Cruel Winter: A County Cork Mystery

by Sheila Connolly

  “It’s okay—it’ll keep us all busy. I don’t know if you had a plan when you started this, but now you’re going to tell us your side of things the way you remember them. They’re going to ask questions. Bart can back you up if he’s needed. Can you handle that?”

  “By now I should be able to, don’t you think? I’ve been answering the same questions for nearly half my life. The problem is, nobody seems to believe me. They all made up their minds a long time ago.”

  “But you want to go ahead?” Maura pressed.

  “What’ve I got to lose? Bart, does that suit you?” When he nodded, Diane turned toward the men scattered around the room. “Listen up. I’ve got one rule here: I get to tell the story in my own way. It may take a while, but the background is important to what happened. You can interrupt me, but you can’t tell me to hurry up.”

  Nobody protested. At least she’d captured their attention.

  Everyone spent some time shuffling chairs around and retrieving a few extra from the back room. Maura added some more coals to the fire; Mick filled more glasses. Jimmy sulked in a corner: if he had intended to make trouble, his plan had backfired. What was wrong with him? Billy watched, somehow resembling a wise old owl, his feathers fluffed out for warmth. Had he ever seen anything like this in his favorite pub? Maura doubted it. From what he had told her about Old Mick, the former owner had made every effort to stay out of other’s people’s business. It had been a man’s pub, where nobody had to talk unless they wanted to. Now that she was running the place and Rose was behind the bar part of the time, some things had changed, but there were still those who came in and sat in silence over their pint without fear of interruption, and that’s the way they liked it. She could respect that.

  Finally, things were set. Gillian stood up. “Billy, stay where you are. But since Diane here is our guest of honor, in a manner of speaking, she should have the place of honor by the fire.”

  To their credit, Liam and Donal jumped up and offered Gillian a chair, and she took one with a grateful smile.

  Maura realized that she was supposed to be the master of ceremonies—no, mistress—and run the show. As Diane seated herself in the upholstered chair, looking more energized than when she had arrived, Maura stood in front of the fire. “All right, guys—a few rules. No name-calling, rude comments, spitting, or throwing things. If you break the rules, you can go sit in the back room. You can’t disrupt the proceedings. Let Diane tell her story and don’t badger her. And keep your opinions to yourself. All she’s asking for is a chance to be heard.” There were a few grumblings, but nobody objected. “Then let’s get started. Diane, you have the floor.”

  Maura removed herself to watch from a chair on the fringes of the group. She made one last check of the others. She had her doubts about the younger guys from the wedding party, but she was pretty sure they’d prefer being warm to being exiled out back, so they’d have to play by the rules.

  Ten

  Diane stood up and cleared her throat. “Thank you all for giving me the chance to talk—too few people have. I was born Diane Wolfe, and my people were dairy farmers out past Schull. When I left school, I decided to try my hand at finding a job in London, and that’s where I met and married my husband, Mark Caldwell. When my father’s mother died, she left me her cottage here in Ireland, and Mark and I kept it and used it as a second home. Mostly summers, but now and then, we’d come over for a short holiday.”

  “When was this?” Gillian asked.

  “What? Oh, we married in 1994. That was just before the start of the Celtic Tiger. My husband was in banking, and he used whatever Irish connections he could to ride the tiger. He did well. So of course we started spending a bit more time over here at the cottage, sort of a mix of business and holiday. Most likely you don’t remember those times, or maybe you might not have seen the changes west of here. Things changed quickly back then. Suddenly there were artists and writers and actors buying up the old places, throwing money around.”

  “The blow-ins,” Mick said. “Many from Europe. Were yeh not part of that lot?”

