‘I don’t know,’ she said dismissively, ‘I never listen to him. I keep away from him. He’s always after me – anything in a skirt.’ She paused. ‘What happened to the priest – I mean, what really happened to him?’
He drew back his head, startled by the sudden change of subject.
‘Don’t you know?’ he asked.
‘It said in the paper he fell down the stairs. Did he?’
‘I’m not sure that he fell.’
Her eyes widened. ‘Did someone push him?’
‘We’re trying to find out what happened, exactly.’
She nodded, still swinging her foot. ‘You don’t give much away, do you?’
To this he only smiled.
‘What age are you, Peggy?’ he asked.
‘Twenty-one.’
‘You must have lots of boyfriends.’
She made a sour face. ‘Oh, sure! They’re queueing up. Anyway, there are no fellas worth a second glance in this hopeless bloody place.’ She looked him up and down with her lips pursed. ‘Where do you live in Dublin?’
‘I have a flat.’
‘Yes, but where?’
‘Baggot Street. It’s over a shop. Very small, just a living room, bedroom, bathroom. It’s a bit like a prison cell, I always think.’
She threw back her head and laughed. ‘Oh, that’s a good one! The detective who lives in jail!’ She grew wistful. ‘God, I’d love to have a flat in the city. I suppose you’re always out in restaurants and pubs, and going to dances, and concerts, and – oh, I don’t know – all sorts of things.’
‘I’m afraid I’m not much of a dancer, and I’ve a tin ear when it comes to music.’
‘You must have a girlfriend, though.’
‘No. I had one.’
‘But you haven’t now?’
‘No. She broke up with me.’
‘She must have been mad.’
Her directness made him smile. She said whatever came into her head. He envied her.
‘We still see each other, now and then.’ He hadn’t thought about Marguerite in a long time. He didn’t like her name. The moment he admitted it to himself was the moment when he knew there would be no future for him with her. They had gone out together for three years, and had slept together twice. Then one night she arrived unannounced at the flat, pale and trembling, to present him with an ultimatum. Either he would marry her, or it was over. There was a fight. Or at least she had fought, while he perched on the edge of a sofa, twisted around himself like a corkscrew. In the end she threw a wine glass at him and walked out. He hadn’t seen her since that night. Why had he lied? Now he heard himself lie again. ‘Her name is Sylvia,’ he said.
‘Oh? Same as Mrs Osborne.’
‘Yes, yes it is. Coincidence. I hadn’t realised.’
But he had.
They were silent, then she exclaimed, ‘Look at me, sitting on a guest’s bed! At least it’s in the middle of the day. Mind you, if Mrs Reck saw me I’d get my marching orders on the spot.’
Yet she made no attempt to rise, only sat there, looking at him. Her nether lip glistened.
‘You have another job here in the town, Mr Reck tells me?’ Strafford said.
The atmosphere in the room had thickened noticeably.
‘At the Boolavogue Arms. I’m going to give it up. The men that stay there, commercial travellers mostly, they’re worse than here, always pawing at me and making smutty remarks.’
She was pretty, he thought, with those red-gold curls, and those freckles, and that generous mouth. If he were to walk over to her now and put his hands on her shoulders and kiss her, she wouldn’t resist – quite the opposite, to judge by the look she was giving him. But ah, it would be a mistake, he knew that. He thought of the wine stain on the wall in his flat, beside the fireplace, where Marguerite’s glass had struck. He had tried to wash it off, but wine was stubborn stuff, he discovered, and a discernible trace of it remained, shaped like the faded map of a lost continent.
‘I’ll leave you to your work,’ he said, clearing his throat and moving away from the window.
‘Where are you off to now?’ she asked. ‘You’ve only just come back – I heard your old jalopy of a car.’
‘I’m going over to Ballyglass House.’
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘To see Sylvia.’
His eyes skittered away from hers. He was blushing. How did women know so many things?
He brushed past her with a muttered word and hurried from the room. In the corridor he stopped, and through the open doorway he heard the girl sigh, and a moment later there was an ill-tempered clatter as she took up her mop and pail.
