The Death of an Irish Politician

by Bartholomew Gill

  “Did you ever hear him speak of a woman?”

  “As I told you yesterday, I didn’t speak to the man beyond the business of collecting our dock fees.”

  “Did he claim an Irish address?”

  “He didn’t claim any address.”

  “Did you ever see him talk to anybody?”

  “If I did, I took no notice.”

  “How long was he here?”

  “Regrettably, two full months and running.” Hubbard pointed toward Virelay, where a group of people on the dock were examining the bloody sails and afterdeck.

  At that moment, Billy Martin passed, saying, “Good morning, sorr. I mean you, Inspector, of course.”

  Hubbard said, “I thought I told you to clean up that mess or ferry that blasted barge out to a mooring where it will be less of a sideshow.”

  “By your leave?” Martin asked McGarr, and then explained to Hubbard, “The law is the law, sir. This morning’s Independent says foul play is not yet ruled out in the investigation of Mr. Ovens’ injuries.” A tightly rolled newspaper stuck from Martin’s back pocket.

  “Not just yet, please, Billy. I’d like to take another look.” McGarr felt he had missed something yesterday and perhaps on the boat. The afternoon had been too balmy, or the feeling in his Dublin Castle office too relaxed, or the prospect of a brief, routine investigation on Killiney Bay followed by an excursion to the Khyber Pass so inviting that McGarr hadn’t gathered every essential detail. Maybe the feeling was just the unease his present garb gave him, or maybe the fact that the eccentric Ovens had now become something of an enigma about whom he desired to learn more. In any case, he had ruled out the possibility that the injury was accidental. The doctor’s opinion coupled with the mystery of the woman who had paid Ovens’ yard bill had set McGarr’s suspicions on edge. Something was not quite right here at the scene of the attack, and McGarr knew not what.

  As McGarr was ambling off toward the boat, the steward said, “I’m Horace C. K. Hubbard, Mrs. McGarr. Very nice to meet you even under such strained circumstances.” He meant McGarr’s presence and not the injury that had befallen Ovens.

  The inspector turned suddenly and started back on Hubbard. “Let me give you an earful, bucko. A felony has been committed here and twenty-eight years of experience dealing with gobshites like you tells me you’re a part of it. Don’t leave the country. I’ve already rescinded your traveling privileges by ordinary transport. Extradition requests to your country are quite routine these days.”

  “Is that a threat? Let me remind you that I am as much an Irishman as you.”

  “You are like hell! And if a learned opinion can be considered a threat, then you’ve been threatened.”

  But aboard the Virelay, McGarr could find nothing new. He asked Billy Martin, as he helped the old man furl the blood-stained mainsail, “Where did Hubbard come from when you found Ovens? From the dock, or maybe the cabin?”

  “To tell you the truth, he could have come from Mars, for all I know. I was so busy trying to keep the bugger’s head out of the water that the first I knew of Hubbard he was at my side reaching for Ovens’ shoulders. By the way, how is the poor fellow?”

  “Is Hubbard married?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Girl?”

  “I think so, although the woman I saw him with could be his sister.”

  “Pretty?”

  “I really didn’t notice, but judging from the man himself, if it’s his sister, I wouldn’t think so.”

  Noreen, after rummaging through the starboard lockers of Virelay, speculated that Ovens’ women were one and the same. Whoever she was, she had a spectacular figure and dressed well.

  By the time they reached the level at which McGarr judged the flash of the high-powered lens to have originated, the day was torrid. McGarr seized upon this excuse to doff the hated sweater. He really hadn’t wanted to continue. An iced drink at the Khyber Pass lounge bar was all he required, and he was regretting having popped off at Hubbard. Noreen urged him on, saying that the view of Killiney Bay from the hill was so spectacular that at any moment some one person was usually scanning the shore with glasses. She was right, and it would be better to contact any such person as soon after the incident as possible.

  Noreen took the houses on the high side of the road, McGarr those on the low. He gave her his shield while he kept his identity card.

