Whistle for the Crows

by Dorothy Eden

  “So that’s where you both are,” said Kitty at the door.

  Neither of them knew how long she had been there. Not that it mattered. They’d said nothing she didn’t know already.

  No one had told Cathleen of Magdalene’s conviction that Shamus had not been married. But why should they have? It wasn’t her business.

  “Liam’s looking for you,” said Kitty. There was a red spot in each of her cheeks. “And Aunt Tilly will be expecting us all in the drawing-room.”

  “Sure, Kitty,” said Magdalene. “We’re only gossiping. Isn’t it time you untied those apron strings?”

  “Apron strings?”

  “Your Aunt Tilly’s. She’s exploiting you, the old devil. Don’t tell me. I know.”

  She walked to the door, giving Kitty’s cheek an affectionate pat. “Time you fell in love and kicked over the traces.”

  Was that the kind of treatment that would win Kitty’s confidence and affection? Looking at her stony face, Cathleen was sure it wasn’t. Was there a way at all? There was, of course, for Liam had found it. But he was a man, and that was probably the secret. Poor lame Kitty, shut into herself, longed for a man’s love, and automatically hated any woman who had had it.

  The night was warm, so Aunt Tilly had ordered that the doors on to the terrace remain open. In that way the curtains could be drawn back and their shabbiness hidden. But she had overlooked the fact that it provided an escape route for her guests. A figure already stood out there in the darkness, smoking a cigarette. Cathleen thought it was Liam, then realized that it was Rory, for Liam was talking politely to the hunting couple. Cathleen heard him saying, “I’m hoping to nominate Red for the Grand National if I can raise the wind.”

  “I thought you were going to put him up for sale at the Dublin Horse show.”

  “No, not Red. I won’t part with him. We haven’t had a National winner since my great-grandfather bred one. I can do as well as old Sean O’Riordan.”

  He looked up and saw Cathleen. He gave her the slightest flicker of an eyelid and presently, having drawn Colonel Green into the conversation, slid away from the group and edged Cathleen towards the door.

  “Let’s get some fresh air.”

  “Should we?”

  “Don’t I remember Aunt Tilly saying at breakfast that you might excuse yourself immediately after dinner?”

  Cathleen laughed.

  “So she did. But I’ve enjoyed the party.”

  “I’ve enjoyed looking at you.”

  They were out on the terrace, away from the splashes of light cast by the windows. Rory had disappeared. Liam took Cathleen’s arm and led her across the grass to the lily pool with its dead fountain. It, like the curtains and carpets, was scarred with neglect and age, the writhing stone fishes flaking dust into the murky water.

  It was romantic, nevertheless, even if it didn’t splash musically as it had done for the ears of the impulsive Oonagh when, flying to the arms of her lover, she had left a high-heeled slipper to posterity. And even perhaps for the young Matilda whose sable wrap and heirloom jewels had not succeeded in finding her a husband.

  “I have, you know,” Liam insisted. “You have lovely shoulders.”

  His fingers touched them. Cathleen shivered.

  “Cold?” he said.

  “No. Don’t, Liam.” She stepped back to avoid his embrace.

  “Don’t you like me?”

  “Yes. I do, but—”

  “When I saw you this morning after that fall I wanted to knock Rory down, and take you in my arms.”

  “Rory just happened to be there.”

  “I know. A habit of Rory’s.”

  Cathleen looked at him in surprise. It was the first time she had heard bitterness in his voice. Had Rory taken other girls of his?

  “As for me,” she said, “I just don’t want to get involved.”

  “You looked beautiful tonight in the candlelight. I couldn’t stop looking at you. What’s wrong? Are you scared to get involved? You’re too young to be a widow forever. You can’t turn into a spinster like Aunt Tilly or Kitty. Let me meet you in Dublin tomorrow night.”

  “You know I’m going!” Cathleen exclaimed.

  “It’s not a secret. Mind you,” his eyes gleamed in the darkness. “I don’t know why you’re going, though at that I can make a guess. The crafty old devil is up to one of her financial transactions. She won’t trust Rory or me because she doesn’t want us to know how much is involved. She puts the half of it on horses, you know.”

