Cruel Winter: A County Cork Mystery

by Sheila Connolly

  “Don’t borrow trouble, Maura me dear. There’s time yet.”

  That was an oddly Irish way of thinking, but it beat worrying about everything all the time. “I hope so, Billy.”

  Two

  It was a slow day at Sullivan’s by any standards. A Thursday, off-season, with looming bad weather? Maura wondered if it was worth staying open at all, but she hated the idea of turning away even one customer—and besides, she was already here. She knew that was not a practical decision, because she’d have to keep the lights and the heat on in case some poor soul wandered in looking for a pint or even a cup of tea. The math didn’t make much sense. But she didn’t like the thought of shutting down and retreating to her cottage, where it wasn’t much warmer and was definitely lonelier. And if the weather warnings were true, she might get stuck up there on her hill for who knew how long. Plus she had next to no experience with driving in the snow, since she and her gran could never afford a car in Boston and really hadn’t needed one, and she didn’t want to end up in a ditch—or worse, upside down at the bottom of the hill. So she was going to stay at Sullivan’s, come what may.

  In that case, she needed to do something. “If we’re supposed to prepare ourselves for a big storm, what do we need to do?” she asked Mick.

  He cocked his head at her. “So now yer takin’ this seriously?”

  “I guess I should,” she replied.

  “Mebbe. All right, then. If the winds come up, the power’s likely to go when the lines blow down, so we should have some torches and spare batteries on hand.”

  Maura had a fleeting image of wooden torches, like in some medieval castle. “Torches? You mean flashlights?”

  “I do. And the batteries’ll go fast at the shops, so you should get yerself up to O’Donovan’s hardware and stock up if you can.”

  “Okay, that makes sense. What if they’re out?”

  “Then the Costcutter will be out as well. I’d guess there’d be some oil lamps in the cellar here, although you’d need to check for fuel.”

  Oil lamps—really? Which century was this? “What about the heat?”

  Mick nodded toward the fireplace. “The oil tank’s half-full. Otherwise, that’d be it. We’re fairly well fixed for turf and coal, so long as the storm doesn’t last long.”

  “That’s out in the shed behind the building, right?”

  “The tank and the rest are, yeah.”

  “And food?”

  “You’ve no kitchen here to speak of.”

  “There’s a kitchen!” Maura protested. “I’m just not sure any of it works, and it hasn’t been used in a heck of a long time. But we would need food. What do we do about that?”

  “Check with Anne Sheahan across the way, see what she’s got laid in. Or the other restaurants on this side of the road. I’d send you to the Costcutter down the road, but that’s where everyone and his uncle will be headed, and the same goes fer Fields, over at Skibbereen. It’ll be mad there.”

  A lot like Boston, Maura reflected. She remembered news stories about crazed people going out to local supermarkets and buying up bread and milk—even if they never normally ate bread or drank milk. Sometimes fistfights broke out. “How long do we have to get ready?”

  “Depends on the storm. Sometimes nothing happens, but sometimes they move fast.”

  “That’s no help, Mick,” Maura said impatiently. “What do you think I—we need to do right now, just in case?”

  “Like I said, you’ve got drink and heat. Make sure yeh’ve got lights, and lay in some food.”

  “What about people who can’t get home because they stayed too long?”

  Mick was beginning to look exasperated. “Are yeh looking fer trouble? Sure, and there’ll be some fools who think a bit of snow and ice can’t stop them. Send them over to Sheahan’s. They’ve got beds.”

  “They’ve only eight rooms over there. What if they’re booked already?”

  “Then go ask the woman. Doubtless she’s been through this drill before!” Mick turned away and started polishing the coffee machine, clearly ending the conversation.

  Maura fought down her annoyance. Mostly she was just itchy to do something, because sitting and staring at the fire wasn’t her thing. She didn’t know what to expect from the weather, and it might be no more than some wind and rain. But if it was worse than that, she wanted to be ready. She didn’t like feeling out of control of the situation.

