by Dicey Deere
It was like being drawn on a string. How could she not? Torrey crossed the street.
* * *
The stairs were wide and carpeted in dark green, the bannister was polished mahogany, the walls were rose-patterned. Pristine.
A buzzer sounded as she entered a small parlor with the same rose-figured wallpaper. A fresh-faced, dark-haired woman, possibly in her midforties, hair in a bun, navy cardigan over a blue dress, came through a doorway, smiling. “Good afternoon. I’m Sara Hobbs. Mrs. Greer, isn’t it? The room’s ready, Number six, double bed, that you asked for. Mr. Greer will be bringing up your baggage? Or I can send my boy down.”
No, Torrey explained, she was not Mrs. Greer. She was a friend of … of Caroline Keegan Temple, who’d been Caroline Ashenden. “Caroline’s mother, Kathleen Brady Ashenden, had an aunt who lived here years ago, I don’t know her name.” She felt a fool, what was she doing here? “Way before your time, of course, Mrs. Hobbs. It isn’t likely you’d have even been —”
“Alice Coggins! My heavens! Of course! Of course I remember! A good thirty-five or forty years ago. My mother was the proprietor then. Good heavens, yes! Dr. Ashen-den’s wife. Kathleen. She’d often come to visit her aunt, an unmarried lady. She sometimes brought her little girl, Caroline. We were the same age, and we’d play together. Alice Coggins made us each a rag doll out of sewing scraps; mine had a blue dress, and Caroline’s was pink. We’d play tea party. I still have my doll. I’m sentimental — I loved my childhood. I keep the doll on my bedroom shelf with my old dolls’ tea set. Brian, my husband, laughs about it.” Sara Hobbs, marveling at the past, grew misty-eyed.
“Alice Coggins died about a year after Kathleen Ashenden was killed in a brushfire. I was too ashamed to send Alice’s poor things to them at Ashenden Manor, bits of material, sewing things and such: It would’ve been an embarrassment to her. I was betwixt and between, you might say. But I couldn’t throw them out. As I told you, I’m sentimental. Her box must still be in the attic.”
“Mrs. Hobbs? I’m Mrs. Greer.” A ruddy-faced woman in a plaid cape was coming in, panting a little from the stairs. “My husband’s on the the way up. The roads! Crowded! We’d have thought to get here earlier. Is it possible to have tea when we’re settled in?”
On the way out, Torrey looked back and mouthed “Thank you” to Sara Hobbs, who smiled in response.
31
It was past four o’clock when Torrey pedaled back home along the narrow access road between the hedges that were higher than her head. Behind the hedges, unseen, would be an occasional cottage, a farm, a field with cows, she could only guess at the hidden landscape. At Nolan’s Bed-and-Breakfast, listening to Sara Hobbs talk of Kathleen Brady, she’d had that same feeling of a hidden landscape.
A wind had sprung up, the sky had turned a cold gray. Overcast. Traitorous weather, a promise betrayed. There’d be sneezing and runny noses tonight in Ballynagh and in cottages in this mountainous corner of Wicklow. People would be opening storage chests and digging about for the warm clothes they’d put away last spring.
Luckily, Torrey had left her sleeveless padded vest in her bicycle basket. She stopped, planted a foot on the road on each side of the bike to hold it steady, put on the vest, and zipped it up. And at least it was less windy on the access road; the high hedges were good protection from the wind. And it wasn’t far now to the cottage.
A half mile farther up, she reached the break in the hedge. She got off the bike and wheeled it through the opening and past the marshy little pond. Because of the woods, it was darker around the cottage than on the road. Except for the little vegetable garden in the patch that the sun could reach, there were tall trees all around, and at this season the green grass was mottled with brown.
A light in the cottage. Ah, so Jasper was there. The thought warmed her. They’d get a fire going and have a late tea with some of Jasper’s delicious biscuits, the ones with currants. There were three left; she’d heat them up. And there was bread and canned salmon. He’d tell her about his trip to Dunlavin.
She leaned her bike against the cottage and opened the door.
* * *
“Hello, Missus!”
The gypsy stood beside the kitchen table. Purple skirt, ragged tan sweater, the mass of dark hair. One of Jasper’s bottles of Bordeaux was open on the table and half empty.
