“Good morning,” he said. “I believe you wanted to see me.” He hesitated for a moment and then, seeing Duffy had risen politely to greet him, offered his hand. “Glad to know you.”
“I’m afraid you must be finding the Force rather a nuisance.” Duffy pulled out a chair beside him for the young man; the table was too wide and too formal a barrier to be allowed to separate questioner from witness. “In fact your reception in Ireland, I imagine, has been altogether more hectic than you bargained for.”
“You’re quite right, Superintendent–it was like a nightmare. My friends in The States had prepared me for a rousing welcome here, but I didn’t look for it to be hectic in quite this way.” A slow smile broke over the young American’s ordinarily solemn face. “A character I met on the flight from New York warned me that Ireland would go out of its way to live up exactly to my preconceptions; if that’s so, you’ve got me to blame for everything.”
“Perhaps it’s just as well then that you have an alibi.” From his papers Duffy selected his copy of the evidence originally taken by the local Guards. “Your statement about what happened here on Tuesday night is admirably clear, Mr. O’Brien Moore,” he said. “There’s no need to go right through it, but I should like you to amplify a few points here and there. For instance, you say that the hall door was open when you arrived. Was the light from the hall shining out onto the steps?”
“I guess it was–enough for me to pick out tire money for my cab driver.”
“Did you notice if the steps were wet?”
“Wet? No, I didn’t notice that. I couldn’t tell you whether they were or weren’t. Wait a minute though–I did get a sort of damp smell when I first came to the door and I haven’t noticed it since; this is as dry a house as I’ve ever been in.”
“Did you hear any movement in the house at all?”
“Not a sound. Up to the time that Clohessy–that’s his name, isn’t it?–came weaving out of the cupboard the place seemed as deserted as the Marie Celeste.”
“Did Clohessy seem surprised when he saw you?”
“Not a bit. He knew I was there all right. Why wouldn’t he? I’d been yelling my head off for ten minutes. He asked me if I was the Yank.”
“I see. And how did he react to the body falling out after him?”
“Well, it seemed to me that he was torn two ways. I guess he didn’t know whether to hide his head in shame because I’d seen it or just to laugh. He kept muttering that it was all a mistake but that he’d see everything right; all he actually did, though, was to keep swigging fire-water out of that little jar of his. Of course, my recollection’s not really all that clear; I was more than a little unhinged, myself.”
“Naturally. Did you examine the body closely?”
“Sufficiently to make sure that she was dead.” Hector shivered slightly at the recollection. “She was such a lovely looking girl, and she was cold and stiff; she must have been dead for hours. My first thought, before I touched her, was that she had only just been killed–in that cupboard–and of course that Clohessy was the murderer. I need hardly tell you that I kept a pretty close eye on him when I knelt to see if there was anything I could do for the poor girl. Even when I realised how long she’d been dead I still thought Clohessy must have done it, and horrid visions went through my mind of necrophilism in the cupboard. It was only when I was out on the road in the girl’s automobile–and how I thanked God for that little bus–that any other possibility occurred to me at all.” Over Duffy’s shoulder he eyed with dislike the door from which Clohessy had staggered with the dead body in his wake, before adding–“My aunt says I’m an ass to suspect her servant.”
“She conveyed the same idea to me,” said Duffy non-committally. “Are you quite sure that there was no knife in the wound when you saw the girl first?”
“Absolutely. The clotted blood round the wound against the white of her sweater was noticeable to say the least. I just had to look.”
“You say that her car was in front of the house. Was it parked, or was it near the hall door?”
“Right bang in front of the steps.”
“A handbag and brief-case were in the car–where exactly?”
“The brief-case was beside the driving-seat. I sat on the bag.”
“Where did you find the keys of the car?”
“In the ignition switch–and was I glad? Incidentally, the door on the driver’s side was open.”
“I see. Well, thank you Mr. O’Brien Moore. That seems to dispose of anything that wasn’t quite clear in your statement. There’s just one other point: Did you have any particular reason for leaving your flight at Shannon, instead of going on to Dublin as your aunt expected you to?”
“A guy on the aeroplane told me that Shannon was nearer to this place, by the best part of a hundred miles. It seemed the more likely place for them to come to meet me. Well, hell, it is nearer.”
“So it was only on the aircraft that you made up your mind.”
“That I made it up finally–yes. Originally I expected to be coming here–to this house, I mean–under my own steam, so I booked to Shannon. It’s in the west, Moore Court’s in the west; it seemed the obvious thing. Then just before I left I got a letter from my aunt saying that she and the family would meet me ‘at the airport.’ she didn’t say which airport, and it was too late to check up, but the odds seemed to be on Shannon. So I was wrong, but I didn’t find out till too late.”
“You appear to have had reason on your side. Had you said anything to your aunt in any letter that might have led her to suppose that you were flying direct to Dublin?”
“Not a thing, but she thinks I did.” Hector shifted uneasily in his chair and adjusted the set of his trouser legs. “It’s like this, Superintendent. Even if one made a practice of arguing with aged ladies, one would agree to almost anything to avoid tangling with my Aunt Josephine. All I did was to give her the number and date of my flight and its scheduled time of departure from New York. She worked out the rest herself.”
