Death on the Holy Mountain lfp-7

by David Dickinson

  Johnny Fitzgerald found him at about a quarter to eight. He took one look at his friend and sprinted over to MacSwiggin’s to find a doctor. The local doctor, Padraig MacBride, was, as it happened, having a quiet drink with his friend the vet in the saloon bar. As MacBride knelt down to look at Powerscourt Johnny wandered off to find the bicycle, or the remains of the bicycle. He looked very solemn when he returned.

  ‘Well,’ said the doctor, ‘I think it’s not quite as bad as it looks, so it’s not. It’s lucky he didn’t hit that tree the moment he came off the bicycle. That might have killed him. As it is, being pulled along the undergrowth by the momentum isn’t pleasant but at least you won’t hit your head so hard.’ The doctor was checking Powerscourt’s pulse and peering at his head.

  ‘Is it staying at Butler’s Court you are, the pair of you?’ he said. ‘You look like the sort of people who stay at Butler’s Court.’

  ‘We are,’ Johnny Fitzgerald, not sure if he was saying yes to the first or the second proposition on offer.

  ‘Right then. If you could stop here with your friend a moment, I’ll go and borrow some kind of horse-drawn transport to get him up the road to the house. I want to get that forehead cleaned up and I doubt we could carry him, with that hill and all.’

  As Dr MacBride sped off towards MacSwiggin’s there was a low moan from the prostrate figure on the ground. Powerscourt managed to sit up, swearing violently.

  ‘Christ, my head hurts! Christ! Johnny, thank God it’s you. What happened? Did somebody hit me over the head?’

  ‘Francis, this is very important,’ said Johnny, leaning down and whispering. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? Your wits haven’t gone wandering, have they?’

  Powerscourt wriggled slightly to make himself more comfortable. ‘Wits present on parade,’ he said, wincing from the pain in his head.

  ‘Right, Francis, you must remember this, whatever else you remember. You fell off your bike and hit your head on a tree. It was an accident. Have you got that? You fell off the bike and hit your head on a tree.’

  ‘I fell off the bike,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I hit my head on a tree.’

  From the direction of the hotel they could hear voices raised in argument, then the sound of a horse’s hooves.

  ‘Quick, Johnny, tell me before they come. What really happened?’

  ‘You mustn’t tell a soul, least of all Lucy,’ said Fitzgerald urgently. ‘Somebody round here doesn’t like you very much, Francis. You’re running out of friends. Some bastard cut the brake cable on that bicycle. It could no more stop than it could take off.’

  ‘Here we are,’ said the doctor, sitting on top of a pony and trap driven by a youth who looked about twelve years old. ‘This is Seamus, driving here,’ said the doctor as they helped Powerscourt into the trap. ‘Cheeky young bugger wanted sixpence to take us up the hill. I said it was an act of Christian charity, helping a fellow Christian in his hour of need. He said you were Protestants so that didn’t count. I shall tell the Christian Brothers about him.’

  Seamus spat expertly into the side of the road and they set off up the hill.

  One hour later Powerscourt was sitting up in bed, sipping soup, his wife by his side. His head had been expertly bandaged by one of the parlour maids called Sinead who had won her nursing spurs bandaging the cut legs and bruised arms of the small boys of Butler’s Court. Powerscourt was the first grown-up she had ever dealt with and she was proud of her work. The doctor had departed, prodding his patient in various places and peering into his eyes before he left. He was to return the following morning.

  When she saw her husband being helped into the hall, the congealed blood on his forehead, the extreme pallor of his complexion, for one heart-stopping moment Lady Lucy thought he was going to die. Not again, she said to herself, please God, not again. She remembered the long vigils through the night, the weeping children sitting on her bed, when Powerscourt had been shot in one of his cases several years before, the certainty that he was going to pass away in front of her. He would drift from coma into death and she wouldn’t even know the moment to hold him in her arms.

  Johnny Fitzgerald had been quick to reassure her as they arrived. ‘Don’t worry, Lady Lucy,’ he had said, putting an arm round her, ‘it’s not like last time. He fell off his bike, the silly old sod, and hit his head on a tree.’

  ‘Dr MacBride,’ the medical man had introduced himself and offered further reassurance: ‘There is no cause for serious alarm, I believe. He’ll be right as rain in a couple of days.’

  ‘Francis,’ Lady Lucy said, holding his hand, ‘I’m so glad you’re going to be all right. I was so worried when they brought you in, I can’t tell you.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said her husband, ‘Maybe I just need some lessons in bicycle riding.’

  ‘I always said,’ Lady Lucy was firm on the point, ‘that Thomas was safer on a bicycle than you are. He concentrates, you see. Your mind is always wandering off, looking for murderers or playing imaginary cricket matches or whatever your mind does while the rest of you is in the saddle.’

  Powerscourt laughed and grimaced at the same time as a salvo of pain flowed through his head. ‘True, Lucy, very true. Maybe I shall get one of those motor cars, a great big one with a mighty horn.’

  ‘You could kill yourself more easily in one of those than you could on a bicycle,’ said Lady Lucy.