“Hello, Missus!” The gypsy’s teeth flashed a smile. Gold bracelets clinked as she waved a wineglass, one of Torrey’s two Waterford wineglasses, then brought the glass waveringly to her lips and sipped, her head tipped down, her dark eyes on Torrey over the rim of the glass.
“What are you doing here? What do you want?” Somehow, the gypsy being a Romanian made it worse. And now she saw that the woman was tipsy, no, not tipsy, she was drunk, drunk on Jasper’s precious wine.
“Ah, Missus!” It was unpleasant, a snigger. “Your kindness brought me back. You’ll be glad you gave me that bit of tea! And that you’re a Romanian, besides Tunet, thunder, Missus. And fulger, lightning. And furtuna, ah! Furtuna, a storm!”
“What are you talking about?” Torrey said impatiently. She was tired, she was hungry, and where was Jasper? She wanted to clean up the table and put on a fresh tablecloth and change her clothes, and —
“Something evil.” The gypsy sniggered. “Yes, Missus, evil. I saw something. Something evil. But a gypsy’s words, they might be smoke. A lady like you is different, could make something of it. A reward, is there?” The gypsy swayed and reached for the bottle of wine. “You’ll give me half, and I’ll buy a pretty nightgown like yours, all yellow daisies.” She lurched against the table. The bottle fell and rolled on the floor. The gypsy stared at it until it rolled against a chair leg and stopped. Then she shook herself and went to the door. “Tunet, fulger, furtuna. You think, Missus. You think about it. I’ll come back.”
32
“Jackpot! Out of the blue!”
“Take it easy,” Jasper said. “You’re assuming —”
“Come on, Jasper. She’s got a caravan or wagon or something in the woods; everybody knows that. She saw something evil, and she’s going to tell me. All because I —”
“Gave her a cup of tea and some soda bread? And tomatoes? Torrey —”
“And because I’m Romanian. And she wants a reward. She’s already got the taste of money on her tongue. I could tell. You know what this means, Jasper? It means she knows who killed Gerald Ashenden.”
* * *
For dinner Jasper made a poulet en cocotte, the chicken browned to a golden color in the casserole. With it, they had a bottle of the Bordeaux. Torrey could hardly eat for excitement. Who? She’d know soon who’d murdered Ashen-den. Strange, unbelievable. But so.
After dinner, Jasper turned on the radio to RTE for the political news and was instantly absorbed. But Torrey walked around in circles, saying “because of tomatoes!” and “freakish chance!” and “a windfall, right in my lap!” Rowena, Rowena would be the first she’d tell. Though rightly she should go first to Inspector Egan O’Hare, bringing the gypsy with her. Her eyewitness. An eyewitness who had seen the killer shoot the knitting needle into Ashenden’s horse.
She looked at Jasper, her dark-haired love, so comfortably heavy, chin in hand, unaware that his eyes were narrowed and his long face intent, and that a muscle twitched in his jaw. He was fiercely outraged at the so-called real IRA bombings. He was, he’d once mentioned, originally from Cork, with a Catholic background. Seeing his narrow-eyed intensity, she’d wondered at first if he was more than a bystander, somehow politically involved. But when she’d asked, he’d laughed away the notion. “I’m a man of inaction, love, a sit-by-the-fire idealist. Books are my passion, not politics.” It seemed to her a lot of protest to her simple question. But why pry?
At nine-thirty they did the dishes, then settled on the couch. Jasper said the estate library in Dunlavin was a bust. “Popular hardback trash.” He’d bought nothing. But in a poor cottage, he’d found a copy of Steinbe
ck’s Winter of Our Discontent. “A paperback not worth ten pence, but I paid a pound for it — I’m in the mood for Steinbeck.” He poked up the fire and read a chapter aloud. He had a rich baritone that brought the scenes alive, “In the doorway stood…” and so on. Torrey heard nothing beyond the first sentence.
At ten-thirty they were in bed, making love; at eleven-thirty Jasper was off to Nolan’s on his bike. Before he left, he stood beside the bed looking down on her. “The gypsy. Said she’d be back, all right. But when?”
