes of these two were free to knock back all the whiskey they wanted, in the middle of the morning, while he was not to be allowed a single sip.
     
“Yes,” he said to the policeman, “a girl called April Latimer— well, a woman, really. She’s a junior doctor at the Holy Family.” The frond of palm leaning beside him was distracting, giving him the sense of an eavesdropper attending eagerly at his elbow. “She seems to be … missing.”
     
Hackett had relaxed now and seemed even to be enjoying himself. He had eaten four fingers of bread-and-butter and was eyeing the stand of cakes. “Missing,” he said, distractedly. “How is that?”
     
“No one has heard from her in nearly a fortnight. She hasn’t been in contact with her friends or, it seems, anyone else, and her flat is empty.”
     
“Empty? You mean her stuff is cleared out of it?”
     
“No, I don’t think so.”
     
“Did someone get in to have a look?”

 
“Phoebe and another friend of April’s got in— April leaves a key under a stone.”
     
“And what did they find?”
     
“Nothing. Phoebe is convinced that her friend is— that something has happened to her.”
     
The detective had started on a cream cake and ate as he spoke. “And what about … um … this girl’s … ah … family?” A dab of whipped cream had attached itself to his chin. “Or has she any?”
     
“Oh, she has. She’s Conor Latimer’s daughter— the heart man, who died?— and her uncle is William Latimer.”
     
“The Minister? Well.” He wiped his fingers on a napkin. The fleck of cream was still on his chin; Quirke was wondering if he should point it out. “Have you talked to him— to the Minister— or to her mother? Is the mother alive?”
     
“She is.” Quirke poured more tea and gloomily added milk; he could still smell that whiskey from the next table. “I went with Phoebe to see her brother this morning— Oscar Latimer, the consultant.”
     
“Another doctor! Merciful God, they have the market cornered. And what had he to say?”
     
The whiskey drinkers were leaving. The one in the bow tie gave Quirke what seemed to him a smirk of pity and contempt; were his troubles written so starkly on his face?
     
“He said nothing. It seems his sister is the black sheep of the family, and there’s little contact anymore. Frankly, he’s a sanctimonious little bastard, but I suppose that has nothing to do with anything.”
     
Hackett had at last located the cream on his chin and wiped it off. His tie, Quirke noted, was a peculiar, dark-brown color, like the color of gravy. The hat-line across his forehead had still not faded. “And what,” he asked, “would you be expecting me todo? Would your daughter, maybe, want to report her friend to us as missing? What would the family think of that?”
     
“I strongly suspect the family would not like that at all.”
     
They pondered, both of them, in silence for a time.
     
“Maybe,” the Inspector said, “we should go round and have a look at the flat ourselves. Do we know where the key is kept?”
     
“Phoebe knows.”
     
Hackett was idly examining a loose thread in the cuff of his suit jacket. “I have the impression, Dr. Quirke,” he said, “that you’re less than eager to let yourself get involved in this business.”
     
“Your impression is right. I know the Latimers, I know their kind, and I