The Death of Love

by Bartholomew Gill

  McGarr wondered how it would be to live out here—on the edge of the continent, in the middle of the ocean, on the lee shore of the Gulf Stream—surrounded by the ever-unfolding high drama of nature. Great for the soul, he imagined, watching the tourists. Seemingly lost in their thoughts, they now began returning to the bus.

  Having seen something—McGarr remembered from Paddy Power’s note cards—but they know not what.

  It is what invites but will not submit to description in simple words—the cold, wild beauty of Ireland…and the miracle of how we can continue to endure her barren caress. And why, when she can be made to change.

  How, McGarr wanted to know.

  The Waterville Lake Hotel is modern and Promethean. With views out over Lough Currane in one direction and Ballinskelligs Bay in the other, its setting is enviable.

  At the desk in its spacious lobby McGarr inquired after Helen N. Power.

  “Has Nell returned from her round of golf?” one young woman asked another without looking up from the papers she was sorting through.

  “Just. I’m only after seeing her coming in.”

  “Room four-eleven.”

  There McGarr knocked, and without so much as a “Who is it?” the door was opened.

  In it stood a short, older woman with wide shoulders that were marked out by the sheen of a stylish golfing jacket. The collar was raised. Thin-hipped, she was wearing slacks of the same tan material and athletic shoes that were new and white.

  Her hair, which was dark and wavy, had been cut short, and a deep tan made her look younger than her fifty-five or so years. With smooth, regular features and a definite chin, she was still what McGarr thought of as fetching. Her eyes were two black buttons that regarded him, then glanced at Noreen and Maddie.

  McGarr had reached for his identification case, but before he could introduce himself, Nell Power asked Noreen, “Don’t I know you? You’re—”

  “Noreen Frenche.”

  “Of course. Fitzhugh and Nuala’s girl. You’re married to—” Her eyes then returned to McGarr, who now raised his laminated picture I.D. into the light.

  “Peter McGarr. I’m with the—”

  “Yes, quite. I know who you are. Don’t stand out there all day now. Come in, come in.” She glanced up the hall before closing the door, and McGarr let his eyes sweep the sitting room of what looked like a three-room suite.

  The furniture had been moved back against two walls to make room for a portable putting green made of some green synthetic material. Beside it was a practice tee wired to a small electronic machine that, McGarr assumed, informed the golfer about the precision of his or her shot. There were golf balls, golf clubs, golf bags, and golf shoes stored neatly against the furniture in one corner. In another was a stack of magazines, the top cover of which showed a woman spraying sand and the white dot of a golf ball from a trap. Grim determination creased her face.

  McGarr turned his head to the wide modern windows that ran the length of the room. There a long table was covered with photocopies of note cards in handwriting no different from those he had found with Paddy Power’s corpse.

  Said Power’s ex-wife, moving into the room after them, “Please pardon the shambles. I’m in training, don’t you know.”

  Noreen turned to her, awaiting further explanation, while McGarr stepped closer to the table.

  “I’m thinking of entering the senior women’s tour. You know, the one for old cows over in the States. At one time I regularly shot men’s par, and I was thinking that if I could again here, I’d give it a go. As you probably know, the Waterville course is the most challenging in Ireland. And probably the best.

  “So, tell me about your parents. How are they keeping? And who is this little one in your arms with the face of her mother and the eyes of her father?”

  Whose own were now scanning the neat, crabbed hand of Paddy Power. Photocopies of his note cards had been arranged according to subject heading. There was a grouping for Shane Frost, another for Gretta Osbourne, yet another for Eire Bank. O’Duffy, and “The Debt,” were some other arrangements. In the shadows beneath the table was a large, plasticized courtesy sack printed with the name of “M.J.P. Frost, Chemist, Sneem.”

  McGarr picked up the pile that was titled “O’Duffy” and fanned through the sheets. There were six cards arranged neatly and photographed on each page. Subheadings said “Political Roots,” “Political Debts,” “Economic Policy,” “Favors Owed,” “Election Financing,” “I, Bagman,” “Dirty Tricks.” McGarr replaced the grouping.

  Noreen introduced Maddie, and while Nell Power was making a fuss over her, he stepped into one of the other two rooms, which turned out to be a newly made-up bedroom. A rather complete wardrobe for a mere golfing outing hung in the closets, and the storage areas of the toilet suggested that Nell Power had been there for a while. There were many and different types of cosmetics, placed on all the shelves and not just the lower ones that would be handiest for a person of her height. The only medicine he could find was aspirin.

  The women were still talking when McGarr stepped back into the sitting room. Passing to the other side of the table, he entered the third and final room of the suite.

  It was a kind of study that contained a writing desk positioned before another floor-to-ceiling swath of glass, and several comfortable reading chairs. On the desk was an addressed envelope and a partially written letter to a daughter in Washington, D.C. It described in detail Nell’s attempts to “groove” her swing and how she had to remind herself constantly to keep her hands loose. With the golf club in them, McGarr supposed. The daughter was evidently arranging the Stateside aspects of the woman’s attempt to get onto the senior women’s golf tour, and much of the letter was devoted to that.

