by Dicey Deere
The block of wood that was Brenda Plant sat immovable, blue eyes staring at Torrey Tunet.
Inspector O’Hare said, “Ms. Plant?”
54
“Ms. Plant?” Inspector O’Hare waited.
Brenda Plant tucked back a strand of blond hair with a firm hand. She looked from Inspector O’Hare to Ms. Torrey Tunet:
“That is the wildest, most insane—!” Her voice was contemptuous. “It doesn’t even warrant an answer. Plant! Roslina! Presupposing, Ms. Tunet, that I’m some kind of obsessed psychotic who goes about snapping whips and hurling rocks!” Furious blue eyes. “As for the antiques show in Cork—I have my own private reasons for wishing to visit Cork! It was not necessary for me to divulge them to Inspector O’Hare simply because I happened to witness that horrifying attack on Mr. Brannigan.” Brenda Plant glared at Ms. Tunet. “My business is my business, Ms. Tunet!”
Silence, astonishment; then a snort of approval from Sergeant Bryson, who turned an indignant look on Ms. Tunet. Winifred Moore took advantage of Sergeant Bryson’s emotional involvement to light another cigarette. Sean O’Boyle gazed pensively at Sergeant Bryson’s handsome, flushed face. Inspector O’Hare saw that Natalie Cameron and Dakin were as bewildered as though it had begun to snow inside the Garda station. As for himself, he had a feeling of being on a train that had gone off the rails. He said, “Thank you, Ms. Plant.”
Ms. Plant said, “Well, really!” She twisted a ruby ring on her finger and gave Ms. Tunet a furious look. Kate Burnside laughed, a hysterical little laugh. The phone on Sergeant Bryson’s desk buzzed. Bryson picked it up. “The what? Evening Standard? No, nothing further. Inspector O’Hare is in … in Galway. Yes, Thursday, as scheduled. In Dublin. The son involved? No further information on that score. Yes, back tomorrow.” He hung up and refrained from looking toward Ms. Cameron and her son. Winifred Moore’s whisper to Sheila was loud: “The Standard! That dirty rag! Madame La Farge at the guillotine!” From Ms. Tunet a soft whistle of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” and then, “Inspector? May I continue?”
“In a moment, Ms. Tunet.” O’Hare turned to the desk behind him and fumbled up some sheets of paper to cover a momentary panic. Had he let the impassioned Ms. Tunet lead him down a garden path where he’d be squashed like a bug? Then he steadied. This was, after all an informal meeting. It need never be exposed to the press. Besides, he was in it now; no way to back out. He frowned down at the papers he held, pretending a need to study them further, his heart beginning to beat more normally. In a minute he’d be ready to proceed. He was grateful, though, that Sheila Flaxton now got up and hurried into the toilet; and then it appeared that Marcy McGann had the same need. She emerged with her red-orange hair recombed and her cherry red lipstick renewed, and settled down beside Willy Hern.
Inspector O’Hare put the papers down on his desk. He nodded to Ms. Tunet. “Yes, Ms. Tunet. Please continue.” He wondered how she could stand so at ease, thumbs hooked into her jeans pockets; but then he saw the faint dew of perspiration on her brow.
Torrey drew a breath. “You know how something can tease your mind? I remembered that at Grasshill Hospital, Mr. Brannigan had told me that, half out of his head, he’d left a message on Mr. Ricard’s recording machine in Montreal saying, “I’m going to kill you.” And I began to wonder: had anyone known that Tom Brannigan had gone rushing off to Ireland to kill Mr. Ricard?
“So I looked up a listing of Montreal detective agencies on the Internet and called one of them. The Dirkson Agency.” She stopped. She was back in the cottage staring at the bloodstained stone on the table, she was getting up and at the kitchen sink drinking a glass of cold water, then crossing to her desk and making the phone calls that had cost her four hundred dollars because she wanted the information within hours.
“Ms. Tunet?”
“Oh, sorry!” She felt chilled; it had darkened a bit in the station, the sky outside having clouded over. “I wondered if Mr. Ricard had a lover who visited him, maybe had a key to his apartment. So—”
“So—” O’Hare couldn’t resist. “So after Ricard had left for Ireland, the lover, say, might’ve found Mr. Brannigan’s message on Mr. Ricard’s answering machine?”
“Absolutely, Inspector. That occurred to me. That whoever it was could’ve found the message. I guessed that that person could’ve recognized the touch of brogue in the caller’s voice and suspected it was Tom Brannigan, who owned The Citadel Bookshop and whom Rafe Ricard was courting as a client.”
