“What’s the matter with young Father Tom? I saw him across in the park this morning when I took my little Tinker for a walk. Sat, he was, before eight o’clock in the morning. It was cold too, and there he was on that bench near the pump. I had to call him three times before I got any response at all. Then, he looked at me, and I swear to God, he had no clue who I was for a few seconds. What could be up with him, Maggie?”
Maggie’s chest had a weight in it, and she fiercely wanted to be on her own, back in the parochial house kitchen or outside in the back garden pegging out the tea-towels. Away from Abina.
“The whole town is turned upside down by such a thing happening, Abina. Are you surprised that a young man should be upset, especially as he often went out to see Mr. Crowe?” Mrs. Brosnan did her best, but Abina wasn’t to be deflected easily.
“Isn’t it true, that he might have been one of the very last people to have seen Simon Crowe alive? I believe he went out there sick visiting early in the day. Maybe he saw or heard something that’s preying on his mind now.”
Maggie felt clammy, and her mouth was dry. She took a few breaths of the fresh damp air.
“I’ll leave you ladies. I haven’t time for our walk this morning. There’s such a lot of work waiting for me back in the parochial house.”
* * *
She felt only the smallest bit of relief when she left them. Unease had a hold of her whole body. If you pinned her down, she couldn’t say what it was, but it was strong, making her heart hammer and everything around her sharpen to a strange almost unreal extent, so that voices she heard and the colour of the trees and pavements and the paint on the houses, it all became more vivid.
The squad car was drawn close – up to the front of the parochial house.
The inspector and the young, red-haired sergeant led Father Tom out to the car, in front of her eyes.
This couldn’t be happening.
“What are you doing? Where on earth are you taking him?” Maggie heard and felt her voice getting higher.
* * *
“Come into the house, this minute, Miss Cahill.”
She hadn’t seen him, and she hadn’t heard him, but at her elbow, so close she felt his breath hot against her face, the canon’s face folded in disapproval, white and judging her, for her reaction and Father Tom for disgracing them.
She didn’t care. For once in her life, in the grip of this travesty, she didn’t care how angry or cutting the canon got.
“You should be setting an example, Miss Cahill, not bawling in the road like a fishwife. How do you think that will help or what do you think you were doing?”
“It’s the least of my worries, Canon, and I would think it’s the least of yours too. Father Tom would no more kill a man, than…that…than the man in the moon. I thought better of Inspector Cronin. I honestly did.”
“That will do, Miss Cahill. You have lost control of yourself. You are the housekeeper here, if I may remind you. First, and foremost, you serve the good Lord, and second you serve me. You have seriously over-stepped the mark.”
“But, Canon…”
He held up a hand, knuckles tight against the skin. “Stop. I’ve told you. I want to hear no more. I will overlook your behaviour this once. I see you are upset as we all are by such a shocking thing happening. What the bishop will say…I dread to think. Please, prepare a pot of tea. I need to review everything. It’s help I need as it all falls on my shoulders. No-one has the least idea. I will need to put someone in place to do his work. I will have to deal with the bishop, no doubt the press. Parishioners.”
Always about him. She’d have one more try.
“I will help in any way I can, Canon. But, I don’t understand why the guards have come and taken young Father Lally away. No one would think…”
She glanced at the thunder building up again in his face. Got it, he would love an excuse to take his frustrations out on her. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
“I’ll make the tea, Canon.”
* * *
Restlessness made Maggie feel wound up tight and exhausted at the same time, not a good combination.
The atmosphere was fuggy as the air in the back parlour when she wheeled in the trolley with the wonky back right wheel. Every time she used it, it irritated her and every time she resolved to get Jim, the sacristan, and part-time handyman to have a look at it. She invariably forgot. Both were busy. The church got its money’s worth from its employees.
A painful silence fell when she wheeled in the trolley, and she cursed the wonky trolley, in her head, the noise irritating her and making her feel stupid.
