The Sailor’s Hornpipe sounded once more and Amiss slowed down. ‘Hello…Yes, Mr Kapur. Can I help you?…Sorry…No, I didn’t know she had asked you to attend this conference…You know it concerns cultural sensitivities in the British Isles?…I see…No, she didn’t tell me. It must have slipped her mind. But then she’s been so busy I’ve seen virtually nothing of her,’ he added, glaring balefully at the baroness. ‘Of course you’ll be most welcome. As you say, I’m sure that the view of an objective outsider will be of considerable help. Right. Now this is how you get there…’
‘Jack,’ he asked with deceptive calm as he ended the call. ‘I should be grateful for an explanation.’
‘Don’t get pompous on me. I didn’t bother telling you since I wasn’t sure he’d come. Anyway you might have objected. You’re always objecting. Only thing to do was go for the fait accompli.’
‘Why do you want him?’
‘All packs need a joker.’
‘Or more likely a loose cannon.’
‘That too,’ she said cheerily. ‘There’s always a chance it’ll let off a ball straight into the enemy’s flanks.’
‘Or, of course, into one’s own ranks.’
‘Life is for taking risks. Anyway, Chandra will undoubtedly provide some fun and will definitely be on my side.’
‘The problem, all too often, Jack, is knowing which side you’re on.’
‘Well it sure as hell isn’t MOPE’s. Now put your foot down.’
Chapter Three
‘It’s just a few hundred yards on. Past the snipe bog.’
‘I’ve never seen a snipe bog.’
‘Not a lot to see.’ She stared out the window. ‘We’re nearly there. Left. Now.’
Amiss turned abruptly through the enormous rusty iron gates. He had read enough novels about the slow death of the Anglo-Irish gentry to be unsurprised by the state of the structure that awaited them at the end of the overgrown drive.
‘We’ll stop here for a minute,’ said the baroness. ‘Get out.’
They had been standing in the twilight for a moment or two when she asked, ‘Recognize the architecture?’
‘I’m hopeless at that. Normanish?’
She snorted with derision. ‘Sixteenth-century tower house. Replaced a castle that had a bad run-in with some rebels during the Elizabethan wars. Georgian wings.’
‘Looks in pretty bad shape.’
There was a loud sniff from his left, followed by a mighty blowing of the nose.
‘Jack, are you crying?’
‘Nothing wrong with crying. I loved Knocknasheen as a kid. Hate to see it like this. Remember those lines of Yeats?’
I came on a great house in the middle of the night,
Its open lighted doorway and its windows all alight,
And all my friends were there and made me welcome too;
But I woke in an old ruin that the winds howled through.
‘That’s what it feels like.’
‘What happened?’
‘That ruin on the left is the wing that had been partially burned down by rebels in 1920 and now seems to have collapsed. The rest is decay. Costs went up, money ran out and the family died off or left the country until the only ones left were Lavinia and Grace.’ She snuffled for a few seconds and then headed back towards the car. ‘That’s enough of that.’
The handbell was rung several times before the peeling front door was opened a crack. ‘I’m sorry to have taken so long, Ida,’ said a commanding voice, whose owner was virtually invisible in the gloom. ‘We normally use the back. Come in.’
The door being too stiff to open properly, they had some difficulty pushing their way through to the hall. ‘You are welcome, both of you,’ said the elderly woman, who though almost as tall as the baroness was fragile to the point of emaciation. She leaned forward and gave her cousin a chaste kiss on the right cheek. ‘I am pleased to see you after so long, Ida.’ She turned to Amiss and offered a cold, thin hand which he shook gingerly. ‘I am Lavinia FitzHugh. You are Mr Amiss, I believe?’
As his eyes became accustomed to the dim light of the solitary bulb, he could see that the walls had the cracks and damp marks that along with the strong musty smell spoke of terminal decay. The only decorations were rows of riding boots hanging at eye-level.
‘I brought you a small present, Lavinia,’ said the baroness, handing over the large Fortnum & Mason bag she had rescued from the boot.
‘That is kind of you, Ida.’ Miss FitzHugh looked inside and smiled. ‘You always were generous. To a fault, indeed, as I remember. Now, follow me upstairs.’
