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Authors: Dicey Deere

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BOOK: The Irish Cairn Murder
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“
W
ho's that on the bike?” The casement windows of the breakfast room at Castle Moore looked out toward the avenue. Sheila Flaxton squinted over her teacup.”Looks like Torrey Tunet. Maybe bringing the rent for the cottage.”
“She mails it,” Winifred said. Winifred, fifty years old and big boned, was eating a thickly buttered hard roll and luxuriating in every bite. After growing up poor, an ignored relation, she blissfully enjoyed having inherited Castle Moore two years ago. No more scrabbling for a living. Her prize-winning poetry, much of it published in Sheila Flaxton's well-known
Sisters in Poetry
magazine in London, had paid only a pittance. It still did. But that didn't matter, now that she owned Castle Moore with its six hundred acres of mountains and streams, glens and woods, and its pastures dotted with sheep. Winifred spent the autumn months at Castle Moore, walking the woods, wearing her oversized corduroy jeans and a pullover and taking deep invigorating breaths of the country air. She had a square-jawed face and short reddish gray hair that she wore pushed behind her ears. There was a shrewd look in her gray eyes and a humorous quirk to her mouth.
She said, “Could be that she wants to thank me for sending Dakin Cameron to do some carpentry. Unless she's up to
something, as usual. Torrey Tunet never made a simple social call in her life.”
“Really, Winifred! You always imagine something hidden in a slice of cake.” Sheila warmed her hands around her teacup. She was forty-two, and wispy, with light blue eyes in a somewhat pasty-looking face. She was thin blooded and felt the cold more; this morning she wore two sweaters and a heavy woolen skirt and thick stockings. She had brought a Yugoslavian knitted cap with her from London. Outdoors, she wore it pulled down almost to her eyebrows, covering even her mixed blond and gray fringe.
“Quite right, Sheila. Because there always is.” Winifred was watching Torrey bring her bike to a stop at the foot of the steps between the heavy stone balustrades. “
Quite
right. It could be a gold ring. Or a knife.”
 
“Dakin?” Winifred said to Torrey, “Dakin Cameron? Here's the sugar. And take one of the muffins. Rose made them.” Rose was the maid who always served breakfast. Winifred poured tea. “Sorry, no coffee. Anyway, Dakin Cameron. Did I mention on the phone that he's on his autumn school holiday? Anyway, he likes carpentry. Built me a supplies cabinet, painted the lodge windowsills. Says he doesn't want his muscles to atrophy. Handsome boy. He'll break hearts. Likely already has. Did a good job for you?”
“Yes. Very. Lives in Ballynagh, does he?”
Winifred laughed. “Oh, you didn't know? He's one of
those
Camerons. The Camerons of Sylvester Hall. He's the son.”
“Sylvester Hall?” Torrey blinked, startled. She'd seen photographs of Sylvester Hall and its rolling grounds in glossy magazines. It was a Palladian-style mansion on a distant rise north of the village. The Sylvester estate was one of the largest in western Wicklow.
“I keep forgetting,” Winifred said, “You're away so much. So you wouldn't know. Dakin's mother is the beauteous Natalie Sylvester Cameron. She inherited Sylvester Hall from her great-aunt when she was quite young, only twenty. Her parents were killed in an earthquake in the west of Turkey when Natalie was about four. Her great-aunt brought her up. Natalie's now about thirty-eight, thirty-nine.”
“
She's
Dakin's mother? Wasn't there something in the news? Some recent, tragic—”
“Right! Two years ago, Natalie's husband, a lawyer, was killed in a cross fire when he was coming out of the Gresham on O'Connell Street. Two drug factions with bad aim.”
“My
God
!”
“Yes. It half destroyed Natalie. She adored him. She's a romantic. Looks like one, too: dark, honey-colored hair, hazel eyes under black brows, broad beautiful forehead—that sort of thing.”
“Oh? What's she like?”
