“I feel the same way.” Duffy helped himself to a cigarette and pushed his case across the table to O’Callaghan. “I don’t want to believe that the father of those two children is a murderer; anyhow I like Dominick, though he’s rather a cold type. And there could be other explanations. We don’t know what subterfuges the girl herself was engaged in, after all; she may not have been very highly principled.”
“Not if ’tis true she was carrying on an affaire with her uncle-in-law, the man that brought her up, though ’twould be his fault mainly if she did. A man low enough to seduce a girl that was left in his care might well kill to keep the story from getting out.”
“Indeed he might,” Duffy agreed. “But let’s stop theorising and get back to what we know about the murderer. First of all, I think it’s clear now that the crime was committed as we reconstructed it. X laid his bait to entice Joan Allison to Moore Court, got there before her, opened the door for her when she rang the bell, stabbed her and left her. Later in the day Martin Clohessy came home, half full of poteen, found the body and decided to get rid of it; first of all though, he washed the steps, threw the knife into the long grass and tidied up generally. Just as he was going to take the body away, he heard a car coming up the avenue, so he rushed back with the body and hid it in the nearest available place, the cupboard in the dining-room. Afterwards, when Hector went away to report the murder Clohessy found another hiding-place for the body, finished his poteen, went to bed and passed out. That’s the mechanics of the affair as I see it.”
“Then you’re absolving Clohessy completely?”
“I am. I may be wrong, something may turn up to change my mind but I am, for three reasons: (1) a man clever enough to carry out the first stages of such a clever plot wouldn’t have been such an ass in the end; (2) if he killed at three-thirty he wouldn’t leave the body lying about till late at night; he couldn’t have expected the family to be so late, you know; and (3) his alibi. It’s a bit loose, but he apparently kept being thrown out of the party and coming back to it from about three o’clock till after six. Anyhow I don’t think he fits the picture of X at all.”
“If he started back finally about six, how was it he left getting rid of the body till round eleven at night?” O’Callaghan wanted to know. “You’d think he’d do it right off or not at all.”
“I don’t suppose he found the body till pretty late. He was on horseback–probably because he thought that if he got too drunk the horse would bring him home. Anyhow he presumably rode in by the back avenue, stabled the horse and looked after it and then went to get a meal for himself; he mightn’t have gone near the front of the house at all till he began to worry about the family being so late in getting home. Does that satisfy you?”
“ ’Tis reasonable enough,” the sergeant admitted.
“All right then! Let’s see what we know about the murderer. I think it’s fairly safe to say that X is someone who was on outwardly good terms with the victim, knew Moore Court and its owners very well indeed–including how to approach the house unseen and how to get into it when it was locked and empty–and someone who knew where the road menders were working so as to be able to avoid them. Apart from that, X is no more than of medium height, right-handed and owns a pair of bloodstained gloves. It’s obvious, too, that he–or she–is very active.”
“Why do you say no more than medium height?”
“Because the sleeve of the dressing-gown is stained on the inside in a way that suggests that the sleeve was rolled up. Since the tiling was worn obviously to keep the blood off the murderer’s clothes, it’s unlikely that he’d have turned back the cuff unless he had to.”
“That’s something in Mr. Dominick’s favour anyway,” O’Callaghan muttered. “He’s as tall as they come. I suppose the dressing-gown was picked at random just because it happened to be lying about downstairs after coming back from the cleaners–or it could have been done to incriminate Mr. Dominick, maybe?”
“But he hadn’t been wearing it for months, and it was put back in the wife’s wardrobe–it might have been Clohessy who did that, though, not noticing the bloodstains on it in the dark. It would be a great help if we could have a talk with the same Clohessy–I wonder if he isn’t swinging the lead a bit. He might find it convenient not to have to talk to us for a few days.”
“ ’Tis true for you, sir.” O’Callaghan sighed–in grief, perhaps, at the turpitude of human kind. “This young woman that Dr. Walton saw; do you think it could be the one that was killed? Could he have just imagined the headscarf and the wrong coloured sweater?”
