by Dorothy Eden
Because she could never do anything inconspicuously, Miss O’Riordan’s passage across the room to the door was watched by everybody.
It was then that the tension caught Cathleen again. She didn’t hear what the elderly immaculate and well-preserved Lord Laver was saying. She stared at Mary Kate’s plump figure in the doorway. It somehow communicated distress.
Her words to Miss O’Riordan were inaudible, but Aunt Tilly had no such discretion. She turned and called in her harsh penetrating voice,
“Liam! Mary Kate says there’s a young woman asking to see you. She’s put her in the billiard room.”
Liam’s face went still.
“Who?”
A glass clinked. Then the room was utterly quiet. It was one of those dramatic moments as in a theatre, Cathleen thought, when the audience was caught in the unendurable suspense of the play. Everyone waited for the woman to be named. Eileen Burke?
Aunt Tilly lifted her raddled proud old face.
“She says her name is Moira, and that she’s your wife.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
EVERYONE WAS AWARE OF the strange duel between the two of them, the tall old woman in black, with her high-held head, and Liam, staring at her with eyes that were the colour of the water in the Connemara lakes on a sunny day. His face was incredulous, angry, baffled—and frightened.
“This is a trick,” he said in a low voice. He seemed unaware of anyone in the room except his aunt. Somehow this was private between the two of them.
“Then you’d better prove it, hadn’t you?” Miss O’Riordan’s voice was level and emotionless. “But if you were being married, dear boy, it would have been courtesy to tell your family.”
Liam gave a stifled exclamation. He pushed people aside and strode towards the door.
“Where’s Mary Kate? She’s playing a trick on me.”
“Mary Kate has merely had the sense not to leave a young woman standing at the door. Go and see her, Liam, for goodness’ sake. You’re spoiling my party.” Miss O’Riordan’s face was as emotionless as her voice, a mask, with eyes narrowed to expressionless slits. “She has a pretty name, though. Moira. I think we should all meet her, since Liam seems too reluctant. Who’s coming? Rory? Kitty?”
Liam had gone swiftly ahead down the passage to the billiard room. Cathleen felt someone take her arm. It was Rory.
“You’d better come, too.” His voice was as expressionless as his aunt’s had been.
It was almost dark in the passage, but in the long billiard room with the heavy curtains draped back from the windows there was the shadowy soft light of evening.
The girl sat at the other end of the room with her face half-turned to the door. She was very slight. Her red hair, luxuriant and shining, hung loose over her shoulders, half hiding her face. She drooped a little, as if she were tired. Indeed, she had seemed to be half-dozing in the dusk, for she didn’t start up until Liam exclaimed in a hoarse incredibly shocked voice.
“Moira! They told me you were dead! They tricked me!”
The red hair was flung back, the pale face lifted.
“Put on the lights, Liam,” said Magdalene Driscoll. “Let’s see who’s been tricked.”
Rory reached out and turned on the light switch. His fingers were biting into Cathleen’s arm, hurting badly. She found the pain curiously welcome. It made Liam’s outraged and frightened face almost bearable.
Almost bearable, too, the look of sad and hopeless confirmation in Aunt Tilly’s.
“So it worked, Liam,” she said flatly. “Yes, it was my scheme. I had to be sure.”
“Sure of what, for heaven’s sake?” Liam shouted. “That I once knew a girl called Moira? She wouldn’t be the first who’s wanted to marry me or even lied that she did. If this is a joke, Aunt Tilly, your sense of humour is appalling.”
“It isn’t a joke, Liam. It’s my apology—my public apology—to Shamus. Now, if our guests will excuse you, I’m afraid there are a couple of policemen waiting to see you. They seem to have located a woman called Eileen Burke in Athlone. She has some rather disturbing accusations to make against you, including assault and kidnapping.”
“Kidnapping! What utter nonsense! Kitty and I merely looked after her baby while she wasn’t able to. She’d fallen and hurt her leg. Kitty! Isn’t that true?”
Kitty put her face in her hands and began to weep, her childishly narrow shoulders shaking.
