‘Them hens was my own, Major, as was the porker from which the doctor’s share of that bacon did come.’
Don’t choke on it, Mary could hear Ria saying to herself and warmed to the woman in spite of what had been said about the blouse. ‘It’s all right, Mrs. Haney. I’m sure the major didn’t mean it.’
Oh but he did, m’am, he did, Ria wanted so much to say but would rather slice off her tongue!
The door was closed but not softly, though one didn’t jump at the sound of it, not when knowing beforehand of what must surely come. ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Major. Mrs. Haney is a very generous, kindhearted woman who has no patience whatsoever with the IRA, both past and present.’
‘To which I would add, Major, that our Ria has seen too much of what they can and have done to want to see any more of it.’
Which was exactly what he’d wanted to impress on the two of them, thought Trant. He’d make no apologies, would rest content.
They began to eat, Mary to watch them as best she could. Trant, of course, suspected that things weren’t right between Hamish and herself, and had obviously wanted to confront them together. Hamish, though, made no pretense of loss of appetite or ability to play the host. Between mouthfuls, the two of them chatted about the war, the country, the Irish—the whole sweep of things including the castle, he deliberately forgetting that he’d been brutally mishandled as had Caithleen, and had also been at loggerheads with them over the treatment of the prisoners.
Great lashings of black currant jam3 disappeared, black strings among the runny yolks and the sop of bacon grease.
‘That bomb you found,’ said Trant, wolfing a mouthful of egg.
Nausea had to be fought down while waiting for him to get on with it.
‘Judging by the size, Mrs. Fraser, I’d have said Liam Nolan was involved but he couldn’t have been, or we’d not be here discussing it unless …’
He briskly cut off a piece of bacon. The ‘coffee’ was full of chicory but must be good—not tea, as usual—for he took another pull at it before shovelling the bacon in.
Droplets of yolk ran down his fork.
‘Unless, what, Major?’ she asked, glancing apprehensively at Hamish who was working on the kippers and looked as if he couldn’t have cared less what happened to her.
Robbie got a small portion, just a taste.
‘Unless Nolan had wanted to impress someone with the fact that he and his friends had easy access to us at any time.’
Trant waved his knife and fork to emphasize the point or perhaps to merely indicate it was only a suggestion.
‘In short, Mary, was this Nolan not within the house itself during the party, did he not place that cardboard box under that chair, and if so, who was he trying to impress?’
‘Won’t this … this Sheehy tell you anything?’ she heard herself ask, the sight of the kippers and oil and melted margarine making her want to throw up.
Hamish fastidiously picked a bone from pursed lips. ‘Major,’ she heard him saying, ‘I have no doubt the man’s as stubborn as the rest of them. Am I right now?’
Trant added a dash of milk to his freshened coffee. ‘Time will tell, Doctor. Sheehy had obviously been coerced into helping them.’
‘His wife and family held to hostage, then,’ sighed Hamish, reaching for another muffin, the margarine and the milk laid on because of the major, not butter and cream, not the usual for Mrs. Haney.
‘These people are all the same,’ said Trant.
‘Mary, the major would like you to go over things for him. As well as you can recall them, lass.’
His use of ‘lass’ was overbearing but she mustn’t get angry, for that would only get in the way, and thank heavens the two of them weren’t smoking. ‘There were three telephone calls.’
‘Three?’ exclaimed Trant, caught by surprise.
‘Yes. One very early on in the evening before the phone lines had been cut. The caller simply said that if I did exactly as I was told no harm would come to anyone.’
The morsel of dripping egg on his fork was momentarily forgotten.
‘When would this have been?’ he hazarded.
There was a slim chance they wouldn’t know exactly when the lines had been cut and she’d have to take it. ‘About nine thirty or ten—just after we’d got up from dinner.’
‘A man or a woman?’ asked Trant, having set down his knife and fork.
‘The former, Major. All three calls were from the same person.’
