The Irish Cottage Murder (17 page)

“Brian? Are you there?”

“Maureen’s a whore!” he burst out. “I know it for sure! A whore! I know of three men she’s been screwing! I’ll not visit her!”

“Brian!” Eileen’s shocked voice.

“Why did Uncle Danny have to marry that wild one, anyway?” he said passionately. “Grandpa Seamus always said Danny could have had her without marriage vows.”

At a sound in the walkway outside the office door—a footstep?—Brian looked toward the doorway. Nobody there. Probably only one of the horses stamping. Besides, he was speaking in Gaelic.

“Brian, are you there?”

“I’m here, Eileen.… Grandpa Seamus said Danny liked it that Maureen was a Comerford and him a carpenter. Like he was conquering the English at last.”

“He loved her.” Eileen’s voice, so quiet, her gentle voice made the harsh Gaelic sound rich as yellow cream.

From one of the stalls, a horse whinnied and stamped, as if disturbed. Brian hardly heard. He was no longer happy, but tense, sweating, his skin gone clammy under his red cotton jersey. Dare he tell Eileen?… Eileen, to whom as a little kid he’d always run.… Eileen, who took away his bewildering hurts and lifted him from the dark, heart-pounding places into safety with her words that were like firelight warmth, soft, dry clothes, and loving arms.

“Brian?”

“Eileen! It’s about Maureen and Mr. Desmond. I have to tell you!”

“Brian, what ails you? You sound—”

But Brian was looking again toward the stable office door. “Hello?” His voice quavered, cracked. A figure appeared. The American young woman. So he
had
heard a footfall. How long had she been out there?

Into the phone, in Gaelic, he managed, to Eileen, “Someone has come in and is standing as good as nailed to the floor. I’ll call you back tonight at nine o’clock when the little ones are asleep. I’ll tell you then. I won’t have to pay for the call; it goes on the Moores’ bill—stable expenses.”

He hung up, the sweat cold on his back, and turned to the American woman in the doorway.

48

“Hello, Brian.” Torrey smiled at Brian Coffey from the doorway of the stable office. She felt she would choke with concealed excitement. Someone named Eileen. Nine o’clock tonight.
“Maureen’s a whore!”

“Evening, ma’am.”

Torrey felt a rush of pity. Brian’s voice that she’d just overheard on the phone speaking in Gaelic had sounded violently angry and excited, yet somehow like a child crying out in fear of the dark. Now his pale blue eyes looked at her almost unseeingly. She sensed that Brian was still caught up with that phone conversation, impassioned, cut off.

“What is it, then?” Brian Coffey said. His voice trembled.

Emotional exhaustion, Torrey guessed. Brian Coffey was sitting hunched over at the desk, one hand still resting on the phone. Such a white skin he had!
Anemic?
Torrey wondered. She met his gaze. Abruptly he snatched his hand away from the phone as though he had burned it.
Oh, my!
Torrey thought. She tried to look disinterested.

Since eight o’clock this morning, when Brian had blurted out those confused words about hearing a shot (“No—voices … like shots … that’s what I meant!”) she’d known she had to discover what he was hiding.

And now, unexpectedly, a jackpot?
Nine o’clock tonight.

“I hope it’s not too late for me to go riding; it’s almost seven.” She smiled at Brian Coffey, hoping desperately that he’d say it was too late. Her sore muscles cried out for a hot bath. But no way she could back out now; Brian Coffey might become suspicious.

“No, ma’am, that’s all right.” Brian got up.

Torrey followed him into the tack room; tack hung on the walls, horse blankets were piled. Among them a beautiful black-and-red plaid caught her eye.

In the yard, she watched Brian saddle Baby Talk. Or was the mare’s name Baby Face? She had a block. How come she could speak colloquial Russian and tell jokes in two Scandinavian languages but couldn’t remember a horse’s name? Was that, too, genetic?

“Ready, ma’am.”

Astride, walking the mare from the stable yard, Torrey whistled between her teeth, a toneless whistle. It was a habit, that whistling, when things were going well for her.

*   *   *

A hundred yards down the access road she reined the horse to a stop. She looked at her watch. Seven o’clock. Give it twenty minutes. “A refreshing jaunt,” she’d lie brightly to Brian Coffey; then she’d head for a hot bath.

