Whistle for the Crows

by Dorothy Eden

  “Rory, do you think she’s gone out looking for Liam?”

  “No.”

  “But she cared so much for him—”

  “Aunt Tilly loves or hates. Something you’ll discover for yourself. She won’t be looking for Liam now. When she made her decision this morning, that was the end.”

  “Then I know where she’ll be!” Cathleen cried. “She was there the night of the thunderstorm. In the room where she keeps her old clothes. Her museum.”

  And there, surely enough, she sat, a stiff figure on the upright chair, a cross between the Buddha Rory had talked of and a fashionable young woman of the late nineteen twenties, dressed in a sequin-trimmed ball dress. Her hands were quietly folded in her lap, her face and neck grotesquely wrinkled above the youthful dress. Her narrowed eyes, turned to Rory and Cathleen, had a stubborn crafty look.

  “If you’ve come to persuade me to go downstairs, you’re wasting your time,” she said. “I’ll not be at that ball.”

  “Everyone’s gone home,” Cathleen said gently. “And you must come to bed.”

  “Ha! Those words have a familiar sound. Come to bed, he says. Come to bed, Tilly. You look damned fine in that dress, he says. You’re a fine woman, Tilly O’Riordan. Ah sure, there’s time to talk of wedding rings later. Have some more champagne, my darling! Come to bed…”

  She was twisting something in her long bony fingers.

  “We could hear the violins,” she said. “They were playing the old Irish songs. And it will not be long now…” her voice was thin and hoarse and absurdly off key, “till our wedding day…”

  With matter-of-fact vigour she tore the paper in her hands to pieces.

  “Michael O’Neill, the black-hearted traitor,” she said grimly. “And down there in the dark at this minute his son is running away. Like his father ran away. All these years I’ve given him all that misguided love. I might have known he’d be his father over again. I took a long time to be convinced there wasn’t something to save. I didn’t mind him getting in a mess over a girl. That’s human enough. And I wouldn’t believe there was anything sinister about that wretched man’s drowning. A lucky accident, I thought. But then there was the business of the Brady child not being who I’d been told he was. And that morbid discovery of Mrs. Lamb’s. The baby’s shoe. One has to face facts some time. One doesn’t back a horse with a faulty heart. One destroys it…”

  She looked up with her keen raking gaze.

  “Well, you two! What are you staring at? If you must know, I put on this dress and sat here pretending to myself that that ball had never started, that Michael O’Neill had never set foot in this house, that—” Her lips began to tremble uncontrollably, “Damn you, stop staring! If you must know, it was worth it. Heaven help me, I’d do it again. Even to that grisly four months in Brighton in the company of your saintly mother who was having a cuckoo foisted on her.”

  She glared at Cathleen and Rory.

  “I’ve told you nothing, do you hear? Nothing.”

  She got to her feet. Just for one moment her aggressive mask cracked and the agony showed through. Then she said briskly.

  “Now we must make amends. Kitty keeps the rubies. Do you hear, Mrs. Lamb?”

  “What’s it to do with me?” Cathleen asked.

  “It’s no more to do with you than any of the other things you’ve resolutely made your business since you came here. But although I’m old and eccentric and a little drunk and perhaps mad, I’m not blind. Now leave me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  THE FANTASTIC EVENING WAS not yet over. Patsy had come stumbling in the front door crying in a brokenhearted voice, “That big brute of a stallion has come back saddled and riderless. Mr. Liam should never have been riding him in the dark. I’ve said over and over that beast weren’t to be trusted.”

  Rory’s face went still.

  “Where are the police?”

  “They’ve taken torches. Young Jim’s gone, too. I’d be thinking he’d be down at the jumps. Are you coming, sir?”

  “Stay here.” Rory said to Cathleen, and was gone.

