The Irish Cottage Murder
Page 13
“Oh, God!” Torrey rubbed her bare arms and gave a shiver. “What can you actually prove, with this?”
“Nothing, so far,” Luke said. “But what I’d like to prove is that Maureen Devlin would have reason enough to murder Desmond Moore.”
“Any mother would. But what are you talking about? You can’t go to Inspector O’Hare with this video and a murder theory. It only proves that Desmond Moore was a pedophile. And anyway, that child isn’t Finola. Surely Finola can’t be the only child in the neighborhood.”
“True. But I’ve done a bit of sleuthing. Try this on;
“Finola is the only child who arrived at Castle Moore early every morning, delivering bread. ‘A pretty little thing,’ is the way Rose described her to me.”
“But—”
“Finola was left alone at that cottage in the woods from before six in the morning, when her mother left to work at Curry’s Meats. ‘You’d see her playing in the woods,’ is what else I learned from Rose. The woods close enough for Rose to look out and glimpse her. Or to be observed from the Castle Moore library, for instance. It gave me a chill.”
“You’re giving me a bit of a chill. Still, that’s hardly—”
“Add to that the fact that there aren’t other likely children around, not nearby. The only place anywhere near Castle Moore is a half-mile away, the Sheedy farm, hard-working farm boys, and the twins, they’re girls, fourteen, local soccer champs. The other children are strictly within the village, most of them from a bit down the valley beyond Butler Street.”
“You’re reeling me in. But only a bit. I still—”
“And what I told you, Desmond’s psychotic rage against the Comerfords, that portrait in his room: Lady Comerford, the image of Maureen Devlin. Lady Comerford, with her young children. Maureen Devlin is a Comerford. I visited Fergus Callaghan this afternoon. He confirmed it. To Desmond, it would’ve been a perfect excuse for his pedophilic choice of Finola.”
“Reasonable, but not quite—So that’s what you’ve been doing! Sleuthing. Even going to Dublin to see Fergus Callaghan. But we still haven’t any proof that Maureen Devlin discovered Desmond was up to something with her little girl. And that she murdered him. If you went to Inspector O’Hare, you’d be putting her head on the block.”
“It might save your own head.”
She shivered, remembering her night at the police quarters in Dublin.
Luke shoved his hands into his pockets. “You’re right about Maureen Devlin. My evidence so far is pretty damn good. But it’s not quite good enough. Still, I have a feeling that—”
“Mr. Willinger?” Rose stood in the library doorway, “Brian Coffey is in the stables. He’s just back from his family in Galway, his sister’s wedding this afternoon. Ms. Winifred said would you please be telling him about the stables because of the plans. The landscaping? He’s in the office at the stables, so if—”
“Thanks, Rose.”
* * *
With Luke gone, Torrey looked at the bronze clock on the Florentine desk. She would give it fifteen minutes. Time for Luke Willinger to give the message about landscaping to Brian Coffey and leave the stables.
Since four o’clock, she had haunted the stables, waiting for Brian Coffey to return from Galway and his sister’s wedding in Oughterard. He’d gone by bus this morning according to Rose, a token visit; he couldn’t yet trust Kevin with the castle’s horses.
Brian Coffey. It was Brian who knew something about that bloody murder in the stables. Brian. A gun shot. It was a solid lead. And now Brian was back from Galway.
She looked at the bronze clock. Ten minutes more.
The clock ticked. Five minutes.
Torrey got up. Merde! Her muscles ached from this morning’s horseback ride. A second ride today would be torture. But it was the only excuse she could think of. She groaned. Get on with it. Brian Coffey.
* * *
In the kitchen of Castle Moore, Janet sat down at the scrubbed wood table and poured herself a cup of tea. The lamb roast was in the oven, sending up the smell of rosemary and thyme. The bread pudding was in the pan on the stove. The honeyed carrots were in the black baking dish next to the pudding. The rest would be easy, though Rose usually forgot to take the ice cream out of the freezer, so it was hard as a rock at dessert time. “Some day I’ll break my arm dishing it out on account of you,” Janet often said to Rose in exasperation. “Take it out at seven o’clock and put it in the refrigerator. That’ll give it an hour to get creamylike.”
