The Witch Elm

by Tana French

  In April of 1888 Elaine McNamara had her baby—a boy, just like Hugo had figured, presumably Mrs. Wozniak’s grandfather. She “protested very vehemently and in great distress” when they took him away to give to the nice O’Hagans. Haskins explained to her that the way she was feeling was punishment for her sin, and she should be grateful that God still loved her enough to chasten her thus, but he didn’t think she really got it.

  The house was going downhill, gradually enough that I didn’t notice it unless some chance thing caught my attention: weak wintry light picking out the cobwebs that festooned the high corners of the living room, a brush of my arm along a mantelpiece sending a swirl of dust motes into the air and leaving a thick streak down my sleeve. Lightbulbs blew and I didn’t replace them. In Leon’s old bedroom a stain was spreading across the ceiling, and there was a growing smell of damp coming from somewhere; I knew a plumber should take a look, but it felt impossible to make that kind of arrangement when I wasn’t sure whether I actually lived there or not, or for how long. No one had mentioned Hugo’s will, but it lurked uneasily in the corners of my mind: had he ever made the one he’d talked about, leaving the house to all six of us? who got it if he hadn’t? was someone going to be delegated to explain to me very tactfully that there was no hurry of course, so grateful for everything you did for Hugo stay as long as you like just with property prices doing so well and all the work to be done before we put it on the market . . . I thought of my apartment, tight-drawn curtains and stale air, alarm lights blinking and the red panic button hunched low beside my bed waiting for its moment.

  I did think, a lot, about trying to talk to Melissa. Now that I hadn’t killed anyone, there seemed to be no reason why I shouldn’t. She hadn’t left—incredibly—because she had stopped loving me; she had only left because I was poking around playing detective, and she had in fact been right that that was a horrible idea, but now I could look her in the eye and swear that I was done with all that for good, also that the next time she told me something I would listen. Somehow I didn’t worry about convincing her I wasn’t a murderer. It made me cringe that I had ever thought she would believe that. Melissa had been way ahead of me, the whole time.

  And yet I didn’t ring her. Because—when I got down to it, when I actually had the phone in my hand—why would I? What, from this dim house where ivy crisscrossed the windows and all my clothes smelled faintly of mildew, did I have to offer?

  It was cold out. I didn’t go outside much; popping to the shops or going for a walk felt like bizarre foreign concepts, and although I occasionally wandered around the garden with some vague idea about healthful fresh air, I didn’t like it out there. My and Melissa’s optimistic marigolds and whatever had mostly died off—probably we had planted them wrong, or it had been the wrong season or the wrong soil, who knew. A few patches of skimpy, diseased-looking grass had sprouted, and there were some tall muscular gray-green weeds that looked like dandelions on steroids, but apart from that the earth was still a bare mess. The gap where the wych elm had been bothered me; even when I wasn’t looking that way it scratched at the corner of my eye, something essential missing and I needed to fix it, it was urgent— The sky was always gray, there were always crows flapping and conferring among the oak branches, the cold always bit straight down and sank deep, and I always went back inside within a few minutes.

  It was cold inside, too. The heating system couldn’t cope with the size of the house, I was running out of firewood and no one had thought to bring me more. Drafts surged up out of nowhere like someone had stealthily opened a door or a window, but when I went looking for the crack I could never find it. Spiders were coming in for the winter; I saw more and more of them, in corners and along skirting boards, chunky gray-brown things with vaguely sinister markings. Woodlice trundled around the crack beneath the French doors.

  A few weeks after she had her baby, Elaine McNamara went home, much to Haskins’s relief. He didn’t mention her again. She didn’t show up anywhere in Ireland in the 1901 census, but there was a woman in the right part of Clare who matched her mother’s info, with six kids born alive and six still living, so it looked like Elaine had married or emigrated or both. I couldn’t find any marriage record for her. Hugo would have known how to go about it, and about looking for the baby’s father, running complicated software to compare various DNA profiles, but I didn’t have a clue where to start.

  Instead I wrote Mrs. Wozniak a report. I didn’t know the right format so it was short, just the bare facts and a few lines at the end, as close as I could get to what I thought Hugo would have written: Unfortunately I don’t have the skills to pursue this any further. Another genealogist might be able to do more. I hope this new information doesn’t come as too much of a shock, and I sincerely wish you all the best of luck in your search.

  When I was done I read it out loud, into the empty air of the study, to the dusty books and the wooden elephants and Hugo’s old slippers left askew under his chair. “Hugo,” I said. “Is this right?” I had started asking him questions occasionally—not that I had lost the plot completely and believed he would answer, just that it got awfully quiet in that house. Some days the silence felt like an actual substance, thickening subtly but implacably with every hour, till it got hard to breathe. I emailed off the report to Mrs. Wozniak, along with DNA analysis results and scans of the most important diary pages, and didn’t open her reply.

