In the Morning I'll Be Gone (31 page)

I took off my cap, rang the bell, and ran my hand through my hair to get rid of some of the water.

Jane McCullough came to the door holding the baby. She had that tired but happy look of new mothers.

“Oh, hello, Detective Duffy,” she said.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“Thank you. Madam finally decided to join us.”

“A little girl, then?”

“Yes.”

“Well done. What was the weight?”

“Seven pounds on the dot.”

“That’s great. Congratulations. I’ll get you something. Is pink still in these days?”

“Oh, that’s not necessary. We have a room full of stuff.”

“Listen, Jane, I’ve come to see Harper. Is he about?” I asked tentatively.

She smiled sadly at me. “You’re still working on what happened to Lizzie?”

“I’m still on the case, yes,” I agreed.

“You’re a regular plodder,” she said, and yawned.

The baby looked at me. She was a beautiful little girl with her mother’s blond hair and green eyes.

If I told Mary what I suspected about Harper she would grow up never knowing her father.

“Have you picked a name yet?”

“Grania.”

“Pretty. From
The Fenian Cycle
?”

“Yes! Cormac mac Airt’s daughter. Harper knows all about that stuff. History . . . all that.”

“It’s a nice name.”

“Like I say, Harper came up with it, but I love it.”

“And where is the man of the house?”

“I think he’s in the library. Do you know where that is? Next to the living room on the ground floor,” Jane said. “Go on ahead. Will you be staying for a bit of dinner?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ll be putting the wee sprog down in a minute, it won’t be chaos.”

“It’s not that, it’s just that I’ve another appointment tonight.”

“All right, then, but if you change your mind let me know.”

“I will, Jane, thank you.”

The library was a rectangular chamber clearly modeled after Trinity College’s reading room. It had quite the collection of books, possibly three or four thousand of them, going back several hundred years. Harper was in a comfortable leather chair facing the boat dock and the choppy waters of the lough.

He wasn’t pleased to see me but he got up quickly enough and forced a smile on to his face. And he wouldn’t have smiled at all if he’d known that I was the fucking herald for the Angel of Death.

The book he was reading was called
Archaeology under Water: An Atlas of the World’s Submerged Sites
. It fell to the floor with a heavy bang as he stood up.

“Hello, Inspector Duffy, it’s great to see you.”

“Hello, Harper.”

“Are you staying for dinner?” he asked.

I closed the library door and sat down opposite him.

“I’ll talk and you’ll listen and when I’ve done talking you’ll have a chance to respond, OK?”

“What’s this all about? Have you found something out—”

I put my finger to my lips.

“Lizzie Fitzpatrick
was
murdered,” I said.

“I told you. One of those characters who was in the bar that night. I—”

“It was a smart play, Harper. Always pushing the murder angle because you couldn’t believe that an accident could have befallen your beloved Lizzie. It made you sympathetic. The man who was so consumed by grief he couldn’t see reality.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She wasn’t killed by any of the men in the bar that night.”

“How can you know that?”

“It was you, Harper. I know it was you. You were there, outside in the shadows. You waited until last orders. You waited until McPhail, Yeats, and Connor had gone.”

“I was at the rugby club dinner!”

“No. You were done by ten fifteen. You were in Ballykeel. Waiting.”

“I was in Belfast!”

“You waited until the three fishermen had gone. And then you knocked on the door and told her it was you. She opened it. She was excited to see you. You locked the door behind you. Did you say anything to her?”

“I wasn’t there!”

“No, you wouldn’t have said anything. Maybe ‘go get your bag,’ and when her back was turned you smacked her on the head with a tent pole or an axe handle. And when she was unconscious you snapped her neck. You made sure that she was dead and then you climbed up on the bar and put a dud light bulb in the socket and you put a good light bulb in her right hand. And you cracked the good light bulb to make it look as if she had fallen.”

Harper shook his head. “This is crazy! Why would I do such a thing? She was my girlfriend. I loved her! We were getting on great!”

“It was because you were getting on so well that she decided to let you in on a secret.”

