Death on the Holy Mountain

by David Dickinson

  ‘I didn’t sleep last night, Powerscourt,’ said Butler, ‘didn’t sleep at all. Tell me, do you think that because Mulcahy and all those people appear in the painting, that means they are the ones behind it all?’

  ‘The same thought occurred to me,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘but I don’t think it does mean that. They may know everything that has gone on, some of those people down in the town, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they planned the whole thing.’

  ‘I suppose I’d better try to cheer everybody up,’ said Butler, locking his bottle of Bushmills away in a cupboard. ‘Can’t go hiding behind the whiskey bottle when times are hard. What would the ancestors have said about such behaviour?’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Tell me, how many of those great battles in Ireland’s past did you ancestors actually fight in?’

  ‘All of them,’ said Richard Butler, ‘every single one that mattered. God save Ireland.’

  Only one person in Butler’s Court was grateful for the furore over the return of The Master of the Hunt. Johnpeter Kilross had discovered an empty cottage in a clearing in the woods about a mile from the main buildings. There was, he saw as he peered through the windows, a little sitting room, a kitchen, a tiny bathroom and a bedroom. The bedroom, oddly enough, was the only place that appeared to have clean windows. It was known as the Head Gardener’s Cottage and the Head Gardener had indeed lived there until he secured a position close to Dublin to be near his sick mother. The place had been empty ever since, as the new Head Gardener already had a tiny house of his own near the town. Nothing seemed to have been moved. Johnpeter had infiltrated his way with a stable lad into the room at the back of the scullery where all the keys were kept and had spotted two stout specimens hanging on a hook labelled Head Gardener’s Cottage. Under normal circumstances it was virtually impossible to get into this room alone and unspotted. Kitchen maids were forever bringing things in or taking things out to the scullery. But the curiosity aroused by The Master of the Hunt was so great that every single servant shot out into the hall or pretended to be busy in the gallery above on the first floor. Johnpeter had nipped down the back stairs and removed one of the keys. Now he and Alice would have a place where they could go in the afternoons. Or the mornings come to that. Johnpeter was certain he would be able to persuade her to join him there.

  Powerscourt drove himself into Athlone early that afternoon. He had sent a cable to Inspector Harkness in Ormonde House requesting a meeting at three fifteen, the hour when the Westport–Dublin express was due to stop at Athlone. Harkness came striding down the platform, the briefcase with the enormous lock clutched firmly in his left hand.

  ‘Are you well, Lord Powerscourt? Good to see you again.’

  They drove out into the countryside for a couple of minutes and set out to walk by the river. Powerscourt told him about the return of the painting and its dramatic impact on the inhabitants of Butler’s Court.

  ‘Now then,’ said the Ulsterman, ‘you said you might have a wee bit of a plan to catch the thieves, Lord Powerscourt?’

  ‘I do, and I would be grateful for your opinion of it. It depends on the list of houses Dennis Ormonde drew up for the Orangemen to guard. You remember the list, Inspector?’

  ‘I do indeed,’ said Harkness, patting his briefcase. ‘Sure I have two copies of the thing in here.’

  ‘And you will no doubt recall,’ said Powerscourt, ‘that there is a line drawn across the list. Underneath that line Dennis Ormonde does not have enough Orangemen to guard the houses and the houses do not have many old portraits anyway. Now then, I fully understand your reluctance to tell me the names of your informants, but do you have anybody close to the thieves, somebody who could be used to send them information?’

  ‘I’m not altogether sure what you’re driving at, Lord Powerscourt, but yes, it’s only a guess, but I do believe there are a couple of lads out there we know about who may move in the same circle as the people who may have stolen the pictures. There’s two in particular I’m thinking of who have fathers and uncles in prison. The promises of early release can work wonders.’

  ‘Right,’ said Powerscourt cheerfully. ‘Now, one of those houses not to be watched is called Burke Hall. I think it’s on the far side of Louisburg but I’m pretty useless at geography. Suppose now that one of your lads drops the word that Burke Hall is not guarded at all by the Orangemen, it’s wide open, so to speak, for anybody. Only it’s not unguarded at all.’

  ‘Me and a bundle of policemen are waiting there for them!’ Harkness was slapping Powerscourt on the back in his excitement. ‘It’s an ambush! I like this plan, Lord Powerscourt, I like it very much!’

