Quirke saw again Francoise d’Aubigny standing between the two tall windows with the softly billowing curtains and turning towards him, holding the snow globe in her left hand. “I don’t think Mrs. Jewell is the type,” he said.

Catching something in his tone, she glanced at him again.

“What type is she?”

“Very French, very self-possessed. A bit on the cold side.” Was she cold, really? He did not think so.

“And to cap it all, smashing-looking.”

“Yes, she’s good-looking-”

“Hmm,” she said to her reflection in the glass, “I don’t like the sound of this at all.”

“-a bit like you, in fact.”

“Alors, m’sieur, vous etes tres galant.”

Quirke folded the newspaper and put it aside and got out of bed. He was in his underpants and a man’s old string vest, which Isabel had found for him at the bottom of a drawer, and which might or might not have been his originally, a point it was better not to dwell on. She asked if he wanted breakfast but he said he would get something at the hospital. “I wish you’d eat properly,” she said. “And besides, you need to go on a diet.”

He glanced down at his gut. She was right; he was getting fat. Again he had that image of Richard Jewell’s widow turning to look over her shoulder at him in gauzy sunlight.

“Can we have lunch?” Isabel asked.

“Not today, sorry.”

“Just as well, I suppose-I have rehearsals in the afternoon.”

She was doing something by Shaw at the Gate. She began to complain about the director. Quirke, however, had given up listening.

On the way to work he stopped in at Pearse Street and called on Inspector Hackett. The detective came down from his office and they walked out into the sunlight together. As usual Hackett’s old soft hat was set far back on his head, and the elbows and knees of his blue suit gleamed in the sun’s glare, and when he put his hands in his trouser pockets his braces came into view, broad, old-fashioned, their leather button-straps clutching the waistband of his trousers like two pairs of splayed fingers.