Sometimes, living in a small town made you really happy. There was such a feeling of security in it. It wasn’t big-headed, but she knew she was well-respected and generally well-liked, and the two didn’t always go together. But, there were times when Ballytierney would make you want to run away. Want to go as far as you could get, from the nosiness and the narrowness and the hardened ignorance you saw sometimes the kind where the person was so ignorant they didn’t even have the least inkling of it, and they were accepted or at least tolerated too, in the town.
Maggie would think then of London or Dublin or any of those big anonymous places, where there could even be a solace in the loneliness. If you put one of the ignoramuses of Ballytierney, or any other small rural town in there, well you had to wonder if they would even survive a week.
The telephone rang, its urgent sound making her start, stub out her cigarette and stand up, all so quickly, that she felt dizzy for a second, and had to slow herself down.
Duty was duty, though, and it was hers to answer the telephone unless one of the priests picked it up first, in which case, she would be expected to fade back into the scenery. Well, none of them would pick it up now. They were all occupied in the dining room.
Maggie’s heart took uncomfortable leaps around her chest when she heard the gasping and crying tones on the other end of the phone. It wasn’t the first time someone had rang the parish house, in dire straits, not by a long chalk, but maybe it was because her own nerves were all on edge tonight, that Maggie actually sat down on the hall chair.
She needed to take a grip of herself. This wasn’t going to get them anywhere.
“What is it, my dear?” She made her voice calm, concerned, flattened the worry out of it.”
“He’s dead, laid there…dreadful, dreadful…oh, God.”
The voice rose, and you could hear the hysteria just about to take over.
“Can you tell me who you are?” Keep it simple. That was the best.
“Mary, Mary…oh, I’m sorry…I’m in such a state, oh, oh,”
There was silence and tension tugged at Maggie’s throat. She was gripping the telephone receiver so tight that it was making her hand go into a cramp. She made her fingers loosen.
“Mary who?”
There came a loud sigh.
“I’m sorry. I’m better now. It’s Crowe. Mrs. Crowe.”
They lived in that big place, Inishowen House, and the woman was rarely seen out around the town. He was a bit of a mystery, rarely seen and reportedly in bad health. Young Father Tom went out and visited him.
“Father Lally came out earlier didn’t he, anointed your husband, I think?”
It was taking a bit of a chance; overstepping the mark even but she needed to calm the woman and remind her that her husband’s death wasn’t a surprise. Or was that being harsh? It was well known that death, even when expected, came as an awful shock.
“No, you don’t understand Miss Cahill. My husband didn’t die of natural causes. Not at all…” The ragged sobbing started again. What on earth did the woman mean? Not die of natural causes? Wasn’t she just suffering some sort of shock, surely? The best thing might be to get one of the priests. The canon definitely wouldn’t thank her for this, but she was out of her depth. Maybe Father Stephen or even young Father Tom…
“You don’t understand, Miss Cahill. He’s been hit. On the head, blood everywhere. Someone came in here, with an iron bar and beat a dying man to death. I was in the house, that’s the thing. I was in the house, alone with my sick husband and someone came in and crept up the stairs and did such a thing. He shouldn’t have come…he shouldn’t have come.”
Her voice rose again. A cold shiver started in Maggie’s neck and went all the way down her back. They used to say about someone walking over your grave. But, this wasn’t the time to be giving in to her own terror.
“Have you called the guards, Mrs. Crowe…Mary,” Squash the slight qualm, it wasn’t the time to be thinking about class distinctions.
“No, oh, oh…I should have done that, shouldn’t I. I’m stupid…just like he says. Oh, what if they’re still here in the house hiding somewhere. What am I going to do, Miss Cahill?”
Logical, practical thinking wasn’t always her strongest suit. But it’s amazing what can happen when you’re called up to the mark. Thought processes happen rapidly, ideas come fast, some are instantly dismissed, and others are put into order.
