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Authors: Dicey Deere

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BOOK: The Irish Cairn Murder
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A
t eleven o'clock Torrey got off the bus on the access road outside Ballynagh. The early morning sun had disappeared, the sky was overcast, a wind swirled the dry leaves about.
It would be at least a ten-minute walk to O'Sullivan's barn. But if she kept her hands in her windbreaker pockets they'd stay warm. And she had on her knitted cap, it covered her ears.
She tucked her chin deeper into her woolen turtle-necked sweater and started off. She didn't even see the woods around her, she didn't feel the cold, she was only hearing Tom Brannigan's voice, as he lay in the hospital bed.
“The old witch! I was chauffeur at Sylvester Hall for four months. Sybil Sylvester came home from hospital in September. I'd drive her to play bridge or to dine with her friends in surrounding great houses.
“Finally, Natalie and I knew we'd have to tell her we were going to get married. And that there'd be a baby. We were excited, happy. We had it planned. If it was a girl, we'd name her Millicent, for Natalie's mother. If it was a boy, we'd name him Dakin, after my father and grandfather.
“But then I had to go to Drumcliff for my older brother's wedding, I'd be gone two days. ‘We'll tell her when you get back,' Natalie said. She was wild with joy.
“So I was gone two days. When I got back to Sylvester Hall, I threw my duffle into my room above the coach house and went to find her. But she wasn't anywhere about. No one, not the housekeeper, not the maids—
no
one knew were she was. I was bewildered. Then frightened. Natalie had known what time the bus was bringing me back to Ballynagh, she would have been waiting impatiently for me.
Finally, frantic, I burst in on Natalie's great-aunt Sybil in the drawing room. I'd never even been in that room before. Sybil Sylvester was playing solitaire at a gate-legged table near the fireplace.
“‘What's happened?' I said, ‘Where's Natalie?'
“At that, Sybil Sylvester just looked at me as though I were too contemptible to be worth answering. Then she said, ‘Natalie had a stomach upset. She confessed to me why. She wasn't even ashamed! What did she think? That I'd embrace the situation? Take you to my bosom? Pah! I explained to her that she'd been foolish, that you were only after the Sylvester holdings. That she must not see you again. That she must not have a child by you.'
“I was dazed. I must have gawked. And then she said, ‘If you persist, if you think you can marry Natalie and live happily ever after—pah! I'll disinherit her. I'll leave her penniless. She'll get to hate you. Being a chauffeur's wife! A
Catholic
wife, besides, ending up with a gaggle of hungry brats! Living in some shabby public housing.' And she said, smirking, triumphant, ‘I told her so. I painted a graphic picture for her.'
“I shrank from that. Sybil Sylvester sat watching me. She had blue eyes like agates, marble cold and shining, a doll's eyes. She was tapping the edge of a playing card on the table, her rings glittered.
“And she went on, watching me, ‘Natalie didn't want to listen. But finally she knew I was right. You understand?
Natalie at last has understood. She has agreed not to see you again. She has already left Ireland. I have sent her abroad to some connections of mine. They will discreetly—they will take care of everything.'”
 
Torrey shivered, not only because of the wind that swept across the field as she approached the O'Sullivan's barn. She was seeing Tom Brannigan in the hospital bed. The edge of the bandage that swathed his head had darkened with sweat. “Gone. Natalie gone, leaving no word for me! But one thing that Sybil Sylvester had said rang in my head, the one thing I hated to think but it could happen: Natalie, penniless, trapped, could get to hate me, despise me. It was true she'd be better off without me. Comfortably off, rich, a secure life, marrying her own kind. And … maybe she'd gone because she wanted to keep on loving me! Loving me
forever and ever
. Was that a crazy way to think? Anyway, it's what I thought.
She loves me that much!
”
There in the hospital bed, Tom Brannigan turned his face fully to Torrey. “Sybil Sylvester was lying, of course, about what had happened to Natalie. But I didn't know it. Not then.
“And there in the drawing room, Sybil Sylvester's agate eyes watched me. And her voice was thin as vinegar.
“‘I have business connections in Canada. I can arrange a position for you. Clerking in a bank, in Montreal. At the Bank of Canada you will find five thousand pounds deposited to an account in your name.'
“When I left the drawing room, I could see Sybil Sylvester's reflection in the mirror over the mantle. She was laying down a new hand of solitaire.