  She looked around the room. Apart from Old Billy, there were no customers. She might as well cross the road and talk to Anne Sheahan or her husband Brian at the hotel and see how they were fixed and if they could offer her any advice. “Fine,” she announced to Mick, “I’ll go over now and talk to Anne.” Belatedly, another thought hit her. “Will Bridget be all right?” Mick’s grandmother Bridget was Maura’s nearest neighbor, and she insisted on living in the cottage she’d come to as a bride. Mick made sure she had what she needed and stopped by regularly.

  A brief flash of guilt crossed Mick’s face. “I’ll go up and check on her once Jimmy comes in. And you get back from the inn.”

  “Should we tell Jimmy and Rose to stay home if things look bad?” Once again, she realized she had no idea how far away any of her staff lived. She knew Jimmy and Rose lived within walking distance, but where Mick’s home was was still a mystery to her. That was the downside of paying their wages in cash. She hoped she wasn’t going to have troubles with her taxes—one more thing to check, even though she wasn’t sure she had enough knowledge to figure out what she might owe.

  She opened the door and had to hold it back against the wind so it wouldn’t slam into her, and she was immediately reminded about her lack of a coat. Was this the time to drive into Skibbereen and hunt for one? No, one thing at a time. Right now the item at the top of the list was to talk to Anne about storm prep. The wind cut through her multiple layers of sweaters. Wrapping her arms around herself, she hurried across the road and climbed the steps to the hotel bar opposite. Once she shut the door behind her, she noted that the place was a hundred percent more crowded than Sullivan’s: there was all of one person at the bar. That made her feel a little better. Anne—co-owner after her marriage to Brian, whose family had owned and managed the place for well over a century—seemed to be working on the accounts on top of the bar but looked up when Maura came in.

  “Maura! How’s it goin’?” Anne seemed pleased to see another face.

  “About as lively as this place.”

  “Can I get you a coffee? Tea?” Anne volunteered.

  “Coffee would be great, thanks.”

  Anne turned to the machine behind the bar to start a cup. “What brings you over here on this fine day?”

  “This fine day, actually. The news is saying we’re in for a storm, and I don’t know what I have to do to get ready for it. Can you tell me what I need to do?”

  Anne slid the coffee across the bar, and Maura settled herself on a stool there. “Sure, and I might have a bit more experience than you. First, rest assured that yer building won’t fall down around yer ears.”

  Maura laughed. “I figured that, since it’s survived this long. But what if it gets bad later in the day, and people can’t get home? Or the power goes out? What happens?”

  Anne waved her hand. “Electric goes out a couple of times a year, storm or no. The winds comin’ up the harbor can be fierce. Usually comes back on in a couple of hours, or maybe the next day.”

  “What if it’s a couple of days?” Maura countered.

  Anne gave her a look that mixed amusement and exasperation. “I’d say you needn’t worry, unless somebody asks you for ice fer a drink. Which they won’t. Me, I’ve got food in the fridge and freezer to worry about if the electric’s out, but yer safe on that count.”

  “That was my next question. Say people get stuck and want to eat. Can I send them over to you? Would that be a problem?”

  Anne shrugged. “Don’t borrow trouble. If it comes to that, we’ve got enough laid in
that we can manage our folk and yours as well. Sure, and you can send them here. Or over at Ger’s on the corner, although they most likely don’t have much stored up.”

  “What about rooms if they can’t get home?”

  “Ah, now that’s a different question. There’s a conference on, over at Glandore, and we’ve got the overflow guests on our hands. Fully booked, we are, and if those guests are smart enough to listen to the reports and don’t head off fer their meetings, they’ll be stayin’ here, sure enough. And I’d warn them that the road along the harbor is tricky on a good day and all but impossible to drive in a storm. Well, if that even mattered. Did yeh hear part of the road washed out in the last big storm we had?”

  “Good grief, no! I don’t go that way very often. What happened?”

  “A chunk of it fell into the harbor, just past the bridge.”

  “So you can’t get to Glandore from here?”