  It was worse after that. With nothing and no one to keep me on a schedule, my body clock went completely out of whack. I had gone from sleeping too much to sleeping way too little—the Xanax weren’t working any more, they just threw me into a nasty limbo where I couldn’t go to sleep but I was never quite sure whether I was actually awake. I wandered the house in half-light, between rooms dense with blackness and pale rectangles that could have been windows or doorways. Occasionally I got dizzy—I was never sure when it was time to eat—and had to sit down for a while. When I groped for something to tell me what room I was in, my hands found only unfamiliar objects: a table leg thick with carvings my fingers couldn’t decipher, a ribbed wallpaper pattern I didn’t recognize, an edge of curled linoleum when there had never been linoleum in the Ivy House. Things turned up in strange places, a heavy old 1949 penny on my pillow, Miriam’s purple psychic rock in the bathroom sink.

  When I thought about Susanna and Leon it was, strangely enough, not with horror or condemnation or anger but with envy. They came to my mind drawn in strong indelible black that gave them a kind of glory; Dominic’s death defined them, immutably, not for better or for worse but simply for what they were, and it took my breath away. My own life blurred and smeared in front of my eyes; my outlines had been scrubbed out of existence (and how easily it had been done, how casually, one absent swipe in passing) so that I bled away at every margin into the world.

  I think Rafferty knew. I think wherever he was, miles away, pulling out his notebook at some murder scene or raising the sail on a rugged little boat, he raised his head and sniffed the wind and smelled me, finally ready.

  * * *

  He came for me on a cold late afternoon that smelled of burning tires. It had somehow penetrated to my brain that it had been days or possibly weeks since I had seen sunlight, so I had gone out to sit on the terrace, and by the time I realized that dusk was starting to fall and it was freezing I didn’t have the energy to get up and go back inside. The clouds were dense and winter-white, unmoving; under the trees the ground was thick with sodden layers of leaves. A squirrel was scrabbling and dashing under the oaks and the gray cat was back, crouched in the rutted mud, tail-tip twitching as he slunk towards an oblivious bird.

  “That your cat?” a voice asked, behind me and much too close.

  I was up and hurling myself backwards across the terrace before I knew it, a shout ripping out of me, grabbing for a weapon, rock, anything— “Jesus, man,” Rafferty said, holding up his hands. “It’s only me.”
/>   “What the fuck—” I was gasping for breath. “What the fuck—”

  “Didn’t mean to startle you. Sorry about that.”

  “What—” He looked taller than I remembered him, ruddier, strong high sweeps of jaw and cheekbone more sharply defined. For a moment, in the gray light, I wasn’t positive it was him. But the voice, rich and warm as wood, that was Rafferty all right. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was knocking for ages, couldn’t make you hear. In the end I tried the door. It’s not locked. I thought I should check that you were OK.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No offense, man, but you don’t look fine. You look in tatters.” He strolled closer, across the terrace. He made my adrenaline spike and keep spiking. There was something around him, a buzz and thrum, a vitality that ate up the air like fire and left me with nothing to breathe. “Can’t be good for the head, being cooped up here on your own. Would you not go stay with your folks for a bit, something like that?”

  “I’m fine.”

  That got a twitch of his eyebrow, but he left it. “You should keep that door locked. It’s a lovely neighborhood, but still: better safe than sorry, these days.”

  “I do. I must have forgotten.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d opened that door. It could have been unlocked for days.

  “We’re after wrecking his hunt,” Rafferty said, nodding towards the cat. The birds were gone; the cat had frozen, one paw lifted, giving us a wary stare and deciding whether to run for it. “He’s not yours, no?”

  “It hangs around sometimes,” I said. I was still shaking. I didn’t actually feel any better now that he had turned out not to be a burglar. Like an idiot I had believed Susanna, It’s over, the cops are gone, we can forget the whole thing . . . “I don’t know who owns it.”

  “I’d say he’s a stray. He’s awful bony. Got any ham slices, anything like that?”

  For some reason I plodded obediently into the kitchen and stared into the fridge. He can’t do anything to me, I told myself. He’ll have to go away soon. I had forgotten what I was looking for. In the end I spotted a packet of deli chicken slices.

  When I got back outside, Rafferty and the cat were still staring each other out of it. “Here,” I said. My voice sounded rusty.

  “Ah, lovely,” Rafferty said, taking the packet from me. “Now. You don’t want to throw it to him, or he’ll think you’re throwing a rock or something, and he’ll be gone. What you want to do—” Wandering casually down the steps and into the garden, face still turned towards me, talking evenly and calmly: “Just get as close to him as you can, yeah? and leave it down, and then back away. I’d say—” The cat flinched, ready to run; Rafferty stopped instantly. “Yeah. Here ought to do it.” He stooped and laid a slice of meat on the ground. The cat’s eyes followed every move.

  Rafferty straightened smoothly and meandered back to the terrace, dropping a couple more slices of chicken on the way, big clear gestures so the cat wouldn’t miss them. “Now,” he said, flipping back his coattails and taking a seat at the top of the steps, easy as if he lived there. “Do that every day or so, and he’ll keep coming round. Keep the rats down for you.”

  “We don’t have rats.”

  “No? Something dragged Dominic’s hand out of that tree for a snack. What was it, if it wasn’t rats?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m not a wildlife expert.” It came out sounding snotty. He was acting like this was a normal casual chat, and I didn’t know what to do with that; I couldn’t hit that note.