  “Really! Is that why she’s always complaining of having no money?”

  “And the other half she spends on making a splash like tonight, proving the O’Riordans aren’t has-beens. Where can I meet you tomorrow night?”

  “You can’t, at all. I’d lose my job, to begin with, if your aunt got to hear about it.”

  “She won’t hear about it. I’ll say I’m going to Athlone to look at a brood mare. Let’s say the bar of the Royal Hibernian hotel at seven o’clock. There’s a fountain there that really works.” He didn’t attempt to kiss her this time. He merely put his hand on her arm and looked at her pleadingly. Beneath his gentleness she sensed, for the first time, an intensity, a will that was not to be shaken. What Liam O’Riordan wanted he would try very hard to get.

  “I’ll bring you back to life, my darling.”

  His soft voice was persuasive. Jonathon’s soft voice, when he wanted something had been irresistible. The voice of a man with only self-love… And now Jonathon seemed so long ago.

  She must be living in a dream if she thought that Liam had any more of Jonathon than a surface similarity.

  She longed, yet dreaded, to come back to life.

  “I’m enjoying this job, Liam. Don’t spoil it for me.”

  “I intend making it for you.” He had taken her warning as consent. He squeezed her arm. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”

  For ten minutes she had forgotten Magdalene and that curiously distraught scene in her bedroom. But now, to change the subject and evade the intimacy Liam was forcing on her, she said casually,

  “Liam, did you know that Magdalene refuses to believe Shamus was ever married?”

  “Wouldn’t you, in her position? A woman has to save her pride, I imagine.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  “Aunt Tilly has her here to let bygones be bygones. But I wouldn’t take too much notice of an hysterical woman.”

  Wouldn’t it be Magdalene, Cathleen thought, who was generously letting bygones be bygones? She certainly looked remarkably unhysterical as, later, she put on her wrap to leave. She said to Cathleen in a low voice, “That thing we were talking about. You might investigate Miss O’Riordan’s sudden craze for orphans.”

  “Sudden?”

  “In the last two years. She decided she needed a pet charity. Perhaps she’s doing penance for something. Who knows?”

  Magdalene’s eyes were sharp and wicked. She had planted some more seeds of revenge. Liam was right. Her pride had made her hate the O’Riordans. She wasn’t letting bygones be bygones at all.

  CHAPTER TEN

  IT WAS THE FIRST time that Cathleen had been in Miss O’Riordan’s bedroom, the magnificent master bedroom with its long embrasured windows that encompassed the formal gardens, the sheltering bank of shrubs, the sweep of green fields, and on the horizon the misty indigo hills of Connemara.

  It wasn’t right that an elderly spinster should be occupying the carved four-poster with its rich but tattered hangings, a marriage bed if ever there was one. But Miss O’Riordan in her sable wrap, and with her haughty and overbearing air made her possession indisputable.

  She held out a box to Cathleen.

  “Here it is. Guard it with your life.”

  The melodrama was scarcely necessary. True, the brooch was an historic piece that rightly should have been sold in a famous London auction room. But one hardly expected to be attacked and robbed on the train to Dublin. Yet the far-fetched thought brought
an unwelcome memory of the tinker’s impertinent dark brown face thrust towards her…

  “I’ll be careful, Miss O’Riordan.”

  “And by the way, Mr. O’Donnell will pay you in cash. Just a little precaution. I don’t want any nosey tax officials asking questions.”

  “But you’d be perfectly safe, Miss O’Riordan. This represents capital.”

  “Spare me your knowledge, Mrs. Lamb. Why should the Government know I’m in the desperate position of having to dispose of valuables? Let’s keep our pride, what we have left of it. Now be off or you’ll miss your train. Since we can’t work together I intend to spend the day resting. I’m exhausted after last night. But it was quite a success, don’t you agree? The O’Riordans haven’t lost their touch. That claret was put down by my father. I hope Colonel Green, the old scandalmonger, didn’t convince you that the gypsy in the painting was our ancestor.”