Down the stairs he plunged, taking them two at a time. Oh yes, he thought, run away, yet again. Peggy should have thrown the bucket at him, much better than a wine glass.
He was opening the door of the Morris Minor – his jalopy, Peggy was right – when Matty Moran appeared at his shoulder, seemingly out of nowhere.
‘Are you going over to the House?’ he asked. At least, that was what Strafford thought he had said, for Matty hadn’t got his dentures in, and when he spoke his lips made a noise like that of a loose tent flap blowing in a high wind. Now he said something else, of which the only word Strafford could be sure of was ‘lift’.
‘You need a lift, do you?’ Strafford sighed. ‘Yes, well, all right, get in.’
Despite the weather, Matty wore no overcoat, and had on only his threadbare pinstriped suit and a collarless shirt. He didn’t seem to notice the cold, although his nose was a shade of purplish-red, and there was a blue sheen on the back of his hands.
In the confines of the car, he smelled to Strafford, mysteriously, of soot, the solid kind that gathers on the inside of a chimney.
Matty spoke again. He was talking about the weather, it seemed, for Strafford was sure he had caught the word ‘snow’.
‘Matty,’ he said, ‘would you mind putting in your teeth?’
‘Righ’, righ’,’ Matty mumbled, and brought out his dentures. He picked off some pieces of fluff that had stuck to them, and fitted them into his mouth, gagging and slurping as he did so.
They went on a mile or two in silence. Matty, it was clear, wasn’t accustomed to travelling by motor car. He sat with his back very straight and his palms clamped on his splayed knees, craning forward with his eyes fixed unblinkingly on the road ahead. At every bend he drew his shoulders up and made a sucking sound with his lips, convinced a catastrophe awaited them and it was only a matter of time before it occurred.
Suddenly, he spoke.
‘I seen you talking last night to your man Harbison.’
‘Yes,’ Strafford answered. ‘He was looking for someone to get drunk with him, but he chose the wrong man.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘I don’t drink. Well, not the way he does.’
‘Umm,’ Matty said, making a muffled clacking sound with his dentures. ‘He had a skinful himself, all right. He’d drink whiskey off a sore leg, that fellow would.’
‘Do you see him, ever, at Ballyglass House?’
‘Oho, no.’ Matty was greatly amused by this. ‘The boss barred him from the place, years ago.’
‘Colonel Osborne?’
Matty didn’t deem this worthy of reply. After all, how many bosses could there be in Ballyglass?
They went another mile, Matty keeping his eyes unwaveringly on the road.
‘A right whoremaster, too, that man,’ he said.
‘Colonel Osborne?’ Strafford said, startled.
‘No!’ Matty returned scornfully. ‘Harbison. He was at it again, last night – no, the night before last.’
Strafford had for an instant a clear image of Peggy, sitting on the side of his bed. But she had said she kept away from Harbison, when she could. Had she been lying?
‘The roads were very bad, that night, weren’t they?’
‘They were,’ Matty said. ‘But when I was on my way home, Harbison passed me by at the crossr
oads, down along here at Ballysaggart, in that big car of his, going hell for leather.’
‘I see,’ Strafford said slowly. ‘And what time would that have been?’
‘I don’t know – I’ve no watch, ever since the one I had broke last year. I was on the bike, when he comes roaring up behind me, flashing his lights and skidding in the snow. Bloody madman, and him full of drink.’
Strafford was frowning at the windscreen. ‘About what time would you say that was, approximately? Two o’clock? Three?’
‘Around three, I’d imagine. It was awful cold, but it wasn’t snowing, and the stars were out.’
‘Which direction was he going in?’
‘He was headed for the town, by the look of it. He have a lady friend there that he goes to see.’
‘Has he?’
‘Aye – Maisie Busher. She works in Pierce’s, the hardware. She leaves the key at the front door, on a string inside the letter box. Harbison is not the only lad who comes calling on Maisie of a night.’
‘And you think that’s where he was going, when you saw him?’
‘It’s where he usually goes when he’s in the vicinity, and has a few on him.’
