“We were told that Tom was going for adoption. The mother wasn’t married and had no way of keeping the child. Though she had tried for a while, staying with some relative.”
She stopped, looked at Maggie and said, “poor girl.”
“But, wonderful for you and your husband, of course.”
That hadn’t come out quite as Maggie had intended, but Deirdre Lally nodded straightaway.
“You’re right. We adopted him and brought him home, and neither of us regretted it for a minute.”
She winced. Just the faintest of movements in her cheeks, around her mouth.
“I hope it was the best thing for him. For Tom.”
Why would she say that? Surely a loving home had to be the best thing for any child?
“He was the best child anyone could hope for. Never an ounce of trouble. Maybe too good.” She paused as if searching for the right words.” I sometimes wonder if joining the priests was the…” Deirdre broke off, an embarrassed half-laugh came from her.
“I have thought that maybe he did it because it would please me. As a child, he was so sensitive. A cross word or a wrong look would cause him agony. He’d go quiet and get a bad headache. I sometimes wondered if it had something to do with the start he had in life. Do you think that is possible? That such a very young child would know that he’d been left?”
“I don’t know, Mrs.. Lally…Deirdre. Maybe so. At two, maybe he would be able to take some of it in. I don’t suppose it’s possible to know for sure.”
“I can’t imagine that he would ever do such a thing as they suspected. I know he wouldn’t.”
Her eyes were bright either with tears or with absolute certainty, Maggie couldn’t be sure.
Chapter Nine
“What exactly are you doing, Ben? You brought the young priest in and released him again, and you’re no further forwards.”
Ben Cronin’s jaw ached with tension, and he’d wound the cord of the telephone around his fingers.
Get a grip on yourself, man. He relaxed his shoulders and released the cord.
“I had to let him go, super. There were no grounds to hold him. I have my suspicions that he saw or heard something, but he wasn’t going to talk.”
Maybe he’d better stop talking himself. He’d gone into the realms of justifying himself now; bad tactics.
The truth of the matter is that he couldn’t hold Lally forever. He had to change his approach. Another truth was that this case had got under the super’s skin and there was no doubt either, but he’d in turn been leaned on to get this one tied up quickly before too much damage was done to the church and to the great and good of Ballytierney.
“Any talk of travellers or some such in the townland?”
“No, sir.”
That would have been the ideal answer. The super was probably annoyed that Cronin hadn’t managed to conjure up some passing madman they could pin the thing on.
“Sort this out, Ben and sort it fast. I’ve had Bishop O’Dwyer on the telephone to me, this morning, not to mention our local TD.”
Cronin could picture the man, the TD, sleepy narrowed eyes of a natural born womaniser, hair curling, a bit too long over the collar and an eye always on the main chance.
“Bill Curran? What did he have to say?”
“How do you mean, what did he have to say? He’s concerned, and I’d say he’s been contacted by the canon and other locals all wondering why you haven’t dealt with this swiftly.”
Cronin felt the sweat cold on his top lip. Was his superior officer stupid or just passing on the mess that he’d already had dumped on his own head? Cronin wasn’t going to fit some innocent person up just to satisfy the local dignitaries.
“I’m working all out on it, Super. Me and my men. It’s not a minor case. I don’t want to make any mistakes—make us look incompetent or worse.”
He was tempted to say more, such as, was he meant to conjure of a villain out of thin air? But, getting smart wasn’t going to get him anywhere.
“I have one feeling, sir, a hunch, as they call it. I think the origins of Simon’s Crowe’s murder lie in the past; in the nature of the man.”
He held his breath for a few seconds, not knowing why he’d thrown that remark into the air; whether he was being honest or, God forbid, trying to wind his boss up. If there was one thing that his superintendent clearly didn’t want, it was that the case would have long roots, roots that would wind right back to some important people in the town. Well, tough.
Lynch’s voice rang out, clear and cold, for all that he coated his words with a semblance of caring about the fate of his junior officer. “Ben, Ben. You’re coming up to retirement, a bit like myself. We’re both long in the tooth enough by now, to know where and when to keep our nebs out. Old sins cast long shadows, they say, but at the risk of mixing my metaphors, you’re in danger of stirring up a great big hornets’ nest. I don’t advise it.”
The conversation didn’t do Ben any good. What felt like a red raw ulcer in his stomach burned away, and restlessness made him have a few moments where he didn’t know what to do with himself. One of the young guards was up in the courthouse too, no doubt with his notebook in hand, giving evidence of the local found-on’s and misfortunes who had no dog licence or tax on their cars. In the meantime, he was being told to turn a blind eye to murder. Or was he?
Made you wonder, though. All the blood loss and misery to get rid of the British and what have we replaced them with? A bunch of power-mad men who were above the law.
He’d go out to Inishowen House. That’s what he’d do. There was more to Mary Crowe than she let on. Whatever she was, it wasn’t only the colourless little doormat that she’d first presented.
* * *
“Come on, Father Tom. Have a slice of toast.”
