The Irish Cottage Murder

by Dicey Deere

  “Yes,” O’Hare said, trying to be patient, his jaw aching with the strain. Sergeant Bryson sat at the card table, making notes with a ballpoint pen. “So it was two o’clock?”

  “Yes, about two. A few minutes after two, anyway. I’d had Kevin sort out some old boxes of harness—a sad lot, rust and corrosion—we’d get rid of it. Mr. Desmond said to charge the new harness at Flaherty’s. T’was a big list. The stables had been let go. Even paint for the stables had—”

  “Yes,” Inspector O’Hare interrupted. He clicked his thumbnail. Get on with it. “So you heard Mr. Moore talking with someone…?”

  “Near box number four, they were, Black Pride’s stall. I heard Mr. Desmond’s voice go up, high like, the way it sometimes gets when he’s angry, but most people’s goes down low when they—”

  “Any words? Did you understand what they—”

  Brian Coffey shook his red head. “No … But angry! Mr. Desmond and the other one. But none of my—And not worrisome. Mr. Desmond often gets angry, like with jobs not done right, wrong stuff delivered, things like that. So I just finished making out the list.” Brian Coffey looked down.

  Something wrong. O’Hare sensed it. Since he’d been a kid, he could always tell: a silence across the supper table between his mom and dad, his mom’s quick look down at the plate, a bruise glimpsed on her arm, the half-heard crash of a dish in the night.

  “Go on.” O’Hare leaned forward, trying to look into Brian Coffey’s brown eyes. Coffey had the kind of thin white face that to O’Hare meant working-class Irish. They worked in shops, tilled fields, drove with their carpenters’ tools in the back of their van, hopefully strummed guitars, their minds whirling with movie star and television dreams. Some went to Trinity; some had Ireland’s love of horses and became jockeys, groomers, trainers. They worked or rode for rich owners or breeders. Some knew the inside of prisons; most knew the inside of pubs. Brian Coffey, with a boy’s thin frame, was still unmarried at thirty-five, like a third of the Irishmen of his upbringing—never marrying because, as iconoclastic O’Hare saw it, between no birth control and the economy, they did not quite dare.

  “And then?” O’Hare said.

  Brian Coffey gulped. “Flaherty closes up at three. And it wasn’t my place to—So I went out behind, where I keep my motorbike, and I went off to Flaherty’s.” Brian shook his head. “We’d’ve been back sooner, but coming out of Flaherty’s we met Mr. Callaghan and—”

  “Who? Who’s Mr. Callaghan?”

  “Mr. Fergus Callaghan, a man who traces your ancestors. He—”

  “A genealogist, you mean?”

  “That’s right. One of those. He’s been tracing back for Mr. Desmond, the Moores’ history and where they—”

  “Yes, yes, all right, Brian. So in Ballynagh, coming out of Flaherty’s…”

  “Yes, well we talked a minute, Mr. Callaghan wishing Kevin well on the job at the Moore stables. He thought he knew Kevin’s family, but it turned out to be other Keatings. He—”

  O’Hare, impatient, cut him off. “Yes, well—At the stable—You didn’t glimpse the other person? You only heard their voice?”

  “Who?” Coffey blinked, his white face strained, his voice exhausted.

  “The killer”—O’Hare said patiently—“who killed Mr. Moore.”

  “Oh,” Brian Coffey said. “Yes. Just his voice.”

  26

  At 6:30 P.M., Thursday, Winifred Moore, at a table in Keenen’s Pub on Parliament Street in Dublin, shouted wildly from a corner table. “Sheila! Over here! Sheila!”

  Sheila, red-faced with embarrassment, threaded her way through the throng around the bar and plumped down. “Really, Winifred! You don’t have to scream. Anyone’d think you’d been brought up in a barn.”

  “Desmond’s been murdered. Knifed! In the stable at Castle Moore.” Winifred’s square-jawed face was burningly alive. Her voice was thick with excitement. Her eyes glittered. “It was on a news flash on television. Torrey Tunet killed Desmond! She stole that ugly Moore diamond necklace and tried to peddle it in Dublin. They caught her.”

  Sheila made an exasperated hissing sound between her teeth. “I don’t look at television, as you well know. Are you drunk? You promised—”

  “Oh, stop it! I’m not drunk. Or hallucinating. It happened. There—” Winifred jerked her head toward the television set above the bar. A news flash had come on; the newscaster was saying Desmond’s name. Then something about Torrey Tunet.