  “Was she?” Cathleen asked.

  “Only on the wrong side of the blanket, if so. Who knows? I sometimes think the strain comes out in Rory. And I shouldn’t be surprised if I had a little of it myself. Oh, I’m a match for anyone, Mrs. Lamb. Let them try their tricks.”

  Looking at the narrowed malicious eyes, Cathleen was quite prepared to believe her. But she suspected an undercurrent of strange seriousness in that last remark, almost an undercurrent of fear…

  As well as disposing of the brooch, Cathleen knew what she intended to do in Dublin.

  At three o’clock, with five hundred pounds in ten-pound notes bulging inside her bag, she went to the office of the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages. She meant to see for herself the famous entry of Shamus’s marriage.

  When she did find it, she stared in disbelief. Shamus O’Riordan, son of Patrick and Cecilia O’Riordan of Galway to Moira Frances Regan, daughter of…

  Cathleen scarcely saw the rest of it. The name was shouting at her. Moira!

  The name that had been in that scrap of letter she had picked up in the Gresham Hotel on her first day in Dublin. The sentence that had said Moira should have come to her senses before it was too late…

  Shamus’s small lie in describing himself as a commercial traveller from Galway city, which no doubt had been meant to keep his wife away from the castle, seemed insignificant in comparison with this.

  Yet, out in the cool windy sunshine, she asked herself what she was in such a fuss about. Just as Shamus was not an uncommon name in Ireland, neither was. Moira.

  How could she know this was the Moira to whom the letter referred? Wasn’t that a too improbable coincidence?

  Yet there had been the rest of it about someone deserving to be murdered, but that one couldn’t kill the golden goose. In other words, the goose who paid up. And the distraught look of the man, like and yet unlike that dark-faced tinker. For how could a tinker have dressed up to go into a smart hotel and know how to behave there?

  Moira… So that was the name of the ghost girl who had since disappeared into thin air.

  The money in Cathleen’s bag seemed suddenly terribly heavy. What was it for?

  Belatedly she remembered the most important thing of all. She had meant to search the register of births over the last five years for the birth of a child to an O’Riordan.

  She went back into the office and paid her fee. But this search proved fruitless. There was no son or daughter born to a Shamus O’Riordan or to a Moira Regan. She carefully checked both sources.

  The baby remained as much a ghost as its mother.

  She was glad she was going to meet Liam that evening. These things must be discussed. Should she take all that money back to Miss O’Riordan? Was Miss O’Riordan in danger? Deserves to be murdered… The words were burnt into her mind. If she didn’t have the money (not to place surreptitious bets on race horses, but for other purposes) would she be murdered?

  Cathleen had little time or inclination to take trouble over her dressing. She clasped on a pearl necklace, brushed her hair and swiftly pinned it up, retouched her make-up, noticing that she was flushed and distracted, and hoping Liam wouldn’t misinterpret the reason.

  She was ten minutes late at the hotel, and saw that Liam was already there at the bar, his back towards her.

  She rushed up to him.

  “Liam!”

  He turned, his black eyes full of mockery.

  “Rory!” she exclaimed.

  “Second time,” he drawled. “Second disappointment?”

  “You’re awfully alike from the back.” That was all she could think of to say.

  “What will you drink?”

  “Oh—nothing, thank you. I’m waiting for Liam as now you must know.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Red seems to have developed a chill. He didn’t want to leave him.”

  “Did he send you to explain?”

  Rory laughed shortly.

  “Liam wouldn’t send me anywhere.”

  Cathleen knew that Liam wouldn’t leave his most valuable horse if it were in danger. There would be a message from him at her hotel, of course. She had rushed in and out without making inquiries for messages.

  But if Liam hadn’t sent Rory, how had Rory known where to come at exactly that time?

  “You overheard us last night!” she accused.

  He grinned.

  “You should choose a more private place if you don’t want your assignations overheard.”

  “Oh! You’re impossible. First you wouldn’t look at me and now you’re following me. What are you up to?”