At the range, Rose buttered a piece of toast, sprinkled it with sugar and cinnamon, and put it in a saucer and brought it to the table. She sank down and poured herself a cup of tea from the brown pot. She was frowning in thought. “Remember last summer—that dented pink celluloid pig Mr. Desmond found in the shrubbery?”
“What about it?”
“Remember he left it on his desk? When I threw it away, he yelled at me for throwing things out without his say so.”
Janet nodded. “He always had a fit if anything was missing. What’s his is his, and don’t you dare touch it. Past tense.”
“Like about that little shoe. On his desk.”
“What little shoe? A paper weight was it?”
“No,” Rose said, “Just a little patent leather shoe with a rosette on it. Like for a doll. He had me combing the library with a magnifying glass. But it wasn’t there.” She criss-crossed her cinnamon toast with a knife, cutting it into four triangles.
“Well, it’s not your fault,” Janet said.
“I guess,” Rose said, picking up a triangle of buttery cinnamon toast. “But where did the shoe come from in the first place? And where did it go?”
47
Brian Coffey, with a thankful feeling of deliverance, said good-bye and thanks to Mr. Luke Willinger in the stable yard.
He came into the tack room. It was just past half six o’clock. The horses were out of the field and in their stalls. Watered and fed. Brian could see that in his absence Kevin had done his job right. Now the lad had scrubbed himself up in the shower, put on his good pants and sweater, and gone on his bike to see a girl in Ballynagh, pedaling off in a plastic raincoat. A light rain had begun to fall.
In the tack room the air was warm and misty and smelled of leather and hay and mold. Brian had a homey feeling of coziness to be back from his day in Oughterard for his younger sister’s wedding. He loved the Moore stables. From down the walkway, he heard Black Pride nicker. Black Pride had proved his stall door no stronger than a bit of plywood that day of Mr. Desmond’s murder. He’d bolted. It had taken Kevin a feverish four hours to find him and get him back to the stables before dark.
At the card table, Brian picked up the phone and dialed the number in Oughterard. He was smiling, so relieved. He had a momentary twinge of guilt that he ought to be calling collect. But this was horse business, wasn’t it? In a way. So the phone call could rightly be billed to the Moore Stables.
“Eileen?” he said in Gaelic, when his married oldest sister answered. She loved the Gaelic. Oughterard in Galway was one of the few places in Ireland where people still spoke the old tongue, a Gaeltacht area. Even the road signs were often only in Gaelic. “I’m back okay. The bus got to Dublin and I took the local. Good news!—I keep the job! Mr. Desmond’s landscape man, Mr. Willinger, came to see me. He says Ms. Winifred’s going ahead with the landscaping and she’s keeping the stables besides!”
His sister sounded so pleased, so delighted for him. Then—“Brian, you might pay them a visit, Maureen and the little one, Finola. After all—”
That whore! No. Never. He stopped smiling. He could feel the sweat starting under his armpits. He’d sometimes wished that when he’d first come to Hennessey Stables in search of a horse-training job, they hadn’t referred him to Castle Moore in Ballynagh. But that’s the way the world worked. Honey came in a bitter cup.
“Brian? Are you there?”
“Maureen’s a whore!” he burst out. “I know it for sure
! A whore! I know of three men she’s been screwing! I’ll not visit her!”
“Brian!” Eileen’s shocked voice.
“Why did Uncle Danny have to marry that wild one, anyway?” he said passionately. “Grandpa Seamus always said Danny could have had her without marriage vows.”
At a sound in the walkway outside the office door—a footstep?—Brian looked toward the doorway. Nobody there. Probably only one of the horses stamping. Besides, he was speaking in Gaelic.
“Brian, are you there?”
“I’m here, Eileen.… Grandpa Seamus said Danny liked it that Maureen was a Comerford and him a carpenter. Like he was conquering the English at last.”
“He loved her.” Eileen’s voice, so quiet, her gentle voice made the harsh Gaelic sound rich as yellow cream.
