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Authors: Dicey Deere

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BOOK: The Irish Cairn Murder
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I
t was a deluge. Black clouds, then the downpour, the wind slicing through it, all so sudden that the lunchtime crowd at Finney's was pretty well trapped inside.
Winifred Moore, sitting across from Sheila at a window-side table, pulled the ecru curtain aside, looked out, and at once ordered a second dessert. The ice cream with banana and nuts. “No sense in going out in
that,”
she said to Sheila.
It was, peculiarly, as though a kind of homey, family peace descended on the restaurant. Terence, who worked at Lowry's Hardware and was always in a hurry, sat back and relaxed. One of the O'Dowd brothers told about a cow who walked backward when it stormed. He swore it was true. The butcher, Dennis O'Curry, told his favorite old chestnut. It was how, twenty years ago, he'd triumphed over the late Sybil Sylvester. It was about the time she'd paid his bill for six lamb chops and included a nasty note: “Mr. O'Curry! I can get lamb chops in Doyle's for a pound less. I only ordered them from you this past Thursday because Doyle's is closed on Thursdays.” Dennis, after mulling this over, meanwhile downing two whiskeys at O'Malley's, had sent the bill back to Sybil Sylvester, having scrawled on it, “When I'm closed I charge a pound less than Doyle's.” Everybody laughed at that one.
Winifred, starting on her second dessert, noticed that Sergeant Jimmy Bryson, at the next table with Ms. Plant, wasn't having his usual favorite: corned beef with mustard and pickles. Instead, he was eating Finney's all-vegetable jumble, as was Ms. Plant. He was messing it around a lot; but Ms. Plant seemed to be enjoying hers. Winifred leaned over to Sheila. “Who's running
whose
young life?”
Sheila followed her glance; then gave her a reproving look. “Is it any of
your
business who eats what?” Sheila was still smarting over
l'affaire champignon,
as Winifred called it. Sheila now even refused to eat mushroom anything, even mushroom soup that came in a can.
A blast of wind shook the plate glass window and the slanting rain struck it with a sound like peas rattling into a pan. At that instant the door opened and Torrey Tunet came in. Old leather air pilot's hat tight to her head, her face wet. She wore a red slicker buckled high around her neck. And as Winifred said later to Sheila, “Up to something, as usual!” “Of course!” Sheila had answered, “But
then,
who would've guessed?” and she gave a little shudder.
“Torrey!” Winifred waved her dessert spoon at Torrey. “Over here! Join us.”
Torrey gave a nod and flicked her fingers in response. She unbuckled the red slicker, and hung it on one of the row of hooks that was already overloaded. She came over, smiling, pulling off the pilot's cap. “Hello! The whole village must be here.” She nodded to Ms. Plant and Sergeant Bryson at the next table. Bryson was fiddling with a green bean, turning it this way and that on his fork.
Torrey pulled back one of the two empty chairs at Winifred's and Sheila's table and sat down. “I saw you through the window, I only came in to say hello and to show you something. Look at these!” She pulled an envelope from her shoulder bag and fanned out a half dozen photographs.
“Shots of the groundsman's cottage. I took them early this morning. Sunny and springlike, can you believe it? My instant camera. I'm not an expert photographer like you are. But I think they're pretty good for an amateur. What do you think?”
Winifred looked down at the photograph Torrey handed her. Awful. Worse than amateurish. Couldn't Torrey see that? She looked at Torrey. What could she say?
Very nice?
Or something more honest, like,
Throw away the camera?
But Torrey was leaning over to Jimmy Bryson at the next table. “You've always liked the cottage, Sergeant Bryson. Have a look,” and she dropped a couple of photos on the table and smiled at Brenda Plant. “You, too, Ms. Plant. You like old things, antiques and such. The cottage is certainly that. Look at this one, it's my best,” and she handed Ms. Plant a photograph.
Winifred spooning up the last bit of banana, glanced at Torrey. Something. A tenseness. Torrey's gray eyes, were a fraction wider than usual; a pulse was beating on the side of her neck just above her cowl-necked sweater. Something up. All was not as it seemed. Puzzling. Well, never mind. “The rain's stopped,” she said to Sheila. “Let's go.” And to Torrey, “I've got the Jeep. Can we give you a lift anywhere?”
