The Haunting Ballad

by Michael Nethercott

  Audrey sighed softly, and so did I. After all, it was because of me—or at least Lent’s misconstruing of my words—that Spires had gotten shot.

  I attempted to summarize. “All right, we have Mazzo as the note writer and Loomis as the gunman. And for Lorraine’s killer…” I looked at my partner, my eyebrows raised in good old-fashioned bewilderment.

  Mr. O’Nelligan again extracted his pocket watch, studied it for a moment, and nodded to himself. “It’s almost time. The person in question should be here any minute.” He looked over at Mrs. Pattinshell. “I trust you conveyed my instructions precisely, madam?”

  Our ghost chanter, who had maintained a low-grade scowl throughout the proceedings, now broke her silence. “I fulfilled your request as specified.”

  “Hold everything!” Audrey, judging by her own raised eyebrows, had contracted my case of bewilderment. “Are you saying Lorraine Cobble’s murderer is coming here now?”

  “Yes,” Mr. O’Nelligan said simply.

  If the topic hadn’t been homicide, the punctuality of the knock on the door would have been almost comical. Again I played the doorman, but this time my heartbeat was in overdrive.

  Staring at the person in the hallway, I can say that I truly wished it was someone other than who it was. Almost anyone else—Mazzo or Hector or Ruby or even Spires, risen miraculously from his hospital bed. Or maybe a man I’d never seen before, with incriminating bright red hair.

  Sadly, you don’t always get what you wish for.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Kimla Thorpe looked at me with wide, startled eyes. Maybe as startled as my own.

  “Mr. Plunkett? Why are you—?” Then she noticed the roomful of people behind me. “Oh God…”

  For a moment, it seemed that she might turn and flee, but Mr. O’Nelligan came forward and took her by the arm. “Come in, Miss Thorpe. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  He led her inside, and I closed the door. All three Doonans were now standing, though the youngest seemed unsteady on his feet.

  “Kimla!” Tim had gone ashen. “What are you doing here?”

  Patch didn’t look much better. “Ludicrous! O’Nelligan, you can’t mean this.”

  My partner released Kimla and offered her a chair. Refusing it, she moved past the Doonans to stand near the wall at the spot that Patch had vacated. Beneath the ghostly painting, she wrapped her arms tightly around herself and stared forward blankly, avoiding everyone’s eyes—most notably Tim’s.

  Smack Wilton, who like our hostess had remained seated, looked Kimla over and frowned. “So this is your murderer, O’Nelligan? This stick of a girl?”

  “Unfortunately, yes,” my partner said softly.

  “Deny it, Kimla!” Tim cried out. “For God’s sake, deny this nonsense!”

  Kimla said nothing, denied nothing.

  Tim turned to Mr. O’Nelligan. “It’s plain to see you’ve intimidated her. I don’t know how you pressured her into coming here, but obviously you’ve blundered in a big way. Kimla’s a quiet lass. A fine, peaceful young lady.” He spun back toward his girl. “Jesus, Kimla, why don’t you say something? C’mon! You never touched Lorraine, did you now?”

  Kimla remained silent, her jaw clenched and her eyes unfocused, but a single tear traced its way down her cheek. It seemed like an answer.

  “Aw, no.” Tim thrust a hand through his dark hair. “No, no, no, no…” He staggered a little, and Neil eased him back into his chair.

  Mrs. Pattinshell now rose. “All right, you have her. I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain. Now take her away and return my home to me.”

  “In due course, madam,” Mr. O’Nelligan said. “But it’s important that everyone here understand what came to pass.”

  Smack grunted. “You bet it is. If you expect me to slap the cuffs on somebody, I’m gonna need more convincing.”

  Mrs. Pattinshell, seeing that her wishes were to be ignored, moaned and slid back into her chair.

  Mr. O’Nelligan continued. “I should explain that our hostess was instructed to call Miss Thorpe and tell her to arrive at precisely this time. Miss Thorpe was expecting to find no one here but Mrs. Pattinshell. All has gone according to plan.”

  “Okay, but why here?” Smack asked. “We could have done this down at the station.”

  “To address that and other points, I’ll explain now how we identified Miss Thorpe as Lorraine’s killer.”

