Black Welcome

by Nigel Fitzgerald

  “Yes. Poor fellow! I’m afraid his arrival here was rather dauntin’. Strictly speakin’, he’s my husband’s nephew of course, but, havin’ been an O’Brien Moore for fifty years, I can’t think of myself as anythin’ else. And of course I started life as a second cousin.” For a moment her smile made her look a young woman.

  “Fifty years!” Duffy was genuinely astonished. “It hardly seems possible.”

  “At the rate that things have been movin’ in the last quarter of a century it certainly doesn’t. I remember––” She broke off as the door opened to admit a pink-uniformed housemaid, who carried over her arm a man’s dressing-gown of camel-hair. “Ah, thank you, Hannah. Leave it on the chair beside the superintendent, will you? That’s all.” She leaned back in her own chair till the maid had gone, then waved casually with her cigarette. “I thought you might like to see that,” she said without any alteration in her pleasant voice. “It seems to be bloodstained.”

  Duffy examined the garment; on its lower right front and on the inside of the right hand sleeve were splash marks that certainly to the naked eye looked like blood. A closer scrutiny through a pocket lens tended to confirm this opinion. Mrs. O’Brien Moore waited in silence for the detective to speak.

  “This seems very significant,” he said at last, “though we can’t be sure till it has been scientifically examined. Perhaps you’ll be so good as to tell me all about it.”

  “I must try to be exact.” She looked out of the window and over the treetops as she spoke, but she still contrived to give the impression that exactitude came easily to her. “The dressin’-gown belonged to my son, Dominick, but–in the way that if you are a married man you will understand–was filched from him by his wife. It’s comfortin’ in the winter to be able to wrap up in somethin’ that’s thick and warm and much too big for one. About a week ago when the weather improved we sent a batch of winter things over to the cleaners in Moycarrick; some of these, the dressin’-gown included, I picked up on last Monday. After that I don’t know what happened to it. I saw it put into the car by the cleaners’ man and didn’t set eyes on it again till it was found about two hours ago. All I can be certain of is that it was not in the car when we set out for Dublin very early on the Tuesday morning. The servants were going to a wedding, and we were all at sixes and sevens.”

  “Where was it found this morning?” Duffy asked.

  “In its proper place in the wardrobe.”

  “By your daughter-in-law?”

  “No. By the maid that we share–you saw her when she brought the dressin’-gown in; her name is Hannah. I told her the stains were due to some frightful carelessness at the cleaners, which I suppose could just conceivably be true. Anyhow it probably saved the girl from throwin’ faintin’ fits all over the place. I explained to her that we must show it to you just as a matter of form.” She fitted a fresh cigarette in her holder. “Ivy, my daughter-in-law, has been away stayin’ with friends for some days.” She opened a drawer of her desk and took out an object wrapped in a linen face-towel.

  “Don’t tell me that’s the hanger it was on?” said Duffy in surprise.

  “I do tell you, Superintendent.” Matter-of-factly she placed it on the desk in front of him. “It was fairly obvious that you would need it–fortunately it’s a wooden one–though of course you’ve only got my word for it that it’s the right one.” She used the arms of her chair as levers to help her to her feet but accomplished the move as fluently as if she were of less than middle age; she was not so tall as Duffy had supposed, though she held herself impressively erect. “I can only hope that this and anythin’ else that we can do will be of assistance to your work. I liked that poor gell who was killed, in spite of her profession and–in spite of other things. The fact that she was murdered here makes it a personal matter. I shall be here, in this room, when you want me. You can wander round the house as you like–ring for Hannah if you want a guide, or you could call on one of my grandchildren, who no doubt will be in your hair from the time that you start to detect.”

  “One question first, Mrs. O’Brien Moore,” said Duffy, holding the coat-hanger as if it were a brief-case. “Do you suspect anyone in particular of this murder?”