Was she playing with him? wondered Trant. She’d not taken that third call. No, by God, she hadn’t! ‘Would you recognize the voice if you heard it again?’
‘How could I ever forget? The accent was very soft and melodious, not harsh or broken or what one would expect.’
‘Of an IRA bomber.’
‘Yes, of course that’s what I meant.’
‘Who answered that first call, Mrs. Fraser? We know the name of the waiter who took the other two calls, and have questioned him, of course.’
Egg was now again dripping from his fork. ‘I did. I had just come down the stairs and was right next to it.’
And bold as brass, but if she was lying, that husband of hers gave no indication of it beyond the slightest hesitation with the last of his kippers. ‘And what did the caller tell you would happen?’
‘Nothing more than I’ve already said. I presumed I’d be told in due course but when I went to use the telephone later to call home, I found it out of order. I was told the lines were down and that Captain Allanby had gone to see to them. The wind …’
‘Yet you distinctly said but a moment ago that they’d been cut?’
‘Of course. I assumed this, knowing as we all do now of the bomb threat.’
And as bold as brass again! ‘And the second call?’
Slowly, deliberately Mary reached for a muffin. She would borrow Hamish’s knife and spread black currant jam over the thing, Bridget now bringing her cup and saucer.
‘By then I was very worried, Major. You see, I’d been trapped into talking to Flying Officer Blakely. Well, not trapped as such, but you know what I mean.’
Bridget filled her cup and poured the milk but gave her such a knowing look, Mary heard herself stammer, ‘Thanks. You can go now. We’d been dancing, Major. Blakely had insisted on pursuing things. I … Well, if you must know, I also felt the caller must have forgotten me.’
‘With the lines down?’
‘Yes. Yes, of course.’
‘Mary, lass, what made you think there was a bomb? The major saw you searching for it long before that second call came in?’
‘More correctly, Mrs. Fraser, suspecting that there might be one, why in God’s name didn’t you warn us?’
‘I … I didn’t know for sure, did I? Remember, please, that I’d not been told this by the first caller. I could just as easily have been wrong. Caithleen was home here with Mrs. Haney and her husband, but none of them would have been able to stop this … this Nolan if he’d wanted to kill Caithleen. I … I had to do as the caller had said.’
‘Then it was Nolan?’ asked Trant, his teaspoon poised over the saccharin Mrs. Haney had laid on especially for his benefit.
‘Major, I didn’t say he was the caller, only that Nolan might have been one of those responsible for what happened to her.’
‘You’ve questioned the girl’s uncle and cousin, no doubt?’ asked Hamish, letting Robbie lick his plate.
‘They’ll both go to prison in silence,’ Trant said with a touch of exasperation. ‘Mrs. Fraser, what was the gist of that second call?’
‘Nothing. The line simply went dead. He hung up.’
‘Without a word? I find that curious. The lines have only just been repaired and all you receive is a caller who says nothing? Come, come now, Mrs. Fraser, you’d been hunting for a bomb.’
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‘They rang through right afterwards, but by then I’d found it, so didn’t answer.’
‘You simply said, “It’s all right. Just tell whomever it is that I’ve left for home.” That’s calm fodder for a woman who was holding a dozen sticks of gelignite and her instant death!’
‘I can’t explain it any more than you can the act of a man who throws himself on a live grenade to save his comrades in battle.’
Hamish was impressed with her response, but Trant was only too quick to cut him down.
‘Doctor, there were splinters in that cut you received.’
‘As I fell, I hit the edge of a trestle table.’
‘Did you have to kick in the door of that potting shed?’
He shrugged and managed to look sheepish. ‘Och, I was in a rage wi’ m’self for being so tight.’
She had best say something. Trant suspected Hamish of lying, but more than this, he had wanted her to know it. ‘Hamish and I’ve not been getting on, Major. It’s my fault. I … I just feel so very out of sorts here.’
