by Dorothy Eden
Mary Kate clasped her hands on her plump stomach.
“I think of that poor young thing sitting in the starlight crying. She didn’t deserve to come to any harm, of that I’m sure. But no mortals seems to have set eyes on her again.”
“And now they say there’s a baby,” Cathleen said involuntarily.
“Aye, and they say men are flying to the moon. Look at me, miss! Do I look a strong healthy woman?”
Cathleen agreed.
“Then if you’re telling me that bit of a creature, like as if she was made out of moonlight and bog flowers, could have a baby, why couldn’t I? It’s pure nonsense, miss, and don’t you go repeating wicked rumours.”
But Mary Kate was prejudiced. And the passing of time had coloured her imagination. She was almost convinced the castle had been visited by a fairy that night. Or perhaps she didn’t want to believe anything else. Shamus had died, and it would be easier for a devout woman to blame the fairies than God.
Cathleen herself found a logical enough explanation. The girl was early in pregnancy and that had made her look pale and ill. She had decided the time had come for the secrecy about her marriage to end, and that had been the reason for her visit to the castle. If she were carrying the heir to Loughneath, then she must demand her rightful place. But what had happened to make the poor little thing run away and sit and cry at a bus stop on a lonely road?
The baby would most likely be a red-head…
Cathleen wanted to work after dinner. She hadn’t enjoyed the uneasy meal, with Rory silent and Liam restless and talkative, almost as if he had had too much to drink. As well he may have, for he and Aunt Tilly seemed to have been in the library close in talk for some time when she had joined them. There was a high flush in Aunt Tilly’s cheeks, too, and she was almost as talkative as Liam. But Kitty looked as if she had been crying.
Nothing was said about the subject that must have been uppermost in all their minds. Aunt Tilly told some long involved story about a priest called Father Flannigan, and Liam talked about the chances he had of getting good prices for his two colts, of Cathleen riding Macushla and of his intensive training scheme for Red.
It was good to escape to the library and work alone. There was so much material that finally she sat on the floor, spreading the letters and clippings about her.
As Miss O’Riordan had said, the past history of the family was fascinating, almost as fascinating as this story at present of a lost wife and an unacknowledged heir. There was Oonagh O’Riordan, the one who had eloped with a British army officer, losing one shoe on the stairs as she ran out of the house to her lover, and the two of them risking being peppered with shot by her furious father. In a crisis, it seemed to be automatic to an O’Riordan to pick up a weapon. The shoe, her elder sister wrote cryptically to a friend, was being preserved for posterity. “But let us hope our family in years to come grows less reckless and hot-tempered…”
There were clippings from newspapers of fiery and provocative letters written by Patrick, the boys’ father, on all kinds of subjects, and one touching note on pale blue paper. “Everyone is calling you ‘that wild Irishman’ and warning me of all kinds of dangers. I think they see you in a draughty baronial hall with wolfhounds snarling at your feet, but I see you as the only man I’ll ever love. I would do anything in the world for you.” It was signed Cecilia and the postmark was Sussex, England.
There was also a picture postcard with a Brighton postmark. It had a view of the Royal pavilion, and it was addressed to Masters Shamus and Rory O’Riordan. It said only, “Hope you are being good boys while your Aunt Tilly and I are away. The sea air is doing me good, but the doctor says I must stay a little longer. I will have a surprise for you when I come home. Love and kisses, Mummy.”
Cathleen wondered briefly how Cecilia, that poor speechless timid-looking woman upstairs, had enjoyed a holiday with her domineering sister-in-law who doubtless had added various rules of her own to supplement the doctor’s. But obviously the holiday in her native air had restored her health, for she had borne her husband two more children since then, Liam and Kitty.
It was getting a little chilly in the shadowy room. Cathleen remembered the fire in the billiard room and suddenly thought of Rory there, alone.
The door opened and she started. Someone had picked up the telephone on the table just inside the door. She was on the floor and invisible behind the large desk. There was only one light on. Whoever was at the telephone must naturally have thought the room empty.
