Into Thin Eire

by Sheri Cobb South

  Having narrowed the field to the four most promising possibilities, Pickett assigned a man to cover each. He himself would take the Dublin Gazette while Carson took the Freeman’s Journal and Jamie examined the Protestant periodical. This left its Catholic counterpart—the smallest and therefore the easiest of the four to examine from first page to last—for Thomas’s perusal.

  “How far do I need to go back, sir?” asked that young man, determined to devote himself thoroughly to the task.

  “Not far,” Pickett assured him, unaware that this was exactly what his valet least wished to hear. “It’s published weekly, not daily, so the last two issues—three, at the very most—should be sufficient. Just be sure you take the time to read them thoroughly.”

  “The—the whole thing, sir?” Thomas protested feebly, struggling to reconcile the tales of danger and bravado recounted by Mr. Carson with the prospect of spending hours bent over the printed page. “Surely the headlines—”

  “The whole thing,” Pickett echoed firmly. “It might not be mentioned in the headlines. It might be given no more than a mention—buried in a longer article on, say, atrocities committed by Protestants against Catholics, or defending Catholics against similar charges against them made by Protestants, or an article on general lawlessness.”

  “Yes, sir,” Thomas said with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

  “I know it sounds tedious,” Pickett said, not without sympathy. “It is tedious. It’s like I told you before: nine parts of any investigation is tedium, no matter what Carson may say to the contrary. And at the moment, this lead is our best hope for discovering where Ju—Mrs. Pickett may have been taken, so I’m going to follow it until it leads me to her. Or until it runs out, or until it points me in another direction. Whichever comes first.”

  “Yes, sir,” Thomas said again, more energetically this time.

  The four men split up, and after making inquiries as to the location of the newspaper’s offices, Pickett set out for the Custom House Printing Office in Crane Lane, a narrow thoroughfare just off Dame Street, and asked if he might have a look at the archives.

  “Is there anything in particular you’re lookin’ for?” asked the clerk who ushered him down the stairs and into a dark, cavernous basement room where back issues of the newspaper were stored.

  “I was wondering if you—the publisher, that is—has run a story lately about any graves being disturbed.”

  “By the resurrection men, you mean?”

  “Not exactly,” Pickett said. “I don’t think the grave robbers were interested in supplying the medical profession with cadavers so much as they were in obtaining one body—the body of a woman—for their own purposes.”

  “Begorra!” breathed the clerk, wide-eyed.

  “Nothing like that,” Pickett put in quickly, realizing the man was entertaining visions of lurid orgiastic rites, no doubt performed around a bonfire beneath a full moon. “Something more in the nature of a—a prank.”

  “Some prank!”

  “Exactly. Do you recall the newspaper printing an article about such a thing?”

  The clerk shook his head. “No, sir, I’m afraid not. And if you don’t mind my sayin’ so, it doesn’t seem the sort of thing I’d be likely to forget!”

  “I don’t doubt it. But if you have no objection, I should like to look through the newspapers myself, just to be sure.”

  To his profound relief, the clerk showed no sign of taking offense at this apparent lack of confidence in his memory, merely lighting a lamp positioned on a work table and giving Pickett a brief overview of which of the boxes and crates stacked haphazardly against the walls corresponded with what dates. Pickett thanked him in a manner that, he hoped, also served as a dismissal; he had no desire to conduct his search while at the same time fielding questions from a man clearly agog for further details about the act of vandalism that had brought Pickett to his door.

  The Dublin Gazette had been in print for more than a century, and its archive was correspondingly massive. Pickett, regarding the stacks of crates and boxes, was thankful he didn’t have to look beyond the last couple of weeks; even that abbreviated search was likely to take all day, and very possibly more. And in the meantime, Julia was—where? Enduring what? The clerk’s false assumptions had been almost amusing, in their way, but they had resurrected fears Pickett had been trying, with mixed success, to hold at bay from the moment he’d learned she had been taken.

