Death of a Pilgrim

by David Dickinson

  ‘You may,’ said the young man. ‘It’s Anne Marie, the daughter of the hotel owner here in Espeyrac. You must have seen her, Lady Powerscourt. She helps out in the hotel and waits at table sometimes in that black and white uniform they all seem to have.’

  Lady Lucy had indeed seen Anne Marie. Even Father Kennedy had been observed staring at her as she carried away the pudding plates or served the vegetables. The girl was a beauty, tall and slim with dark hair and light brown eyes. She had a distinguished air about her as if she might have dropped in from some fashionable salon in Paris or St Petersburg. ‘She is very beautiful,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘But tell me, Christy,’ she resisted the urge to remind Christy how young he was, ‘have you been in love before?’

  ‘I have not,’ the young man replied proudly. ‘This is my first time.’

  ‘Well, that can be wonderful, being in love for the first time. Sometimes it can be painful too, mind you. What makes you so sure – that you’re in love, I mean.’

  Christy Delaney thought hard for a moment. ‘It’s quite hard to describe, I think. I feel elated and excited every time I look at her. I think about her all the time. I hardly noticed the time walking back from Conques this afternoon. It’s just – exhilaration, you know, Lady Powerscourt. You must remember what it’s like falling in love with somebody.’

  Lady Lucy didn’t say that she was still in love with her husband. ‘I do remember, Christy, it is all very exciting. Sometimes you think you’re going mad. Have you spent a lot of time with young ladies? Do you have any sisters at home?’

  ‘That’s just it, Lady Powerscourt. There are five boys in our family. And the school I went to was all boys. So I don’t suppose you could say I was experienced in these matters.’

  ‘And how can I help? It’s very flattering to be taken into your confidence like this, and I’d be delighted to help in some way if you think I could be of service. How good is your French, for a start?’

  Christy explained the primitive phonetic system evolved in ordering rounds of drinks. He wondered if it could be adapted to affairs of the heart. He pulled a notebook and pencil out of his pocket.

  Lady Lucy laughed. ‘Let’s see what we can do. Does she know your name for a start?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Je m’appelle Christy. Vous êtes Anne Marie, n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘Could you say that again?’

  ‘Je m’appelle Christy. Vous êtes Anne Marie, n’est-ce pas?’

  Lady Lucy peered over his shoulder as he wrote in his notebook. ‘Je ma pell Christy. Voo zet Anne Marie, ne-sup-pa?’

  ‘Good, Christy. Perhaps you’d better tell her you’re Irish. I think the French would prefer the Irish to the English. Je suis Irlandais. Je suis Irlandais. But this isn’t going to make for a very long conversation. What else would you like to say?’

  ‘I thought I might ask her to come for a walk with me. Then we could point at things like trees and roads and say the words in our own languages,’ said Christy seriously. He made a trial run and pointed suddenly at a group of animals in a neighbouring field. ‘Sheep,’ he said firmly. ‘Sheep.’

  ‘Mouton,’ Lady Lucy replied.

  ‘Moo tong,’ Christy wrote in his book.

  ‘Voulez-vous faire une promenade avec moi? That’s ‘would you like to come for a walk with me?’

  They worked their way through How old are you, I am eighteen, Have you always lived here at the hotel, I am going to university, What is your favourite colour, How many brothers and sisters have you. Christy had filled four pages by the end. Suddenly he stopped learning his lines and asked, ‘What if she doesn’t like me, Lady Powerscourt? What shall I do if she is in love with somebody else already? She must have hundreds of admirers.’

  ‘You’re a very presentable young man, Christy,’ said Lady Lucy, feeling about a hundred years old. ‘The French have a word for it. It was the motto of the Three Musketeers now I come to think about it. They came from somewhere near here originally. Courage, dash, it says, always dash. L’audace, toujours l’audace.’

  ‘Low dass,’ Christy scribbled quickly, ‘two dewars low dass.’