“Put the phone down now, Mrs. Crowe and ring up the barracks immediately. Dial 999 and answer the questions they ask you. I’ll go and get the priests, and one of them will come out to the house. I’ll give you a chance to make the call, and I’ll ring you back in about fifteen minutes to check. I’m putting the telephone down now. Are you all right?” Stupid question and for a few seconds there was no answer. Terror gripped Maggie, and it was like the feeling of something going with your breath, choking and being winded all at once. Had the intruder crept up on Mary Crowe and grabbed her?
“Yes, yes, I’ll do it now. I’m…thank you. Miss Cahill.”
For a couple of seconds after replacing the receiver, Maggie sat her hand on the receiver back, now, in its place. The clock caught her attention. It was half-eight. Twenty to nine, she’d ring the woman back.
In the meantime, there was the canon to inform.
Their dessert. Well, that would have to go by the wayside now, all that song and dance about the blooming sherry trifle, and it wouldn’t be eaten. What was she thinking about? Trivial. What did the trifle matter?
She put her hand out to push the dining room door open when it opened from the other side, and Father Tom was there, all red-faced and embarrassed. Oh, so he’d been sent out to find her, had he? She’d been too long with their next course. The canon wouldn’t be happy. He’d be even less so when she told him what had happened to Simon Crowe, a few miles up the back road.
“It was a phone call, Canon, from Mrs. Crowe of Inishowen House. Her husband has been attacked. I told her to telephone immediately for the guards. I thought maybe you’d go…” She was looking at the canon and stopped talking when she saw the expression on his face. His eyes stared at her, and he opened his mouth and sat there for a few seconds, mouth open, all dignity gone with a look of terror on his face.
Then it was confusion. A few of them got to their feet and questions were fired at her mainly from Frank O’Sullivan and Buckley, the solicitor—mainly asking her more details of the conversation she’d had with Mary Crowe. What exactly had the woman said and what exactly had happened?
The colour was gone from the canon’s face.
“It’ll be a robber, probably a tinker. Big house like that and they were known to keep money in the house.”
It was Frank O’Sullivan who’d got up and crossed over to where the canon was sitting.
“Do you hear me, Canon, it will have been a robbery. They come prepared these scum.”
His voice was firm. More than firm. There was a warning in it. That was stupid. Where had the thought come from, into Maggie’s mind?
“Get a glass of brandy for the canon.” Frank looked at her, his expression impatient. A man used to giving orders.
“No brandy. I’ll have to go out there now, go out to the house, see Simon. See his wife.”
“No, Canon. Let Father Stephen go. You stay here. Stay here for the time being, Canon.”
He looked across at Maggie.
“Go down to the kitchen now, please. Miss Cahill and make us a pot of tea. Donal, you get the brandy. In the cupboard there, the bottom of the sideboard.
“I’ll go with you, Maggie.”
It was that quiet Mrs. O’Sullivan speaking. Geraldine.
Frank O’Sullivan made it clear that he wanted all of them, all of the women out of the room.
A chill started in Maggie’s stomach and spread through her body, to the back of her neck, making the little hairs stand up.
“One thing, I must do, straight away,” she told Geraldine O’Sullivan h
anging back in the hall, “is to ring Mary Crowe back. The poor woman was in an awful state, and I said I’d ring her back to make sure she was all right. She was frightened that they might be still in the house.”
“Oh, holy Mother of God,” Geraldine O’Sullivan grabbed at Maggie’s arm. “Is she there in the house, on her own?”
“Yes.”
She was put through quickly and told Mary that both priests, Father Lally and Father Stephen were coming out to the house.
“I got through to the sergeant. They’re coming too, straightaway. Thank God.” She sounded less terrified than she had the last time they spoke.
“There’s a knocking on the door, now. Maggie. Could it be them, do you think? Should I open it?”
“Well, it won’t be the priests, yet. It will probably be the guards. I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Crowe. Go and ask them who they are and if it’s the sergeant, let them in. I’ll hang on here until you come back on the line. That’s best.”
