The Dead of Achill Island

by The Dead of Achill Island (retail) (epub)

  Declan guided the conversation at lunch. He even selected our food, insisting that we must try the lamb stew, the special of the day. I had had plenty of lamb already; what with all the sheep on the island, it’s a staple. I would have preferred a sandwich, but I felt obligated to join in the group order. I could see what Maggie meant when she called him controlling. Our talk ranged from eating on Achill (he approved of only two restaurants, this being one of them), to Irish theater (he spoke familiarly about current playwrights, claiming several as friends). When Toby mentioned he owned an antiques gallery, Declan gave instructions on which dealers he should visit in Westport and Castlebar.

  When the topic turned to art, I thought I would have a chance to weigh in, but even here Declan held forth, mocking recent trends in the art market. He was scathing on the subject of “installations,” which he called compendiums of junk. “A painter should paint,” he proclaimed. “Installations are for plumbers.” I had heard the line before. I confessed to Toby later that I felt like a student given the honor of dining with the eminent guest lecturer. Declan was proud that his Dublin gallery specialized in more traditional nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Irish painting. And that brought us to the events of the past week. When I mentioned the Paul Henry landscape that Uncle Bert had acquired to promote his tourist project, Declan’s smooth urbanity gave way.

  “Don’t I know all about it?” he said. “I was desperate to get that painting, but he outbid me for it at Whyte’s.” Whyte’s was the premier auction house in Dublin. Declan cleared his throat, a nervous tic. “I know he was your uncle, and I’m sorry for your family’s trouble. But this isn’t the first time something like that’s happened. These rich Yanks come over with wads of money and drive up the prices of Irish paintings so we can’t afford them anymore ourselves. They snap them up as ethnic badges to show off their Irish heritage. They have no real feeling for art. As a result, dealers like me have a hard time finding local inventory. But this time, I wanted that painting for myself.”

  “How much did it go for?” asked Maggie.

  “Too much. The hammer price was two hundred thousand euros, not including the buyer’s premium. I can’t compete with that.”

  “Isn’t that more than Paul Henry’s work usually sells for?” asked Maggie.

  “It used to be.” Declan sighed. “A couple of his works recently sold for even more, one for half a million.”

  “What was it about that particular painting?” I asked. “My uncle’s partner showed me a photo of it on his cell phone. It looks like a strong piece, but Henry painted other scenes quite like it, didn’t he?”

  “Similar, yes, but not identical. It’s a great example of his ability to modulate tones and harmonize colors, painted two years after he arrived on Achill. And it’s in pristine condition. But, more than that, it’s a scene that has special meaning for me. It’s the view from the house on Achill that my parents owned and where we spent our summers. I grew up with that view.”

  “Is that the place I’m staying at now?” asked Maggie.

  “No, my parents’ house burned down years ago. It was near Dooagh. That’s why that painting means so much to me. I’d kill to have it.” He caught himself, adding hastily: “I don’t mean that literally, of course. Bad choice of words under the circumstances. Sorry.”

  How to reply to that? I didn’t.

  “Where’s the painting now?” asked Maggie.

  “It’s at Frank Hickey’s house,” said Toby. “He’s invited us to see it.”

  “Hmm. I wonder if he’ll put it up for sale again,” mused Declan.

  “I don’t think so,” I replied. “He’s planning to use the painting to advertise the new hotel and the steam railway.”

  “That remains to be seen,” said Declan. “Word has it that the project was running into money problems well before your uncle was found dead. In fact, they say the partners had a falling out. If I were the guards, I’d be looking into that.”

  “There are plenty of people on Achill who resented Nora’s uncle,” Maggie pointed out.

  “That’s true, and I’m one of them,” admitted Declan. “But now the project is Frank Hickey’s to pursue or to give up. The whole island’s wondering what he’ll do.”

  For a while, we ate in silence. The lamb stew was savory, and the wine that Declan had ordered to go with it was a perfect match for the dish, but grim talk makes a poor meal.

