St Ernan's Blues: An Inspector Starrett Mystery

by Paul Charles

  ‘But not as bad as you’ll feel and look the day after?’

  ‘Now you’re getting it, Starrett,’ she said, ruffling his hair again.

  ‘And just remind me again how you would look if I let the worms ea–’

  ‘Starrett! Ah! Don’t! – now that you’ve put that image into my mind I’ll be thinking about it all night!’

  She sidled up to him again and moved her head so close he could feel her breath around his ear. Then she whispered, ‘but if you’re really nice to me and buy me a glass of wine in McDaid’s, I’ll allow you to distract me later when we get home.’

  ‘Bejeepers mam, I’m your man,’ Inspector Starrett boasted.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Day Four: Saturday

  Being a Saturday, Starrett had arranged to meet Gibson and the gang at the gardaí station, which, coincidently, was dangerously close to the aforementioned McDaid’s Wine Bar, down on Gamble Square. Starrett, tea cooling on his desk, summoned Romany Browne, who sat at the inspector’s desk with a small bottle of still mineral water, an apple and a banana. The banana he kept secure in a creased brown paper bag, the apple he kept free, looking like he didn’t know whether to juggle the three items or start to eat one or drink from the other. Either way, the apple was clearly the poor cousin and perhaps a sacrifice to be offered up to his senior.

  ‘Did you know, Garda,’ Starrett started, forcing Browne to, a) pay attention to him, and b) place the three items on his desk, ‘that when penguins are migrating, mostly, they make it to their destination only if they stick with their waddle. However, if they are solo they invariably get lost.’

  Browne looked first at Starrett and then at his apple and finally at his bagged banana. Starrett looked at Browne, then the apple and then the banana shape in the brown bag and then back to the apple and then back to the banana shape. He nodded to himself, signalling that he’d made his choice, but not before finishing his story to Garda Romany Browne, the guard, formerly, briefly, known as Pips O’Toole.

  ‘And my point?’ Starrett asked but didn’t wait for an answer, ‘well, my point is that it’s vitally important to stay in the waddle and work as part of the team.’

  ‘Okay,’ Browne said, half relieved but still visibly worried in case his banana was at risk.

  Starrett lifted his right hand to make his move but he diverted it at the last possible second into the top right-hand drawer of his desk, where he blindly futtered around for a few seconds before he removed a brand new KitKat from his stash.

  ‘So,’ he declared, following a swig of his cooling tea and his first stick of KitKat, ‘what were you up to yesterday, Garda Browne?’

  ‘I was trying to track down Father Gene McCafferty.’

  ‘What about the bishop?’

  ‘I figured I’d a better chance of success if I concentrated on one of the two missing members of clergy.’

  ‘And why did you decide to chase Father McCafferty over Bishop Freeman?’

  ‘I thought it would be easier to find the father rather than the bishop,’ Browne replied immediately.

  ‘And why was that?’ Starrett was now intrigued as to what the logic might be.

  ‘I figured that if Father McCafferty was prepared to tell such obvious lies – about where he’d served before he was sent to St Ernan’s – then there was an equal chance he wasn’t going to be very good at covering his tracks this time either. Bishop Freeman is another matter altogether – he looks like he could be very devious, on top of which, I don’t much like the way he looks at people.’

  ‘By people you mean yourself.’

  ‘Well yes,’ Browne admitted.

  ‘Sound logic,’ Starrett said, ‘very sound logic. So how are you progressing?’

  ‘Well, Father McCafferty doesn’t have a car and none of the bicycles are missing. So he obviously had to walk away. The nearest easy rendezvous point seems to be the Craft Village Centre, back out on the main Donegal Town to Ballyshannon road, so I checked there to see if a priest was met there by anyone, including taxis.’

  ‘No joy?’

  ‘No joy,’ Browne conceded. ‘Then I realised that Father McCafferty just might have twigged that was too obvious and traceable an escape route.’

  ‘O-kay.’