“Do you think it’ll be all right?”
“Yes, go and ask them.”
It was highly unlikely that her husband’s murderer had returned to the scene of his crime to knock on the door. But, you couldn’t be certain, and Maggie would be more satisfied to know for sure. She was also in no hurry to go in her kitchen, and make small talk to women who would look down their noses at her. Where had that come from? She was definitely beginning to develop some strange notions, in her old age.
There was a distant noise, sounds over the telephone wires and they were reassuring noises. Men talking in a calm way—well one man’s voice, authoritative. If he had arrived, poor Mary Crowe would be safe.
* * *
He didn’t like this. Not one little bit. He’d got this far in his career, just edging on the right side of trouble, and it would be terrible luck if it all went wrong now when retirement and his pension were almost within his grasp.
Harriet used to talk about it a lot. His pension. His retirement. She talked about it as though it was a big treat at the end of all the hard work. When she started on the subject, he’d hide his unease, by putting what she called, his face on. He thought he knew what she meant. To him, until it had become too close to ignore, retirement was something in which he had no interest. Harriet didn’t mention it anymore. She’d given up planning altogether, and instead of bringing him relief that made him sad.
The telephone call had come as he was thinking about going home; the young sergeant on night duty had arrived about half an hour ago and clearly wanted rid of him so he could settle down for the night.
The woman had been terribly frightened, and the first thing was to get out there to Inishowen House and make sure she was safe. Then, he’d have to call in reinforcements, such as they were in this smallish town in a rural area.
He shouldn’t feel like this. A big case in a small town, wasn’t it what every man wanted as his career came to an end? Go out with a swing. That was one way of looking at it. The other was that this was going to test him, and it could go wrong.
“Do you have to be so bloody self-righteous?” Harriet shouted at him once, when he’d refused an invitation to the old bank manager’s Christmas do, at the rugby clubhouse. Incorruptible was the other word she used, but the way she said it…well it wasn’t a compliment.
Self-righteous, he disputed, and he doubted he was completely incorruptible, laying no claims to sainthood, but what he hadn’t been, was truly tested. It looked like that might change. That was the gut feeling he had about the business at Inishowen House.
His sergeant, Dick Sheehan drove out there, competently and thankfully, without talking.
It would probably be a robbery, a nasty, violent robbery—rare but not unheard of—and since the war or, as some insisted on calling it still, the emergency, there was no doubt in his mind that people had been getting that bit more reckless and more greedy. Still and all, they’d probably been saying that since Roman times.
“Right, sir.” The sergeant pulled into the gravelled space before shadowy but substantial, Inishowen House. Anglo-Irish originally, but sold on now. Crowe had made his fortune abroad, far off somewhere, Rhodesia, wasn’t it? Probably by exploiting the natives. Still, it was an exotic story, for Ballytierney. He had come back to live here well before the war—the mid-twenties, maybe. Twenty years ago. Vigorous then, something possibly corrupt, in him.
“Have you anybody here in the house with you?”
Mary Crowe shook her head. Her hands had been shaking terribly when she opened the door and let them in.
“No, there’s a woman who comes in to do the housework a couple of times a week.”
“That’ll be Hannah Scrivens?”
She nodded. It came as no surprise. Goodness knew how many cleaning jobs the poor woman had, single-handedly keeping her idle family in fags and beer, not to mention food.
“We were on the point of getting a nurse. Doctor Cash knows a woman, come back from England, trained nurse…but…”
As though realising again, what had happened, she looked at him, as a small child might look, for someone to help her, and find some answers.
“Did you telephone Doctor Cash?”
“He’s on his way.”
“Right. It’s distressing for you, Mrs. Crowe, I’m sorry, but you need to take us up, He’s upstairs, you said. In bed?”
Her eyes widened and she looked from him to the sergeant.
“Do I have to?” The shaking started again, worse than ever and he touched her arm.