“Must have?”
Torrey nodded. “Well, it was a guess. So I called The Citadel Bookshop, and found out that just after Tom Brannigan had left for Ireland, a woman had called wanting urgently to speak to him. The clerk told her he had left for Ireland. That, of course, was all she really wanted to know.”
Torrey stopped; she drew a breath. “The clerk said the woman had been excited and that hanging up she’d muttered a hasty good-bye, ‘only it wasn’t “good-bye”.’ The clerk tried to imitate it for me, and said, ‘It was like the Russian word for good-bye, do zvidaniya, but not quite.’ So of course I knew.”
“Knew?”
“Well, of course, yes! Of the twenty-six most common languages, the word good-bye is similar in only two: Russian and Polish. The Polish is do widzenia.”
So quiet. A waiting. Torrey said, “I called the Dirkson Agency again. They found out for me that, yes, Ms. Brenda Plant had booked an Aer Lingus flight from Montreal to Dublin leaving that same night.”
55
Brenda Plant sat staring at Torrey Tunet. “You! What did it have to do with you? Nosing about! What’s it your business? Of course I rushed off to Ireland to warn Mr. Ricard! Tom Brannigan was out of his mind! He was murderous.” Her voice was uneven. She breathed quickly and patted her chest, calming herself. She turned to Inspector O’Hare. She spoke directly to him, as though the two of them were alone, perhaps in comfortable chairs somewhere before a fireplace with a crackling fire, not in this Garda station.
“Inspector, you’ll understand, when I explain.” She took a breath. “I’d arrived in Montreal from Buffalo to spend a weekend with Mr. Ricard. I knew he’d gone to Ireland on some business and expected to be back by then. But instead, I found that frightening message on his answering machine.” She shuddered. “You can imagine! I was desperate to warn him, so I followed. You see?”
O’Hare nodded. “Of course. I quite—”
“Yes, of course, Inspector! In Ballynagh, I found there was only one bed and breakfast. Sara Hobbs was at the desk in the reception room at the top of the stairs. When I registered, I saw on the register that Mr. Ricard was there, but that Tom Brannigan hadn’t yet arrived—somehow I’d gotten there ahead of him. A tremendous relief! Later I found out he’d had car trouble on the road.”
O’Hare nodded. The car that Tom Brannigan had rented at the airport was still at Duffy’s garage. Duffy had mentioned engine trouble on the way to Ballynagh. Sergeant Jimmy Bryson had made a notation of that at the time of the attack on Brannigan.
Brenda Plant sat forward, her face pale, her light blue eyes looking into the past. “Right away, I called Mr. Ricard’s room. But there was no answer. So I sat there in the reception room, waiting for him to show up.
“But instead, Tom Brannigan arrived. His face was a horror: white, tight, lethal. I held up a newspaper before me in case he looked my way. Sara Hobbs chatted away to him while he registered, but he barely said a word. He called Mr. Ricard’s room from the desk and got no answer.
“So he rushed right back down the stairs. I followed. I was afraid to leave him in case he found Rafe. He went into a pub down the street. O’Malley’s. I thought, what if he has a gun? What if Rafe was in the pub and I’d hear gun shots? What if—”
O’Hare started as the phone on Sergeant Bryson’s desk buzzed. And buzzed. Brenda Plant waited. Sergeant Bryson made no move to the phone. He was a statue, his gaze fixed incredulously on Brenda Plant. Inspector O’Hare went to Bryson’s desk, lift
ed the receiver an inch, then placed it back in its cradle. “Go on, Ms. Plant.”
Brenda Plant smoothed her blond hair with a nervous gesture. “Well … after a few minutes Tom Brannigan came out of the pub. He was walking like a … a wooden man. I followed him up the street and across a little bridge. On the road, I mingled with some women returning home from some sort of jumble sale. Gradually they dropped off, going up paths or side roads. Finally there was just Tom Brannigan ahead. He stopped outside tall, wrought-iron gates. He just stood there. Only trees and bushes and silence all around; and along the sides of the road, bits of brush. And stones. And I thought, Stop him now!
“So I picked up a stone.”
Inspector O’Hare refrained from looking at Ms. Tunet. From Marcy McGann he heard a whisper, presumably to Willie Hern, “It wasn’t a blue jay!”