“If he saw anyone at all. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t telling the truth. He may have invented the woman to try to throw us off some other scent, or he may have given me a purposely vague–or even false–description with the idea of shielding someone.”
“Shielding someone–hah!” The sergeant’s eyes lit up like those of a warhorse that has scented blood. “I wouldn’t ask for three guesses as to who that someone might be.”
Before Duffy could reply there sounded a loud knock on the door, which burst open to admit the chief superintendent whose large red face wore the expression of one who brings bad news.
“I found out a couple of things for you, Duffy,” he said, drawing up a chair to the table. “And there’s one of them that I don’t like at all, at all. First, though, I had the inquiry made at the post office that you asked me about. Two letters from America were delivered in the last week to people that you might say are connected with the murder: one to the poor girl that was killed–and no one more closely connected than her, says you–the other was for Miss Cynthia Walton; she’s on your list, a cousin of the family.” He spoke as if there were only one family concerned in the case, which was perhaps to some extent true. “And now there’s this other business.”
“Yes,” said Duffy encouragingly.
“I don’t like it.” The chief superintendent’s resolution seemed to have weakened, even as the impetus which had carried him into the room had been checked by his sitting down; he heaved a deep sigh. “Ah well! Putting it off won’t make the thing sound any better,” he muttered at last. “We’ve found a woman who swears that she saw Mrs. Dominick O’Brien Moore in a car following the Allison girl out the road to Moore Court at a little after three on last Tuesday–that’s to say less than half an hour before the poor girl was killed.”
CHAPTER V
A TELEPHONE call to the house near Moycarrick where Dominick O’Brien Moore had said that his wife, Ivy, was staying elicited the information that she had borrowed her hostess’s car and gone out with the avowed intention of visiting Moore Court; she had left shortly after one o’clock.
“Without any lunch,” Mrs. Weldon added aggrievedly. “She’s been very upset for the last couple of days, and when the news of this dreadful murder reached us nothing would do her but to take the car and dash off at once to her children. Very natural, of course, but there was no need for her to go just as lunch was being put on the table. I only hope she won’t make herself ill; that wouldn’t do anyone any good–and I told her so.”
“I’m surprised that you were so late in hearing about the murder,” Duffy said. It was a phrase to which he was becoming accustomed.
“Well, of course, we’re a long way from the town and we don’t get the Irish Times till we go in and fetch it ourselves, except on Tuesdays and Thursdays when the grocer’s delivery van comes round–and we seldom use the wireless, reception is so bad here in the mountains. When the grocer came to-day he told Cook and Cook came in and told me, and there was this dreadful thing right on the front page. I could scarcely believe my eyes. What did you say your name was?”
“Duffy. I’m the detective-superintendent in charge of the case. I thought I ought to have a talk with Mrs. O’Brien Moore as a matter of form.”
“Well, really, that’s a very remarkable thing.” Although Mrs. Weldon’s voice remained courteous something in its tone suggested that her physical attitude h
ad stiffened. “It’s very kind of you to have telephoned to let Mrs. O’Brien Moore know what is happening but I do feel that someone from Moore Court might have rung up; I can’t see why it should have been left to the police, or the newspapers, to break the news.” After a little further rambling, however, she promised that, if her guest should return without having met Duffy, she would be told to get in touch with him immediately. “It’s the least she can do after your kindness in telephoning.”
Duffy hoped that it would not be necessary. He felt that Dominick’s wife, having once broken the ice and gone to see her children, would not easily tear herself away from them; almost certainly she was still at Moore Court. With O’Callaghan at his heels, Duffy clattered downstairs to board his car; before reaching it, however, he was intercepted by the chief superintendent who had preceded him by a few minutes to the general office on the ground floor.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have trouble with the Press,” said tire big man morosely, the lines of this new worry already furrowing his brow.
“I thought the Daily Record might stir things up a bit,” Duffy agreed. “After all the girl was on their staff.”
