The Butterfly State

by Carol Coffey

  “Yes. Some form of autism?”

  “Yeah, something like that. My sister was teaching at the school the girl went to at the time and said she couldn’t believe it, said she was a lovely child, smart too, working on normal books and all. Dymphna, which is my sister’s name, said the girl was like locked inside herself or something like that. But she said she was harmless, more interested in collecting the strangest of things – like, one week it would be feathers from the farm, another week it could be coloured stones from the field – nearly drove that sister of hers crazy.”

  “But who else would have wanted to kill Michael Byrne?” Sam asked, hating the way the story was taking a different twist, preferring to think that he had it all sewn up.

  Mullins sat up in his chair and leant forward. “This is confidential, right?” He was not quite drunk enough to make a fool of himself. He hated retirement and had not adjusted to the boredom it brought. People used to respect him and he had been an important man in the town. He had never married. He had never met anyone he felt that strongly about so the job became his life. He had worked every Christmas since he came to this part of Wicklow, letting the younger policeman off to his family. Not that much ever happened around here, mostly drunk and disorderly charges and the odd theft. He had a sister who had married locally but he had never got along with her husband so did not visit her often. Now that he was retired, his two nephews dropped in from time to time but it was too late to form any kind of a bond with them and he spent most of his time alone.

  “Oh, absolutely!” Sam replied, knowing that if he did print anything Mullins said, he could claim the old man was drunk and never asked him to keep it confidential.

  “Well, I’d say there were a lot of people who weren’t sorry to hear about Byrne. There was Jimmy Kelly for a start. He was due to get that farm but Byrne pulled it out from under him, Jimmy’s son too, for that matter. Byrne’s own son Seán was a suspect but he had an alibi – he was with the sister Kate around the time of the murder. Seán and the old man never got along, chalk and cheese as they say.”

  “Would anyone else have done it, I mean, apart from the family?”

  “He wasn’t liked, that’s for sure, but I can’t think of anyone who would have wanted to murder him. He was always starting rows in the pub. I was called in a few times over the years, had to caution him, but he never seemed to care what people thought of him. He was a strange sort of man. I guess that’s why the kids had the problems they did – must have got it from him.”

  Pete Mullins went quiet for a while as though he was trying to decide whether or not to go any further. Moran, sensing this, topped up the sergeant’s glass, declining one for himself. He needed to remember all he was told today. He might not get anyone else so willing.

  “You know, I’ve never been one for gossip but there was talk over the years that his wife, Maura, was a little bit on the wild side if you know what I mean.”

  Sam pretended he didn’t. He needed to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

  “Well,” Mullins went on, looking around the room as though someone might hear him, “it was said that she was pregnant when Byrne married her. I wasn’t stationed here then, didn’t come to Árd Glen until ’51. People said it wasn’t his. That would have been Seán, the eldest, which I suppose is why he resented the lad. Anyway, as I said, it’s all gossip.”

  “Why would he have married her then, if the child wasn’t his?” Moran asked as innocently as he could.

  “Why? Ah lad, easy knowing you’re a city boy! Land, of course. Not a bad farm they have there. I’m from a farming background myself. The lad has let it run down now over the years, turned into a drunk. Hate to see that in a young man.”

  Sam smiled to himself, the irony not lost on him. “Whose was it then, if not Byrne’s? Why didn’t the father marry her?”

  “Nobody local, that’s for sure. If you had known her old man you’d understand why. A right tyrant. I heard that he used to beat herself and her brother black and blue and then show up for Mass, rosary beads and all.”

  Moran was intrigued. A pregnancy outside marriage would have been a scandal back then.

  “Anything else you can think of, Pete?”

  “No, just that it never felt right, the girl being accused of it and all. Of course the investigation was out of our hands. A homicide team handled it – three of them there were, caused a real upset in the village. I understood their conclusion, even if I didn’t agree with it. After all she was found standing over the body, the rock in her hand and blood on her dress – but it was all too convenient if you ask me. I told them so at the time. I mean, what murderer stands around admiring a rock when they should be miles away from the scene of the crime?”

