The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black

could fulfill it, she could not say. Only she was aware, when he had shown her out and she was walking again along Adelaide Road towards the bus stop in the windy twilight—it must have been more than an hour she had spent with him, if it was this late—of having been set apart somehow from everything around her. She felt like the people in the advertisement for Horlicks, or maybe it was Bovril, who are shown walking along through driving winter rain but smiling cheerfully, each one enclosed in a protective aura of light and warmth.
     
She went over in her mind what she could recall of the tales and parables he had recounted. The story that had made the strongest impression on her was that of the girl who had been brought back from the dead. This girl had three suitors and could not choose between them. Then one day she fell ill and was dead within the hour. The suitors were heartbroken, and each mourned in his own way. The first would not leave the graveyard, day or night, and ate and slept beside the grave; the second went wandering and became a fakir, or wise man; while the third gave over all of his time to comforting the girl's grieving father. One day on his travels the second suitor, the fakir, learned from another wise man the secret magic charm that would bring the dead back to life. He hurried home and went to the cemetery and said the magic formula to summon the girl out of her grave, and in a moment she appeared, as beautiful as she had ever been. The girl returned to her father's house, and the suitors began to argue among themselves as to who should have her hand. Eventually they went to the girl and each put his case to her. The first said he had not left the graveside for an instant; therefore his grieving had been of the purest. The second, the fakir, pointed out that it washe who had acquired the knowledge to bring her back from the land of the dead. The third spoke of the consolation and comfort he had brought to her father after she had died. The girl listened to each in turn, and then said to them, "You who discovered the spell to restore my life, you were a humanitarian. You who took care of my father and comforted him, you acted like a son. But you who lay in grief beside my grave, you were a true lover—and you I will marry."
     
It was, she knew, only a story, and even a silly story, at that, yet something in it moved her. She felt that of all that the Doctor had said, this was the one thing meant especially for her. The shape of the fable seemed the shape of a life that would one day be hers. The future, she believed, the future in the unlikely form of Dr. Kreutz, had sent her a message, a prophecy, of survival and of love.
    7
     
     
QUIRKE WAS NOT SURPRISED WHEN HE HEARD WHO IT WAS THAT WAS asking to see him. Since the day of the inquest he had been expecting a visit from the inspector. He put down the phone and lit a cigarette and sat thinking—let Hackett cool his heels for five minutes; it would do him good. It was morning, and Quirke was in his office at the hospital. Through the glass panel in the door he could see into the unnatural glare of the dissecting room, where his assistant, Sinclair, dourly handsome with black curls and a thin, down-turned mouth, was at work on the corpse of a little boy who had been run over by a coal lorry in the Coombe that morning. Thinking of the policeman, Quirke experienced a twinge of unease. The years at Carricklea had left him with a lurking fear of all appointed figures of authority that no subsequent accumulation of authority of his own could rid him of.
     
He crushed out the cigarette and took off his green surgical gown and went out of the office. He paused a moment to watch Sinclair cut into the child's exposed rib cage with the bone cutter that always made Quirke think, incongruously, of silver secateurs. Sinclair was deft and quick; someday, when Quirke was gone, this young man would be in charge of the Department. The thought had not occurredto