Evelyn squeezed his arm again, more tightly.

They had come to the steps of the hotel, and here they stopped short in a mixture of amusement and sudden wonder. Through a large square window to the right of the main door they were offered a lighted view, as on a stage, of a crowd of elderly folk, in pairs, immaculately dressed, dancing. Round and round they glided, in spritely restraint, their backs straight and silvery heads held erect, suave, meticulously elegant and expressionless as marionettes. Here was the source of the waltz music Quirke had heard earlier.

‘The Merry Widow,’ he murmured.

‘What?’

‘The title of the operetta. I just recognised it.’

‘I have always thought that a cruel title.’

‘What is it in German?’

‘The same. Die lustige Witwe.’

They watched and listened for a minute, and then, without further comment, they went together on up the steps and entered the hotel.

‘Let’s sit a while, in the lounge,’ Evelyn said. ‘The night is too lovely to let it end, just yet.’

They settled themselves at a table by another of the big windows that gave on to the seafront and, beyond, the bay with the moonlight on it. Evelyn ordered a tisane, which when it came gave off a delicate fragrance of dried orange blossom.

‘It must be like drinking scent,’ he said.

She made a face at him.

Early on in their stay, Quirke had struck up an acquaintance with one of the barmen, a dusty old boy with large hairy ears and shoe leather that squeaked. This person now, without being summoned, brought to the table a tumbler of Jameson Crested Ten, with a glass of plain water on the side.

‘Wine, brandy, and now this,’ Evelyn said, eyeing the whiskey. ‘Surely tonight you will sleep.’

‘Surely,’ Quirke said, taking a sip of his drink.

This was more like it. How he savoured the sensation of the whiskey running like slow fire along the complicated tracery of tubes behind his breastbone. His indigestion sent up one last hot flare and was extinguished – good old J J&S, always dependable. He leaned back, and the cane chair crackled under him like a bonfire. Evelyn, sitting opposite, was smiling, in her unfocused fashion, at nothing in particular. Then she lifted her eyes to his. She had a way now and then of looking at him with what seemed like surprise and muted delight, as if she hadn’t known him before but had chanced on him just at that moment and was already discovering him to be an object of the profoundest and most pleasing interest.

Yes, he thought, with a faint, inward shiver, nothing is so worrying as happiness, especially when it is of the ordinary variety.