“She didn’t say. I just assumed tomorrow. If she doesn’t come by afternoon, I’ll go crazy! I’ll look for her in the woods; I’ll ask in Ballynagh where her wagon is. Someone’ll know.” She shivered with excitement. “She knows! My God, she knows!”
“Don’t go looking for her.” Jasper was frowning down at her. “I know enough about gypsies to know it would be a mistake. She’ll come when she’s ready.”
“Well, if I can stand it.”
“Torrey, another thing. You’re making an assumption.” Heavy, serious, Jasper’s baritone voice.
“Yes? What?”
“You’re assuming that whoever shot that knitting needle into Ashenden’s horse wasn’t Rowena Keegan.”
Torrey said, “Rowena? If the world stops spinning tomorrow, I’ll believe it was Rowena.”
33
Elated. Thrilled. In the morning, Torrey, working at the computer, turned her head a half dozen times toward the door. Any minute the woman would appear, the gypsy in her purple skirt with her secret to tell. Torrey shivered with anticipation. Already she saw herself finding Rowena in the stables at Ashenden Manor or at Castle Moore and smilingly telling her, “I have a witness to your grandfather’s murder.” Or maybe she’d say, “You’re safe, now, Rowena. The most amazing thing happened.” And she’d tell Rowena who had shot the knitting needle into Thor. And there’d be inexpressible relief on Rowena’s face, so drawn now, the green eyes with the lids lately so tinged with pink.
She worked to one o’clock, concentrating on a basic simple vocabulary, thinking of French children who by the time they were six would be trilingual, speaking English and Spanish as well as their mother tongue, moving with ease from one language to another. She hoped, she hoped! The second book would be American kids speaking, let’s see … Never mind! Finish working out this one first. When it came to the illustrations, she’d have to tie her hands behind her back and put tape over her mouth to keep from meddling.
At one o’clock she stopped for a lunch of leftover curried carrot soup that Jasper had made. It was a sunny day and warm enough for her to take the bowl of soup outside and sit in the sun on the old wooden bench beside the door. From there she could see anyone coming. Wind made the leaves rustle, a bird trilled, but among the trees and near the hedge was no touch of purple. A reward, is there? I saw something evil.
Back in the cottage she worked until four. Then just sat, biting the inside of her lip. Could the gypsy’s I’ll be back mean not today, but tomorrow? Frustrating and exasperating, not to know.
At five o’clock the low sun glimmered gold through the trees. Torrey put on her heavy shawl-necked sweater against the evening chill. She’d walk up the access road a bit. Just a bit. A few steps. Maybe the gypsy had missed the break in the hedge? That was perfectly possible, wasn’t it?
She wrote a note for Jasper. He was going to make dinner. She never knew where he was during the day. Riding around the countryside on his bike, he’d told her, looking for old books. “You never know what rare books you might find in these villages. I’ve a friend who found a first edition of Homer’s Odyssey, with the N. C. Wyeth illustrations, in a cottage in County Kerry. He bought it for two pounds, worth maybe, in your American money, two thousand dollars.” But now that she thought of it, Jasper had never shown her any of his lucky finds. Not once. That Steinbeck book, Winter of Our Discontent, that he’d brought to the cottage didn’t count. She’d even seen one like it on the secondhand shelf in the little variety store in Ballynagh.
She went through the opening in the hedge and started up the access road. The bus from Dublin came up behind her and went past, south toward Cork. A group of teenage boys in their home soccer jackets bicycled north. She heard a car behind her slow down.
“Ms. Tunet! Torrey!” The car came abreast. It was Caroline Temple. “Can I give you a lift?”
Torrey halted. The road ahead was empty, nobody in clinking bracelets and a voice with a Romanian gypsy accent to tell her the wished-for revelation of the murderer. She might as well go back to the cottage.
“Torrey?”
“Thanks, Caroline. I was getting chilled.” She got in the car.
* * *
The car was at least a dozen years old, but luxurious, a Mercedes with worn, dove-colored upholstery. “I was at Fogerty’s farm, getting asparagus. They don’t sell to grocers.” Caroline’s voice was falsely bright and chatty as she drove on. “You have to go yourself.” Her pale face was strained, her hands on the steering wheel trembled. She was wearing an old chinchilla coat that looked definitely motheaten. “Asparagus,” she repeated. She put up a hand and rubbed her forehead. “I’m a bit distracted lately. I went to see Inspector O’Hare. He was polite and sympathetic. But I saw at once that he’s convinced Rowena killed my father. Convinced!”