  “I liked you better with your hair tumbled,” he said seriously. “The way it was when Macushla threw you. Like this!”

  She ducked from his hand.

  “Don’t be a fool!”

  He grinned again. “Yes, I’m following you. What did you discover at the register office?”

  “Nothing you don’t know already.”

  “Perhaps not. But you come to it with a fresh eye, a remarkably analysing eye, if I may say so. Which is strange, for it looks so dreamy. Made for gazing on fountains and flowers, or, shall we say, a loved countenance. It doesn’t look at all like the gimlet it is.”

  “You make me sound like the one-eyed gorgon,” Cathleen said, without amusement. “Don’t tell me when they handed out the blarney they missed you.”

  “Sure, and don’t you believe it! I haven’t begun yet. Well, Cathleen. Did you notice anything? I’m serious, and this is important. And I know you did. You came rushing in here, bursting with some sort of news. You can tell me, you know. Perhaps I haven’t been exactly encouraging before. But I mean this.”

  “You can shut me out until I’m of some use!”

  “Never mind being feminine. And I still don’t like your interference. But you’d better tell me. Hadn’t you? And you can trust me, you know.”

  “Can I?”

  “Sure,” he said easily, and she was farther away than ever in knowing what to believe.

  But she had to tell him because there was no one else. He listened intently and without interruption. He said the name “Moira,” softly like a caress. He had a beautiful voice when he cared to speak softly and with feeling. Probably he hadn’t missed out on the blarney after all. Or had the name Moira a special meaning for him?

  Then he asked her a great many questions about the drunken writer of the letter, commented that it wasn’t an unusual state for a Dublin citizen, and finally said,

  “I don’t see how we can take it personally. Do you? I mean, why should this thing have blown up just now? It’s three years since Shamus died, and four since he married.”

  “There was the day your aunt was having trouble with a workman at the orphanage,” Cathleen said irrelevantly. “We were delayed in leaving Dublin because of it.”

  “What workman?”

  “I don’t know. Someone who apparently accused her of having no conscience.”

  Rory said nothing for a full minute. Then he beckoned t
o a waiter and ordered more drinks. He leaned back comfortably in his chair.

  “Where would you like to eat?”

  “Are we going to eat?”

  “Naturally. Liam’s absence needn’t deprive you of food.”

  “I can get something back at my hotel.”

  He behaved as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “Do you know, you look alive for the first time since I met you.”

  Cathleen was very conscious of her flushed cheeks.

  “You mean, it’s the first time you’ve looked at me.”

  “Don’t you believe it! But you haven’t lost your husband for so long, have you? You’ve still got him inside you, I think.”

  Cathleen hadn’t expected so much perception from him. It shook her badly. She wanted to say that she wasn’t looking at Jonathon any longer, except in perplexity as to which one of them had failed. At last she was facing that knowledge. It was bitter and healthy. But it didn’t make her equal to Rory O’Riordan’s complexities.

  Later in the evening, that was so different from what she had anticipated, Cathleen saw that Rory was drinking too much, and wondered if he were trying to forget the name Moira, or its owner. He had followed her to Dublin for a reason, and probably kept Liam away for the same reason. He must have been afraid of what she would discover.

  His eyes, in the dim light of the restaurant, were amazingly bright.

  “Where’s the money, Cathleen?”

  She had thought he was going to pay her another of his satirical compliments. She hadn’t expected this.

  “What money?”

  “That little courier job my aunt asked you to do. It was hardly fair expecting it of you, so I’ll relieve you of the responsibility!”

  “Don’t you dare!” Cathleen held her bag tightly. “This is her money, and I deliver it to her.”

  “Good lord, I believe you think I mean to rob you.”

  “How do I know what you’re up to?”

  Rory gave a faint amused smile.

  “What am I up to? Protecting you from other thieves. Protecting Aunt Tilly from folly. Besides gaining medals in heaven just as she is. I intend to call at the Mary and Joseph Orphanage in the morning. You can either be ready to leave at eight, and wait while I see the sisters, or I’ll come back for you afterwards.”