What had they talked about? He could not remember. The weather, probably, and France, no doubt, given the day it was and where they were. She mentioned her husband but did not say who he was, only confided, smiling, that he was here and was not pleased with her, for it was she who had refused to take the Ambassador’s expensively manicured hand. “My brother was in the Resistance,” she said, and gave a small shrug. “He died.” Other people had come to the window then and Quirke had drifted away.

Later, when Isabel Galloway, who was at the party, told him who the Frenchwoman was, he was surprised and even somewhat disconcerted; he would not have picked Richard Jewell as the kind of man that the kind of woman he guessed Francoise d’Aubigny to be would marry. Isabel had been suspicious, of course, and wanted to know what the two of them had been hugger-muggering about, as she said, there at the window, looking like Danielle Darrieux and Gerard Philipe, or somesuch. Isabel considered jealousy, quickly sparked and forcefully expressed, as love’s necessary tribute. She and Quirke had been together only for-what?-half a year? In that time there had been bumpy passages: Isabel was an actress, and wore her theatricality offstage as well as on-

Hackett was speaking to him.

“Sorry?”

They were at the front door, waiting for their knock to be answered. Jenkins had been sent back to Jewell’s office, to keep the corpse company, as Hackett had said, winking at Quirke.

“I said, what will we say to her? The wife, I mean.”

Quirke considered. “It’s not my place to say anything to her. You’re the detective.”