Had his political hide been less tough, had his hold on the support of the party faithful been less strong, William Latimer would have suffered grievous professional damage from the successive tragedies that had befallen his family. In the  latest of these, his nephew Oscar Latimer had confessed to the murder of his sister and then taken his own life. It would have been enough to destroy the career of a lesser figure. But Bill Latimer was not a man to be brought down by adversity.

The scandal had been contained, of course; that went without saying. The family had let it be known that poor  Oscar, despite being the country’s most respected obstetrician, was never quite right in the head, and on that terrible day had suffered some manner of a brainstorm – the word was his uncle’s – and lost his reason entirely. And though he claimed to have done away with April, her body had never been found, so that the coroner had no choice but to close the case. It was all very sad and unfortunate, and best forgotten about as quickly as possible. The country had weightier matters to occupy its attention.

The Archbishop himself had attended Oscar’s funeral, which was seen as the official wiping away of the taint of sin from Doctor Latimer’s demise.

In the end, the Minister’s political advisers, with their accustomed cunning and skill, had turned the whole incident to their boss’s advantage, winning widespread sympathy for him as the survivor of a double tragedy, and showing up the fortitude of this scion of a legendary dynasty of patriots and revolutionaries, the living embodiments, for many, of Yeats’s ‘indomitable Irishry’.

Indeed, it could be said, Phoebe reflected, that the Minister had done well out of his family’s woes. The Oscar business was only the latest in a series of misfortunes to have struck the house of Latimer. Hadn’t this man’s brother, Conor  Lati mer, the clan chieftain himself, also taken his own life, some years before, in a fit of noble despair? The country had failed him, it was said. The Ireland he had fought for was a shining dream that had given way to an ashen awakening, and it broke his heart. That was the legend. Few were aware of what Phoebe knew, that the late hero was the very one whose years-long abuse had blighted the lives of both of his children and led directly to the destruction of one of them, at least.

The Minister was watching her now through narrowed eyes, in each of which a spark of deep suspicion glinted – she thought of a weasel crouched in the corner of a yard and facing a pack of hunting dogs.

‘Would it be the case, I wonder,’ he said, ‘that Doctor Quirke is back on the booze?’ He smiled. ‘Sorry for asking.’