“And her brother, Dr. Peregrine Walton,” pursued Mrs. O’Brien Moore, indicating the middle-aged man with a wave of her cigarette. “As well as being a cousin he is our nearest neighbour –lives about five miles away. And this is Miss Kennedy who helps him to write his very worthy books, every one of which I treasure but don’t read. They’ve only just heard about the dreadful things that have been happenin’ here, but I refuse to let ’em talk about it.”
Unlike those of his relations whom Duffy had already seen, the historical biographer was a very small man. In his case the family nose was to some extent camouflaged by a large and ragged moustache, but his eyes had the same vivid paleness as those of his cousins, as well as an impish gleam that was all their own. He wore a clean but rumpled grey flannel suit and a threadbare tie, which Duffy recognised as that of one of the collegiate societies of Dublin University. Weather-bronzed face and hands suggested that his leanness was of the healthy kind, and he looked as if he possessed an abundance of nervous energy. He hopped effortlessly out of his chair and cocked his head on one side in birdlike fashion to look up at the detective.
“You’re the golfer, aren’t you?” he asked. “Thought I recognised you. Saw you play in the final of the Western a couple of years ago. Thank heaven we’ve got something interesting to talk about, since we’re not allowed to mention what we are all, quite obviously, thinking of.”
“You of all people should be able to discipline your thoughts, Peregrine.” In spite of her pleasant smile and her relaxed attitude Mrs. O’Brien Moore gave the impression that her imperturbability was founded on a rock-like firmness. Her holder, apparently cleared of its obstruction, was at last united with her cigarette. “I know I’m old-fashioned, but you will just have to bear with me. Besides, we mustn’t bore the children.”
Duffy accepted the word “bored” as an euphemism. The children looked far too normal to be uninterested in the drama that went on around them; frightened they might be, or become in the silent watches of the night, but not bored. The girl was probably about eleven years of age; she wore her black hair in pigtails tied with ribbon that was only a shade brighter than the green of her eyes and of her faded corduroy slacks. Her only physical attributes that could be called characteristic of her family were length and thinness of limb and a haughtiness of expression that was probably due to the bone structure of her face. Duffy hoped that her later life would not be dominated by the family nose; she seemed to be a nice child. Her name was Mary, he was informed.
“How do you do,” she said in a round and plummy voice which suggested that she had been trained to pronounce the greeting to her grandmother’s satisfaction. In brisker and more natural tones she added–“I’ve always wanted to meet a detective. Have you read Artists in Crime? I think it’s my favourite.”
Duffy said that he had read the book and agreed that it was high in his favour, too, before turning to shake the hand of a bright-eyed small boy who answered to the name of Michael and who was prepared to bet that detectives were jolly good shots and thought that it must be fun chasing bandits all the time. Mrs. O’Brien Moore laughed.
“Modern education spreads its tentacles even without the benefit of television,” she said. “As for Mary–the child reads everythin’ in the house, even her Uncle Peregrine’s books, which are miles above my head.”
“They’re jolly exciting, Grandma,” Mary protested. “And informative.”
“Well, thank you, pet, that’s just what they’re meant to be.” Dr. Walton looked quite as much gratified as amused. “Though I think that I find more pleasure in the writing than anyone could possibly get out of reading the stuff. I measure my work by the mile, not the thousand words.”
“Of course,” said Duffy. He had accepted a glass of dry sherry, whose excellence was helping him to detach a part of his mind momentarily from his work. “I should have remembered. You wrote In the Steps of O’Sullivan Beare, didn’t you? I’ve always wanted to read the book since I saw some of the reviews; only lack of time has prevented me from doing something about it. You literally went in his steps, I believe.”