  So she had to sit with only a tear-smeared swollen-eyed Mary Kate for company, and think of the magnificent ruthless old woman upstairs tearing up the letter Cathleen herself had unearthed in her research— You must have been bewitched or under the influence of Patsy’s poteen. I deny every word…—and having the courage to bring her greatly-loved son for whom she had lied, stolen, and almost wrecked Kitty’s life, to justice. Perhaps Liam had been the victim of the circumstances of his birth, perhaps he had inherited his father’s weaknesses, or too much of his mother’s arrogance and ruthlessness without her leavening of humour and courage. Certainly his mother had secretly spoilt him outrageously, encouraging him to think that he would be denied nothing and forgiven everything. Miss O’Riordan’s loves were violent and loyal and all-embracing until the turning point came. Liam had shown a diabolical cleverness in knowing he could exploit his mother’s vulnerability and guilt about a child born secretly and irregularly. His stupidity had lain in not recognizing that there could be a breaking-point in her loyalty.

  Perhaps at the end Cathleen herself had been responsible for his downfall. She guessed he had begun to want her as badly as he had wanted Moira Regan, but he had had the sense to know she couldn’t be had so simply. So he had had to strut and show off, to boast of his ambitions, most of all to acquire money. And cope with the complication of Kitty’s jealous love for a brother who was not a brother…

  At midnight they brought in the hurdle bearing the broken body…

  The conversation in Miss O’Riordan’s museum might not have taken place. It was never referred to again. A week later Miss O’Riordan sent for Cathleen.

  Cathleen found her sitting up in bed, the sable cape askew over her shoulders, her face sharp and alert. Kitty stood at the window, her back turned.

  “Well, Mrs. Lamb. Now you’ve been here long enough to discover the sort of people we are, are you prepared to stay?”

  The week had been sad and confusing, and very lonely. Cathleen had seen little of Miss O’Riordan or of Kitty with her red-rimmed eyes, even less of Rory. She had kept out of the way, working in the library, but feeling useless and forgotten.

  “But of course, Miss O’Riordan. We’ve scarcely begun our work. As soon as you feel fit enough—”

  “We’re not talking about my state of mind,” Miss O’Riordan interrupted brusquely, “but yours. As I understand it, a book can only be a success if its author feels personally involved. Do you now regard yourself as sufficiently identified with us?”

  It was as if all the melodrama and tragedy had been laid on as a testing process for her! An ordeal by fire, to prove her a worthy historian of this crazy family. Cathleen meant to say that she felt more than a little involved. Instead she answered simply,

  “I feel alive again.”

  Miss O’Riordan regarded her with interest.

  “Now I begin to see what was lacking in your appearance when I first interviewed you. Then I thought you were another Cecilia. Now I can see you’re not.” There was a certain satisfaction in her voice. “Definitely not.”

  Presently she added, “Mere good looks aren’t enough. It’s the spirit inside the flesh that makes beauty. I believe that strange creature, Moira, had it. Mary Kate says so. Liam was luckier than he knew.”

  She spoke quietly and without bitterness. Her own fiery and undefeated spirit lay very close beneath the finely-drawn flesh.

  But in a moment her eyes were snapping vigorously.

  “Then here’s my plan, Mrs. Lamb. Tomorrow you’ll drive Kitty and me to Dublin. I want to see Sister Mary Martha who may need a little reassuring after that perplexing affair with the Brady child. Besides, I’d like to see the little ones again. While I do that, you are to take Kitty shopping. Rory has stopped behaving like an unpopular Government and handed me back my five hundred pounds, together with a little extra. As long as there’s something left so
that I can follow a horse or two, you may spend the major part of it on a good wardrobe for Kitty. She’s to start leading a much more active life. See that there’s a good ball dress, and some snappy little cocktail affairs.”

  Kitty spun round.

  “Aunt Tilly, I won’t be treated like a schoolgirl. I can buy my own clothes.”

  Aunt Tilly gave her hoarse chuckle.

  “Splendid, child, splendid! I detected a flash of O’Riordan spirit there, thank God.” Her voice hardened. “But on this occasion you’ll do as I say. Mrs. Lamb isn’t patronizing you. She’s shown already that she can be your friend, and little enough you deserve that.”