  Still, he’d insisted that Thomas examine each issue thoroughly, regardless of the time such an examination required, and he refused to demand less of himself than he required of his valet. Heaving a sigh, he moved the crate containing the most recent issues to the table, drew up a stool, and began to read.

  It soon transpired that the Dublin Gazette was little more than a mouthpiece for its English counterpart. Its motto was “Published by Authority,” and it became clear that “authority,” in this case, meant the English government. Many, perhaps even most, of its articles had appeared a few days earlier in the London Gazette, and the few that were original seemed designed to subtly—or not so subtly—emphasize the subordinate status of its Irish readers. Reaching for yet another issue, Pickett doubted very much there would be any mention of desecrated graves at all, unless the event were offered as evidence of the inability of the Irish to govern themselves.

  And then, just when he was ready to give up the Dublin Gazette as a lost cause, he discovered what he was looking for. It was not a long article; in fact, it was not an article at all, but a letter to the editor along the lines of “young people these days,” in which the writer listed several complaints, beginning with garden-variety vandalism and progressing to shocking atrocities—including, as an example of the latter, the brief mention of an illegal exhumation conducted under cover of darkness and for no other purpose than the disfigurement of an unfortunate young woman’s earthly remains. The letter was attributed to one Gerald Reilly, resident of a place called Summerhill in County Meath.

  It wasn’t much to go on—in fact, it might refer to another disfigurement of another young woman entirely—but at the moment, it was all he had. Pickett glanced about to make sure he was alone in the room, then withdrew a penknife from the pocket of his coat and carefully cut the letter out of the larger page. He folded the letter in half, then folded it again and tucked it into his pocket along with the knife. After returning the stack of newspapers to the crate and the crate to the proper shelf, he climbed the stairs, thanked the clerk for his assistance and assured him that, yes, he believed he had found what he’d sought.

  Then he joined his three traveling companions at their appointed meeting place and informed them that they would be setting out at first light for County Meath.

  16

  In Which Julia Gathers Information

  and Bides Her Time

  Summerhill, when they reached it, proved to be a humble village whose only claims to distinction were the two stately homes in the vicinity: Summerhill House, the enormous Palladian edifice built for Lord Langford in the previous century, which crowned the summit of a hill overlooking the village; and, some few miles to the north, Dangan House, the childhood home of Sir Arthur Wellesley, recently appointed head of British forces in Portugal and, if Jamie were to be believed, a man for whom even greater achievements lay in store.

  By contrast, the house Pickett sought was a modest abode, one of a string of attached dwellings lining the street across from the church. A patch of bare earth in the churchyard suggested a recent burial—or, perhaps, a reburial. No wonder he took such an interest in a body being dug up, Pickett thought as he strode up the short walk to the cottage door. The exhumation took place practically on his doorstep.

  He was alone on this occasion, having pointed out to his companions, quite correctly, that the sight of no fewer than four Englishmen standing on his doorstep would not inspire any Irishman toward loquaciousness. And so, after inquiring at a public house where Mr. Gerald Reilly might be found, h
e had left Jamie, Carson, and Thomas refreshing themselves after the journey from the fruits of the pub’s cellars while he paid a call on the author of the Dublin Gazette’s letter.

  “Mr. Reilly?” he asked when the door was opened by an elderly man with thick white hair and blue eyes beneath bushy white eyebrows. In fact, he bore so marked a resemblance to Pickett’s magistrate, Mr. Colquhoun, that Pickett resolved to ask upon his return to Bow Street whether his mentor had any relatives in Ireland. “Mr. Gerald Reilly?”

  “Aye, that’s m’name, don’t wear it out.”

  It was not the most encouraging of welcomes, but having come this far, Pickett was not about to give up so easily.

  “You wrote a letter,” he said, fumbling in the inside pocket of his coat, “to the Gazette.”

