“Hank’s already applying pressure.”
“That’ll annoy Dad,” said Snow cheerfully.
I couldn’t reprimand her—that would have been sheer hypocrisy—but I sighed. I had refused to have it on my conscience that I had turned Teddie’s children against him. (Try to Preserve the Image!) However, I didn’t have to worry: He had done the job all by himself.
“Mommy, what if Hank doesn’t get Daddy to pay?”
“If that should happen, there is more than enough in the trust fund to get us home and maintain us come September. You do have to be back in time for school, you know.”
“What? And let Daddy think you caved in?”
Humph! I hadn’t thought of that aspect.
“Yeah, we know,” said Simon, grinning. “And there are good schools here in Dublin.”
“You’ve been checking?”
“Sure.” Simon’s grin got broader. “Why not? Plan ahead!”
I leaned back in my chair, as if the inanimate wood could give me moral support.
“Now look, you two …” Even as I framed it, my argument about continuity in education/friends/homes seemed weak… opposed as it was to the fact that Teddie-boy would think he’d won the game.
“Yes?” drawled my children encouragingly.
“You may like Ireland but you haven’t been accused of murder, or gaining an inheritance under false pretenses. You don’t have to bear the brunt of outraged elderly aunts, and—”
The doorbell wheezed.
“Speaking of outraged elderly aunts,” said Snow maliciously, “what odds will you give me on our caller?”
“I wouldn’t,” and I listened fervently for a friendly voice.
The male mutters I heard .were encouraging. Shay? I half rose in expectation, berating myself soundly for that notion. I was both pleased and disappointed to see Michael Noonan, tall and very attractive, striding into the dining room.
“I was hoping to find you home, Rene. Can I persuade you to have a few jars with me this evening? I couldn’t reach you by phone this afternoon.”
I heard that Michael wanted to talk to me, away from the ears of my adoring children.
“I’ll change and be right with you. Snow, show Mr. Noonan what we’ve done with the living room and the kitchen.”
You know, it was really fun at my age to dress up for an unexpected date, without resorting to the pretenses of indifference or keeping him waiting, so as not to appear unpopular.
I slipped quickly into the lemon-yellow sheath with the matching sandals that Snow had bludgeoned me into buying, found the strand of wooden beads that Snow said “made” the ensemble, pulled a brush through my hair, dabbed on scent, eschewed the eye shadow despite what Snow said about the absolute necessity of that, and was back down the stairs in seven minutes flat. Wishing it were Shamus Kerrigan who awaited me.
“Mom, practice makes perfect,” said my daughter, casting an appraising eye on my costume.
Michael’s expression told me he agreed. Then Simon stepped forward with an exaggerated swagger.
“Now, Mr. Noonan, I don’t want any fast driving, she’s our only mother, and you’re to be home directly after the pubs close. Otherwise we’ll worry. Now have a good time, dear.”
Michael was at first nonplussed, until he recognized the reversal of roles. He made conventional responses in a mocksolemn tone of voice.
“What a pair!” he said as he guided me to his car, a dark blue Spitfire.
“I’m sorry to let you in for that.”
“I’m not,” he replied, with laughter in his voice.
“I guess they’d be considered bold here in Ireland. Or cheeky!”
He gave me a sidelong look as he started the car. “They’re not disrespectful for all they’re vocal, Rene. Then, of course, knowing they’re Yanks changes one’s perspective.” He was not above needling me.
Michael had turned his car toward Dublin as we stopped at the dual highway. He was glancing in his rear-view mirror, waiting to get out into the traffic, which was fairly steady on the main road.
“Any favorite pubs?”
“I haven’t done much searching yet, but I rather had the notion you wanted to talk. “
He took off down the highway, easing in between two rather fast-moving vehicles with what I thought was a dangerous want of driving discretion. He appeared pleased with his maneuver, but I hoped he didn’t continue to drive like this. But he did. At the lights in Cabinteely he took an unexpected—though he signaled—right and then almost immediately a left into the parking area for the Bank of Ireland Computer Building. He pulled on the brakes, doused the lights, and glanced back over his shoulder at the road. A car came tearing past the entrance, and almost immediately we heard it braking. I cringed for a crash-bang-shriek.