  ‘Will it work, Inspector? That’s the thing.’

  Harkness paused for a moment. ‘What happens if they don’t want to steal any more paintings? If the theft at Ormonde House was all they were interested in?’

  ‘I’ve thought about that,’ said Powerscourt. ‘First of all there’s the arrival of the Orangemen some day soon. That’s going to be like a red rag to a bull to the thieves. Think how brave and clever they would look if they pinched some more stuff from right under the Ulstermen’s noses. They’d be heroes overnight. And it would send a message to Dennis Ormonde. Don’t imagine we’re finished because you’ve imported these people from the north. I think all those blackmail letters had a deadline, I don’t know if it’s the same deadline for all four houses, but I do know that the Butler one is pretty close. More stolen pictures would put more pressure on the man from Ormonde House.’

  ‘Let’s do it, Lord Powerscourt. I’ll think about it some more on the train, but assume we’ll do it. God, it’s a grand wee plan so it is. I’ll have to go back to Westport, wind up the clocks in person if you follow my meaning.’

  ‘Could you or your people do something for me in Dublin, Inspector? I would send Johnny Fitzgerald but I’d like to keep him close at present.’

  ‘What can we do for you now?’

  ‘It’s about moneylenders, plenty of those down in Dublin as you know. I want to know if this person has until fairly recently had large debts outstanding with one or two or maybe even three of these sharks. I’ve put the name and the general description in this letter.’ Powerscourt handed over one of Butler’s Court’s finest envelopes. Harkness put it in his pocket.

  ‘More reading in the train,’ he said. ‘Regard it as done, Lord Powserscourt. I’ll send you word when I have the answer. Discreet word, of course.’

  Walter Heneghan, the contractor responsible for the construction of the new chapel at the summit of Croagh Patrick, was holding a crisis meeting with his staff at the end of the day. In one sense good progress had been made. The exterior of the building was virtually finished. It had a stout roof, fit to withstand the winter storms. It had windows with glass in them. But it had no doors, no pews, no altar, no furniture inside of any kind. Clasping The Skedule in his right hand, Walter addressed his troops like a general before a battle.

  ‘Men,’ he began, ‘you have done well. We are nearly back on Skedule.’

  There was a murmur of appreciation from the little band. Being back on Skedule was like winning a prize at school.

  ‘However,’ Heneghan went on, ‘we have very little time left. I have been consulting with that old sailor with the disgusting pipe who sits all day under the portrait of the Blessed Oliver Plunket in the saloon bar in Campbell’s public house, the man who says he can foretell the weather. Tomorrow and the next day, the ancient eejit told me, will be fine. Then it is going to get bad, rain, storms, all of that. So I am proposing a series of emergency measures.’

  There was a slight groan from his workmen. Emergency measures probably meant only one thing, getting up even earlier in the morning.

  ‘Charlie O’Malley, where the devil are you?’ Heneghan peered at the faces in front of him.

  ‘Here, sir,’ said Charlie, who had been thinking of the days of rest that lay ahead of him.

  ‘I’
m afraid that the rotation policy with the donkeys will have to stop. We must have Jameson and Powers in action every day now. And I want to see if you can lay your hands on a couple more of the beasts for a week or so. The Church will provide.’

  At least, Charlie thought, even though the donkey rotation policy, one day working, one day resting, carried out according to the precepts of the great agriculturalist Turnip Townsend, might have to stop, now he would be able to add a beast called Bushmills to his stable. But he didn’t think there were any more whiskey distilleries in Ireland. What on earth was he going to christen the last one?

  ‘For tomorrow and the next day I have hired another six men, three of them carpenters,’ Walter went on. ‘The pews and the altar are all ready in bits in the Westport workshops to be brought to the bottom of the mountain this evening. I want to see you all up here at the summit by nine o’clock tomorrow morning at the latest. Including the donkeys carrying the pews and stuff.’

  You could almost hear the calculations being done by the workmen. They would have to leave home at six or even earlier. Another murmur of rebellion rose from the ranks.