  “If I could change the subject,” Toby began, addressing Declan with a bit of mischief in his eyes, “Maggie tells us—” But he was interrupted by a warning kick under the table, which resulted in a midsentence pivot. I knew what he was up to. He was dying to ask about the Achill swingers’ club. Declan waited for Toby to continue.

  “Uh, Maggie tells us we’ve been lucky with the weather so far. Only morning showers,” Toby finished lamely.

  Declan sensed he was missing the subtext and turned to Maggie for enlightenment. She gave the slightest of shrugs. “That’s so,” he agreed. “Achill’s been on its good behavior, but watch out, she’s as changeable as our woman here.” He turned a hand toward Maggie, without looking at her. “One day she’s warm, the next day she’s cold.”

  “Get on with you,” said Maggie dismissively.

  Toby caught my eye, looking miffed. He would find a way to wheedle the information he wanted from Maggie’s ex, one way or another. For now, though, he beckoned for the bill.

  After lunch we headed for the market in Achill Sound to pick up provisions for supper. Toby and I do the cooking together. I defer to his superior skills, which means that he plans the menu (after all, a chef is inspired when he’s cooking what he likes), does most of the grocery shopping (he doesn’t trust anyone else to pick the best produce), and sets the strategy (cooking techniques, order of preparation). I make suggestions, follow orders, solve problems, and serve. That evening we put the system to work at Mom and Dad’s cottage and produced a meal that contented everyone: broiled salmon with caper-butter sauce, pureed peas, and a salad of chopped celery and raisins. Nobody had to know that the salmon and peas started frozen or that the salad had no lettuce because the greens at the grocers were brown. We topped it all off with ginger cake made by the grocer’s wife.

  The atmosphere at dinner was tense, without much talking. I summarized our lunch with Maggie and Declan, but my account was incomplete. If we weren’t going to talk about Uncle Bert’s death, we certainly weren’t going to talk about Maggie’s sex life.

  Over dessert, Mom cracked the shell. “We were with Laura and Emily this afternoon.”

  “Oh?” said Angie. “Was there a wake I didn’t know about?”

  “You’ll know if there’s a wake,” Dad said. “The body hasn’t been released. Anyhow, the wake will be in Wellesley.”

  “That makes sense,” Angie said. “That’s where their friends are, and Grammy.” As if choreographed, we all put our forks down. Grammy. We looked at Dad, and he knew what we were thinking.

  “We called Grammy, from Laura’s. It was tough.”

  “We’ll call too,” I promised Dad. Her family needs to get home to her, I thought. And yet we couldn’t, not till the investigators were finished with us.

  Dad pushed away his half-eaten cake.

  Angie left to join Bobby Colman at his band rehearsal, and Mom asked me to do the dishes with her so Toby and Dad could play chess in the other room. I hoped that Mom wanted to talk, over the suds.

  As we cleared the table, Mom took the lead. “I want to ask you about Angie,” she said. “What’s going on with this Bobby?”

  “I think they’re flirting with each other.” That was all I knew for sure.

  “It’s gone beyond that,” Mom announced. She kept me waiting for explanation as she leaned over to put detergent in the dishwasher. Using gestures to tell me to rinse the dishes and hand them to her, she explained, “Our little Angie spent the night out. We didn’t see her till we got back from Laura’s.” There was amusement in Mom’s voice,
not the worry I had expected.

  Now, Mom’s not prudish, but she’s always been protective of Angie, so I was a little confused. “You’re not concerned, then?” I asked.

  “Maybe, maybe not. This could be a good thing. Angie’s not cut out for the religious life. Better she should realize it herself than be kicked out later.” We were getting into a quick rhythm with our dishes assembly line, even as we discussed a hot topic.

  “Kicked out? Where do you get that idea?” I asked.

  “You said yourself, last summer—her mother superior watched Angie fall in love with that French policeman. She’s only stringing Angie along, waiting till she comes to her senses.”