“Perfect,” Torrey said. “You can drop me at the turnoff to O'Sullivan's barn. It's on your way.” She gathered up the photographs that Sergeant Bryson and Ms. Plant had laid on the table after murmuring polite comments. She slid them into the envelope and got up.
 
It was a mist rather than a drizzle by the time the Jeep reached the turnoff to O'Sullivan's barn. Standing in the dirt road, Torrey watched the Jeep disappear, mud splashing up around the wheels. Then she turned and walked up toward the barn.
The blue BMW was parked in its usual place. It was only two o'clock, but the day was dark. Lights shone from the high windows.
Torrey went to the BMW and opened the car door. Smell of perfume, tobacco, stale whiskey. In a holder attached to the dashboard was an empty glass. Baccarat. Wouldn't you know! She had to smile. Carefully, between two fingers, Torrey lifted out the glass. “Once a thief, always a thief,” she whispered aloud, and made a face. She took a paper bag from the pocket of her raincoat and put the glass in the bag.
O
h, no! No!
Inspector O'Hare stared at Ms. Torrey Tunet standing in front of his desk and taking an object from her shoulder bag and placing it on his desk … then reaching into the bag again and taking out another object, which she placed beside it. Then a third object.
Oh, no!
Yet here she was. Had he committed some sin in an earlier life to deserve her meddling
again?
Ms. Tunet was in a red slicker and a close-fitting World War I leather pilot's cap she must have found at a yard sale. It was three o'clock and the sudden noontime deluge had dwindled to a drizzle. She smiled at him. “Inspector.”
The fourth thing she took from her shoulder bag was a chocolate bar. She made an inquiring gesture as though to break it in half, and when O'Hare shook his head in refusal, she peeled back the silver paper and bit into the chocolate. She unbuckled the red raincoat and sat down in the chair beside his desk.
Inspector O'Hare set his jaw in his
no
mode. He folded his arms and swore to himself that this time,
this
time, whatever theory Ms. Torrey Tunet came up with,
this
time it would slide off him slick as oil. She'd get nowhere.
Nowhere.
Because this time was different. He knew what he knew: Natalie Cameron had killed Raphael Ricard. He had
two eyes. He didn't need a third one in the middle of his forehead to confirm that fact.
Ms. Tunet said, “Inspector,” and she reached across and picked up one of the objects she'd laid on his desk and began to talk.
 
Twenty minutes later, Sergeant Bryson returned from the Harrington's farm, having settled a fistfight between the seventy-eight-year-old Harrington twin brothers over which puppies in their bitch's new litter would belong to which brother. He found Inspector O'Hare alone sitting at his desk, biting the inside of his cheek, and gazing at some things that lay on his desk.
Bryson said, “All settled, Inspector.” He felt good, pleased with himself. “After Henry got a black eye and Stevie lost a tooth. There were five pups, so who was to get the odd one? I felt like King Solomon.”
“Hmmm? King Solomon?” Inspector O'Hare gave a sudden bark of a laugh. “Which one did get it, Jimmy?”
“I did, sir. Cost me thirty pounds. When it's weaned, I'll pick it up. My mother'll like it, she's been wanting company.” Bryson took off his cap and rubbed his forehead and looked over at a packaged doughnut he'd left on his desk. “Wouldn't mind a bit of tea, though a mite early.”
“Sergeant Bryson.”
Bryson felt suddenly alert. Something in the Inspector's voice. “Sir?”
Inspector O'Hare said, “Never mind tea. I want you to take these things”—he gestured at the objects on his desk—“right now to Dublin Castle, forensics. I've already rung up Sanders. Depending on what he finds, I may be calling an informal meeting. If so, Friday morning at ten o'clock.”
“
I
swear,” Jessie said to Sean O'Boyle, “today's a false spring. That balmy!” Jessie was wearing only a light jumper over her white-aproned blue uniform. She was standing on the gravel on the curved drive in front of Sylvester Hall watching Sean O'Boyle trim the masses of rhododendrons beneath the long windows. She'd come out to gather up some of the cuttings of the shiny leaves. They'd look a treat in the brass pots in the kitchen.
It was Thursday morning, eleven o'clock. Sean, only half aware of Jessie, had already finished trimming the rhododendrons on the left side beneath the drawing room and breakfast room windows. Minutes ago, he'd begin to trim those on the left, beneath the library windows, which were open, and from which he could hear the murmur of voices. Ms. Tunet's bicycle was on its stand on the gravel drive. It had been there at least twenty minutes.