“Upstairs in my room in the coach house I found a plane ticket lying on the table. A direct flight from Shannon to Montreal.”
T
he BMW was parked in the rutted drive beside O'Sullivan's barn. Shivering in the cold, Torrey knocked hard on the barn door. “Kate!”
“Go away! I'm working!”
Oh, no! Let the world of art suffer. This was a matter of murder. Torrey pushed open the door and went in.
Kate Burnside was sitting on a swivel stool holding a mug. The easel before her was blank. What Kate Burnside had been working on was a glass of whiskey. The bottle was on the table beside her among a jumble of paint tubes. If Kate had been drinking hot rum, Torrey would have asked for the same. Her fingertips were ice cold. A cast-iron stove warmed the studio. Torrey blew on her cold hands and sat down on the arm of the leather sofa.
Kate Burnside, holding the glass, stared at her. “I said,
don't come in!
” Her voice was angry, a frown formed lines between her brows. She was wearing a heavy brocade kimono edged with what looked like sable. Her dark hair was in a single braid that was drawn forward over her shoulder and fell across her right breast. She looked romantic in a disheveled way.
Torrey said, “I'm sorry, but it's about Natalie Cameron. Because you were Natalie's friend. Her
best
friend. And—”
“Whoever told you that? Besides, it was a thousand years ago.”
“All right. But while she's out on bail Inspector O'Hare is huffing and puffing, gathering evidence to get a conviction. I don't know what the penalty is in Ireland for murder, but it can't be pretty.”
Kate Burnside swirled the drink in her glass and stared at her. “What's it
your
business? Just because Dakin got that phone call at your cottage. Yes, he told me about it. He tells me lots of things. Besides, Inspector O'Hare dislikes you. You
irritate
him.”
Torrey said, “I've just come from Glasshill Hospital. I saw Tom Brannigan. He told me things.”
No response. The only sound was the low roar of the stove. Then Kate said, “Went right to the fountainhead, did you?”
Torrey said, “You
were
best friends with Natalie, weren't you? Right up until you were seventeen or eighteen. Best friends. So you would've known about the chauffeur. Tom Brannigan. And that Natalie got pregnant with Dakin.”
“That's none of your—”
“That's why Ricard was murdered, isn't it?
Because he knew
. And threatened to reveal it.”
Kate Burnside said, “You
are
a tiger, aren't you?” She turned on the stool and uncapped the whiskey bottle on the table. “A libation?” Holding the bottle, she looked at Torrey.
“No, thanks. So. Blackmail. Of course!”
Kate filled her glass and recapped the bottle. Glass in hand, for a moment she sat looking back at Torrey and biting the inside of her cheek. Then she shrugged.
“Dakin came here that Thursday. He told me that Natalie had received two letters demanding money under threat of revealing something. But that Natalie had no idea
what.
Mystifying and frightening. Yet for some reason she was hesitating
about going to the Gardai. That in itself alarmed Dakin even more. Poor lad! Struggling so with his bewilderment!”
“You were able to help him? You, his mother's old friend. Or not?”
“Not. It had become too complex. A Pandora's box. I didn't dare. Better to keep him in the dark, not knowing.” She gave a sudden hoot of a laugh. “It was something that the blackmailer didn't know, either! It was something only I knew.”
Torrey, on the arm of the leather couch, sat very still. “Knew?”
“Because I'd been there when it happened. Back then. I was seventeen. Natalie was eighteen. And in love with the chauffeur. Tom Brannigan.”
“Knew what?” Torrey said.
“That second blackmail letter? Dakin told me that Natalie had refused to go to meet the blackmailer at the cairn.”
“Yes?”
“So I went to meet him. I … well, not just because of what I knew that the blackmailer didn't know. But because I felt I owed Natalie something. In a way.”
“Owed?” But then, when Kate only shrugged in response, Torrey remembered the mustard-colored jersey hanging in Kate's elegant bathroom.
Kate said, “So I went. That Saturday noon. I thought the blackmailer would be Tom Brannigan, come back from somewhere because he wanted money. I went to meet him at the cairn to tell him to let Natalie alone because she would never, ever, pay blackmail since she had no
idea
what he was talking about.”
Torrey could only stare. She waited.
