There they left the matter for the night. The chief superintendent went his way, and Duffy settled down for a nightcap with the sergeant who had come with him from Dublin. Between them they formed a team that had solved many cases and, as it the lot of mankind, known some failures. Now, according to their custom, they forbore to talk shop; they did not yet know enough about the case to make a discussion of it worthwhile, so they preferred to start with fresh and open minds in the morning. Duffy stared into the darkness beyond the open window and listened with no more than half of his attention to Sergeant O’Callaghan’s dissertation on the prospects for the flat-racing season then in its infancy. Not for the first time in the course of his career he was wondering why he had become a policeman.
The following morning was bright and clear; the smell of turf and sea-water was in Duffy’s nostrils as he drove to the hospital to make his first official call of the day. He found the doctor who had performed the autopsy on Joan Allison’s body to be an efficient young man with a sufficiently professional outlook to answer questions simply and advance no theories without prompting. The superintendent already knew from the official report that the dead girl had been well-nourished and healthy, that she was not a virgin but was not pregnant; he now learned some further details about the stab wound that had caused her death. The blow had been struck upwards from below the ribs and had penetrated the heart, death being almost instantaneous. Because of the sharpness of the long thin blade and the avoidance of the rib cage, no great strength would have been necessary, though the blow had undoubtedly been a determined one. In the doctor’s opinion the angle of the wound suggested that it had been caused either by a left-handed blow struck by a person standing face to face with the victim or by a right-handed blow struck by someone standing on the victim’s right.
“There’d have been a lot of blood, I suppose,” Duffy suggested.
“Yes, a lot of blood. If the murderer was standing in front of the poor girl, he’d have been pretty well spattered with it; he’d probably have collected a few drops even at the side.”
“There’s one other thing, Doctor. As you know, the body was moved after the murder, more than once I imagine, before the Guards saw it. On the assumption that this shifting about was done some considerable time after death, can you suggest the sort of position that the body was in when the murderer left it?”
“I think so.” The doctor drew back the sheet which had been covering Joan Allison’s mortal remains and displayed the wound. “There was a lateral movement of the knife-blade after incision which could most easily have been caused by the body falling forward and hitting the handle against hard ground. She certainly lay on her face, because the blood ran forward out of the wound and clotted in one pool at the front of her sweater. Apart from that, I think she may have been lying on something, like a table, with her arms actually hanging over the edge up to the time that rigor set in.”
“You mean that her arms stiffened in a reaching forward position?”
“Yes.”
“But not her head? That wasn’t craning forward?”
“No. It wasn’t. That’s why I suggested a table. Her head and body must have been supported and her arms hanging down on each side. There was a slight bend at the hips but her legs were fairly straight.”
“Any bruising from the fall?”
“Only round the wound–not a mark on her apart from that.” Frowning in thought, the doctor replaced the sheet. “Even on a carpeted floor you’d expect her face to be bruised; she wouldn’t have been able to use her arms to break the fall.”
“If it happened indoors and she fell against a chair or something like that, you’d think there would be plenty of blood to mark the spot,” Duffy observed. He looked at his watch. “I believe Martin Clohessy is being treated here. Is he your patient?”
“He is. At the moment he’s having an induced sleep. You might get something sensible out of him to-morrow; you certainly won’t to-day. The wretched man must have knocked off about three pints of poteen.”
“In that case, Doctor,” said Duffy, “I shan’t take up any more of your time.”
His next call was on Mr. and Mrs. James Flynn at whose home the dead girl had been spending her holidays and had indeed, Duffy understood, spent the greater part of her youth. Mr. Flynn was an auctioneer and estate agent with offices at the county town as well as in Newtown Moore, but his residence was close to the latter place. It turned out to be a pleasant small ivy-covered suburban house surrounded by trim hedges; the tennis court looked as if it were regularly played on, and the air was heavy with the scent of wallflowers. Duffy beat a tattoo on the brass knocker, and, as he had been brought up to do, turned his back on the door and gazed into space. He did not have long to wait.
“Well?” snapped an impatient voice.
Framed in the doorway and blocking it, stood a thin fair-haired man of about fifty who contrived to look dapper in spite of the shortcomings of his attire. His eyes were of a pale and frosty blue, and they glared from a beautifully proportioned, clean-cut face, topped by hair that looked as if it had recently had the attentions of a first-class barber; his shirt, however, though clean, was frayed and rumpled and his shapeless flannel trousers failed by some nine inches to reach his dirty canvas shoes. Duffy was somehow put in mind of an admiral who had taken to scrubbing his own quarter-deck.
“Mr. Flynn?” he inquired.
The handsome face twitched impatiently. “Yes.”
Duffy produced his official card, apologised for intruding at such a time, but explained that it was necessary to ask questions. “I know the local people have been to see you, but I have to start again from scratch,” he said. “I understand that Miss Allison was your niece.”