“Quite literally. I have a thing about cross-country movement, topography and toponymy; I suppose that’s why I concentrate on figures who have been made famous by great retreats. Reconstructing in my mind the actual physical difficulties of flight and pursuit and running battle is my hobby as well as what I do for a living.” The little man’s eyes glowed with enthusiasm. It was impossible not to believe that he was speaking of what he genuinely loved. “I always walk or ride over every inch of the ground I’m writing about that can’t be covered by car, and of course I go to endless trouble––” He darted a glance at his secretary who was looking at him rather reproachfully. “We do, I should say. We go to endless trouble to evaluate the changes in physical features that have been brought about by drainage of rivers, hydro-electric installations, the planting and destruction of forests and that sort of thing. It’s exhausting, but it’s enormous fun.”
“Well, thank you very much, Dr. Walton,” said Miss Kennedy with some asperity. “We don’t want anyone to run away with the idea that it’s too difficult though. After all I haven’t quite gone out of my mind yet–and I’ve only broken my leg once. But I do remember some trying moments, like coping with dictation under a tree during a storm in the Yellowstone National Park while we were doing Chief Joseph’s retreat.”
Duffy had had no more than a glimpse of the writer’s secretary while they were being introduced, a vast jar of rhododendrons having interposed itself between them. He now found himself in a position from which he could both see and hear her without effort; his immediate reaction to her appearance and her voice was to remember the exclamation mark that had been inserted after her occupation in his list and to hope that its suggestion was untrue. With her reddish-gold hair, creamy complexion and attractive figure she looked the sort of secretary that an employer might well wish to be on more intimate terms with, but she also looked too nice a girl to enter on any casual relationship–so at least Duffy thought with that small part of his mind which had been detached from work; professionally he retained a permanent scepticism. She had a nice name, too–he reflected–to go with that charming face of hers; Lua Kennedy. Silently he formed the syllables with his tongue–Lua. It was unusual, but he liked it.
“Well, fancy you writing about Chief Joseph,” said Hector with every evidence of surprise. He had been hovering near Miss Kennedy in a politely admiring manner; now a new respect was added to that admiration. “Of course I know that the old boy was one of the world’s great men–the study of his tactics was a must at West Point for years–all the same it seems odd that two Irish people should do a two-thousand-mile trek through North America, as I suppose you must have done, just to write a book about a Red Indian.” A puzzled look came over the young man’s face. “It seems to me that this is the second conversation about redskins I’ve had since landing here. I don’t know why, but I shouldn’t have expected Irish people to be interested.”
The hawk-nosed Miss Walton displayed her strong front teeth in a smile. “Of course Irish people are always looked on as being frightfully parochial,” she observed. “Till they go abroad––”
“And then they’re looked on as Americans,” Dominick O’Brien Moore finished for her. His intent was obviously unkind, but he had not spoken loudly; only his mother reacted to the remark. She gave him a coldly appraising glance but said nothing.
“Chief Joseph could teach a thing or two to other people besides soldiers,” said Mary suddenly. The child was curled up in her chair, where she had been fondling a book, turning it over and over and stroking its cover, as if only the awareness that to read would be rude prevented her from opening the book and burying her nose in it. “There are lessons for detectives, too. Aren’t there, Mr. Duffy?”
“I suppose there are,” he admitted slowly, to give himself time to think. The question had somewhat taken him aback, but he felt that he had to answer
it intelligently; people, especially children, were more likely to volunteer information to a detective whom they thought would be capable of making use of it, and he felt that the good will of the local residents might prove more than ordinarily important in this strange case. That was one of the reasons why he had broken a habit by consenting to have a social drink with a family some of whose members, at least, must be suspect; the other reason was that he wanted to study their faces while neutral topics were being discussed. Now, however, it was his own face that was being studied. He racked his brain to drag from it what it recollected of the retreat of the Nez Percés. “I suppose you mean the examples of misdirection,” he suggested at last. “That’s the sort of thing every detective should be on the lookout for.”
The air of childish triumph with which Mary looked round the circle of her family was thinly disguised. “Mr. Duffy means that Joseph made the army think they were seeing one thing when actually they were seeing something quite different,” she explained. “F’rinstance, he led his warriors quite openly into an army camp one evening. The sentries could see tire Indians coming for miles but thought they were U. S. Cavalry because they rode in military formation, a thing no Indians had ever done before. The soldiers never knew how wrong they were till the warriors were charging through the camp uttering blood-curdling yells; and then it was too late. Isn’t that right, Uncle Peregrine?”