“But when I got to the cairn, it wasn't Tom Brannigan. It was this Rafe person.” Kate put up a hand and touched the braid that fell across her breast. She pulled the brocade robe
closer, the sable edging dark against her white throat. “Raphael Ricard, the papers say.” She looked at Torrey. “I told him what I had come to tell Tom Brannigan.”
“And what was that?”
“I told this Rafe person the truth. That Natalie had retrograde amnesia. She didn't remember that Tom Brannigan had ever existed. She actually thought Dakin was her son by Andrew Cameron.”
“
I
t was a rainy evening,” Kate Burnside said. “I had a party to go to in Dublin. My father was away, or he would have forbidden it. ‘No daughter of mine'—and such-like drivel. ‘You're only seventeen! Dublin is a sink of iniquity!' But my mother never could cope. I had a flame-colored dress and my parents had given me a little convertible when I'd graduated from Alcock's.”
Telling it, Kate walked back and forth in the heavy, brocade kimono. She wore soft, thickly padded Oriental slippers that made no sound. She hardly glanced at Torrey, who had slid down from the arm of the sofa and sat among the cushions.
“Anyway, I kissed my mother and threw on a raincoat and went out. And there was Natalie just driving up in that big silver Rolls. “Get in!” she told me, her voice all queer. So I got in beside her. She sounded hysterical. She'd had a terrible quarrel with Sybil, her great-aunt. Sybil had found out about Tom Brannigan and that Natalie was pregnant. Sybil had been furious. ‘Sleeping with the chauffeur! Like in some cheap sex film! Or like in that disgusting D. H. Lawrence's
Lady Chatterley'sLover
, sleeping with the gardener or whatever he was. And you're pregnant, besides. But you're
not
having this baby! We'll go abroad. I'll arrange everything.'
“In the Rolls, telling it, Natalie's face was white, she was wild with rage. ‘How
dare
she! Tom and I—we love each other! We're going to get married!'
“‘Fine,' I told her. I looked out at the rain splashing down on the hood of the Rolls. ‘Is there anything I can do? Just tell me. Anything. It's a shame! But I'm in a rush. I've a party to go to in Dublin.' And I said, ‘D'you want to come?'”
“‘I'll drive you,'” she said, quick as a flash, ‘It'll make Sybil wild to know I'm driving the Rolls. She's never allowed it. But I know how. Tom always lets me. And to Dublin! To a party! That's even worse.' And she laughed.”
In the barn, Kate Burnside turned to Torrey and spread her hands helplessly. “I should have known better! And in that weather! But I was only a kid! And there was that party! By the time we got to Dublin, the wind was gusting, blowing the rain in sheets. We could barely see through the windshield, the streetlights were blurs. On Chancery Street we hit a curb and crashed into a streetlight.
“The accident was minor. Thank God for
that,
I remember thinking. Little did I know! Only a dented fender and a broken windshield and side window. But Natalie's arm was cut by broken glass. Luckily, the Gardai showed up right away, lights flashing.
“At the hospital, Natalie's damaged arm turned out to be a nasty business. Then it appeared that she also had a concussion. By that time, it was late, so staying overnight at the hospital was advisable for her.
“Aside from
that
, we had a problem with the Gardai: Natalie had no driver's license.”
Kate, pacing, stopped in front of Torrey. “That coldhearted Sybil Sylvester! The teachers at Alcock's Academy were angels compared to her. Well, anyway. I telephoned Sybil Sylvester from the hospital and told her about the accident. ‘Indeed?' she said, her voice coming from somewhere
north of Iceland. ‘A fitting punishment! Running off in a temper! And driving the Rolls! Injured her arm? A deserved punishment! Don't expect me to rush off to Dublin and bring her home. She can take the bus. Feeling chastized if she has any sense. Not that she has shown much of
that.
As for the Rolls, I will see to the repairs. The cost will come out of Natalie's allowance.'
“I mentioned, then, feeling helpless and guilty, about Natalie driving without a license. To that, after a moment, she said, ‘I am cognizant, Kate Burnside, of how to handle such affairs. It wit be taken care of.'” Kate looked at Torrey. “She meant she knew people, she would pull strings. The license problem would quietly drop down a … an oubliette.”