  “Her senses seem to be the problem, actually.” We laughed, and I relaxed with Mom for the first time since the murder.

  “What do you think of this new boyfriend?” Mom asked. “Worth leaving the convent for?”

  I had to ponder that. At last I said, “Worth something. He seems like a good person, but that’s just a first impression.”

  “I wouldn’t want her to get her heart broken again,” Mom said, more seriously.

  “They both have to know it’s a summer romance. We’ll be gone as soon as we’re allowed. But you’re right. Even a summer romance should tell Angie she’ll never be ready for celibacy.”

  “Never,” Mom said quietly. “She’s never going to take those vows, and she never should.” Then, in a confidential tone, she said, “Why don’t you get some time alone with her tomorrow? Maybe you can get her to see the light.”

  “I don’t know, Mom. She hasn’t asked my opinion.”

  “You’re the only one she’ll listen to now. Dad and I have said all we can. You have to help us.”

  “It’s not my place. I’m her sister. I’ve got to be on her side, whatever she wants.” The minute I said it, I knew I had laid bait for a fight.

  “You think I’m not on her side? I’m her mother. I’ve been on her side every day of her life.”

  “I know that.”

  “No, you don’t know. You’ve been away from home too long. You didn’t watch her growing up, too beautiful and sweet to be safe in this world. It’s been a struggle, watching over her and protecting her from being taken advantage of. It’s your turn to help us, with this convent nonsense.”

  I recognized the impulse to steer Angie away from trouble; I’ve felt it myself, many times, but I’ve been trying to step back and let Angie be herself. She doesn’t need family supervision anymore; in fact, she has a right to resent it.

  “Angie’s future will take care of itself,” I asserted, with more confidence than I felt. “We’ve got our own troubles to deal with—Uncle Bert’s murder. That’s what we should be talking about.”

  Mom slammed the bottom rack of the dishwasher back, and it jammed. “Uncle Bert! It’s still always about him.” She jerked the rack back and forth till it fell into its groove with a force that made the dishes clank. “There’s no point in talking about something we know nothing about,” she said. “The police will have to look to the locals.” She dried her hands on the dish towel and put it down. “If you ask me, they won’t find out who did it. Every man and his brother hates Bert—here, at home, wherever. By now they probably have a dozen suspects. They won’t need to bother about us.”

  I don’t know if she saw my skeptical look, but she backed away from the sink and said, “Would you finish up here? I’m going to our room to write Grammy a letter.” She walked to the bedroom door but stopped to call back, “We’ll see you at supper tomorrow. Dad and I need some time to ourselves.”

  Mom didn’t come out of her room, even when Toby and I called good-bye.

  9

  IN THE MORNING, Inspector O’Donnell called and asked if I would meet him at the garda station in Achill Sound. He said he had “just a few additional questions” about my statement, and it shouldn’t take long. The station was in a small, yellow house just before the bridge to the causeway. When I arrived, Garda Mullen greeted me and offered me a cup of tea. He had to climb a flight of creaky wooden stairs to fetch it. “I don’t want to put you to the trouble,” I said, but he waved me off. The inspector was waiting in the main sitting room on the ground floor, leaning back on two legs of a cane-backed chair.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  “Not at all. I’m happy if I can be of help.”

  “Then I’ll get right to the point.” The inspector brought his chair back to its upright position. “I want to ask you again about your family and your uncle. There wasn’t much love lost between your family and Bertram Barnes. Am I correct?”

  I tried to stay composed. “Actually, my father was quite fond of his brother.”

  “Yes, but I’ve been told that your mother and your uncle didn’t get on. Is that the case?”

  It was best to tell the truth—but not necessarily all of it. “Uncle Bert was not my mother’s favorite person, if that’s what you’re asking.” I stopped there. Don’t say more than you have to. Be direct. Answer the question.

  The inspector jotted a note on his pad. “What reservations did your mother have about your uncle?”