  ‘The day after tomorrow,’ Heneghan said, raising his hand to quell the muttering, ‘your man Father Macdonald from Westport is coming on a mission of inspection. Some of you may have seen this priest. He’s a bundle of nerves, no more courage in him than a brindled cat. Behind him is that great bullock of an Archbishop from Tuam who’s coming to consecrate the building on Reek Sunday. He’s not a man to cross, Dr Healey. He looks like he could be the model for Goliath in a holy picture, so he does. Or maybe Samson before he had his hair cut.’

  Walter was a great devotee of the religious paintings on display in the bars of Mayo.

  ‘So we don’t want to upset the man Macdonald from Westport or the big man from Tuam who could throw us all down the mountain with his bare hands. And there’s one last thing, lads.’ Walter Heneghan was keeping the good news to the end. ‘If the pews and everything are in place by the day after tomorrow Father Macdonald will be providing a small thank-you. Free drinks all evening in Campbell’s public house at the bottom of the mountain.’

  Charlie O’Malley escorted Jameson back down the mountain, thinking desperately about what to call the fourth member of his fleet. Salvation, in the shape of Campbell’s public house, was in sight before the answer came to him. He remembered a relation of his wife’s, a cousin, he thought, who had done well in America and had come home to show off to his relations. He had brought a couple of bottles of spirits from Tennessee with him to show what native American industry could produce. Charlie felt rather proud suddenly. The links between Mayo and the mighty continent of America had always been close. He would add a transatlantic flavour to his team of donkeys. He would christen the last one Jack Daniels.

  Lord Francis Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald were crouching on the hard stone floor of a little tower to the left of Burke Hall on the far side of Louisburg, peering out through the turrets. This was where Inspector Harkness of the Special Branch in Dublin Castle hoped to spring his ambush on the thieves who had been stealing paintings from the houses of the Anglo-Irish gentry. It was shortly before two o’clock in the morning. Burke Hall itself was a fine Georgian mansion with all the usual great windows and fine plasterwork. About eighty years before an ambitious Burke, conscious of the fashion for Gothic revival sweeping through Irish country houses, decided to add a section to his inheritance of two wings with two round towers each, both linked to a square fortification topped with battlements at the end. Work was started but never finished. This Burke consumed so much of his inheritance on the gambling tables of Dublin that the builders downed tools, great piles of stones were still stored at the back of the house to this day, and only one single tower remained. The Burkes called it the Pepper Pot. The locals called it The Stump. It was commemorated in a local ballad as the Divil’s Thumb.

  From time to time Powerscourt or Fitzgerald would shift in their position, rubbing at a leg or an arm. To their left was Burke Hall. To their right a curved drive, flanked by beech trees, stretched out towards what passed for the main road a mile or so away. In front of Burke Hall lay a great expanse of grass with tight clumps of trees at the end of the lawn. Beyond the trees, invisible from the house, lay a long beach, marked with great stones and piles of dank weed, and the sea.

  Earlier that evening there had been a frightful row about authority and precedence between the policemen. Powerscourt, keeping well in the background, saw at once that it was one of those who’s in charge arguments that must have begun when Eve was trying to persuade Adam to eat of the apple in the Garden of Eden. The local Mayo policemen came with their very own sergeant, one Sean O’Callaghan, a man even taller and broader than the Archbishop of Tuam, though not endowed with many mental blessings from the Almighty. O’Callaghan had been a sergeant for fifteen years now. Even his own wife thought further promotion was beyond him. His own mother, after all, had once described her Sean as a little slow sometimes. In spite of, or perhaps because of his limitations, Sergeant Sean had a very acute sense of his own position and his own role. Mayo men, he told Harkness, should come under the command of a Mayo man. When the Special Branch Inspector pointed out that he outranked a mere sergeant from Castlebar, it was like a red rag to a bull. Here was a stranger, a younger man, with the very rank he had aspired to for all these years, giving him orders. The Dublin men, he assured his visitor, could all go and jump into the biggest vat in Guinness’s brewery as far as he was concerned. Eventually Harkness gave way, fearful that all the policemen would be marched off if he did not. So it was the Sergeant who made the dispositions. He placed two of his men at the front of the house. His own command post was in the hall inside, next to the dining room where two Burke ancestors, one of them the great gambler, lined the walls. Harkness was with him. One hundred yards up the drive, Harkness’s assistant O’Gara and a colleague waited for their visitors. If the thieves thought the place wasn’t guarded, O’Callaghan reckoned, they would head straight up the drive for the front door. He believed the visitors might display as little finesse as himself. Two further men guarded the back of the house, with a further two in reserve inside. The Burke family and their friends had been sent early to bed, but they were behaving like naughty children, forever leaning out of their windows to whisper to each other and peering up their drive. Silence only arrived on the upper floors when O’Callaghan threatened to remove himself and his men at once and leave them to their fate. Up in the attics the butler and the footmen kept as still and as quiet as mice. They were lying on the floorboards, staring out of their attic windows into the night. The moon and the stars were hidden beneath thick clouds. There was scarcely any wind. At least, the watchers felt, it wasn’t raining.