“I didn’t know!” she sobbed. “I didn’t know!”
“This woman claims you took the baby and said it would only be returned unharmed if she agreed to what you suggested. You apparently trusted her too much. But don’t we all make that mistake some time? Fight that out with the police, boy. I’m too old, too tired. Sweet heaven, I’m tired.”
Liam looked from left to right. The room, Cathleen thought, must have seemed to him full of accusing faces. His own face suddenly looked narrow and cunning, as it must have looked when he had stood over Eileen Burke, threatening her with harm to her child.
“Look out!” cried Colonel Green in the background.
But it was too late. Liam had backed swiftly to one of the long windows, flung it open, and leaped out.
Two of the men went to follow him, but Rory called sharply, “Let him go.”
“Let him go!” repeated Colonel Green in amazement. “If I get this right, that bastard—and I don’t apologize for the word—married this girl we’ve all been made to understand was Shamus’s wife, and completely tricked the poor thing.”
“Under Shamus’s name,” said Magdalene bitterly. “In a shoddy little ceremony at the Register office. And nobody knew, not even Shamus until that night when he saw Moira leaving the castle and somehow wrested the truth out of Liam. I’m not saying his death was an accident. But I do know he fell and cracked his head on that desk as a result of a blow from his charming youngest brother. And that his mother most likely came in and saw Liam leaving. What has she been trying to say lately but Liam, Liam’s living a lie! Pretty, isn’t it?” She bent her head. “Now I’ve had my revenge. If you all want to know, I hated it. Hated it. But my dear Shamus can now rest in peace.” Her voice shook. “Thank you, Miss O’Riordan. That was—very great—of you.”
She went out, trying with shaking fingers to pin up her hair. Kitty, although the tears were still shining on her cheeks, surprisingly enough had grown quite calm. She went across to Miss O’Riordan and put her arm around the stiffly erect figure.
“Come, Aunt Tilly. Let’s go upstairs. I’ll get you a drink.”
“Yes,” said Miss O’Riordan quite strongly. “I need a drink. Faugh! Not that insipid champagne. Whisky, it is. And none of your delicate touch.”
Colonel Green sniffed loudly.
“Remarkable woman,” he muttered. “Remarkable. Well, well! What’s to be done about your brother, Rory?”
“Leave him,” said Rory curtly. “He’ll have gone to the stables. That’s where he always went when he sulked as a boy. Shamus and I—perhaps we were to blame. How does one know?”
Cathleen curled her fingers in his. She felt his painful answering grip.
“It had to be done,” he said, as if speaking to himself.
“Always. He seemed to have been born that way. Hated being the youngest brother. He compensated himself with dreams of grandeur, such as breeding famous horses, winning great races, becoming a personality in that world. Marrying a humble person like Moira Regan didn’t fit into the picture at all. But she was a good girl, and marriage was the only way he could get her. That’s another characteristic of my brother, what he wants he goes to any lengths to get. Anyway, he lied to her from start to finish. He took rooms in Dublin and lived with her there whenever it suited him. He told her he was away a great deal on a travelling job. Moira must have been a dreamy and gullible person, perhaps even a little simple. She didn’t doubt his word at first. But later, by some means, she found out what he was—or who he had said he was—Shamus O’Riordan of Loughneath Castle.
So naturally, feeling a little indignant about the two rooms in Dublin, she came here to find out the truth of the matter.”
“Good lord! And no one saw her but Mary Kate?”
“Mary Kate left her in the billiard room, just as she did Magdalene tonight. She intended to tell Shamus when he came in that someone was waiting for him, but Liam came in first, luckily for him. Somehow, I don’t know how, except that Moira must have been an obedient person, he persuaded her to go back to Dublin. He’d make the announcement about their marriage, when he’d paved the way with his mother and so on. Moira doesn’t seem to have been an acquisitive girl. And God help her, she loved him and was ready to forgive him anything. She still thought he was Shamus, of course. But the next day she saw the shocking news of Shamus’s death in the paper.”
“And she thought it was her husband!” Cathleen exclaimed.
