The Body at Ballytierney

by Noreen Wainwright

  The woman was thin and had her hair scraped back under a headscarf in the style of those women in England during the war. She was wrapped up well against the cold day with layers of jackets and cardigans and a hessian sack tied with twine around her waist—very much how you expected a farm woman to look. When you looked again at her, she wasn’t a bad-looking woman at all, but she looked like she’d had a hard life.

  “I told you, you shouldn’t start all that up, I told you, Breda.”

  “Shut up, Mikey. No-one wants to hear from you.”

  If that was what passed for normal conversation in this family, it was no wonder Captain, the dog, was belligerent.

  “I’m not sure how I can help you, Inspector.”

  She had her face turned away from them and put the pail down on the tiled floor. She’d obviously been feeding something.

  You got the feeling that she was buying some time as she took off her outer coat and scarf and hung them across the back of a chair.

  “Will you have a cup of tea?”

  “That would be good of you,” Ben answered.

  “Mikey, have you nothing to be getting on with outside? Paddy will be back, and he’s been going on about those sheds. Could you not make a start?”

  “You’re not shifting me so fast. He can clean the sheds himself if he’s that bothered.”

  She stood up, anger in her quick movements. “Right, men. Come across into my front-room, please?” She gave a look at her brother. “Not you.”

  Had she forgotten about the tea? Ben had a mind for a drop.

  Apparently not. She led them into a room after taking them down a short corridor.

  Ben almost commented as he stepped into the room. He just stopped himself because it was so different from the kitchen and the little they had seen of the rest of the house.

  There was no doubt at all that it was Breda O’Hehir room. There was a sewing machine and a mannequin set up in the corner, and there was colour everywhere, in the burnt orange walls and the green carpet and curtains. Books were piled to almost a toppling point on shelves, and there were paintings and pieces of wooden sculpture. It looked different, and it looked foreign. Either Breda O’Hehir had travelled a long way from Ireland, or she wanted to. He really wanted to ask her, but this wasn’t the time.

  She came into the room with a tray, full of cups, saucers, a yellow teapot and a plate of currant soda bread.

  “Sit down.” She waved her hand at the big sofa opposite the fireplace. Ben hesitated, knowing what that would do to his back, but there wasn’t anywhere else to sit.

  She poured the tea and handed it to them and out of nowhere, Ben was hit by the strongest sense of unease he’d ever experienced.

  It was stupid. The brother was odd, but not any more so than a lot of other rural people he had met, and Breda seemed a woman with something about her if this room was anything to go by.

  “I know why you’ve come out here. It’s that young man who was found dead.”

  “He was related to you? You wrote a letter that we found on him?”

  She had perched on the arm of a chair opposite their sprawling sofa, and she hadn’t had any tea. She was too tense to have risked balancing cups of tea and saucers. Her right fist was clenched into a fist and her mouth drawn tightly. She might be nice looking if she wasn’t in such a state of nerves, with soft, naturally wavy brown hair and clear skin.

  “I wrote the letter, and I wish I hadn’t. If I hadn’t brought him to Ballytierney, he would be still alive, though think maybe there was something…”

  She spoke slowly, not drawling out the words, but measuring them and you had to wonder if she had much company out here; in fact, what kind of a thwarted existence did they have out here? Three siblings.

  Ben jumped to his feet as a noise burst into the soft muted room.

  At the door, was a man, holding a shotgun which was pointed straight across the room at him and Dick Sheehan.

  “I told you, you shouldn’t have done it, Breda. What did you do it for? Now, look what you made me do.”

  The world stopped, then speeded up as Ben took in that the man holding the shotgun must be the other brother, Paddy. A big man, wild, wide-open staring eyes. That was all he could take in, and then, the world exploded.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Father Tom didn’t come home, and Maggie was worried to the point of distraction, where she didn’t know where to turn or what do. The odd thing was that the canon behaved as though nothing was amiss. He must be worried, or concerned or, at least, angry. If he was any of those things, he kept them well hidden, sitting down in the dining room with lamb chops and then taking himself off to “do my correspondence”. At least, he didn’t expect her to do his typing. He had when she’d first started working at the parochial house, and she’d been stupid enough to be flattered, thinking that he must think her capable and that it would be interesting work. After about three months, it dawned on her that this task was growing, and that no payment was forthcoming and that she was being taken for a fool. She didn’t confront it, as usual. She just made out that she was too busy, which she often was and for once, in their relationship, it seemed he’d got the message.

  When it came to growing dusk, Maggie took herself to task. How much longer was she going to prevaricate and worry?

  The trouble was that Father Stephen was away for the day at a conference in Limerick. He’d taken the train from Banteer station this morning and was staying overnight, his car tucked away in the little car park at the side of the station.

  She had Deirdre Lally’s telephone number but to ring her would be a last resort. Did Maggie really believe that something bad had happened? He had been very down in his mood, had spent three days in the custody of the guards, and he was clinging onto a secret that was driving him mad. She tried to be logical. The big fear was that he had killed himself. There, she had given form to the thought. But, surely, nothing could be that bad, to make him do that.