  The first house McGarr approached had a spiked iron fence and a Doberman guard dog with fangs that arced into its mouth like those of a shark. McGarr rang the bell at the gate, but nobody answered and each peal only set off a cascade of savage barking and growling from the dog. In three spots the dog had been prevented from tunneling under the fence by strands of barbed wire. Judiciously McGarr moved on.

  In the doorway of the second house, a young mother with one child in her arms, two others clutching her skirts, told him she had so much to do she seldom looked at the bay, much less through high-powered glasses. In the next house, a retired barrister, whom McGarr remembered vaguely from his early days with the Garda, now had cataracts. An Irish-American industrialist and a London-based architect owned the next properties and neither had been in the country yesterday, so said the young man who cared for their gardens. He had gone fishing and wondered if McGarr liked whiting.

  While the gardener wrapped the five thin hake in a newspaper at the back of his open van, McGarr glanced out to sea. Banks of purple clouds with towering buff thunderheads fringed the green water and whitecaps to the north. A wet wind had begun to rustle the foliage at roadside. The contrast between the still-brilliant sun on shore and the glowering horizon was startling.

  The two houses following were similarly unavailing. One did have a telescope on the porch, but the woman assured the inspector it was an antique that was never used. The second woman was on the telephone. When McGarr climbed the walkway, opened the gate between two clumps of rounded hedges, the breeze running before the approaching storm was blustery, and through it he thought he heard Noreen call his name. Looking down the road he couldn’t see her, but again he heard her call.

  She was at least a hundred yards above the road, standing near a small white cottage that had been tucked under a ledge of the hill. By the time he reached the narrow lawn, the rain had begun to fall in thick drops that splatted on the flagstone walkway and the slate roof of the cottage. A view of Killiney Bay as fine as that which the Khyber Pass itself enjoyed now presented itself to them. From a central bolt of lightning, seven jagged fingers crimped seaward, a crackling rip of thunder following. They could see the wall of rain rushing over the waves shoreward. Below them on the docks of the Killiney Yacht Club, boat hatches were being rammed shut and several people had begun sprinting toward the clubhouse.

  Noreen explained, as they stepped into the cottage, “Mr. Moran’s a retired sea captain.”

  “Tugboats!” a voice from the kitchen corrected.

  Two bay windows opened the room to the horizon, sea and sky. A large pair of binoculars sat on a tripod. McGarr put his eyes to the lenses and looked right onto the porch of the yacht club as though he were drinking tea and complaining about the rotten change in the weather among the members. McGarr straightened up.

  Here in the cottage a turf fire sputtered in the hearth, and the mantel held a collection of ships in bottles. McGarr could hear the hiss of gas, the pop of a match, and then the sound of tap water plashing into a pot. McGarr noticed the tiles of the room were marked by rubber tires.

  A wheelchair appeared in the open kitchen door. It contained an old man with a thick, powerful torso and a grey blanket draped over thin legs. He wore a wool shirt, pale blue. His face was clean-shaven and as smooth as that of a younger man. His shock of white hair had been combed precisely over one temple, the hair part-perfect. He held out his hand. “Walter Moran.”

  “Peter McGarr.”

  “Your wife tells me you’re from the Castle.”

  “Inspector of detectives.”

 
“Chief inspector,” Noreen corrected, proudly.

  “I offered Noreen tea. Would you care for something stronger?”

  “That I would.”

  Moran pulled himself over to a low cabinet near one of the windows, and, playing one wheel against the other, swiveled neatly in front of the door. As he reached below and extracted a bottle of sour-mash whiskey, a gust of wind pushed the heavy rain against the glass and blurred the storm scene outside. Thunder sounded in the distance. He placed two tumblers with thick bases on his lap and returned to the hearthside. “Please sit down.” He indicated the armchairs to either side, one of which contained a dozing cat. “Just put Jack out. He gets to thinking he’s not feline, our living here alone.” He poured two stiff drinks and handed one to McGarr. The flame drummed on the bottom of the kettle. “You’re here about the trouble at the club yesterday, your wife tells me.”

