“Never mind about the hat for Christ’s sake.”
“Well then, I went out to the kitchen, guessing that Miss Ruby might be there with Moira. I found them together, all right …”
“Go on, Patrick.”
“I couldn’t guess the whole truth at first. There was only Miss Ruby, crouched on the stairway to the cellar, threatening me …
“You sure you’ve got that right?”
“I should know when I’m being threatened.”
“Okay, let’s skip that part. What happened next?”
“The policemen took her away.”
“Hold on a second. Where was Moira hanged?”
“In the cellar.”
“Which is where you came on Ruby. So Ruby had to have discovered the body?”
“That could be.”
“But she didn’t tell the police about Moira?”
“I don’t recall she did, now that you mention it.”
“What happened after the police and Ruby had gone?”
“I returned to the kitchen, to check the cellar where … well, where Miss Ruby had threatened me.”
“Whatever.”
“Poor Moira was arse over teakettle in the gloom at the bottom of the stairs. There was a piece of rope’round her neck, fresh cut I’d guess. The rest of it was still strung from a ceiling hook.”
I checked my watch. “It’s nearly two o’clock, Patrick. How in hell have you kept my uncle in the dark about all this? And what are the police doing right now?”
“There are no policemen here.”
“You never called?” I said. And I realized, too, that Ruby must not have reported what she saw. Why?
“I’ll have Moira quietly taken away, in due time.”
“You’re telling me the body’s still there in the cellar?”
“Sir, I—”
I slammed down the telephone. I dialed the operator, who gave me the number of the American Embassy. Then I called for help, my fingers not particularly steady as I pumped unfamiliar coins into the phone.
“My name is Neil Hockaday. I’m an American citizen. I’m in trouble.”
“Hold, please.”
It could have been a minute or two, although I would have sworn it was an hour, before someone returned to the line. “Your name and place of permanent residence, please?”
“Neil Hockaday, New York.”
“City or state?”
“Both.”
“Occupation?”
“Police detective.”
“Relatives here in Ireland?”
“Look, would you put away the form? I’m in trouble here—and I’m in a hurry.”
“Aren’t we all? What seems to be the trouble, Mr. Hockaday?”
“The Dublin cops.”
“Come again?”
“We’re in trouble with the police, I think.”
“We—?”
“My … companion, Ruby Flagg.”
“Someone named Ruby’s in trouble with the Garda?”
“They’ve got her, now they’re looking for me.”
“Let me get this straight. You’re a cop, and you’re in trouble with other cops?”
“I’m in the news, for Christ’s sake. Do you read the papers?”
“Sir, there’s no need to take that tone with—”
I slammed down the telephone again. I took Brady’s card from my wallet and called him. There was I, so desperate I was chasing a chaser and thinking maybe my life depended on catching him. I somehow had to keep Brady, of all people, from smelling this desperation.
Brady’s “office” was a tired woman with a cigarette voice and the sound of a lot of squawlers around her. “Would it be an emergency job of business?” she wanted to know.
“Well, from the dead woman’s point of view, I guess not,” I said.
“Oh, my, we’d best allow the solicitor himself to decide that,” she said. She told me to ring a second telephone number that turned out to belong to a pub convenient to a hospital and the Dublin Garda headquarters called the Gnarling Cur.
“Oh, but I’m not at all sure I’m right for you,” Brady said when he finally answered my page. “You seemed so disappointed the last time you required my services. I know that I myself felt a bit … shall we say, cheapened?”
“Listen to me close, Brady, because I haven’t got time to dance with you. I am now making my way over to the Garda headquarters. If I don’t see your ass waiting for me outside that door, I’m going in to tell the man how you slipped out the other day when Keegan got it. Something tells me the cops are looking for a goat in the case. I’ll make sure you qualify.”
“Mr. Hockaday, see—!”
“No. Let’s see it my way, Brady. I’m in a lot of heat, so I’m capable of spilling anything that might make it cooler for me. If that means burning you, who cares?”
