The Death of an Irish Lass

by Bartholomew Gill

  McGarr suffered no delusions about Ireland. The base of his country’s economy was agriculture, and most of his countrymen were farmers. As one who had lived with the effects of industrialization in other countries, McGarr wouldn’t have Ireland any other way than what it had been since recorded time—perhaps the finest bit of natural pasturage in all Europe. Certainly there was a hot demand for the products such a country could supply on a grand scale, given certain improvements in farming methods. Many of the Continental countries even now couldn’t feed their populations.

  But Clare was another story. Clare was rock, albeit picturesque rock. Stepping out of the Cooper, McGarr remembered what an old woman in Lisdoonvarna had once told him when he had remarked about vistas in that rugged terrain: “Ah, lad—could we but eat that beauty, things would be grand.”

  Superintendent O’Malley said, “I’d prefer to do the telling alone, if you don’t mind.”

  “I’ll take a gander out back, then,” said McGarr.

  An old man was standing in the doorway now. “Is it about May that you’ve come?” he asked O’Malley.

  O’Malley removed his blue Garda cap. “Maybe we better go inside, John. The news isn’t good.”

  McGarr walked around the outbuildings: an old barn in which cows were once kept before the new house was built, a three-bay hayrick, the old house, in the main room of which a Massey-Ferguson tractor now sat—and stopped at the garden. The cabbages were big but withering, as were the cauliflower, squash, and turnip plants. However, the quarter acre of potatoes farther up the hill seemed to be reveling in the hot, dry weather. In other fields McGarr could see corrugated folds of earth that marked former potato beds.

  He reached down and plucked a bright red tomato from the shadows of a plant. The vines were loaded with them, nobody seeming to care that they had fruited, grown prime, and now were beginning to rot back. He bit into it. The flavor was as sweet as anything he could ever hope to taste. A mere second it had been from vine to mouth. And no chemical fertilizer or insecticide had ever touched this land, he didn’t doubt.

  At that moment, looking down the valley toward Lahinch and the ocean beyond, McGarr wished fervently that he had taken his uncle’s farm in Monaghan when it had been offered to him twenty-five years ago, that he had become a farmer and raised a tribe and followed his country’s footballers into Croke Park of a Sunday afternoon to cheer for his boys. In Rathmines, where McGarr now lived, he hardly knew more than a half-dozen people who lived on his street.

  But, he supposed, there was another side to this idyllic picture before him. The urban world had so intruded on the Clares and Donegals of Ireland that few young people chose to remain. Television, the press, movies, and magazines had made so many other places seem so much more glamorous that the young people were off as soon as they were old enough to scrape up the money. And few returned.

  McGarr thought of May Quirk and New York, and he knew what would greet him when he entered the house: two old people who had been forced into a sort of isolation in a farmhouse with nobody but themselves and some neighbors like them; in short, no real reason to have more than a small garden, a couple of chickens, and two dozen sheep. McGarr only hoped they were strong, for the death of their daughter would hit them doubly hard.

  McGarr didn’t bother to knock. He opened the front door and stepped into a hallway. The parlor door was open. The room was filled with two stuffed chairs, a divan, and a thick rug, all in some red color, and a sideboard with Waterford crystal on top. The mantel of the glazed-brick fireplace held an eight-day clock made in Japan and a gilded-frame picture of their only and now dead daughter, May. But something else on the sideboard caught McGarr’s eye—a half-empty, open bottle of Canadian Club.

  Superintendent O’Malley seemed lost, both in the immensity of the divan and in his own thoughts. His blue eyes had clouded. He was gently touching his fingers to the plush of the upholstery. The balls of the clock spun in its vacuum. McGarr could hear a woman crying somewhere within the house and the low voice of an old man trying to soothe her. McGarr poured himself a very large whiskey, drank that off, and poured himself another. He filled a second glass and handed it to O’Malley. He then made a cursory search for the cap to the Canadian Club. He could find it neither in the parlor dustbin nor in the kitchen.