  Powerscourt was highly amused when Lucy told him of her encounter with Christy back in their house in the hills that evening. ‘Chair,’ he said, pointing. ‘Book. Cup. Bottle. Plate. Wife. You missed the exciting part back there in the hotel, my love. The Inspector has been summoned to a big meeting in Figeac first thing tomorrow morning. Nobody is to leave the hotel until he returns. Maybe they’re going to deport us all.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘Pack. Train. Boat. Long journey. Not come back. Goodbye. Now then, let’s be serious for a moment. I want you to look at this form, Lucy, and see if you think I’ve left anything out. I’m going to get all the pilgrims to fill this in immediately after breakfast. It’s a long shot, a very long shot. See what you think.’

  He handed Lucy a single sheet of paper. It was a sort of questionnaire. Name, it said at the top. Date of birth. Brothers’ and sisters’ names and dates of birth. Place of residence. Previous places of residence if appropriate. Parents’ names and dates of birth if known. Brothers and sisters of father. Brother and sisters of mother. Place of birth of parents. Grandparents’ names and dates of birth if known. Grandparents’ place of birth if known. Brothers and sisters of grandparents if known. Great grandparents’ names and date of birth if known. Place of birth if known.

  ‘My goodness me, Francis, you’re going back a long way. Methuselah, date and place of birth. Parents’ names and dates of birth if known. What do you hope to achieve by this?’

  ‘I said it was a long shot, Lucy. I think we all agree that the answer to the mystery lies somewhere back in the past. We’ve had conversations with the pilgrims about their history but we didn’t write it down. Johnny Fitzgerald and Alex Bentley’s brother are, we hope, ferreting about in the Delaney past to see if there are any skeletons in the cupboard or maybe how many skeletons there are. We’ve got Alex Bentley’s stab at a family tree, though he says it’s incomplete. When we’ve got this, if the pilgrims can remember as much as I would like, we may be able to make some connections. It’s a fishing expedition, if you like, with a very poor rod in very choppy water.’

  ‘Could I make a suggestion? Why don’t you leave a blank space at the bottom for them to put in any other details about their family. It doesn’t have to be important. You know how most families have myths about their past, the great auntie who kept pigs in the front room, the uncle who could walk on his hands, that sort of thing. That might be useful.’ Lady Lucy paused and looked carefully at her husband. ‘You realize, Francis, that the murderer is going to fill this in too?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You don’t suppose the murderer will think you might be on to him?’

  ‘What if he does?’

  ‘He might change the batting order, Francis. You might be the next on the list.’

  14

  Johnny Fitzgerald found it very strange being back in the ordinary Ireland rather than in the great houses of the Protestant gentry where he had stayed the year before. Macroom was still the same small Irish town as all the other small Irish towns he had known when he was growing up. The main square was there with the tall spire of the Protestant church and the grocer and bookmaker with bars attached. The shops were selling the same stuff they had sold when he was growing up all those years before. There was a drunk lolling against the wall of the pub on South Street. There had always been a drunk somewhere about the town. The children still trooped off to the Christian Brothers and the convent for a proper education in the pieties of Irish life. The wall of the demesne ran along one side of the square. Through the ornamental gate with the one-legged lion, wounded by an inebriated young revolutionary in some earlier uprising, the road snaked its way through the woods past the lake to Macroom Castle, home, he presumed, to one Jonathan Henry Osborne. And to his wife, Mary Rose Osborne, née Lennox. Johnny knew he would have to ask somebody as casually as he could if
they still lived there. He hoped he could keep his voice steady when his hour came. He wondered if there were any children. He realized with a start that any sons and daughters might be almost grown up now, conducting their own love affairs, breaking other people’s hearts. And what did Jonathan Henry Osborne do with his time? Was he a conscientious landlord, improving his estates, looking after his tenants? A hunting, shooting and fishing landlord forever out in pursuit of fox or fish? Perhaps he had died in the saddle or been accidentally shot in his coverts. Maybe the widow Osborne would be waiting for him, a relief after years in black.

  Johnny had established his headquarters in the O’Connell Arms, a handsome building at the top end of North Street. From his bedroom he could just see into the grounds of Macroom Castle. Nothing moved. Nobody was taking a walk through their property. No children could be heard playing in the grounds. Perhaps they had all gone away. Johnny decided to jump his fences as soon as he could. He bought a drink for the landlord in the lounge bar of the hotel, the walls lined with pictures of horses, rickety tables that had seen better days scattered round the room like patients waiting for the dentist.

