Death of an Irish Mummy

by Catie Murphy

  “Sheer incredible bad luck.”

  He laughed, a big booming sound that made feedback in the phone. Then his voice lowered. “Now I know you are not police. I will tell you this, but you must tell no one you heard it from me. I do not wish attention.”

  “I promise.”

  “I believe you, murder driver. I left your client at the hotel, as I have told the police. But I waited, yes? In the taxi ranks in front of the hotel. And I watched the doors, to see who might come out needing a driver. A white man met your client as she went inside. He held the door for her, and caught her arm as if she slipped. I did not see her slip, though.”

  “Oh my God.” Megan straightened again in her seat, eyes wide as she gazed, unseeing, at the street ahead of her. “What did he look like?”

  “Tall, with light hair. He wore a young man’s clothes, jeans belted around his hips and a large, long shirt, a sports jacket over it, do you understand? A baseball cap and expensive runners and winter gloves. Sunglasses, although it was—” He made a sound as if he was gesturing to grey, cloudy, rain-laden Irish skies, and Megan chuckled.

  “Anything else? A beard or anything?”

  “No, he was not . . . hipster. Gobshite, perhaps, but not hipster.”

  Megan laughed. “Right. I know exactly what you mean. Okay. Oh my god. Thank you so much. Anything else?”

  “Only that she went into the hotel after that as if nothing was wrong. He walked with her a little way, then returned, but I did not see his face. You will not tell anyone I told you this?”

  “I won’t. I promise. But thank you so much. Thank you so much.”

  “She was a loud and rude American,” Omondi said after a few seconds. “But she tipped well. I hope that her killer is found.”

  “He might just be, with this. Thank you so much,” Megan said again, and Omondi chortled.

  “Good luck, murder driver. You are our own personal superhero. I hope you vanquish your enemy once again.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The line went dead and Megan took a minute to do a stomping, air-punching victory dance in the driver’s seat before putting a video call through to Detective Bourke. He picked up immediately, his pale gaze wary. “Did you find another body?”

  “No, but I got a description of a man seen with Cherise Williams on her way into the hotel right before she died.”

  “What? How did you do that?” Bourke sat back, visibly stunned, then pulled a notepad toward him and propped the phone against something on his desk so he could write and see her at the same time.

  Megan, loftily, said, “I have my sources,” and then, in a more normal tone, added, “Honestly, I can’t tell you. I promised I wouldn’t. But I was able to talk to somebody who trusted another civilian more than they trust the cops.”

  Bourke lifted his eyes to her for a moment, then sighed. “I’d like to say that’s insulting and there’s no reason anyone shouldn’t trust the guards, but I’m not that naive. What’s the description?”

  “White male, light hair under a baseball cap, no beard, dressed young but wasn’t, necessarily.” Megan gave the details, including the fake stumble, and ended with, “My source described him as a gobshite but not a hipster.”

  Bourke laughed sharply. “Sure and I know just what that means.”

  “So did I,” Megan said, amused. Hipsters, in her reckoning, could be gobshites, but gobshites weren’t necessarily hipsters, only people with a look of troublemaking about them, or who were indulging in what Irish vernacular referred to as antisocial behaviour. There was, she’d found, a fine line between obnoxious and gobshite, but, like plenty of other things in life, people tended to know it when they saw it.

  “Anything else?”

  “My source said—”

  “You’re really enjoying saying ‘my source,’ aren’t you?”

  “I am so,” Megan said with a smile. “Anyway, my source said the suspect wen—”

  Paul gave another sharp laugh. “I think you mean the person of interest.”

  Megan’s smile broadened. “Do I? Okay. I’m not entirely up on my police terminology. The person of interest went inside the hotel doors with Cherise, but came right back out, but my source didn’t get any better of a look at his face.”

  “Do we know what time that was?”

  Megan’s face fell. “I didn’t think to ask, but . . .” She did a rapid calculation. “I dropped Cherise off at just before two, and Declan said she was at the CSO fo—”

  “Declan? Declan Ahern at the Central Statistics Office? Megan, what were you doing talking to him?”