  Maggie sat with a cup of tea and a cigarette and stared at nothing.

  Father Tom had a secret. But, it must be more than that. If someone, Simon Crowe, say, had confessed something bad, he’d have passed the burden on to the young priest. That wouldn’t be enough. No-one else’s secret would have that much of a drastic effect on a person. There was always a spiritual director with whom to discuss this sort of thing. Hearing bad and troubling things wouldn’t be an unusual occurrence for a priest. They must learn about that in Maynooth.

  If Maggie could just think…Tom was adopted, and Mary Crowe had said things, nasty but vague things about what had happened in Ballytierney, years ago. It was related to babies, babies being taken away and all of it being covered up. If that was at the heart of it, and Father Tom found that his own origins were in Ballytierney. The vile thought that kept intruding was that if Simon Crowe had told Tom something about his own birth, would that have affected him so much, so badly that he had lashed out at the old man?

  Maggie got up and across the room, out the door, to the front of the house where she could look out into the street, for the umpteenth time. She needed to move to get away from this awful direction her mind was going in.

  She opened the door. The air smelt of autumn and coming rain. There was a soft stillness in the air and then she heard birdsong. Maggie’s heart jumped. There was simple joy and beauty in the natural world. Her mind and imagination were running away with her. It didn’t do to sit here and brood, it would be better to take some kind of action. First of all, she’d make a few telephone calls.

  He might have been to the convent, for instance. Those nuns certainly hadn’t taken a vow of silence, and they could have taken it into their heads to delay him and to feed him.

  She rang Mary Crowe first. Father Tom had been a friend to her husband, whatever silly nonsense Maggie’s mind had thrown up at her. Maybe he had called on her. There would be a funeral to arrange.

  “Oh, no, Maggie. I haven’t seen him, not since they released hi
m. Maybe he felt too embarrassed to speak to me. Not that I think he harmed Simon. He’d been a friend to him…I told you, didn’t I?”

  There was something about the way she spoke that irritated Maggie. She said the right things, but not with enough conviction for Maggie’s liking. Before she could ask her if she really believed that Father Tom could not have anything to do with Simon’s death and make a fool of herself, Maggie ended the conversation, though she first found herself agreeing to meet Mary, the next day, at Kelly’s.

  All of this was off-key. Father Tom being out all this time, without a word, the canon pretending nothing was amiss, and now she was making arrangements to meet someone for tea, the next day as though she didn’t have her own big decisions to make. Whatever half-hearted efforts Maggie had made about looking for another job had come to nothing, and she could no longer understand her own behaviour She was sleep-walking into a crisis, and it was as though she could do nothing to stop herself.

  The idea came to her out of the blue. The minute she thought about the old woman, Maggie knew she had her answer. She didn’t know how she knew it but was convinced all the same. The person she needed to contact—the person who would have some answers was Nora Hannigan. The woman wouldn’t be on the telephone, though. There had to be a way…Will Brosnan would take her out there.

  He might think she had lost her reason asking him to drive her out to see an old lady who lived out of the way, up a long boreen, and who had a reputation for not giving a damn about what anyone thought.

  She should maybe tell the canon that she was going out; not the details but just that she was going out to see Mrs. Brosnan.

  Then, the telephone rang.

  * * *

  Nothing had prepared Ben for this. It rushed through his head that all the things he had wasted his time thinking about: the superintendent getting on his nerves; the difficulty of conducting an investigation amidst such secrecy. Other things too that he’d wasted too much energy on…Abina Moore, even his daughter’s estrangement, and Peter Barry’s comments. It all mattered nothing. Not compared to what had happened to Dick Sheehan.

  It was as though a moment happened and everything froze, and he wanted to jump up and tell someone, No, this isn’t what’s going to happen, stop it, reverse it. And the appalling recognition that he couldn’t do it.

  He bent down to kneel by his fallen man, a boy really, and everything else receded. He couldn’t tell if the man was still there holding the shotgun or what had happened to Breda O’Hehir.

  There was a silence and a smell in the air, a smoky, choking feeling.

  “Dick, Dick. It’s all right. I’ll get help. It’s all right…” The young man’s eyes met his and focused, and his eyes changed, something happened.

  The light went out, the phrase repeated itself over and over again in Ben’s mind, and he wondered if he would use those exact words when people asked him about this. No, he would never say those words aloud.

  There was something he must have done, and that was to reach up for an Aran-type of blanket that Breda O’Hehir had put over the arm of the chair and press it to the front of Dick’s uniform shirt—the pale blue shirt, now stained.

  “Oh, my God. What has he done? What has he done?”

  It was the woman’s voice, the sister and for a second Ben hated her. There was a need to blame someone. She was living here, in her dolled-up room, in her little false world where no regard was paid to her mad brother who should have been put away years ago before he could do such harm. Dick Sheehan was the oldest of four children; three boys and one girl who had just been called to do her teacher training. He’d been full of it, telling them all how his parents were delighted at the news.

