“I tried already, and got nowhere.”

The door was opened by Sarah Maguire, the housekeeper. She was a wan creature with mousy hair and had a flinching manner, as if she were constantly in expectation of being hit. Her pale eyes were red-rimmed from weeping. She stood back for them to enter and led them off wordlessly along the broad hall, over the gleaming parquet. The place smelled of flowers and furniture polish and money.

Mrs. Jewell, Francoise d’Aubigny-what would he call her? Quirke wondered-was in the drawing room. At first when the two men entered they felt as if they had walked into a mass of hanging gauze, so dense was the light flowing in at four great windows, two each in adjacent walls. The windows were open wide at the top half, and the long trails of muslin curtain hanging before them were bellying languorously in the breeze. Mrs. Jewell was standing to one side, holding something in her left hand, some kind of glass ball, and turning back to look at them over her shoulder. How slender she was, how narrow her face with its high cheekbones and high pale forehead. She was far more beautiful than Quirke had recalled. She gave him a quizzical look, half smiling. Did she remember him from that one brief encounter a year ago? Surely not.

“This is Dr. Quirke,” Hackett said. “He’s here instead of Dr. Harrison, the state pathologist, who’s not well.”

She extended a cool hand for Quirke to shake. “We meet again,” she said. Surprise made him miss a beat, and he could think of nothing to say and instead attempted an unaccustomed bow, bobbing his head awkwardly. “You’ve been to see my husband?” she asked. She might have been speaking of a social visit. Her glossy black eyes took him in calmly, with the hint of a smile, ironic, a little mocking, even.

“Yes,” Quirke said, “I’m afraid so. I’m very sorry, Madame”-he faltered-“Mrs. Jewell.”

“You are kind,” the woman said, withdrawing her hand.