* * *
Stanislaus had a big white apron over her habit and cuffs of the same material protecting her sleeves and holding them up.
It was unbelievable that the two of them were here in St. Michael’s, polishing the pews and shining the brasses and carrying on as though nothing had happened. Of all people, it would have to be her. Between her and the canon, Maggie was to be pitied. Every instinct in her body propelled her down Church Street and up the Main Street and into the guards’ barracks. Someone needed to look out for that poor young lad, he might be a priest, but that didn’t stop him from being wet behind the ears. His mother. That was another point. Would the canon even have spared a thought to telephoning the poor woman? Unlikely. All that bothered him being the inconvenience to himself.
“Maggie, could you give the vases on the altar a good wash? Sure, they look green with that nasty slime from the flowers. Signs of neglect.”
Hot pressure rose in Maggie’s windpipe. Glancing from the corner of her eye, she could only see the snooty face of Sister Stanislaus, aka Angela Scully, frowning her disapproval as she took in the altar. Maggie had one of those seconds of déjà vu and she was back in fourth class, her sweaty fingers trying to unravel that red jumper. She lost count of stitches as she tried to pick them up and all she could imagine was ripping the whole thing out. She’d caught a glimpse of Angela then, the exact same look of disapproval on her face and a smirk lurking in her eyes.
Don’t let her see that she upset her.
“All right.”
Don’t gossip either.
If she knew her nun, Stanislaus would be waiting for her to talk about what had happened with poor Father Tom. Well, she could wait.
The silence was as sullen and loaded as it had been in the back parlour when she’d wheeled in the trolley. She could withstand it. There had been a time when this kind of thing would have been awful, but those days were well gone. One of them would crack eventually, but it wouldn’t be Maggie Cahill.
“The poor canon.” Stanislaus’s voice when it came, startled Maggie. The silence had gone on forever, and as it stretched, she’d become used to it. Now, Stanislaus’s prissy tone jarred like the smell of rotting flowers. She made a non-committal noise. Don’t get drawn in. Nuns, they listened to everything you said and then got you into trouble for talking out of turn.
“The poor canon, I said. One of his good friends murdered in his bed and that young priest…God between us and all harm—I can’t imagine he’d have anything to do with it.”
“He wouldn’t, not in a million years.” Damn. She’d resolved to say nothing.
“Mmm, you can’t ever be sure. There’s no smoke without fire, and I heard once that there was bad blood there.”
Maggie’s breath made a noise, coming as it did from her tightly compressed mouth.
“I can only speak as I find, Angela…I mean Sister Stanislaus, and I find Father Tom a lovely young man without a bad bone in his body.”
How she wished to say more -as in how the young priest got put upon and abused and taken for a fool but, it would go straight back to the canon.
She clattered the brass too loudly, instead, glancing at the statue of the Sacred Heart and praying for patience.
She wouldn’t even ask about what Stanislaus had meant about bad blood. It was rubbish. The second cousin of his mother had probably had a baby outside o
f marriage, or his grandfather’s brother might have borrowed a bike fifty years ago. It could be enough, and the irony was that an awful lot of really wicked things happened and were covered up and the perpetrators went about with a rod up their backsides and a great opinion of themselves. Still, what good did it do to even think like that?
* * *
Jasper Quinn faced Father Tom Lally, absorbed, as far as Cronin could tell, in what the young priest said. Though he showed no emotion, it was there in his posture, how he was sitting straight, his hands gripping each other. One thing for sure, he carefully listened to every word Father Tom said. For all the good that would do.
You weren’t supposed to get involved with people brought in for questioning, but Cronin found it difficult with this fellow. If he’d had a son, he’d be much the same age—unlikely he’d be a priest, maybe.
“We keep coming back to the same thing, Father Lally. You were seen, leaving Inishowen House, much later in the evening than you first told us. The only explanation is that you returned, later. For some reason, you won’t deny that, and you won’t confirm it. That leaves me in a quandary.”