  “Nosing around, obviously. Anyway, it would have been between two-fifty and three-thirty at the latest, I’m guessing, because Raquel and I got back to the hotel at about five-thirty and Cherise’s skin was already cooling, so she couldn’t have died less than an hour before that at the most.”

  Bourke frowned, blond eyebrows pulled down in a deep V. “I suppose if a civilian has got to keep getting involved in local crimes, one who keeps their head about things is better than the squeamish sort, but it’s a little weird listening to you be so cool and collected. I know,” he added before she said anything, “you’re trained for it. But I think of you as a limo driver, not a combat medic and . . .” He shook his head. “Well, never mind. It’s good work you’ve done here, and I owe you for it. Get back to me if you learn anything else.” He hung up, and Megan, immensely satisfied with herself, sat back to wait for the Williams sisters to return.

  * * *

  She’d gotten most of the way through her book—a fantasy novel about a shaman in Seattle—before the Williamses emerged, all three of them hollow with grief and exhaustion. Megan held the car doors for them, and as soon as she’d gotten back in the car herself, Raquel spoke in defeated tones. “It costs so much to send a body back to America. They said we should consider cremation, but we’ve never been a cremation family.”

  “Could you bring us back up to Leitrim?” Jessie asked. “We know the cemetery on the house grounds is a mess, but they said if we got permission we could bury her there, so we thought . . . we thought we’d go ask. And even Sonny agrees it’d be better if we asked in person.”

  “Who do you ask?” Megan asked, both morbidly curious and mystified. “The local parish? The current landowners?”

  “Both.” Even Sondra’s voice was heavy. “And we have to try to get it done today. It’s Friday and I—I’m told nothing happens in Ireland over a weekend.”

  In most cases, that was true enough that ordinarily Megan would laugh about it. She thought that death, what with it waiting on no man, probably fell under different auspices, but she also remembered that Sondra Williams had a board meeting early in the next week that she was desperate to get home to. Glancing at the other two, Megan suspected they didn’t yet know that, and wondered who Sondra was protecting. “Do you know where the current landholders are living?”

  “I looked them up. They still live in that little town we were in yesterday, just not at the big house.” Jessie pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “If we’d known we could have just . . .”

  “Gone and said we thought we were long-lost cousins, with no proof?” Sondra, for once, didn’t speak with bitterness. “I’m sure they already know we were up on their land without permission.”

  “Still,” Raquel whispered. “It’s too strange a request to make if we weren’t pretty sure, isn’t it? So if we went up and asked, at least we’d know whether they were willing to consider it. I wish we had the diary. Maybe some of it would sound like old family stories they knew.”

  “Should we stop and get your dogs?” Sondra asked.

  Megan blinked in surprise, then smiled. “That would be great, if you didn’t mind.”

  “I think we could all use some puppy love. And maybe lunch, before we go. What time is it?”

  “Just after eleven.” They’d been in the embassy longer than Megan had expected, although on the other hand, she also wouldn’t
have been all that surprised if it had taken all day. “Do you want something familiar and comforting and carb-y, or local ambiance?”

  They exchanged a wordless conference and Raquel said, “Comfort carbs.”

  “I’ll take you over to Five Guys.”

  Sondra’s sense of self reawakened and she said, icily, “Christ, no, I don’t eat Five Guys,” then curdled red from her collarbone up as her sisters froze in shock for a heartbeat before doubling with laughter. Jessie slumped in the leather seats like a child, one arm wrapped around her ribs as tears of laughter spilled down her face, and Raquel fell toward her, wheezing as she wiped her eyes. Sondra’s mouth grew pinched, first with embarrassment, then with resignation, and eventually twisted into a dry acknowledgment of humor. Their laughter finally wound down, and Sondra, with tremendous injured dignity, said, “I suppose I’ll have Five Guys just this once,” and watched in nearly invisible satisfaction as it set her sisters off into whoops of laughter again. They were still giggling and blotting their faces as Megan put the car in drive and took them through the Dublin streets toward lunch.