The young priest looked away from her. For a moment, he reminded Maggie of a sulking twelve-year-old. That wasn’t fair. He was deeply troubled, and it seemed that his mother’s presence in Ballytierney had made it worse.
“Look, Tom. I’m not your mother, and I don’t want to start treating you like a child, but whatever it is that’s troubling you so much isn’t getting any better for not talking about it. Is it?”
There was a moment of stillness before he shook his head, one of the dark curls falling down his forehead. He needed a haircut.
“And another thing that isn’t going to help the situation is going on hunger strike.”
She’d stuck that in there in an effort to make him smile and it worked for a second before the darkness fell on his features again and his shoulders slumped down with the weight of the world on them.
The thought that had crossed her mind more than once came back. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for the priesthood.
“Your mother is a nice woman, Father Tom. Was she pleased when you decided to become a priest?”
Two vertical lines appeared ridiculously between his brows, a foreshadow of ageing.
“Of course she was. It’s every Irish mother’s dream, a son in the priesthood. Why wouldn’t she be delighted? I’ll be going back on holiday, back to the village, saying mass in the local church and going back to my old school I suppose, and people will be asking my mother to get me to pray for them, for illness and exams, that sort of thing.”
This was astonishing, this take on his life that was so simplistic, so unreal.
“Was it what you wanted, though, Tom?”
She wasn’t sure where this candour was coming from, in either of them, and it felt like hovering on a dangerous edge, but if she didn’t grasp this moment, they would probably never have this conversation.
“Yes. It’s a noble calling, isn’t it? I’m privileged, being called to a position where I can be useful to people when they most need it. Bring comfort. It’s a huge responsibility, though, and I definitely don’t have all the answers.”
“None of us have all the answers. You have to sacrifice things too, though. An awful lot, some would say.”
&n
bsp; More and more, they were treading on what could be dangerous ground.
“Do you mean girlfriends?”
“I do, amongst other things.”
“I had a girlfriend. Her name was Rosie. She came from Dublin, She was just in our place for the holidays with her grandmother. But it was…” he shrugged his shoulders.
“A dream, a fantasy. It was never going to come to anything, was it? It was just before I left for the seminary. I never led her on, never pretended that things were going to be any different.”
He’d come back to life, though, talking about Rosie, and for the first time since being released, that hunched-up tension had left his body.
The canon came into the kitchen, instantly bringing discord into the room with him, giving a look at both of them and then, Maggie could hardly credit it, a disparaging look at the teapot, as though implying that they had better things to be doing than drinking tea.
She didn’t hear the telephone for a second, or more to the point, she didn’t take the sound in. Her mind was with the young priest who had more or less shot out the back door as soon as the canon came in.
“Are you the priest’s housekeeper?”
The voice was of one who was not only old, but unfamiliar with using the telephone.
“Yes, that’s right. Miss Cahill, Maggie Cahill. Is it the canon you were wanting?”
“No, I don’t want to be troubling his lordship. It’s the young man I was wanting to talk to. Young Father Tom Lally. Will you get him for me?”
She was talking more loudly now as though she really was talking through the distance that separated them.
“I’m very sorry. You’ve just missed him. He’s only gone through the door. Can I give him a message at all?”
“Tell him to call out to see me. It’s Nora Hannigan.”
Maggie wracked her brain and saw the picture of an old, old woman, almost an outsider in the town. Different.
“Of course, I will.”
“Thank you.”
She sounded more formal now, and Maggie wondered whether she was ringing from a neighbour’s or a public telephone.
* * *
The light was soft in the room she took him into, and Cronin feared dozing off. That would be a disaster, but a treacherous wave of sleepiness had come over him, just after sitting down. The room was warm, that was it. The old house must have central heating because the fireplace only held cold, dead ashes. Mary Crowe was that kind of person. Hard to get to know, hard to draw out. One of those people who made you do all the work. That was the kind of person he found highly irritating, usually. But he was struggling even to feel that heated about her.
He had a theory about the reticent, or as they called them around here, the tough ones. They took all in and then eked out the bit they said like a miser spent money, as if it cost them dear. They made you feel the foolish one for saying too much as you rushed to fill the gaps and ended up exhausted. So-called shyness could just be rudeness.
But, Mary Crowe was different—the trouble was that he couldn’t quite make out whether she held back because she didn’t have much to say or whether there was some damage to her. A funny thought to have but there could be something dark behind the brown eyes.
“What did bring yourself and your husband to Ballytierney those years ago?”
“Well, I came from here, originally, or a smallholding a couple of miles out the village on the Charleville Road. There’s no house there, now. All gone to rack and ruin and it was eventually pulled down.”
She looked around her, as though talk of her old home had agitated her. “I’ll go and ask Hannah to bring us a cup of tea.”
Hannah. That woman was everywhere. Propping up the whole of Ballytierney.
She couldn’t wait to be away from him. What rattled her so much about the past? She’d had a similar reaction when he’d asked her, just after her husband’s death, about Rhodesia.
“Will they release the body, soon? Will we be able to have the funeral?”