Quinn focused on Ben Cronin now and mighty uncomfortable that made him feel. It never felt right having someone observing and scrutinising your every move and word. Quinn, in particular, gave him the pip. He had something of the lord of the manor about him; perfectly polite but you could tell he saw you as two rungs down the ladder from himself. It shouldn’t bother Cronin, but it did.
“Father Lally. We’re going round in circles. I’m asking you to talk to me, here. If you were involved in this murder, crazy as that sounds, we’ll find it out eventually. There would be traces of blood somewhere, and we’ll find them. There are officers working on that very thing as we speak.”
Lally’s head had been bowed, and like the solicitor, his hands were clasped, in his case, very tightly, on the table in front of him.
Cronin sighed. Audibly. Let them both know his frustration.
“How long will you keep me?”
He had to strain to hear the words.
“That depends on what you choose to tell me; how you choose to play it and depending on that, what the court decides. It’s in your hands, you might say. I repeat, the charge we’re looking at it as serious as it gets. Justice will be served in the end, you know.”
Father Tom Lally’s face twisted and a noise came from him, a protesting sound, easy to confuse with a sob.
“Oh, that’s a joke, Inspector. If there was justice, I wouldn’t be here, and if there was justice, there are people walking around this town, throwing their weight about, who should be behind bars.”
“Father Tom, be careful what you say. In fact, my advice is that for the moment, you should say nothing.” The solicitor had one of those educated Dublin accents that supposedly epitomised class and breeding. It grated on Cronin.
But, he agreed with Quinn on this occasion. Throwing random statements like that around the place might indicate something useful, but it could also just lead them down a blind alley. The young man was outraged about something, though.
“If you’ve finished, Inspector, I would like another word with my client, here.”
The words were drawled out, self-assured to the nth degree and Cronin’s hackles didn’t so much rise as hit the ceiling. Out of irritation alone, he had a good mind to keep them both with him for a bit longer. Go over the earlier visit to Inishowen house, for instance. The priest had been willing enough to take him through his visit to the old man, one of many undertaken on a twice weekly basis, at the least, sometimes more often. They hit a brick wall when it came to the confession. Cronin had expected that. It had been covered, in detail, during his time at Templemore. If it came to it, he would attempt to do battle with the priest, if life or death depended on it. But that big thorny issue wasn’t one he’d wrestle with, unless and until he had to.
Consequently, his account of his sick visit had been tame—a word with Mary Crowe, tea, seeing the doctor briefly as he left. Nothing. He’d given an account of his call to Nora Hannigan, even said that the canon hadn’t been happy about the unscheduled stop. You didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to tell the young fella was on a short leash. The fact that no love was lost between Lally and the canon was also patent. The lad was upset,and his guard was down, but only some of the way.
“My sergeant will be outside the door, and I’d appreciate you calling into my office for a word when you’ve finished your talk with Father Lally.” He was determined to show Quinn who was boss here. Pathetic of him, probably.
Cronin was sick and aching from little to no sleep, and for two pins he’d get out of the stuffy, institutional, mugginess of the barracks. It would be grand to take his pointer, Ted, out for a good run in Burke’s wood and the surrounding fields; even take his fishing rod down to the backs of the Tierney. He was in cloud cuckoo land. There was a job to be done, and whenever he finished, he had a wife at home, neglected, in pain and on her own apart from that bloody Abina Moore.
* * *
“You’re awful late, Ben.”
Her voice came out of the dark. Why hadn’t she put the light on? Why was she still up?
“We had both dropped off to sleep. Can you imagine it, Harriett? Sure, we must have been jaded, the pair of us.”
Oh, no, that bloody woman was still here. All he needed There was a bottle of Paddy Powers in the bottom cupboard that he was going to get a hold of, any minute, however annoyed Harriett would be, or however scandalised the other one would be.