  “Yeah, how did we identify her?” I wondered aloud.

  “Earlier this afternoon, I took a fine long walk.” Mr. O’Nelligan’s answers were nothing if not roundabout. “This allowed me to ponder and prioritize the facts that we’ve gathered these last few days. In the course of our quest for truth, while various threads played themselves out, one lingering problem could not be ignored—Cornelius Boyle’s claim that he spoke with Hector Escobar near the time of Lorraine’s death.”

  “Coupled with Hector’s counterclaim that he wasn’t there,” I put in.

  “Indeed. Apparently, one of them had to be lying. And yet, after repeated interviews, it became apparent that neither was.”

  Audrey joined in now. “Hector swore on his grandmother’s cross that he wasn’t there. He seemed in earnest.”

  “He did,” my partner agreed. “Mr. Boyle seemed equally sincere in his own assertions. Of course, his eyes and ears, though a source of pride for him, bear over a century of usage. Then, this morning, we heard from Tony Mazzo that when he himself had been in Lorraine’s empty apartment, he heard the exchange between Cornelius and another person. What Cornelius saw that night was a slender individual of dark complexion, at a bit of a distance and obscured in shadow. Based on who he had seen earlier that day, he guessed it to be Hector the grocery boy. Cornelius called out—first in English, then in Spanish—and that individual answered, briefly but convincingly. Thinking no more of it, Cornelius returned to his apartment. Sometimes one sees what he believes to be true, even if the reality is false.”

  “But it was never Hector, was it?” Audrey asked.

  “I came to believe that it was not,” Mr. O’Nelligan said. “Especially after our encounter with the lad today. The question now arose, if this figure in the shadows wasn’t the grocery boy, then who could it be? If it was a stranger, then of course, there was no way to guess. But what if he was one of the men in Lorraine’s circle? Who of those we’d met resembled him? Going over the possibilities, no one seemed a likely match. Perhaps the closest was young Tim Doonan.”

  “What now?” Patch barked. “So it’s Tim you’re accusing?”

  “I am not. Tim is fair-skinned and more solidly built than Hector. Additionally, Cornelius’ youth spoke Spanish, a skill I wasn’t sure Tim possessed. I added up our hallway lurker’s known traits—the slenderness, the complexion, the ability to speak Spanish—and an unexpected possibility arose. Miss Kimla Thorpe. True, she was the wrong sex, but with her thinness and her husky voice, perhaps disguised, she could quite possibly be mistaken for a teenaged male. Especially by ancient eyes in a shadowy hall. As for the Spanish, I recalled that when we heard her perform Friday evening, she sang one of her songs partially in that tongue. A love ballad from Madrid. While that did not necessarily indicate fluency, it did suggest that she knew enough of the language to toss out a few words to Cornelius.”

  Neil Doonan cut in. “Surely, though, that’s not enough to be certain it was her.”

  “There was, in fact, more to go on,” Mr. O’Nelligan said. “I’d been reflecting on Mrs. Pattinshell’s latest ghost song. While I’m very open to the world’s metaphysical possibilities, I was not convinced that the song presented to us genuinely came from Lorraine’s spirit. Obviously, we were being steered toward believing that Cardinal Meriam was her murderer. Earlier, Lee here had suggested the possibility that Mrs. Pattinshell herself created the song. Surely that would be the simplest explanation. After all, having read Cardinal’s letter to Lorraine, Mrs. Pattinshell was aware of its threatening tone and could infu
se those sentiments into the lyrics. Conversely, it could also be that another party had written the ghost song and somehow coerced Mrs. Pattinshell into saying that it came from the late Lorraine. In reviewing the lyrics of the ghost ballad, one line echoed for me—none can brave the storm. I realized that I’d heard it recently in a different song, again one from Miss Thorpe’s repertoire.”

  I looked over at Kimla. She was still hugging herself tightly, staring off at nothing at all. I thought I saw her lips silently forming the words “brave the storm.”

  My colleague went on. “Although not a completely unique phrase, it was distinctive enough to be taken note of. As I’ve mentioned, I was already considering Kimla to be that person in the hallway, and the echoed lyric further elevated her as a suspect.”

  I tossed in my two cents. “Also, she was one of the few people we showed Cardinal’s letter to at the Mercutio.”