“Kieron was right. You are being tailed. C’mon.”
“Tailed?” I said it to his closed door as he came round the Spitfire to help me out. “Was that what that wild driving was about?”
“I don’t normally scramble, Rene.”
Just as we got to the roadway, a car backed up past us, braked again, and then angled into the one free roadside parking space, its lights briefly full on our faces.
“Is that the man?” I asked, but Michael told me not to look, and hurried me across the street to the pub.
Unexpectedly, the pub was luxuriously appointed, with thick carpets, paneled walls, deep armchairs, and a cheerful fire on the hearth.
“D’you mind sitting here?” Michael asked, gesturing to a table whose chairs had a discreet view of the door.
“Under the circumstances, no.”
We were giving our order when the door opened and in came … Nosy.
“He just arrived,” I told Michael, leaning forward as if to flick my ash, then nonchalantly glancing up.
Michael sat back, rubbing his chin reflectively. Then he adjusted his glasses. “You do have a tail: one of our good private detectives.”
“Does he know you?”
“He might.” Michael sounded doubtful, although he gave me a cheerful grin. “Much of our work deals with estate management, wills, sales …”
“But wasn’t he hired by my relatives?” Even as I said it, the notion didn’t sound plausible. How could a private detective’s checking my movements help to contest the will?
“It couldn’t be about old Mrs. Slaney?” He shook his head. “My ex-husband?”
He nodded.
“But why? Why now? I’ve divorced him. What I do is not his business any more—” I broke off because Michael had that anticipatory look, like someone waiting for the players to hit on the right syllables in charades. “He’s trying to revoke my custody of the children? Trying to prove me immoral or something? He’s out of his ever-loving mind! Just because I came to Ireland for the summer?”
Michael had kept nodding agreement with my various points. “I don’t know the man, of course, but I understand that he was not in favor of your holidaying here. In fact, if I may be candid, I’ve heard from your American solicitor, Mr. van Vliet, asking my advice on custody laws here.”
“What?”
Michael patted my hand soothingly. “The Irish courts would uphold your custody unless wilful and excessive neglect of the children could be proved.” I was sputtering with indignation. “And that would mean you’d have to stop feeding them completely, keep them locked up in substandard rooms without toilet facilities, et cetera, et cetera. Or if you were proved guilty of some felony.”
“Good God! How could Teddie have heard of Mrs. Slaney?”
Michael merely nodded in Nosy’s direction.
“You mean, you think I’ve been followed since I got here?”
Our drinks arrived then, and I took a long, long pull. Michael, noticing, indicated to the barboy to bring two more.
“That impossible, incredible man! How could he do such a thing?” Very easily, I realized, remembering the unserved injunction to keep us from even leaving the States. Wha
t maggot was possessing Ted Stanford now? “Well, I’m glad you didn’t mention this in front of the twins. They’ll be livid.”
Michael’s eyebrows went up. “You’re going to tell them?”
I sighed, thinking back to that earlier conversation. “Neither of them is stupid. Sooner or later they’ll see Nosy, and it doesn’t take them long to put facts together.”
“You Yanks!”
“Yeah,” I said, with no enthusiasm. “But what can he do?” I asked, in a fine state of agitation.
“Legally,” Michael said in a forceful way, “nothing. I understand from van Vliet that at their ages your children have some say in the choice of parent.” He shrugged as if that solved my problem entirely. “I’d hazard the guess that the man is merely trying to ruin your holiday.”
“He’s got company.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I was thinking of the aunts,” I said, with a heavy sigh.
“Now, now, Rene, cheer up. After all, you haven’t murdered anyone.” He said it to shock me out of my depression, and he did.
