“What was the name, Mr. Quirke?”

“Falls. Christine. She must have come in sometime last evening, now she’s gone. Where to?”

“I don’t know, Mr. Quirke.”

Quirke sighed into the open file; he wished Wilkins would not insist on addressing him by his name in that crawlingly obsequious way every time he was called on to speak. “The release form,” he said, “where’s that?”

Wilkins went out to the body room. Quirke searched in the desk drawer again and this time found the aspirin bottle; there was one tablet left.

“Here you are, Mr. Quirke.”

Wilkins laid the flimsy pink sheet of paper on the desk. The unreadable signature on it, Quirke saw, was the same, more or less, as the one in the file. At that moment he realized suddenly what had been odd about Mal’s pose here at the desk last night: although Mal was right-handed, he had been writing with his left.

MR. MALACHY GRIFFIN WAS CONDUCTING HIS AFTERNOON ROUNDS OF the obstetrics wing. In three-piece pin-striped suit and red bow tie he swept from ward to ward, stiff-backed, erect, his narrow head held aloft, a gaggle of students shuffling dutifully in his wake. On the threshold of each room he would pause theatrically for a second and call out, “Good afternoon, ladies, and how are we today?” and glance about with a broad, bright, faintly desperate smile. The bigbellied women, torpid on their beds, would stir themselves in shy expectancy, straightening the collars of their bed jackets and patting their hairstyles, thrusting hastily under pillows the powder compacts and the hand mirrors that had been brought out in anticipation of his visit. He was the most sought-after baby doctor in the city. There was about him a certain tentativeness, despite his great reputation, that appealed to all these mothers-soon-to-be. Husbands at visiting time sighed when their wives began to speak of Mr. Griffin, and many a boychild born here at the Holy Family Hospital was obliged to venture out upon the obstacle course of life bearing what Quirke was sure would be the not inconsiderable handicap of being called Malachy.