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Authors: Dicey Deere

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BOOK: The Irish Cairn Murder
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A
t nine-forty on Friday morning, Winifred Moore, seated at a window-side table in Finney's, crushed out her cigarette in the extra saucer beside her teacup. Through the window, she watched Sergeant Bryson carry folding chairs, four at a time, from Grogans' Needlework Shop to the Garda station directly across the street. He had already made two trips. In the window glass, she could see her reflection. She was wearing her favorite hat, the Australian outback hat with the chin strap. She and Sheila had breakfasted at eight o'clock at Castle Moore. Then she'd taken a half hour's invigorating walk to the bridle path and back, pedometer strapped to her ankle. Now this soul-satisfying, body-satisfying cup of hot tea. It was still twenty minutes before the informal meeting that had been so suddenly called by Inspector Egan O'Hare.
“What's it all
about?”
Sheila asked, poking at her empty teacup. She'd been fretful ever since yesterday when the call had come from Sergeant Bryson. She'd planned a morning of correspondence.
“If I were a betting woman, Sheila, I'd say it's something Torrey Tunet has a hand in.”
“Winifred, that's an
incredibly
awkward sentence!”
Winifred, gazing from the window, said, “There's Natalie Cameron with Dakin. They're just going in. She's the most
romantic-looking woman I've ever—And look, that blue BMW What a careless way to park! It's Kate Burnside. Why's
she
here?”
 
At a few minutes to ten, Inspector Egan O'Hare, standing beside his desk, said “Good morning,” and smiled at the expectant faces. Here they all were, or almost all. Among them, a murderer.
An informal meeting. “Be sure to say
informal,”
he'd told Sergeant Bryson, giving him the list. He'd long since discovered that psychologically the word
informal
made the guilty lay down their guard. They translated it as “negligible.” It wasn't official. It didn't count. It was safe. The guilty would feel they had a chance to spy, get the lay of the land. Yet each time in the past, the innocent-appearing informal meeting had trapped the guilty. What looked like honey was actually glue.
O'Hare glanced over at Ms. Torrey Tunet, who was standing at the back, beside the soda machine. She was wearing that bandanna around her dark hair, the turquoise scarf with the peacocks. Her talisman, he'd heard, something to do with her father, the Romanian. She had on a red jumper and jeans. Nelson, that opportunistic dog, sat beside her, as though on guard. Give him a biscuit and he was yours.
Ms. Tunet met O'Hare's gaze. And he thought, All right, then, Ms. Torrey Tunet, here we are.
Leave no stone unturned
. That was the motto of Chief Superintendent Emmet O'Reilly at Dublin Castle. O'Hare thought wryly: What good that a man feared neither God nor the devil, yet quailed before the cold-eyed assessment of Chief Superintendent Emmet O'Reilly, each word in his overly educated voice an icicle? He dared not risk it. Five minutes past ten.
“Oh, sorry! We're
sorry
!” The door had opened once again. “We're sorry! Marcy's bike had a flat.” Willie Hern
and Marcy McGann. A flurry. Sergeant Bryson unfolded two more chairs and set them down beside Brenda Plant, who nodded hello.
So that was it. All here. Inspector O'Hare's gaze took them in: Winifred Moore in a sort of cowboy-looking hat with a chin strap; beside her was her London friend, Sheila Flaxton, who was wrapped in a fuzzy beige shawl. In front of them sat Kate Burnside, whose dark hair was in two long braids though she was a woman in her midthirties. Still a beauty, despite the ravages of unchecked drinking and God knows what, there were unsavory rumors. She had shrugged off a brown shiny leather jacket and wore a peach-colored silk shirt open at the throat.
In front of Kate Burnside sat Natalie Cameron. O'Hare had the passing thought that her kind of beauty was indefinable. A broad brow, a blunt nose, the curve of a cheek; you could look a thousand times and never define the source of that unutterable beauty. She was in a black sweater and dove gray pants. Beside her was the boy, Dakin. Dark-haired, his mother's broad brow, a handsome, troubled face. For a change the boy wasn't wearing one of his yellow-brown jerseys but a suede jacket and navy shirt. On the folding chair beside Dakin sat Sean O'Boyle, freshly shaved, in a real suit. Next to him was Jessie Dugan, hands clasped in her lap and looking like an attentive schoolgirl. All here, Ms. Tunet.
It would be tricky. Standing before his desk, he managed a cryptic statement about exploring a possible connection between two recent violent events in Ballynagh, “both of which involved Canadians.” He smiled at the mystified faces, though of course everyone knew that by “violence” in one of the cases, he meant “murder.” He felt perspiration under his arms. So. The witnesses. He took a breath:
“Ms. Plant. If you don't mind.”
 