She kicked the horse’s side, reining it about. Then she just sat. It was as though she were seeing the beauty of Wicklow through a clear crystal. Birds sang, breezes ruffled the leaves of trees, the pungent evening smell of flowers, grasses, and loam was sharp and delicious in her nostrils.

Quarter past seven. She seemed to see Brian Coffey’s pale eyes looking into her eyes as though searching for what she might have heard; at the same time, veiled, confident in his secrets.

Twenty past. Back to the stables. She was already hungry for dinner. Roast lamb, Rose had said.

“Go!” she told the horse. “Giddap!” She shook the reins and kicked the mare’s sides and Baby Face—or was it Talk Baby?—trotted back down the road and up the drive to Castle Moore.

49

“‘Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich,’” Winifred quoted, grinning around at to the others at the dinner table. She forked a second helping of the juicy-looking roast lamb from the silver serving platter that Rose, at her elbow, held out. “Dr. Johnson said that. He did like a good dinner.”

“Well, you can feed with the rich every meal now,” Sheila said tartly, “even when you’re alone.” Across from her sat Torrey Tunet. Torrey’s color was high. She looked … well, mettlesome, Sheila thought. Hardly a poetic description, but one couldn’t be poetic
all
the time. She also looked rather off center. Her swatch of silky hair was a bit awry on her forehead and her gray eyes were a little wide. She was wearing brown velveteen pants and one of those black turtlenecks that ballerinas wore a lot. Torrey could get away with it, with her slender neck. As for Luke Willinger, who was slathering a parsleyed potato with butter, he had on a shirt and argyle sweater and no tie, as though he were relaxing over a comfortable dinner at home, with maybe a book propped against the sugar bowl. And Winifred! Impossible! “You might,” Sheila said to Winifred in exasperation, “get a decent-looking jacket instead of wearing that moldy old jumble sale bargain.”

“In due time,” Winifred said. She took a last luxurious bite of the roast lamb. “I think there’s ice cream for dessert. Then we’ll want a cognac with the coffee. How about some poker after dinner?” She looked at the others, then glanced at her watch. “It’s hardly nine o’clock. We could have a couple of hours before bed.”

Torrey jumped to her feet. “Hardly
nine?
This damned watch of mine! That’s the second time—Will you excuse me? I’ve got to … to get some tapes down on hard copy and send them off in the morning’s mail. I’ll have to skip dessert.”

“Do go ahead…” Winifred started to say. But Torrey had already gone.

*   *   *

Straw tickled her nose. Darlin’ Pie’s tail swished past her face. She was at the wrong end of Darlin’ Pie’s stall, the dung end, alas. But she’d be able to hear better there. In the dark, she slid the cassette recorder from her jacket pocket. With her pencil flashlight she looked at her watch. Two minutes to nine.

The stable office must once have been a stall. The partition that had been built up above the opening between the office and Darlin’ Pie’s stall was flimsy fiber board, a temporary measure, Desmond Moore had had big plans.

Footsteps in the walkway, going past. A minute later, a light went on in the stable office. Torrey could see streaks of light through the ill-matching boards behind Darlin’ Pie’s rear.

A sigh, a mutter, a series of coughs, the sound of pacing; then a chair pushed back, the tap of numbers on a Touch-Tone phone, Brian Coffey’s voice. “Eileen?”

Torrey, cross-legged in the straw, clicked on the cassette recorder.

50

To Fergus, the early morning air of Boyleston Street in Ballsbridge was surely the sweetest and freshest in Dublin. It was Tuesday morning. He sat at the kitchen table in his tan cardigan having breakfast. The casement windows were open to the back garden below. His black tea steamed in the blue china cup. He buttered his toast. This was his morning’s special moment of peace.

The phone rang.

“Yes?” he said into the phone. Then, “Yes…” and, “Yes. Certainly not.” He hung up. He could hardly breathe.

“Ten o’clock this morning, Mr. Callaghan, at the garda station in Ballynagh.” Inspector O’Hare’s voice on the phone had been chillingly without inflection. “I hope it will not inconvenience you.” A command performance, nevertheless.

*   *   *

By nine o’clock, Winifred had breakfasted, jogged four miles, practiced her tennis serve, and written two poems, one a villanelle, the other a rondel. “Just to keep my hand in,” she’d told Sheila. Both poems resoundingly praised Ireland’s recent vote to make divorce legal. Publication of the poems in the Irish feminist press was certain.