  Rafferty considered. “A fox’ll climb a high fence, but they haven’t really got the claws for trees. I’ve seen the odd one do it, mind you. Going after eggs, or nestlings. Got foxes?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never seen any.” Dominic’s hand, flopping under delicate busy teeth. Small bones rained deep into the earth. The garden felt like it had that terrible stoned night with Susanna and Leon, distorted and alien. I wanted to go inside.

  “Could’ve been, I suppose,” Rafferty said. The cat was stretching its neck towards the meat, curious. “Sit, man. He won’t come closer while you’re standing there.”

  After a moment I sat down, at the far edge of the steps. He fished out a packet of Marlboros. “You want one?” And, grinning, when I hesitated: “Toby, I know you smoke. Saw them in your stuff when we were searching. I promise I won’t tell your mammy.”

  I took a cigarette and he held the lighter for me, making me lean towards him. Getting that close made all my nerves tighten. I couldn’t figure out a way to ask what he was doing there.

  Rafferty drew in a deep lungful, eyes closed, and let it out slowly. “Ahhh,” he said. “I needed that. How’ve you been getting on, you and the family? Is everyone all right?”

  “As much as we can be,” I said, which for whatever reason was the standard response I’d found myself coming out with a few hundred times at the funeral. “It’s not like it came out of the blue. We just didn’t expect it so soon.”

  “It’s rough, no matter what way it happens. Takes a lot of getting used to. Look at that—” Paw by paw, nose twitching, the cat was inching nearer. “Don’t pay him too much notice,” Rafferty said. “Are you going to go back to work? Now you don’t need to be here for Hugo?”

  “I guess. I haven’t thought about it yet.”

  “They could use you, man. Your boss—Richard, right?—he couldn’t stop telling me how great you are, how they’re lost without you.”

  “That’s nice,” I said; and then, in case I had sounded sarcastic, “It’s good to hear.”

  “He wasn’t just saying it, either,” Rafferty said, with a grin in his voice. “Have you looked at the gallery’s Twitter lately? There’s been maybe five tweets since the night you got attacked, and one of them says ‘Hello Maeve, could you check that these are going through? Thanks, Richard.’”

  I managed to laugh. I really hadn’t thought about going back to work, not in a long time. It seemed inconceivable somehow, as though the gallery was in some inaccessible country or possibly a TV show I used to watch.

  “You need to get back in there, save them from themselves. Is there seriously no one else there who knows how to work the internets?”

  “Not really. I mean, they can check their email and shop online, but social media . . .”

  “Huh,” Rafferty said. Lazy still, only half interested. “That’s mad. Because the other thing I noticed, about that Twitter account? Up until the week you got hit, there’s a load of other accounts following it, tweeting to it, retweeting your stuff. Dozens of them. After that week . . .” He arched an eyebrow at me, smile lines starting in his cheek. “It’s tumbleweed in there. Not a chirp out of any of those accounts. About the gallery or anything else.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said, after a moment. “You got me. It’s pretty standard practice. Set up a bunch of ghost followers, whip up a bit of buzz . . .”

  He laughed. “Is it? I kind of figured that, all right; nice to know I was on target. I’d say it’s good craic, as well.”

  “I guess. It can be.”

  “Ah, come on. All your imaginary skangers? Arguing about whether Gouger’s dole’ll get cut off if he makes it big as an artist?”

  There was a silence.

  Rafferty’s smile lines had deepened. “You should see the face on you. It’s OK, man: you can come clean. We already talked to your pal Tiernan. He was shitting bricks, but he calmed down once he realized we weren’t about to arrest him for distribution of a counterfeit skanger.”

  “Right,” I said. I had tensed up hard, although I wasn’t sure why—what could he do to me, why would he care? Why was he even bringing this up? “OK.”

  “He’s good, isn’t he? I don’t know a lot about art, but those paintings looked pretty decent to me.”

  “Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

&nb
sp; “Any chance they’ll ever get seen now?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Pity. I suppose your man Tiernan can make more; still, but. I don’t blame you for not wanting them to go to waste. Those tweets, were they all you? Or did you have anyone else involved?”

  “No. Just me.”

  Rafferty nodded, unsurprised. “Fair play. They were good, those. Rang true, got you wondering what was the story with this Gouger fella, looking for updates . . . I’d have fallen for them myself. No wonder your man Richard wants you back. Look, there you go—”

  He pointed his chin at the cat, which had reached the first slice of chicken and was wolfing it down in quick snaps that managed to be voracious and delicate at once. “A couple of weeks and you’ll have him eating out of your hand.”

  “When did you find out?” I asked. “About Gouger?”

  Rafferty shrugged, leaning to tap ash. “Jesus, ages back. A case like this, we look into everything about everybody. The signal-to-noise ratio is horrendous, but that’s grand, as long as we pick up the odd useful bit in there. We figured Gouger was irrelevant—got a good laugh out of him, end of.”

  “OK,” I said. “I’m glad he gave you a laugh.”

  “We take them where we can get them, in this job. There haven’t been a lot on this case.”

  “What happens now?” I asked. “Like, is the case closed? Are you . . .”