“Not mine, the wife’s. More like a daughter to me. Come in.” It would be too much to say that Mr. Flynn’s expression softened, but his glare became a shade less baleful before he turned to lead the way into the house. “Didn’t go to the office to-day. Couldn’t face it. Can’t really believe that it’s happened yet. Come on in here and meet the wife.” He held open the door of a sunny drawing-room and subdued his voice to something less than its normal ferocious bark. “Dulcie–this is Superintendent Duffy. He’s from Dublin.”
It was a bright, pleasant, not strikingly imaginative room, the furnishings of which gave the impression of having been copied exactly from an illustration in one of the glossy magazines. Its most remarkable adornment, however, was the woman on the sofa.
It was difficult at first to make out where the woman ended and the sofa began. She was wearing a brightly patterned dress which to some extent blended with the chintz cover on which she was curled up in a little-girl-attitude that emphasised her astonishing fatness; she resembled nothing so much as a mountain on top of which was set a head of extraordinary beauty. As Duffy drew nearer, he could see that she was not as young as he had at first supposed and that tears had worn two channels through her thick make-up without in any way taking from the sweetness of her expression. She held a glass in one hand, the other she extended to the detective.
“How do you do,” she said. “I know it seems early to be drinking brandy, but we’ve had a ghastly night of thinking about things and now we’re trying to pull ourselves together.” Her voice was soft and attractive and rather girlish. “I suppose it’s no use asking you––”
“No thank you, Mrs. Flynn. My thinking is just beginning. I’m sorry to have to bother you so soon, but the obvious way to start is by finding out all I can about your niece. I have had some particulars from the local people, and I’ll try not to go over too much of the ground that they have already covered. First of all, perhaps, you’d give me an idea of how much of her time she actually spent here with you?”
“I will, of course. You’ll have to forgive me if I cry–I can’t help it when I talk about her–but I’ll do it quietly and not let it interrupt.” Mrs. Flynn was as good as her word; tears welled copiously from her eyes as she spoke but she ig
nored them, except for an occasional dab with a handkerchief so big and sensible that it must certainly have belonged to her husband. She held out her glass to him. “James, darling–give me another drop of brandy with lots of water. I must be dehydrating myself.” In the same tone and almost in the same breath she began to give Duffy the information that he sought.
Mrs. Flynn’s sister, it appeared, had married an English journalist named Allison in the early thirties and had settled down with him in London where their only child, Joan, was born in 1934. On the outbreak of war Allison joined the R.A.F. and his wife one of the voluntary services, but they sent Joan over to the safety of Newtown Moore. The child was seven when her parents, on leave together in London, were killed in an air raid. From then onwards the Flynns had come to think of her as their own child. In order to maintain a link with her father’s family Joan had gone to school in England after the war, had progressed to London University and had eventually joined the staff of a London newspaper, but her holidays had–almost without exception–been spent in Ireland.
“Then she must have had lots of friends around here,” Duffy suggested.
“Indeed she had–loads of them. No one terribly close, you know–her holidays weren’t all that frequent in the last few years–but any amount of people she could go about with whenever she wanted to. She was better looking and cleverer than any of them.” Mrs. Flynn handed a fat envelope to the detective. “Here are some snaps of her. I can’t bear to look at them.”
Whether intentionally or not, she gave Duffy the impression that her niece had not got on very well of late with the young people of the neighbourhood, either because Joan had felt that she was growing away from them or merely because she had failed to make herself popular. It seemed that the auctioneer, too, had heard the faint note of apology in his wife’s voice, for he proceeded to amplify what she had said.
“We were the wrong age for poor Joanie, you know,” he observed, subduing his apparently habitual bark as well as he could. “We’re too old to have anything in common with her contemporaries and not old enough to be on very intimate terms with their fathers and mothers. While Joanie was at school, or in college, it was different; the children she used to play with as a nipper still had their holidays at about the same time as hers. All that’s changed in the last few years, though; some of her friends have got married, or they’ve got jobs and their holidays don’t coincide any more. She still got asked to most of the parties, but she had no intimate friends around here. That’s what you wanted to know, isn’t it?”
Duffy admitted that it was. He was looking at the snapshots of the dead girl and finding that they only confirmed the opinion which he had already formed that in life she must have been uncommonly attractive. Some of the pictures were in colour and contrived to suggest a vivid personality with perhaps a trace of hardness in her expression. He wondered if the amatory experience to which the medical report had alluded might not have tended to age her beyond her years and to widen the gap between her and the less sophisticated local girls; he reflected, too, on the popular belief that Irishmen, however much they may appreciate beauty in a girl friend, prefer to marry homely women with housewifely skills.
“The young ones that are here all the year round seem to be set for old maids,” said Mrs. Flynn, as if her thoughts had been travelling on lines parallel to Duffy’s. “Joanie said only a couple of days ago that each time she came home on holidays she seemed to come back into the same conversation that had been going on in the town when she went away. I don’t know why she came at all really–we can’t have been that much fun for her.” She ended on a sob and dabbed her eyes vigorously with the big handkerchief, then took a sip from her glass. “Don’t take any notice of this,” she added when she had regained control of her voice. “I’m not a dipso. It’s just that I’m a compulsive eater when I’m upset, and it seems decenter to drink than to stuff myself with chocolates at a time like this.”