  ‘That’s a grand day we’re having now,’ said the landlord. ‘They say it’s going to rain tomorrow.’

  The weather, Johnny remembered, was often the overture to most conversations in Irish bars.

  ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t last,’ said Johnny, keeping the meteorological ball in play.

  ‘Have you come far?’ said the landlord.

  ‘I’ve come from London as a matter of fact,’ said Johnny.

  ‘That’s the divil of a long way,’ said the landlord. ‘We had a lad from the town here two or three years ago who went to London, so he did.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘Didn’t last. He came back a week later, Declan Dempsey. He said he couldn’t stand the noise and the huge numbers of people. He’s a regular in this bar on alternate Wednesdays after the cattle sales. If he has too much porter he’ll tell you all about London. There isn’t a customer here who hasn’t heard the story fifteen or twenty times.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Johnny, taking a very large draught of his Guinness, ‘are there people still living in the big house up there?’

  ‘Up in Macroom Castle? There are indeed. There’s Mister Jonathan and his wife and a herd of children. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I knew a man in the Army who used to stay there years ago,’ Johnny lied. ‘He said they had very good parties.’

  ‘We wouldn’t know about that,’ said the landlord. ‘We’re not invited.’

  ‘Could you tell me this, seeing you’re a knowledgeable sort of man about the locality,’ Johnny plunged on, ‘is there anybody round here who knows about the history of the place, a local historian if you like? A friend and I are writing a book, you see, and we need some information about Macroom’s past.’

  ‘A book, do you say? Who would want to read a book about Macroom’s past, for God’s sake? Nothing ever happens here. People are born, they get married, they die. That wouldn’t even fill a page.’

  ‘The book’s mainly about the famine,’ Johnny said. ‘We thought we should write it while there may still be people alive who can remember it.’

  The landlord crossed himself. ‘The famine. Mother of God. It was bad in these parts, very bad. But perhaps you knew that. That’d be a fine thing to do, writing a book about the famine. Nobody’d buy it, mind you. Not round here. Not in Ireland. We’re still trying to forget the whole thing. We had a young priest here years ago who formed the theory that the reason the locals drank so much was that they were trying to forget what had happened to their ancestors.’

  ‘Seems rather a complicated reason for liking a drink,’ said Johnny, finishing his pint and ordering another. ‘He’s not still here, is he, the priest?’

  ‘No, no. He gave up. He did manage to enrol most of the adult males in that you can’t have a drink thing they have, the Temperance League or whatever it’s called. One day he happened to pop in here for a glass of water or something and found the whole lot of them knocking back the porter in the public bar. He never got over that, Father Bell. The boys told him they’d only joined up to make him happy, they never intended to go dry at all.’

  ‘Poor man,’ said Johnny, ‘can you imagine what it’d be like never having a drink? You’d never get through the day.’ He took another liberal helping of stout to calm his nerves.

  ‘You were asking about the local history and stuff,’ said the landlord. ‘I tell you now the fellow you want. Brother Healey, he’s your man. He teaches history up the road at the Christian Brothers and he’s always described as a mighty scholar. They say he once had an article published in the Cork Examiner.’

  ‘And where would I find him?’

  The landlord looked at his watch. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘He’s regular as clockwork. After school he goes back to the house and marks the homework and polishes his strap or whatever they do. Sometime between six and six fifteen he pops in here. Two glasses of John Powers and he’s away again. I’ve never seen him take any more and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Perhaps he joined the temperance lot too,’ said Johnny. ‘I think I’ll take a walk now. I’ll be back in time to meet the Christian Brother.’

  Johnny knew he was torturing himself. He could perfectly easily have stayed in the hotel bar and chatted to the landlord. Instead his legs carried him, almost without his knowledge, to the gates of the big house. He stood there for a moment, staring up the drive. I’m like a love-struck schoolboy, he told himself, lurking outside his girl’s house in the hope of seeing her. He wondered briefly about walking up to the house and knocking on the front door. A butler would open it. Johnny Fitzgerald, the butler would proclaim, and he would be ushered into the presence. What would he say then? What would she say? What would the husband say, if he was there? It was all too embarrassing. Johnny was nearly back at the hotel when he heard a carriage rattling up the street. As he turned to look he caught a glimpse of a hat, only a hat, not the face he had kissed so passionately all those years before.