  Kitty flushed, but stubbornly kept her head high.

  “I’m not sorry for anything.” In a low voice she added, “I’d have died for Liam.”

  “And now you’ll live for me. We’re a diminished family, and we must stick together. And by the way, get some riding clothes. I want you to learn to ride.”

  “Aunt Tilly!” Kitty spoke in a shocked whisper. “You’re not trying to make me take Liam’s place!”

  Aunt Tilly sat upright, her eyes blazing.

  “How dare you! What a thing to say!”

  Her flat chest heaved. She had difficulty in controlling her emotion. At last she said dryly, tiredly,

  “No, I’m not trying to make you take your brother’s place. I’m merely trying to make sure that you find a husband.”

  Dublin was grey beneath a grey sky. The ragged jaunty beggar was playing his accordion on the humped bridge over the Liffey. Gulls drifted in slanting flight. A red-headed girl wandered dreamily by, swinging her shopping bag. A cat washed itself in the doorway of a shop spilling over with secondhand books and grime-obscured paintings. With a lively jingling, a cart drawn by a leisurely donkey, and full of straggle-haired bright-eyed children, threaded its way among the traffic. Someone was whistling. There’s a colleen fair as may, for a year and for a day…

  Cathleen looked round with swift apprehension. A workman, carrying a crate into a warehouse, stopped whistling and winked impudently.

  Her heart quickened. There were no crows here. They had all flown away.

  But a hand was laid on her arm, holding her back.

  “What have you done with Kitty?” Rory asked.

  “What are you doing here? Following me?” She had almost not been able to keep the joy out of her voice.

  “Sure, I’ve been following you.”

  “Then you know I left Kitty at the hotel. She was tired. We’ve shopped all day. Successfully, too. You’d be surprised at how animated Kitty got. But now she wants to rest, and I—”

  “Yes? What about you?”

  “Did you follow me particularly?”

  “I did. I wanted to talk to you away from the castle, clear of all that mess. Do you understand?”

  “I think so.”

  “Cathleen!” Again his hard grip was hurting her. “You’ve been haunted by your child. What about your husband?”

  Jonathon—she remembered how he had sometimes withdrawn his hand when she had held it too eagerly, too publicly. She knew what it was now—he had been a perfectly good man who had somehow diminished her spirit.

  Rory would hold her in public, bruising her if he wanted to, proclaiming to the world his possession. He would hurt her and make her blazingly angry, and she would never for a moment not know what it was to be alive. Their children would have brilliant black eyes and smiles that broke one’s heart.

  “Jonathon’s gone, Rory,” she said soberly. “No more ghosts.”

  “Then we’d better be getting home.” Only his hurting grip betrayed his feelings. “Hadn’t we?”

  The pain stung her to retaliate.

  “Yes, and I’ll tell you this, Rory O’Riordan. Magdalene said you were in love with someone else, but if you dare to be—if you dare—”

  He spoke in his charming deliberate brogue.

  “You’ve got a quick tongue in your head, to be sure. If you’ll not be keeping a check on it I’ll take the pins out of your hair and let it tumble down. That would be a foine sight in O’Connell Street. A very foine sight,” he said in his caressing voice.

  It was impossible to think that his eyes had ever been hard or insolent or angry, as they dwelt now on thoughts of her spilt hair.

  About the Author

  Dorothy Eden (1912–1982) was the internationally acclaimed author of more than forty bestselling gothic, romantic suspense, and historical novels. Born in New Zealand, where she attended school and worked as a legal secretary, she moved to London in 1954 and continued to write prolifically. Eden’s novels are known for their suspenseful, spellbinding plots, finely drawn characters, authentic historical detail, and often a hint of spookiness. Her novel of pioneer life in Australia, The Vines of Yarrabee, spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list. Her gothic historical novels Ravenscroft, Darkwater, and Winterwood are considered by critics and readers alike to be classics of the genre.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1962 by Dorothy Eden

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  978-1-4804-3005-1

  This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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