The bedrooms to which Miss FitzHugh showed them were at the top of the house and both austere and mouldering. ‘Reduced to servants’ bedrooms, now, Ida. Alas, the roof of the bedroom wing fell in last year. You will find a bathroom of sorts at the end of that corridor. I shall see you both downstairs in fifteen minutes for a glass of the madeira you have so thoughtfully provided.’
***
‘Thank you, Miss Grace.’ Amiss took the delicate crystal goblet from Miss FitzHugh’s smaller and even more fragile sister. When polite conversation about the journey and their route came to an end, he asked curiously: ‘Forgive me, Miss Fitzhugh, but do I gather from the dozens of pairs of riding boots that you or your sister used to give riding lessons?’
‘Certainly not. We wouldn’t have wanted snivelling adolescents with social pretensions near our horses. They’re family boots.’
‘Ah,’ he said and took another sip.
The baroness took pity on him. ‘It’s a family tradition. When a member of the family dies, their boots are hung on the wall.’
‘Servants too,’ added Miss Fitzhugh.
‘When we had any,’ added Miss Grace.
‘And if they rode.’
‘When did the last boots go up, Lavinia?’ asked the baroness. ‘I’m afraid I’m sadly out of touch.’
‘Our nephew Jock. Remember him, Ida? Constance’s son. Killed ten years ago taking a six-foot hedge unwisely.’
‘I didn’t know. Tell us about the others. It’ll bring me up to date.’
‘Grace’ll do it. She’s the family historian.’
Miss Grace led them back to the hall and began at the far end. ‘These are Cousin Jock’s. And these Mama’s. O’Brien’s are next to hers. You remember O’Brien, Ida?’
‘Indeed I do. He taught me to ride.’
‘Our last butler. With us for more than fifty years.’
‘These were Phineas’. And those his boys’. You’ll remember them, Ida. Both killed in the RAF during the war.’
‘Only just. I was a toddler when I met them.’
‘And Cousin Gavin, poor boy. Such a romantic. Nothing would do him but to fight in the Spanish Civil War.’
‘On which side?’ asked Amiss.
Miss Grace looked at him askance. ‘Republican, of course. Only Catholics fought for Franco.’ She went back to the boots. ‘Jim Flur, our gamekeeper. O’Sullivan, the head-groom. And father and Walter.’ Her voice seemed to quaver.
‘When did they die?’ His voice was gentle.
Miss FitzHugh’s voice cut in icily. ‘They were shot by the IRA in 1920 for being Protestant interlopers.’
‘How long has your family been here?’
‘About eight hundred years. Give or take a few decades. Come on. Leave the boots and come into dinner.’
***
‘Part of our problem is that money for the peace-and-reconciliation industry is virtually unlimited,’ explained the baroness, as she coped valiantly with a badly-charred trout by washing each mouthful down with copious amounts of the Brouilly she had provided. ‘Ergo it’s impossible to turn down any of MOPE’s crazy demands simply on grounds of finance.’
‘Are you telling me, Ida, that these dreadful people are subsidised by the crown?’
‘I fear so, Lavinia. But so is your government, so we can’t just blame the dreadful Blair.’
‘The dreadful who?’
>
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Grace,’ said Miss FitzHugh, ‘you know who Anthony Blair is. He’s the prime minister, that fearful fellow who’s expelled Uncle Ralph from the House of Lords.’
‘Oh,’ squeaked Miss Grace. ‘Yes, of course, I’ve heard of him.’ She gazed worriedly across at the baroness. ‘Is he as ruthless as Cousin Gertrude said when she wrote to tell us the news? You’re not in any danger are you, Ida?’
‘No, Grace, frightful, grinning little squirt though he may be, Blair will stop short of the tumbrils.’ She paused. ‘At least I think he will. Besides, I’m not an aristocrat.’
‘At least, Ida,’ said Miss Fitzhugh, ‘you still have the Queen as head of state instead of those hectoring lady lawyers we keep having forced upon us.’
Miss Grace was looking puzzled. ‘Ida, do I understand that this Blair person has given you huge sums of money to hold a gathering of terrorists?’