“A darling. High ideals. Spotless reputation. After her husband was killed, she became involved with affordable housing for low-income families. Thinks it'll help keep drugs away from kids. Ho! Ho!
That'll
be quite a trick!”
“So, Natalie Cameron.” Torrey swirled the tea in her cup. Dakin's appalled, startled eyes. Something about his mother.
“Now Natalie's going to marry Marshall West, the architect. The low-cost housing advocate. It was in the papers a couple of weeks ago. He was in Ballynah around then. Dropped into O'Malley's when I was blowing some froth off a blessedly delicious beer, a treat after my six-mile hike. Looks about forty, keen eyes, has a jaw that brooks no nonsense. Reeks of decency, honor, the lot. Left a more-than-respectable tip.”
Torrey said, “Uhhuh … Thanks for the tea.” What she
was looking for, whatever it was, wasn't to be found here at Castle Moore. Waste of time. What
was
she looking for, anyway? She got up. “I'm off.”
 
Winifred speculatively watched Ms. Torrey Tunet pedal off down the avenue. Something doing behind Ms. Tunet's big gray eyes starred by the black lashes.
“Wouldn't you say, Sheila,” Winifred said to Sheila Flaxton, “that Ms. Torrey Tunet has that look again?”
“
What
look?”
“Her dragon-slaying look.”
“Oh, for heaven's sake, Winifred! You have the most amazing tendency to make something out of nothing.”
T
hursday morning at ten o'clock, Sean O'Boyle finished clipping the boxwood hedges at Sylvester Hall. Shears in hand, he straightened. He was sixty-two. Every Thursday since he was in his thirties, he'd manicured the green lawns that sloped away from the hall down to the woods. He pruned the glossy yews and rhododendrons and cut back the shrubs. In the greenhouse, he planted seeds and nurtured plants. He oversaw the kitchen garden, so there was always a supply of fresh fruits and vegetables for the household. And even after so many years, he still felt a lift of pleasure when his old car rattled through the gates and up the avenue of oaks, and there, set like a gem in the folds of the hills, lay Sylvester Hall.
As for the shears—Sean made a face. They'd gotten dull; he liked a shears sharp as razors. He'd give them a good grinding. The whetstone was kept in the coach house. It was a grindstone that purred like a cat, a pleasure to use; he'd even sharpened his penknife on it. And Breda, the cook, always gave him her kitchen knives to sharpen.
He started across the stone-flagged courtyard toward the handsome coach house. It was grey, with three sets of black, arched double doors, wide enough for carriages with double-harnessed
horses. The doors had brass pulls shaped like lions' heads.
But now, of course, it was a garage. There was Ms. Cameron's Saab and Dakin's red Jeep. The old silver Rolls was there, seldom used now, though in Sybil Sylvester's day Olin Caughey, the chauffeur, would drive the old lady to her shopping and bridge games in the Rolls. Not that Olin Caughey should've been driving at all, what with his kidneys always acting up. Tough old bird. “I'll use your guts for garters!” he'd threaten Sean when he'd been drinking. And Sean, younger and stronger, had to laugh.
There was still the one old carriage left in the coach house, though. It was a black boxlike, closed carriage, elegant looking, with two square lamps with beveled glass. A hundred years old. Last year, an antiques fellow had offered Ms. Cameron a hefty sum for the carriage, but she'd turned him down. Odd, because Ms. Cameron wasn't what you'd call sentimental about historical family possessions.
“Mr. O'Boyle?” Jessie Dugan, the younger of the two maids, was coming across the courtyard. She was carrying the morning's post of letters and magazines from the postbox at the end of the avenue.
“Morning, Jessie.”
Jessie was frowning, head tipped sideways in puzzlement. “This morning, Mr. O'Boyle—When you got here, did you see anyone about? Maybe near the postbox?”
Sean shook his head.
“Well,
queer
. Yesterday when I got the mail, a letter for Ms. Cameron was in the box without a stamp. Now, this morning,
another
letter! This one.” Jessie held up a blue envelope. “Had to've been just
put
there!”