“Jessie?” Ms. Cameron had come out and was standing at the top of the steps. “Jessie, will you please get Dakin for me. He's in the coach house washing the Rover. Tell him I'm in the library and I'd like to see him.”
“Yes, Ma'am.” Jessie went off toward the coach house, the gravel crunching under her feet.
Sean paused in his clipping and looked up to where
Natalie still stood at the top of the steps. She had on a long velvety-looking brown skirt and a brown pullover and her face looked pale, so different from its usual warmth. At that moment, she put her fingertips to her temples, closed her eyes, and shook her head slowly from side to side. Then she opened her eyes, blew out a breath, and turned and went inside.
Sean just stood for a moment, shears in hand. It was terrible, Natalie's face so thin these last days. In the greenhouse, even while he showed her what cuttings he was taking, and while she replanted one thing or another, or looked at him when he was explaining something about mixtures of soil, her hazel eyes had a transfixed look as though her gaze was frozen on something.
Meantime, those gossip reporters were prowling around the Sylvester Hall gates and in Ballynagh having a pint in O'Malley's and chatting up young Sean O'Malley as though he were privy to secret goings-on at Sylvester Hall. As for Dakin, he'd given up doing jobs around Ballynagh, what with people plaguing him with questions about his mother. Natalie's attorney, Mr. Morton, had'come from Dublin three times and had left frowning, his jaw set. The inquiry would be next week, in Dublin.
A smell of coffee wafted from the library window, and again the murmur of voices.
Ms. Tunet had arrived almost a half hour ago. “She called around ten o'clock,” Jessie had told Sean while he was doing the rhododendrons that had begun to tower over the sills of the breakfast room windows. It was something to do with a meeting tomorrow morning at the Garda station. “Ring! Ring! That telephone!” Jessie had said. Earlier, it had been Sergeant Jimmy Bryson calling. “Yes, Sergeant Bryson, Ten o'clock, Friday morning?” Natalie had said. Nothing got past Jessie.
“Hey, Sean.” From behind him, Dakin's voice. “‘What bodes the day?' Did Shakespeare say that or did I make it up?”
Sean turned, smiling. Dakin wasn't even wearing a jacket. Just jeans, and a jersey with the sleeves rolled up for washing the jeep. It was one of his batch of mustard-colored jerseys that he'd bought from a catalogue. This one had a raccoon on it.
“I think you made it up,” Sean said. Not that he had any idea.
When Dakin went inside, Sean didn't start clipping again. Holding a rhododendron leaf and rubbing its shiny, dark green surface, he just stood there beneath the open library window, head cocked, listening to the voices.
A
t eight o'clock Friday morning, Jasper picked up the phone in his bedroom suite at the Actons Hotel in Kinsale and dialed Torrey's number in Ballynagh.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed, already dressed. Crew-necked black sweater, white pants, and sneakers. In the tipped bureau mirror on the left side the room, he could see the reflection of the harbor; the sea glittered in the morning sunlight; yachts and sailboats and other small craft seemed barely to move. On the bedside table beside him lay the program for the ten-day International Gourmet Festival at Kinsale, the gourmet capital of Ireland. He'd arrived last night from Dublin, driving south on the N9 in the Jaguar. He'd dined at Kieran's on the celebrated roast wild boar, but his taste buds had betrayed him. He could have been eating Styrofoam.
“Torrey?” But it was her machine that answered, her familiar “Torrey here. You're calling the right number … at the wrong time—” only then to be picked up. “Hello?”
“Torrey?” He grinned. She would be in that long striped flannel shirt she wore as a nightgown. Yawning, half-awake despite the cold water dashed on her face, she'd be in the kitchen taking his shaped biscuits from the refrigerator and baking them, maybe even remembering to let the butter get—
“Jasper? Jasper! Hel
lo.”
Suprise and pleasure in her voice.
He said, “You're sabotaging my taste buds. I keep seeing you sleuthing away. My investigative nature—”
“Jasper, listen.” Torrey's voice was sober. “Since you left, I've been tracking through a labyrinth that the Minotaur himself could get lost in. Then, by a sheer fluke …”
While she told him, he gazed out at the sunlit harbor. The yachts and small craft seemed to take on an innocence that had not been there before.
“So,” Torrey was saying now, “when I started to tell Inspector O'Hare, he got that exasperated, stay-off-my-turf look. Then gradually as I talked, I could tell he thought I was simply crackers.