  She shook her head gravely; the twinkle had long gone from her eyes. “I can only tell you who didn’t do it. I’ve known Martin Clohessy since he was a child. His father was coachman here when I came to Moore Court in 1910, and I’m very proud to be able to say that he was my friend until the day he died. Martin is not as strong a character but he’s fanatically loyal and completely honourable. I’m quite prepared to believe that he might kill, under great provocation, to protect us but I’m quite sure he wouldn’t lift his hand against a woman in any circumstances. What clinches the matter for me is that the body was found here; if Martin had had anythin’ to do with this, our names would have been kept out of it, our house would not have been involved.”

  “Might poteen not make a difference?”

  “His one weakness.” She smiled again, with only a faint trace of sadness. “It doesn’t change a man’s nature; it only removes inhibitions. Besides, the weapon was all wrong.”

  “I’m inclined to agree with you,” Duffy admitted.

  He returned to the front of the house where Sergeant O’Callaghan was waiting for him in conversation with the leader of the local technical team which had been sent out by prior arrangement. On the previous day the fingerprints of each member of the household had been taken, and all obvious surfaces in the vicinity of the dining-room had been “dusted for dabs.” It was clear, however, that Duffy’s particular line of inquiry might well call for further work of the same kind; in fact the occasion had already arisen. He handed over the dressing-gown and coat-hanger to the experts and packed them off, under Hannah’s guidance, to see if they could find any interesting prints on or near Mrs. Ivy O’Brien Moore’s wardrobe. When they had gone Duffy led the sergeant over to the steps in front of the hall door.

  “I’ve got an idea about the way the murder was committed,” he said, “and I want to try and reconstruct it. You’re the victim.”

  O’Callaghan said nothing at all; he merely waited to be told what was expected of him.

  “The first thing Joan Allison must have done when she drove up here on the Tuesday afternoon was to ring the bell. However much she trusted in her information she couldn’t bank on it that someone hadn’t stayed behind at the last minute. Let’s go through it in slow motion. She wouldn’t expect an answer but she’d ring.”

  Duffy went inside the doorway and made a gesture to indicate that the door was supposed to be closed, whereupon the sergeant–his vast face preternaturally solemn and his breathing heavy–ran in a ladylike manner up the steps and mimed tire ringing of the bell; whether it was due to up-bringing or example, he then turned his back on the house and gazed through the trees, out over the narrow reach of sea.

  “Hallo!” said Duffy sharply from behind him, to indicate the opening of the door.

  As the sergeant turned on his right heel, Duffy brought up his own right hand in a crisp upper-cut to the left centre of the other’s stomach just below the ribs. “That’s about the angle, I think,” he said. “Now the blood spurts out and I naturally want to avoid it. I want you to fall away from me, not towards me.” With his left hand he grasped O’Callaghan’s sagging shoulder and shoved the man across him to the right; then he stood back to watch the result.

  As has already been mentioned, a curving guard-wall bounded the steps on either side; outside each wall a hedge of laurel, trained and clipped exactly to follow the curve, hugged it closely. Giving a remarkable impersonation of someone snatching at life in the agony of death, O’Callaghan tottered towards the wall, reached out for its support, then fell helplessly across it; his face was partly buried and partly cushioned among the smooth leaves of the laurel. After a moment his arms dropped realistically; one trailed lifelessly on the steps, while the other forced itself a little way between the wall
and the hedge before coming to rest at an awkward angle.

  “That,” said Duffy, “is rather as I expected. It accounts for the position of the arms and for the face being unmarked. Now if we can find some blood––” He let the sentence trail away to silence as he helped the sergeant to regain his equilibrium.

  “It could have happened like that,” O’Callaghan admitted. “But he must have washed the steps after.”

  “Who must?”

  “X–the murderer.”

  “I don’t think so. It seems supererogatory to wash away the blood if one isn’t going to remove the body, but we shall see. Our best chance is on the outside of the wall, where the hedge would interfere with washing operations. Let’s have a look.”

  The hedge was thick but, as is the way with laurel, easily pushed aside so that the two detectives were able to examine the wall a section at a time. On their third attempt they were rewarded by the sight of an ugly stain on the stone where purplish drips had run together and congealed. For a moment they stared at it in silence.