Caroline gave a little whimper. She tipped her head down and momentarily closed her eyes.
A boy and a girl were walking on the road toward them, laughing, the boy’s arm around the girl. The road was narrow, but the Mercedes didn’t slow down or start to swing around the couple. The girl’s eyes widened in fright; the car was headed straight toward them.
“Oh, God!” Caroline screamed and wrenched the steering wheel and the car drove into the hedge. The boy and the girl went hurriedly up the road.
Caroline put her elbows on the steering wheel and dropped her head in her hands. “Dear God!”
Torrey, mouth dry, gazed at the nose of the Mercedes buried in the hedge.
“Dear God! Dear God! They have men guards in prisons. They do what they want to the women prisoners! Rape! Anything! I saw a report on television! It was horrible.” The words came out muffled; Caroline’s face was still buried in her hands. She shook her head back and forth.
“They won’t,” Torrey said. “They won’t put Rowena in prison.”
“Oh, yes! Inspector O’Hare. He’ll find miserable little bits and pieces enough to make it look as if Rowena killed my father. Dublin Castle reprimanded him. He’s got to prove he was right to jail her in the first place. He’ll do anything to prove it.” Pale face, fair hair in disarray, eyes awash with tears.
“You folks all right?” A kindly red face, bushy white eyebrows, a bald pate; a farm truck behind him. “Get yourself out of the hedge, can you?”
Torrey answered for Caroline. “Yes, thanks. We can manage.”
And then, as Torrey was later to realize, that was when she made her mistake.
The farmer gone, Torrey put a compassionate hand on Caroline’s shoulder. “Listen, something’s come up. I think someone was near the bridle path, may have seen what happened. She saw —”
“A witness? Someone saw…?”
“I think. I only think that maybe someone saw. I’m not saying for sure. But it’s a possibility. Only a possibility. I’m waiting to find out.”
“You mean there’s a chance that — Find out? When?”
“I don’t know. Maybe tonight. Or tomorrow. I’m not … not positive.” She was suddenly overwhelmingly weary. She wanted to say, But it may come to nothing. Yet she could not. She looked at Caroline’s hopeful face framed in the collar of the old coat. No, she could not. Instead she said, “That’s the softest fur, that fur you’re wearing! Chinchilla, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
34
As Winifred Moore said near midnight that Tuesday, when she and Sheila got back to Castle Moore, “It was like an underground trickle, a whisper here, a whisper there, and
who knew who was tapping into it? The source, of course, was Torrey Tunet. Her telling Caroline in the first place. A pity. So, trickle, trickle, reaching the ears of a murderer.”
Sheila said, “I guess. I wish I hadn’t been there. It was so gruesome.”
* * *
All that Tuesday it had poured. When Torrey got up, the first thing she thought was, The gypsy won’t come today. By late afternoon, looking out the window at the rain pounding down on the trees and at the overflowing pond, she was unhappily sure of it. “Maybe the gypsy was just so drunk on the Bordeaux that she didn’t know what she —”
“She’ll turn up tomorrow,” Jasper said, “This rain’s enough to drown in. Don’t worry. She hears the clink of gold.” He was lying on the couch by the fire, reading her copy of Dickson’s The Official Rules. “How about this one: ‘The Umbrella Law. You will need three umbrellas: one to leave at the office, one to leave at home, and one to leave on the train.’” He put down the book and swung his legs off the couch. “Stop thinking about the gypsy. I won’t make dinner. I’m taking you to the movies. The Governess is playing in Dunlavin. We can take the bus, village, at O’Malley’s. The best sausages and mashed in Wicklow County.”
“All right.” She smiled at him.
They were at the bus stop on the access road, both under her umbrella, when she said, “I didn’t lock the door. Did you?”
“Hmmm? No. There’s the bus.”
35
At half past nine they were in O’Malley’s pub eating hot mashed potatoes and sausages with Winifred Moore and Sheila Flaxton, who’d been at the movie and given them a lift back to Ballynagh. The rain had stopped.