  There had been a couple of false alarms already. Shortly after midnight some animal had charged across the path at great speed, followed rapidly by O’Gara’s assistant who thought the beast was a burglar and made so much noise blundering through the bushes that O’Callaghan himself had to come out to restore order. Just before one a man at the back, who had been taking a sip of whiskey to keep awake, just a sip as he had told Harkness afterwards, swallowed too much and had a great coughing fit, sounding, the Inspector told him, like a man on the terminal ward of the Westport Hospital rather than a policeman on duty on a dangerous and difficult mission. Johnny Fitzgerald had smiled at the coughing fit. He too had kept awake on night watch with little helpings of John Jameson. Powerscourt felt glum and responsible. This, after all, had been his plan, his idea, outlined to the Inspector by the banks of the Shannon a short while before. Now he wondered if the thieves weren’t coming. Maybe they had smelt a rat. Maybe they were a day too soon. Maybe the robbers knew they had been given false information. Maybe this whole expedition was going to end in failure. Maybe the Sergeant’s plan wasn’t the best on offer.

  Shortly before three o’clock Johnny Fitzgerald nudged Powerscourt in the arm and pointed to his ear. Johnn
y had heard something. All Powerscourt had noticed was a very faint scraping noise far away as if somebody was dragging a screwdriver up a wall covered in ivy. Silence fell again. Johnny’s ears may have been better than Powerscourt’s but Powerscourt’s eyes were sharper. Five minutes or so after the scraping sound he prodded Fitzgerald and pointed down the drive. Unfortunately for the thieves the clouds had broken and a faint moonlight now shone out over Burke Hall. Coming very slowly, walking in pairs on either side of the grass, a party of four young men were coming down the drive. Powerscourt felt certain suddenly that things were about to go wrong. From his command post inside the house O’Callaghan had no idea they had visitors. He could make no deployments. The coughing man and his colleague at the back could not see the thieves either. O’Gara and his colleague were outnumbered two to one. But instead of sinking back into the trees and letting the thieves go past and so surrounding them, they panicked. O’Gara sprang into the middle of the drive and shouted ‘Halt!’ for all the world, as Johnny said afterwards, as though he was conducting the traffic on Sackville Street in Dublin. His colleague fumbled in his pockets for his pistol. ‘Halt! In the name of the law!’ O’Gara tried again. The four figures turned and fled at full speed back the way they had come. O’Gara’s colleague fired two shots at the retreating figures and was rewarded by a shriek that turned into a scream.

  As Powerscourt and Fitzgerald reached the bottom of their little tower, they heard one of the great windows open on the first floor. ‘Bastards! Thieving bastards!’ yelled the senior male Burke figure, leaning out of his bedroom in his finest silk pyjamas and firing three shots from an ancient rifle at the disappearing quartet as they fled up the drive. Powerscourt and Fitzgerald overtook a shaken O’Gara and his trembling colleague a hundred yards from the house. Around the bend the drive stretched straight ahead for another hundred yards or so. There was nobody there. Another three shots sounded out from the first floor of Burke Hall. ‘Cease firing! You bloody fool! You could kill one of our own!’ Sergeant O’Callaghan had arrived at last to take command. Now the sounds of weeping women replaced the noise of gunfire. At the end of the hundred-yard stretch another bend led into an even longer straight section of drive. O’Gara and his colleague staggered off, O’Gara holding on to a stitch in his leg, his companion wheezing and making slow progress. Johnny Fitzgerald motioned Powerscourt to stop.