  “Yes and no,” Diane replied. “I was from here, but Mark wasn’t. And he had little patience for the local people—thought them slow, uneducated. He’d rather have spent his time with those others, not that they were particularly interested in him. We made a few efforts to get together with them, but nothing came of it. He wasn’t happy about that. There’s another side to it as well: at the same time as all those arty people were showing up, there were other people coming in and settling there—jobless people from other EU countries who thought that either they’d find plenty of work here, or if not, they’d just go on the dole, which they could do. And then there were the old hippie types.” That term met with blank looks from most people. “New Agers?” Diane tried. “Back-to-nature folk? The label doesn’t matter. The fact of it was, there were a lot of new people coming in, whole gangs of them, and they didn’t all mix well. It changed the place, and it happened fast.”

  “Can yeh get on wit’ the story?” Danny in the back called out.

  Maura was about to step in and remind him of the rules she had set, but Diane spoke first. “You need to know this part of it. I’m setting the stage. Things had pretty much been the same for centuries, then suddenly there was lots more money and strangers coming in and taking the land. And the younger folk figured they didn’t want to be dairy farmers like their fathers, so they packed up and headed for the cities for cleaner work that paid better. There were a lot of changes, and they didn’t sit well with the people who’d been there all along. So things were unsettled in the nineties. Fair enough?”

  “Yeah,” the man muttered, then subsided.

  “So Mark and I were going back and forth from England to West Cork a lot then. We had no kids, so we could come and go as we pleased. After a couple of years, we were the ‘old folk,’ the ones who’d been there longest. We watched as the other cottages around us were bought up. Some of the new people kept them much as they were but added decent wiring and plumbing. Others tore them down and put up fancy new places. But in a way, you couldn’t really see it—like here, I gather, the houses were scattered far apart, so you needn’t see your neighbors. When we first were coming, Mark and I used to joke that we knew more cows than people. Still, I was happy. I’d always loved the place, and it was peaceful. Mark had a bit more trouble slowing down because of his kind of work, so I most likely spent more time at the cottage than he did.”

  “Are you still married?” Maura said suddenly.

  Diane turned to look at her. “We are. Going on thirty years now.”

  “What about the murder?” Joe called out.

  Diane peered at him, then snapped, “Fine, if you’re so impatient. I’ve painted you a picture of the way things were. A lot of newcomers, and most didn’t know each other well. The longtimers resented them, even if they spent a lot of money in the villages. It wasn’t the way things used to be, and that bothered them. Then, in January of 1996, right after the holidays, Sharon Morgan was found dead on her own property. Not in her house, but outside. The news stories were kind of exaggerated—half of them probably cobbled together from rumors and somebody’s idea of what would sell papers. But it was pretty clear that she had been savagely attacked—stabbed from the front, many times—and left to die. She was found the next morning by neighbors walking their dog. They called the guards, and then all hell broke loose. The reporters were there before the state doctor, who had to come down from Dublin. If there was evidence, it was trampled by the curious folk who wanted to get a look at the body or at least see the scene.”

  “Where the lady was killed,” Billy asked, “how close was her home to yer own?”

  Diane turned to him. “Billy, is it? As the crow flies, maybe three miles? But there are few crows there, and by road it’s more like five. And if you’re wondering if I could have walked, there’s a bog between the two. Nothing any sensible person would try to cross in the dark.”
/>   “How did yeh know it was dark when she died?” Mick asked.

  “I was told that Sharon was seen in the stores in Schull buying her supper past five, and it was dark when she left for home. It appears that she ate her supper after she got home. And then she was killed. She was found roughly twelve hours later.”

  “She was married?” Billy asked.

  “She was, to another London man, Paul Morgan. He was English as well.”

  “And where was he when this happened?”

  “Home in England. As was my husband.”

  “So it was just you, alone in yer cottage, and this Sharon, alone in hers?”

  “I was alone. I can’t speak for Sharon. I never saw her that day—or night.”

  An awkward silence fell over the group, and Maura could hear the wind throwing snow against the large glass windows facing the street. Finally, it got too uncomfortable for her, and she stood up. “Okay, you’ve set the scene for us, Diane. But where do we go from here?”

