The Darkling Bride
Page 16
She walked the perimeter of the castle, appreciating the uniqueness of its various wings and angles and rooflines and trying to match the interior plans with the exterior. It was almost hopeless, especially for someone who barely knew the difference between stone and brick, let alone the various architectural periods.
The library was by far the easiest to identify, with its former identity as a private chapel. Sibéal paused by the hidden outside door—for fugitive priests, Cullen had told her; her sergeant knew all kinds of odd trivia—and pondered it with interest. The police at the time had hastily concluded that the killer had entered and exited the castle by this unobtrusive priest’s door. It wasn’t a bad theory—if it didn’t have the air of being grasped at as the one most convenient for the family. Personally, she didn’t see how a random outsider could have even known about the door. Or for that matter, been able to open it. It possessed a sturdy enough lock today.
“Trespassing, Inspector?”
She didn’t flinch, didn’t even blink, simply assured herself that the door was, indeed, thoroughly locked, before turning to face Philip Grant. When she’d spoken to the family yesterday, he’d been dressed in a bespoke suit that made him look sleek and satisfied. Today he wore khakis, boots, and a tweed jacket that made him look like a countryman. Only his cynical, practiced expression remained the same.
She didn’t respond to his jibe, but seized upon the moment. “Would this be a convenient time to speak, Mr. Grant?”
“About what?”
“About what happened here in 1992, and how you came to be mixed up in all of it.”
“Mixed up?” he repeated, amused. “Only in the most peripheral sense. Do you want to conduct an interview lurking outside the walls?”
She wanted to conduct the interview without risk of being interrupted. She nodded to a wooden bench, silvered by age and exposure, at the edge of what had once been trimmed turf. “We can sit.”
Philip agreed, and when they were seated launched into the story he’d no doubt been preparing since he heard the case was reopened. “I was an intern, more or less, hired for that summer by Lord Gallagher thanks to my father’s connections. I had business aspirations that have proved to not be entirely foolhardy.”
“Helped, no doubt, by Gallagher money.”
A man may smile and smile and still be a villain definitely applied to this man, with his custom-made clothing and easy air of belonging and fair-haired good looks…and yet, there was something reptilian at his core. This was a man devoted entirely to his own ends.
“Not so much the money, as the name. You’re quite right, Inspector, marrying Kyla did me no harm. Nor her. And isn’t that the ideal marriage—where both partners benefit?” His eyes flicked to her bare left hand. “You’ll just have to take my word for it.”
Sibéal wouldn’t have taken his word if he swore that the earth was round. She wondered if Kyla felt she’d benefited as much from the marriage as her husband.
“Mr. Grant, what was the nature of your relationship with Lady Gallagher during your internship? I believe you were resident in the castle.”
“I was. In one of the more remote wings. There are more than a hundred rooms in Deeprath Castle. I could go days without seeing anyone but his lordship and the steward.”
“Mr. Bell, the estate manager? You reported to him as well?”
“I wouldn’t say reported.”
Of course not, she added mentally, you wouldn’t want me thinking you were ever subordinate to a mere steward.
“Whatever Lord Gallagher asked, I did. I studied estate records and past investments, I learned about the running costs of property as balanced against income, and I studied stock reports and practiced picking winners.”
“And your relationship with Lady Gallagher?” she asked again.
The reptile flickered behind his eyes. “Her secretary was off having a baby or some such that summer. When she needed it, I helped with her correspondence.”
“Did Lady Gallagher have a large circle of correspondents?”
He shrugged one elegant shoulder. “American, mostly. They’re all so…friendly. Don’t you find? Like Miss Ryan.”
Sibéal was taken aback by the hostility of the apparent non sequitur. “The library archivist? Is she American?” For some reason, she didn’t want Philip to know she’d already spoken to Carragh.
“I’m not entirely sure what she is. She had a grandmother in Dublin, but Carragh was raised in Boston. I suppose that makes her American, whatever mongrel bloodline brought her into being. She’s adopted, you know?”
He’d called her Carragh. Now why did Philip Grant feel the need for such a personal attack on someone wholly unconnected to Deeprath Castle before now, someone who could have nothing at all to do with the murders? Yes, obviously, Sibéal thought, he is trying to distract me. But why Carragh in particular? An interesting puzzle.
One that could wait. “Mr. Grant, I would appreciate a list of all the correspondents you recall Lady Gallagher being engaged with that summer. My colleagues were not especially searching in their questions at the time.”
“Understandably. All the signs pointed at robbery gone wrong. No need to disturb a devastated family more than necessary.”
“But it wasn’t robbery, was it? No, Mr. Grant, I’m afraid it will not hold. Someone killed them both, someone who knew enough about Deeprath and Glendalough to hide those antiquities in an unmapped holy well, along with the gun. Someone who has gotten away with it for twenty-three years. That someone? Should be very, very worried.”