‘You don’t think he could have been on his way to Ballyglass House?’
Matty turned his head and looked at him. It was the first time he had taken his eyes off the road.
‘Didn’t I tell you he’s barred out there?’ he said, in a tone of exasperation. Plainly he believed he was dealing with an idiot.
‘All the same—’ Strafford let his voice trail away.
They were approaching a crossroads. ‘This’ll do,’ Matty said, ‘let me off here.’
Strafford, bringing the car cautiously to a halt on the icy verge, peered up at a snow-clad signpost. ‘Is this where he overtook you?’
‘That’s right. This is Ballysaggart.’
‘Did he turn off, to left or right, or did he drive straight on?’
Matty was uncoiling himself, sloth-like, from his seat. ‘Straight on, he went, looking neither right nor left. He’ll wrap that car of his around a tree one of these nights, so he will.’
He slammed the door behind him and was gone. Strafford sat motionless for some moments, thinking. The road led not only to the town, but also, beyond it, to Ballyglass House.
*
When Strafford arrived at the house, Mrs Duffy let him in at the front door. She pointed to a note on the hall table, addressed to him.
‘There was a telephone call for you,’ she said. ‘Colonel Osborne took down the name.’
He picked up the note. Detective Chief Superintendent Haggard telephoned. He asked if you would call him back. Osborne.
The telephone, an ancient one, with an earpiece and a horn to speak into, was kept on a little table in an alcove off the hall, behind a curtain of moth-eaten black velvet, as if it were a thing of dubious taste and must be kept discreetly out of sight. Strafford squeezed into the alcove, took up the receiver and wound the metal handle, which made the bell inside the machine tinkle faintly. The operator came on. Strafford hesitated, then said he was sorry, that he had made a mistake. He hung up.
He didn’t feel up to dealing with Hackett, just now.
Instead, he went in search of Jenkins.
19
Jenkins, however, was not to be found. He had spoken to Mrs Duffy, so she told Strafford, and had quizzed her about her having cleaned up the blood in the library and on the stairs. Then he had wandered about the house for a while, examining again the room where Father Tom had slept and the spot in the corridor where he had been set upon and stabbed. The housekeeper had followed in his footsteps as he poked about, to keep an eye on him, suspecting, Strafford supposed, that even though he was a policeman, or precisely because of it, he would be inclined towards pilfering. After that he had put on his coat and hat and had left the house, at which point Mrs Duffy had judged her duty done, and had gone down to her room in the basement to get out her sewing box and turn the collar of one of Colonel Osborne’s shirts.
Maybe, she ventured, Sergeant Jenkins had brought Sam out for a walk. Sam was the black Labrador. It had taken a shine to the sergeant, she said. Strafford tried to picture Jenkins and the dog tramping through the snow, the dog nosing after rabbits and Jenkins discovering in himself the nature lover he had never known himself to be, until now.
Strafford walked away, laughing to himself.
The house was deserted. Dominic had gone off to an afternoon Christmas party at the home of friends of his in New Ross, Mrs Osborne was resting, and probably comatose – Doctor Hafner had called while Strafford was at Scallanstown – and Lettie had been dispatched to Sherwood’s pharmacy in Enniscorthy to renew a prescription for her stepmother. Colonel Osborne was out at the stables with the local vet. Despite the impression Strafford had got, from the Colonel’s airy references to them, that ‘the horses’ must consist of a couple of dozen thoroughbreds at least, in fact there were only four – two mares and an elderly stallion, along with Father Lawless’s gelding.
Father Lawless’s gelding, Strafford thought, and made a pained face, recalling the bloodied front of the priest’s trousers.
Now he too walked about the house, meeting no one. He heard a stove being riddled, the scullery maid singing, an ancient lavatory flushing. It was an ordinary afternoon in a country house in the south-east of Ireland. This was the life, and these its circumstances, that Strafford was thoroughly familiar with, and yet he felt estranged, an interloper in a foreign world of violence and malefactors, of stab wounds and blood.