Then to be perfectly consistent, I slammed down the telephone. If nothing else, I needed a witness for going to see Dublin’s finest. Brady was the best I could do on short notice and low pay.
I pulled the brim of Snoody’s hat down over half my face and headed toward Garda headquarters, using the side streets that paralleled O’Connell. Ten minutes later I rounded the corner at Roxboro Lane to O’Connell Street and the headquarters building came into view.
So did a clutch of overaged schoolgirls in tartan plaid skirts and knee socks and green cardigans, about to go into their mumbling act around a couple of Japanese tourists. I was halfway to rescuing the Japanese when I saw Brady up there on the headquarters steps, right by the door where he was supposed to be.
Brady saw me, too. And when he did, he pointed me out to the two beefy constables standing next to him.
Then the constables came running at me, guns in hand.
Chapter 37
Chancellor Peadar Cavanaugh leaned back in his chair and waited for his young interviewer to respond. He had time to smoke one Rothman’s, then nearly half another before Oliver Gunston managed to speak.
And then, he only stammered, “What you’ve told me here, it’s … Well, the plan is surely extraordinary, but …” Gunston could not finish the thought. More to the core of him, he could not begin such a thought. The Nevermore Plan. Inconceivable, lunatic …
Cavanaugh assumed as much. Of course. The most unbearable thing about his old age, he had learned, was the weight of experience, which had rendered so many things of the few years remaining so utterly predictable. He would gladly suffer the loss of yet another lifelong friend in exchange for a day with a single surprise in it.
“Permit me to help you through this,” Cavanaugh said. “The scoop I’ve just handed you … Oh, by the way, that is what you call it in your business, is it not? A scoop?”
“Aye.”
“Here you have a sensational story, and yet you know very well it cannot be published. Certainly not in the Irish Guardian. Is that not your dilemma?”
“It is.”
“And why?”
“Well, I …”
“Come now, Gunston. I’m told you were a fine bright student here at the college not so very long ago. One of the eager types—on full scholarship were you? You haven’t gone all cobwebby over there at that good gray lady of a paper, have you? Tell us now, why is your wonderful scoop of no value?”
Gunston wondered why Cavanaugh was taunting him. That crack about his scholarship status. He tucked the thought away. Then said, “I’d be daft if I brought it up to my editor?”
“Exactly so. I’ve long known the kind of men who rise to power in newspapers. Now even the women, too, God help us. Tell any of these cretins about Nevermore and they’d sic the doctors on you.”
“They’d think me mad?”
“Positively barking. They haven’t it in them to see that insanity is the rational adjustment to an insane world. Therefore, they refuse to publish madmen’s thoughts, until they’re dead. It’s why the press is such a bore. By the way, Gunston, I find the stress of your sentences disturbin
g.”
“The stress?”
“One more small sadness of our time. Men and women of your tender age no longer assert themselves in conversation. You say so little anymore that ends with nice, emphatic periods. It’s all about question marks now. So early on in life. Pity.”
“Speaking for myself, and nobody else my age, I’m up to stuffing with answers,” Gunston said. “But I don’t mind trying you for one. If you knew there was no way for me to publish, then why did you tell me?”
Now here it was the knowing Cavanaugh stroking his white beard, searching for the words to his thoughts. He brightened, finally, and said, “Why, Gunston—I thank you!”
“You’re welcome?”
“I simply don’t know why I told you. This surprises me. I am in your debt.”
“Chancellor…?”
“Never mind.” Cavanaugh took the silk from his breast pocket and wiped his lips. “It must have been all the lovely memories brought back to me by looking at your picture that intoxicated me, loosening my tongue like a jar of mist. My, just saying that makes me thirsty.”
Cavanaugh twirled in his chair to a credenza behind his desk, on which was a small decanter. “Join me?” he asked Gunston.
“Thanks, no.”