  “Yes. I see your glasses are trained on the porch.”

  “I’m a member of the club,” Moran explained in an accent McGarr assessed as only slightly Irish, that of a man who had passed most of his life out of the country. Every available space on the interior wall was covered with watercolors of tugs that bore the Moran name or framed photographs of tugboat scenes. “But I don’t want to be a bother all the time, so I attend most functions incognito, so to speak.”

  “Yesterday, around five-fifteen in the afternoon, were you on the glasses?”

  “Sliance!” Moran raised the tumbler, then tossed off the entire drink. He then said, “A little before and a little after.”

  “Good luck.” McGarr drank his down. “It’s the little after that that interests me.”

  Pouring two more drinks, Moran said, “There I can’t help you much. I just glanced down and saw the three of them talking near the gate to the slip. Later, when I put my eyes to the glasses, Ovens was in the water, Martin was scrambling around the deck of the boat.”

  “In any way did the accident appear unusual?”

  “I didn’t see it happen, mind you, but from the first Martin was looking for the boat hook and Hubbard was running toward the boat.”

  “It was you who called in the report, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. I also sounded this siren.” Moran pointed to a switch on the wall near the chair in which Noreen had been sitting. “I won’t do so now, since I wouldn’t want to be accused of crying wolf. Because I spend so much of my time on the glasses, the Killiney search-and-rescue squad has given me the dubious privilege of sounding this horn from time to time. My neighbors, needless to say, were annoyed. But…”

  McGarr sipped from the second glass. He wondered why neither Hubbard nor Martin had told him about the siren. It could be that in the confusion they hadn’t heard the thing; it could be, however, that either or both of them did not want McGarr to talk to Moran. “How do you know his name?”

  “I’ve sailed with the man and his misfortune is common knowledge.” Moran pointed to the morning paper that lay on the table between them. “He was and, I hope, still is…” his voice trailed off wistfully as he glanced out at the storm that was frothing the waves of the bay, “a sailor of no mean ability.”

  “I was told he never sailed the Virelay from the day he put in at the yacht club,” Noreen said from the kitchen.

  “Not on Virelay. What he wasn’t doing with that vessel was a crime for which at times I couldn’t forgive him. Then, at others, say race week this year, I could forgive him high treason.”

  McGarr raised an eyebrow.

  “He stole their thunder, all those fair-weather skippers! Halfway through the race a storm blew up like now. Some of the others reefed, doused sail, and motored, some even heaved sea anchors, but every last one of them but Ovens knuckled under. The boats were one-tonners, fiber glass, tender, light-air craft. Ovens set a new course record.

  “Then there was the race last Sunday right here in the bay. Internationals, they were manning. That’s the class the youngsters here learn on, all those sailing dinghies you can see moored on the far side of the club. Ovens played a long shot, cutting the final marker close with his boom to starboard on the off chance the other boats, which were running a wind two points off the port quarter, couldn’t jibe and beat him to the can. They had right-of-way, but he stole their air, headed up, and put a couple hundred feet between him and the next contender. Afterwards—complaints. They called him a ringer. One member disclosed that Ovens had crewed aboard Intrepid. They pissed, they moaned. It was frightful, but he showed them what sailing is all about and in their waters, too. I loved every moment of it.

  “Ovens and I, you see,” Moran confided, pulling his wallet from his shirt pocket, “are the only two real seamen at the club.” He handed his merchant mariner’s master’s license to McGarr. “Ovens has one also. The rest of them talk like Salty Brine and sail about as well as a kid with a toy boat in Phoenix Park pond.”

  “Hubbard would have us believe the man had no friends.”

  “I’m not exactly a friend, but you certainly could call me an admirer. There are two sorts of seamen, you see.” Moran mused into the whiskey tumbler. “Gabbers like me, and loners like Ovens. And then there’s his girl.”

  Noreen appeared in the kitchen door.

  McGarr put down his glass.