  * * *

  Sondra snuck the puppies out of the kennel one at a time, snuggling them and handing them to her sisters to cuddle, too, on the drive up to Leitrim. Megan pretended not to notice and the dogs wriggled with utter joy. Eventually Dip went to sleep with his chin on Jessie’s jeans-clad thigh. Megan was going to have to vacuum the whole car before she would even dare bring it back to the garage, and then do the detailing herself, but having the puppies licking and snuggling was clearly so good for the sisters that she didn’t mind. They didn’t talk much on the drive, distracted by the dogs or drowsing because of emotional strain and burger-filled bellies. They’d even brought a cheese dog, fries, and a milkshake back to the car for Megan, who would also have to apply a lot of air freshener. Still, she appreciated the gesture and enjoyed the meal (eaten one-handed on the drive), and managed not to drip any ketchup on the Bentley’s seats.

  Her phone buzzed a couple of times as they crossed into Leitrim, but she ignored it in favor of catching Sondra’s eye in the mirror. “Do you know the family’s address, or would you prefer to go to the church first?”

  Sondra’s “I don’t know,” seemed like a much more dramatic confession than it would have from either of the other two sisters. “The dogs need a walk, though.”

  “Flynn will know where they live,” Jessie offered rather tentatively. “I mean, I’m sure he will. I could call him.”

  “That’s actually a really good idea,” Raquel said into the little silence that followed. “Why don’t we stop and walk the dogs and you can call him and we’ll . . .”

  They reached the little town of Mohill before Raquel found a way to finish that sentence. Megan pulled into a street-side parking lot not far from the café they’d eaten at the day before, and Sondra herself took the dogs’ leashes to clip them to their collars before opening the doors and leaving the vehicle.

  It hadn’t been warm in Dublin, but the Leitrim air had a fresh, cold edge to it, like more than rain might fall from the gloomy skies. Sondra shivered, but the puppies leaped about in delight, wiggling their whole bodies into the air and snapping at invisible motes around them. They hadn’t been out of the vehicle thirty seconds before locals were gathering hither and thither, making a production of not noticing them. Jessie, unencumbered by a dog leash, walked several steps away, putting her phone to one ear and her hand over the other, as if it would keep interested strangers from overhearing her conversation.

  “Flynn? Hi, this is Jessie.” She took a few more steps, moving out of Megan’s easy earshot. Megan clicked at the dogs, encouraging them on their walk. To her amusement, the older two Williams sisters trotted along obediently, even though the puppies were more interested in stopping, sniffing, and exploring.

  By the time they got back to Jessie, she was leaning on the Bentley’s hood, arms folded around herself to ward off the cold. She was better-dressed for the weather than she’d been the day before, with a multitude of long, decorative scarves and a longish, if lightweight, coat. In fact, they were all dressed more appropriately, but even Megan, in a long coat over her uniform, thought it was bitter, and she hadn’t just come from Austin, where the winter temperatures ran eight or twelve degrees Celsius warmer.

  “Flynn says—” Jessie smiled briefly. “He says Anne Edgeworth lives ‘down the country,’ whatever that means, but he gave me her address. It’s a big, lonely old house, he said, but nothing like the estate house. I checked my maps app. It’s about a fifteen-minute walk, or just a couple of minutes’ drive. I don’t know which we should do. Flynn said he’d come bring us there if we wanted.”

  “We can read a map,” Sondra replied. “I think we should drive, though.”

  “For a fast getaway?” Jessie asked, but didn’t argue as she got back in the car. Megan held the door for the older sisters, then paused to towel dirt off the dogs before herding them into their kennel. It really was just a couple of minutes’ drive, down around a bend in the road and up a slim driveway that led to a two-story, eight-room manor on a hill.

  Flynn was right: It was a lonely old house, with dark windows and tall grass growing up to brush its lower window frames. It didn’t quite have an air of neglect, but it felt forgotten in a way that even the estate house didn’t, with paint aging on the door and ivy spilling over walls. A thin stream of smoke rose from one of four chimneys in the middle of the roof, and the car in the driveway had been new when Megan was a baby.