He had told Rosemary Lawless he had become a policeman as a way of breaking free from what his upbringing would have made of him. Yet what he had become was an outsider, an observer. Was that freedom? At Ballyglass House, he seemed to himself the ghost of what he might have been. He was out of place, out of time, the very model of a man cut adrift.
He went to the alcove behind the curtain and again wound the handle of the telephone, and again was spoken to by the operator, a weary-sounding woman suffering from a heavy head cold. He gave her the number of Pearse Street Garda Station, and after a long wait was put through to Detective Chief Superintendent Hackett. Who was not in the best of humour.
‘It’s about time,’ Hackett grumbled. ‘I called two hours ago – where were you?’
‘I went to see the priest’s sister.’
‘And? What did she have to say?’
‘Not much. Did you know her father was JJ Lawless?’
‘Are you telling me you didn’t know?’
‘Who was there to tell me? Getting information out of these people is like – I don’t know what it’s like, but it’s very difficult.’
‘I thought you’d know your way around down there. It’s why I put you on the case.’
To this, Strafford said nothing. He was slowly learning to negotiate the treacherous waters of his boss’s moods. Hackett was a decent man doing a difficult job, and Strafford respected him, was fond of him, even, in a muted sort of way. It wasn’t long since Hackett had been promoted to Detective Chief Superintendent – the inflated title embarrassed him – and the last thing he needed, in the early days of his new position, was to have to deal with a murder, especially the murder of a priest. Now he asked, ‘Is that all she had to tell you, the sister, that her father was JJ Lawless?’
‘Yes. She was in distress, as you can imagine. It was clear that relations between her brother and his father were less than warm.’
‘Is that so? Well now, isn’t that a surprise. Do you know anything at all about the bold JJ Lawless? Lawless – the name suited him, even if he did make a fortune out of the law. In the Civil War he used to shoot people in the face. It was his trademark.’
‘I didn’t know that,’ Strafford said.
‘And drove his wife into the asylum. Oh, a hard man, the same JJ.’
‘The sister said he was tormented.’
‘Who, JJ, or the priest?’
‘She meant
her brother.’
‘It would be remarkable if he wasn’t tormented, given what he came from. Anyway, the clergy are all half-cracked – only don’t say I said so. Speaking of which, that’s what I was calling earlier to say to you. You’ve been summoned to an audience with His Grace the Archbishop.’
‘The Archbishop?’
‘Doctor McQuaid himself – who else? He has a place down there, outside Gorey, on the coast. It’s his summer retreat, as they say. His’ – a chuckle – ‘Castel Gandolfo. He’s there now, though God knows it must be a chilly spot, in this weather. Maybe he’s on retreat, pondering the state of his soul. Anyway, you’re to go over and see him.’
‘Why?’
‘How do I know?’
Strafford sighed. He felt as if he had been summoned to an interview with the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada.
‘I saw the story in the Irish Press,’ he said.
‘So did I. What about it?’
‘I suppose the press release came from the palace?’
‘We issued one too, but it was ignored. Church business is none of our business.’
‘Even when it’s a murder?’
Hackett was silent.
‘The paper had it that he fell down the stairs,’ Strafford said.
‘And?’
‘And he didn’t fall down any stairs.’
‘That’s a technicality.’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Reporters get things wrong,’ Hackett said wearily. ‘Anyway, what does it matter how he got down the stairs? They could have said he flew down and it would be all the same.’
‘The man was murdered.’
‘Don’t shout at me, Inspector.’
‘I’m not shouting!’
Strafford shifted uncomfortably in the cramped space of the alcove. The receiver was hot in his hand, and seemed to breathe, like a mouth, into his ear. He was unnerved by telephones, by the humid sense of intimacy they offered. Even the most bland and guileless remark sounded like an insinuation over the phone.
‘Have the results of the post-mortem come in yet?’ he asked.
‘There’s nothing in them we didn’t know already,’ Hackett replied. ‘The man died from shock and loss of blood – there’s science for you, Harry Hall and his henchmen at their most subtle. It was “a frenzied attack”, as the newshounds would say.’
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