“Absolutely right, my dear. That’s just how it happened.” Dr. Walton beamed benevolently; he seemed to think–not without reason–that the girl’s perspicacity reflected some credit upon himself. “I have one intelligent reader anyhow.”
“And another budding historian perhaps,” Hector suggested.
Mary, however, had not exhausted her theme. “That’s the sort of thing that clever criminals do,” she pursued, “and stage magicians. They work on the principle that, if people expect to see something, they can be made to believe that they have seen it.” She spoke quickly and jerkily, in her eagerness running one word into another, but her meaning was always crystal clear. “That’s how a man can make people think that he’s doing business as usual in Moycarrick while he’s really here,” she explained. “Here–sticking a knife in someone.”
The heavy silence that followed this pronouncement was broken by Mrs. O’Brien Moore with a prolonged and hacking smoker’s cough. Duffy was not at all sure that the sound had not started as something else, an exclamation perhaps, or even a laugh, but whatever its origin its later development was unmistakable and painful; no one seemed prepared to interrupt it.
CHAPTER IV
“GOD BLESS my soul,” said Mrs. O’Brien Moore. “I am so sorry, everyone. A shred of tobacco must have gone against my breath.” As if to emphasise that her coughing was the fault of her cigarette, she stubbed it out and lighted a fresh one. “Some day I shall have to give up smoking.”
General conversation returned uneasily to the room. People turned brightly to one another and started simultaneously to speak, then simultaneously begged pardon and waited hopefully, only to find–as often as not–that each had forgotten what he had originally intended to say. It seemed that Mary’s parable had been taken by her relations as having a particular reference. Her father put his hand gently on her shoulder.
“Look here,” he said. “You and Michael had better take the dogs for a walk. Go and see how the calves are getting on or something.”
“Oh, but Pop–it’s just lunch-time,” she protested. “Anyhow we’d much rather stay here and talk. And the dogs are asleep. Look!”
“Not now, they aren’t.” The magic word “walk” had opened every canine eye; the dogs were still folded together in attitudes of repose but they gazed at tire children hopefully. “And lunch won’t be for another half an hour. Run along, both of you.”
The little boy, Michael, roared cheerfully at tire dogs and vanished with them through the french windows in a flurry of feet and beating tails, while his sister slowly and reluctantly uncoiled herself from her chair and thrust her book for safekeeping under its cushion; she glanced at her grandmother but obviously decided that no help was to be expected from that quarter.
“Oh, all right,” she said, and with the heavy lumbering step peculiar to thin girls of her age began to follow her brother. “What hearty boring busybodies little boys are,” she muttered as she went.
Her departure did not, however, immediately free tongues from all restraint. Duffy felt that it was the family’s solidarity that made things difficult for them; they thought–perhaps–as one, but each hesitated to be the first to interpret, their common point of view to a stranger who was also a policeman. Only the matriarch was unaffected by the tension in the room; she seemed indeed, to be unaware of it. She was gazing after her grandchildren with an indulgent smile.
“Not an unintelligent child, Mary,” she observed at last. “Don’t run away with the idea that she frowsts in the house all day, Mr. Duffy, with her nose always buried in a book. It’s just that she has the gift of concentration. She puts her soul into everythin’ she does, whether it’s fishin’, climbin’ trees, or readin’–anythin’, from Buffalo Bill to Baudelaire–and hates to be disturbed. About the only thing she takes no interest in is eatin’. That’s why she’s such a Skinny Liz.”
“Mother!” said Dominick firmly. “The superintendent is naturally puzzled about what Mary said. I think we should explain to him.”