  “Yeh can, by a road up toward the Costcutter, but it’s steep, so if the snow’s bad . . . Well, I wouldn’t want to try it, and I’d tell any strangers as much.”

  “When will it be fixed?” Maura asked.

  “When the government decides. It’s not in our hands, fer sure.”

  “Wow. Thanks for telling me, at least. Anyway, I was just checking on what beds were available. You know Sullivan’s and what space we have. There are rooms upstairs, but nothing like furniture in them, and nobody’s used them for a long time. If people show up with their own sleeping bags, we might be able to cope, but I can’t count on that. Which leaves offering them a piece of the floor, and that’s kind of hard.”

  Anne considered. “Most of our linens are in use with the guests we’ve got, but if things get bad, I might have some old duvets to lend you, to at least cover the floors. Let’s hope you won’t need them. And did you come out without a coat, then?”

  Was it the blue lips that gave her away? “Well, yes. When I came over here in the spring, I didn’t think I’d need one because I didn’t plan to stay this long. I’ve done okay with sweaters so far, but it seems that’s not going to work much longer.”

  “I’m guessin’ you don’t have wellies either?”

  “Wellies? Oh, boots. Nope. I was traveling light back then—just one carry-on for the plane. Where should I go looking for what I need?” That I can afford?

  “Let me check what we’ve got stashed away here. People leave stuff behind, now and again. Wellies in particular, if they’ve had a poor run of fishing. Brian might have an old coat or two from his younger days that’d fit yeh.”

  “Thanks, Anne. I’d really appreciate it.” Maura was oddly pleased at Anne’s offer, since they weren’t exactly friends.

  “Ah, we’re neighbors—we’ve got to stick together. Stay a moment, and I’ll see what’s in back.” Anne darted through a door behind the bar and emerged a minute later holding up a quilted dark-blue coat and a pair of battered rubber boots. “These’ll do fer yeh!” she said, pushing them across the bar toward Maura.

  “Great, thanks.” She slipped into the coat, which fit better than she expected and seemed reasonably clean. “This is fine, Anne. I really need this. Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you. Any idea how bad the weather’s going to get?”

  “Hard to say. Much of the time, it depends on exactly where you are. We might get nothing along the coast here, but there’d be ten centimeters a few miles inland or higher up.”

  Maura did some quick math: an inch was something over two centimeters, right? So ten centimeters would be four or five inches.

  “That doesn’t seem like much,” she said. “We get a lot more than that in Boston—and more than once a year. Maybe more than once a month in winter.”

  “Ah, but yer people there are ready for it, aren’t they? They have plows and salt and sand and the like, or so people tell me. Here it’s a rare thing, so we don’t waste our money on such items. Mostly we wait until it melts. Was there anything else you were wanting?”

  “Not that I know of—yet. I’m sure I’ll find more. You know, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you, but would it be a problem for you if I cleaned up those couple of rooms over the bar and fixed them up as bedrooms?”

  “Yeh’re sayin’ for rentals, or like a B and B by the night?” Anne asked.

  “Something like that. The space is there, and it seems a shame to waste it, but that would be one more thing I’d have to manage. Look, if you tell me you can handle whatever business comes along here, I won’t get in the way of that. Or you could use my rooms as overflow if you needed to.”

  “Let me think on it. Or mebbe you could do longer lets if people want to stay around fer a bit. No need to decide right now, eh?”

  “Of course not. I guess I’m off to try to find batteries.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  Maura slid some euros across the counter to pay for her coffee, but Anne pushed them back toward her. “You’ll do the same fer me, later.”

  “Thanks, Anne.”