  “Can you remember the names of the investigating crew?”

  “Em . . . oh, they’d mostly be retired by now, if not dead from working in Dublin. It was dangerous even back then!”

  Sam didn’t take the insult to his native city to heart.

  “The youngest chap,” Mullins went on, “Flynn I think his name was – sorry, can’t remember his first name – I’d say he’s still working. They were all stationed in Beech Street.”

  “What do you think, Pete, what really happened?”

  Pete sighed heavily and looked over at the blackened wall. “What I really think, and not that it made much difference to the Dublin crew, was that she just happened upon him. I interviewed her first and she was the calmest murderer I ever saw. Okay, admittedly I didn’t see many in my years but she didn’t understand a word I said. She even wrote me a note asking me if she could have the rock back – she liked the shiny bits in it. Can you believe that?”

  Mullins sat still, his head lowering gradually. Sam thought the old man was thinking and waited for him to continue before realising he had fallen asleep, the half bottle of whiskey obviously taking its toll. Before he left, he took the bottle he had brought with him and put it into the inside pocket of his jacket. Opening the door slowly he slipped out and wondered if the old man would even remember talking to him.

  Chapter 16

  1971

  Tess Byrne sat at her desk in the institution’s school trying to write an essay titled “If I had three wishes”. She did not enjoy these exercises as she did not believe that tooth fairies or leprechauns existed but she knew she would be in trouble if she didn’t do her work. She told the teacher that she could not write stories but she didn’t believe her and once smacked Tess across the hand with a ruler for defiant behaviour. It occurred to Tess to bite the teacher but Dr Cosgrove had told her that every time she did this, she moved six steps away from going home. She had worked out that she had stopped herself from biting people approximately sixteen times in the past few weeks which must mean that she was ninety-six steps closer to home. She did not know how many steps it would take to get home but ninety-six seemed like it would take her a good way there. Even though Tess could not write essays, she could paint well which she believed was like a story and she wondered why she wasn’t allowed to draw her stories. The words would never come to her mind, no matter how much she begged them to. She even slapped her own face twice at her desk which was at the back of the room hoping the words would come but they hadn’t. She sighed and put pen to paper, the teacher eyeing her, ready for trouble.

  My Three Wishes

  To go home

  A happy face for Seán and Kate

  A voice for Ben

  When the teacher came around to read Tess’s work she didn’t ask her why she didn’t write complete sentences but sighed heavily. “Another list, Tess?” was all she said as she walked away from her most troublesome pupil.

  Seán drove slowly back to Árd Glen with only one thing on his mind, telling Kate that Michael Byrne was not their father. In a way he realised that he always knew but he couldn’t face up to the fact that his mother was unfaithful in her marriage, regardless of what Michael Byrne had been like. His mother always seemed so respectable
and he found it hard to think of her carrying on in that way. Seán had worked out that Michael had married Maura when she was pregnant with him but somehow she had become pregnant again. But to whom? Who was his and Kate’s father? Why hadn’t he married their mother and saved her from the life of torment Byrne had subjected her to? How had his mother access to another man? In Seán’s memory his mother rarely went out. She went to the village for shopping and sometimes to Mass on Sunday but otherwise it was unusual for her to venture out alone. None of this made any sense. His grandparents were dead now so he couldn’t ask them about it and he certainly wasn’t going to approach his Uncle Jimmy who had tried to make out to the police that Seán was involved in Michael Byrne’s death. He remembered a woman at his mother’s funeral whom he had never seen before. She was crying and some local people seemed to know her but he had never asked her name. He had caught her staring at him a few times but had not approached her. Maybe someone in the village knew who she was; he could get away with asking about her without raising any suspicion. There was also the matter of the will. If the last will wasn’t legal, Tess was the rightful owner of the farm with Seán only permitted an income from its management. He had to talk to Kate. She would know what to do.