  After a while, John Quirk appeared in the doorway. He was a very tall man who had once carried a heavy frame. Now his neck was thin, his head skull-like, eyes sunken. His jawbone was visible right back to his ears, which were large and hairy. His face, however, like his daughter’s, was long and regular. His hand, which McGarr took, was massive and had once been heavily calloused. He wore a green woolen shirt and gray pants held up by leather suspenders. His socks were black.

  McGarr poured him a drink.

  “You’re from Dublin, are you?” John Quirk asked McGarr when he handed the old man the glass.

  McGarr nodded.

  “Are you going to catch the villain who did this to my May?”

  McGarr nodded again.

  “How can you be so sure?” The old man set the glass on a small table next to the stuffed chair in which he now sat. White doilies covered the back and arms of it.

  “I won’t stop until I do.”

  “That’s easy to say,” said Quirk.

  “He’s the best, John,” said O’Malley. “He’ll find the bastard. For my money, we got him already. Like I told you.”

  Quirk wasn’t listening to O’Malley. “And what will you do when you find him?”

  “I’ll try to make it so he’ll get hanged,” said McGarr without hesitating. He knew what Quirk wanted to hear, and in fact it was the way he was feeling then too.

  Quirk nodded his head. He then turned and looked at the picture of his daughter on the mantel.

  From where he sat, McGarr couldn’t tell if the photographer had added the blush to May Quirk’s young cheeks, but she looked fresh and innocent, with a happy smile and a big space between her two front teeth, which then had not been capped. Knowing how she had been murdered was enough to mist the eyes of even McGarr, who had sat through many such interviews and was in his own way a very hard man indeed.

  “How did he do it to her?”

  “P—, poison,” O’Malley said. “Something new and quick. She didn’t suffer a bit. Must have spiked her drink.”

  “But why?” Quirk asked.

  “That’s the reason we’re here,” said McGarr. “Perhaps if we can gather the facts quickly, we can get right on the trail of whoever it was. What can you tell me about your daughter? I understand she’s been away for quite some time now.” He stood, holding his empty glass.

  “Oh,” said Quirk suddenly. “Help yourself.”

  “It’s a shame the cap’s missing. All its strength will escape.”

  “Jim Cleary from next door gave it to me like that. Last night.” Quirk turned to O’Malley. “Strangest thing. He just knocked on the door and when I opened it he thrust that thing at me. He looked like something or somebody had scared him witless. Do you suppose—?”

  O’Malley shook his head. “Not Jim Cleary. He’s just getting a little soft is all. Sure and you know him better than me. He’s as gentle as a lamb and has always been. Even when he’s on the drink.”

  But Quirk wasn’t listening. Again he had turned to look at the picture of his daughter on the mantel. “She was a changed girl when she came back from America. Forgetful like, and distracted. She had something on her mind, that’s for sure. First night, instead of staying home here with her ma and pa like she hadn’t done in ten years, she went out to the pubs, like some day laborer or strumpet. I don’t know what the world’s coming to. When I was a lad, women stayed at home where they belonged. And they got married and had children. I don’t know.” The old man rocked his head from side to side. “I’ve always said the drink is the curse of Ireland, something gutter snipes and desperadoes use for blood.” McGarr was just pouring himself another small glass. The old man added
, “Begging your pardon, sir.”

  McGarr asked, “Did your daughter have a drinking problem?”

  “Oh, God no. At least I would say that she didn’t. I mean, I wouldn’t rightly know. But every night she went out, Aggie and me waited up for her. Not once could I even tell she had had a drop. She wasn’t tired or groggy. Several times we stayed up until dawn.” Yet again he turned and looked at his daughter’s picture on the mantel and then bit his lip. “I knew there was something in the wind. She wasn’t acting like that because she wanted to. I don’t care how many years she spent in New York. I know my May. It’s the upbringing that counts.” His hand jumped to his face. Not knowing what to do with it, he scratched his forehead.

  McGarr took out his wallet and removed May Quirk’s $27,000. He reached over and placed the crisp bills on the table beside Quirk. “That’s your daughter’s money, Mr. Quirk.”

