Black Welcome

by Nigel Fitzgerald

  “All right,” said the little boy patiently. “So Mr. Duffy is the U. S. marshal, and the fat sergeant’s still his deputy. All right?”

  “It sounds all right to me,” admitted the newly appointed marshal. “Do you remember just after that ambush when you were showing me over the–the reservation, you fired at something on the sea? I asked you if it was a cormorant. Do you remember that?”

  The little boy answered precisely as he had on the former occasion–“No cormorants here. It’s too muddy.”

  “That’s just what I want to know. Was that answer part of the game, or are there really no cormorants around the bay?”

  “It’s too muddy round here. I told you.” Michael seemed to think that the detective was being purposely obtuse. “No rocks for nesting.”

  “That’s what I thought. Thank you, Michael.” Looking about him, Duffy was not in the least surprised to see that the two fat women and the little girl were staring at him suspiciously. “So I can take it that a cormorant is seen in the bay only very rarely, before a big storm or something like that–not in this sort of weather certainly?”

  This time it was Mary who answered, very slowly and carefully. “There is no record of a cormorant ever having been seen in this part of the bay,” she said. “Mummy will explain to you why, if you like. She is by way of being an expert. She digs Natural History.”

  “ ’Tis the truth,” Mrs. Scully confirmed. “If you find a bird or a beast going against nature, ‘tis terrible ominous. I won’t tell you a word of a lie; only once in my life did I ever see a cormorant on the bay, and that was ere yesterday.” She paused to finish her drink in one swallow before adding in a piercing whisper–“’Twas to foretell the doom that was hanging over us. May the saints preserve us all.” She banged down her glass with such force that she almost shattered a small table. She gave the impression that she was enjoying herself.

  Mrs. Flynn, on the other hand, was bored; she suppressed a yawn and looked at her watch. “Those fellows must have settled down for a night of it at the pub,” she complained. “I wish I wasn’t too lazy to drive. And by the same token what’s that young American doing for Miss Kennedy all this time? I thought he was only going to carry her upstairs.”

  “He’d be able to do a lot for a girl, by the looks of him, when the time is ripe,” observed Mrs. Scully with relish. “ ’Tis the fine, strong man that he is–more power to him–better than any medicine.”

  As if the mention of his name had summoned him in the flesh, Hector O’Brien Moore appeared in the doorway; his amiable expression had been replaced by a worried look–a change which was scarcely matter for wonder–but his manner retained all its pristine courtesy. “Air, there you are, Superintendent,” he greeted Duffy. “It’s very nice to see you again, even if the day becomes more melancholy as it develops. You want to have a word with Miss Kennedy, I believe. She’s not too well and she’s very much upset, as you can imagine, but my aunt says she’s well enough to talk to you now. She’ll stay with her till you go up. I’ll show you the way.” He held the door open politely.

  “Better than any medicine,” Mrs. Scully repeated with conviction.

  Lua Kennedy’s bedroom was in the front of the house, and therefore must look out over the bay, though its possession of drawn curtains shut off whatever was still to be seen of land or water as well as the new-fallen darkness. It was a big room, brightly furnished and comfortable, less what one would expect to find allotted to a secretary than what one would imagine might be chosen for herself by the mistress of a house; the quibble came to Duffy’s mind unbidden and irritated him unreasonably. Mrs. O’Brien Moore was waiting beside the bed.

  “Good evening, Mr. Duffy,” she said. “I know you won’t distress this child more than is necessary. I just want you to understand that we’re not going to leave her alone here to-night, though we haven’t quite sorted out our domestic arrangements yet. Is anyone else in any danger, do you think?”

  He shook his head. “There’s no more danger for anyone.”

  “I see.” She looked at him curiously for a moment but she asked no further questions; with Hector following her she descended the stairs.

  Lua was small and haggard in the big bed; the vivid brightness of her hair hung against her white skin like a feverish flush. She did not turn her eyes to look at the detective.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “I don’t feel anything at all.” Her voice was flat, without expression. “I suppose I’m comfortable. I just don’t know. I keep telling myself what’s happened and it doesn’t mean anything to me, or perhaps it means so much that nothing else in the world has any meaning whatever. I’m trying to look at something that no longer exists against a background that never existed. I suppose you know about me and Perry?”

