The three men were all looking at Dree now and she knew that they were recalling that last family conference six months before, and all that had led up to it. No, not all. Only she could remember all. She remembered now.
Her very first meeting with Prince Arthur, three years ago, had been prefaced by a family row.
There had been snow on the ground and in Boston the bright lights strung across the streets signalled the approach of Christmas. But there was to be another festive occasion that December which was even brighter in terms of social significance and glitter. This was the reception to be held at the State House in honor of the Prince’s visit.
Naturally there was an invitation for the Connollys. Even more naturally, Old Pat had forbidden any of them to attend. None of his family was going to bow or curtsey to an English Prince!
Deirdre at twenty understood little of his reasoning. All she knew was that she was vastly disappointed, but after a brief flash of Celtic rage, she might well have accepted her disappointment. It was Conal who made an issue of it. He told the old man not to be a fool. Boston expected a Connolly presence at its great occasions. Politically, he personally ought to attend. And as for his sister, it would be a cruel thing to deprive her of such a night. Old Pat was reduced to a brooding silence which Conal took for consent. And when the great night came, Deirdre put on a simple gown of white silk and went to the State House adorned with that unself-conscious beauty which outdazzles all that the art of jeweller, couturier and coiffeur can offer.
It had been a magic evening. The Prince was clearly enjoying himself, smiling, talking, joking, laughing, and when the music started he took to the floor at once and seemed determined to dance with every woman in the room in turn.
Deirdre’s turn came early on with a waltz, and thereafter the Prince’s system seemed to break down. Ladies, tremulous with anticipation, began to tremble instead with resentment as he danced three in a row with that Connolly chit.
The photographers had a field day. The incredibly handsome young couple were the focus of all attention. But only one person other than the Prince had made any impression on Deirdre’s mind.
No matter how much they whirled around the floor, over Arthur’s shoulder she always seemed to see a solid, granite-faced man whose cold unblinking gaze seemed to touch her very skin.
“Who’s that?” she whispered. “The one who feels you with his eyes.”
“You mean Mr. McHarg,” laughed the Prince. “My detective. He’s just checking you for concealed weapons.”
He pressed her close in a spin and added, “I can’t detect any.”
“Me neither,” she answered. She felt deliriously happy.
It was a happiness which lasted till the Granda saw the papers next morning. Even Conal could not deflect his great wrath, and in the end it was Deirdre’s tears which calmed him.
“It was only a dance, Granda,” she wept. “I’ll never see him again. So where’s the harm?”
But she was wrong about not seeing him again, though she pleased Old Pat when an invitation came shortly afterwards to attend a farewell party for the Prince at the British Embassy in Washington by tearing it up before his face.
The following summer, she visited Europe with a party of friends, most of them enthusiastic sailors, and after a short stay in Ireland visiting ancestral shrines, she had gone on to join them for Cowes Week on the Isle of Wight.
And there her path and Arthur’s crossed again.
They saw a lot of each other, but very rapidly by tacit mutual consent they fell into the habit of distancing themselves in the public view to keep the press fooled. She was naive enough to believe at first that this was for her sake. Only later as their intimacy grew did she realize how strong an opposition there would be in his family also to the connection.
“The thing is,” he explained, “apart from the fact that your grandfather’s almost run out of terms of abuse for my relatives, if I should happen to want to marry a practicing Roman Catholic I’d have to renounce my right of succession. And you’d think I was the Great White Hope instead of being pretty lowly placed in a queue a mile long!”
It was the first mention of marriage. It was made in bed the first time they slept together. In the morning, Deirdre, who had a sharp sense of fun, heaved the mattress up and pretended to look for the princess-testing pea he’d placed there. But it was no fairytale world they lived in, and a happy-ever-after ending looked a long, long way away.
Miraculously, they kept their romance out of view of the media for two whole years. As minor royalty, Arthur was not subject to the intensity of scrutiny and pursuit endured by his mainstream cousins. But it still took skillful planning, trustworthy friends and a lot of luck.