“Secret? What are you—”

“She clerked for James Mulvenna. She spent the two summers before you killed her clerking for him. Appearing in court, filling in forms, filing briefs, witnessing wills . . .”

“So?”

“She witnessed your father’s will, Harper,” I said.

I waited for a reaction but he played an impressively straight bat.

“And as your relationship blossomed the secret was eating away at her. After Mulvenna’s death from MS it occurred to her that she was the only living witness to the will. That will in James Mulvenna’s filing cabinet and Lizzie’s word—the only two things between you and a fortune.”

“This is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I don’t think it is.”

“Where is this mysterious will that you’re speaking about? Show it to me,” he said, his voice moving into a slightly higher register.

“Oh, the will’s gone. Lost in the burglary of 23 December. But there’s a record of it in Mulvenna’s account book that I’ve made a photocopy of. James Mulvenna kept meticulous accounts.”

I passed him the photocopy of the account book.

“What does that prove?” he said dismissively.

I took back the photocopy.

“Your father paid Mulvenna one hundred and thirty pounds for work on his will,” I said. “As the official witness Lizzie got twenty pounds.”

He laughed. “That’s pretty thin, Inspector Duffy. This is what you’re going to take to a jury?”

“Mr. Wright might testify that he had a conversation with you about replacing your father’s will and you declined because your father was in poor health.”

“I wasn’t going to drag him through making a new will.”

“But he was getting better, wasn’t he? He was getting better every day. And that’s what you were afraid of. The old will and the possibility that he might make a new one.”

“The will, if it ever existed, is long gone, Inspector Duffy. And I’m afraid you’re going to need this mythical will of yours if you’re going to convince anybody about these wild speculations,” he said with some complacency.

“This is what I think happened. Lizzie had no intention of telling you what was in your father’s will. It would be a breach of professional ethics and by all accounts she was quite serious about her legal career.”

“She was.”

“But after James Mulvenna’s death and as your relationship grew she knew that the only thing standing between you inheriting this estate and the construction firm and getting absolutely nothing was a silly piece of paper that your father had almost certainly drawn up in a fit of pique.”

“That sounds like him.”

“What did she tell you, Harper? Who was he leaving all the money to? A school? A charity? The rugby club? The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds? You weren’t getting a bloody penny, were you? That’s what shocked her. That’s what made her tell you.”

Harper linked his fingers behind his head. “You’re trying to get me to blurt out some confession? This isn’t fucking
Miss Marple
, mate. I’m not confessing to anything. I’m not confessing because I didn’t bloody do anything.”

“How do you explain this?” I said, holding up the photocopy of the account book.

“You’re going to try to hang me on that? You’d be laughed out of court.”

I pulled my chair a little closer to his.

“She must have told you the week she came back from university at Christmas break. She knew that time was of the essence. If you were going to act you had to act soon.”

“Maybe I killed Mr. Mulvenna too, did I?”

“No, you didn’t. But his death was the catalyst. She knew there was an opening here. A tiny window of opportunity where you could act, where you could break into Mulvenna’s office, find the will, and destroy it.”

“You should write a novel, Duffy.”

“So she told you about the will. But here’s the thing, Harper. She couldn’t have known what kind of a man you were. Your father knew what sort of a person you were but she couldn’t have known how ruthless you could be.”

“I’m enjoying this. It’s pure fantasy,” he said, attempting to light a cigarette with a box of matches. I pulled out my Zippo and offered it to him. He lit his cigarette and threw the Zippo back at me.

“Poor Lizzie. All she thought that you had to do was break into the office and get the will and destroy it and everything would be fine.”

“Go on.”

“But that wasn’t your plan, was it, Harper? She hadn’t thought things through. Your father was on the mend. Every day he was getting a little bit better. The outpatient visits were working. The physiotherapy was working. He was a tough old bird. He had recovered from one stroke and now he was going to recover from a second one. He still despised you. When the law office eventually found out about the missing will he’d just make a new one, wouldn’t he? You’d be right back to square one. No, no, no. Lizzie hadn’t thought things through, but you had. You knew you’d have to kill him, didn’t you? You had to destroy the will and make sure your father could never make another. But she was the hitch, wasn’t she? She trusted you but you didn’t know if you could trust her. A burglary seemed harmless enough, but would she countenance murder?”