  “I think so. Do you mind talking about him?”

  “I can’t do anything else. There’s nothing else in my mind.”

  “I’ll try to be brief; I don’t want to tire you. He must have talked to you about the murder. Who did he think killed Joan Allison?”

  “He couldn’t make up his mind. At first he thought that Dominick’s wife had done it in a fit of jealousy, then he decided that too much of what happened was uncharacteristic. He kept arguing about it but he came to no conclusion; then it was time to work–and then he was murdered.” She said it very slowly and clearly in the same dead voice, as if she were still trying to din into her mind the meaning of the words.

  “What were your own views about it?”

  “My own views?” She stared at the detective blankly for a moment and then, with her first show of feeling, said–“I don’t remember what I thought–and now I don’t care. I’ve nothing to be frightened about.”

  “No one has.” Duffy’s voice was gentle. “I know who the murderer is, but I’ve got to prove it. I’m not offering you revenge; I’m asking for your help in clearing the innocent, because everyone connected with Peregrine Walton will be suspected till the case is closed. If you loved him, you will want to prevent that.”

  The relevance of her answer when it came was not immediately apparent. “He asked me to marry him, and I said it would spoil things. I knew he didn’t like being tied and I didn’t want anything to change. It doesn’t make any difference now. Yes–I loved him. I had something that very few wives have. I was a part of the making of his books; his thoughts were my work. All right! My brain still functions, if my feelings don’t. I can answer your questions. What do you want to know?”

  “You met Joan Allison?”

  “Yes. She came round asking questions. Perry is–was–oh, what a bloody thing the past tense is! He was quite a celebrated figure in the literary world, you know; in his own right he was news for her paper or material for her book. He wasn’t like the rest of the people round here, noteworthy only for their connection with The Family. His name would give added shock-value to any skeleton found in either the Walton cupboard or the O’Brien Moore cupboard. Miss Allison didn’t get any change out of Perry, though.”

  “Are there any particular skeletons?”

  “Of course there are, old and new. I suppose I’m a new and rather minor skeleton. Oh God! What an unfortunate metaphor when death is at the back of one’s mind. Anyhow Allison had got hold of some of the things that everybody knows: the coolness between the two families, on account of the difference in religion, when Perry’s father and mother got engaged; the mad uncle who thought he was the Holy Ghost, and the alcoholic, cigar-smoking great aunt. None of that mattered; it was old stuff and the local ancients remembered it just as well as the family did. No one gave the poor girl a clue about the great skeleton, though. Would it ever occur to you that Mrs. O’Brien Moore could have run away from her husband with a young Italian painter?”

  “It doesn’t seem possible,” Duffy agreed.

  “But she did it–only a short time after they were married. I used to be in awe of her, so Perry told me that to make her seem more human. She came
back to her husband because it was her duty and has done nothing less than her duty for forty years. Is that human or inhuman? I don’t know. There are lots of people round this side of the county who must know about that, but no whisper of it got out. I only mentioned it to show you how real country people will clam up about things that they think are no business of the questioners. They respect the old lady for acknowledging a mistake–by their standards and hers it was a mistake–and for being able to live it down.”

  “I’m looking for a scandal that has its roots in America,” Duffy said. “I know there must be one.”

  “Then you know more than I do.” Her voice had lost some of its listless quality. “There’s only the old tizzy about Cynthia’s marriage to young Kennerley, but that couldn’t have anything to do with the murder; everyone knows about it.”

  “But no one will talk about it. No one has anyhow. This is the first time I’ve heard of who she married. Has young Kennerley anything to do with the publishers that Hector O’Brien Moore works for?”

  “Not with the firm, but he’s die old man’s son. You’ve probably heard of him as an up and coming politician with a chance of office in the next administration–that’s one reason why it’s been hushed up a bit, the marriage, I mean. The senator has a rich and influential wife now and a father-in-law with a vested interest in virtue.”