But finally luck had run out. Perhaps on the Prince’s side first. And perhaps his own family had arranged for the news to be leaked to Old Pat. From their point of view, it would have been a good move. His fury was terrible. He had lashed Deirdre with his tongue and when she was reduced to helpless tears, he had turned on her brothers. It had looked as if something would have to give beyond hope of repair—either Old Pat’s heart or the fabric of the family. Only one thing had brought them back from the brink and that was Deirdre’s screamed assurance that she was not seeing the Prince any more, that they had brought their relationship to a halt.
She was, to say the least, being Jesuitical. The truth of the matter was that she and Arthur had both hesitated at the brink of coming out into the open about their feelings. Both of them were too aware of the effect their marriage would have on their respective families to take the step easily. They had agreed not to see each other for six months before taking a final decision. A fairytale test, Arthur had called it. The period had just started when Old Pat had thrown his tantrum.
And now it was almost up.
But her half-year of quiet living at Castlemaine, her assurances that nothing was going on between her and the Prince, these had not altogether stilled the suspicions in the old man’s mind. And now he had devised this new barrier to any resumption of the connection, by making her brothers’ financial future dependent on her obedience.
Conal was right, of course. It was an act of insanity. And Christie was right too when he called it an act of cruelty. Suddenly she felt herself calmer and more self-assured than she’d done for weeks. This was above all an act of provocation and her Connolly blood did not take such things kindly.
She still did not know what decision she had reached about her relationship with Arthur. She had no idea how he now felt about her. All she knew was that she was going to see him again soon and that none of these three men, no matter how much she loved them, was going to deprive her of that.
She said: “You must excuse me. There are arrangements to be checked.”
It was an almost deliberate ambiguity. Feeling very controlled, she went straight to her room and picked up the telephone. A few minutes later she was connected with old Henry Goffman, who ran the general store in the small township of Summit a few miles down the valley from the Connolly Lodge in North Maine. He also acted as caretaker and supplier of the Lodge, and anyone going up there always checked with him first to make sure no other member of the family had a prior booking.
“Mr Goffman,” said Dree, “I just wanted to confirm that I’d be using the Lodge on March 17th. Probably a couple of nights, I don’t know, but definitely the seventeenth. You’ll see to that? OK. Thanks, Mr Goffman.”
When she rang off and rose from the bed on which she was sitting, she started as she saw Conal standing in the doorway.
“March 17th?” mused Conal to the air. “That’s St Pat’s Day. Now what will the Granda say if you’re not by his side in Boston at the celebrations of the greatest day of the year!”
“Nothing,” said Dree steadily. “He’s already announced he’s going to stay quietly at Castlemaine this year.”
“Has he now? And you, Dree, will be visiting with Christie from tomorrow, I gather. Are Christie and his br
ood going to the Lodge too?”
“No. Just some friends,” said Dree.
“Is that so? Why, I may join you then,” he probed.
“It’ll be a full house,” said Dree lightly. “Besides, Con, won’t you be parading up Fifth Avenue in your green suit, trying to keep a hold on the Mick vote?”
He laughed, but didn’t answer the question. Instead he said, “Dree, I came up to say, don’t let yourself be upset by the Granda and his daft will. You know what he’s like, everything’s got to be played with full orchestra.”
“It doesn’t bother me in the slightest,” she assured him. “Tell me, Con: what’s the real reason for Mary and Peggy not coming? It’s not just a cold, is it?”
“Oh, but it is,” he said. “It’s that interesting condition, a cold in the marriage. Symptoms: irascibility, thirst, nausea, withdrawal. Prognosis: bad.”
“Oh, Con, I’m sorry,” she said sincerely. “I’m really sorry.”
“I believe you,” he answered. “I also believe there’s a little bit of the politician in you too, Dree. You’re a good changer-of-subjects, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, pushing past him. “But I do know I’ve got a ceilidh to arrange.”
Behind her she heard Conal’s light, cynical laugh. Then his footsteps came after her down the stairs.