  O’Malley glanced at McGarr. Officially, the money was evidence which should have been held until it was ascertained that May Quirk did indeed own it. But McGarr wasn’t about to go by the rules with these people. He didn’t think of the money as compensation, but it might help them over the months of sadness, when, he supposed, neither of them would feel much like working.

  With quaking hands and fingers that seemed too numb or rough to separate them, Quirk tried to fan the bills. “I don’t understand. No amount of money will ever bring her back.”

  “And we don’t want it, neither,” said an old woman from a doorway that led to a hall and bedrooms beyond. “That’s dirty Fenian money it is, and what’s responsible for my poor baby’s death.” Her hand groped for the jamb.

  O’Malley stood to help her.

  She fended him off and walked unsteadily toward the divan. Her legs were like thin sticks and red from sitting too close to an electric fire. She was wearing an old, flower-print dress—green holly sprigs with red berries—and a wool cardigan worn through at the elbows. Her hair was thin and very white. Her face had once been handsome, but, like her husband’s, far too thin. Her cheekbones were prominent knobs and her false teeth seemed to be a bad fit. McGarr imagined that the Quirks, like many older people out here in the West, cooked only when they had company. Otherwise it was tea and cake, potatoes once in a while, and an odd rasher in the pot. Much of the produce in the garden out back had been left past prime.

  When she had eased herself into the cushions of the divan, O’Malley asked, “What makes you say it’s Fenian money, Aggie?”

  There were red circles around both her eyes. Otherwise her face seemed bloodless. “Didn’t she have a shooter in her handbag?”

  Her husband was surprised.

  “I saw it myself when she kept digging for them scented cigarettes of hers what smelled like a cabbage patch under the torch. Big as a gangster’s it was. How else can you explain that?”

  She didn’t wait for a reply. “Oh, I know how it is. I’ve read about it in the papers. Our poor innocent kids get over there to New York and after a few years they think they know it all. And then they meet up with a cutie, some little good-for-nothing chancer from hunger who’s got a nose for the fast buck and an easy mark. He gets ahold of a pretty young thing like May and asks her how Irish she is. And to prove it, over there where everybody’s pretty much of everything and nothing much of what’s good, she starts collecting money—handouts, mind you, just like plain begging it is—from other misguided country people. They think it’s going to the patriots and rebels, you know, the ones what freed the country from the British. But it’s not. It’s going straight into the pockets of the dirty little dodgers like that one in New York, or them in Derry and the Bogside, the ones what would rather kill than work, the ones what are blowing people out of the seats in London restaurants. Or the one what did whatever he did to May.” She made a fist with her right hand and pushed it into her forehead. “The craven coward, may he die a thousand hideous deaths!” She began sobbing.

  McGarr waited until she had quieted. “What man in New York?”

  “Sugrue, his name is.” She stood and started out of the parlor toward the hall. “Wrote her just last week, he did. A little runt of a man. And without an occupation, either. She told me he was a fund raiser. Now then,” she paused in the doorway, “wouldn’t you call that tripe? A fund raiser! Isn’t that what we all are in one way or another?”

  When she returned from the bedroom she had a letter in one hand, a photograph in the other. “Look at him. A half-pint. Doesn’t hardly come up to her shoulder.”

  McGarr didn’t stand to take the photo from her. He didn’t think he’d come up to the old woman’s shoulder either. She was at least six feet tall.

  And May Quirk was too. She and a man were pictured standing outside a bar named Mickey Finn’s in what McGarr assumed was New York, since all the cars parked at the curb looked like ugly limousines. It seemed to be summer and she was wearing a tight lilac-colored pullover and short black skirt. Most tall women had legs that were in some way flawed, McGarr had noticed in the past, but in this picture May Quirk’s seemed perfectly shaped. They were wrapped in dark hose, and she wore pumps with low heels. And she was in every other way a handsome woman.