“Speaking of Mrs. Slaney,” I began brightly, “how much would it cost me to get Fahey out now? I really don’t need any more unsavory characters on my queendom.”
“I’ll sound him out. How high would you go?”
“Well, I refuse to be milked, but I don’t want anything to do with a man like that. More important: Does Tom Slaney have any legal right to squat in that cottage now that his mother’s dead?”
“Tom Slaney’s legal rights are nil as far as the cottage goes.”
“Is there an inquest coming?” I asked.
“As it happened, her physician had seen her the previous week, and her heart failure was no surprise.”
“What about the hole in her head?” I’m not a vindictive person, but the appalling nature of her final injury made me wish that her son would suffer something in the way of justice,
“Ah, yes, well, she died from the heart attack. Slaney admitted to her collapse, said she struck her head on the hearth—I understand there’s corroborative evidence—and he put her in the bed. He was, on his own admission, drink-taken. It’s been proved that he came back to her cottage Friday night to get money from her, since her pension had just been paid. At any rate, according to the barman, when he returned to the pub he had money enough to drink himself stocious. He did end up spending the night in the nick.”
“While his poor mother lay dead …”
“Legally one could split hairs on this, and I don’t know yet if there will be a prosecution. She died first, you see.”
“Of fright, terror, disappointment … And where is that creature”—I preferred to call him ‘murderer’—“now?”
“He’s still in custody. He won’t bother you, and as far as the cottage is concerned, it has reverted to the landlord—you.” Michael patted my hand reassuringly. He had such nice hands.
He started to recount a case he’d been briefed with which was so outrageous and improbable that I had to keep my mind on it. Then he regaled me with several more highly amusing incidents so that “Time, ladies and gentlemen” caught me cornpletely by surprise, and with some dismay.
“Hungry, Rene?” asked Michael as we left the pub.
I naturally glanced over my shoulder to see if Nosy was there. Michael gave me a little shake.
“All aboveboard,” he said. “If we can make it to Stepaside by half eleven, we can eat and drink. Might as well spend your ex-husband’s money on Nosy’s expenses … huh?”
“Hey, great!” I laughed. Michael was giving me the proper perspective.
As he drove off this time, it was at a circumspect speed.
“Speaking of ex-husbands, Michael, couldn’t Mary Cuniff get an annulment and then be free?”
“Of course.”
“How much does an annulment cost, then?”
“More than Mary can manage to save.”
“Not more than George would be willing to spend, though?”
“Hmmm. My dear girl, you are remarkable. But are you so certain Mary would jump out of one fire into another?”
“George is different! I know she really thinks so.”
“Does she?” His question hinted at others unasked.
“Why?”
“Irene …” and then he stopped, and took a rather sharp curve carefully.
“I’ve a suspicion,” I began, to relieve his conscience, “that my Great-aunt Irene had some blind spots in her philanthropy. I feel that George is right for Mary. Why must she be condemned to this sort of half life, this sense of being trapped, or Molly, for that matter? It just perpetuates the problems in the next generation.”
“And you a divorced woman?”
I sighed. “My marriage to Teddie failed for very understandable reasons. But that doesn’t mean that I couldn’t and wouldn’t make a second marriage work. In fact, I’d be better at it. I know so many of the pitfalls.”
“Oh?”
Michael’s reply was too bland, and I realized how my attitude had suddenly polarized. In spite of what I’d seen of Irish marriages, and in spite of what I knew about the high divorce rate of American marriages, I was essentially a romantic, cockeyed optimist. And I really did like having a man about the house. Domestic by temperament, I liked to “do” for a man. I’d missed that these past eighteen months. While it was enthralling to have a queendom of my own, while I was enjoying the redecoration, I was also more and more aware that a good bit of such industry is doing it for a particular man: to please him, to give him a reason to boast to his friends about his home and his wife, and to give him a valid reason for coming home at all.
“Yes, ‘oh,’” I said tartly, in answer to Michael. “There are some areas in which the resemblance between my great-aunt and me fails completely. Another thing: How can Ann Purdee get a legal separation? I’m willing to finance it. I can always say it was Aunt Irene’s wish.”