  “God,” Raquel said nervously. “Do you think anybody actually lives here?”

  “They must.” Jessie got out of the car and marched for the door with enough purpose that her sisters scrambled after her, with Megan tagging along, curiously, in their wake.

  A door knocker the size of Jessie’s face took the place of any more modern method of announcing their presence. She lifted it and rapped several times, then stepped back, suddenly pale with nerves.

  Enough time passed that even Megan was beginning to have her doubts, but the door finally creaked open, first a few inches, then wide enough for a small woman to frame herself in it and stare up at them.

  Anne Edgeworth probably hadn’t cleared five feet of height even in her youth, and age had long since taken inches from her. She wore white hair in a fluffy bun above a network of wrinkles, and a hand-knit cardigan over a high-collared blouse and calf-length wool plaid skirt. Ankles gone thick with age protruded over the collar of black leather shoes that were both exceptionally sturdy and exceptionally ugly. She looked at each of them in turn, dismissing Megan with a flick of her sharp brown gaze, and lingering longest on Jessie.

  “Jaysus,” she finally said, mostly to Jessie, “you’re the very image of my sister. I suppose you’d better come in, then.”

  CHAPTER 17

  The interior of Anne Edgeworth’s house had the thick, damp stillness Megan had come to recognize in old stone buildings. The exterior walls were a solid two feet deep, cut of enormous stone, with windows set shallowly in them, and the central hall had, as Megan had suspected, four original doors, two on each side, and a stairway leading up. A fifth door at the back of the hall led into what she bet was a modern—or modern-ish—kitchen, and maybe into other additions to the original building. A low-watt yellow bulb flickered in its setting, barely illuminating the hall. Megan thought she probably would have believed this house belonged to a witch, when she was little. Or maybe not just when she was little.

  Anne Edgeworth pushed open the first door on the right, its weight shushing over a rug threadbare from decades of such activity. The room beyond had a formal, mid–twentieth-century air to it, with walls that had been painted when lime was popular for home decorating. If the car outside hadn’t also been forty years old, Megan might have thought the whole room had been done up in a deliberately high-quality retro fashion, but she had no doubt every piece in the parlour was lightly used vintage. All four of them sat gingerly on the front ed
ges of the furniture, even Jessie’s posture suddenly flawless.

  “I suppose you’ll be wanting tea,” Anne announced with the air of one prepared to be inconvenienced. She hadn’t yet taken a seat, adding to the impression of having been disturbed, but looked somewhat thrown for a loop when the visiting sisters all said, “Oh, no, thank you,” as one.

  Megan, who had been in Ireland long enough to understand this game, said, “Please, if it wouldn’t be a bother. Maybe I could help you? Or even get it for you, if you like? I’m only the driver.”

  The three Williams women looked at her in abject horror, clearly thinking her rude beyond belief for taking their reluctant host up on the offer, but a sort of peaceful relief came over Anne herself. “I wouldn’t mind, at that. The kitchen’s only down the hall, and the kettle is beside the cooker. There’s a box with the tea in.”

  Megan smiled, both genuinely glad to help and amused, as always, at how the ritual offering of tea set the stage for Irish conversations. “I’ll find everything,” she promised, and rose to go explore a stranger’s kitchen, an opportunity she relished. Conventional politeness meant closing the parlour door behind her, because an Irish peculiarity was often to only have heat on in the room they were occupying, so she couldn’t really eavesdrop, but she had some confidence the Williamses would tell her what she’d missed, later.

  The manor’s kitchen was modern in the sense that it had electricity, a cooker and oven, and both a refrigerator and a washing machine installed under the counter, but if any of them had been upgraded in the past thirty years, Megan would eat her chauffeur’s hat. Even the electric kettle was vintage. A small cardboard box of commercial limescale remover sat on the counter beside a larger, teak box with the word tea inlaid in intricate lettering on its top. Megan filled the kettle, setting it to boil, and opened cupboards until she found one with an heirloom china tea set, complete with a pot, cups, trays, a platter, sugar bowl, and milk jug. “Oh, wow.”