‘No, Grace,’ said the baroness with commendable patience. ‘This is not a gathering of terrorists, although there will be the occasional erstwhile Seamus O’Semtex…’
‘And,’ put in Amiss, ‘Davy McPipe-bomb…’
The baroness looked at Miss Grace’s baffled face and threw in the towel. ‘You explain it, Robert.’
‘This conference,’ began Amiss, ‘is intended to help people in these two islands to appreciate each other’s cultures.’
‘Do you mean,’ asked Miss Grace, clearly trying hard, ‘you want the Reverend Ian Paisley to learn Erse* and that horrid IRA man with the beard to become a Protestant?’
‘Well, Miss Grace, I suppose in an ideal world one should have such aspirations, but we seek only to encourage some further understanding and respect.’
‘It’s all balls obviously,’ added the baroness and then, hastily, seeing Miss FitzHugh’s nostrils flaring, ‘…I do beg your pardon, Lavinia. The expletive escaped me inadvertently.’
Miss Grace was not letting go. ‘I am still perplexed, Mr Amiss. Why should the British government waste enormous amounts of money on something that Ida has no faith in?’
‘The British and Irish governments think that if you invite terrorists to conferences and cocktail parties, they’ll give up murder. It is the presence of such people at this conference that has attracted vast amounts of money.’
‘Should one write a letter to someone about this?’ asked Miss Grace anxiously. ‘Perhaps Gertrude might be able to do something.’
‘Frankly, Grace, I think the best thing we can do is change the subject and have a snifter of that brandy I brought.’
‘That would be agreeable, Ida,’ said Miss FitzHugh. ‘We can pretend we are living in more gracious times.’
***
‘I don’t know about you,’ said Amiss, as they drove down the drive, ‘but I’m chilled to the bone.’ He looked through the windscreen at the driving rain and shivered.
‘I’m forced to admit that Grace and Lavinia are a lot tougher even than me,’ said the baroness, turning the heater to maximum. ‘Mind you it’s central heating that’s made wimps of us all. Twenty years ago I wouldn’t have noticed the cold. I’m really a bit ashamed of having chickened out of staying the second night. But very relieved I did.’
‘It was the damp more than the cold. I swear those sheets were wet despite the stone hot-water bottle.’
‘In my case it was because of. The bottle leaked.’
‘I’m not surprised you decided to cut and run.’
‘Still, it came as little surprise. If you visit what the Irish allude to as the “ould dacency,” these hardships are to be expected. At least the sheets were linen. Apart from the bits that were holes, that is.’
‘As you know, Jack, I have no standards. I’d prefer dry polyester to wet satin, any day.’
‘With luck we’ll find a hotel that has dry linen. I have one in mind.’
‘Do you think the ladies believed our excuse?’
‘They absolutely accepted that you needed a phone socket that took a modem. Didn’t know what you were talking about, but believed you.’
‘Well, it’s true anyway. God knows what messages I’ve missed. Especially since the mobile wasn’t working at Knocknasheen either.’
She turned right and put her foot down hard on the accelerator. ‘So what did you think of them? Good old girls, aren’t they?’
‘I won’t forget them easily.’
She blew the horn at a wobbling cyclist, causing him to panic and almost tumble into the ditch. Passing him at high speed, almost too late, she spotted a signpost for Mayo and turned the steering wheel so violently that the car missed by only an inch crashing into a stone wall. She affected not to notice Amiss’ intake of breath. ‘Hardly anyone realises the Prods were all but eradicated in the south, since the Catholics are so good at the rhetoric of tolerance and have largely pretended discrimination and violence were a curiously northern phenomenon. The northern Catholics never shut up whingeing and the stiff-necked old Ulster Prods, of course, told their side of the story with all the charm and subtlety of an aardvark.’
‘I know what you mean. Gardiner Steeples has caused me less trouble than almost anyone else involved in this conference, yet he comes across as truculent and churlish.’
‘Who’s Gardiner Steeples?’
‘One of the very few unionists who look like turning up. Most of them think it’s a complete waste of time and will be MOPE-driven.’