  At last O’Callaghan allowed his armful of laurel to settle back into its normal position. “That settles it, sir,” he said. “Meaning no disrespect to the poor girl–God rest her–but she must have bled like a pig.”

  “You’ve seen as many people who’ve been stabbed to the heart as I have. They do bleed.”

  “But wouldn’t the knife have plugged the wound?”

  “Not when the impact with the wall moved the blade sideways in the wound; both sides as well as the top of the wall must have been noticeably stained with blood. The important point about all this, I think, is that no attempt at all has been made to wash away the stain where it wouldn’t be readily seen. In other words, it looks as if the object of the washing was to make the place look decent rather than to destroy evidence. All this points the same way as what the doctor told us; since the body was apparently left in the position into which it originally fell till rigor set in, it seems very unlikely that it was the murderer who then moved it. On the other hand, a faithful servant, coming home drunk to find a murdered body on his employer’s doorstep, might well be panicked into doing some pretty silly things in an effort to save the family embarrassment.”

  “Martin Clohessy wasn’t just drunk, by all accounts; he was bullephants. All the same, if a man wanted to hush things up, his first impulse would be to get rid of the body before anyone else came along, you’d think. In the evening light–and it must have been evening at least if the poor girl was stiff–it could be hoped that the blood might escape notice, or at the worst might be passed off as paint.” While he spoke O’Callaghan had been stuffing tobacco into his pipe; he paused to strike a match before adding–“But there’d be no explaining away the body itself.”

  “It was hidden, you know, after a fashion; and the interruption may have come before Clohessy had done all that he intended to do–if his skinful of poteen had left him in a condition to formulate any very clear intention. Anyhow I must stop speculating till I have some more evidence. Hallo! Who’s this?”

  Out of the corner of his eye Duffy had seen a figure on a bicycle appearing round the bend of the avenue. Something of purpose and dignity in her carriage suggested that the cyclist was a middle-aged woman, though her clothes and her hair might have belonged to someone much younger. She wore sandals, tapered grey slacks, and an open jacket of white tweed over a red sweater; her beaky nose was surmounted by a pair of horn-rimmed, tinted spectacles, and her ginger-coloured hair was closely cropped. She leapt nimbly from her machine, as it came abreast of the steps, then after a dismissive glance at the sergeant, snatched off her glasses and extended her hand to Duffy.

  “You must be Hector,” she pronounced. “I’m your cousin Cynthia Walton. Welcome home to Ireland.”

  She was not a bad-looking woman, Duffy thought, in spite of slightly protruding upper incisors, a sallow complexion and a muscular build. It was impossible not to notice how healthy she was, how well scrubbed and how self-confident, not to admire the brightness of her pale eyes and the sheen of her rather jagged hair; but for the moment her individuality was less assertive than her type. Everything about her, from the much-used appearance of her bicycle to her hard and somewhat plummy voice and the firm grip of her hand–which Duffy found himself shaking politely before he had time to explain that he was not her cousin–added up to the picture of the County spinster of small means who lives alone with her dogs and keeps one poor horse which she hunts to the limit of his capacity but otherwise coddles. As if to fill in the background, an Irish setter came lolloping, flop-eared, round the bend, lay down on the gravel at her feet and began contentedly to pant.

  “I’m afraid I’m not Mr. O’Brien Moore,” said Duffy with, in his voice, that faint note of apology which one cannot escape when one’s hand has been shaken in error. “My name is Duffy. I’m a detective-superintendent from Dublin Castle. I shall be calling to see you within the next day or two–your name’s on my list. I understand that you five within sight of this place but on the other side of the water. It’s possible that you may have some evidence for us, even if it’s only of a negative kind.”

  She began to answer before he had finished speaking. “Half a mile if one is amphibious–eight if one isn’t.” A wave of the hand that held her spectacles indicated the direction of the wider stretch of water that, from his study of the maps, Duffy knew to be hidden by the trees to the right of the house. It was only then that she seemed to become aware that each of the two cars on the gravelled sweep bore the insignia of the Civic Guard. “But what is all this? Evidence! What are you talking about? Has something happened here?”

  “We are investigating a murder, Miss Walton. Do you mean to tell me that you haven’t heard about it?”

