Black Welcome

by Nigel Fitzgerald

  He said nothing at all. He allowed the driver to pull in behind another car that was parked by the steps and to disinter the golf bag, the brown paper parcel and the two suitcases that Hector had momentarily forgotten. Light streamed out over the steps from open double doors and revealed an empty hall panelled in black oak and a staircase of the same wood ascending into darkness. Hector located a bell-push, pressed it, heard no sound and pressed again; then he took out his wallet, to pay for the hire of the car. The driver cocked his head on one side and considered.

  “Six quid, boss–to you,” he announced at last. “If it was any ordinary Yank, I’d say twenty dollars.”

  “Mighty nice of you, but why do I get a cut rate?”

  “Well, sure–I enjoyed the ride. And”–he pointed to the brown paper parcel–“aren’t you after buying a lot of stuff at the uncle’s?”

  Hector did not dispute the point. He gave the driver ten shillings more than he had asked for and noted that it was gratefully received; thereafter the two men shook hands and parted with expressions of mutual esteem and of regret at the curtailment of their acquaintance. It was, however, with something deeper than regret that Hector watched the car’s rear lights fade round the first bend of the avenue; he had a feeling that this was the severance of his last link with the modem world, his own world. It was perhaps unfortunate that he found himself unable to decide whether the jumble of recollection and recognition that was confusing his mind partook more of the euphoric dream or of the nightmare. He turned back to the doors and looked hopefully into the hall.

  “Hallo, there!” he called. “Anyone at home?”

  There was no sound. The hum of the car’s engine had lost itself amongst the trees; silence pressed in from the avenue, from across the pale lawn and from the still water that he could not see but knew was there. He was aware of a damp smell. He pushed the bell again, but if it rang in some far distant part of the house he did not hear it. He marvelled at the thickness of the walls and wondered why he had not remembered so distinctive a feature of the house. He went into the hall and shouted again, listening for an answer with an intensity that suddenly struck him as being quite absurd. He found himself glancing over his shoulder, as if he expected his hosts to advance upon him stealthily from behind; he laughed a little uneasily, forcing himself to look at the only picture that hung in the hall. He could not make up his mind whether it was the picture itself or merely its type that seemed so familiar; certainly the long, high-nosed face that stared out at him with an air of blank condescension from behind opulent whisker and elaborate linen was no stranger’s. Younger or older, it had smiled on his achievements or frowned on his follies all the days of his life, and nowadays a decidedly younger version of it scowled back at him from his mirror when he shaved; for better or worse it was the O’Brien Moore face.

  He found himself remembering that there were more portraits, lots of them, in the dining-room; and the dining-room was–here perhaps. Without conscious decision Hector opened a door and went through into the room beyond it. The walls seemed lighter in colour than he remembered them, but the dozen or so dark oil paintings stood out all the more clearly; the elegant Chippendale table and chairs, the sideboard, the tea-pot in the corner–these things were not necessary to tell him where he was. He had been accustomed to look at the table from about its own level, now he looked, down on it; that was the only difference–only now presumably, he would have his meals in here and not merely be paraded with other shadowy children to say good night to grown-ups whose clothes were very real and very solid but whose heads, in memory at any rate, were lost in cloud. Cloud? Well, perhaps not exactly that. His eyes followed the ascent of a thin tendril of smoke, but his brain did not at first appreciate the significance of what he saw. On the highly polished surface of the dining-table was a cracked saucer, and on the saucer a cigarette smouldered.

  “Ahoy!” Hector shouted. “Anybody home?”

  The question was merely rhetorical. Cigarettes do not ignite themselves; and this particular cigarette had been half stubbed out on the saucer within a few seconds of being lighted. Scarcely more than a centimetre of ash showed on the saucer, so it must have been put there just before Hector opened the door, while he was in the hall. Therefore it appeared that the smoker was purposely avoiding Hector. Why? It could be that he–or, more likely, she–had just slipped away to run a comb through her hair and make herself presentable for receiving guests; on the other hand it could be that Hector’s cousins were finding at the last moment that they had even less enthusiasm for meeting him than he had for renewing his acquaintance with them. Apart from the one by which Hector had entered, there were two doors opening from the dining-room; since he confidently remembered that one of these gave on to a small cupboard, he naturally assumed that the smoker must have left the room by the other, and he made up his mind to follow. He was getting more than a little nettled at his reception, or the lack of one.

  No sooner had Hector reached this decision than the door of the cupboard opened and there emerged from it a tall grizzled man in a brown suit. The man’s eyes were inordinately bright and badly focused as he bent their gaze on Hector.

  “Are you the Yank?” he inquired thickly.

  “I’m from the United States. Hector O’Brien Moore is my name. I understood that I was expected.”

  “Blessed are they that expect nothing.” The man hiccuped and grinned wildly; he seemed to have no control over his loosely-hanging mouth. In his arms he was cradling a small earthenware jar with as much care as if it were a new-born baby; he pushed the cupboard door shut with his shoulder and then with one hand groped for the key. His face showed the strain of trying to concentrate on two different things at once. “Sure, you can’t help it, you poor eedjut,” he muttered, advancing towards Hector and proffering the jar for his admiration. “Have a drop of the right stuff–sir.”