From one of the stalls, a horse whinnied and stamped, as if disturbed. Brian hardly heard. He was no longer happy, but tense, sweating, his skin gone clammy under his red cotton jersey. Dare he tell Eileen?… Eileen, to whom as a little kid he’d always run.… Eileen, who took away his bewildering hurts and lifted him from the dark, heart-pounding places into safety with her words that were like firelight warmth, soft, dry clothes, and loving arms.
“Brian?”
“Eileen! It’s about Maureen and Mr. Desmond. I have to tell you!”
“Brian, what ails you? You sound—”
But Brian was looking again toward the stable office door. “Hello?” His voice quavered, cracked. A figure appeared. The American young woman. So he had heard a footfall. How long had she been out there?
Into the phone, in Gaelic, he managed, to Eileen, “Someone has come in and is standing as good as nailed to the floor. I’ll call you back tonight at nine o’clock when the little ones are asleep. I’ll tell you then. I won’t have to pay for the call; it goes on the Moores’ bill—stable expenses.”
He hung up, the sweat cold on his back, and turned to the American woman in the doorway.
48
“Hello, Brian.” Torrey smiled at Brian Coffey from the doorway of the stable office. She felt she would choke with concealed excitement. Someone named Eileen. Nine o’clock tonight. “Maureen’s a whore!”
“Evening, ma’am.”
Torrey felt a rush of pity. Brian’s voice that she’d just overheard on the phone speaking in Gaelic had sounded violently angry and excited, yet somehow like a child crying out in fear of the dark. Now his pale blue eyes looked at her almost unseeingly. She sensed that Brian was still caught up with that phone conversation, impassioned, cut off.
“What is it, then?” Brian Coffey said. His voice trembled.
Emotional exhaustion, Torrey guessed. Brian Coffey was sitting hunched over at the desk, one hand still resting on the phone. Such a white skin he had! Anemic? Torrey wondered. She met his gaze. Abruptly he snatched his hand away from the phone as though he had burned it. Oh, my! Torrey thought. She tried to look disinterested.
Since eight o’clock this morning, when Brian had blurted out those confused words about hearing a shot (“No—voices … like shots … that’s what I meant!”) she’d known she had to discover what he was hiding.
And now, unexpectedly, a jackpot? Nine o’clock tonight.
“I hope it’s not too late for me to go riding; it’s almost seven.” She smiled at Brian Coffey, hoping desperately that he’d say it was too late. Her sore muscles cried out for a hot bath. But no way she could back out now; Brian Coffey might become suspicious.
“No, ma’am, that’s all right.” Brian got up.
Torrey followed him into the tack room; tack hung on the walls, horse blankets were piled. Among them a beautiful black-and-red plaid caught her eye.
In the yard, she watched Brian saddle Baby Talk. Or was the mare’s name Baby Face? She had a block. How come she could speak colloquial Russian and tell jokes in two Scandinavian languages but couldn’t remember a horse’s name? Was that, too, genetic?
“Ready, ma’am.”
Astride, walking the mare from the stable yard, Torrey whistled between her teeth, a toneless whistle. It was a habit, that whistling, when things were going well for her.
* * *
A hundred yards down the access road she reined the horse to a stop. She looked at her watch. Seven o’clock. Give it twenty minutes. “A refreshing jaunt,” she’d lie brightly to Brian Coffey; then she’d head for a hot bath.
She kicked the horse’s side, reining it about. Then she just sat. It was as though she were seeing the beauty of Wicklow through a clear crystal. Birds sang, breezes ruffled the leaves of trees, the pungent evening smell of flowers, grasses, and loam was sharp and delicious in her nostrils.
Quarter past seven. She seemed to see Brian Coffey’s pale eyes looking into her eyes as though searching for what she might have heard; at the same time, veiled, confident in his secrets.
Twenty past. Back to the stables. She was already hungry for dinner. Roast lamb, Rose had said.
“Go!” she told the horse. “Giddap!” She shook the reins and kicked the mare’s sides and Baby Face—or was it Talk Baby?—trotted back down the road and up the drive to Castle Moore.
49
“‘Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich,’” Winifred quoted, grinning around at to the others at the dinner table. She forked a second helping of the juicy-looking roast lamb from the silver serving platter that Rose, at her elbow, held out. “Dr. Johnson said that. He did like a good dinner.”