“She did. And she decided, with her quite outstanding pride and decency, that if the O’Riordans wanted nothing of her, she wanted nothing of them. She was too good for us, if the truth be known. Anyway, she packed her stuff and went off to London to start again. That’s why we found no trace of her when we looked for her. Liam, if you can believe it, helped us search.”
“And then?” Colonel Green asked.
“Three years later Moira came back on a visit to Dublin at the time of the Dublin Horse Show and there, staring at her from the newspaper, was a picture of my good-looking younger brother, Mr. Liam O’Riordan, winning one of the main jumping events. Her husband. Not Shamus, but Liam.”
“Extraordinary!” muttered the Colonel.
“Not more extraordinary than my sister-in-law. She might have been easily fooled, but she was all the things no one believes in much nowadays, idealistic, loyal, loving, true. The only action she took was to tell her two brothers the terrible thing that had happened to her, and while they were planning not only how she, but they too could cash in on such a windfall, she quietly drowned herself. She had loved Liam too much. She had had her heart broken.”
Cathleen’s fingers moved in his. He looked down at her.
“Do you never have melodramas like this in your country? The O’Riordans indulge in them constantly. As you’ll discover, my darling.”
Colonel Green harrumphed with delicacy.
“You two have something to say to one another. I think the rest of us could well follow Matilda’s example and go and find another drink. Remarkable business, this. Remarkable! But I must say I never thought Shamus…”
His voice died away as the other guests discreetly followed his example. A loud knock came at the door and Sergeant O’Grady put his head in.
“Sorry to interrupt you, sir. Been waiting for Mr. Liam O’Riordan. There’s a question or two I want to put to him.”
“You’ll find him down at the stables.”
“The stables?”
“Yes. He won’t put up a fight, sergeant. I know him. He always runs away.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Like leaving your mother and Shamus that night,” said Cathleen. “How could he bear to?”
“He didn’t dare to be seen in the room. He had to leave them to be found by someone else.”
“But your aunt has known about this?”
“Since Moira reappeared, yes. Liam confided in her, and she’s been protecting him. She’s been afraid poor mother would get her speech back and tell the truth. It must have been a nightmare for her, the gallant old thing.”
“Gallant?”
“Yes. The word’s the right one. And she’d have gone on protecting Liam if he hadn’t committed the ultimate offence, the unforgiveable one. He decided to cash in on Danny Regan’s game and go one better.”
Cathleen lifted a horrified face.
“You mean, he deliberately invented the story that he and Moira had had a child?”
“Exactly. He knew Aunt Tilly would go to any lengths to stop his name being blackened, with the scandal of his wife’s suicide. Indeed, to stop a possible prosecution for murder. Who knows how Shamus really died that night? And Liam couldn’t have his life blighted by a false marriage and an illegitimate child. The child was a brilliant stroke of imagination. The story was that it had been born in England, and Liam himself hadn’t known about it until recently.”
Rory’s eyes were dark with disillusion.
“I’m afraid my brother thought Aunt Tilly loved him enough even to sell the family jewels for him. He planned that if he got sufficient money he’d go to England and start breeding horses in a big way. He was always completely impractical. Had his head full of dreams, and filled Kitty’s with them, too. Poor little Kitty was his sycophant.”
“Rory, how did you find out all this?”
“I’d found out quite a lot from Moira’s brother in Dublin yesterday. I told you that. He, by the way, was the fellow who was lurking outside your hotel that night. The word had got around that you were collecting money. The crows were gathering. And they didn’t trust Liam. But the rest I got from Eileen Burke this afternoon.”
“You found her!”
“I wasn’t idle while you were so kindly dressing Kitty for her ball.”
“How did you find Eileen Burke?”
“Luck. A little deduction. I knew Liam wouldn’t risk her being in Galway. Athlone was the next big town. I guessed she had some injury; and of course, the baby boy. I simply went round the hotels. I might say she was so scared when I walked in, she must have thought I intended to take her baby, too.”
“Liam did that? He hid the baby in the west wing?”
“Yes, with Kitty’s help, and a little of my mother’s sedatives. They kept the boy asleep all the time.”