  Dr Cosgrove stood with Tess on the top floor of the institution looking out towards the city skyline. It seemed he got her to say more when the session was less formal. They sat down at the end of the corridor and began to draw, or at least Cosgrove pretended to draw.

  The girl had real talent, he thought, as he watched her producing yet another picture of her “Butterfly Lake” which always included a little figure standing at the lake’s edge, obviously herself, and some grotesque-looking insects with human heads. The effect was always surreal, fascinating – and alarming. Cosgrove knew that the lake pictures were connected with her father’s death and that if he could get her to talk about them he might make a vital break-through. But Tess would not utter one word about her lake pictures and paintings.

  “What are those insects, Tess? Caterpillars, I think? Are they?”

  Nothing.

  Cosgrove stifled a sigh and changed direction.

  “Tess, the staff tell me you are writing lists almost every day. Can you tell me what they are about?”

  “Secrets.”

  “Oh, secrets. Right. Do you trust me, Tess?”

  “Yes.”

  “Could you tell me what the lists mean? I promise I won’t tell anyone. Doctors have to keep secrets that their patients tell them.”

  Cosgrove spoke slowly and methodically, making sure to stop at the end of each sentence to allow Tess to absorb his words.

  Tess turned her head sideways, looking away from Cosgrove, thinking.

  “It’s about apologise.”

  “Oh. Are there people who need to apologise to you?”

  No answer.

  “Tess, are the people on your list people who did things to you, bad things?”

  Tess flicked her fingers, the snapping sound echoing around the bare corridor.

  “You have to say you’re sorry,” she replied simply.

  “Who, Tess, who has to say they are sorry?”

  “Did you know that there are over one hundred thousand different butterflies and moths in the world?”

  Cosgrove sighed. He was getting to know Tess better and she always made a statement like this when he was getting nearer to the truth. He was also learning that it was useless to probe when she did this as it set their trust back weeks.

  “No, Tess, I didn’t know that. Come on and I’ll bring you back to your classes.”

  He was going to have to try another day.

  Seán waited until Kate had put Ben to bed before he told her about the will. It occurred to him that if Michael wasn’t his father then neither Tess nor Ben were his full sister and brother. It didn’t really matter, he supposed, they were his mother’s children. When Kate came back into the kitchen she looked at him and waited. His sister could always read him like a book.

  “I went to Brown & Son,” he said “but the will was not there.”

  “What? Where would it be?”

  “In Dublin.”

  Seán told Kate about his day, leaving the bit about their true parentage to last. When he finished he found Kate silent. He had expected her to be calm. She always was. But there was something in her expression, something else.

  “You knew!” he spat.

  Kate lowered her head.

  “I didn’t know about me. I thought he was my father all right – she never told me that part.”

  “But you knew all along that Michael Byrne was not my father and you never told me.”

  “I couldn’t, Seán. Mam made me promise. She said that you knowing wouldn’t solve anything. She didn’t want you to think badly of her.”

  “Think badly of her? I’m a bastard, you’re a bastard. I now have no way of making a living. Tess owns the farm! Why on earth would I think badly of her?”

  “She wouldn’t have known about his will. How could she? She stayed with him all these years so you and I could have a future. She loved us. She sacrificed her happiness for us, Seán.”

  Seán thought his day could not get any worse but the realisation that his sister knew all these years and said nothing was a betrayal he could not bear. He stared angrily at her, the veins in his neck bulging as he clenched his fists, banging them loudly on the old kitchen table, startling Kate.

  He took a deep breath and tried to calm himself.

  “Who was our father, Kate? Please tell me.”

  “I only know his first name. Éamonn. He let her down. That’s all I know, Seán, I swear.”

  “Where did he live, Kate? How did she meet him?”