  In the noisy bar, Winifred watched Sheila’s jaw drop as she distinguished the newscaster’s words. There was a momentary shot of a jewelry clerk at Weir’s on Grafton Street being interviewed.

  “I can’t believe it!” Sheila’s eyes were wide with shock. “Something’s wrong. Winifred, Torrey Tunet’s too smart. If she killed Desmond, she wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to sell the necklace in Dublin right after. She’d hide it and take it to America to a … you know … a—”

  “A fence,” Winifred said. “But I’m glad Ms. Tunet was that stupid. Otherwise, you know what the gardai would think?” She watched Sheila’s face turn pale and nodded with grim satisfaction. “Otherwise they’d think I killed Desmond. After all, I’ll inherit. And I don’t have an alibi.”

  “Alibi? Where were you this afternoon, Winifred?”

  “Ah,” said Winifred, “hanging about the piers in Dun Laoghaire, holding the poetry medal in my pocket in case I ran into my dead pa, so’s I could show him. As though he’d done right…” Her voice had begun to quiver. She bit her lips, gave her shoulders a shake, and stood up. “Come on! I already paid, but I had to wait for you. It must be merry hell at the castle.”

  27

  “In here, sir, Ms. Tunet’s room.”

  Janet Slocum, the long-faced, bony maid senior over Rose, the other maid, opened the door to the bedroom and Inspector O’Hare stepped inside, followed by Sgt. Jimmy Bryson.

  It was seven o’clock, two hours after Ms. Torrey Tunet had been arrested at Weir’s in Dublin. The evening sun shone golden through the wide bedroom windows.

  Inspector O’Hare surveyed the bedroom, thinking how his wife would have loved it. There was a queen-sized canopy bed and a marble fireplace full of silk flowers, and a thick rug with scrolly designs. There was a rose-colored lounging chair, a pair of soft chairs, and a scattering of small tables with Moore family photographs and bits of decorative things on them—porcelain cherubs and the like, naked little reclining figures with wings. The kind of thing his wife particularly liked.

  The Garda Siochana in Dublin was holding Ms. Tunet for theft, and possibly for murder. The gardai had impounded the Moore diamond necklace, which had been variously reported on the RTE, the Irish National Television News, to be worth ten thousand pounds, twenty thousand, thirty thousand, and even a half-million. On RTE, Torrey Tunet had rated a full thirty seconds of vehement denial. She had not murdered Desmond Moore. She had not stolen the Moore necklace. Mr. Moore had given her the necklace. Undeniably attractive she was, with that swag of satiny dark hair and the style of her and that uplifted chin, despite her grim situation.

  “Anything special, sir?” Janet Slocum asked from the bedroom doorway, “that you’ll be wanting?”

  Inspector O’Hare shook his head. He narrowed his eyes at a scattering of books, writing paper, and letters on a lady’s desk near a window. “Just having a look round.” Maybe to draw the noose securely. Murder was not on his list of approved activities. “Sergeant,” he said to Jimmy Bryson, “check out this room and the bathroom. You’re looking for a knife. If no luck, we’ll try her car; it’s still parked in Dublin.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  At the little inlaid writing table, O’Hare searched the drawers: stamps, pencils, paperclips. No knife. O’Hare stood over the desk, frowning, pulling at his nose. A book lay on the blotter, The Loom of Language, Subtitled: An Approach to the Mastery of Many Languages. Inspector O’Hare flipped it open and read: “An example which illustrates how to make ass
ociations for memorizing words of Romance origin is ‘hospitable.’ The Oxford Dictionary tells us that this comes from the Latin verb hospitare (to entertain). The related word hospite meant either ‘guest’ or ‘host,’ and it has survived as the latter. Another related Latin word is hospitale, a place for ‘guests,’ later for ‘travelers.’ This was the original meaning of ‘hospital,’ and survives as such in Knights Hospitallers.”

  “What’s that?” Jimmy Bryson was beside him, rummaging in a wastebasket.

  “Hmmm?” Inspector O’Hare read on. “In Old French it appears shortened to hostel, which exists in English. In modern French s before t or p has often disappeared. That it was once there is indicated by a circumflex accent over the preceding vowel, as in ‘hotel.’”

  “Inspector?”

  “Yes, Sergeant?” Unwillingly, he looked up. Bryson was holding out a paper. “This letter. It was on the floor. Must’ve fallen off the desk.” He handed it to the inspector.