  “Murder!” For a moment all trace of handsomeness left her face as she stared at him from eyes that had suddenly become frightened; her mouth hung agape and her somewhat equine teeth seemed more than ever obtrusive. “My God! Who was it? Who’s been murdered?”

  “Not any member of the household, you’ll be relieved to hear. It was a Miss Allison–a visitor from England.” Duffy took her bicycle to save it from falling and passed it on to the sergeant who propped it against the wall by the steps. “I thought that news, especially bad news, travelled fast in the country.”

  “Not when you live as far off the beaten track as I do.” Cynthia Walton made an effort to pull herself together. “I haven’t spoken to a soul for two days–except my brother’s secretary, and she didn’t say anything about it. What a dreadful thing! I believe I’ve met that young woman once or twice, poor soul. Who did it?–or is that an indelicate question?”

  “It’s the question I’ve come here to ask. I haven’t yet found the answer.” He bent down to pat the setter’s head and to ruffle its ears. “Your dog’s tired after his run, Miss Walton, and you must be, too,” he said. “There’s only one matter of any urgency that I’d like to check on with you; the rest will keep for the present.” He stood up and once again met her eye.

  “Yes?” She had shut her mouth and seemed more in command of herself but she continued to stare.

  “Have you noticed any strange boat in this part of the bay during the last couple of days?”

  Slowly she shook her head. “The fishermen are up on the back loughs,” she said, “and there hasn’t been even a teaspoonful of wind for sailing. I haven’t seen or heard a boat this week, except my own on the day before yesterday. Tuesday, wasn’t it? Anyhow Lua came to borrow my dinghy. I tend to lose track of the days of the week once the Monday is over. I could hear the chugging of the outboard motor going and coming back, and I’m sure there was no other on the water all day–or any other day recently.”

  “Who did you say borrowed it?”

  “Lua Kennedy–my brother’s secretary. She had a free afternoon for some reason. Is that all you want to know?”

  “For the moment–yes. Thank you, Miss Walton.”

  “I declare to good
ness, ’tis great energy you’ve got, Miss,” observed Sergeant O’Callaghan admiringly, his manner inclining somewhat towards the stage-Irish. “If I had a nice little boat with an outboard engine to come across the easy way, I wouldn’t push a bike for eight miles of road–let alone the other eight to go home again.”

  “I don’t suppose you would.” She said it perfectly seriously and without any trace of sarcasm, though her glance travelled to the sergeant’s portly stomach. “I prefer the boat, too, and usually come that way but I had to do some shopping in the village. I’m hoping that someone will take me home by water, bike and all.” She strode up the steps and into the house, where she could be heard calling–“Where is everybody?”

  A few minutes later Duffy established himself in the dining-room, which had been kept locked since the first arrival of the Guards. He had sent one of the servants to find Hector O’Brien Moore and, while awaiting the American’s arrival, sat down to reperuse the fist of residents in the neighbourhood which had been furnished to him. He wanted to see what comment the chief superintendent had made about Lua Kennedy, if any; he had a vague recollection that there was something. The list had been made out in the form of a Dramatis Personae, and the secretary’s name followed that of her employer: Peregrine Walton, historical biographer–the C.S. had written–thinks no end of himself, (his mother was an O’B.M) Miss Lua Kennedy, his secretary! The exclamation mark proved to be the only comment. Duffy considered that, as information, it was either not enough or too much. The fact emerged, however, that Miss Kennedy and her employer shared the same address, while the latter’s sister lived alone elsewhere. Duffy was brooding on these things when the door opened and a tall young man came into the room.

  The detective had been picturing Hector as an American rather than as an O’Brien Moore; it now came as something of a shock to discover how completely the young man was both. It was as if one of the family portraits had stepped down from its frame, had a close haircut, and now began to speak in a Harvard accent. Only the guarded look in his pale, vivid eyes and the healthy actuality of his presence distinguished Hector from his ancestors–and the guardedness was scarcely to be wondered at; the land of his fathers was probably not showing itself to Hector quite as he had expected to find it.