  Brother Healey was a small Brother of about fifty years, plump now and with small eyes, holding tightly on to his whiskey glass as if somebody might come and take it from him. Johnny introduced himself and explained his mission. He gave a more elaborate version of his legend about the reasons for his visit this time. He and a friend, he told the Brother, were writing a book about the famine. They had been commissioned by a very rich American called Delaney who was particularly interested in the Delaney family, many of whom he believed had perished in the years of hunger. Did the Brother know anything about these Delaneys? Would he care for another shot of John Powers to lubricate the brain? Brother Healey did care for a freshening of his glass as he put it.

  ‘Delaneys,’ he said, savouring the word as if it were another variety of whiskey, ‘there are a whole lot of Delaneys buried there in the field outside the town. It’s not a period I know a great deal about. I’m rather better on Cromwell and the redistribution of land, myself. But I know a man who is an expert on the famine. It’s rather late in the day to call on him now, I’m afraid.’

  ‘But it’s only a quarter past six,’ said Johnny.

  ‘I know, I know,’ said Brother Healey. ‘I wouldn’t wish to speak ill of the fellow. But he begins to take a drop of refreshment very early in the day, if you follow me. Before breakfast, I believe. The woman who looks after him says it’s the drink that’s kept him alive. She says he’s so pickled in John Jameson that no disease could get near him. But he’s the man for you. I’ve got the first two lessons off tomorrow. I’ll take you round to him then. You see, he’s well over eighty now. He lived through the bloody famine. He survived.’

  Powerscourt thought you could tell which pilgrims had done well at school by the way they filled in his forms. There was a certain amount of pen-sucking in some quarters. Waldo Mulligan polished his off in no time at all and stared out of the window
. Christy Delaney, the young man in love, was also well ahead of the pack. He wrote the name Anne Marie on his hand over and over again. Girvan Connolly, the man on the run from his creditors, seemed to be writing an essay in the extra space provided. He was now on the other side of the page.

  Powerscourt wondered what you would do if you were the murderer. Would you tell the truth? Would you make up a totally fictitious past? Could one tell if a person was lying from words written on a page? It would be, he realized, much easier to tell if a person was lying in a conversation than it would be reading a sheet of paper. What would I do, if I were the murderer? he asked himself. A clever murderer would know that he, Powerscourt, had no means of checking out the information. He could invent a totally fictitious past and a totally fictitious family. Maybe the whole thing was a waste of time.

  The pilgrims began to drift away after they had finished. Inspector Léger’s men watched their every move. One of these men is a murderer, Powerscourt reminded himself, one of the most daring murderers he had ever encountered. He wished there was some test he could give, other than this one, like those chemical experiments he dimly remembered from his school days where things turned blue or green when confronted with another substance.

  At last they were all finished. Powerscourt took the papers up to Alex Bentley’s room and together they began turning them into family trees, horizontal and vertical lines joining up the Delaneys spinning their way down the pages. Then he remembered the local vineyard. The owner had been taking his evening meal at the table next to the Powerscourts the evening before and had shouted a very loud invitation to visit him in the morning as he left. Normally Powerscourt would have declined but he had promised to go and his head was weary with family trees. ‘I’ll just pop over for half an hour or so,’ he said to Alex Bentley. ‘Can you tell Lady Lucy where I’ve gone?’

  The last of the morning mist was clearing as he set out on the half-mile walk to the vineyard. Thin wisps could be seen disappearing very slowly when you looked at them. A bird of prey, buzzard or kite, was circling high in the sky. It was going to be a beautiful day. Monsieur Leon’s vineyard was on top of a hill. On the right-hand side the vines ran down the slopes in orderly well-tended rows. On the left the hill became almost a precipice, tumbling down towards the Lot, the waters dark in the shadows.