“There’s nothing to be frightened of, Mrs. Crowe. We’re here, and no-one can harm you. All I want is for you to take us up to him and maybe tell us a bit about what happened as we go. We’ll talk to you properly afterwards.”
She nodded her head, wisps of greying hair away now from the bun at the back of her neck. Her clothes were grey and black and completely unremarkable, apart from the fact that they were well-made, but around her neck, she wore a big, striking piece of custom jewellery. It wasn’t at all what you’d expect. What did he know about her? Had she ever been seen much at all around the town?
“Father Tom, the young priest came out earlier. He’s a good young man, comes at least once a week since Simon’s been laid up. Then, the doctor came. He didn’t stay long. I got the impression that my husband was just as he expected to find him, Inspector. He hadn’t changed. Sleeping a lot of the time…a bit more awake in the mornings and eating a little, mainly then, earlier in the day.”
“But, tonight. What happened tonight, Mrs. Crowe?”
“I don’t know. After eight o clock, maybe getting on for half-past, I just went upstairs to check that he was settled.”
“And you hadn’t heard anything?”
Something was wrong with this whole story. But, they had reached the end of the corridor, and the door on the right was ajar.
It was a big room, and straight away, you could smell what seemed like Vick’s ointment and the sharp, sickly tang of blood. His stomach churned, a reflex action that he was able to control. You could control it, but you didn’t get used to it.
The man’s eyes were open, and a filmy look chased away any notions of him having a look of terror or shock. The sergeant stood slightly behind him, and Ben approached the bed, steadily, touching nothing and taking in everything about the large bedroom. It wasn’t cluttered with furniture, and what pieces there were, were good and well-polished. The signs of the sickroom were there in the bedside locker which had an array of bottles and what looked like boxes of tablets.
“Did you open the window, Mrs. Crowe? The sash window had been pushed up enough to create a cold draught. It didn’t look wide enough for a person to enter, but whoever it was could have partially closed it when he left, if he had gone out that way.
She shook her head, looked confused.
Now, there was a noise downstairs.
“You can go down and answer the door if you like. The sergeant here will go with you.”
She didn’t re
spond for a second, and he saw her eyes fixed on her husband’s form on the bed with such a look of intense concentration, it was almost frightening.
“I will, so, Inspector. It might be Doctor Cash. The lady at the priests’ house, the housekeeper, Miss Cahill told me to telephone for the doctor too.” She was gabbling the words out now, nervously, and it was a relief when the sergeant laid a hand on her arm, and she turned and left the room with him.
Cronin needed this few minutes here in the room before anything he saw or heard could sway his thoughts. It was fanciful, but he needed to absorb the feeling in the room and visualise the events that had unfolded here. No matter how early days it was, a motive for this was difficult to fathom out. The man was old and sick. So the chances were he wasn’t long for this world anyway.
There was a dent, a bloody dent in his forehead and Cronin deliberately half-averted his gaze from the exposed bone shards and tissue. He wasn’t a doctor or a pathologist for a good reason. His job was to find the whys and the wherefores. He would bet his pension that it wouldn’t be an easy case to conclude. Well, it would, if it turned out to be a robbery gone wrong, or a handy passing madman. But, there was no evidence to point to either. The thing had been done too quietly to fit in with the passing madman, and Mary Crowe said she didn’t think there was anything missing though she’d have to check the house and the safe.
The priests came up the stairs together. Two of them. Not the canon, though, and for that, you’d have to be thankful. If a little surprised. You wouldn’t think he’d be able to keep away. He was at the heart of everything that happened in the place, and this was the biggest thing that had happened in Ballytierney, possibly in living memory.
“Don’t touch anything in the room, Fathers. In the case of a suspicious death like this…” The word suspicious hardly sufficed here. “We need to have the room secured and minutely examined.”
He looked out through the window. The room faced the back of the house, backing onto parkland. Could a ladder have been used? It was just about possible. The window sill, the window fastening and the floor beneath all needed to be checked. He could delegate that. He needed to talk to the woman downstairs.
The Body at Ballytierney Page 3