by W. C. Ryan
‘If you were able to, that would be very kind.’
‘Could I use your telephone?’ Harkin asks Charlie. ‘I would like to call Mr Bourke, now that Mrs Wilson mentions him.’
‘Of course. There’s one in father’s study but it is probably better if you use the one in the telephone room at the end of the long hall.’
‘In which case,’ Moira says, ‘I might also talk quickly to Mary and make sure everything is in hand. I’ll show Mr Harkin where the telephone is.’
She leads him to a room beside the staircase at the far end of the hall, which seems to be a cross between a bathroom and a wardrobe, with a long sink along one wall and a rack of empty hooks and a boxed telephone on another. Their flickering candles show them pale and wet in the wide, gilt-framed mirror, spotted with age, that hangs above the sink. Their reflections seem to belong to strangers. Harkin turns towards her, but Moira holds a finger to her lips and they listen to Charlie climb the staircase and then walk along the landing. Moira, in the meantime, removes her monocle and when they can no longer hear Charlie, she steps into his arms. They do not kiss, but hold each other tight. He is surprised to find they are both shivering.
‘I need your warmth, Mr Harkin,’ she breathes into his ear.
‘It is all yours, Mrs Wilson.’
‘I worried, when I heard Sean Driscoll had been murdered, that you might have been killed as well.’
Harkin can think of nothing to say in response.
‘You must make your telephone call,’ she continues.
‘Indeed I must, and you must to talk to Mary.’
‘Mary?’ she says. ‘She’s well capable of looking after things until I get back. I only wanted to feel your arms around me.’
And so he holds her for a little longer while their reflections seem to merge into one.
CHAPTER 41
T
he conversation with Bourke is short and to the point.
‘Did you hear about Driscoll?’
‘I did. Are we leaving?’
‘No.’
There is a brief silence on the line.
‘There’s no reason to stay.’ There is a slight edge to Bourke’s tone. ‘He’s dealt with. The investigation is over.’
‘Except it isn’t. Listen, can you come over in an hour or so. I’ll explain things.’
‘Will I meet you at the back gate?’
‘No, the front gate. There’s a man we need to speak to there.’
‘In an hour, so.’
Bourke hangs up and Harkin listens to the crackle on the line before he replaces the earpiece on its hook. He stands there for a moment, wondering if maybe Bourke is right and they should leave. But then he remembers Vane’s swagger on the beach and Maud sitting in her armchair.
He steps out into the hallway and stands still for a moment. The only light in the large expanse of the long hall is his solitary candle. There is an unnatural quiet within the house itself, while the external sounds, of the wind and the sea and the rain, although present, seem to come from a different world. Somewhere at the far end of the hall he hears a small creature’s claws scuttling across the marble floor. He presumes Billy is somewhere upstairs, as well as Charlie and Moira. If they are, they have been swallowed by darkness and silence.
Harkin’s footsteps echo as he walks towards the staircase, and strange shapes loom down at him from the walls. Sometimes when a flicker of candlelight catches a snarl of teeth or the glint of glass eyes, he feels his breath quicken. He climbs the staircase slowly, the old wood creaking under his weight. His eyes can barely detect the faintest outlines of the gallery windows high above, and he thinks of the White Lady, and Maud – of Arthur at the dining table and the dead soldiers by the graveside – and there is a part of him that wants to run.
But where can he run to? To Dublin? He will have his ghosts there as well.
He stands outside the door to Maud’s bedroom and reminds himself to breathe, concentrating on the lift and fall of his chest. He turns the handle and the mechanism gives a low, grinding squeal. He tells himself that there is nothing inside the room – only his clothes and the bed he will sleep in this night – and that even if there is something in there, it is better he faces his fear. He holds close the memory of Moira’s warmth and pushes the door open, and when he steps inside there is nothing out of the ordinary, only the same sense of loss that pervades the rest of the house.
After placing the candle on the dressing table, he takes comfort in the routine of laying out his clothes on the bed. He removes his wet garments and rubs himself down with a towel, feeling the chill of the room against his damp skin. He wonders whether anyone will light a fire in it this evening and then remembers that if anyone does, it will have to be him. He dresses quickly, savouring the crispness of the dry shirt against his skin. When he has finished, he examines himself in the clouded mirror. His cheekbones seem hollow, while his eyes appear to have sunk into his skull. He wonders if the distortion is reality or only in his mind. Tomorrow will be the end of it, one way or another. Or perhaps tonight. He retrieves Moira’s little pistol and places it in his jacket pocket, thinking back to the beach and Sean Driscoll lying there, his blood soaking the dark sand. It could have been him lying there, either instead of Driscoll or alongside him, and it might still be.
His eye falls on the davenport writing desk. If the letters were not written by Sean Driscoll, then who did write them?
Harkin walks to the dressing table and retrieves the key to the writing desk. He is less worried this time about offending. It seems to him that the situation has progressed past the need for politeness when it comes to the Prendevilles. He goes straight to the bottom drawer, unlocks it and pulls it out.
The first sense he has that something is not quite right is that the small plank which concealed the void where the letters were kept is now missing. He reaches into the secret compartment and finds it lying on the bottom of the void.