  “Meaning she was privy to its menacing tenor,” Mr. O’Nelligan said. “Taking in all these things together, Kimla Thorpe seemed a valid choice. The question was how to confirm it. I devised a plan to confront our hostess about Lorraine’s ghost song. Arriving here an hour ago, I secured her admission that she’d lied to us regarding the song and, in fact, had been paid to do so.” He addressed Mrs. Pattinshell. “It might be best, madam, if this portion was given in your own words.”

  She glared bullets at him but, after a moment, obeyed his request in her clipped, formal manner. “Yesterday morning I awoke to find that an envelope had been slipped under my door. The unsigned letter within had been penned in a strained hand, as if the writer were attempting to disguise his or her identity. The letter consisted of two sheets, the first being the lyrics to a song, and the second being a set of instructions. Additionally, some cash had been included, not an ungenerous amount. The instructions told me to call up Plunkett and O’Nelligan, inform them that I’d received the song from Lorraine’s spirit, and sing it to them in whatever tune I fancied. If I complied with this, more money would be forthcoming. As it turned out, the investigators insisted on coming here to hear the song, so I was forced to memorize the lyrics. That is all.” She turned now to Smack Wilton. “As you see, Detective, I’ve done nothing illegal. Unorthodox perhaps, but not illegal.”

  “Unorthodox!” Smack snickered. “That’s just another word for no-holds-barred batty, ain’t it?”

  Mr. O’Nelligan took over again. “In order to draw Miss Thorpe out into the open, I had Mrs. Pattinshell phone her earlier to say that she’d figured out Kimla’s identity and demand she come here to sort things out. No doubt feeling cornered, Kimla, as we see, did indeed comply.”

  For the last several minutes, Tim Doonan had been sitting in silence, appearing deeply shell-shocked. He now looked over at his girlfriend and managed to rasp out a question. “Is it all true, Kimla?”

  Still avoiding his eyes, she gave a barely audible “Yes.”

  Something between agitation and anger drove Tim’s words. “But why? Why did you kill Lorraine?”

  Instead of answering, Kimla looked over at Mr. O’Nelligan. “You tell him.” There was bitterness in her voice. “You seem to know everything.”

  “I certainly don’t know everything that occurred,” my partner said, “but I can speculate. While I had identified you as Lorraine’s killer, it was hard to imagine someone of your gentility in that role. I wondered what could possibly have compelled you to such an extreme act. What did you hold so close to your heart that you would fight to protect it? The answer was Tim.”

  “Yes,” Kimla said under her breath.

  Mr. O’Nelligan kept on. “My guess is that events began to unfold that evening at the Café Mercutio when Patch played his jest on Lorraine and Loomis Lent, sending a bottle of wine and a provoking note to their table. Lorraine was enraged at this presumed mockery, but perhaps even more so at Patch’s subsequent comments ridiculing her song gathering.”

  “That she was,” Patch agreed.

  “The accusation—made in public—that she had pilfered tunes from poor hobos and farmers must have struck Lorraine to her very core. Remember, her role as songcatcher was her greatest source of passion and pride. Here was a woman whose anger could be searing when she felt herself wronged or insulted, and that anger was now turned toward Patch. We know that Lorraine would often depend on Loomis for dark gossip about others, and we know that Loomis may have been privy to a rumor concerning Patch and a barracks attack in Ireland.”

  “Because we’d been in Deirdre of the Sorrows together?” Patch guessed.

  “Most likely,” my partner agreed. “Now here I take a leap, but I propose that Lorraine, upon learning of Patch’s possible involvement in the attack, decided that she’d use the information to malicious effect. Additionally—and here again I speculate—she perhaps planned to extend that fate not just to the eldest Doonan but to his brothers also. Well, Miss Thorpe, might this be the case?”

  “Lorraine swore she’d get them deported!” It came rushing out of her now. “Arrested and deported! She said that if Patch was involved, then probably all the brothers were, or at least that’s how the authorities would see it. That meant that Tim—” Kimla stopped to catch her breath.

  My partner nodded. “Yes, as I’ve said, I felt that it must all come down to Tim. To your affection for him.”