 
“Oh, my!” Ms. Plant gave a startled laugh. Then with a shudder, she recounted her terrifying experience at the gates of Sylvester Hall. She wore a navy suit over a high-necked lavendar sweater, and with her short peroxided hair tamed and anchored above her ears by two curved little combs, she looked composed, though in the telling, she put a hand to her heart and her mascared blue eyes went wide. “Then,
jazz
music! And Ms. Tunet on her bicycle!”
Inspector O'Hare nodded. Marcy McGann was next. Marcy, in cherry-colored lipstick, said she hadn't seen a thing. “Not a thing,” she mumbled, and cast a sidelong glance at Ms. Tunet. Neither had Willie Hern seen anything, “because of the curve in the road.”
“Miss Tunet?” Torrey Tunet told the rest, right up to the arrival of the ambulance and the victim, Mr. Thomas Brannigan, taken off to Grasshill Hospital. So that was that. “I would've
died
of fright in Ms. Plant's shoes!” came Sheila Flaxton's whispered voice, followed by Winifred Moore's exasperated shushing.
But, curiously, Inspector O'Hare now smiled indulgently around at the attentive faces. “As you're probably aware, witnesses often are confused about what they've seen. Tests have shown a remarkable discrepancy between what actually happened and what a person
thinks
he saw happen. In this case, that appears to be so.
“Among the brambles at the gates where Mr. Brannigan was struck down, our investigation has turned up a bloodstained stone. The blood is Mr. Brannigan's blood type. So there you are! Ms. Plant saw
some
thing strike Mr. Brannigan. As for the rest, hysteria surely played a part.” He smiled sympathetically at Ms. Plant.
“But—” Brenda Plant looked bewildered.
“A stone?
But I saw—You mean it wasn't a club, it was a
stone?
But I distinctly—Well, now I don't know!” She rubbed her forehead.
Someone's hoarse whisper: “Hallucinations, Sheila. The stuff of poetry!”
 