  I glanced at my face in a small mirror opposite me on the wall. I looked strained. “I think she felt that he didn’t treat my father as well as he should have. Lots of families have those kinds of issues.”

  “I understand there was a public quarrel between your mother and your uncle at a family celebration in Galway just before you arrived on Achill. Can you tell me what that was about?”

  I wondered if this all came from Laura and Emily or if he had been talking to people in Galway. I took a slow breath to keep myself calm. “There’s been a disagreement about what will happen to the family home when my grandmother dies. It’s more about fairness than about money. That’s what they were arguing about. I wouldn’t make too much of it.”

  “According to witnesses, your mother was quite angry.” The inspector flipped a few pages on his pad and read from one of them. “She was heard to say, ‘If you get that house, I hope you die in it.’ Is that correct?”

  So the inspector’s team had been talking to the guests at the Jubilee. “I didn’t hear the whole argument,” I said. “But families quarrel all the time and people get angry. Sometimes they say things they don’t mean literally. I’m sure you know that, Inspector.”

  “Even so, when one of the parties to a quarrel turns up dead two days later, it raises questions. Particularly if the circumstances suggest a crime of passion rather than a premeditated attack.”

  “I’m not sure I follow you.”

  “Someone who planned in advance to kill your uncle—say someone who wanted to stop the railway project—would have brought a weapon to the scene. But whoever killed him used a rock, picked one up and struck him, perhaps on a moment’s impulse. That suggests a personal rather than a political motive.”

  Now I was really worried. O’Donnell was implying that my mother had a motive to murder Uncle Bert, a passionate anger against him, and the means, a simple rock. The one element missing from the frame was opportunity, but she may have had the opportunity too. What would happen if Mom’s alibi came into doubt? What evidence might the inspector have? Could they get fingerprints from a rock? Had the tech team come up with anything? There was the button, of course, but Toby and I were the only ones who knew about that. So far.

  O’Donnell was waiting for me to reply. “I don’t think my mother or anyone else in our family had anything to do with what happened to my uncle. Do you have any evidence that suggests they did?”

  The inspector folded his hands in his lap. “The investigation is ongoing. I’m simply considering the possibilities.”

  “Maybe you should concentrate on the threats made against my uncle by people on the island. That’s where you’ll find the answers.”

  “So you’ve said. I can assure you we are following all leads.” He tilted his chair back again.

  I waited for him to continue, but he said nothing
more. “Is there anything else?” I asked.

  “Just that for now.”

  “Then may I go?”

  “Yes. We’ll talk again.”

  Toby was waiting on a bench outside the cottage when I got back. “How’d it go?” he asked.

  I gave him an account. “I’m worried, Toby. It doesn’t look good for Mom.”

  There was still a long afternoon ahead of us. I had made a walking date with Angie to see one of the island’s megalithic tombs and hoped that would take my mind off the investigation. Being with Angie always boosts my mood. Toby decided to hunt for antiques for his shop back home.

  I had found a paperback on the island’s archaeology and folklore and was deep into a chapter on megalithic tombs when Angie came to the door.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “I’m ready, but I wasn’t sure if you’d be coming. I thought you might be off with your music man,” I said.

  “He’s got a day job,” she retorted. “‘Sheep, shearing, and shite,’ he calls it.” Her dreamy smile didn’t go with the earthy terms for Bobby’s work. “So tell me, Professor, what’s this megalith we’re going to?”

  I did my best to be upbeat. “It’s a prehistoric monument. ‘Megalith’ just means ‘huge stone.’ Achill has more of them than anywhere else in Ireland, and we have one of the best practically on our doorstep. You’re going to love it. Think warlords and wizards and human sacrifice. Well, not really. Human sacrifice was a Mayan thing. It should be impressive, though.”

  “How old is this megalith supposed to be?”

  “They say it goes back five thousand years, when people first settled along the side of the mountain. They planted fields to the east of the village, and beyond the fields they buried their dead. And they built these tombs out of gigantic stones.”