  He’d liked what he called skiffle music and had been on holiday to Jersey. Dick had told a half-listening Ben about the signs of the German occupation he’d seen there. Actually, Ben had started to listen properly that time because he had found it interesting. Dick had been interested in a girl he’d met at a dance in Newmarket, but he had lost his bottle just before asking her out. He talked unusually openly about it, for a young man with an obvious shy streak and he’d been showered with advice on how to proceed.

  All gone now. All over in a mad second, his life and future gone-taken away by a madman who could have no feelings at all for the person he aimed his shotgun at. Or had it been meant for him? That shot. He was the senior officer, and he hadn’t a scratch on him.

  He was in that kitchen again, desperately trying to pull himself together and to separate out the strands; distinguish between the voices. The place was full of people, most in uniform. They would have brought in guards from the outlying areas and the bigger towns. Even the superintendent was here now, speaking in a commanding but low tone. There had been an ambulance too, and another was on its way. He couldn’t figure out whether it was for him or for Paddy O’Hehir. He’d overheard that the man had been found outside in a shed, the shotgun thrown on the nearby grass.

  The woman, Breda O Hehir talked and cried and went on and on until Ben put his hands over his ears. Literally, like a small child, to block out her pointless whining. Maybe, one day he’d feel some compassion for her but not now.

  “I want you to go to the hospital, Ben.” It was his superintendent, and Ben struggled to get across his view,

  “There’s nothing on me, look not a scratch. It’s a waste of…time. A waste.” The words were somehow not even making proper sense in his own mind. This was a feeling he’d never in his life experienced. It was like being very drunk, but in a bad way, as though the drunkenness had been forced on you, and you were trying to scramble out of it and you couldn’t. It was like you knew you weren’t right and fought against what was happening to you.

  The nearest thing it felt like was a nightmare. But, with a nightmare, you woke up and even though the bad dream might echo in your mind for the rest of the day. Eventually, it would fade.

  * * *

  “There’s an awful pall of gloom over Ballytierney.”

  Helen Brosnan spoke the words as she, Abina and Maggie went into the church together. It was only a weekday mass, but the church was nearly as full as it would be on a Sunday.

  “It must be a need to come together, to … not make sense of it because how could you?” Maggie commented as the groups of dark-clad men and women came up the avenue that led to the church. Many of them had heads bowed. There were times when Ballytierney was gossip-ridden and prurient, but this wasn’t one of them.

  She had stayed up late last night with both priests, Fathers Stephen and Father Tom. He had come back of his own accord, as soon as he heard what happened at O’Hehir’s farm. Maggie’s spark of inspiration had been right. He had taken himself off to Nora Hannigan’s where he wouldn’t be judged or harried. Like the rest of them, his own tribulations had faded to trivial when he heard what had happened to the young guard. Nothing was anything in comparison to what had happened to young Dick Sheehan. The senseless waste of it.

  “The whole town feels responsible.” Father Stephen had spent what was left of the day, comforting and praying with people. The canon had eerily removed himself from the people, even from his own household. No-one had seen him, apart from Maggie, who had taken tea and sandwiches up to him. She had hesitated before knocking and again, once he opened the door and took the tray from her. He was pale and shrunken, and with her whole being, Maggie wanted to leave him with the tray and to whatever misery he was going through.

  But she just couldn’t, when it came to it.

  “A very bad business, Canon. That poor young man. Doing his job.”

  He stared at her and didn’t respond.

  She felt like shaking him or shouting. He couldn’t abandon the parishioners. He had to be made to see that whatever was behind his behaviour, he had to go through the motions, at least in the immediate period following something like this. People were looking for leadership and that, for most people, meant the church.

  “There’s been man
y telephone calls, Canon, and people coming to the door.”

  “Father Stephen will deal with them.”

  That was true. He was dealing with everything on the go, relentlessly, barely stopping to eat. But, he was only going to be able to cover for the canon’s absence for so long and not for much longer.

  Father Tom was better, which was something to be grateful for. Maggie couldn’t ask him for explanations, immediately after his return because all anyone was capable of thinking about at that point was the young guard.

  Pale with tiredness, Father Stephen had eventually sat down, and she’d made toast—heaps of toast—he had it with jam. He and Father Tom had refused anything more substantial, even sandwiches. But, almost always a person could manage thick—sliced white bread toasted and with butter.

  “What happened to you, Tom?” She kept her voice as gentle as she could. He still looked almost shocked as they all must do, but there was more to it, in his case.

  Father Stephen was pale too, and looked older. That would be temporary. He was only on the young side of middle-age, and this was a combination of exhaustion and distress. Maggie probably looked no great shakes, herself.

  “I’ve been foolish and got myself into such a mess…”

  Both Maggie and Father Stephen stayed silent. Father Tom needed to do this, and neither of them must say anything to put him off.

  “I became friendly with Simon Crowe…I know it must seem an odd combination, an old man and me. But, he was intelligent, and he loved to talk, and I could air stuff, thoughts with him that I didn’t dare to mention to anyone else…that I’d never been able to say to anyone else. My own father was a good man, in most ways, but you couldn’t dream of talking to him…anything about feelings or doubts, say about the direction you were taking, for instance.”

  He looked from one to the other of them and swallowed.

  Maggie nodded. “Simon Crowe was a father-figure, then?”