  “Dear Donna,” the letter began. Inspector O’Hare scanned it. It said only that Torrey Tunet would be returning to North Hawk in a week and that she was excited about the possibilities, and that “You’re not to worry about the money. I will manage it somehow.”

  “Donna,” O’Hare said. He looked over the letter at Bryson. “That would be Donna Lefebvre. Her fellow thief. The one mentioned in the fax.”

  The fax from the North Hawk police in Massachusetts, in answer to O’Hare’s routine inquiry, already lay on his desk at Ballynagh. Reading it, O’Hare had said, “Mother of God!” under his breath. He’d been struck with the pity of it, the pity that the young Torrey Tunet’s half-mischievous thievery had ended by destroying the Willinger family and putting Torrey’s younger friend in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Terrible. Yet O’Hare found himself helplessly awash with sympathy for the perpetrator, Torrey Tunet. But now Miss Tunet was an adult and there was murder involved.

  Inspector O’Hare carefully folded the letter and slid it into an envelope he found on the desk. He glanced down at The Loom of Language and shook his head sorrowfully. “Miss Tunet reads interesting books. But she could well be convicted of murdering Desmond Moore. Prison is as good a place as any to pass the time with books.”

  “Yes,” said Sergeant Bryson, “well she might! Did she think we’d believe that Desmond Moore would give a thirty-thousand-pound necklace to a young lady he’d known for less than a week? She must take us for looneys.”

  “Yes,” Inspector O’Hare said.

  “And no alibi,” Jimmy Bryson said, incredulously. “Just strolling around Dublin! Eating a Chinese takeout in Saint Stephen’s Green! Walking along the Liffey. Come, now!”

  “Weak,” O’Hare had to concur. Miss Tunet, with the jaunty walk and the low, husky voice, a voice with a lilt that was almost Irish. A wave of sadness again washed over Inspector O’Hare. Thievery was one thing. But Desmond Moore’s slashed body lying among bits of hay in the Castle Moore stable was another.

  O’Hare shook his head; he would have to phone Chief Superintendent O’Reilly at the Garda Siochana headquarters in Dublin and tell him about the fax from America.

  He gave a last lingering glance toward the naked, winged cherubs on a nearby table. They looked to be made of marble. His wife’s birthday was coming up; maybe he’d find one at a shop in Dublin. “Come along, Jimmy.” He went toward the door.

  “Right.” But Jimmy Bryson, drawing out the single word like a sigh, sounded as far away as county Cork. Inspector O’Hare glanced back. The sergeant was looking at Janet Slocum, who had not left the bedroom. She had been so still, the inspector hadn’t realized she was still there, bony, thin-lipped, eyes like gimlets. “Is Rose around?” Jimmy Bryson said to Janet Slocum, “Rose Burns?”

  “Ah, no she isn’t, sergeant. Gone to London last night on the ferry from Dun Leoghaire. Went to spend a couple of days with her sister, Hannah. Hannah’s been seeing the sights in London, the Tower and such.”

  “Ahhh … vacationing, is it?” Sergeant Bryson cleared his throat. “And Hannah, how is she enjoying London? Does Rose say?”

  Janet’s long face took on an odd look, almost wary. She thrust her hands into the pockets of her bibbed white apron and rocked a little on her feet. Inspector O’Hare noticed for the first time small pockmarks on Janet’s flat cheeks; she had missed out for looks. Her hoarse voice didn’t help.

  “And why wouldn’t she be enjoying it, a big, exciting city like London?”

  “They’ll be coming back soon, will they? Rose and … and Hannah?”

  “Oh, yes, Sergeant. That they will.”

  O’Hare, always sensitive to undertones in a voice, regarded Janet for an instant while Sgt. Jimmy Bryson heaved up a sigh from somewhere around his booted toes. It seemed to O’Hare that Janet Slocum was speaking on two levels, an upper one open, a lower one veiled.

  28

  At six o’clock Friday morning, Luke Willinger, numb and incredulous, drove to Dublin. Last night, around five o’clock, the gardai had arrested Torrey Tunet in connection with the murder of Desmond Moore.

  On Moleston Street, Luke sat through the hour-long AA meeting in the community house behind Saint Anne’s. He didn’t hear a word anybody said.

  The meeting over, he stopped at a coffee shop around the corner. Someone had left a copy of the morning’s Irish Independent on the counter. Luke glanced at the lead story and promptly scalded himself on his cup of coffee.