CHAPTER 6
The weather had changed in twelve hours and now as the tide approached the ebb once more, there was very little of the previous evening’s magic in the air. Squalls of salty spray blasted in from the sea and hissed against the hot metal of the swaying arc-lamps. Half-a-dozen figures clad in waterproof capes and rubber boots moved in and out to the shifting, ghastly light with the slowness of an underwater ballet. They followed the retreating waterline, probing the gelatinous sand with long spikes and occasionally summoning a colleague with a spade if some obstruction were encountered.
McHarg listened attentively to each cry but so far nothing had been unearthed which merited his attention. He and Dr Wainwright were seated in the relative warmth of a police Land Rover parked as far down the beach as McHarg had felt able to go on the wet sand. The two men looked not dissimilar in the dimly lit interior of the vehicle. Both were stockily well-built with a breadth of shoulder not yet overtaken by width of waist. Both had a frost of grey hair at their sideboards, and the skin beneath both sets of eyes was pouched and creased by too many disturbed nights, too many chronic worries.
The differences began in the detail of their faces. Wainwright’s long pinched nose and hollow cheeks combined with wide, slightly twisted lips to produce an expression of world-weary pessimism, while McHarg’s broad, blunt nose was set over a mouth sculpted to cry defiance, and framed by a jaw and a brow either of which looked as if it could be used to break ice in the Antarctic.
“This was my night off,” said Wainwright. “I’m back on call in an hour.”
“Night off? What’s that?” wondered McHarg. “I was up at four yesterday morning paddling around in hot ash up to my ankles.”
“Police barbecue?”
“Ha. Human barbecue. Some poor sod in one of those timbered cottages up the river at Little Pailey. Pyres if you put a spark to them.”
“Arson?”
“Smoking when drunk, the fire chief says. A journalist.”
“It’d be warm at least,” said the doctor, taking another sip of coffee.
“He’ll be dead, you reckon?” said McHarg a little later. “This chap who lost his tongue.”
“Possibly. Depends what happened next. With proper medical treatment he might be OK. Left to himself, he’d probably choke on his own blood if the shock didn’t kill him.”
“Let’s hope the poor sod was dead when it happened,” said McHarg.
“It seems a rather pointless thing to do in that case,” said the doctor.
McHarg regarded him curiously. “It seems rather pointless either way,” he said. But he added thoughtfully, “Mind you, it rings a bell somehow. I don’t know why, but it does. Odd.”
Wainwright glanced at his watch and shifted impatiently. “What’s the point of this anyway? You’re hoping to find other bits of the poor sod?”
“It’ll be over soon,” assured McHarg. “Have some more coffee. When the tide turns, that’s that. For tonight. You’re sure it was a man, by the way?”
Wainwright shrugged. “It was large enough, but your laboratory should be able to tell you that. I hope to God…” He let his voice tail away.
“Not long now,” said McHarg as cheerfully as he could manage. He reached under his seat and pulled out a briefcase.
“Fancy a sandwich?” he asked, extracting a Cellophane-wrapped package.
“What’ve you got?” said Wainwright.
McHarg prised apart two slices of impact-sealed bread and inspected the interior.
“Tongue,” he said.
“Oh Jesus!”
Suddenly there was a change in the cumbersome activity at the water’s edge. The uniformed sergeant in charge turned towards the Land Rover, raised his hand above his head and made a circling motion.
“They’ve found something,” said McHarg. “Sorry. We’re going to get wet after all.”
The wind hit them like a wet pillow wielded by a giant. It seemed to gust from all quarters so you couldn’t even lean into it as you walked. At least it’s keeping off the vulgar curious, thought McHarg.
“What’s up, Bert?” he asked the sergeant when they reached the huddle of glistening oilskins.
“We’ve found a spade, sir,” said the sergeant.
McHarg looked down. The suck and thrust of the tide had almost pulled the tiny implement out of its lodging place in the sodden sand and it lay askew, fragile and pathetic as a makeshift cross on a battlefield.