“So it really was Kitty who pushed me down the stairs, and who frightened Macushla that day. She must have an intense loyalty for Liam.”
“She has. She loved him and clung to him too much. I gather she overheard a telephone conversation that made her suspicious and frightened.”
“And knew that I’d heard it, too,” said Cathleen. “So I had to be watched. Made to go away, or even been got rid of. I think she must be a bit unbalanced where Liam is concerned. She would do anything to protect him, wouldn’t she?”
“I believe so. She is such a solitary. Aunt Tilly’s fault, mother’s, the fault of all of us.”
“Poor Kitty,” said Cathleen sadly. “But let’s keep her out of this, if we can. Did Eileen Burke tell you everything?”
“Everything. Even to blaming herself for persuading her weak husband into this. She’s an unpleasant woman, mercenary, vain, ambitious. She suspected Liam wasn’t playing fair, so she decided that she would deliberately—subtly, of course—spread the rumour about the child which hitherto only Aunt Tilly had known. She thought it would give the Regans a strong hold over Liam. You see the nasty little circle it was, the one biting the other. Liam was furious, of course, and that was how he and Danny came to have the argument at their rendezvous at the pool. There’s no doubt Danny was helped to his death. Liam couldn’t trust him any more. He had to keep him and his wife quiet until the last coup.”
“Which meant getting all the jewels?”
“Yes. Their loss wouldn’t have been discovered until my mother died, and then we’d be expected to assume that Aunt Tilly had sold them to pay her gambling debts. She had always been a reckless gambler. No doubt Liam thought the jewels were his legitimate share of the family fortune. At least, they were all that could be turned into cash, with Aunt Tilly’s co-operation. So that was the ultimatum in the last blackmailing letter to her. It told her not to laugh at anybody’s funeral because the wrong person was dead.”
“So then she must have known it was Liam, and she hid the ruby necklace in the hatbox for safety. But why did she still keep silent?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps she wanted retribution on a grand scale. That’s her nature. You heard her say she wanted to make a public apology to Shamus, for hiding the truth for so long. So finally she hit on the plan to st
artle Liam into giving himself away by getting Magdalene to act Moira. That’s why the light had to be just right, neither too dark nor too light. Aunt Tilly took me into her confidence this afternoon and we rehearsed Magdalene and Mary Kate. That’s how it happened.”
He moved tiredly. “But I think we should go and find Aunt Tilly.”
There were lights everywhere now. The castle looked as if it were lit for genuine festivities, not for a party that had come to an abrupt end, with the guests tactfully leaving.
Magdalene was coming down the stairs, her hair hidden by the filmy green scarf.
When Rory put out his hands to her she made a quick gesture, moving away.
“Just let me go, Rory. Oh, I’ll come back to your next party. But this one’s over. Finished.”
Her eyes were full of tears.
“I never did stop loving Shamus, you know. But I can think about him easily now. Good night, you two. If you’re looking for Kitty, she’s up with her mother, holding her hand. Aunt Tilly seems to have disappeared, the old monster.” There was wry affection in Magdalene’s voice, “Don’t let her have sung her swansong. The castle wouldn’t be the same without her.”
The big bedroom with the shadowy four-poster was empty. Upstairs Kitty sat on the floor with her head resting on the side of her mother’s bed, while in the background Peggy made violent signs not to disturb them.
“They’re both asleep,” she hissed.
Perhaps somewhere Miss O’Riordan was asleep, too, like Kitty, overcome with the exhaustion of sleepless nights, worry, fear, skipped meals, and finally the end of an illusion.
Rory was getting anxious.
“She won’t be asleep. Have you ever seen her sleeping? Personally, I don’t believe she ever closes her eyes. When I was small I used to think she was like a very thin old Buddha sitting with her hands clasped, and watching everything!”
He was talking to allay Cathleen’s fear.
“She couldn’t even have been very old then. She’s always seemed everlasting to me. She was a far greater personality in our childhood than mother ever was. I think mother was always terrified of her, and of my father, too. She was too gentle for a family like ours.”