  Paddy Power was mentioned only once.

  Your father is presently in Parknasilla. I don’t know if he has told you or not, but he’s out to save the world, or at least the Irish part of it. And not simply by enriching every wastrel, layabout, and tinker with that giveaway Fund of his. He’s planning to run for office, and he has his cap set for no less an office than taosieach. His thinking, I’ve been told, is that no party will be able to resist taking him in. Given his popularity, he well may be right. Worse still, he has a drastic, harebrained scheme to restructure the Irish debt at our expense. It includes a write-down. Everybody from Sean O’Duffy to Shane is against it, but you know your father. That blessed perfectionist woman, whose idea it probably is, is behind him all the way. They’ve been working on nothing else for the past six months, and they just might get it done, says Shane.

  Gretta Osbourne, McGarr supposed, was the “blessed perfectionist woman.”

  In an open briefcase beside the desk McGarr found two of three quarterly reports of Eire Bank for the present year, and the full annual reports for each year since its inception some fourteen years earlier.

  He opened the report for the last fiscal year to learn that “Eire Bank is a privately held fiduciary trust with some eleven owners of record to date.” None was named. He could not tell—and understood that it would probably take somebody skilled at financial reporting to know—if Eire Bank had made a profit in that year, though some £15 million had been claimed.

  If Eire Bank was private, why the elaborate annual report with full-color pictures of the new banking complex in Dublin? His eye caught on a sentence in Chairman Shane Frost’s opening statement: “Eire Bank continues to enjoy the full faith, credit, and support of the government of the Republic of Ireland.”

  In the most recent quarterly report Frost also said, “Given the current international banking environment, Eire Bank has informed the government of its willingness to explore the possibility of extranational merger and/or acquisition.”

  He closed the report, replaced the several documents in the briefcase, and stepped out into the sitting room.

  Nell Power waited until her conversation with Noreen had drawn to a close before she turned to McGarr and in the same p
leasant voice, asked, “Well, sir, now that you’ve gone through my belongings, may I ask the purpose of your visit? Or is it just habit, after all your time with the Guards?”

  Flourishing his hand, McGarr offered it to the woman. “Now that’s what I like—a compliant woman with a sense of humor. I must confess to the latter. Noreen here will tell you, I’m a born snoop, and wasn’t I wondering just what a soon-to-be professional athlete—and woman at that—would choose to have about her person while training.”

  Nell Power had a small hand but a firm grip.

  McGarr avoided looking directly at Noreen, whose practiced, incompany smile had been replaced by a look of acute social pain. From the easy manner in which Nell Power had greeted them, she was obviously good company. Of greater concern to Noreen was the fact that Nell Power, as the former wife of Paddy Power, was an acceptable person, both here and back in Dublin among Noreen’s parents’ set, who included—by their own estimation—the best people in the country.

  What bothered her most, however, was McGarr’s deceit. It would later be told by Nell Power that McGarr had waited until he had extracted the last bit of information before breaking the news of her ex-husband’s death.

  “May I ask you something?”

  She swung her head to one side and smiled. “Why not?”

  “Where’d you get these?” McGarr pointed to the photocopies of the note cards on the table.

  Her head moved to the other side. She had opened the golfing jacket, and the reason for the appellation “Big Nell” was now apparent. Her jumper was made of some sheer material beneath, and McGarr could see the lacy array of some substantial support. “So, is that what this is all about? Curious—I thought you were homicides, or are you another one of Paddy’s ‘friends’?”

  McGarr only waited.

  Holding Maddie in her arms, Noreen shifted from foot to foot. Her green eyes wheeled toward the door. It was one thing to dissect the fine points of an enquiry over tea, quite another experience gathering facts firsthand.

  Nell Power moved toward the table, her thin-hipped stride lithe for a woman of her age. “Those are my erstwhile husband’s notes on his life. He’s assembling them for a memoir, so. It’s common practice among great and near-great men, I believe. Do you think you’ll ever be bitten yourself, Peter?”

  “You’re helping him with the work?”

  She paused, as if playing the sentence over in her mind, then smiled again, liking the thought. “I guess you could say that. Yes, or at least I’ve tried to help him.”

  Again McGarr waited.

  “Listen,” said Noreen, “I think I’ll—”

  But Nell Power began speaking again. “What I mean is, I’ve taken the time and summoned the…strength to read them all. I then tried to reach Paddy to give him my opinion, contrary as it is. But he was out when I called round.”

  By “called” she meant “visited.” “At Parknasilla?”

  She turned and smiled at him, her dark eyes glittering with evident anger. “The very place.”

  “When?”

  “Sunday afternoon.”

  “He was expecting you?”

  She laughed once. “Not likely. His debt conference was about to begin, and I met his chargé d’affaires on the stairs. D’you know her, Peter?”

  “Gretta Osbourne.”

  “So, you do. We had words, as usual, and I thought it best to depart. Life’s too short for that, and, when he knows that I’m now privy to these immortal thoughts”—her hand swept the table—“he’ll be by.”

  “Did you tell Gretta Osbourne you had them? Copies of the note cards.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “Ah, Nell—” Noreen began to say, but McGarr, stuffing one hand at the floor, stopped her.