Michael gave a snort. “Irene did not like her protgégés …”
“Succumbing?” I asked testily, when he couldn’t find an appropriate verb. “Will or will not a legal separation give her protection against that husband of hers?”
“Yes, it would,” Michael said. “I have suggested it. But the separation has to be made by mutual consent.”
“And you don’t see Paddy Purdee consenting?”
“Consenting, no. But he’d do anything for a price.”
“You know him?”
“Yes. Irene tried to put the fear of the law and the Lord into him.”
“Then why is Ann Purdee scared?”
“Irene Teasey is dead. He was afraid of her. “
I thought of my aunt’s diminutive stature. “Good heavens.”
“Irene in an angry mood was … formidable, Rene.” Michael was both amused and respectful. “She tore strips out of him.”
“She met him?”
“In my office. I arranged the meeting.”
“Then he’d know who and where …”
“I doubt it. For starters, your aunt’s name was never mentioned. And the interview was attended by one of Irene’s very good friends in the Gardai. Unfortunately, that gentleman has also passed on. We’ll just hope that Purdee is still fishing a long trip and hasn’t heard.”
Undoubtedly Rene’s Law applied to Ann, and Paddy Purdee would run into some person who knew about Irene Teasey, where she lived, and Ann’s situation.
As we turned into the parking lot of the Stepaside Inn, Nosy wasn’t far behind us, and I sighed deeply. I too did not like being followed. Once more I was visited by the irresistible desire to cut stakes here instantly and go back to my own country. But that would be cowardly, and worse, Teddie would think he had won.
We were lucky to find a table, for the Inn was rather full. As Michael pointed out, it was one excuse to keep on drinking past licensed hours and to get a solid base of food for more drinking at home.
“There’s one more business,” I said after we’d giv
en the waitress our order.
“Yes?” he said encouragingly when I faltered.
“Do you know why my aunt turned against Shay Kerrigan? I mean, exactly why?”
Michael gave me the blank look which I suspected he found useful in courtrooms.
“Oh, c’mon, Michael, I know even if Aunt Irene shoved it under the convenient heading of protecting someone innocent. Was she explicit to you? The thing is, I don’t think she got the right man. And it would alter matters considerably if I could prove it.”
“Oh?” Again that horribly bland response.
“Really, Michael. You’re infuriating. And it’s not betraying a professional confidence to tell me if she was explicit. You have only to say that much and I’ll reveal what I’ve found out.”
Michael took ages to make up his mind. “She said, as nearly as I can remember her exact words, that she had been bitterly disappointed in Shay, that he had abused her confidence and lost her respect; he deserved no assistance from her.”
“Then she never confronted him?”
“She absolutely refused to see him.”
“That wasn’t fair.”
“Does ‘fair’ enter into it?”
“I think so. He’s supposed to have fathered Sally Hanahoe’s baby.”
This was as much a shock to Michael as it had been to me. He blinked and stared at me as if he doubted his ears, strengthening my own belief in Shamus.
“Yes, and furthermore he’s supposed to have told Sally that he was married and covered his tracks so well that she couldn’t find him. She had to have the baby on her own.”
Michael had begun to shake his head from side to side.
“I don’t believe it either,” I went on. “And for good reasons. One, Shamus made no secret to me of the fact that he’s not married, nor likely to marry. Two, he has a keen sense of family responsibility. Look at his kindnesses to his nephew, his courtesies to the Ladies Brandel. They’re damned good judges of character. But it fits in with what I’m beginning to understand about Aunt Irene. She would think the worst of a man, any man, without bothering to ask yes, no, or maybe. Furthermore, when I mentioned Sally Hanahoe’s name to him it didn’t, absolutely didn’t, ring a bell. I’d stake my life on it.” Michael gave me a knowing glance, which I dismissed angrily. “I hear things when people are dissembling.”
The Kilternan Legacy Page 23