  The mood was subdued in Butler’s Court for the next couple of days. The news of the thefts from Ormonde House and Powerscourt’s injuries seemed to take their toll. Sylvia Butler looked particularly subdued. Her husband tried to raise spirits with games of whist in the drawing room after dinner. Where the air had been filled before with the melodies of Thomas Moore, it was now filled with the shouts of the card players which grew louder with the passing of the port. ‘You had the ace of spades, you bastard!’ ‘I didn’t think you had any more trumps, damn your eyes!’ ‘Who would have thought you had all three of the buggers, ace, king and queen! You’ve won again!’ Great Uncle Peter came down to play in his green dressing gown, raking in his tricks like a croupier in a casino. Powerscourt noticed that Young James refused all offers to play, saying quietly, ‘I never play cards, never.’ Powerscourt and Lady Lucy, playing together, took three shillings and sixpence off Richard Butler and his wife.

  ‘We’re going to have an entertainment soon,’ Butler announced as the cards were folded away one evening, ‘a sort of concert party. Young James is organizing the children to recite poems, sing songs, all that sort of thing. He was going to do it with those aged eight and upwards, but the six- and seven-year-olds ganged up on him and beat him up in a pillow fight. Now Young James says the little ones can’t remember their lines. He’s going to fire the starting pistol when they can.’

  Three days after his accident Powerscourt got what he wanted. There was a letter for him in a rather distinguished-looking envelope. He took Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald up to his room to read it.

  ‘Dear Lord Powerscourt,’ it began, ‘His Grace the Most Reverend Dr Healey acknowledges receipt of your letter. As you stress the urgency, His Grace has spared time for you at five o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. If that is not possible another appointment can be arranged the following day. We shall expect you on Tuesday unless we hear to the contrary. Yours, Fintan O’Shaughnessy, SJ, Secretary and Chaplain to the Archbishop.’ Johnny Fitzgerald disappeared for a moment or two and then returned.

  ‘By God, Lucy, I’d better get my skates on,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It’s Tuesday today. Where is Tuam, for Christ’s sake? I’ve no idea. I’ve got a feeling it’s up towards Sligo some place.’

  ‘It’s not up, Francis, it’s down,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, grinning at Lady Lucy. ‘Down towards Galway, the other direction entirely. I’m coming with you, Francis, to make sure you get on the right train. We don’t want you ending up in Bundoran or Ballina, for God’s sake. I’ve just been to look up the details of the trains. There’s plenty of time but we nee
d to get moving. I’ll check out the hostelries while you’re down on your knees with the Archbish, confessing your sins or being accepted into the true faith. Maybe they’ve got a Cathedral Arms or the Bishop’s Mitre down there where a chap could quench his thirst. I’ve always wanted to have a drink in a pub called The Cathedral Arms. It’ll make a change from the saloon in MacSwiggin’s.’

  Lady Lucy sat on the steps in front of Butler’s Court and watched her men being driven off to the station. Why, she wondered, was Johnny Fitzgerald going with Francis today? He wouldn’t normally accompany him on a mission to an archbishop. Francis might be pretty hopeless about directions and that sort of thing, but even he could make his way on to a train. He’d been managing that for years now. Was Francis in some sort of danger? Even going to an archbishop, for goodness sake? Was Johnny going as some sort of bodyguard? Going to keep Francis safe? Then another terrible thought struck her and refused to go away. That accident on the bicycle, was it really an accident? Lady Lucy wasn’t an expert on bicycles but she was sure there must be ways you could tamper with the things, loosening the saddle so the rider would fall off or unscrewing the bolts that held the wheels to the frame. Maybe you could do something with the brakes, she just wasn’t sure. Throughout the morning she tried to put these fears out of her mind but they refused to go away. By lunchtime she knew that the knot was back, the knot in her stomach, the knot she had lived with for years, the knot she thought had gone away, the knot of anxiety and terror that her beloved might be in danger and might never come back from his journeys.

  Father Fintan O’Shaughnessy, SJ, the Archbishop’s Chaplain, was one of those irritating priests who don’t walk. They glide. They shimmer, Powerscourt thought, as if the Holy Ghost has placed a slim buffer between them and the ground that ordinary mortals walk on. Father Fintan was definitely shimmering this afternoon as he led Powerscourt down a long corridor lined with Irish landscapes and religious paintings which led to the Archbishop’s study.

  The Most Reverend Dr John Healey was a great bullock of a man with grey hair, about six feet four with broad shoulders. One of his more irreverent curates once said that he looked like a cattle dealer from Mullingar. Certainly, Powerscourt felt, Dr Healey would be in the vanguard of his flock, an onward Christian soldier marching as to war. Powerscourt bowed slightly and shook Dr Healey’s hand. There was a reproduction of a Renaissance crucifixion on the wall behind his desk. More Irish landscapes lined the walls. Perhaps, Powerscourt thought, he liked collecting paintings.

  ‘Lord Powerscourt, welcome to Tuam,’ he boomed as if speaking to some mighty congregation. ‘Have you been here before?’ He waved his visitor to the chair opposite his own.

  ‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure,’ Powerscourt replied.

  ‘Well, you must look round before you go, if you have time. A fine little town.’ The Archbishop looked closely at Powerscourt’s face as if sin or salvation could be discerned there by people like archbishops who knew what they were looking for.

  ‘There’s a definite likeness, you know,’ he said with a smile. ‘I met your father years ago now when I was at Maynooth, at the college there. He was a fine man, your father. You remind me of him.’

  Powerscourt smiled. Maynooth, he remembered, was the principal seminary and Catholic college in Ireland. His father, a man with a deep interest in human nature, had collected parsons and priests and padres of every description. He always said he enjoyed their company, whatever their particular faith might be. Maybe a younger Dr Healey had been one of those.

  ‘But come, Lord Powerscourt,’ the Archbishop opened his hands out in front of him, ‘to business. You must tell me of your concerns.’

  Powerscourt told him everything. He told him about the stolen paintings and the letters that had accompanied them. He explained that he did not know the precise content of the letters, but said they were blackmail letters and that they contained a terrible threat if the contents were revealed to a third party. He mentioned the fury of Dennis Ormonde of Ormonde House and his threat to import one hundred Orangemen, possibly more, to guard the houses of the gentry of the west.

  The Archbishop had been taking notes until the mention of the Orangemen. Then his jaw dropped slightly and he stared at Powerscourt.

  ‘One hundred Orangemen,’ he boomed once more, ‘one hundred of them! God bless my soul!’ His hands began stroking the great silver crucifix that hung from his neck. ‘I’ll come back to them in a moment if I may, Lord Powerscourt. Let me try to make clear in my mind the story so far, as it were. Some twenty portraits, all of them male, all of them the predecessors of these great landlords, have been stolen, and some Old Masters. Blackmail notes have been dispatched demanding we know not what. Do you know, Lord Powerscourt, if any of these blackmail threats have been met? Have the Butlers or the Moores paid up?’

  ‘I wish I knew the answer, Your Grace. I think not. There is an air of desperation abroad in all these houses now, I think. There may be a deadline for payment. Again, I do not know. I suspect they are waiting for the threats at the end of the letters to be carried out. And they are hoping against hope that the thieves will be caught before they can carry out their threats.’

  ‘These Orangemen now,’ the Archbishop was taking notes again, ‘you said they are, for the moment, a threat rather than a reality. Is that so? And, if so, under what circumstances will they come?’

  ‘My apologies, Your Grace, I should have made myself clearer. Ormonde has sent to Dublin Castle for an inspector and a colleague from the Special Branch, or the Intelligence Department to come and investigate the thefts. Ormonde is giving them a week to find the perpetrators. If they fail, the Orangemen and their bands will set forth from Enniskillen. They could be here in a day. I believe Ormonde intends to charter a special train to bring them down.’

  ‘Just one point, Lord Powerscourt, if I may, you’re not serious when you talk of bands? There are all kinds of things I can put up with as a proper Christian pilgrim but Orange bands are not one of them. Please tell me you jest here.’

  ‘I was speaking metaphorically, Your Grace, I have no idea if they propose to bring a band or not. But if you think about their activities, those Orangemen are scarcely able to move about in any numbers in Belfast and their other strongholds without a band. It would seem to be part of the Orange mind.’

  ‘You’re right, Lord Powerscourt,’ said the Archbishop sadly, ‘they are hardly capable of leaving their front doors without those terrible Lambeg drums. Maybe they will bring a band. God save Ireland.’

  The Archbishop frowned. His hands moved faster round his crucifix now.

  ‘By my calculations, Your Grace, these Dublin Castle men should have arrived three days ago. There are four days left.’

  ‘I can see your concerns, Lord Powerscourt. You were certainly right to come to me. Tell me, do you have particular fears or is it just the general situation that concerns you? And do you envisage any particular role for the Church in these events?’

  Powerscourt paused for a moment. ‘I think,’ he began, ‘that the situation becomes so combustible with the arrival of the Orangemen that anything might happen. But let me try out, if I may, some possibilities. Your Grace will, no doubt, be able to think of more. Look at it from the beginning. Suppose those Orangemen arrive in Westport station in their special train. At least they won’t have had to share their carriages with anybody else. The most logical way for them to reach Ormonde House is to walk or march – even Dennis Ormonde hasn’t enough carriages to carry a hundred of them there. Suppose they do bring a band and march out down the Mall in Westport towards the Louisburg road. Do you think they would reach the end of the town without bricks or bottles being thrown at them? I doubt it. Then suppose they arrive in Ormonde House and are put up in one of those great barns and outhouses out the back. How long before the buildings go up in flames? Or suppose these Orangemen go out drinking at one of those pubs like Campbell’s underneath Croagh Patrick. They’re nearly as
fond of drinking as they are of marching. How long before a fight or a brawl breaks out and spreads? How long before the Protestant houses with the paintings guarded by the Orangemen are torched? Or boycotted? Trouble could come in any one of a number of ways, Your Grace.’