  “I think you had better tell me all about it,” Duffy said.

  “There’s not much to tell. Cynthia was a student in New York, and she got in with a madly gay set at the beginning of the war. It seems incredible, doesn’t it? She met young Kennerley at a party and they went and got some rural J.P. to marry them when they were both plastered–just another gin-marriage. Well, of course they just couldn’t bear the sight of each other when they sobered up, and that was the end of the affair. Kennerley got a facile divorce in Mexico or somewhere, and poor Cynthia had enough disillusion to last her the rest of her life. Of course old Kennerley, who’s absolutely sweet, was hopping mad with his son, specially when he found out who the girl was–not only was she an innocent colleen but she had some pretty important connections, and her uncle, Hectors father, belonged to the same clubs as old Ken. The upshot was that Cynthia was persuaded to accept an annuity as heart-balm and everybody just pretended that the marriage had never happened; young Ken had got a divorce that served his purpose, and if that wasn’t good enough for Cynthia she could get one anywhere in the world on die grounds of desertion. But she wasn’t interested; she’d had enough of marriage.”

  “I see.” Duffy wasted a few seconds in speculation on the possible effect on Cynthia Walton of a more successful initial flutter with love. He sighed. “I see. Was Joan Allison asking questions about the affair?”

  “She mentioned it. She didn’t have her nose to the ground, or anything. It was just that she had come across some reference in some American provincial paper’s files to a union between the Kennerleys and a scion of the aristocratic O’Brien Moore family of County Moy, Ireland. Just that apparently. It was a gossip item and gave no details, not even the actual name of either of the contracting parties. She was only intrigued because she couldn’t find out anything definite; no one would tell her.” Lua’s voice shook because of either laughter or tears; it was difficult to tell which predominated. “Perry of course pulled her leg; he told her that Dominick in his first year in college took a girl athlete called Kennerley to Gretna Green but got the marriage annulled when the girl changed sex and grew a beard and was kicked out of the Olympic team. Perry–was an awful ass. Oh, my God, what will I do without him.”

  “Let yourself go and you’ll feel better,” said Duffy gently. “Have you got anything to make you sleep?”

  “Yes, I have. And don’t worry–I shan’t take too many. And look here! You’re not imagining that all this business had anything to do with the murders, are you? There’d be no point in anyone’s killing to keep dark something that so many people know about. Would there?”

  “It doesn’t seem a very sensible motive,” the detective agreed. “Just one thing, though; there’s a clause in the late Colonel Walton’s will to the effect that, if his daughter Cynthia were to marry without the consent of the trustees, she would cease to benefit under the will. It seems that she married but has continued to benefit.”

  “But there was formal consent. Colonel Walton had just died at the time that Perry found out about the marriage. He got his aunt, Mrs. O’Brien Moore, and the other trustee to write a formal letter of consent, ante-dated, of course, and in case that wasn’t enough signed a disclaimer to any property of Cynthia’s that might have come to him on account of the marriage. You can see the letters, if you want to. He could never bring himself to talk to Cynthia about the matter, so he never gave them to her. Funny, you know; they doted on each other in a way, yet they couldn’t discuss anything rationally. Perry’s sense of humour always got too much for him. He’d pull her leg and she would lecture him; they always ended up like that. I don’t think she approves of me, you know, and I’m quite sure she’d like to have helped Perry with his work–but that wouldn’t have lasted a day. They’d have driven each other up the walls. One had to love Perry to be able to stand him, not just love him like a sister, but–oh.”

  Her face suddenly broke up, lost all form and became an amorphous thing in which only eyes and tears were distinguishable . Convulsively she turned away from Duffy and her bright lovely hair mercifully hid her agony from his sight. He did not quite know why he felt constrained to tiptoe from the room.