  He had, at least, the satisfaction of seeing the scowl lift from those eyebrows. “Aye, that I did, I’ll not deny it. What of it?”

  Having found the rectangle of paper he’d cut from the Gazette, Pickett offered it for the man’s inspection. “You make mention of an ‘illegal exhumation conducted under cover of darkness and for no other purpose than the disfigurement of an unfortunate young woman’s earthly remains.’ ” By this time, Pickett had read and reread those lines so many times he could now recite them verbatim. He saw no reason to mention the fact that there was only one “m” in “exhumation.”

  Gerald Reilly’s gaze shifted from Pickett to some point over his shoulder—the naked patch of dirt in the churchyard, he suspected.

  “You’ve come about that, have you?” Reilly asked eagerly. “Mean to put a stop to it, I hope?”

  “Er, not exactly,” Pickett confessed, painfully aware that this admission might considerably hinder his cause. “I think I may know why it was done, if it’s the body I think it may be.”

  “Just how many of them do you think there are?”

  “Only the one, I hope. Can you tell me something about it—about her?”

  Reilly noticed Pickett’s self-correction, and nodded in approval. “Aye, you’ve got the right of it. She was once a living, breathing human being, and her body ought to be treated with respect, in honor of the person she used to be.”

  “And who was that?”

  “My sister’s girl. Died in childbirth, she did, and the babe with her.” Again his gaze shifted to fix on something beyond Pickett’s shoulder. “Didn’t waste any time in getting her body back underground, mind you, but every time I step out my door or look out my front window, I see the bare dirt where poor Moira was dug up, and think of her. It was like losing her all over again, them digging her up like that.”

  “In your letter, you mention disfigurement,” Pickett reminded him gently, trying to sound respectful and sympathetic while at the same time steering the conversation back to his own area of interest. “If you don’t mind—if you have no objection to—”

  Seeing his visitor floundering helplessly, Reilly took matters into his own hands. “What did they do to her, d’you mean? Well you may ask! Cut off one of her fingers, they did, the bastards!”

  Pickett’s heart began pounding to such an extent that he was surprised Mr. Reilly couldn’t see his chest twitching. “Cut off one of her—”

  “Aye, the little finger of her right hand. Mind, it would’ve been bad enough losing her to the resurrection men, but we could at least have taken some small comfort in knowing that a new medical discovery might have come of it. But this”—he made a vague gesture in the direction of the churchyard and the new grave—“why would a man do something like this?”

  “A prank, perhaps—” Pickett began.

  “A prank?” the Irishman echoed in disbelief. “D’you mean to tell me somebody thought this was funny?”

  “A warning, then. Maybe even a threat.” Or a taunt, he added mentally. A way of saying “I’ve got your wife and there’s not a bloody thing you can do about it.” Yes, Hetherington would certainly find that funny. But maybe, just maybe, it would be he who would have the last laugh. “Tell me, do you know of any estate hereabouts that—I’m afraid I don’t know the name, but it would have been confiscated by the Crown about fifty years ago, after the battle of Carrickfergus. The owner—”

  “Oh, you’re thinking of the old Lynch place. Fairacres, its name was, although it’s not looking so fair these days, or so they say.”

  “Can you tell me how to get there?”

  Something of Pickett’s eagerness must have shown in his face, for Reilly frowned. “Aye, but you won’t find anyone there. It’s stood empty for almost fifty years.”

  “I understand.” Pickett nodded in agreement, although he suspected it wasn’t nearly as empty as Reilly supposed. “I just—there are—reasons—I need to find the place.”

  The older man obliged by giving the necessary directions, all the while regarding Pickett warily, as if he suspected the poor fellow of having lost his wits. As well he might, the Irishman decided, if someone had been sending him dismembered fingers as some sort of joke.

  Pickett thanked Reilly for his help, adding his belated condolences for the man’s loss—although it was difficult to sound properly sober and sympathetic when everything in him wanted to sing and shout and laugh and dance and, finally, break down and sob from sheer relief.