It was an awkward moment. She didn’t want to bob up and say, “Hi, if that’s private, I’m here.”
She heard the man’s low voice. Whose? Rory’s or Liam’s? In that low tone it was impossible to distinguish the speaker’s identity. A number in Loughneath was asked for.
Cathleen’s hesitation in announcing her presence had now committed her to eavesdrop. She raised herself to see the tall figure at the other end of the long room. He hadn’t switched on another light and stood in shadow. The spare body and dark head could have been either Liam’s or Rory’s. So, too, the low furious voice as someone answered his call.
“Look here, what the devil are you up to? Have you gone mad? I’ll see you at the usual time and place. I’m not letting you down, but just remember, if you let me down,” the voice sank warningly, “I can have clever ideas, too.”
The receiver slammed down. The man strode out. Cathleen scrambled to her feet, her heart beating madly. Was it Rory? She had to know.
She went swiftly to the door, hoping to catch a glimpse of him in the hall or on the stairs.
She almost collided with Kitty who seemed to have materialized out of space and who stood blocking the door, her face white, her hands pressed to her mouth as if suppressing a scream.
“Kitty! What’s the matter?”
“I saw a rat.” She shivered violently. “I can’t bear rats. They make me sick.”
There were footsteps sounding up the stairs.
“But someone just came down here. Rory or Liam. He’d have seen the rat if there was one.”
Kitty’s hands fell to her sides.
“I didn’t see anyone. Only the rat. It went behind those curtains. I’ll have to tell Patsy.” She began to move away. “I’m sorry. I suppose you think I’m a baby.”
“I don’t at all. I’m terrified of rats.”
Kitty must have heard the sympathy in Cathleen’s voice, for she paused, her wide shocked eyes for a fraction of time full of unguarded appeal. Cathleen had just time to realize that she was very frightened, and about something that was not a rat, then the veil dropped again.
“Liam had a little too much to drink tonight. He went to bed an hour ago. It must have been Rory you heard.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
THERE WAS A KNOCK on her door at seven o’clock the next morning.
“Cathleen! Come for a ride.”
She was certain as to the identity of the voice this time.
She stirred sleepily.
“Oh, Liam! So early!”
“It’s a wonderful morning. I’ll meet you at the stables in ten minutes.”
“Will your aunt mind? I’m here to work.”
“Don’t you have a trade union that says so many hours work, so many hours play? I’d like to take care of your play hours. I’d make them happy.” His voice was gay and confident. It bore no relation to the threatening one on the telephone last night.
Jonathon had said, “You would make me happy,” not, “I would make you happy.” This, with Liam, wasn’t the same at all. How, she wondered, would it be with Rory?
But the morning, soft and misty, was too beautiful to spoil by worrying. The ride across the bottom field and up into the woods took all thoughts but enjoyment out of Cathleen’s head. Liam rode Red Rover, the big chestnut stallion. He looked splendid on a horse, slim, erect, completely master of his mount. He was slighter and perhaps two inches shorter than Rory which probably gave him his gentler, more diffident air when h
e was in the house. But here he was in his element. Cathleen, on the well-mannered Macushla, didn’t attempt to compete with him.
Walking back from the stables, however, something had to be said.
“That was just what I needed to clear my head. I worked late in the library last night.”
“My head needed clearing for a different reason,” Liam answered easily. “Aunt Tilly had me tasting the wine for the dinner-party.”
He didn’t give the slightest sign that he had made a telephone call which he wouldn’t have wanted to be overheard. His story tallied with Kitty’s. So it had been Rory, as she had been afraid. She shivered a little. She was overheated and the wind was chilly.
“I’m finding your family history fascinating,” she said.
“Are you? I’m surprised Aunt Tilly lets you read all that old stuff.”
“Why? Is it very secret?”
“Every family has secrets. Didn’t yours?”