O’Hare said drily, “You covered yourself well, Ms. Plant. Screaming out to Ms. Tunet for help. Rushing to her on her bicycle.”
Brenda Plant shrugged. “What else was I to do? I heard jazz, “Mack the Knife,” so sudden, so near! I thought she might have glimpsed—or they might have,” and she nodded toward Marcy McGann and Willie Hern. “I had to try.”
O’Hare almost winced. He thought wryly of the seemingly terrified Ms. Plant in her olive green coat telling him of seeing a man smashing a club down on Brannigan’s head.
Peripherally, he was aware, on his left, of a sudden movement as Dakin Cameron stood up, only to have his mother swiftly reach out and grasp his arm, shaking her head and pulling him back down. O’Hare shot a swift look at Ms. Tunet and saw at once that she too had seen the byplay; he was startled to discover how well he could read that young woman in her peacock bandanna. She was simply looking at him but she might just as well have said, Do go on, Inspector. The garda station was, after all, his arena. His confidence flowed back. He glanced with a touch of amusement at Sergeant Jimmy Bryson, who appeared dazed. He said, “Thank you, Ms. Plant.”
Excited whispers, a general murmur; Inspector O’Hare caught a “So horrifying!” in a trembly voice from Sheila Faxton, and from Willie Hern, an awed … and perhaps envious “with a bloody stone!”
O’Hare rubbed his chin, waiting until the murmurs died down. Then he looked over at Kate Burnside sitting with her dark head tipped down, gazing blank-eyed before her. “Ms. Burnside.”
Kate Burnside looked up. Her brown eyes were heavy, her face brooding and wretched. One hand had worried the top button of her peach-colored silk shirt, so that the button now hung loose.
“Yes, Inspector?” No mockery now. O’Hare felt a stir of pity. No wonder apprehension rode Ms. Kate Burnside! Her fingerprints were on the penknife.
“Ms. Burnside, if you don’t mind. To go back a bit: Your … ah, tale … You said that Mr. Ricard was attempting to blackmail Natalie Cameron.”
“Yes. That’s what I said, Inspector. For what it’s worth.” Bitter, as though to say, Stop plaguing me.
“Thank you, Ms. Burnside.” O’Hare had a familiar sense of closing in; it was like the games of his childhood, hiding, running, searching, the shouts of discovery, the culprit sprawling, revealed. He turned to Brenda Plant.
“Ms. Plant, you stopped Mr. Brannigan from killing Mr. Ricard. Did you know why Mr. Brannigan wanted to kill Mr. Ricard?”
“Naturally not. I had no idea.”
“I see.” He was sweating under his arms again. This is the only way, Ms. Tunet had said. No, not said: begged. As if it were her own life she was begging for. Ms. Tunet, over there, so innocent-looking, hands in the pockets of her jeans. Ms. Tunet having once again proved herself a thief, and expecting him to do more than turn a blind eye. And him, conniving. He reached behind him to his desk and picked up the wrinkled sheet of notepad paper with the note scrawled in a bold hand. “This,” he said, and he read aloud: “People with guilty secrets are fair game. The bitch’s secret is ugly enough to be worth twenty thousand pounds. More, if she balks. Back by Friday. R.’”
Brenda Plant cried out, an inarticulate cry. Then, “How did you get that? Sara Hobbs poking about among my things? Fat little snooping pig! Running to you with—That’s illegal! This whole—this village. Conniving! It should be reported to police headquarters in Dublin.” Indignant, fist to her chest, breathing hard, she said angrily, “All right! I knew about the blackmail. It’s true, what Rafe said! Fair game! He was having financial problems and all of a sudden he found out about Natalie Cameron. Her rotten secret! He’d found out what she was: lily white on top, a lying, sleeping-around tramp underneath.
“So she killed him! Killed him, rather than give him the money! Killed him to keep her secret.”
A crack of thunder, the sudden pound of rain against the plate glass. Inspector O’Hare looked over at Natalie Cameron beside Dakin. Her hazel eyes were wide, a waiting look; her lower lip caught between her teeth. O’Hare thought of the time he’d had the broken arm and while Dr. Collins was setting it, he’d bitten his lower lip until it bled all down his shirt. Now all those who belonged at Sylvester Hall would bleed.
Brenda Plant said, “Rafe knew about Natalie and the chauffeur back then, years back, at Sylvester Hall. Tom Brannigan, the chauffeur! Rafe knew that Dakin Cameron is Tom Brannigan’s child.”