“I don’t think a weak drink like that could do anyone any harm,” said Duffy encouragingly. He held out one of the photographs to James Flynn, who was hovering on the hearth-rug, shifting from one foot to the other, and seeming to be as restless as his wife was statuesque. “Who’s the tall man in that one? I feel I ought to know the face.”
“Who?” The auctioneer grabbed the picture and peered at it as if he were short-sighted. “Oh, him!” Before handing it back to Duffy he glared briefly at his wife. “You might know him, Superintendent, or it could be just the face that you know from the picture papers.” He spoke now with every appearance of casualness. “That’s young O’Brien Moore from Moore Court. He moves in rather a different sphere from the rest of us here. Cigarette?”
“Thank you.” Duffy produced his lighter and snapped it into flame, but he continued to look at the photograph as if trying to remember why the man’s face was so familiar.
“That was taken at the flower show last year,” Flynn pursued. “There’s a bed of roses outside that Joanie planted when she was about fourteen, so we always enter the blooms in her name. She got first prize last year. That’s why––” He sighed heavily and stared over his wife’s head and out through the window to the garden; he seemed to have forgotten what he had intended to say.
“Do I understand you to mean that Miss Allison didn’t often go to Moore Court then?” Duffy asked.
“Perhaps half a dozen times in her life.” It was Mrs. Flynn who answered the question. “The old lady out there gives two children’s parties and two grown-up parties in the year that people like us get asked to. It’s like a royal command. Apart from that I think Joanie went to a couple of dances there. They can be very kind when they want to.”
“Kind, my foot!” the auctioneer barked. “She was a very charming girl and a lovely dancer.”
“So remember, Superintendent,” went on Mrs. Flynn, “that, if ever you hear anything about Joanie going about with that young man, there isn’t a word of––” For the moment she got no further; an explosive snort from her husband interrupted her.
“What are you talking about, Dulcie?” he demanded.
“What do you want to go putting ideas into the man’s head for? Women!” He raised his eyes towards heaven and made a gesture of helplessness. “They’re for ever making up things because they’ve nothing else to do. Joanie had to see him a couple of times about a book she’s writing––” He sighed again somewhat histrionically–“was writing I mean, Superintendent. Out of that one or two local busybodies tried to make up a story, but it died out for lack of any facts to keep it going. I didn’t expect my wife to join in slandering her own niece. Dominick O’Brien Moore is––”
Mrs. Flynn interrupted him in her turn. A married man–to be sure he is. And when did you last see him with his wife? I’m not putting any ideas into the superintendent’s head that plenty of other people won’t try to put in. It’s much better that he should hear about the story from us and learn that it isn’t true before the town gossips get at him. There’s no point in trying to conceal the facts.”
“This is not a fact.” The auctioneer bent down to glare into his wife’s face, then he shrugged helplessly. “Sometimes I think that women aren’t rational beings at all,” he muttered in what for anyone else would have been almost a shout. “Are you a married man, Superintendent?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Then you’ve missed a lot of happiness but you’ve saved yourself a lot of exasperation. I told my wife to burn that photo because it might give a wrong impression, but of course she knew better. Women always do. Here’s my wife, one of the best of them, cluttering up your head with a lot of damn’ nonsense that doesn’t mean a thing when you obviously want to stick to the essentials. Isn’t that right?”
“Quite right–but of course I’m in no position to say what is essential and what isn’t till the case is over.” Duffy replaced the photograph in its envelope; he wondered if the auctioneer realised that there were amongst the collection of snapshots t
wo others in which young O’Brien Moore appeared. The fact that it was in these three pictures only that Joan, looking at the young man, showed an expression from which the hardness was noticeably absent was in itself interesting. Apart from this, Duffy, being human, was inclined to take the Flynns’ protestations at something like the reverse of their face value. “What I really want to find out now is why your niece went to Moore Court on last Tuesday, the day she was killed.”
“She went there to meet the O’Brien Moores’ cousin from The States,” James Flynn replied somewhat truculently, as if he thought that the question had carried an innuendo. He added–“Professionally!”
“So I understand, but why did she go at that particular time?”
“Because that’s the time she expected him to get there.” From the look on his face Flynn seemed to have decided that detectives could be as unreasonable as women. “His flight was due in at noon at Shannon. Supposing that it was punctual and that he didn’t waste time over his lunch, it seems reasonable enough to expect him at Moore Court around three-thirty.”
“I should think that was the earliest at which he could possibly have got there.”
“She wanted to be there when he arrived,” explained Mrs. Flynn. “It’s much easier to get an interview out of a man if nobody else is around to get in his hair. That’s what Joanie said anyhow.”
“I’m quite sure she’s right. Can you tell me how she knew that Hector O’Brien Moore was due to arrive on that particular flight?”
“In a place like this everyone knows everyone else’s business,” pronounced the auctioneer firmly. “You’re a Dubliner; you wouldn’t understand how the grapevine works in a country district–specially when the top people are involved.”
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