Cathleen thought of her pleasant uneventful childhood in a large Victorian house near Salisbury, of the well-ordered lives of her mother and father, good-mannered untemperamental people who almost certainly didn’t have the smallest bone of a skeleton in their cupboards. It had been a dull childhood, perhaps. It had left her unprepared for the tragedy that had struck her.
“My father was a country solicitor,” she said. “Very correct.”
“Ah, no illegitimate babies in his life.”
“Illegitimate!”
“Wrong word. Phantasmagorical, then.”
So he had been concerned about the rumour which he had seemed to dismiss. He even went on to talk about it.
“Someone hates Rory, I imagine.”
“Who?”
“Maybe the girl, Shamus’s wife. I don’t suppose she meant to disappear forever. No woman is as self-sacrificing as that.”
“Then why doesn’t she just come and produce the baby?”
“Well,” Liam’s eyes glinted humorously, “that could be too straightforward a thing to do. We’re a devious race. We never tell the truth, for one thing. It’s much more amusing not to. Try to get Rory to tell you the truth.”
“Does he know it?”
“And would I be knowing?” Liam asked, so dryly that Cathleen couldn’t help laughing, and letting her apprehensions fly away.
At breakfast she was surprised to see a letter by her plate. It must be from Ronald Gault. So far, she hadn’t let other friends know her address.
The postmark was Galway.
She tore open the cheap envelope and took out the thin slip of paper. It was a letter that had no beginning and no end. It was simply a clumsily printed message.
IF YOU ARE WRITING A FAMILY HISTORY OF THE O’RIORDANS YOU OUGHT TO KNOW IT INCLUDES A CRIME WORSE THAN MURDER? ASK ABOUT THE CHILD. IT ISN’T FAR AWAY. IT’S A WICKED SHAME.
Liam was at the sideboard pouring coffee. No one else was in the dining-room.
Cathleen hardly knew what made her stuff the paper and envelope into her pocket out of sight. She was only sure that she didn’t want to talk about the note until she had digested it.
An anonymous letter! And she being used as a pawn in this queer mystery. At first, indignation made her want to tear up the note and refuse to be involved in something that was no concern of hers. But she knew she couldn’t forget it. Whoever had written must have known, too, of her terrible vulnerability towards children.
Who in these parts knew her name? Peggy Moloney must have mentioned it when she was home yesterday. So that now all of Loughneath knew it, the old men in tweed caps, the women behind the prim lace curtains.
“Hi!” said Liam. “Where have you gone? I asked you if you wanted black or white coffee?”
“Oh, black, please.”
“And what else? Sausages, bacon, eggs? You can’t just sip coffee after a ride like that. Tomorrow we’ll go right up to the lake.”
“Lake?”
“Oh, yes, we have a tame lake of our own. Have you ever seen the blue bog-pools in Connemara? This lake is the same colour when the sun shines. Gentian. Like a jewel. The trouble with this place, it’s too big. We can’t control the poachers and gypsies.”
The tinker with the brown-black face, Cathleen remembered. With his persistence about selling her one of his kettles or pots, and his haunting songs.
“Tinkers, too?” she asked.
“Probably, although they keep more to the outskirts of the towns. They’ve got to sell their wares.”
“Do they all look alike?”
“How do you mean?”
“Rather dirty and impertinent, and burnt black with living out in all weathers.”
“And drunk, you could add,” said Liam.
“Didn’t gypsies used to steal babies?”
He looked at her keenly.
“That’s strictly fairy-tale stuff now. Are you thinking about that crazy rumour?”
“No,” said Cathleen, for Kitty had just come in, with a murmured good morning, and a glance under her lashes at the two of them.
“I’ll teach you our local customs,” said Liam. “Hullo, Kitty. How’s mother?”
“Just the same. I don’t think Mrs. Lamb would find our local customs particularly interesting.”
“Depends entirely on who, teaches them to her,” said Liam, grinning. “Sorry, Kit. Can I get you some coffee? You look a bit tired this morning. Didn’t you sleep?”