Torrey hardly heard the gasps, the creaking of the folding chairs as the listeners leaned and stretched to glimpse at least Natalie Cameron’s face or profile, or stared in shock at Dakin Cameron, who sat with one leg crossed over the other, an arm resting along the back of his mother’s chair. Good for you, Torrey thought: Natalie and Dakin sitting there looking no more than slightly dazed. Prepared, thank God! At least that. Prepared in the library at Sylvester Hall yesterday morning, she telling Natalie Cameron what she’d discovered. Then Dakin called in from the coach house. She had stood at the library window looking out at Sean O’Boyle trimming the rhododenrons while off on a sofa near the fireplace Natalie had told Dakin who his father was. “It’s the only way,” Torrey had unhappily warned them before she left Sylvester Hall. Dakin had surprised her. At first, a stunned face; nothing more. Later, he had reached out and touched the unicorn bracelet on his mother’s wrist. Then a shake of his head and a sigh. Torrey had noticed that the blue bruise had almost faded from his cheekbone.
In the Garda station, again a crack of thunder, the spatter of rain against the window; and now Brenda Plant saying, “Rafe told me, ‘I’ll just ask that hypocritical bitch,”How d’you think your son will feel if I tell him that his real father is the former chauffeur at Sylvester Hall? You sleeping with the chauffeur, then marrying Andrew Cameron to hide that you were pregnant by him. And palming off the baby to Andrew Cameron as his! But a DNA test can prove otherwise.”’”
Brenda Plant glanced scornfully over at Natalie Cameron. “Rafe said it was in the Irish Times, in the society news, that Natalie Cameron was about to marry again. ‘She’ll be frantic to pay me off!’ he told me.” Brenda Plant looked back at Inspector O’Hare. “But Natalie Cameron didn’t pay. She killed.”
Torrey for an instant closed her eyes. Brenda Plant had just showed why Natalie would have had good reason to rush furiously at Ricard with the penknife. Torrey shivered. It was a risk she’d had to take. And Natalie Cameron had trusted her. Chestnuts in the fire.
56
Inspector O’Hare’s mouth was dry. He had a box of mixed fruit drops in his top desk drawer, but this was hardly the time. He mustn’t lose the chain; no, it wasn’t a chain, it was barely more than a thread. “Ms. Plant. Both you and Mr. Ricard were staying at Nolan’s Bed and Breakfast, so you were in close contact, and—”
“No! Not at all! Barely a good-morning, what with Sara Hobbs so solicitous! Acting like a guard dog, protecting me from who knew what. The man with the club, I suppose. And Sergeant Bryson, on my heels every minute. So Rafe thought, Risky. Better not. Not even to talk to each other. Breakfast at separate tables.”
“I see.” Inspector O’Hare licked dry lips and longed to soothe his throat.
But now he was inching along the thread. “Yet you and Mr. Ricard managed to meet secretly, away from Nolan’s, despite the diffculty of your sprained ankle.”
“I don’t exactly follow?” Brenda Plant looked puzzled.
“You were seen meeting with Mr. Ricard near the cairn, in the west field near Castle Moore. More than once.” The thread was getting taut. “It is only logical, from a police point of view, that you were conferring about the progress of—”
“That’s an outrageous assumption!” Ms. Plant’s face was furious. “Is this a trick? Trying to implicate me in the blackmail at the cairn! I never went there! I had nothing to do with the blackmail! I tried to dissuade Rafe from it entirely! I—”
“No, no! Ms. Plant! I don’t mean to implicate you. Not at all!” O’Hare felt warm dampness under his arms. “Simply, it’s police procedure to follow every—not to overlook anything. Likely it was only the need … the need for privacy between two lovers. So, in the fields …” O’Hare coughed. “It was only natural. Lovers. It was just that, since someone happened to witness—” He stopped. To his own amazement he felt a blush rising, heating his face.
“Witness?” Brenda Plant laughed. “What nonsense! There was nothing to witness. They’re lying.” She half turned and swept a glance over the listeners. She turned back to Inspector O’Hare. “What witness? Which of them? Who’s the liar?”
“No one here. It was a child.”
“A child?” Brenda Plant laughed again. “A boy? A girl? A child who made it up! Children do that. Wanting attention. Starting trouble. The witches of Salem. Burned at the stake. Tied up and drowned because of children’s lies.”
But from one of the listeners, a half laugh and a husky voice said, “It wasn’t a lie. It did happen. Making love in the field.”