The letters, however, are nowhere to be found.
CHAPTER 42
B
illy does not answer when Harkin knocks on the door, but Harkin knows Billy of old and enters. He is sitting in an armchair beside the bed, in the dark. He does not look up.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Middling,’ Billy says, in a hollowed-out voice that tells Harkin he is on the edge of a precipice they both know well.
‘I’m sorry about Sean.’
Billy looks up and Harkin knows instantly that his intonation has revealed his knowledge of their relationship. But then, he thinks, it’s better this way.
‘You’ll always be my friend, Billy. I am not able to say that to many people. I do not change my mind about these things. I want you to be aware of that.’
Billy says nothing for a moment, then sighs.
‘I loved him, of course. He loved me. He followed me to France, for God’s sake. If that isn’t love I don’t know what is. It was only a friendship, at first. A very close friendship and a long one, since when we were children. But when we came back here, after all we had been through, it didn’t seem there was much point not being true to ourselves. I don’t expect you to understand that.’
‘I do understand it. He was a fine man. Brave, and loyal and principled.’
‘All of that.’
Harkin lets the silence between them linger, while he sits on the bed and makes himself comfortable. All the same, he has come here to ask questions.
‘You were with him the night of Maud’s murder,’ he says.
‘Yes. I was with him when I saw the damned ghost as well.’
Harkin leans forwards. His friend’s face is gaunt in the candlelight and he does not meet Harkin’s gaze.
‘I’m sorry I suspected him,’ Harkin says. ‘I will do what I can to bring Abercrombie to account.’
‘Will you kill him?’ Billy says, his voice barely audible.
‘I don’t know. But if it comes to it, perhaps. Sometimes killing is necessary.’
>
There is another silence.
‘How was he?’
‘Who?’
‘Sean, on the beach. How was he?’
Harkin takes a deep breath, reminding himself that this is a conversation they have had before, many times. About different men, in different places.
‘They knew he was a Volunteer, and almost certainly that he was an intelligence officer for the local brigade. They tortured him. They must have done everything they could to make him talk. But he didn’t or I wouldn’t be talking to you now. I’m not sure I could have withstood what he went through.’
‘Thank you,’ Billy says, eventually. ‘I thought you might be involved. I suppose we both kept secrets from each other.’
‘Will you be coming down for dinner?’
‘Yes. I need to talk to Father, and it’s as good a time as any.’
Harkin walks over and puts his hand on Billy’s shoulder.
‘I have a spare room in Dublin. The house may be small but it does have working electricity.’
Billy manages a half-laugh.
‘And there’s a tram fifty yards up the road that takes you straight into town pretty much whenever you like. You could come and stay for as long as you needed.’
‘I may well do that.’
‘One question before I go.’
‘Of course.’
‘Did your uncle come and see you this afternoon, after we went down to the beach?’
‘No. Thank God.’
Harkin nods, surprised once again at his capacity for missing the obvious.
‘I’ll see you later on, then. If I’m a few minutes late for dinner, will you ask them to start without me and make my apologies? I will be there, but I might be delayed.’
*
When he has lit the fires that Charlie requested, and made sure that the flames have taken hold, Harkin walks down the drive to the gate lodge. The rain has stopped but the wind coming in from the sea is damp and the cold it brings with it works its way through his clothing in no time at all. He knows his guilt is probably misplaced – that Abercrombie likely knew about Driscoll weeks, if not months, before Harkin came down from Dublin. He knows he is more directly responsible for the death of Father Dillon, but given the priest was an informer and the indirect participant in the deaths of at least three people, Harkin thinks he can live with his portion of that responsibility.
Somewhere in the woods an owl gives its mournful cry and he hears his own apprehension reflected in the sound. He has a sense of foreboding about what is to come.
There is the crack of a twig and then a voice with a Dublin accent comes from the bushes beside the road.
‘Very careless. I could as easily shoot you down as scratch my arse.’
‘Just as well you’re here to protect me, then.’
‘If you’d only allow me to protect you,’ Bourke continues, emerging on to the drive. ‘I’m telling you, if I get an order tomorrow to take you up to Dublin with me, that’s an order I will take some pleasure in obeying.’
‘I promise we will be leaving tomorrow, if not before. Orders or no orders. But we need to deal with a few loose ends first.’
‘Loose ends? So you’re telling me Sean Driscoll wasn’t the killer.’
‘No, he was not.’
He tells Bourke all that he has uncovered since they last met, omitting only the nature of Billy’s relationship with Driscoll. When he finishes there is a long silence.
‘Fuck.’
‘That about sums it up.’
‘Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.’
Harkin decides there isn’t much point he can add to that.
‘You know what I think?’ Bourke says eventually.
‘We should go back to Dublin?’
‘That is exactly what I think.’
‘Let’s go and see the gatekeeper first.’
Bourke’s silence is the silence of a storm about to break, but he follows Harkin to the gate lodge’s side porch and waits while Harkin knocks on the door. After a short interval, there is the sound of an inner door opening and candlelight in the side window.
‘Who’s there?’ an understandably nervous voice asks.