Sean said, offhandedly, “Well, what of that? What with stamps costing as much as a side of bacon to send a letter!” He said it just to have Jessie on. But it
was
odd. In truth, he
didn't like it. Anything a bit off sent a little tightness of alarm between his shoulder blades and he'd look about like a deer raising its head at the scent of danger. It always had.
 
At ten-thirty, after a half hour's brisk morning walk with the two hounds, Natalie Cameron arrived back at Sylvester Hall. She'd been in the woods and fields, nettles clung to her woolen pants. She felt healthy, happy, and glowingly alive; autumn was her season, she loved it.
“Dakin was up at six,” Jessie had told her over her late breakfast. “He waited to talk to you. But he finally had to leave. He was putting up scaffolding. The Conklins' barn.” Lucinda had left for school at eight.
“Sorry I missed Dakin.” She'd been in Dublin until late last night at a meeting about low-cost housing. She'd arrived home after one o'clock and had slept late.
Absentmindedly plucking nettles off her pants, she went into the library. At the big table she settled down and opened the folder of plans for Marshall's housing project. Marshall was somewhere in America. Oregon, a three-week teaching seminar. When he got back, they'd plan the wedding. A dozen close friends. After Andrew's death, she'd thought she'd never be in love again. And why
Marshall
? Forty-two, up from a working-class Scotch-Irish family, and too decent to be true. “Marshall West, the architect,” was the way he'd been introduced to her at a fund-raiser. He'd taken her to dinner. He drove a Honda. He had a couple of organic apples in the glove compartment; he liked to munch an apple and listen to music, Beethoven and Mozart. He told her that at nineteen, at university, he'd been engaged, “but my girl suddenly married a soccer player she'd met in a pub the week before.” Since then, pleasant, short-lived affairs without true involvement on either side. Until now.
“Ma'am?” Jessie came into the library. “Ma'am? Breda says,
about lunch, Coyle's is out of asparagus, and will broccoli do? She can make the soup with carrots and the broccoli in the blender. And mix in a bit of yogurt for tartness. Considering—”
“Yes, Jessie. Broccoli soup's fine.”
“And ma'am?” Jessie glanced at the morning's post that Natalie had picked up from the hall tray but hadn't yet looked through. “That there's another letter without a stamp. The blue. The one on top. If you'll notice.”
“Yes, Jessie.” Watching Jessie leave, she couldn't help smiling. Jessie, always so apprehensive, as though the sky might fall.
As for that first unstamped letter she'd received Monday morning with its ridiculous enclosure wrapped in a twist of white tissue—! Reading the letter, she'd laughed. What nonsense! A sharp, angular handwriting on copy paper:
A pity to let the exposure of one's past jeopardize one's present life and future! Especially when you're espousing such a worthy cause. Decent housing is critical indeed! I respect your cause! But due to unfortunate circumstances, I am in need of funds. I must save myself. So I have no recourse but to resort to you. In the amount of twenty thousand pounds. At twelve noon on Wednesday, bring twenty thousand pounds to the white cairn cornerstone that separates the Sylvester property from Castle Moore. The Cloverleaf shall then be yours.
Reading the letter Monday morning, she'd been bewildered. Then laughed. Blackmail! Pay up or he—or she?—would expose her past! Was this a joke? Her past?
What
past? How boring that she didn't even
have
a past. She'd never done anything shameful. She was, now that she thought of it, ridiculously moral. True, even as a child she'd had a dirty mouth. But that wasn't a shameful past. “I'm a bloody
paragon
!” she'd said aloud, and laughed.
What other foibles? Hung out as a teenager in Dublin pubs, smoking pot? She only wished she had! But from the age of six she'd attended that sickening goody-goody Alcock's Academy, that all-girls school that was strict as a nunnery. Her great-aunt Sybil, who'd brought her up, had seen to that. A tediously numbing experience. Damn it! She'd never even had
time
to do anything worth being blackmailed for!