Cavanaugh poured himself three fingers of whiskey, then twirled around to face Gunston.
“May I see it again, the photograph?” he said. “And where did you say you came across it?”
Gunston went into the manila folder on his lap. He slid out the photograph of the Dublin Men’s Society of Letters and propped it on the edge of Cavanaugh’s desk, between a set of old-fashioned quill pens and a quite up-to-the-moment telephone console.
“As I told you,” Gunston repeated, “the source is confidential.”
“That you did say. And you still won’t allow me actually to hold it in my own hands?”
“I think not.” Gunston kept his own hand on the photograph, ready to snatch it away if Cavanaugh made a move on it.
“Only good sense, I suppose; although, as you realize, you’ll have no need of it.” Cavanaugh shrugged, then leaned forward and took in all the old faces once more.
“My, look at them all,” he said, sipping his drink. “I do believe I hear us again—singing old Billy Yeats’s unsingable songs, written to the tunes of ‘O’Donnell Abu’ and ‘The Heather Glen.’ God, it was lovely.”
“And a lovely chorus of goose-steppers you were then,” said Gunston.
“You don’t approve.”
“I surprised you again?”
“Not the way you think. The surprise to me is that you’re not insisting I’m a wise man. Most young fools give me that awful respect as readily as a tip of the hat.”
“There’s nothing wise to your brand of cynicism.”
“Bold and emphatic! Just see how you’ve come’round to speaking your mind so well. Pray, tell us what more you think.”
Gunston took a breath. “I think there are sociopaths on all sides of a war. I think your Nevermore Plan is only fostering a grotesque symbiosis. One terrorist outfit without the other, and you’re all unemployed. You’re not so much about battling the Brits as you are about maintaining some mutually agreeable level of deceit, destruction and murder.”
“Now that is a fine flow of words, well chosen to indict,” Cavanaugh said. “You will find it surprising, therefore, that I agree with all you’ve just said. Aye,’tis the very genius of the Nevermore Plan—and our basic defense.”
“The dirty business of a noble cause never ends? That’s your rationale?”
“And see how we didn’t even have to invent the notion? After all, it’s a constant running through all man’s fool history. People soon forget when the fighting dies down. So we make it our business to keep the pot boiling, no matter what.”
“So you’re saying …” Again, Gunston had trouble accepting his own line of thinking. “You’re saying, you’d help the other side? The Royal Ulster Constabulary—that bunch of Prod fanatics up there? You’d help them against your own kind?”
“I’ll say only that we’ll do what we have to do to keep mistrust alive and well.”
Gunston stood up. “I need air, you’re making me sick,” he said. “You sit here at this campus, you and your elites, and you—”
“You think we’re elitists, boy?” Cavanaugh’s voice rose, and his face reddened. He finished off the whiskey. “Think again. And then if you like, I’ll tell you of the people where Aidan Hockaday and I come from.”
“I was on scholarship, as you point out. I know what it is to come to this place the hard route. I don’t need to be hearing your own biography.”
“Perhaps you do, Gunston. Think of the famine time. No priest, no capitalist, no constable and no scholar died. Only the common people. We died! Now, look how we’ve done by that injustice—the Nevermore Plan. Look how we’ve planted ourselves amongst the privileged, and moved them to our own ends.”
“It can be done without more killing of one’s own, can’t it?”
“Can it?”
“Look at your deceit,” Gunston said, “your destruction, your murder—”
“Deceit, of course! But no murder and destruction like before, not like the days of only the English money and guns—and English deceit.”
“Nevermore,” Gunston said, sarcastically.
“Aye, nevermore! The English are not to be trusted. They’ve deceived us often enough. The best man of the race always has an ace up his sleeve that’s not part of the acceptable pack.”
“If you’ll excuse me, I’ll now go puke.”
Gunston walked to the door, then turned before leaving, and said, “I swear, I’ll find a way to tell this mad story of you murdering old bastards!”