  Beds of pain, whether physical or of the spirit, can be trying for the visitor as well as for the patient; when the sensitive visitor knows that he can bring no alleviation of the pain, not even a momentary distraction from it, the occasion becomes doubly harrowing. Thus it was that Duffy could not have classed as pleasant the manner in which he spent the evening and the night that followed Peregrine Walton’s death. From Lua’s bedside he had gone to that of Martin Clohessy, the poteen-drinking man-servant from Moore Court, to try and separate the facts of Martin’s interference in the aftermath of murder from the fantasies induced by over-indulgence in the unmatured, unadulterated spirit. Thereafter he had been permitted to visit another private ward in the hospital where Cynthia Walton lay conscious, talkative and in no great physical pain. She had asked to speak to him, or he might have left the interview to another time. There followed a short session with the chief superintendent at the Guard Station in Newtown Moore where one further fact came to light: the bullet that had killed Peregrine was of the same calibre as the revolver which had been taken from his sister’s cottage. It was therefore with the details of a completed case in his mind that Duffy returned to the house at the head of the bay. There remained but the unpleasant duty of making the facts known to those most concerned.

  Lua had fallen asleep with the help of drugs, and the O’ Brien Moore family was in indisputed possession of Peregrine’s study. Mr. Flynn and Mr. Scully had returned from the pub to pick up their respective wives and take their homeward way, though not without a moment of drama which Dominick had been in time to share.

  “I’d been over to Shantubber to see Ivy,” he explained. “She decided to come back with me, as you can see.” The fact was indeed self-evident. “The Flynns were just going, but one of their tyres was a bit flat. Jamesy wanted to leave it, but his wife opened up the boot to get the pump, and there, large as life, was Peregrine’s air mattress that he used to float on. It was my daughter that spotted it–Mary’s got eyes like a hawk–but there’s no doubt that it’s Perry’s. There you are, Duffy. That’s it. His housekeeper is prepared to swear to it, and so am I. I can’t account for the one like it that you found earlier to-day, just as James Flynn can’t account for this one being in the boot of his car, but that’s your job.”

  “Yes,” said Duffy. “It is my job. I can account for it. I’ve been asking questions since I got here last night; now it’s my turn to do some answering, some explaining anyhow. You’
ve all got to reconcile yourselves to the fact that one of your circle is a double murderer, and I think that now is as good a time for me to tell you about it as any. I wish I hadn’t got to do this, but it’s only right that you should know. A warrant is being made out for the murderer now.”

  The children were no longer in the study. The housekeeper had induced them to He down in another room and they had found temporary forgetfulness in sleep. Only adult O’Brien Moores remained to hear what Duffy had to say: Dominick, and his mother, and his wife, and his cousin from America whose coming had coincided with the beginning of the tragedy. The faces were watchful but inexpressive.

  “There have been two murders here within fifty hours,” said the detective. “While the solution of the first crime presented a number of difficulties, the murderer in committing the second left a trail which led clearly to his door. Let us be conventional and call him X.”

  “Who is he?” asked Mrs. O’Brien Moore bluntly. “There can be no reason to keep us any longer in doubt.”

  “I’m afraid there is a reason.” Duffy helped himself to a cigarette from a box which Dominick had pushed towards him. All five of the occupants of the room were now smoking–evidence, perhaps, of a not unnatural nervousness. “Please believe that I’m not just delaying the disclosure for dramatic effect. I shall be able to sort out the details more quickly if we take things in chronological order. And, by the way, I hope you’ II forgive me if I use only Christian names for the younger members of the family; it will save confusion and make what I have to say more readily understandable.”

  Mrs. O’Brien Moore nodded; she was engaged in winkling the butt of a cigarette from her holder. The others merely looked blank until Ivy suddenly blurted out–“Of course we don’t mind. Do go on.”

  “Very well,” said Duffy. “I shall begin with the circumstances of the first murder exactly as it happened. The details were worked out piecemeal from the evidence but most of them have been already confirmed. At three-thirty, then, on last Tuesday afternoon Joan Allison drove out to Moore Court in the hope of meeting Hector. She did not expect him to have got there before her, nor did she expect anyone to be in the house, but–just in case someone had stayed at home after all–she ran up the steps and like any ordinary visitor rang the door-bell; then, not anticipating an answer, she turned away to look out over the water. At that moment she heard the door open behind her.”