‘It’s Thomas Harkin, I’m a friend of the Prendevilles, staying up at the house. I’m investigating Miss Prendeville’s death on behalf of the insurance company I work for.’
The door opens a crack and an older man with wispy grey hair looks out. He looks from Harkin to Bourke and back again.
‘Who is he?’
‘Mr Bourke. My associate.’
Patrick Walsh considers this for a moment and then nods.
‘Come in, then.’
The small living room is lit by an oil lamp that hangs from a cross beam, giving out a soft yellow light. Harkin looks around him, at the coal glowing in the fireplace and the threadbare furniture, albeit of good quality. He wonders if it may once have belonged in the big house.
‘We won’t stay long,’ Harkin begins. ‘I just have a few questions for you about the night of the ambush. Nothing you tell us will be passed on to the police or anyone else, you have my word.’
‘Will you sit down?’
Harkin sits down in an old leather armchair, the arms cracked through to the stuffing. He looks up at Bourke, who is still standing.
‘Mr Bourke? You’ll be more comfortable sitting down.’
Bourke looks as though he’s about to disagree, but then he sits down on an ancient hall chair that seems to bend under his weight.
‘Is Mrs Walsh at home?’
‘She’s with her sister in the town,’ Walsh says. ‘She’ll be back tomorrow. The killings upset her, as you can imagine.’
‘Can you tell us about the events of the evening? I understand the column took over the house beforehand?’
‘Yes. They said things could go badly for us with the police if they didn’t.’
‘And were things difficult? Did the police interrogate you?’
Walsh looks thoughtful for a moment, as though the question has taken him aback.
‘Not at all. Sergeant Kelly asked us how we did when His Lordship told them how we’d been tied up,’ he says, his tone uncertain.
‘They didn’t ask you about the ambush?’
‘They wanted to know which direction the column had left in, but we didn’t know. The car was there, all shot up, and Miss Prendeville and the others were dead. I suppose they knew what had happened all right.’
Harkin nods. ‘We’ve been told there was a single shot, about five minutes after the ambush itself. Can you tell me about that?’
The old man sits back in his chair, his eyes damp.
‘I don’t like to remember it. You see, we’d have known Miss Prendeville since she was a baby. So would some of the men in the column.’ He looks at Harkin quickly, as though he has given something away.
‘Anything you tell me is between us alone, I guarantee that.’
‘Well,’ the old man says, seemingly reassured, ‘when they realised she was in the car, they were upset. Her reputation would have been very high in the locality. But they saw she was only unconscious, so the commander said to put a blanket over her, as the people from the house would be down and they would look after her. And then he told them to search the boot and the car for weapons and then, when they’d done that, he ordered them to leave it as they needed to be on the move.’
‘And then they left?’
‘I wouldn’t say it was more than a minute or two after the shooting before they were gone.’
‘What happened then?’
‘Well, then Mrs Walsh and myself, we tried to undo the cords they had tied us up with so we could go outside and look after Miss Prendeville.’
‘But you didn’t manage?’
‘No, we managed.’ Walsh seems to look back into the past and not much like what he sees. ‘I got my hands loose but then we heard the man coming.’
Walsh stops, and Harkin leans forwards and Walsh looks up to meet his gaze.
‘Tell me about the man, Mr Walsh. Anything you can remember.’
‘He came from the other side – not the direction the Volunteers left in. From behind us. He took his time and when he reached the car, he had a light.’
‘A torch?’
‘It could have been. At the time, I didn’t know what it was. Only I had a fear of him.’
‘What did he do?’
‘There wasn’t any wind, so it felt like we could hear every noise he made. He was in no rush. He opened the boot, I remember that, and the car doors, and it sounded as though he was moving the bodies around, with him sighing. I wasn’t even sure he was human.’
The old man seems to have become older still in the telling of the story. He stops, momentarily overcome, and Harkin takes the opportunity to look over his shoulder at Bourke to gauge his response. To his surprise, the big man seems to have taken on Walsh’s fear, his eyes round and shining in the yellow light, his face pale. Harkin turns back to the gatekeeper.
‘Would you like us to fetch you something, Mr Walsh?’
‘No, I’m all right. Just the memory of it.’
‘Do you think the man was searching the car?’
‘I would say so. After a while, there was a small click and the light was gone and I thought he might have heard us and be about to come in. I swear to God we didn’t breathe until the light came back on. Then there was a scratch and a flame and I think he lit a cigarette and that’s when I knew he was a man after all.’ There is a long pause and then Walsh wipes something from his eye. ‘Then he shot her.’
There is silence for a moment and, once again, Harkin is surprised to see that Bourke’s eyes are also moist.
‘Do you remember anything about the sound of the man? Anything distinctive?’
Walsh seems to look back into the memory and then he nods.
‘I’d swear he was wearing riding boots. I could hear them creak as he moved. I used to be a footman up at the house. I’d know the noise anywhere.’
‘Another question, if you don’t mind. Was there anything unusual about his gait? A limp or a dragged foot or a steel heel plate? Anything like that?’
‘Nothing, only that he was wearing riding boots.’
Harkin thinks over what he’s told them.