  “Jesus!” On the front page, favored position, right side, was an account of the sensational tragedy in North Hawk, Massachusetts, sixteen years earlier. It was accompanied by a photograph of the young Torrey Tunet at that long-ago court hearing. There she was, skinny, in a real dress instead of jeans, but with that peacock bandana around her dark hair.

  An enterprising journalist on The Irish Independent had somehow obtained the North Hawk information from Superintendent Inspector O’Reilly’s office at the Garda Siochana Murder Squad headquarters in Phoenix Park.

  So! Torrey Tunet’s past in North Hawk was exposed! The exposure seemed to Luke to justify his years of grievance against her for the destruction of his family and his having to drop out of school. “The wages of sin,” he thought grimly, rattling the newspaper. Not to mention pigeons coming home to roost.

  He reread the Independent piece, mentally corroborating every fact supplied by the police records in North Hawk. It even gave the calibre of the Smith & Wesson gun that had killed his stepfather. It was a weird feeling.

  Then he simply sat there on the plastic stool, feeling strange. Something was wrong. He had always thought of himself as honest with himself, cleanly honest in fact. And fair. And decent. Not a paragon, for God’s sake! But certainly a man of character; if not a Socrates, at least a worthy disciple of such a philosopher. And certainly not a person prey to emotions to the point of blind rage, to an arbitrary desire for revenge. Yet for sixteen lousy years—

  Jesus Christ, he thought, she was only fourteen!

  He sat there, stunned, as though the fact that Torrey had been a kid of fourteen was news to him. My, God! He’d never given a thought to the fact that she was a fourteen-year-old. Why not? Because he was an emotional eighteen-year-old at the time, swearing eternal hatred of Torrey Tunet for his father’s suicide. He’d locked himself into that grievance.

  Meanwhile, Torrey Tunet had been growing up and becoming a person with qualities unknown to him. She wasn’t locked into being a thief. That was only in his head. Who was she? What was she?

  For the third time, he read the paragraphs in The Irish Independent. Torrey claimed that Desmond Moore had given her the necklace.

  He sat back. He suddenly wanted desperately to believe it. But she’d stolen the necklace. He knew it. In the moonlight at the lake, spying on her, he had seen her take the necklace from beneath a piece of shale.

  Yet … in the pub near the Shelbourne, Torrey leaning across the table saying, “Desmond was playing a nasty little sex game. He wanted me to sw
ipe the necklace. I obliged.… in the morning I gave him back the necklace … and then Desmond gave it back to me. For good.”

  Had she been telling him the truth? Or was she still a thief … and now a murderer?

  “If you’re through with that paper? They’re all out of the Independent.” The woman’s voice at his shoulder had the hoarseness of a long-time drinker. She sat down on the plastic stool next to him, a skinny woman with a long-boned face, dun-colored bun of hair, pockmarks on her cheeks. She’d been in the row of folding chairs at his left at the AA meeting. He handed her the paper. “It’s all yours,” and added, “I’m Luke.” Just as they did back home, in Ireland AA members gave only their first names.

  “I know,” the woman said, “I recognized you. From Castle Moore. I’m Janet, the senior maid. Senior above Rose. There’s just the two of us right now. Mr. Desmond wasn’t free with money for service.” She glanced down at the item about Torrey Tunet. “I saw all that on this morning’s television. What a laugh!”

  “A laugh?”

  “Ah, for sure!” Her tone was ironic. “Who was that king who sold his kingdom for a mess of pottage? No, in the Bible. That boy. Sold his soul.”

  “His birthright.”

  “Right, his birthright. Anyway, so did she, this American, Ms. Tunet. Except it was her body she was selling, but same thing.”

  “How you mean, a mess of pottage?”

  “Just a minute, I want some coffee and a bun. The coffee at this morning’s meeting was swill.” She ordered coffee and a sugared raspberry bun. When they came, she took a long draught of the coffee. “Got to get my blood stirring before getting back to Castle Moore.”

  Then, eating the bun and sipping the hot coffee, she told him about the mess of pottage.

  29

  In the small, square room at Pearse Street Garda Station, Torrey looked in amazement at the aluminum tray with the breakfast the female garda placed before her: orange juice, a bowl of hot porridge, a plate of scrambled eggs with three plump sausages, thick-sliced bacon, and broiled tomato. There was a basket of brown bread and white toast, a slab of butter, and a pot of hot coffee.