The truth when needed, was that it, well some of it, and given with downcast eyes? ‘Mrs. Fraser, why do you suppose the caller told you to put the cake in the boot of your motorcar, that it was a present for the O’Neill girl?’
‘Because he knew by then I’d found the bomb.’
‘But you hadn’t told him this?’
‘Of course not. The waiter who answered the telephone must have. Didn’t he?’
Trant set his knife and fork down on his plate at precisely the 6.30 a.m. or p.m. position. ‘You’ve not touched your coffee.’
Or the muffin she’d spread with jam. He glanced at his wristwatch, got up without another word, and left the room before she could even see him to the front door, left her standing here waiting for him to accuse her, waiting until they heard his car start up and leave in haste, Hamish having let the silence grow between them.
‘Darling, what did he mean by saying there were splinters in that cut on your head?’
‘Only that he had talked to Dr. Connor in Armagh.’
A nod was all she could give. Like Caithleen, he had been left as a warning. Fay Darcy and the others could so easily have killed him and Trant hadn’t been the only one to have realized this but Hamish was waiting for her to admit it.
‘Will you be off to Tralane this afternoon?’ she heard him ask.
‘Yes, I suppose so. I guess I must.’
‘You’re not feeling ill, are you?’
‘No, of course not. Just tired.’
Two minutes later Fraser heard her on the stairs; three and she was throwing up into the toilet. The whole house would have heard it.
Trant stood at the windows in his office with his back to her. He’d given no greeting, hadn’t even had the courtesy to turn. As the door closed behind her, Mary came to stand before his desk. He was over on her right. There were three tall, leaded windows in the bay and he was facing the middle of them. The lights had been deliberately switched off prior to her entry. Though it was just a little after 2.00 p.m., the room appeared as if at dusk.
Still he would not turn. ‘Liam Nolan, Mrs. Fraser. Educated at St. Patrick’s School for Boys in Armagh. Taken at the age of seven by one of the priests and thrashed until the blood ran for being unruly and deceitful. He was sent home to Morlan Park, the estate of Lord Gilmore where his father was head gamekeeper. There the boy was stripped naked, tied by the wrists to the pump standard in the yard near the stables, and thrashed again and then again.’
‘But he was only seven?’
‘A fact that seems to have been ignored. Oh, his father wasn’t an unkindly man, but the boy’s keep at the school was being paid by Lord Gilmore. Nolan had, apparently, brought disgrace not only down upon himself but on the estate of his lordship. He held out for three days in the rain and the freezing wind, then his lordship gave in and the boy was put to bed.’
Trant was affecting a dryness he knew she’d find disconcerting.
‘Needless to say, Nolan was no problem after that. Oh I have no doubt he was every bit as unruly and deceitful—more so perhaps—but other boys got the blame and took the rap. Excelled at his schoolwork, was head altar boy and lead soloist until his voice broke, but not much at sports. Perhaps he saved all that up for his holidays home. Went to Trinity College, Dublin, on a scholarship. Ancient and medieval history with, of course, the usual Irish readings, the Book of Kells, that sort of thing. Just where and how he learned to make bombs, I wish I knew, but the problem is, Mrs. Fraser, Liam Nolan most certainly does know how to make them.’
Still she stood waiting for him to turn from the windows. He’d let her wait. ‘Nolan was at Oxford, did you know that?’
‘No, I didn’t. Major, I’ve never met this Nolan. How could I possibly know anything about him?’
‘My thoughts precisely. The point is, Mrs. Fraser, he seems to know of you—enough, at least, to have realized you wouldn’t just hang around for another of those telephone calls of yours but would start hunting for that so-called bomb.’
When she didn’t respond, the major rubbed the windowpane in front of himself to clear it of the fog his breath had caused.
‘Just who were they trying to impress, Mrs. Fraser? Yourself, or someone else?’
Trant would know she would want him to face her and that she would be wondering what on earth was happening out in the Bailey.
‘Well?’ he asked, startling her.
‘I … I’ve no idea.’