  The man, on the other hand, looked remarkably like McGarr but younger. He still had a full head of curly copper hair, and his smile seemed contagious and friendly, like that of somebody you’d enjoy knowing. He was small and thick and had placed his hand around May Quirk’s waist in the casual way that people who have been intimate with each other adopt. He was wearing what McGarr speculated was an expensive light gray suit cut in the fashion of the moment, and shiny black shoes. He wore a green carnation in his buttonhole. A black silk tie on a gray shirt made him look like a successful entertainer or businessman.

  “And just read the letter.”

  “Aggie,” said Quirk. “You didn’t.”

  She turned on him. “Of course I did, you poor old fool. I only wish I had earlier and showed it to Dan here, too. He might’ve placed her in his protection and she’d be alive this minute.” The patent absurdity of her statement seemed to make her all the more aware of the situation. Her arm jerked toward the picture, which she grasped off the mantel and hugged. She then shuffled from the room, saying, “Ah, May. May.”

  McGarr read:

  Suite 70007

  World Trade Center

  N.Y., N.Y. 10048

  May,

  In the past I might have told you I loved you. Forget all of that. ’Twas only said in the heat of the moment. Now that you’ve been gone for six weeks, I’ve had a chance—free from your constant caresses and many charms—to think about us, you and me. And I have come to this conclusion.

  We can’t go on as before, meeting here and there—your place, my place, some rundown hotel up in Saratoga Springs. That’s cheap. What’s worse, my wife wouldn’t like it. And with all the running around, I’m wasting away.

  What? You didn’t know about the wife? How about the thirteen kids? Do you think a handsome sporting gent like meself could long remain solitary and sexless? Give me credit for at least having had a little fun before I met you. (And I rue the day.)

  Since, the certain matter about which you are aware has arisen, and I’m off to the Vatican for a special dispensation from my prior marriage vows, whence to the Holy Isle I’ll fly, arriving at Shannon (14th August, 2:00 P.M., flight 509 Aer Lingus from London) and we shall tie the knot. Why knot? You know knot not, say not.

  We’ve talked about it. You’ve never said no. You’re home now among your people, and what better time and place for us to marry? What say? You can give me the answer at Shannon. If not (knot?), I’ll just continue on back here and see if I can prise one of these thermopanes off the concrete blocks. I’ll say a pray for you as I descend.

  I love you and hope you’ll meet the plane,

  Paddy

  It was the thirteenth of August.

  “‘A certain matter’ indeed!” said the old woman, from the doorway. She still had the pi
cture in her hands.

  “Aren’t you assuming an awful lot, Mrs. Quirk?” said McGarr.

  “What? With that money and the gun? And him a ‘fund raiser’ as well as being a mouse and a gobshite? I know what ‘a certain matter’ means, if you don’t, Mr. Policeman. Just like I know what he’d been up to with May. He was her lover. No two ways about it.”

  “But his intentions—” McGarr began to say.

  “I couldn’t give a tinker’s damn for his intentions. It’s the facts what matter. What sort of a constable are you, anyhow?” Her eyes cleared and she gave McGarr a close look. “You’re nothing but half a man yourself.”

  Quirk got out of his chair and put his arm around his wife. He then led her back into the bedroom.

  Superintendent O’Malley went into the kitchen, where McGarr heard him phone a doctor.

  McGarr examined the postmark of the letter. It had been mailed in Boston five days earlier.

  When Quirk returned, McGarr asked him, “Can you tell me something about what your daughter did while she was here? When did she return? What were her habits? Did she visit friends? Do you remember anything remarkable about something she might have said or done?”

  Quirk reached over for the nearly full glass of whiskey. He wet his lips and winced. He was not a drinking man.

  McGarr said, “Let’s start with her friends.”

  “Male or female?”

  McGarr cocked his head. “Female first.” He wanted to get to know who May Quirk had been.

  “Ach—the whole house was cluttered with them what are left hereabouts now. And who would have thought there were so many of them her age. I had thought they had all flown, like May herself, but they came from all over the county they did. Kids and husbands and all. May had always been popular, you see. She had a way about her. Had—”