“Is he, Dommy? Then by all means explain away.” She did not, however, give him the opportunity. With a gracious smile at Duffy she went on talking. “I’m sure the superintendent is much too astute to be puzzled by anythin’ that we may do or say. Even if he thought for a moment that Mary really meant to suggest that little Jamesy Flynn is the murderer, I’m sure he wouldn’t let it weigh with him–either against Mary or against Flynn. Would you, Mr. Duffy?”
The detective hesitated. “I hope I shan’t let anything weigh with me except evidence,” he said at last, feeling rather like the good boy who has given the right answer to the Religious Knowledge question. “I should like to know, though, what makes you think that what I took to be merely a generalisation was meant to refer to Mr. Flynn?”
Dominick looked deeply uncomfortable; perhaps with the object of dissociating himself from the conversation, he took Cynthia Walton’s glass and began slowly to refill it. His cousin, Hector, watched the proceedings with a detached, but not unapprehensive, interest, while the Waltons and Lua Kennedy gave the impression that they would have preferred to be elsewhere. From outside of the windows the receding voices of Michael and the dogs were still audible, the little boy’s raised in an Indian war-whoop.
“That’s very simple–because we know that Mary detests poor little Flynn,” said Mrs. O’Brien Moore crisply. “Apart from that, Flynn is the only person I can think of who does business in Moycarrick and at the same time has a connection both with this house and with the unfortunate gell who was killed here. But you can forget all about that.” An expansive gesture with her cigarette holder cancelled out what she had said. “Not for one moment will I believe that the child consciously thought of Flynn in connection with the crime. Her subconscious mind endowed the murderer with the attributes of someone she dislikes; that’s all. It’s simply a matter of automatic elimination–Mary likes everyone else, and a most unpleasant murderer does exist.”
“Certainly,” Duffy agreed, “a murderer who, as your granddaughter suggested, must have used misdirection to come and go apparently unseen.”
A sharp yelp from Cynthia Walton seemed at first to be a reaction to what Duffy had said, but almost at once the detective realised that a minor disaster had occurred. It appeared that in handing her a replenished glass of what looked like gin and vermouth, Dominick had let go too soon and spilled the sticky liquid over Miss Walton’s grey slacks. There ensued a moment of near pandemonium as the young man and his mother simultaneously apologised and the victim protested that it did not matter because her trousers were in the habit of being
liberally besprinkled with engine oil and fish blood and were in any case due to go to the cleaners. In a loud voice Dr. Walton made jokes at which only he laughed, while his secretary very sensibly went to get something to mop up with; Hector, on the other hand contented himself with making soothing noises.
“Cynthia my dear,” said Mrs. O’Brien Moore when the hubbub had sufficiently abated for a constructive suggestion to be heard. “Run upstairs and get into something dry. There’s bound to be a skirt of mine that you can wrap round you till Hannah has your slacks ready. She can sponge and press them for you while we’re having lunch.”
“Really, Aunt Josephine, they’re quite all right as they are. I’m afraid most of the stuff went on the carpet–and I’ve quite ruined Mr. Duffy’s handkerchief.” She gave the detective a charming, if somewhat buck-toothed, smile. “Everyone has been most frightfully kind, and there’s really nothing to worry about at all. Of course there is one exception to that everyone.” She turned a chiding glance towards Dr. Walton. “I wonder why brothers are always so tiresome–some brothers, anyhow. I remember with horror the time, when I was about six, and Peregrine put a frog in my bed. The wretched thing jumped out at me when I was saying my prayers.”
“I’d forgotten about that.” The historian again laughed heartily. “It’s a jolly good tiling you did say your prayers, otherwise you might have hopped in on top of the frog, and that would have been a nice how-d’ye-do. Of course I’m older now and I wouldn’t do a thing like that; I’ve learned to be kind to animals. Did I ever apologise, by the way?”
“I’m sure I should remember if you had.”
“Well, I do now, Cynthia, and I promise not to do it again. As for the spilt gin––” He waved a hand to include Duffy, Dominick and Lua Kennedy. “You were surrounded by mopper-uppers. There was no room for either Hector or me to get in on the act. We were with you in spirit, though.”
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