“Still and all, he’d get his information just as quickly without making a nuisance of himself–themselves, I should say; there are three of them who have just got here, with a car and a camera. If they get listening to the pub-gossip, heaven knows what they’ll print, but the worst of it is that they’ll be setting a bad example to the Dublin reporters, fellahs who can be depended on to be decently restrained when they think no one’s going to get a scoop on them. Are you going out to Moore Court?” He scarcely gave Duffy time to reply. “Then you can warn the old lady to keep the gates locked and to have a man with a good dog or two to guard them. It wouldn’t be the tiring at all to have those fellahs out there photographing the children and trampling all over bushes and flower-beds.”
“And clues,” Duffy suggested.
The chief superintendents face relaxed and he gave a short rumble of laughter. “À chacun son metier,” he said unexpectedly. “Mine is keeping the peace.”
It seemed that the news of the proximity of a journalistic task-force had already reached the O’Brien Moores, for their front gates were closed, chained and padlocked; the Great Dane and a horsy-looking man armed with a shotgun pulled out from behind the bars. Duffy wondered if it was because the ramifications of the local grapevine had been stimulated by the murder that it was now proving itself so much more efficient than it had in reporting the actual crime; but he had little time for such reflections. To the accompaniment of rattling chains and amiable barking from the big dog, the gates were swung open; the police car had been recognised. Duffy reached out through his window to tap the custodian’s gun.
“Don’t shoot anyone with that,” he said.
The horsy man’s face broke into a broad grin. “Sure I haven’t e’er a cartridge for it; ‘tis only for show,” he explained. “Mr. Dominick’s terrible partickler about things like that.”
All was not well at Moore Court; a gloom had settled on it, greater than that caused by the murder. The fact was obvious to Duffy as soon as he came in sight of the house. A black Hillman Minx had been left standing in what the detective thought of as a peculiarly feminine manner in the middle of the gravelled sweep before the door. It had not been parked out of the way of other traffic, nor had it been stopped adjacent to the steps; it gave the impression of having been abandoned at the moment that the driver had spotted her objective and jammed on the brakes with such suddenness that each wheel had dug for itself a separate little trench as it slid through the gravel. The driver’s door hung open. It was not, however, this evidence of a hurried advent–Mrs. Dominick O’Brien Moore’s presumably–which gave Duffy to understand that all was not well with die family; that information was supplied by the children. Their faces white and tense, they sat, motionless for once, on a grassy bank and stared at the house; Mary had one arm round her little brother. They took no notice of Duffy’s arrival.
“Ructions,” Sergeant O’Callaghan observed. “And the children the subject of the argument. Is the wife a Catholic?”
‘I don’t know.” Duffy opened the door and put one leg out of the car. “I’ll bet she wants to take the children away with her. He followed his front leg out onto the gravel, muttering–“naturally enough.”
On the steps he met Dominick, who was coming out of the house in a hurry; the young man’s face was white with anger, and he looked at Duffy almost without recognition. Even when he had succeeded in adjusting his mind to the moment he was slow in taking in the fact that the detective’s immediate purpose was to interview his wife.
“Ivy,” he repeated two or three times in a preoccupied way, then–“What on earth’s the rush about putting her through it?” he demanded.
“You can be present when I’m questioning her, if you both wish it.”
“Me? Good God, no! It’s got nothing to do with me.” Dominick turned on his heel. “If you go into the dining-room, ‘I’ll send her to you.”
Although it took her ten minutes to put in an appearance, the younger Mrs. O’Brien Moore’s face was flushed and her eyes were still red as if from weeping, but she was completely in command of herself. She was a smaller woman than Duffy had expected and less obviously attractive, in spite of a clearcut, delicately featured face which might, in happier circumstances, be handsome; her dark hair and eyes, too, would show up more effectively when the traces of tears had gone. It was undeniable, however, that her figure was dumpy and featureless and that her legs were practical rather than ornamental. The detective had not particularly looked for glamour in Dominick’s wife, but he had expected a man whose own family ran to elegant slimness and length of limb to choose a bride with the build of an Oaks filly rather than of a pit pony. It was probably not so much the attraction of opposites as the overpowering memory of six leggy elder sisters, Duffy concluded, which had guided Dominick in his choice.