However unwise it might have been, Sibéal felt vicious satisfaction at knocking the smug expression off Philip Grant’s face.
* * *
—
Aidan spent much of that Tuesday in Rathdrum dealing with Winthrop on estate matters. It was straightforward—as much as it could be—for the solicitor had done an excellent job over the years keeping track of the many spinning plates that constituted a heritage like Deeprath and a fortune like the Gallaghers’.
But when Aidan complimented him on his work, Winthrop said, “You owe as much thanks to your sister as you do to me.”
“Kyla?”
Coolly, Winthrop replied, “You did appoint her to oversee the books.”
So he had, fifteen years ago before he’d started university and Kyla had just earned her business degree. Aidan had given it little thought since then, assuming she saw it as he’d intended: a figurehead position, meant mostly to ensure he wouldn’t be bothered too much by Ireland.
No wonder she thought him arrogant and detached. Fumbling to ask without sounding more condescending, Aidan ventured, “I’m glad she has had something to keep her occupied. We don’t discuss it much.”
“I know.” Could it be disapproval shading the solicitor’s tone? “I thought it a pity you weren’t more receptive to her thoughts on the castle’s future—alternatives to donating it to the National Trust.”
“Hotel, conference center, historical archives…Wicklow is not Dublin. If we ever managed to turn a profit, no doubt it would be eaten up at once by expenses.”
“No one thinks it would be easy, but this was no idle dream, Lord Gallagher. Kyla worked hard for months putting together a viable business plan, complete with possible grants and sponsors for the project. Did you not read it?”
“I assume you know I didn’t.”
Winthrop removed a hefty file from one of his desk drawers. He must have come prepared for this meeting, in more ways than one. Passing it to Aidan, he said, “You should read it. If you have questions—ones that you cannot bring yourself to ask your sister—talk to Robert Bell. He also thought this an excellent proposal.”
“Is there not one person in Ireland who thinks the trust donation is a good idea?”
“Of course there are—those persons who work for the trust.”
Uttered with a dry humor that pierced Aidan’s pride, so that he answered more humbly, “I will read it. Carefully.”
He thought he’d learned that lesson as a boy—but had begun to realize that grief denied and ignored will come back to bite you in the ass. Look at Kyla’s drinking. Look at Nessa’s iron avoidance of emotion. Look at his own tendency to shy away from anyone or anything that came too near his boundaries.
Impulsively (or as near to impulse as he was capable of), Aidan texted Penelope.
What are you doing?
Not waiting around for you. How is Ireland?
Not as horrible as I feared. The castle, at least. But the family? Let’s just say the Gallaghers are not fated for personal happiness.
Fate?
I’m Irish. We believe in Fate.
I’m rolling my eyes at you so hard a passerby just stared at me in concern. How’s the woman?
What woman?
There’s always a woman where you’re concerned, Aidan. Usually more than one. And don’t tell me you don’t notice them…you’re a sodding police officer. Didn’t your aunt hire someone for the library?
How do you know it’s a woman?
Ha! If you’re stalling, it’s because I’m right. What’s her name?
…
Aidan?!
Carragh Ryan. She’s adequate to the job.
The job of the library…or the job of walking with you in your mountains?
You’re an unnatural creature, you know that? You were sleeping with me three weeks ago.
And I broke up with you two weeks ago. So Carragh Ryan likes your library and likes your mountains…what else does she like?
He almost ended the conversation there. But apparently impulse, once indulged, could run riot.
Pen, if I asked you to come to Ireland for the weekend—would you?
What on earth for? If it’s to protect you from this archivist, forget it. And I won’t sleep with you. What other use could I be?
Am I really that selfish a bastard? I suppose I am, because I do want something.
Aidan paused. Did he really want to do this? Taking a deep breath, he started typing again.
You told me before that you use hypnosis in your psychology practice.
To relax people, yes.
Even through text, he could feel her caution.
And when people are relaxed, they can sometimes remember things they didn’t want to before?
She took so long to respond he thought she’d given up in disgust.
What is it you want to remember?
I don’t know. There are definite gaps in my memories of that day. I thought the police statements would help me fill them in. But it turns out the police barely spoke to me at all.
That was accurate, as far as it went. But Aidan knew what he wanted to remember, something that had been tugging at his mind and conscience since his return. He had seen Kyla just before the murders. He knew he had. But he couldn’t remember anything of the context. Had she seen him? Had they spoken? He didn’t even know if this had happened inside or outside the castle.
This, he knew now, had always been lurking beneath his detachment, the cold fear that had seeped into his relationship with his sister, which he had buried long before he went to London to work. He could not keep it buried any longer.
So you want me to come all the way to Ireland to maybe or maybe not hypnotize you. What an enticing proposition.
There’s a party on Friday night. Half of County Wicklow is coming to the castle to kiss my hand before I throw away my heritage.