A rustling and shifting of feet while Inspector O'Hare leafed through a batch of papers he picked up from his desk. Willy Hern tiptoed quietly to the soda machine, but then there was a clank and the can rattled down. Marcy McGann stifled giggles until her pretty face turned almost as red as her hair.
“Now.” Inspector O'Hare tapped a sheet of pale green paper and looked up. “Two Canadians attacked, one killed. Naturally, one presupposes a connection. I turn now to the results of forensic tests made concerning the murder of Raphael Ricard.” His gaze came to rest on Katherine Burnside. “Miss Burnside. A few questions.”
I
n the folding chair a few feet from O'Hare's desk, Katherine Burnside raised her brows in surprise. “Yes, Inspector O'Hare?” Amusement in her voice. She ran a hand over the back of the neck of her peach-colored silk shirt and pulled a thick braid forward to lie on her breast. Holding it, running her fingers absentmindedly along it, she gazed back at him. He drew a breath.
“Ms. Burnside, I have a report here from Dublin Castle. It concerns the killing of Mr. Raphael Ricard on Tuesday, October seventeenth. A penknife was the murder weapon. Forensic tests have revealed vestiges of various fingerprints on the knife. Yours among them.”
Indrawn breaths from the listeners, someone gasped, then a waiting. Nelson snapped at a fly. In the silence, the snap of his teeth could be heard.
Inspector O'Hare did not take his eyes from Ms. Burnside's face. Her look was one of stunned disbelief. She said,
“My
fingerprints? I can't—That can't be, Inspector! Impossible!” And again,
“Impossi
ble.”
“An error is always possible, Ms. Burnside,” O'Hare said agreeably, “though we have a set of your fingerprints taken from—but that doesn't matter. Fingerprinting is a simple
procedure. So if you object, and if you would submit your fingerprints to confirm the match of—”
“Never mind!” Kate Burnside's long and beautiful and paint-stained fingers twisted and twisted the black braid. She bit her full lower lip and stared at Inspector O'Hare. Then she shrugged. “Well?”
Inspector O'Hare, triumphant, suppressed a strong desire to again look over at Ms. Torrey Tunet.
My compliments, Ms. Tunet.
He said, “If you would care to explain, Ms. Burnside …”
“No, Inspector. I would not care to explain. But I hardly have an alternative … or am I wrong?” Even cornered, Kate Burnside was mocking him. Never mind.
“Quite right, Ms. Burnside.” He folded his arms. “So if you please …” On his left, he was aware of Dakin Cameron swiping a hand through his dark hair. The wall clock ticked. Waiting, O'Hare had the impression that Kate Burnside had begun to hold on to that braid as though on to a life line.
“This is exactly what happened.” Her throaty voice had a defensive loudness; no one in the room had to strain to hear her:
“I'm an old friend of Natalie Cameron's. I've known Dakin since he was a child. We remained friends, though his mother and I had drifted apart. Once in a while he'd confide in me. So …” A deep breath.
“A week ago Thursday, Dakin visited me. He told me that someone was blackmailing his mother, demanding that she deliver money to him at the cairn. And he said, ‘She says she will never go to the cairn and give him money. But
for some reason
she refuses to report it to Inspector O'Hare.”
Kate Burnside stopped. She looked back at O'Hare. “Dakin was worried that the blackmailer might retaliate by harming his mother. He was afraid for her. She was acting ‘off somewhere,' as he put it—” Kate stopped.
Inspector O'Hare waited with a vague feeling that he was on a path through a wilderness. Kate Burnside sat gazing into space. A silence, a waiting.
Kate Burnside blinked as though coming back to herself. She said; “I wanted to help Natalie. We'd once been good friends.
Best
friends. And Dakin, so anxious, so worried! I didn't know how I could help, but I'd try. So that Saturday, in Natalie's stead, I went at noon to meet the blackmailer.” She stopped.
Indrawn breaths; then the room was still. O'Hare, waiting, said at last, “And?”
“He was there, at the cairn. A man, a Canadian, I know the accent, I've Canadian cousins. I told him I was a friend of Natalie's and that she'd told me she'd no idea what secret she could possibly be hiding, that there was nothing she might be guilty of. Nothing about which to pay blackmail. It was all nonsense. She would never come to the cairn to pay blackmail. Never! He didn't believe me. He was angry, impatient. But then he laughed. ‘I'll write her again,' he told me, ‘a letter that will bring her. Tuesday noon. She knows why I'm here. Otherwise, she'd have called the Gardai. So she'll come.'
“I didn't know what else to do, how to help. But all Tuesday morning, while I was working on a painting, I felt drawn to the cairn to see for certain. I could see myself going to the cairn and saying to that blackmailer, ‘You see? You'll get no money from Natalie. She'll never come! Let her alone!' And I'd even lie, and say, ‘I believe Natalie has already informed the Gardai.'
“So I went, I couldn't help it. But when I got to the cairn, he was lying there. The blood! My foot touched something. I picked it up. It was a penknife. At once I flung it away. And I thought,
Natalie has come after all.
”
 
 
Indrawn breaths. Appalled faces turned to look at Natalie Cameron, who sat immobile. Sheila Flaxton made a mewling sound. Winifred Moore lit a cigarette with an unsteady hand, then at a reproving sign from Sergeant Bryson, crushed it out under her boot.
Inspector O'Hare said, “That's how your fingerprints got on the penknife, Ms. Burnside?”
“That's exactly how, Inspector.”
“And then, Ms. Burnside? What did you do then?”
Kate Burnside said, “What? Then? Oh, then I ran from there! I was so—But when I got back to my studio—it's in that old O'Sullivan's barn—I thought, maybe Natalie had gone to the cairn without bringing the blackmail money. So he'd lost his head and attacked her! Maybe
in defending herself from him,
she—” Ms. Burnside put a hand to her throat. “So I ran back to the cairn to take the penknife away. To save her.
“But when I got back, coming out of the woods I saw several people standing over there beyond the meadow, at the cairn. You, Inspector, Sergeant Bryson. Others. I was too late.”
BOOK: The Irish Cairn Murder
11.04Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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