  Julia was less than five miles away.

  And he was going to reclaim her.

  HAS IT BEEN THREE DAYS or four? Julia wondered as she stole a glance around the table at her dinner companions. The time they’d spent on the journey had been marked by differences in the various posting-houses where they had broken their journey at the end of every day, and Julia had done her best to keep count of these in order to form some idea of where they were taking her. But since they had reached their destination—which she knew must be somewhere in Ireland—the days had begun to run together in a blur, like a watercolor left out in the rain.

  She could not complain of the treatment she had received; she was afforded all the consideration that one might give an honored guest. And yet it was very clear that she was not to be allowed to leave the house. When on the very first day she had attempted an exploratory walk about the grounds for the purpose of determining a likely escape route—although she had offered, as a belated excuse, a desire to exercise her limbs after being shut up for so long in the carriage—Flynn had discovered her and escorted her back to the house, and at dinner that night her host had given her a gentle scold.

  “For you might have fallen, perhaps even twisted your ankle, and no one knowing where you were or what had happened to you,” he’d pointed out, as if he were a doting uncle and she a small and not particularly intelligent child. “If you want to go out, you have only to ask, and either Flynn here or I myself will escort you.”

  She’d found his solicitous manner nothing short of terrifying. The genial host and the man who hadn’t hesitated to shoot Bohannan in the back might have been two completely different people.

  While she could not bring herself to request Mr. Hetherington’s escort, she had on more than one occasion been so desperate to escape her prison that she’d asked Flynn to accompany her on a walk about the neglected grounds. One of these walks had taken them near the stable, and Flynn had been displeased to discover one of the wide double doors standing slightly ajar, swinging gently on its hinges in the breeze.

  “Stay right there,” Flynn instructed her. “I’ll be watchin’ you, in case you’ll be getting’ any ideas.” With this warning, he strode away toward the stables.

  Until that moment, Julia had not thought of the horses that had pulled the carriage. Were they trained to the saddle as well? Even if she were able to escape the house unseen, she had no habit or crop, and would no doubt be obliged to saddle her own hack, but these circumstances, though far from ideal, should not present any insurmountable obstacle; Papa had been determined that his daughters should be able to ride under any circumstances, even going so far as to put his little girls into the saddle astride and in their pantalets, deaf to
Mama’s shocked and horrified protests. No, no daughter of Sir Thaddeus Runyon would balk at making her escape bareback and wearing the narrowest skirts she owned, if that were her only option.

  But now, as Julia tried frantically to see what she could of the stable through the open door, she was disappointed to catch no glimpse of either horses or carriage. In fact, the stable—or at least that part of it that she could see—appeared to be empty except for a number of crates, barrels, and sacks, all piled haphazardly just inside the doors. And then she could see no more, for Flynn pushed first one door closed and then the other, shutting off her view before turning and making his way back to her.

  She would have loved to ask about the contents of the stores, but dared not betray any interest. And even if she did, he would probably fob her off by claiming they contained oats for the horses—an answer that might have made sense had it been September instead of July, when the fields contained sufficient grazing as to make such large quantities of fodder unnecessary—indeed, even undesirable, since any resident rats would have made inroads into the supply long before the horses had much need for it.

  And so she said nothing, but kept her eyes and ears open for any details that might give her escape, when she made it, a greater chance at success. In the meantime, an unexpected benefit of her supposed resignation to her captive state soon presented itself. For since she displayed no intention of attempting an escape, her dinner companions grew less careful in their speech than they had been on that first night.

  “I thought I’d be goin’ to the village in the mornin’,” Flynn told Hetherington. He sounded uncertain, as if tacitly asking for approval, and it occurred to Julia that he, in his own way, was just as frightened of the man as she was. “See about hirin’ a wagon and team to be deliverin’ the package.”