“I believe you will,” Cavanaugh said. He smiled, and Gunston stalked into the hallway. Yes, young Gunston has been sufficiently provoked; he’ll fight for a way to tell the story. Cavanaugh said to the angry air, “In fact, I’ll be obliging you now with a peg for the news …”
He waited a moment for the wild beating of his heart to subside. Then he wiped his hands with the silk again, and his brow as well. First he had surprised himself by telling of the Nevermore Plan. Now this, his sudden inspiration for the perfectly symmetrical end.
Cavanaugh reached down to the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a sheet of heavy ivory bond, the stationery he used for handwritten notes, along with an envelope. Then, from the top drawer, he took out the razor knife used for cutting newspaper articles.
He smoothed out the bond on the desktop, admiring the embossed seal of Trinity College, and his own name beneath, in deep purple: PEADAR CAVANAUGH, CHANCELLOR. He set the razor knife to one side of the stationery, the envelope to the other, then selected a quill.
How very, very fitting, he thought. He pulled back a sleeve, then a cuff. Then remembered the walnut box, in yet another drawer. He pulled this out and set it on his desk, then again pulled back sleeve and cuff.
But now his hands trembled. Was he quite ready?
He pressed a button on the telephone console.
“Yes sir?” came the secretary’s voice.
“Come in here, Thelma, if you please.”
“I’ll be only a minute, sir.”
He turned, and poured another drink. Then he rose and took it with him to the window.
The chancellor looked down over the campus he commanded; he, only a common lad from the poor, hard coast of Kilkenny. Down below his leaded pane window was where he had walked with them—Shaw, Behan, Joyce … and Yeats.
Could his sweet mother in heaven see him in this earthly realm? The Trinity greensward, the ancient stone walls, the vine-covered gates; there in the haze just beyond Trinity’s walls, rising up the long hill that O’Connell Street made from the Liffey to the Post Office, the green, white and orange of the flag of Eire.
God, it was lovely.
Thelma entered, with her dictation pad. She said to the back of his black suit, “I
’m here, sir.”
Cavanaugh did not answer right away. He raised his glass, and slowly drank down the whiskey.
“I’ll never touch my mother’s face,” he finally said.
“Sir—?”
“It’s to be my worst punishment. Can you understand?”
“Sir, are you feeling—?”
He interrupted her again, now by reciting words unspoken since boyhood:
“Th’anam chun Dhia! But there it is—
The dawn on the hills of Ireland.
God’s angels lifting the night’s black veil
From the fair, sweet face of my sireland.
OIreland! isn’t it grand you look—
Like a bride in her rich adornin’?
And with all the pent-up love of my heart
Ibid you, top o’ the mornin’!”
“It’s quite a lovely poem, sir.”
Cavanaugh turned to her. “It’s from John Locke, Kilkenny’s very own. My mother would say it each morning at the breakfast board, like a regular grace. She believed it would cheer the day.”
“Well, it is lovely,” Thelma said again, uneasily.
Cavanaugh returned to his desk and sat down.
“I am writing a most important message, Thelma. It’s to be hand-delivered when I’m through.”
“Very well, sir. I’ll attend to it myself.”
“Perhaps you should know what the letter’s about.”
“Sir?”
“It’s about the god of irony. At least,’tis the god’s hand guiding me in the writing. Do you believe in such a god, Thelma?”
“I am a Catholic …” Thelma’s face went red. “And pious, sir.”
“Wonderful. When you win your deliverance to heaven, please speak to the Holy Father on behalf of myself and my comrades. Explain to Him that we never wished to offend the martyrdom of His only begotten Son, which is why we committed a few violent sins.”
“Blasphemy!” Thelma cried, clapping both hands to her hot face. The dictation pad fell to the floor.
Cavanaugh ignored the outburst, and told her, “Meanwhile, you may carry on. Come back here in fifteen minutes for the letter, and please close the door tightly as you leave.”
Drown All the Dogs Page 28