Pacing again, Kate began absentmindedly unplaiting her dark, luxuriant braid. “The accident was on Tuesday night. Natalie had mentioned that Tom Brannigan would be returning Wednesday morning from his brother's wedding in Drumcliff. ‘We'll marry right away!' Natalie had told me, driving furiously through the rain toward Dublin, ‘We'll be happy! I know it!'
“I'd taken the late bus back to Ballynagh on Tuesday night after the accident. So in the morning, Wednesday morning, I telephoned the hospital and learned that Natalie would be released in the late afternoon.”
Kate Burnside took a deep breath and looked at Torrey. “It was my first encounter with evil. That is, if evil is
at
all costs
to override everyone else's human feelings. Having her own way. I mean, of course, Sybil Sylvester.
“Anyway, Wednesday noontime I drove over to Sylvester Hall. I wanted to offer to drive Tom Brannigan to Dublin in the convertible to pick up Natalie at the hospital. But I couldn't find him. He wasn't upstairs in the coach house. The door to his room was partly open but he wasn't there. The room looked somehow so empty. Just nothing on the dresser,
and no personal things about. There was only the chauffeur's uniform and cap on a hanger.
“At the hall, I found Mrs. Dugan, the housekeeper, in the kitchen and asked if she'd seen Tom Brannigan. She looked at me funny and said no. I had the feeling, though, that she was lying, that something was wrong and she didn't want to say.
“Anyway, at about three in the afternoon, not knowing where Tom Brannigan was, or what Sybil Sylvester had told him about the accident, if anything, I drove in to Dublin to pick up Natalie.
“It was a bright, beautiful, sunny day in early October, this time of year. At the hospital, Natalie was waiting in the reception room, her arm heavily bandaged. She was pale, but otherwise looked … she's really quite beautiful. And a nurse had brushed her butter-colored hair smooth, she couldn't have managed it with her one arm. ‘I'm rather a mess, Kate,' she said. She looked down at her sweater, a coral sweater; it had a streak of grease on the shoulder. ‘I'll never get that off!'
“I'd put the convertible top down, it was such a beautiful, breezy day, just warm enough. But the traffic was horrendous and noisy, and I had to pay attention to my driving, I'd had the convertible only two weeks. So it wasn't until we'd gotten onto Route N-eighty-one going south that we were able to talk. So I said—because I was a little puzzled, I couldn't think why Tom hadn't rushed to the hospital to see Natalie when he heard, unless—and it was a horrible thought—unless he didn't
know
about the accident! Maybe Sybil Sylvester hadn't told him! So I said to Natalie, there on the motorway, ‘I went to the coach house this noon, looking for Tom. But I couldn't find him. I was a little worried.'
“At that, Natalie said, ‘Tom?' And then again, sounding puzzled, ‘Tom?'”
Kate stopped unbraiding her hair. She looked at Torrey. “I didn't understand. I said again to Natalie,
‘Tom.'
“She didn't answer. I risked a sideways look at her. There was a puzzled frown between her brows. Then she laughed.”Oh, the new hound! The pup! So they've named him? But what's wrong? He looked perfectly healthy yesterday. Or … was it yesterday? No, of course not! The day before?' She rubbed her forehead.
“At that, I was bewildered. There was no new pup. The last litter had been five months ago.”
In the O'Sullivan's barn, Kate raised her shoulders, and hugged her arms, chilled. “You must understand, Ms. Tunet, I'd no idea. But I knew something was wrong. ‘No,' I said to Natalie, ‘Tom Brannigan.'
“‘Oh?' Natalie said, ‘What have I missed? I've only been gone a couple of days! Or a day?' And she laughed and ran her hand along her bandaged arm. ‘Who's this … Brannigan? You did say Brannigan.'
“It frightened me. I gripped the steering wheel hard, trying to hold on to reality: the car, the road, the traffic, the wind blowing our hair about. I didn't understand. I'd never heard of retrograde amnesia. Now I know it happens often with a concussion. A whole section of recent memory sheared off as though it were part of a cliff that falls into the sea. Something like that. Anyway … gone. But I was seventeen! I didn't know. I could hardly drive, I was so aghast. Tom Brannigan
no longer
existed
in Natalie's mind.
“I left her at the steps of Sylvester Hall, I didn't want to go inside. I watched Natalie walk up the steps, that broad half-moon of granite steps. The door closed behind her. What had happened to Tom Brannigan? I didn't know.”
BOOK: The Irish Cairn Murder
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