Before Duffy could make any comment or ask a further question there sounded a loud and confident rapping on the door of the room. The young man who entered in response to the detective’s invitation was so like Hector in a number of ways that at first glance he seemed to be the American’s double; this appearance, however, was not borne out by a closer scrutiny. Each of the two men possessed the features common to the O’Brien Moores: a high forehead, aquiline nose and pale but vivid eyes. There the resemblance ended. The newcomer was rangier in build and had in general a lighter skin than Hector’s, though his facial complexion was ruddier; he wore his hair longer, and his clothes–corduroy trousers and a silk scarf tucked into a checked woollen shirt–were unmistakably of this side of the Atlantic in their origin. There could have been little doubt of his identity, even if Duffy had not already seen his likeness in a photograph in which the dead girl also appeared.
“Forgive me for interrupting, Superintendent. I’m Dominick O’Brien Moore, as you’ve probably guessed,” he said politely but without warmth. His eyes were coldly appraising rather than guarded. “The whole family has assembled for a drink before lunch; my mother would be very glad if you’d join us when you can spare the time.”
“That’s very kind of her.” Duffy collected his papers and returned them to his brief-case. “And this is a good time to break. I don’t think I have any more questions for your cousin at the moment. There are one or two things that I have to do in Newtown Moore, but of course I shall be coming back later to talk to you all separately. Before we go in, though, I should like to ask you two questions.”
“By all means.” Dominick’s solemnity differed from Hector’s not only in its coldness but in its assurance; if he had any misgivings about being questioned, he did not show them. “What do you want to know?”
“Why were you all so sure that your cousin would go on to Dublin Airport instead of leaving tire flight at Shannon?”
“My mother was sine. It
was she who corresponded with him.” He glanced at Hector without a flicker of friendliness in his eyes. “The rest of us assumed that she was right. She usually is.”
“You haven’t discussed the matter with her since you found out that she was mistaken?”
“There didn’t seem to be much point in it. It was too late to change what had happened–and, even if we had gone to Shannon instead of Dublin, we still wouldn’t have been back in time to prevent it. My steering was due to go wrong, and it wouldn’t have been fixed any more quickly on one road than the other. It’s not like changing a plug.”
The murderer, however, could hardly have relied on the O’Brien Moores’ ear breaking down, Duffy thought. The breakdown in fact did not seem to have affected the issue one way or the other, nevertheless the detective had ordered a thorough check with the garage where the repairs had been done, but his purpose was to assure himself that the various members of the family had been where they said they were at the appropriate times rather than to confirm the genuineness of the defect in the car’s steering.
“You were lucky that it happened in a town,” he said. “Just one further question–do you know what it was that Joan Allison wanted to see your cousin about?”
For a moment Dominick stared without expression at Duffy, then he said, somewhat surprisingly–“No, only that she did want to see him. She didn’t give me any idea that it was important, though, important enough for her to let us make asses of ourselves by dashing off to the wrong airport while she sneaked up here to interview the V.I.P. without interruption from the locals. She might have told me.”
It seemed to Duffy that the bitterness in the young man’s voice was due to a genuine feeling of hurt. It could be that he was essentially self-centred and regarded every happening, tragic or trivial, which displeased him as a personal affront; on the other hand, it was quite possible that his relationship with the dead girl had been deeper and more sincere than her family cared to believe. If this were so, his sense of loss would only have been intensified by the knowledge that she had deceived him and made a fool of him and in so doing had gone to her death.
“It may well be that the information that brought her here only reached her after you had started for Dublin,” said Duffy consolingly. “You left about eight on the Tuesday morning, didn’t you?”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” There was a momentary softening of the expression in Dominick’s eyes. “Yes. We were out of here before eight. The whole damned thing’s so mysterious I can’t think straight. How on earth could she have known that Hector was going to land at Shannon?”
“She couldn’t have known; that’s quite certain.” Hector’s tone suggested that he had made the assertion many times before and that his politeness was all the more obvious because it was wearing thin. “I didn’t know, myself.”
“We’ll sort things out eventually,” Duffy observed. “When did you last see Joan Allison–Mr. O’Brien Moore?”
“On Saturday evening,” said Dominick, adding as if he thought that some explanation was needed–“A few of us went into Moycarrick for dinner and the dogs. A tenant of ours was running something that he fancied.”
“Was that when she told you she wanted to meet your cousin?”
“No. That was a few days earlier, when she first heard he was coming over–she said it quite casually, though.”
“Did you get the impression that she was interested just because he represents another branch of your family and might be able to provide material for her book, or because he’s an American, or because he happens to be a publisher who might be expected to take a personal interest in local history?”
“To be honest, I thought that she was just being polite. I’d said that our American cousin was coming to stay and that he was a publisher who might have a sentimental urge to bring out her opus. She said that would be very nice but that, if he read it at all, he’d probably be more anxious to have it suppressed, then she asked what firm he was in. When I told her he worked for Kennerley Forde she said that they were pretty hot in their line and that she’d like to meet Hector, though she didn’t expect much from the meeting except that he might put her wise to the goings on of the family on his side of the Atlantic. That’s all there was to it.”