As they rounded the next corner, she jammed on the brake just in time to prevent them crashing into a tractor which was ambling gently down the middle of the road. ‘Bloody fool. Why doesn’t he pull in? Doesn’t he realize it’s me?’
Amiss ignored the increasingly petulant denunciations that accompanied the gesticulating and horn-blowing—all of which made no visible impact on the course of the tractor. They proceeded in a stately procession at eight miles an hour until suddenly and without warning the machine turned left into a hidden opening. As they shot by, the baroness shook her fist and the driver responded with a smile and a happy wave. ‘Moron,’ she yelled at his image in the mirror.
‘I suspect he’s deaf, Jack.’
‘And blind. Shouldn’t be on the road.’
‘What does it matter? We’re not in a hurry. We’re supposed to be on holiday. You shouldn’t be bringing to country roads in County Sligo that pace of life which everyone deplores back home. Especially in the middle of a deluge.’
‘I’m in a hurry to get to lunch. I want to put the memory of that breakfast well behind me.’
‘You’ve always trumpeted the wonders of porridge.’
‘That wasn’t porridge. That was gruel. Porridge is as thick as that tractor driver and you take it with lots of brown sugar, cream and whiskey. That watery stuff was inedible.’
‘We’re not doing too well on the gastronomic front, are we?’
‘That’s why I’m in a hurry. The centre of holidays is food. You can’t properly appreciate the scenery unless you’ve got a happy stomach.’
Amiss reacted nervously to the sound of the Sailor’s Hornpipe. ‘Hello…Roddy…What!…Why?…What’s she like?…Must we?…What can I say except that I’m not pleased?…This has come very late in the day…Bye.’
‘What is it?’
‘We’ve been lumbered with an observer.’
‘What do you mean an observer? What is there to observe other than a lot of impossible malcontents complaining about each other?’
‘This is not the view of MOPE. As a result of your beating-up of Seoirse MacStiopháin, they’ve lodged a formal protest about your bias and have tried to have you fired. Dublin claims to have worked night and day to achieve this compromise, viz, an observer to ensure fair play.’
‘What do you bet McCorley’s accepted whoever they came up with?’
‘My shirt.’
She groaned. ‘I can see it all now. No doubt it will be some poncey, left-wing, English academic who believes we should do what MOPE wants in order to atone for Cromwell.’<
br />
Amiss shook his head. ‘Nope. It’s an American.’
She banged her left fist on the dashboard. ‘A fucking American? What business is it of theirs?’
‘Now, now, now, Jack. You know very well that Americans have been meddling in Irish politics since the famine. Besides, Roddy said Dublin and London were happy that she’s not political. Just a representative of a cultural organization.’
She glanced at him in deep suspicion. ‘What cultural organization?’
‘Roddy didn’t seem too clear. Something to do with Irish-American heritage.’
‘You know bloody well what that’ll mean, Robert. One of those cretins who likes to fight battles at a three-thousand-mile remove.’
Amiss shrugged. ‘I’m beyond caring. We’re stuck with her anyway. Besides it should be quite entertaining watching you trying to prove to her satisfaction that you’re impartial.’
‘Pah! I’d like to see any bloody little Yank trying to cross swords with me.’
Amiss noticed with alarm that the speedometer had crept up to eighty, but he knew better than to encourage the baroness to greater excesses by challenging her. He hoped she wasn’t noticing him gripping his seat hard. He was almost relieved when the phone rang. ‘Hello…Yes, Gardiner…Tea? I don’t think so. You won’t be arriving until about six thirty, after all…Goodbye.’
‘What’s that about?’
‘Gardiner Steeples wanting to know if he’ll be there in time for tea…Look out, Jack!’ There was an almighty jolt, the car lurched violently and only their seat belts saved both of them from being hurled through the windscreen.
The baroness jammed on the brake and the car stalled. ‘What was that?’
‘We hit an obstacle. Shouldn’t we stop and look?’
‘Haven’t got time. The oysters call.’
‘I don’t like oysters.’
‘You should.’ She started the car again and within a minute the speedometer had passed sixty.
‘Jack,’ he said desperately, forgetting his earlier self-discipline. ‘Remember what happened only two minutes ago. This is a country road.’
Anglo-Irish Murders Page 3