  ‘So then I checked all the taxi companies in Donegal Town to see if any of them had been booked to pick up a priest from this side of the bay. Once again there was no joy with that line, just a lot of complaints about how bad business is at the moment. Then I checked the mini cabs outside of Donegal Town, mostly they were the driver-owner type companies and again no luck. So then I drove around the locale to see if there were any other wee petrol stations or shops he might have called in with or been picked up from. Again…nothing. Next, I checked small hotels and guest houses in the area. Finally, I did a door to door of all the houses in the immediate vicinity.’

  ‘Again nothing?’

  ‘Correct, Sir.’

  ‘Maybe he just bummed a lift?’

  ‘Someone would have seen him, Sir, I checked all the houses along the nearby road. No-one saw a priest, walking, talking or hitching a lift. You’re pretty noticeable Sir if you’re a priest walking along the roadside.’

  ‘So he just disappeared off the face of the Earth?’

  ‘Impossible,’ Browne replied, matter of fact. ‘No, I think I’ve worked out where he is, Sir.’

  ‘Really, Garda Browne? Colour me impressed.’

  For a split second Browne looked like he might have regretted his boast.

  ‘You know, Romany,’ Starrett said, ‘it really isn’t important to be right all of the time. But it’s vitally important to keep coming up with ideas, because, at some point one of them is going to be on the right track.’

  Browne nodded to show he’d understood Starrett’s logic.

  ‘So where is it you think Father McCafferty is, Garda Browne?’

  ‘I believe he’s still in St Ernan’s, Sir?’

  ‘But we searched St Ernan’s.’

  ‘I know Sir, but I think there must be some secret space or room in there. Father McCafferty doesn’t look to me to be the kind of man who could either walk a long way or be capable of sleeping it rough, so the only other option is that he’s still on St Ernan’s.’

  ‘Okay, that makes sense. So what is your next move?’

  ‘Well, that’s as far as I got really. I’ve been on the internet most of the night checking out the history of St Ernan’s. There’s talk of a secret tunnel. I don’t know where it starts or where it leads to, but it’s been mentioned in too many different articles for it not to exist.’

  ‘You know, Garda Browne,’ Starrett started off, ‘I should point out that every now and then one of the penguins that breaks off from the waddle does make it to the destination, eventually.’

  ‘Are the priests going to allow us to search St Ernan’s again, to look for secret compartments and trap-doors and tunnels and what-have-you?’ Browne asked, taking silently what he felt just might have been a compliment.

  ‘Why don’t we just scoot up there and check it out for ourselves?’

  ‘Just the two of us?’ Browne replied in disbelief.

  ‘Well, Ban Garda Nuala Gibson is busy writing up her reports and she and Francis Casey and Sergeant Garvey will be busy today checking up the alibis and trying to get a lead on the whereabouts of the bishop. So that just leaves the two of us.’

  ‘But it’s a very big house?’

  ‘I think I know a wee shortcut,’ Starrett said as they took off, him at the wheel, in the direction of Letterkenny.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  The first part of that wee shortcut to St Ernan’s - and the house’s mysterious potential trapdoors and tunnels that lay beneath - turned out to be a detour by the Letterkenny General Hospital and, in particular, the offices of Dr Samantha Aljoe. The doctor had received a request from Father O’Leary to release the remains of Father Matthew McKaye for burial.

  ‘So yo
u made it quicker than you thought,’ was Aljoe’s greeting to Starrett and then, on noticing Garda Browne, ‘ah, you’ve got a new sidekick.’

  ‘Yes indeed,’ Starrett said, taking the one free chair in her office. ‘So have you managed to solve the mystery of the magic bullet?’

  ‘No, Starrett,’ she said, taking a few photos out of a green file on her desk, ‘but I can show you in detail–’

  ‘Ah jeez woman,’ he protested, ‘I’ll never have the stomach to look at that! Please, just explain it to me.’

  Garda Browne lifted the photos that Starrett had replaced on the desk. He seemed to be examining them very carefully.

  ‘So this is the track of the bullet?’ he offered, using a pen to demonstrate his line.

  ‘Yes,’ Aljoe replied, leaning over the photos beside Browne and putting her arm on his shoulder, ‘but the only problem is: there is no bullet.’