  “I don’t know, Seán, honestly I don’t. She never said. It upset her to talk about it. She didn’t want me to make the same mistakes. That’s why she told me. That’s all I know, Seán.”

  Seán needed some air so took his coat and strode out the kitchen door. He set off down the dark pathway that led out onto the Dublin road.

  Kate followed him. “Seán, where are you going?”

  “Go back inside and leave me alone. I have to think this through. Everything has changed, Kate, everything.”

  Seán Byrne walked the whole way to town in the darkness. When he reached the main street he walked into Slattery’s bar where his “father” had drunk.

  “Seán!” Mattie Slattery exclaimed. “I thought you weren’t a drinking man?”

  “I am tonight,” was all the tormented man replied.

  Seán sat as casually as he could at the bar and ordered another pint, amazed at how his life had changed in a matter of hours. Up until today he thought he owned a farm and thought his father was Michael Byrne. Until today his sister Kate was the person he was closest to in the world and now he found out that all the time she was lying to him, or at least not telling him the truth, which to his mind was the same thing. He also thought the world of his mother but she was not the saint he believed her to be. She was a whore as far as he was concerned. And also until today he was a pioneer, pledging never to drink alcohol, a pledge that had made his mother very happy.

  Seán looked around him and saw his uncle and cousin whispering in the corner, watching him, but decided to ignore them even though it bothered him that he had all these questions that he knew his Uncle Jimmy could, but wouldn’t, answer.

  Seán beckoned for Mattie Slattery to come over.

  “Mattie, I was just thinking about my mother’s funeral,” he said quietly, trying to sound as casual as possible. “There was a woman there that I didn’t know. Short, chubby type with brown hair. You don’t happen to know who she was by any chance?”

  “Mmm, no, Seán. Doesn’t ring a bell with me.”

  Before Seán got a chance to shrug his shoulders as part of his act, Mattie started talking loudly to another customer who was drinking at the other end of the bar.

  “Frank, you were at Maura Byrne’s f
uneral, yeah?”

  “I was,” the middle-aged man replied. “I knew your mother well, lad. Lord Rest Her. Is there something you want to know?”

  Seán squirmed in his seat and could feel his uncle’s eyes boring into the back of his neck. He wasn’t too happy either to be talking to Frank Ryan who was the village’s most notorious gossip. So much for his quiet, casual enquiry, he thought to himself while Ryan eyed him carefully.

  “Oh, it’s nothing much. I was just thinking about the funeral on my way to town and remembered a woman I didn’t recognise there. I thought Mattie here might know who she was, that’s all. It’s not important.” He swallowed hard.

  A few other men in the bar had started to listen to the conversation and were leaning over in preparation to give their two bobs’ worth.

  “Small, you say, fat?” a voice said from the side snug. “Well now, who would that have been?”

  “Sure, wasn’t that Dan Whelan’s wife from Knockbeg?” said another voice. “Sounds like her.”

  “No,” Ryan replied. He didn’t want to lose his audience so soon and wanted to drag this out for what it was worth. “Sounds to me like that girl Maura used to pal with. I’m sure I saw her at the funeral. She wasn’t from around here. Her mother was though and she came here for holidays – now what was her name?” Ryan replaced the pipe in his mouth and chewed on it, hoping no one else came up with the answer first.

  Jimmy Kelly shifted uneasily in his seat and knew that there was more to his nephew’s query than idle conversation.

  After what seemed like an insufferable silence, Frank Ryan removed the pipe from his mouth. No one else had spoken, aware that Frank wouldn’t be too pleased with them stealing his limelight.

  “Brigid, that’s what it was. Lives in Dublin. Ah, Christ, I can’t remember her people’s name. It’s on the tip of my tongue but it’s an odd name, northern I think. Blast it anyway!” Ryan hated to fail.

  “Are her family still around?” Seán asked, still trying not to come across as too keen.