  “Waddayeh mean?” Joe protested. “The woman died. Stabbed at her own home.”

  Maura glanced at Diane. “Diane is telling the story the way she wants, and that’s fine. But I’m not from here, remember? I don’t know how garda investigations work—well, not a big one like this—or how they worked back then. I don’t know what kind of officers were available, or how many, or where they came from. I don’t know what it takes to make an arrest, and I don’t know how the courts work. So somebody’s going to have to fill me in along the way.”

  “Yeh don’t know much of anything, do yeh now?” Jimmy called out.

  Maura swallowed a spurt of anger—he really was in a lousy mood. “Hey, Jimmy, I’m new here. And this all happened twenty years ago, when I’m guessing it was a pretty different place, and I have to take that into account, which you don’t because you’ve lived here all that time. So, what does that mean? No mobile phones, for one thing. Not everyone had a television. How many channels were there? What were the newspapers, and how many people had a chance to read them?” Everyone was now staring at her, which she found kind of annoying. She didn’t think she was being unreasonable.

  But this was her pub, and she had a right to speak. “What I have learned since I got here is that memories are long around here. People then knew each other—except for the blow-ins you’re talking about. And people talked to each other back then. You know how that works: a story starts spreading, and by about the fifth time around, people have added flying saucers and an army of thugs. Maybe the truth was simple, but it wouldn’t have taken long for people to muck it up and fill in the blanks however they wanted. And that’s what stuck.”

  Mick spoke up suddenly. “People felt safer back then. Like yeh said, everyone knew his neighbor and could count on them to help—look after the herd if there was trouble, keep all the kids in line, that kind of thing. And then, all at once, like Diane said, there were all these new people comin’ in without any history with the place. Nor did they want to build a life here, for the most part. People who’d lived here all their lives were unsettled—and rightly so. And then this murder in the midst of it all—it scared people. They didn’t know who they could trust anymore.”

  “I can see that,” Maura said, wondering how much things had changed. At least she’d been welcomed, but it hadn’t happened overnight. “But tell me this: why was everybody so willing to point the finger at Diane? She had a history here. Plus, she was a woman. How many woman killers have there been in Ireland?”

  “How many killers have there been at all?” Seamus asked. “It was said at the time that Sharon Morgan’s killing was the first such in West Cork since Michael Collins was cut down in 1922. And people are still arguin’ about who did that one.”

  “Can we save that story for another night?” Maura asked, softening her comment with a smile. “One thing at a time. Diane was accused of the murder of Sharon Morgan during a January night in 1996. She was questioned by the local gardaí for it.”

  “Twice,” Diane volunteered in a wry tone.

  “Twice, then. But the gardaí didn’t hold her because they had no evidence. They do still need evidence to arrest people in this country, right?”

  “They do,” Mick said. Bart nodded but didn’t speak.

  “Look, guys—and Gillian and Rose—I don’t know how many American television shows you get here, or if you watch them, or if there’s the same kind of thing made in England or here, but these days everybody thinks they know how to solve a murder because they’ve seen it all before. And all those murders are solved in an hour. People seem to believe there are magic machines that can identify evidence and DNA and make facial reconstructions, and they can check phone and Internet records and bank accounts and credit cards in minutes. Of course that’s not true—back in the States, these things actually take months or sometimes years. Or so I’ve been told.”

  “Yeh, and yer Bulger fellow was hiding in plain sight for, what, fifteen years?” Bart commented. “And nobody noticed?”

  “I never said American cops or the FBI got it right all the time,” Maura shot back. “Some things don’t get looked at, or somebody jumps to the wrong conclusion when they do look. Mistakes get made. Now, you can correct me if I’m wrong, but back in the nineties, things were still pretty simple here, right? At least in this part of Cork. From what I’ve heard, most crimes around here were for drunk driving or petty theft. The gardaí didn’t have much experience with homicide and not much in the way of labs for the science part, either. Have I got that right?”