Yet she had described Nolan’s voice over the telephone to a tee. ‘He wouldn’t have wasted twelve sticks of gelignite on trying to impress that girl, Mrs. Fraser. Not Liam Nolan.’
Were the accusations coming now? ‘I’ve told you all I know.’
‘What’s he got in mind?’
‘Major, I’ve absolutely no idea. How could I have?’
Surprisingly her voice hadn’t risen, but they’d got nicely over the business of whether it had been Nolan or not. She’d not even realized that by speaking as if it had, she’d given away the fact.
He’d rub the window again. The Bailey was deserted, of course, but she’d not see this yet, the grass rather green for this time of year, but then, it was nearly always green.
The flagpole stood in the centre of the parade square, with four of Napoleon’s cannon at the corners. Private Summers would escort her along a route she’d wonder at, taking her to the cannon only to leave her on the pretext of having forgotten something, and she’d be forced to wait out there all alone. Yes, that would be best.
But what must her thoughts be at such a time? he wondered. Guilt over the ugliness of a sordid little affair with Erich Kramer? Fear for her life, if Nolan and the Darcy woman were twisting her arm and that’s what Kevin O’Bannion wanted?
Fear of betrayal then, and of being caught at it. Something … by God, something! That damned book she’d given Kramer. Thackeray, The Virginians.
‘You can go now, Mrs. Fraser. Get me all you can on the Bachmann thing. Wolfganger and Werner have denied any involvement, but of course, they would.’
He had still not turned to look at her. ‘You didn’t tell them I’d overheard things, did you?’
‘Don’t be silly. They’ll have figured that out all by themselves.’
The walk along the ramparts had been cruel—she not knowing why they were taking that route. They never had before. Private Summers had worn a black armband and had carried a Lee Enfield rifle as if she was a prisoner and he the jailer who had despised her, which was so unlike him it hadn’t made any sense either unless he’d been ordered to behave like that.
The rampart walk had run eastwards from above Trant’s office to the Gosling Tower. From there it had taken them to Sir Guy’s Spy, a cubicle sentry box with embrasures, then down a long slope of wall to the first of the east gate towers
.
They had then walked out across the bailey and Summers had left her here at the flagstaff on the flimsy excuse of having forgotten something. The main part of the castle—its living quarters with all its many rooms and tall windows, was now off to her right, to the west.
As she stood looking southwards towards the barbican and Trant’s office, Mary picked out the bay with its three windows and knew he’d still be standing there as she was here, each staring at the other across the football field of a no-man’s-land of grass and empty space.
Would he be using field glasses? she wondered, hating the thought of it, the deliberateness.
Setting the bundle of books down, she slid her hands into the pockets of her overcoat. Trant would be asking himself questions about her, and she would have to remain like this, facing him for as long as it took to bring Summers back.
But it was lonely, was hard to bear, and the wind seemed only to echo from the surrounding walls and towers, there being no other sound. Two men with a Vickers machine gun had manned each section of rampart up there when she’d gone to meet Jimmy that time atop the keep and been able to see them from there. At the first of the east gate towers there had been a Lewis light machine gun. All had been waiting, all watching the bailey and the prisoners but now were they at the ready to fire on this one woman—was that what Trant had wanted her to feel by leaving her out here like this? That they would shoot traitors in times of war, even women? Or had he merely wanted her to remember what was up there, he thinking that she could well pass the information along, as she’d felt when with Jimmy? If so, why that opened a whole Pandora’s box because it really did mean that they were using her to feed false information to the prisoners—that business of their being sent to Canada; this one of the defences when everyone knew men and guns were at a premium and the castle could not, out of necessity, be as secure as they’d have liked.
Did Trant suspect Nolan and the others had made contact with her for purposes of breaking the prisoners out? If so, he would have thought they’d ask her about such things. They’d want plans of the place, drawings, sketches, hence his showing her that sketch of the cellars and the escape tunnel they’d supposedly found.
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