  Tim bowed his head and let out a low, pathetic groan. Standing beside him now, Patch reached down and rested a hand on his shoulder.

  Kimla couldn’t seem to stop. “She’d come by the Mercutio that morning. I think she was hoping to find Patch, to rub it in—what she’d learned and what she was planning to do. But Patch wasn’t there, and neither was Tim or Neil. I was the only person in the room, just having coffee and reading a book. I guess Lorraine figured telling me would have to do. That’s when she made her threats about getting the boys jailed and deported.”

  “It could have been a bluff,” I said.

  “I don’t think so,” Kimla insisted. “Lorraine was clever enough and vindictive enough to carry through on her threats. I had to believe she could do what she promised to do. I tried to talk to her, but she was out the door before I could get a word in. Tim was away for the weekend, so I couldn’t go to him about it. I had commitments for the rest of the day, way into the evening. It wasn’t till very late that I made my way to Lorraine’s.”

  “This was close to ten P.M.?” Mr. O’Nelligan asked.

  “Something like that.” Kimla’s voice was becoming distant and trancelike; she unfolded her arms and let them fall to her sides. “I’d decided that I was going to reason with her. I was going to get her to promise to leave Tim alone, to leave all of them alone. There was no answer when I knocked on her door, but then I heard someone singing on the roof, and I knew it must be her. I climbed up. There was a half-moon that night, just bright enough to see her by. She was singing ‘The Wild, Weeping Heather.’”

  “The song she said Spires stole?” I asked.

  “Yes, that’s the one.” Her trance seemed to be deepening. “Lorraine was standing by the edge of the roof. I went over and began pleading with her, begging with her not to bring any harm to Tim. I told her that he was such a good person, that she had no idea what a good person he was. Maybe Patch had done what she claimed or maybe he hadn’t, but not my Tim. She told me that getting Tim and Neil into trouble, too, would make Patch’s suffering all the worse.”

  “Jesus,” Patch muttered under his breath.

  “I told her that Tim had a pure, true heart. That’s when she laughed. She said that I was talking about him like he was someone out of a ballad, but that people were never as moral or worthy as the characters in songs. She said that people were shameful and foolish, and that I was a fool for thinking Tim was something special. Then she laughed again and said she hoped they’d lock him away till he was withered and broken. That’s when I pushed her.”

  Those last words hung over the room like a storm cloud, and no one spoke for a long interval.


  Finally, Kimla continued, her voice barely audible now. “I couldn’t believe what I’d done. It just didn’t seem possible. It felt like I was in some dream, and if I hurried home quickly enough, none of it would really have happened…” She faded out, lowering her eyes and again wrapping her arms protectively around her slender form.

  Somewhat to my own surprise, I was able to take up the narrative. “Then you descended to the fifth floor and paused near the stairwell. That’s when Cornelius stepped into the hallway and called out to you. You must have been hugely relieved when you saw that he’d mistaken you for Hector. From your earlier visits to Cornelius, maybe you were aware of Hector and his grocery runs. When the old man started speaking in Spanish, you knew enough of the language to answer, probably altering your voice to sound more male. That’s why Mazzo didn’t recognize you. You convinced Cornelius it really was Hector there, and he went away. Does that all ring true?”

  “That’s how it happened,” Kimla answered quietly. “In the days after, I drove it all from my mind. Lorraine’s death was declared suicide, and I think, in a way, I made myself believe that’s what it truly was. Maybe I hadn’t even been there at all.”

  I was reminded of Mazzo saying that the more he told the lie about lambasting McCarthy’s minions, the more it seemed like the truth. It’s peculiar what the human mind can do.

  “Then you two came to town.” Kimla looked at my partner and me. “And I couldn’t pretend to myself anymore.”

  “No, you could not,” Mr. O’Nelligan said. “With our arrival, homicide was now being considered, and you were put on guard. Two nights ago, when you observed us accosting the Doonans about the barracks attack, you realized that we were getting closer to the source of Lorraine’s killing. Having seen Cardinal Meriam’s foreboding letter to Lorraine and knowing of Mrs. Pattinshell’s ghost songs, you fashioned your plan of misdirection and set it in motion. You hoped to have us believe that Cardinal had killed Lorraine and that he was beyond our reach.”