Fi
n
ally, he began to take it in, thank God. So then he started wiggling that tough jaw of his around that way—you know how he does—then I guess he figured he couldn't risk ignoring it. So, ‘Better run it past Dublin Castle.' Right?”
Jasper, bemused, said, “Right.”
“Just in case I wasn't a total idiot. So then, when yesterday he got the report back from forensics at Dublin Castle, he called for an informal meeting at the Garda station.”
“When?”
“This morning, ten o'clock. I've still got to dress and have breakfast. I keep wishing you were here. Jasper?”
“Yes?”
Torrey's voice was serious, sad. “If I'm right about what happened—You know that expression, ‘unalloyed joy'? Is it ever possible? In real life, no matter how delicious the apple, there's always a worm. Twice in the past, I've uncovered the truth behind a murder. And each time it has exposed … each time there's been a cruel price that somebody, innocent but entangled, had to pay. In this case, it'll be Natalie Cameron.
The exposure. A pity. But there's no other way. And then, of course … Dakin.”
Jasper, gazing out at the sunlit harbor, said, “Yes, that. The son.” He was thinking hard.
“Jasper?”
“I'm still here.” He paused, then: “All of a sudden I find myself wearing my Jasper Shaw investigative reporter hat. Tell me again. What was it that Kate Burnside told you about that Rolls Royce trip to Dublin, the two girls, Kate Burnside and Natalie Cameron?”
She told him. Then, “Why? What're you thinking?”
“I don't know yet.” And he didn't; it was too elusive. But out there somewhere. He said, “And what about Tom Brannigan? What's going on with him?”
“I don't know. Because up to now Grasshill wouldn't tell me anything about his condition. They had orders from Inspector O'Hare to treat me like yellow fever.”
After they hung up, Jasper sat for some minutes, thinking. Then abruptly he reached out to the bedside table, picked up the program of the International Gourmet Festival and dropped it into the wastebasket.
 
A half hour later, outside the Actons Hotel, Jasper, in corduroy pants and brogues, and with a windbreaker over his sweater, slung his bags into the back of the Jaguar.
He drove north, up through Cobh and on through Youhal. By the time he reached Dungarvan on the N25, the sun had given way to clouds; in Waterford he turned onto the N9, broad and fast, and at Nass got onto the N7. In a pouring rain, he passed the turnoff that would have brought him, finally, to Ballynagh, but drove on. Twenty minutes later, he was on the N81 from western Wicklow into Dublin. Traffic
was slowed by the rain, then stopped; there'd been a washout. Raincoated Gardai splashed along the roadside.
Jasper, arms resting on the steering wheel of the Jaguar, watched the windshield wiper click back and forth. Torrey. As always, the thought of Torrey brought a humorous twitch to his lips, not quite a smile. Torrey. Hopeless as a cook, a genetic marvel at languages, and as stubborn as Joan of Arc. Out of so simple an incident! She on her Peugeot, a nasty pair of young bullies on the road, and then Dakin, her rescuer. Out of that incident, Torrey would valiantly fight the equivalent of the War of the Roses.
In the gray rain, a flashlight was signaling. The cars ahead were beginning to move. Jasper inched the car forward, thinking: But, no. It wasn't that Torrey felt she owed Dakin something. It was about Dakin's belief in his mother's innocence. Torrey didn't
know
that Natalie Cameron hadn't killed Raphael Ricard. But if there was any chance that Dakin's mother was innocent, Ms. Torrey Tunet, the stubborn Ms. Tunet, was going to try to prove it. But she'd do it with sadness because, win or lose, what it was going to expose would break Dakin Cameron's heart. So, then.
“Move on, move on!” A garda in a yellow slicker waved his flashlight in an arc and the line of cars picked up speed.
The outskirts of Dublin, finally. He looked at his watch. Twenty past nine. He drove onto Clanbrassil Street, made a right at South Circular Road, then took the first left. He drove slowly down this unfamiliar, narrower street. Ah, there! A car was departing, leaving room to park. He tooled his way into the spot, shut off the motor, and said aloud, “For you, Torrey, my love, I've given up the Twenty-fourth International Gourmet Festival.” Days of dining at the Kinsale Good Food Circle, the ten choicest restaurants in Ireland.
So what he was about to do had better pay off.
BOOK: The Irish Cairn Murder
5.99Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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