  Nods from most people, including Diane and Bart.

  Maura wondered just what she thought she was doing. She knew nothing about what had happened—but maybe that was a good thing, because she could be objective. The most she’d hoped for was to keep these people entertained until they all fell asleep, and maybe in the morning the snow would have stopped, and everybody could go home. Then Diane had walked in, carrying with her what had to be one of the more notorious stories of the past century, and based on how Mick and Jimmy had reacted it was still a sore subject. Of course people both had opinions and wanted to hear more once they knew she was here. And Diane seemed willing to talk about it. So Maura was willing to roll with it, but they needed some sort of order or structure. “Okay, we’ve got the star witness right here. We’re going to give her a fair trial.”

  “What’re yeh talkin’ about?” Joe asked.

  “Forget what you see on the telly. You all know this part of the country. We’ll look at the facts. We look at the evidence that we know about and ask if there might have been more, if anyone had been looking, and if anybody saved it or if it’s gone forever. We talk about the whys and hows and whens. We ask Diane the hard questions.” Maura glanced quickly at Diane, who didn’t object. “What reason would she have had to kill Sharon Morgan? And if she didn’t do it, who else might have had a reason? Unless you want to say there was some random crazy person roaming the bog after dark, bashing people without leaving evidence behind.” That brought a muffled laugh. “You’ll answer questions? All of them?”

  Diane gave her a long look before answering. “Yes, I will. I’ve got nothing to lose.” She turned to look at the rest of the group. “Do your best—or your worst.”

  Seamus grinned—he seemed to be the most invested in this, among the people in the audience. “Then we’ll give you your trial,” he said. “We’ll poke holes in what everyone thinks they know based on those dumb stories like ‘Where Are They Now?’ that pop up now and then.”

  “Will we be choosing sides, then?” Donal asked anxiously. “Like, maybe, for and against?”

  Maura had no idea. “Has anybody here actually been to a trial?” The question was met with silence. “Well, maybe that’s a good thing—you’re all law-abiding citizens.”

  “Or we haven’t been caught,” someone said. Several men laughed.

  Maura turned back to Diane. “What do you want, Diane? Do you want someone to speak for you? Like a solici
tor or an advocate or whatever the heck they call them around here?”

  Diane shook her head. “I don’t think so. No one else knows the story or what questions to ask—well, maybe Bart here, but he’d serve me better as a witness. I’d be better off on my own. We need a moderator, though, to keep you all in line. You can do that, Maura. You have no stake in this and no wrongheaded ideas about what happened.”

  “Fair enough,” Maura told her. She checked the clock. It felt like twelve hours had passed, but it was still only nine o’clock. She hadn’t seen any headlights passing outside the building for quite a while. Maybe other people had had the sense to stay home. “Okay, then. Everybody comfortable? You need another drink, get it now. Because it’s not fair to stop and start.”

  “And should we all visit the loo, mammy?” Seamus asked.

  “If you need to.”

  A few people bellied up to the bar; others drifted toward the back, where the lavatories were. Maura studied the way the chairs were laid out and decided a circle made sense, open to the fire at one end. Billy had his seat and Diane hers on the other side of the fire. The rest could fend for themselves.

  “You’re sure you want to do this?” she asked Diane again.

  Diane smiled. “Stop asking me that, will you, Maura? I know my own mind. I can handle myself, you know. I’ve been living with this for years, and I’ve probably heard every question they could throw at me more than once.”

  “You say you didn’t kill Sharon Morgan. Do you have an idea about what really happened?” Maura asked softly.

  Diane eyed her, maybe trying to assess her motive. “God’s honest truth, I do not. Let’s see what a batch of fresh minds can come up with.”

  “You’ve got it,” Maura said, then raised her voice. “All right, everybody, let’s get this thing rolling.”