As the thought came into his head, it was chased by another one. For all that he had a pig of a day, and he should be able to please himself in his own home, Abina Moore would be well capable of talking about him all over Ballytierney and whether he liked it or not, there was a big case on and could he afford to have talk about him hitting the bottle? No, he couldn’t. He needed to get rid of her. Permanently would be too much to ask for, he’d have to settle for this evening.
He bent down to stroke Ted’s ears. As usual, he lay at Harriet’s feet. She had one other loyal companion, at least.
“It’s very good of you to keep Harriett company, Abina. I can take over now. You’ll be wanting to get back to your cat. I did see your car outside, didn’t I?” It was back from the garage, then. He hovered on the brink of blunt rudeness, but he probably got away with it.
He avoided looking at his wife, though having heard her draw her breath in at his words.
“Oh, well, if I’m in the way…”
She was in a huff. Guilt spiked him again. “No, you’re very good to come out and look after Harriett when I’m at work. I don’t know what either of us would do without you.”
He held his breath. It could go either way. God almighty, having to come in after the day he’d had and play some sort of appeasement game. For two pins, he’d…What, though?
“Have you arrested anyone else for what happened to that poor man?” She’d finally gathered her umbrella, or gamp, as she called it, and various bags and headscarves and other bits and pieces and he was walking out to the car with her, parked as it was a short distance down the road. She claimed not to like negotiating their small drive and said she was frightened of blocking him out or in.
“No. Only Father Tom.”
“Only Father Tom.” Her voice resonated with shock or was it sarcasm.
That’s a phrase I never thought to hear uttered. He’s a priest for goodness sake. My mother must be turning in her grave, God rest her. The world has gone mad.”
“Yes well, it’s early days yet, and as you know, I shouldn’t even be saying anything at all.” He risked it. “It’s only that it’s yourself, Abina, and I know you will be discreet and keep the gossips at bay.”
He held his breath, thanking God, they had reached her car.
“Yes, don’t worry about that, Ben, I know when to keep my mouth shut unlike the gossips of Ballytierney.”
He let his breath out, long and slow. He�
�d been right. Years of policing had taught him that you couldn’t overestimate people’s capacity to be flattered or their lack of insight into their own characters. Abina Moore had no idea that he viewed her as the most malicious gossip in town. Well, he’d side-swept that confrontation, but he was unlikely to get away with it twice in one night. There would be a lecture when he got in about how rude he’d been to Abina.
He stopped and got out his cigarettes. Five minutes quiet, five minutes thinking time. He may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
It wasn’t right. That young fellow, priest that he was. He saw him as a young man. He was out of his depth and not talking—to the point of stupidity. But, it didn’t sit right that he could have murdered a helpless old man in his bed. That would take some motive. But, he did know something and was determined not to talk.
There was the sanctity of the confessional—he’d need to delve into that one a bit more. That still didn’t explain it—not in his book. Father Tom had been seen going back to Inishowen house at a time he’d no business to be going there and no imaginable reason. He didn’t deny it which, had there been a mistake in identity that would possibly put the priest out of the picture. Ben ground the end of the cigarette and went back into the house to face Harriett.
* * *
“I’m not asking you to do this, Geraldine. I’m telling you. The canon, Pat Buckley, and Donal are coming round tonight for something to eat. Something easy that won’t take a lot of to-ing and fro-ing. No women and if you have that Scrivens woman round to help you, make sure she’s gone before they come.”
“Frank.” She was quaking, but she couldn’t let this happen. For the first time in two years, her own relations were coming to her house tonight, coming to Basil Row. Her brother Tony was back from the States, with his wife. Even her mother was coming with them. Geraldine had been planning and looking forward to it for weeks. None of them liked Frank, not really. They didn’t come out and say it, but you couldn’t miss it. There had been a rift, and this had been a measure to mend it. It was only family loyalty to her, and maybe the children, making them come.
The Body at Ballytierney Page 7