  “Well?” Nell Power demanded, now seeming to sense that some purpose larger than the note cards had propelled the McGarrs at her door.

  “You first. The note cards. Gretta Osbourne. Did you tell her you had copies of them?”

  “I didn’t have to. Wasn’t it she herself sent them to me?”

  “Do you know that?”

  “No—but who else could it have been?”

  “When were they delivered?”

  “That morning. Sunday morning. There was a knock on the door, and a porter was holding that sack”—she leaned back and pointed to the “M.J.P Frost, Chemist” sack in the shadows beneath the table—“filled with the photocopies. I read my own first, or, rather, Paddy’s poor opinion of me, his children, and the life we’d passed together for nearly fifty years, counting our childhood in Sneem. I then set off to see him, to give him the other side, don’t you know. It’s like”—she regarded the stacks of note cards and shook her head—“two people, one life, but reading those cards, you’d think he’d spent it with somebody else.”

  “How do you know Gretta Osbourne sent them?”

  “I just know,” she snapped. “Who else could it have been? Who else has access to Paddy but her? Or the spite.”

  “Did the porter mention her name?”

  “No, but I know.”

  McGarr waited, and when she offered nothing more, he asked, “Eire Bank. You’re a shareholder?”

  She nodded. “Isn’t it about time you told me what you’re about here?”

  “Yes, Peter,” Noreen echoed.

  “Because of your divorce.”

  Nell Power nodded.

  “You are divorced?”

  Again. “’Tis a wonderful lot of questions over some photocopies of some note cards.”

  “Who else are shareholders in Eire Bank?”

  Nell Power only regarded him.

  “You, your former husband, Shane Frost,” he prompted. “Gretta Osbourne?”

  Still she said nothing.

  “The Irish government—how much aid have they given Eire Bank?”

  “What happened to Paddy?” she asked.

  McGarr drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “He’s dead.”

  Nothing about her changed: not her stance, her facial expression, not even a blink. “When?”

  “Sunday evening.”

  “His heart?” she asked.

  “Did you know about his condition?”

  “Wasn’t I his wife for thirty-plus years? How is it you’re telling me of it now and like this?

  “Who knew you were here?” With the bulk of the note cards, McGarr thought.

  “My daughters, my sons.”

  “We’ve been trying to get in touch with your son Sean Dermot in Palo Alto. Perhaps you can do that for us now.” McGarr reached for the plastic sack. “What had you planned for the note cards?” He looked around for another container to hold the cards.

  As though lost in her thoughts, it took some time for Nell Power to reply. “I don’t know. I had thought of destroying the lot.”

  “Looks like years of work.” Seeing an empty waste bin, McGarr reached for it.

  “Malevolence, I’d call it.” There was a pause, and then: “Pity a life should come to that.”

  McGarr began placing the stacks as neatly as he could in the bin.

  “Hold on—I’ll get you another plastic sack. I have a bunch of them.” Nell Power had nearly reached the study doorway when she stopped. “Why…you and not—” A priest, she meant. “Was Paddy murdered?”

  “Commissioner Farrell asked me to look into the matter. Tell me about the medicines Paddy was taking for his heart,” he went on, drawing the groupings together and trying to arrange the subject headings in some rough alphabetical order.

  “I have no idea. Shortly after he began taking them, he left me, saying he didn’t have much life left, and he wasn’t going to waste it ‘for the sake of the children.’ No mention of me or us, which he said he didn’t remember. Apart from my bad opinion of him.”

  Again she began turning away before she asked, “Will you read them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I want you to remember one thing and one thing only. A
nytime I asserted myself, Paddy felt threatened. He got me to quit golf. He got me to quit my little business. He got me to quit this, that, and the other thing until he had me all to himself, body and soul, which is when he quit me.”

  When she returned with a small valise, she asked, “Where is he now?”

  McGarr explained that a postmortem had been performed and named the hospital.

  “So, it was murder.”

  He snapped his eyes up to hers. “And if it was, whom would you suspect?”

  “Gretta. The Osbourne woman, of course.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he used and spurned her, like he used and spurned me. The difference being that at least we were married, which is what she had wanted and didn’t get.”

  “He would have had a will?” McGarr asked.

  “Certainly. In matters financial, Paddy was most careful. With his own money.”

  McGarr recalled what he had seen in the desk in the study and her letter describing how Power’s debt conference would cost Nell Power and her children money. “You mean he owned no part of Eire Bank.”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t say that. As far as I know, he was still the largest shareholder by one percentage share. The children and I got nineteen percent in settlement of the divorce.”

  “And Shane Frost told you your husband was now proposing that Eire Bank ‘write down’ its share of the Irish debt? What exactly does that mean?”

  “Some of its share. It means forgive, forget, expunge. Twenty percent, to be exact.”

  “Which means in pounds?”

  She shook her head. “I have it somewhere, but not a small fortune by any means. Millions and millions of pounds.”

  “Can Eire Bank absorb such a loss?”

  “Paddy can or…could, and what did he care about us?”

  “Where will you be for the next several days?”