Kitty looked at her plate.
“I’m all right. With Aunt Tilly busy on that book, there’s more housework for me. And now we’re having this dinner-party someone has to get the place looking presentable. I suppose you thought, Mrs. Lamb, that living in a castle there would be a footman behind each chair. It would be no use anyone holding us up to ransom. They’d get a cheque that bounced.”
Cathleen didn’t miss the implication of Kitty’s last remark, but she didn’t begin to understand it.
After that Rory and Aunt Tilly came in. Rory was preoccupied and said nothing. Cathleen thought that Aunt Tilly glanced sharply and expectantly through her letters, but after tearing them open she visibly relaxed, and beaming with unexpected goodwill said, “Not a single bill this morning. Isn’t that splendid! Well, Mrs. Lamb. Are you ready for a hard day’s work, because I am.”
Cathleen felt as if the crumpled note were visible through the silk of her blouse. Was she to display it or not? How serious was it? Did helping the missing child depend on secrecy? She doubted her ability to concentrate on old love letters or any kind of letters that morning.
As it happened, Aunt Tilly was constantly interrupted by the telephone ringing. The people who had been invited to dinner were telephoning to accept.
Aunt Tilly had long breezy conversations with them all, and when the telephone rang for the fifth time she said, “Now that will be Colonel Green, and he’s the last.”
But it wasn’t Colonel Green. Cathleen heard the changed note in Aunt Tilly’s voice immediately.
She said, “Who?” and then, sharply, “This is Loughneath Castle. Yes. I said Loughneath Castle. You have the wrong number.”
She put the receiver down with an emphatic click.
“Damn fools!” she muttered.
A moment later the telephone rang again.
“Good heavens! I’ll never get any work done. This is absurd. Why don’t we have a butler to answer this?”
“Shall I?” said Cathleen.
“No. Stay where you are.”
She picked up the receiver again.
“Yes? Who are you this time? Who?” There was a long silence. Miss O’Riordan had turned away. Cathleen could see the white of her knuckles as she gripped the receiver. Then she said quite calmly, “If you have a complaint to make, I haven’t time to talk about it now. Ring me at three this afternoon.”
She slammed down the receiver.
“Fool!” she muttered again. “Bothering me with trivialities.”
Cathleen wondered if it were her imagination that the old lady had gone
very pale. Her skin had a waxen tinge at any time. Certainly her eyes were glittering, but they did that on very little provocation.
“Is it something I can assist you with?” Cathleen asked.
“Mind your own business!” Belatedly she apologized, “I’m sorry. I’m beginning to talk to you as if you were one of the family. You can thank your lucky stars you’re not, unless you’re cleverer than I am at fending off creditors.” She began to pace up and down, a thin tall figure, scarecrowish in a loose tweed jacket with a sagging tweed skirt. “Rory will have to do something about money. This is too humiliating. I need at least a thousand—” She swung round on Cathleen. “What’s the most we can hope for from that publisher as an advance?”
“We haven’t even begun the book.”
“But there is a book. You’ve got to admit that. Roger Casement once stayed here. And a long time ago a young man with a big nose called Arthur Wellesley who later won the Battle of Waterloo. Isn’t material like that worth a large advance?”
“We must write some of it first,” Cathleen said.
“Yes, yes, I suppose so. Then it must be Rory, the skinflint. Or one of my pieces of jewellery. By the way, Mrs. Lamb, you ride very well.”
Cathleen hadn’t imagined the windows of the castle wouldn’t have had eyes that morning.
“Thank you, Miss O’Riordan”
“My nephew Liam will admire that. But don’t take him seriously. He’s a great flirt.”
“Is he?”
Miss O’Riordan’s eyes narrowed.
“I hope I didn’t make the mistake of thinking you were plainer than you are. There’s nothing like a man talking flattering nonsense to make a young woman’s eyes sparkle, of course.”