  Maura pushed her way out the door again, carrying the boots. The coat Anne had given her was a blessing. It was freezing, and she couldn’t afford to get sick. And she’d never even thought about boots. Where had her head been? Did she really think winter didn’t happen in Ireland? Had she let herself get sucked into the green/rainbows/happy cows/tourist junk? She hurried up the street to the hardware store a block away. It was called O’Donovan’s. So was the furniture store across the road and the flooring store next to it. And a funeral home at the edge of town. Well, Leap had been named after Donovan’s Leap, or so many people had told her, so it made a kind of sense. She had only a fuzzy grasp of what the leap was all about—something about one of the important local guys fleeing the British and clearing the small gorge and the stream that had created it to escape, back in seventeen-something. Every time she walked over the modern bridge that spanned it, she tried to visualize a horse that could make it—and failed.

  The owner of O’Donovan’s (the hardware store, not the furniture store—Maura assumed they were related to each other somehow and maybe even to her) was a tall, rangy man in his forties, Maura guessed. She’d never learned his name, but she was willing to bet it was O’Donovan. Before she even opened her mouth, he said, “All out, if it’s batteries yer looking for.” He spoke slowly and deliberately. “You’d be Maura Donovan, am I right?”

  Crap. “I am, from the pub. I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. . . . O’Donovan.” The man nodded without comment. “Any chance for lamp oil?”

  The man raised his eyebrows. “Are you sayin’ you have the lamps?”

  “I think so. Old Mick Sullivan never threw anything away, so there may be some in the cellar—I haven’t looked yet. Not that I know how they work, but I know people who know, if you get what I mean.”

  “Someone who’s a bit older than yeh, mebbe?” He smiled at her.

  “Exactly. So, do you have any?”

  “What yer after is kerosene, not the fancy stuff in expensive small bottles. We’ve plenty of that fer stoves or heaters. But yeh’d hardly need that much of the stuff. Wait there.” The man disappeared through a door at the back of the shop. Maura looked around, wondering what other things she should have that she didn’t. Or didn’t know whether she had. She knew how to use a screwdriver or a hammer and maybe a wrench for simple plumbing, but mostly she’d let Mick or Jimmy handle mechanical things, and they had their own tools. And, she realized, she’d never really taken a look at the dark corners of her cellar, beyond where the kegs were stored, and who knew what might be lurking there? Something else she could do while waiting for the weather to go to hell.

  The man emerged from the back clutching a plastic gas container. “I’ve filled a smaller jug fer yeh. Here, take it. It should see yeh through the storm.” He thrust it toward her.

  “That’s great, thanks. What do I owe you?” Maura asked.

  “Ah, go on, take it. Yer a neighbor, and it’s a big storm.”

  “Well, thank you
. I’m sorry—I don’t even know your first name.”

  “It’s Charlie.”

  “Well, thank you, Charlie.” It had stopped surprising her that everybody in the village seemed to know who she was, but she’d come to realize that few new people moved in, so she stood out. And she realized how little effort she’d made to get to know her neighbors in the village. She’d used the excuse that she was too busy learning how the pub operated, but she should simply admit she was kind of unsure of her welcome. Old Mick had been a fixture, and she was very new. “Will the pub be busy tonight, do you think?”

  “If yeh’ve got heat and light and drink, yeh might be. How’s it been goin’?” he asked her.

  “Not bad, at least since we started with the music again.”

  “Ah, that was a grand thing, ten or more years ago. Great bands Old Mick brought in. It added a lot to the town. I’m glad to see it again.”

  “Then you should stop by—the least I can do is buy you a pint.”

  “After the storm, then. Good luck to yeh.”

  “Thanks, Charlie.” Toting her kerosene container, Maura scurried out the door and down the hill, headed for Sullivan’s. The wind seemed to have picked up since she left.

  Three

  Maura fought the wind all the way back to Sullivan’s. She burst into the pub, which was at least warmer than outside, and held up her container. “No batteries, but they had this at O’Donovan’s—it’s kerosene. All we need now is the lamps—and someone who knows how they work,” she ended dubiously.

  “I’ll check downstairs in a bit,” Mick said. “You’ve got another customer,” he added, nodding toward the fireplace.

  Maura was surprised to see Gillian Callanan sitting next to Billy, deep in conversation. Maura went over to join them. “Gillian! I didn’t expect to see you here. Where’s Harry?”