“Well, you can feed with the rich every meal now,” Sheila said tartly, “even when you’re alone.” Across from her sat Torrey Tunet. Torrey’s color was high. She looked … well, mettlesome, Sheila thought. Hardly a poetic description, but one couldn’t be poetic all the time. She also looked rather off center. Her swatch of silky hair was a bit awry on her forehead and her gray eyes were a little wide. She was wearing brown velveteen pants and one of those black turtlenecks that ballerinas wore a lot. Torrey could get away with it, with her slender neck. As for Luke Willinger, who was slathering a parsleyed potato with butter, he had on a shirt and argyle sweater and no tie, as though he were relaxing over a comfortable dinner at home, with maybe a book propped against the sugar bowl. And Winifred! Impossible! “You might,” Sheila said to Winifred in exasperation, “get a decent-looking jacket instead of wearing that moldy old jumble sale bargain.”
“In due time,” Winifred said. She took a last luxurious bite of the roast lamb. “I think there’s ice cream for dessert. Then we’ll want a cognac with the coffee. How about some poker after dinner?” She looked at the others, then glanced at her watch. “It’s hardly nine o’clock. We could have a couple of hours before bed.”
Torrey jumped to her feet. “Hardly nine? This damned watch of mine! That’s the second time—Will you excuse me? I’ve got to … to get some tapes down on hard copy and send them off in the morning’s mail. I’ll have to skip dessert.”
“Do go ahead…” Winifred started to say. But Torrey had already gone.
* * *
Straw tickled her nose. Darlin’ Pie’s tail swished past her face. She was at the wrong end of Darlin’ Pie’s stall, the dung end, alas. But she’d be able to hear better there. In the dark, she slid the cassette recorder from her jacket pocket. With her pencil flashlight she looked at her watch. Two minutes to nine.
The stable office must once have been a stall. The partition that had been built up above the opening between the office and Darlin’ Pie’s stall was flimsy fiber board, a temporary measure, Desmond Moore had had big plans.
Footsteps in the walkway, going past. A minute later, a light went on in the stable office. Torrey could see streaks of light through the ill-matching boards behind Darlin’ Pie’s rear.
A sigh, a mutter, a series of coughs, the sound of pacing; then a chair pushed back, the tap of numbers on a Touch-Tone phone, Brian Coffey’s voice. “Eileen?”
Torrey, cross-legged in the straw, clicked on the cassette recorder.
50
The phone rang.
“Yes?” he said into the phone. Then, “Yes…” and, “Yes. Certainly not.” He hung up. He could hardly breathe.
“Ten o’clock this morning, Mr. Callaghan, at the garda station in Ballynagh.” Inspector O’Hare’s voice on the phone had been chillingly without inflection. “I hope it will not inconvenience you.” A command performance, nevertheless.
* * *
By nine o’clock, Winifred had breakfasted, jogged four miles, practiced her tennis serve, and written two poems, one a villanelle, the other a rondel. “Just to keep my hand in,” she’d told Sheila. Both poems resoundingly praised Ireland’s recent vote to make divorce legal. Publication of the poems in the Irish feminist press was certain.
“Now what?” Winifred said to Sheila, when Rose came to tell her that Inspector O’Hare of the Ballynagh garda was on the phone. She was in sweatpants and shirt at her laptop computer in the dining gallery of Castle Moore. “You take it, Sheila.”
Back from the phone, Sheila said, “Ten o’clock at the Ballynagh garda station, if you don’t mind. Important, he says.”
“You’re coming with me, Sheila. I’m sweaty. I’ll have to shower again first. Read these poems, Sheila.”
“Maybe it’s something about the murder. Inspector O’Hare, I mean,” Sheila said. “Why he called.”
“Which murder?” Winifred said. “We seem to have a plethora.” She went to shower.
* * *
There weren’t enough chairs. Inspector O’Hare swore under his breath. It was already 9:45. “Borrow some folding chairs from across the street, the Grogan Sisters’ Notions,” he said to Sergeant Bryson. “They have ladies’ knitting parties; they must have chairs.”