“I’m afraid I’m not in the best possible frame of mind for answering questions,” she said, as soon as she had taken a seat. Her speech was clipped and rapid, almost as if she were addicted to prattling, but her voice was hard. “Something always happens the moment I set foot in my mother-in-law’s house. I hope this isn’t going to take too long, I have other things to do.”
Duffy ignored the latter part of her remarks; he merely murmured sympathetically–“Murder is enough to upset anyone, goodness knows.”
“And on one’s very doorstep! I want to take my children away till the whole wretched mess has been cleared up and forgotten–so far as a thing like that can be forgotten. Don’t you think I’m right?”
“I think it’s very natural to want to take them away.”
“That’s not what I asked you, Superintendent.” She looked at him appraisingly, as if she were really seeing him for the first time. “Don’t you think I’m right?”
“You said you were in a hurry, ma’am,” Duffy reminded her. “If you keep asking me questions, we’ll be here all the afternoon noon. Let’s change round, shall we?” The detective’s rare smile softened the meaning of his words. “Now, you realise that I have to check on the movements of everyone connected with this house about the time of the murder and for an hour or so before and after that time. Can you tell me how you spent last Tuesday from lunch-time onwards?”
“Last Tuesday? But didn’t Dominick tell you I’m staying over at–Oh help! Oh lord!” She gave a little shriek that changed into something nearly resembling a giggle. “That was tire day I came over here. I thought all the time that the murder was yesterday, because it’s in to-day’s papers; I’ve only just realised that it happened on Tuesday. Isn’t that odd?”
“Will you please tell me all about it?” said Duffy.
“Of course I will. That’s what I want to do–but I don’t know quite where to begin.” Whether she knew or not, she went on talking; in fact she gave the impression–which was presumably illusory
–that she only thought of what to say some seconds after she had said it. “You’ve probably gathered that things have come to such a pitch between me and my mother-in-law that I’ve refused to stay under the same roof with her any longer. I’m here now though, aren’t I? But I came over to-day for a special reason, and so I did on Tuesday. If I could remember what the reason was, I’d tell you, but I don’t see that it matters anyhow. This is my husband’s home, and my children are here. Isn’t that enough?”
Duffy merely nodded in affirmation; he did not want to change the direction of the flow.
“I’m staying over at Shantubber with Molly Weldon–that’s about ten miles on tire other side of Moycarrick, you know, right up in the hills, miles from anywhere. So I borrowed Molly’s car to come over here.” She waved a hand towards a front window. “She lent it to me again to-day; that’s it outside.” Talking, it seemed, had gone far towards restoring Ivy O’Brien Moore’s equanimity; the hectic colour of her cheeks had paled to a more becoming shade and her eyes looked normal. “Well, the difference between the two days is that on Tuesday I didn’t get here at all. I changed my mind.”
“Let’s be a little more specific,” said Duffy. “At what time on Tuesday did you leave Shantubber?”
“Oh–about an hour after lunch, I suppose–perhaps half past two. I don’t remember exactly. Anyhow I came straight through Moycarrick and Newtown Moore and started on die road for here–then I changed my mind and turned back. Afraid I’m not much help really.”
“Why did you change your mind?”
“I caught up with another car headed this way; it had to be coming here. There’s nowhere else. I couldn’t very well have a stand-up row with my mamma-in-law in front of callers; it’s awfully difficult at any time, she’s so damn’ civil. I always lose my temper and she just smiles pityingly and sends for sal volatile or brandy; and everything that’s done to soothe me only rubs me up the wrong way. I’ve realised since then that no one was at home that day anyhow, so it’s just as well that I turned back.”
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