  This man at least was nothing out of Hector’s memory, and yet he seemed even less real than the shadows from the past which had been trying to push their way back into Hector’s mind. A strange alcoholic smell enveloped him like a cocoon. It was not, however, the man himself that held Hector’s attention.

  Behind the brown-suited man the door of the cupboard, insecurely fastened, was opening slowly and steadily, as if it were being pushed from within; there was a queer effect of synchronisation between the doors movements and his, as if both were keeping time to some unheard music. With the same deliberation, in the same unhurried rhythm, a girl’s face peered briefly round the door; her staring eyes focused for one instant on Hector, then she pitched forward stiffly into the room, her outstretched hands seeming to clutch in vain at the man’s brown coat as she fell.

  She was an attractive girl. Her copper-red hair was thick and lustrous; her body, encased in thick white sweater and grey jeans, would have done credit to any film star, while her face showed an unusual dignity and repose.

  The only thing wrong with her was that she was dead.

  CHAPTER II

  IT WAS almost exactly twenty-four hours after Hector O’Brien Moore’s strange reception in the home of his fathers that a large black car drew up before the Civic Guard Station at Newtown Moore. Despite the lateness of the hour, the station sergeant was hovering in the doorway; he forestalled any attempt on the part of the occupants to leave the car.

  “Superintendent Duffy?” he inquired.

  “Yes.”

  “The chief is waiting for you at the hotel below, sir. He’s booked rooms for you there, and he thought you’d prefer to talk in comfort after your long drive.” The sergeant added that the hotel was at the far end of the main street and then stood back to allow the car to proceed.

  Although the Garda Siochana, or Civic Guard, the police force of the Republic of Ireland, is a nation-wide body under unified control, its headquarters-detective branch does not normally conduct criminal investigation beyond the marches of the metropolitan division. It can be called on at any time for assistance but t
akes full responsibility for a provincial case only under exceptional circumstances and at the particular request of the chief superintendent in whose area the crime has been committed. Duffy had known before he left Dublin that such a procedure had been followed in the present instance but he could only guess at the reason for it. He was not, however, left long in doubt after his arrival at the hotel.

  “The parties concerned aren’t only the most looked up to people in the county,” the somewhat harassed-looking chief superintendent explained, “but they’re related to half the big landowners in the west. Of course, the O’Brien Moores who really did something to be looked up to for are dead and gone long since, but anyone around here who inherited the name came into a halo with it. But that’s not all.”

  Duffy grunted encouragingly and helped himself to his second cup of black coffee. He was a tall, fair, grey-eyed man whose habitual expression, as befitted his calling, was noncommittal. He was aware that he had acquired a reputation for handling important people tactfully; he would not have thought it necessary to point out that this was merely because he handled all witnesses, whether important or otherwise, with due regard for their feelings. He settled back comfortably in his chair and looked at his host.

  “The main trouble is that the affair has international ramifications,” pursued the chief superintendent. “The poor girl that was murdered is a British subject, though she was brought up in these parts; to make things worse, she was on the staff of a London paper, the Daily Record. You can bet they’ll have a crime reporter over here to-morrow to make as much as they can out of their own private murder–that’s the way they’ll think of it, I’m sure. And there’s more yet.” Absent-mindedly he helped himself to one of Duffy’s sandwiches and began to chew sombrely. “The crime was reported in the first place by an American cousin of the O’Brien Moores, a young man who’s a vice-president, or something like that, of a big publishing firm. Now it seems that the poor girl–God rest her–was waiting out at Moore Court to interview this man as soon as he arrived from America; and while she was waiting she was killed. It looks as if there’ll have to be a lot of digging done into the secrets of the O’Brien Moore family here, and in The States too, perhaps, and you’d never know what skeletons might come to light. Every family has its troubles.” He stopped chewing to eye Duffy impressively. “If any skeletons are to be found in that particular cupboard, it would be much better for all concerned that they should be dug up by a stranger.”

  “I see.” Duffy looked at the long typewritten sheets of the report which he had not yet had time to read. “Have you got as far as having a favourite suspect–or would you rather not say?”

  “A suspect is it? All the world or no one at all.” The chief superintendent looked more than ever harassed; he waved a hand towards the report. “You’ll see for yourself. Sometimes I think the fairies did it.”

  Duffy finished his coffee. “I’ll skim through this quickly now, in case there’s anything I may want to ask you about. I can digest it more fully afterwards.” He lighted a cigarette and began to read.