“I can smell smoke! I’ve told you about smoking in there! Please go outside, gentlemen!” Jane yelled from the kitchen.

“Sorry, Jane!” I yelled back.

The rain had stopped now so I opened the French doors and let in the cold, damp night air.

“After you,” I said, pointing the way out to the balcony.

He went first and I followed.

The air was cool. Lough Neagh was the silent, dark vacuum to the west.

“She trusted me but I couldn’t trust her? Is that your bullshit theory?” Harper said.

“You had to do three things. Mulvenna was dead but the will was still there sitting in his office like a time bomb. The will, Lizzie, and your father in that order. First the burglary. You needed Lizzie’s help for that. She had to tell you exactly where the will was and how to get in through the dodgy bathroom window. She was the brains. She was the fairy godmother behind this part of the plan.”

“Nonsense!”

“You did that on the 23rd.”

“As if I would know how to do a burglary.”

“Then poor Lizzie had to go. What happened there, Harper? Did you tell her that you were going to have to kill your own father and she objected to that? Or were you afraid to tell her because you knew that for her burglary was one thing but murder was the line she wouldn’t cross. Maybe you could have killed him and just not told her anything. But she might have been suspicious, and then you would have had that hanging over you for your entire married life. No, the best way was to get rid of her and then wait a month or so to finish the old man.”

“Rubbish!”

“When you found out that she was going to be working in the pub alone, that must have got you excited, eh? You knew that you could use that. And you were at the rugby club dinner that night. You had an alibi. Did you ask her to give you the key? Did you make a copy? Or did you already have a copy? Maybe you lifted the key from Lizzie’s purse and got a copy made in Antrim.”

“This is bollocks, Duffy. Pure speculation.”

“The key isn’t important anyway. It was an old lock. Easily picked. Easily locked from the outside. I’ll bet you any key from the period would have worked in that lock. Nah, forget the key. The real challenge was the bolts on the door, wasn’t it?”

“Exactly, Duffy. The doors were locked and bolted from the inside. No one could have got in or out.”

“It was perfect, Harper. Lizzie was alone in the pub in a locked room. She tried to change the light bulb and she fell and broke her neck. You and her mother were the only people who couldn’t believe it because you were warped by grief.”

“This is—”

“Let me tell you how you did it. You gave your speech at the rugby club dinner and you excused yourself to go to the bog and then you drove back to Antrim. Everyone would assume you were still at the dinner but you were already back in Ballykeel. You knocked on the door. Lizzie’s all ‘Oh, Harper, what a surprise, I’m so happy to see you’ and then bam! Broken neck. Light bulbs. Then you make sure the front door is locked and bolted. Then you use your key to go out the back door. You lock the back door from the outside but of course you can’t possibly pull the deadlock over, can you? You don’t need to. You wait until eleven thirty and you call Mary Fitzpatrick from a phone box in Antrim, not from the rugby club dinner. You show up at Mary’s house and you join the search party. The police officer shines his torch into the pub and all of you break down the front door.”

“Where we found the pub locked and bolted from the inside!” Harper exclaimed with more than a touch of desperation in his voice.

“You find the body and while Mary screams and the beat cops call it in . . .”

I flipped open my notebook and read aloud from it: ““Everyone was just milling around waiting for the CID to come.” That’s right, isn’t it? Everyone was just milling around waiting for the CID. Ten minutes of that waiting around
,
Mr. McCullough.”

“So?”

I flipped over the page in my notebook. “Do you remember I asked you this question:
“
And what about the back door, Mr. McCullough?” This was your answer: “I checked that myself. Locked and bolted.” That’s when you did it, Harper. While the cops were guarding the front door and comforting Mary and telling her not to touch the body and you were staggering around in despair . . . You took ten seconds to go to the back door and slide the deadbolt across. As simple as that.”