She'd rattled the preposterous blackmail letter. “You've got the wrong lady!” She'd been barely nineteen when her great-aunt Sybil had taken her on a trip to Italy. In Florence she'd met her beloved Andrew. She'd never cheated on Andrew with a lover. She'd never even been tempted to cheat. After Andrew's death in the cross fire outside the Gresham, she'd had two years of numbness. The children, Dakin and Lucinda, then fourteen and eight, had been her only comfort. Who was the Greek matron who said of her children, “These are my jewels”? Somebody. Penelope? Anyway. Dakin and Lucinda, her jewels. Then four months ago, she'd met Marshal West and fallen in love.
So, incredulously looking down at the letter, she'd laughed. And what did this blackmailer mean by Cloverleaf?
The Cloverleaf shall be yours
. What a crock!
Then, curious, she'd unwrapped the tissue paper. A tarnished silver charm bracelet with three silver unicorns dangling from it. Souvenir-shop kind of cheap bauble. Was it supposed to mean something significant to her? Well, it didn't. She'd tossed it into the wastebasket along with the letter.
But then, frowning, she'd thought, better to keep the letter and its enclosure to show to Inspector O'Hare in case she decided to call him. Such a nuisance! Exasperating. She had a million letters to write about Marshall's housing project. Still …
She took the letter and charm bracelet from the wastebasket and put them into the shallow desk drawer. Before sliding the drawer closed, she looked down at the bracelet. She frowned. She lifted a hand and brushed her fingers over her left brow as though to brush away something thin and gauzy that obscured her vision. She blinked, and it was gone. She closed the drawer.
Now this second letter.
“Hell and dam
nation
! What a nuisance!” She picked up the blue envelope and slit it open. This second letter, too, had an enclosure wrapped in tissue paper.
Elbows on the desk, exasperated at wasting time over such nonsense, she read the letter, the already-familiar heavy handwriting, with its sharp up-and-down angles:
Same time, Saturday noon. At the white cairn. But now it will cost you thirty thousand pounds. The cloverleaf will be yours.
In place of a signature, a heavy, black dash.
There were two postscripts. The first:
Don't think you can be rid of me until you pay—not even by under-handed means. As for crying out to the law, I've no fear of that, since you're aware that it would lead to the revelation about you—I'd make sure of that. So I am untouchable. As Napoleon said at Montereau, “The bullet that will kill me is not yet cast.”
The second postscript said only, “A present for Dakin.” The single sentence made her catch her breath. Dakin. Why Dakin? She tore open the tissue. A small penknife Ivory. Perhaps five inches long.
She sat holding the knife. She turned it over and over. She felt a shiver. The ivory penknife, cool to the touch. Familiar, somehow.
“Ma'am?” Jessie again in the doorway. “Lester's here, to be paid. That's the mulch and the hydrangeas. And he says Sean O'Boyle says plantings are needed along the roadside both sides of the gates, he's given Lester this list.”
“You'll find Lester's check on the hall table. Leave the list. Tell him I'll call him tomorrow.”
“Yes, ma'am.” The door closed behind Jessie.
Familiar. She turned the penknife over and over. Familiar. And then she knew why: Engraved into the ivory on one side were the initials, JHS. Her father's initials. It was the little penknife she'd inherited. It had been her father's as a boy.
She left the library. At the east end of the upper hall, opposite the grandfather clock was the old escritoire. It had been there since her childhood. She'd always thought of it as
her
escritoire, her great-aunt Sybil had had no use for it. She knelt down and opened the base of the grandfather clock. She took out the key to the escritoire. Dust motes rose from inside the clock, making her sneeze.
She unlocked the escritoire. The penknife. She had kept it here in the top left drawer with her other treasured childhood keepsakes.
She pulled open the top drawer. But of course the penknife was not there: she was holding it in her hand. JHS. Her father's ivory penknife. Someone had come into Sylvester Hall and crept up the staircase and stolen the penknife. Who? And why?
A present for Dakin.
BOOK: The Irish Cairn Murder
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