  The report was intelligent, succinct and comprehensive. It began with the arrival of a distraught American at the Civic Guard Station at Newtown Moore shortly after the previous midnight. It summarised the visitor’s somewhat incoherent story and the action that followed from it. Having reported by telephone to the County Headquarters, the sergeant in charge had at once proceeded–policemen always proceed; they do not merely go–to Moore Court, where he found the family unaware that any fatality had occurred in their home. Mrs. Josephine O’Brien Moore stated that she, her son and grandchildren had just returned from an abortive journey to Dublin to meet her nephew, Hector. She identified the young American as being unquestionably the said nephew, but seemed to think that his story of having found a dead girl and a drunken murderer in her dining-room was no more than a figment of his imagination. There were, however, facts to support the young man’s story: a man-servant employed at Moore Court, one Martin Clohessy, was undeniably drunk and, by that time, incapable even of speech; he had in his possession a jar still containing a small quantity of a liquid that appeared to be poteen. There was also the matter of the car in which Hector had driven himself from Moore Court–where he had found it–to the Civic Guard Station; papers found in the glove compartment established that the car was the property of Miss Joan Allison, a London journalist who was known to be staying with relations in the neighbourhood and whose description tallied with that given by Hector of the dead girl. A search resulted in the finding of Allison’s body in a broom cupboard–though not the one from which she had earlier so dramatically fallen. The sergeant had thereupon taken Martin Clohessy into custody on a technical charge.

  The remainder of the report detailed the result of the inquiries that had subsequently been made. It had been possible to establish (1) that the entire indoor and outdoor staff of Moore Court had departed about noon of the previous day for the wedding festivities of one of their number at a farmhouse some miles away and that, with the exception of Martin Clohessy, none of them had returned until the small hours of the following morning, (2) that at about 3.30 in the afternoon, when the house and place were apparently deserted Joan Allison had driven up to Moore Court with the avowed intention of interviewing Hector O’Brien Moore, and (3) that until six o’clock that evening at any rate no one else openly approached or left the neighbourhood of the house. Medical evidence put the time of death as no later than four o’clock. The weapon, a carving-knife, had been found in some long grass near the scene of the crime; on the handle were Martin Clohessy’s fingerprints and his only. But for one thing the conclusion would have seemed obvious: Clohessy had been thrown out of the wedding party because his behaviour and his poteen were alike unwelcome, but it seemed that he had not left early enough to have had an opportunity of committing the murder.

  “You’re satisfied with the evidence about comings and goings?” Duffy asked.

  The chief superintendent appeared to start out of a reverie, though it is possible that he had been dozing; the murder had robbed him of his previous night’s rest. “It’s as good evidence as you’ll get,” he declared after he had collected his thoughts. “The County Council were tarring the road along past Moore Court yesterday–and by the same token that’s another sign of the family’s importance; there’s no traffic at all on the road except what’s for their place. Well, the men knocked off about six, and up to that time a few of them were always in sight of each of the two gates that lead into Moore Court. They’re quite positive that no one went in but that poor girl. I needn’t tell you that road menders are seldom so intent on their work that they wouldn’t notice passers-by. And the house is too far from the road for any of tire Council’s men to have had time to nip in and do the thing themselves; ’twould mean being away twenty minutes at least, and any foreman would notice that.”

  “And there’s no other way in at all?”

  “Except by climbing over the wall or going round by sea, and I think we’d have heard if there’d been a boat round that way. I don’t say that getting into the place presented enormous difficulties–it seems obvious that the murderer got in–but what I do say is that he clearly went to a lot of trouble to avoid being seen by anyone. That suggests to me that he went there with the intention of committing a crime, whether murder or something less.”

  “It certainly looks like that,” Duffy agreed. “One might go further and say that, if he went there with the intention of killing the girl, it narrows the field a bit, because only a limited number of people could have known in advance that she intended to go to Moore Court. It seems a bit early for speculation yet though.”

  “I’ve done a bit of speculation and I don’t like the result,” the chief superintendent admitted. “Why was the deceased in such a tearing hurry to meet your man from The States? A junior vice-president of a publishing firm doesn’t seem the sort of person who’d rate an exclusive interview in the Daily Record, so it mi
ght have been something personal that the girl wanted to see him about–probably was. You see, in her spare time she was writing a book about the county families here around, and rumour had it that the book was going to be very scandalous altogether. Certainly she was inquiring into every unsavoury thing that happened in the county for years back. Now it may be going a bit fast to suggest that the girl might have been killed to prevent her from meeting young O’Brien Moore from America, but that is a possibility; and it’s a possibility that I don’t like. The local people wouldn’t want to discuss their secrets with a man like me, whose face they see about every day–and will go on seeing, please God, for a few years yet. They’d be happier telling everything to a stranger.”

  “Less unhappy, perhaps,” Duffy suggested. “Is there any chance that the girl might have been killed in mistake for one of the family?”

  “Well, she doesn’t look like any of them. But she was at Moore Court and I suppose a stranger might––”

  “I didn’t mean that so much,” Duffy interrupted. “But, if one leaps on somebody with a knife and then finds it’s the wrong person, it may be too late to stop–or it may seem safer to finish the job. A lot of murders are done for money and the O’Brien Moore’s seem to have it. I should like to know who else connected with the case has got it and who has not. And if you could find out for me quietly about the family’s testamentary dispensations it might be a help. It’s a lot to ask, I know.”

  The chief superintendent passed a hand wearily over his greying head. “That is a tall order,” he protested. “All the same though–I’ve got a niece who works in the family solicitor’s office. I might be able to find out something, but don’t count on it. It’s highly irregular, of course, but I take it you only want a general indication.”