“Not for the next few days, at least. I was asking about your reasons for returning to Ballytierney. Was it a sudden decision? I mean, you’d been out there some time. Did you meet out there?”
She drew her breath in, and there was irritation in the glance she gave him.
You’re not going to let this go, are you?
He wasn’t. She was hiding something, and maybe that blankness she presented was about that. Fade into the background and no-one would ask awkward questions. Well, sorry.
“I met him in Rhodesia. I had gone out there to look after the children of a friend of my mother’s. He was…”
She stopped and tightened the skin around her mouth.
She shrugged her shoulders as though in apology. “It was exciting. He was as different as you could get from the men or boys, I’d been used to, back home. He was more grown up, and he had a knack for making money, big money. He was not afraid of risk.”
“How was it he made his money?”
“Gold mines. But, he moved from the rough end of the business to the investment side, quickly too, I’d say.”
Cronin already knew some of this, and he could imagine the kind of man he’d been. But, the return to Ballytierney?
“So, why did he leave all that? The excitement and the chance to make even more money and come back here? I mean, neither of you was at retirement age, what twenty-five, thirty years ago.”
Again, she sighed, looked out the window. He could see her longing to be off, out there, away from him and his probing of the past.
“There were bad things about life there. The rules didn’t always apply. The price of the gold fluctuated, then picked up again…I’m not sure...connected with the gold standard, they say. There was money to be made, and people prepared to do what it took, to get their share of it.”
She sounded like a different woman again. He concluded this woman was a chameleon, or at the least, very selective about what she let herself show. Now, she had decided to give him what he wanted. They both knew that he wasn’t going to be fobbed off and, no doubt on her sojourn in the kitchen, she’d decided to stop trying to prevaricate. Still, the change in her surprised him. She no longer sounded like the little wife in the background.
“Simon made a couple of enemies. Two, an Englishman and a Scot.”
She looked at him, and this time she grinned, and he saw an animated and intelligent woman, just for a second.
“I know, sounds like the start of a joke, doesn’t it? The Englishman, the Irishman, and the Scot. The trouble was that it wasn’t funny. They co-operated in the setting up of a mine in the Limbapopo area. Then, time passed and Simon, who was never one to be shackled to anyone, moved on. A new settlement and a new investment. The other two didn’t take kindly to this. Thought they should be involved in this new project, which turned out to be…a goldmine…if you excuse the expression. Simon was threatened, attacked on one occasion.”
“Was he hurt badly?”
“Not really, no. It was only a warning. In that country, at that time, you would say he got off very lightly. If they’d wanted to finish what they started, they would have done.”
“We had a child; a son.”
He turned his head, too sharply and her eyes met his, a glitter, in them.
The sun shone strongly through the window, showing up tiny particles of dust in the air, making everything look hazy. Just for a second, Mary Crowe’s face shimmered before him. He was short of sleep.
“Where is your son now?”
“That’s a long story. I’ll get to it.”
She had taken charge. So much for the meek widow.
“We had adopted a little boy. Well, I hadn’t become pregnant, and the opportunity came along. We were in a position to do it. Our little boy, Ezra, was three. When Simon was attacked, I reached a decision. I hadn’t adopted a child, given him a new start just for him to be orphaned. Simon took some persuading. He tried to get me to come back, just with Ezra. That would
have been the beginning of the end, I think. Either he would have stayed out there and got himself killed or just continued on his rackety way.”
She was appearing stronger by the minute. Strong enough to have killed her husband? Difficult to see why now, though. He wasn’t going to last forever, and she didn’t give the impression of a woman who had reached a breaking point and snapped, as the newspapers were fond of saying.
“Ezra?”
She gave that little smile again. A shudder, out of nowhere, crawled down the length of Ben’s spine. Why had no-one they’d spoken to so far, mentioned the presence of a child?
“In our wisdom, we sent him off to the Christian Brothers’ boarding school, just outside Cork.”
She shook her head, and he noticed that she’d had something done with her hair. It was smarter, softer.
“I look back on it and know now that it was the worst thing we could have done. A big mistake. He was beginning to settle into Ballytierney, bring friends home, even though we are out of the way, here. I’ve asked myself why, many times, but I still don’t know why we sent him.”
Maybe the reality of having the care of a child didn’t match the fantasy. He would have thought she’d have been glad of the company, in this isolated place. There was no indication that she’d ever had a job since coming back to Ireland.
“It seemed fine, to start. He settled and did fairly well with his studies. Never caused the brothers any problems. But, as he grew older, sixteen or so, he and Simon began to clash, badly.”
“How about you, Mrs. Crowe? Did you get on well with your son?”
She frowned. Annoyed at having her flow interrupted?
“Well, obviously, the constant falling-out affected me too. I always had to act the peacemaker. Wearying.”
“It sounds a difficult period of time, for all of you.”
Where would we be without the platitudes?
“It was. He went to university. That didn’t last. He took the boat to England. We were frantic. Well, I was frantic. I think Simon was angry, mainly.”
The Body at Ballytierney Page 10