Strafford too rose to his feet. Phoebe gave him a questioning look. Did he intend to accompany her to the telephone and stand by while she placed her call? She wondered yet again why Chief Superintendent Hackett had insisted on sending him with her. She was hardly in need of a  bodyguard, and anyway Strafford hardly fitted the description.

‘I’ll call from my room,’ she said, and turned to go.

‘Wait,’ Quirke said. ‘What are you going to do?’

‘I told you – I’m going to phone the hospital, and ask to speak to Doctor – what did you say was the name she’s going by?’

‘Lawless. Doctor Angela Lawless. What are you going to say to her?’

‘I don’t know. I’ll let her do the talking.’

Quirke’s eyes slid away from hers. He had, she saw, the queasy look of a man who in an unthinking moment had arranged an elaborate practical joke, only to find that he was himself the butt of it.

Phoebe walked away.

‘I wonder, my dear,’ Evelyn said mildly to her husband, ‘if you ever listen to the way you speak to people.’

Strafford cleared his throat.

‘I think perhaps I’ll take a walk.’

He disentangled himself from the chair and rose and drifted in the direction of the sunlit front door. Quirke looked after him, noting his curiously sinuous, meandering gait, and scowled. He could have done with a drink, but even for him it was still too early.

Evelyn too was watching Strafford, who stopped now and turned to glance up at Phoebe ascending in the lift.

‘Oh, dear, they are so lonely,’ she said. ‘And so careful to avoid seeing what is plain to see.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Quirke said suspiciously. ‘And what’s that?’

Ash from his cigarette dropped into his lap and he brushed at it vexedly.

‘Oh, Quirke, my dear. For such a clever man, you know so little. They are like—’

‘Chalk and cheese, that’s what they’re like.’

‘No no. They’re like those things, what do you call them, the things that attract metal.’

‘Magnets.’

‘Yes, that’s it. They are two magnets, turned the wrong way and pulling against each other.’ She demonstrated with her hands. ‘Just one little twist and—’ She smacked her hands together, and laughed.

Quirke’s frown deepened. He didn’t like the sound of this at all. Phoebe, and that chinless wonder?

‘What about your nephew?’ he said. ‘Aren’t he and Phoebe—?’

‘Not really. Paul is a good young man, very bright and ambitious. He may do something notable in the world. But Phoebe is not for him, and he is not for Phoebe.’

‘Christ,’ Quirke said, and slumped back on his chair. Not the least part of his dismay was due to the fact that it was by his agency that his daughter and Detective Inspector bloody Strafford had been brought together in the first bloody place.

*