  “She crewed for him race week, although, if the truth were known, I’d bet the boat was hers. In little ways some people give away their origins. She has a smile. It’s permanent, as though there’s some little secret she knows that none of the rest of us mere mortals can.”

  Noreen said, “That she was born with a fortune which would make a Croesus gag with envy, no doubt.” She pushed a tea cart into the room.

  “Perhaps,” said Moran. “But apart from that she seems pleasant enough in her own way. Her name is Lea. The last I don’t know. I remained in the galley the entire voyage.”

  “Race week?” McGarr asked. “What if the boat—”

  “What if the sky should fall? My arms are strong. I could tread water all night.”

  “Is she, this Lea…” McGarr motioned a hand in front of his chest.

  “All that and more. But, alas, she knows it, which detracts enormously from her beauty, at least in my eyes. Her manner is—how shall I word it?—overweaning in subtle ways. There’s a certain something that mars her beauty and it isn’t physical.”

  “How old is she?”

  “That’s hard to tell. Thirties, even forties. She’s one of those people who seem ageless. I should imagine that even when she was as young as Noreen she looked substantially as she does now. Nearly as handsome as your wife, Peter.”

  “Tea?” Noreen asked the men to dispel her embarrassment.

  Both nodded. “Know anything else about her?” McGarr asked. “Where does she live?”

  “Dublin, I believe. She mentioned a David as though he were an obligation, and after the race, when Ovens got drunk, they went aboard Virelay and had a row.”

  “About what?”

  “I was in the club. I only saw her leave in a huff, and he never returned to the party to claim the trophy.”

  An hour later, as Noreen and McGarr were about to leave, Moran added, “Did I tell you I’ve seen her more recently?”

  “Who?”

  “Lea.”

  “Where?”

  “Talking to Hubbard on the veranda of the club.”

  “Is he a sailing man?” Noreen asked.

  “The second best, but second by much.”

  “Are she and Hubbard…?”

  “Close? It would appear to me that in some way she’s close to every man. During the race she popped her head down the companionway and smiled—well, bared her teeth is more like it—in a way that invited all sorts of untoward imaginings. She was showing ever so little tongue between the edges of her dentition. I could be wrong; the invitation could have been to friendship.”

  “But then again,” said McGarr, “it could have been to pleasure.”

  “Of that I was very sure.”r />
  The McGarrs thanked Moran and left.

  Tramping down the hill neither Noreen nor McGarr spoke. Both were thinking. This much they knew: Virelay had probably been used to smuggle arms into the country; Hubbard and Martin had not told McGarr the whole story about either the siren or the woman who had been present at the time of the Ovens injury; Hubbard had felt a sort of rivalry existed between him and Ovens. About the woman they knew only that she was wealthy, beautiful, and sometimes lived with Ovens. A man named David could figure in her life too. All things considered, McGarr now believed Ovens’ injury had not been accidental.

  As Noreen opened the driver-side door of the Cooper, she said, “Shall we skip the Khyber for today? Perhaps we can catch a quick bite on the way to the hospital.”

  McGarr nodded as he slipped the whiting into the trunk.

  There the sister on duty told them Ovens had just regained consciousness. He was in the mercy ward, a long room lined with tall hospital beds made of iron tubing painted grey. Men in every physical state from moribund to nearly well shared this room. Worried families were cramped onto tiny, straight-back chairs around the beds of dying relatives, while near the solarium three men in robes smoked and talked jocularly. Old and young were here, bottles siphoning liquid into the veins of some, a portable television with earphones playing to others. Two men had pushed their beds together and were rolling dice on a game board.

  Ovens’ entire head was swathed in layers of gauze bandages, but his eyes were open. The doctor, O’Higgins by name, wasn’t more than twenty-five, and his profession still regaled him. He said, “Your man was lucky. If the weapon had hit him a half inch either way, it would have cleaved the entire cranium. Then the succeeding blows would certainly have been fatal. As it was, the blows merely glanced off his scalp. He nearly drowned, however, from both the sea and the booze.”