“This is your daughter’s, Doctor?” asked McHarg.
Wainwright nodded.
McHarg bent down and picked up the spade.
“OK, Bert. Mark the spot so it stays marked. Take a couple of bearings too. And dig like buggery. You’ve got about a minute at the most. I want everything you find here, including the bloody sand!”
Leaving behind the group of policemen now feverishly shovelling the sand from the area marked by the spade into large plastic bags, McHarg and Wainwright walked back to the Land Rover. As they neared it, a figure appeared in the theatrical glow of the headlights. McHarg recognized one of his DCs.
“What is it, Jimmy?” he asked.
“Super’s here, sir,” said the man, jerking his head back towards the promenade. “He’d like a word.”
“OK.”
They got into the Land Rover and McHarg started it up, engaged the four-wheel drive and took it back towards the promenade in a slitheringly tight circle that had Wainwright cursing.
“Won’t be a sec,” said McHarg as he brought the vehicle to a sharp halt behind the only other car in sight.
“Morning, Douglas,” said Chief Superintendent Tim Davison through the half-covered window. “Is that Wainwright with you?”
“Yes, sir,” said McHarg, crouching down beside the car, partly for audibility but mainly for protection. He had tried the handle of the rear door but it was locked and Davison had made no attempt to open it for him.
“What do you make of him, Douglas?”
“Seems OK,” said McHarg, surprised. “Down to earth. Reliable.”
“They’ve got to seem like that, I suppose,” said Davison.
He spoke in monotone and sounded slow and dull-witted. McHarg was not deceived.
“What’s up, sir?”
“Some of them couldn’t tell a tit from a tennis ball,” continued the Chief Superintendent. “It’s a cock-up, Douglas. That thing he found. Waste of time.”
“You mean it’s not a tongue?” said McHarg in amazement.
“Oh, it’s a tongue all right. I’ve had the lab report. But it’s not human. Dog’s. Some sort of big dog.”
“They’re sure?”
<
br /> “That’s why they’ve got the letters after their names. I thought I’d let you know before you got too wet.”
“Thanks,” said McHarg, feeling his trouser legs clinging to his calves like a cold poultice.
“Look, Inspector, I’ve really got to get back home. That phone’s going to start ringing in half an hour and I’ll need a hot bath.”
It was Wainwright, grown impatient and come to hurry him along. In his hand he clutched Lucy’s tiny spade.
McHarg glanced from Davison to the doctor. It didn’t seem a time for introductions.
“Is something up?” asked Wainwright, sensitive to atmosphere. “I can make my own way home.”
“No, no,” said McHarg. “It’s just that, well, no use beating around the bush. That tongue you found. We’ve had the lab report. It’s a dog’s.”
“It’s what?”
“A dog’s. The Chief Super’s just told me. I’m sorry.”
He should be apologizing to me, thought McHarg. But it was clear Wainwright was in no mood for apologies.
“Are you crazy, or what?” he demanded.
“That’s what they say at the lab,” replied McHarg defensively.
“What kind of morons do you employ down there? Retired lollipopmen?”
McHarg bent down to the car window again in search of support.
“Pass it to the RSPCA,” said Davison, winding the window up. He motioned to his driver and the car began to pull away.
“Stupid bastards!” exploded Wainwright.
“Look, I’ve said I’m sorry, though I don’t know why I should be,” said McHarg, beginning to get angry. “Let’s get you home, shall we?”
“Oh, go to hell!” snapped Wainwright. Turning on his heel, he strode away, carrying the spade like a battle-axe.
McHarg watched him go, then returned to the Land-Rover. There were half-a-dozen very wet men on the beach and he didn’t relish telling them that they had been wasting their time. It would be little consolation to them that he had been wasting his too.
And perversely, now that it didn’t matter any longer, the mists of memory evaporated and suddenly he recalled with perfect clarity what it was that had made the grisly business seem somehow not totally unfamiliar.
Who Guards a Prince? Page 3