  ‘Still no exit wound?’ Starrett asked, looking at the ceiling.

  ‘Just the entry wound, the tract, the damage and then…nothing.’

  ‘Incredible!’ Browne said.

  ‘There’s no chance that, you know, due to gravity it could simply have dropped out again after having done the damage?’ Starrett ventured.

  ‘Quite impossible,’ Aljoe replied immediately, ‘it, whatever it was, left just too much damage in its wake for there to be a clean tunnel for it to drop out from again. On top of all of that, after the projectile hit and destroyed its target, Father Matthew would have slumped over.’

  ‘Could someone, you know, with knowledge have extracted the…the projectile?’

  ‘Not without leaving a much larger hole than the one created by the entry point.’

  ‘How about if they’d used a magnet?’ the inspector said, always ploughing onwards.

  ‘That’s getting a bit Sherlock Holmes, Starrett,’ the doctor replied, raising her eyebrows. ‘But yes, it would be possible, assuming we’re talking about the remains of a bullet, but you’d need a very strong magnet and it would bring a lot of blood and brain tissue with it.’

  ‘I wish I hadn’t asked you that now, your answer was much too vivid for my stomach,’ he said, noting that Garda Browne was hanging on to the doctor’s every word and every move.

  ‘What other weapon could have caused this amount of damage?’ Browne asked, proving he wasn’t too much in awe of the company, or on second thoughts, perhaps his question was exactly for the benefit of the female in their midst.

  ‘Now that’s a good question!’ Aljoe replied, turning around to face Starrett’s junior. ‘What are you thinking of?’

  ‘A spear? The arrow of a cross bow? The arrow of a bow? An ice pick? An iron spike?’

  The light went on in Starrett’s head at that moment.

  ‘The only problem with all of them is there would have been no element of surprise,’ he said. ‘Father Matthew would have put up some efforts in self-defence and there is no evidence about his person to suggest he’d done that.’

  ‘Correct,’ Dr Aljoe offered, ‘and if any of the aforementioned had been used, there would have been some trace, some contamination. Whatever killed Father Matthew, it left no trace whatsoever.’

  ‘Have you ever seen anything like this before?’ Browne asked hopefully.

  ‘No,’ she said, with a tone of certainty that visibly deflated Garda Browne.

  ‘Is there any reason you can think of why we shouldn’t release Father Matthew’s remains to the priests at St Ernan’s?’

  ‘None whatsoever, Starrett – I’m 100 per cent covered from my side.’

  ‘Okay, let’s do that then, Doctor, let them have the body. Have you any idea when they want to bury him?’

  ‘They’re talking about Monday. I believe they have an undertaker on standby.’

  Starrett immediately thought about the Major and he didn’t stop thinking about him the entire way to Donegal Town.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The next stop on Starrett’s wee shortcut became apparent to Garda Romany Browne the minute the detective walked into Father Robert O’Leary’s rooms, right by the top of the staircase in St Ernan’s.

  ‘Tell me,’ Starrett started off, ‘you know you said that you didn’t feel comfortable volunteering information to me…’

  ‘Yes,’ O’Leary replied, tentatively.

  ‘But if I ask you a specific question, i.e. I’m not fishing, you said you’ll give me a correct answer?’

  ‘Or words to that effect. But yes that sums up our deal,’ he replied, putting the book he was reading down on his desk before sign-writing ‘that’s our deal’ with his forefinger and thumb.

  ‘Okay. Then can you please show me where the secret rooms are in St Ernan’s?’

  Father O’Leary grinned.

  ‘So you’ve been doing your homework.’ He both spoke the words and wrote them in the air.

  ‘Actually, it was Garda Romany Browne here who did my homework for me,’ Starrett admitted. Then he looked down at Father O’Leary’s book –not quite the light reading he’d imagined, it was The Private Life of Chairman Mao by Li Zhisui. The father flipped off his red tartan carpet slippers and left them neatly by his sofa, as though guarding his open book from the observant detective. He took a sheepskin jacket from his bedroom and pulled a black beanie hat from the pocket, and put both of them on. He walked out of the room without saying a word.