“I don’t want to pry into things which could have no bearing on the case,” said Duffy slowly, “but I must find out why Joan Allison was so keen on getting an early interview. Were there any goings-on of the family on the other side of the Atlantic that she might have had an inkling of and that might have interested her?”
“My parents were the soul of propriety, I’m afraid.” Hectors disarming smile made it impossible to disbelieve him. “And I’m the only other American O’Brien Moore–so far. I don’t think an occasional tentatively amorous adventure at college would be of much interest to any chronicler. My cousin Peregrine, now, is a more picturesque sort of person; when he’s on Iris travels he lives in the public eye, but I never heard of any family scandals–and, if I had, I certainly wouldn’t tell a gossip writer about them. I can’t see why she should expect me to.”
Dominick started to speak and stopped, then seemed to change his mind a second time. “Joan did ask me about Cynthia’s marriage,” he said. “But there’s nothing particularly exciting about that.”
“Cynthia?” Duffy was momentarily at a loss.
“Our cousin Cynthia Walton. She says you’ve met. She comes steaming over on a bicycle followed by a dog. You probably thought of her as a spinster; we do.”
“She doesn’t wear a ring.”
“No. Her husband was an American who walked out a couple of days after the wedding and got a Mexican divorce, a bit of a cad, one gathers; but as it all happened about twenty years ago I only know what I’ve been told. Both families thought it best to pretend that the thing had never happened. Cynthia had to come home anyhow on account of the war, so she came as Miss Walton; if anyone outside the family knows different, they’ve kept mum about it.”
“Well, who’d have thought it?” Hector murmured in astonishment. His eyes had a far-away look; they were presumably bent inwards upon a picture of Cynthia’s old-maidish qualities. “Poor old girl.”
Perhaps irritated by the choice of words, Dominick stared at his cousin oddly. “Your father didn’t tell you?” he asked.
“Not a hint.”
“He knew about it all right–it was he who told us–but everyone decided to ignore the affair altogether. We’ve never said a word about it since.”
“Except whoever told Joan Allison,” Duffy suggested.
“Nobody told her. She came across a mildewed cutting from some American provincial paper’s gossip column. It was on the back of a filed reference in her own rag’s library and was incomplete; it just hinted at a union between a local boy and a relation of the O’Brien Moore family and didn’t even mention the girl’s name. I considered I was under a promise not to tell the story to any outsider, so I said that the only one of the family who had married an American, as far as I knew, was Hector’s father. Joan didn’t seem all that interested anyhow, just mildly curious.”
“Who was the husband?”
“Some chap who was in college with her.” Dominick glanced at his watch. “My mama has all tire details. I suggest you get them from her, if you should need them; it would be less harrowing than raking up poor Cynthia’s recollections.”
“There shouldn’t be any need to do that,” Duffy said. “Well, I’m afraid that my two questions have developed into about twenty, but I shan’t bother you any more for the moment. We had better not keep Mrs. O’Brien Moore waiting.”
The drawing-room was at the south-western corner of the house, a big low-ceilinged room with, along one side, a row of pillars which gave it a somewhat cloistral appearance; its chief characteristics, however, seemed to be comfort and the feeling of use. Deep sofas and arm-chairs abounded, and there were two open fireplaces, in one of which a turf fire glowed agreeably. Branches of floweri
ng shrubs stood in tall jars and helped to accentuate the effect of sunlight and shadow. French windows opened onto a green lawn that seemed to be no more than an extension of the room; on the carpet an assortment of gun-dogs pillowed their sleeping heads on the soft fawn bulk of a benevolent-looking Great Dane who opened one eye to inspect Duffy and then shut it again, apparently satisfied. The human members of the family were wide awake but they seemed no less composed.
Although it was difficult to be sure that his count was exhaustive, Duffy made out that there were six people in the room when he entered it: two women, one of whom was already known to the detective, a middle-aged man and two children were grouped haphazardly amongst the bright blossoms and the fading chintz; it was noticeable, however, that everyone faced towards the chair occupied by Mrs. O’Brien Moore, as flowers turn towards the sun. The owner of Moore Court held a cigarette between her lips and was engaged in digging its predecessor out of her holder with a pin. A shaft of sunlight burnished her white hair and left her septuagenarian skin discreetly in shadow; on a table by her side was a glass containing an amber liquid that looked like whisky. She abandoned her tussle with the elusive butt to greet the newcomers.
“Ah! Mr. Duffy, how nice of you to give us a few minutes. Now let’s see. Who don’t you know? Miss Walton I think you’ve met.”
Duffy bowed politely to Cynthia Walton, the handsome–if somewhat horse-faced–cousin of the O’Brien Moores. She sat closely beside her hostess and clutched a cocktail glass tightly in her right hand, as if she feared that it might escape her. She gave the impression that she had scarcely expected to meet a policeman in the drawing-room but had made up her mind to accept the situation with a good grace. It was hard to believe that she was anything other than a spinster.
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