I’ll think about it.
With that, he had to be satisfied. As he drove back to Deeprath in the battered Land Rover that had been part of his childhood, he thought about what it was he wanted—needed—to know.
First: Who murdered my parents?
Second: Why?
And a very distant third: What do I do with those answers once I have them? For years he’d lived his life based on the trauma of one day. If ever that day was explained and understood…who would he be?
The unusual introspection meant he had not anticipated Inspector McKenna in his house. He’d hardly even noticed the strange car outside, assuming it was the cleaners. But the detective was in the Great Hall, having just finished an interview with Mrs. Bell. The housekeeper looked flustered, and Aidan felt a flash of empathy. After his parents’ deaths, the only thing close to open affection he’d received had come from his godmother. Maire Bell had been a faithful correspondent, writing him weekly through all his years of boarding school and university. Nessa had never approved. She’d considered the friendship between Maire and Lily Gallagher improper. “The American in Lily,” she used to say. “Never knowing where to draw the proper lines.”
Which was precisely why people had loved his mother. For the first time since his return, Aidan realized that if he wanted a more complete picture of his parents from an adult point of view, Maire Bell was the one to ask.
Noting that for later, he said, “Any news, Inspector?” He had asked various Dublin contacts about Sibéal McKenna, knew the basics of her family and upbringing and history in the Garda. She looked serious, but then, he suspected she always did. Something about the steadiness of her gaze and the set of her chin.
“Only that the antiquities have been definitely identified by your solicitor. Which seems to upend the conclusions reached by the police at the time. As you noted, few thieves would commit murder for such items only to bury them away for decades.”
“Does that upend your conclusions?” Aidan asked. “I had the impression from the first that you didn’t believe in an opportunistic robbery gone wrong.”
“No, I didn’t, no more than you did. Which makes me wonder, Lord Gallagher, what exactly you have concluded about what happened.”
“I was ten at the time. Too young for theories.”
“And since then, you have grown up and joined the police force. As an Arts and Antiquities officer, interestingly. Did you join that division in order to keep an eye out for your family’s missing antiquities?”
His temper flared at the implication he couldn’t make rational decisions. “Are you a cold case officer because you have an unsolved crime in your past?”
Her smile was ripe with understanding. “For whatever reason, you are a police officer. So don’t tell me you don’t have theories now.”
“I don’t.” He stared her down.
“Already, I am being encouraged by the local police to admit that the most likely remaining scenario is a business rival who wanted your father out of the way and perhaps didn’t anticipate your mother getting in the middle of it. Hired assassins seems to be the desired conclusion, who took the antiquities as a distraction.”
“Hired assassins who relied on finding a convenient weapon at hand? And how the hell would a hired killer know about any holy well near Glendalough? It’s not in any tourist literature. I didn’t even know about it!”
“Quite.” She nodded once, as though approving an apt pupil. “We both know it was not a stranger, Lord Gallagher. It was someone who knew your family, someone who knew this castle, someone who knew the landscape of these mountains. And if that is true, then it is almost certainly someone you know.”
“I have nothing to add to that very logical piece of deduction.”
Her brief smile of acknowledgment was without warmth. “You are no longer ten years old. And you are not simply the seventeenth Viscount Gallagher. You are a detective inspector in the Metropolitan Police, and what I want to know is…who are you protecting?”
“I have no answer to that.” He met her stare without blinking.
“I didn’t expect an answer. And I don’t really need one. I may not be wealt
hy and titled, but I’m an inspector, the same as you. I think I can work it out on my own.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Carragh used the return train ride to transcribe the first of the enlarged photos. She disciplined herself to treat it as an academic project, to not look through them all at once and anticipate what she would find. But it didn’t take long to see the strangeness Duncan had hinted at.
…and envy is not to be borne. Why should the girl be happy, why should she live with joy in the world, while disdaining those spirits who walked with her through darkening days and endless nights? Ingratitude is the first sin of the fae, disloyalty punished by exile and death.
The Bride had forgotten them. She had fled her bright world for the darkling shadows of the mortal one and counted her people well lost for her pride. But sin casts a long shadow. Where one child is lost, another may be found. If the girl would not return of herself, then let her pay the price.
So…a narrative. Of sorts. And a suggestive narrative at that, what with the reference to the Bride and the use of “darkling” as a description. Written, Carragh guessed, by the beleaguered Jenny Gallagher during her periods of confinement to the tower. Whatever illness or madness had caused her confinement, she wrote lucidly enough, though it would take many more transcriptions to tease out a storyline from it all. Was that what had drawn Evan Chase to Jenny—that she had literary talent as well as beauty and birth?
She was glad to see the electric lights shining at Deeprath Castle when the cab dropped her off. There was a blue Volkswagen parked near the stables, and Inspector McKenna approached it from around the house as Carragh drew near.