  Browne and Starrett followed him as he crossed the landing, straight to the stairwell. The old priest then went down the staircase, past the antique fireplace, along the large hallway with the strange yet effective honeycombed ceiling, out through the front door, into the conservatory styled entrance hall and down one flight of stairs, which took them to the ground level by the same front door Starrett had knocked on exactly four days ago.

  Instead of going out into the cold fresh air, as Starrett had thought they might, the priest opened a door on the side of the staircase and walked through it. From beyond the doorway, the detective noticed a light being switched on. He and Browne stooped slightly to enter by the same door. An immediate right took them down fourteen steps and into a large window-less basement, part of which had been cut into the side of the hill into which St Ernan’s House nestled.

  Father O’Leary still hadn’t said a word, bar confirming the inspector’s understanding of their arrangement. He turned and walked back out of the basement area, leaving both gardaí standing with their arms the same length.

  Starrett found the basement area, with its catacombs, comfortably warmer than he’d been expecting; it clearly benefited from a heating system or furnace somewhere, or maybe it was some kind of by-product of the heating system upstairs. Either way, everything down there was very dry, if badly lit with reacting lights, which sprung to dim life as he travelled closer to them, following him as he continued to plunge into the darkness ahead. He thought he heard a noise behind him but after a few seconds’ pause he assured himself it was nothing more than heat either expanding pipes or wooden floorboards in their wake, or maybe both.

  Parts of the basement were packed, wooden floor to concrete ceiling with old furniture and uniformly sealed cardboard boxes. Starrett knew from experience that the furniture was in a holding pattern, for either a skip or a bonfire. Every twelve feet they passed through an open doorway of a roughly four-foot thick wall that clearly supported the solid concrete beams, which in turn supported St Ernan’s House above them. The concrete beams were obviously a modern addition to the original work, most likely replacing wooden beams that were ravaged by the damp.

  Browne lagged a wee bit behind Starrett, seemingly distracted by something or other, so the detective soldiered on before seeing a door, where there had been openings in the previous support walls. There was a light shining underneath and he thought he could hear several voices from the other side – they certainly weren’t coming from above. The space behind the closed door must be directly under the living-cum-kitchen-cum-fireplace sitting area.

  He
decided that he needed Browne with him before he went beyond the door so, in the half-light, he retraced his steps. He’d come back through two of the thick wall openings when he had a flash of Garda Romany Browne being in danger. He didn’t know where it came from but he felt it as sharply as any of the premonitions he’d ever felt before.

  Starrett’s mother, the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, had a gift, a gift of vision and of healing. During his life people were forever calling at the house to have his mother ‘attend to them’. Starrett’s memories were of how physically and mentally drained his mother was after all of these sessions, to the point that, when Starrett returned to Ramelton to join the gardaí, his father had insisted his mother retire, if only to protect her own health.

  At first, Starrett didn’t think he’d been blessed with his mother’s gift. But then there were a few times too many where he’d experienced flashes – like the one he just had – which had so saved his bacon that it had started to become difficult for him not to believe she’d passed on some of her powers to him.

  He didn’t panic. He needed to find Garda Browne, and quickly. He was caught between the points of not wanting to embarrass himself by seeking help from upstairs, when there was possibly nothing wrong, but, equally, that help might be warranted, before something terrible happened to either Browne or himself, or both of them.

  Searching in one of the side storage areas, he found a lampshade-free metallic lamp, which he lifted, removed the bulb which he placed carefully on a box beside him. He wrapped the cable around the bulb end several times, tied the end in a knot so that it wouldn’t get in his way, took a couple of trial swipes to judge the weight, tried to gauge exactly how hard he’d need to hit someone to render them helpless and, finally, set off in search of Browne.

  He thought he saw some light from the hallway through which they’d entered the basement, but then it disappeared. Could Father O’Leary have left them down in the basement and then set someone on them because they were getting too close to the truth? If that were true, what exactly were they getting close to?