“
Now
what?” Winifred said to Sheila, when Rose came to tell her that Inspector O’Hare of the Ballynagh garda was on the phone. She was in sweatpants and shirt at her laptop computer in the dining gallery of Castle Moore. “You take it, Sheila.”

Back from the phone, Sheila said, “Ten o’clock at the Ballynagh garda station, if you don’t mind. Important, he says.”

“You’re coming with me, Sheila. I’m sweaty. I’ll have to shower again first. Read these poems, Sheila.”

“Maybe it’s something about the murder. Inspector O’Hare, I mean,” Sheila said. “Why he called.”

“Which murder?” Winifred said. “We seem to have a plethora.” She went to shower.

*   *   *

There weren’t enough chairs. Inspector O’Hare swore under his breath. It was already 9:45. “Borrow some folding chairs from across the street, the Grogan Sisters’ Notions,” he said to Sergeant Bryson. “They have ladies’ knitting parties; they must have chairs.”

“Right.” Sergeant Bryson took off. The police station door clicked closed behind him.

Inspector O’Hare looked over at Miss Torrey Tunet, who was pacing the room and whistling “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” between her teeth. She looked fresh as a petunia, in white pants and a pink flannel shirt, a satiny band of dark hair falling across her forehead.

Yesterday he hadn’t a single lead to the murder of Mr. Lars Kasvi. Now, though, Torrey Tunet had presented him with a surprising bit of information. Tenuous, but worth this effort.

Where was Sergeant Bryson with those chairs? O’Hara looked toward the door. He had felt it incumbent on him to request those involved to be here. The next hour would be like … like luring a mouse out of a hole. Miss Tunet had provided the bit of cheese.

51

“Good morning.” A contralto voice, deep, melody in it. The garda station door closed behind the woman who entered. It was ten minutes to ten.

“Ahh, Mrs. Devlin,” Inspector O’Hare said. “Thank you for coming.”

Torrey turned, full of curiosity. Maureen Devlin, at last. She was a woman in her thirties, certainly. Not slender but full-bosomed, and with a confident lift of her chin. She wore a full-skirted black dress and a man’s well-worn brown jacket. Her skin was weather-roughened. Her hair, a warm brown, worn in a knot at her nape, had crinkled strands of gray. She looked around the room at everyone, her blue eyes guarded. They came to rest on Fergus Callaghan, who had arrived five minutes earlier. Mr. Callaghan gave her back a haggard look.

“Well, now,” Inspector O’Hare said, feeling that he might have a heart attack out of excitement.
Only one more person to come.
He introduced Mrs. Devlin to Miss Winifred Moore and her wispy English friend, Miss Sheila Flaxton. Then to Miss Tunet and
her
friend—or lover?—Mr. Luke Willinger, who, as far as O’Hare could see, was a totally unnecessay presence that was just using up one of the Grogan Sisters’ folding chairs.

“You know Mr. Callaghan, of course.”

“Yes,” Maureen Devlin nodded. “How do you do, Mr. Callaghan?”

*   *   *

Five minutes past ten. The wall clock ticked. Ten minutes past. Inspector O’Hare sweated.
The last person. Where was he?
Inspector O’Hare took a box of stale Fig Newtons from his desk drawer and offered them round. Nobody accepted except Mr. Willinger, who took two. At the smell of the cookies, Nelson rose from his corner and padded over to Inspector O’Hare, wanting his share. “Bad for your teeth,” O’Hare said, and gave Nelson a dog biscuit from the bottom drawer.

The door of the police station opened.

*   *   *

Brian Coffey stood in the doorway, trying to catch his breath. He was in jeans and boots and an olive, cowl-necked woolen sweater. His red hair lay close to his head in flat clumps, as though he’d wet it and brushed it flat before he left the stables. The door closed behind him. He said, breathless, to Inspector O’Hare, “The lad Kevin took sick, went giddylike, so I was out exercising Black Pride myself. Janet Slocum came waving at me, shouting that the garda station at Ballynagh telephoned, could I be here at ten o’clock. I came on my motorbike, fast as I could.” He blew out a breath, hit his chest with a fist, and looked at the wall clock facing Inspector O’Hare’s desk.

“It’s only a quarter past,” Torrey said loudly because she had an insupportable need for Brian Coffey to look at her. She wanted to feel sympathy for Brian Coffey and his secrets. He looked so skinny and vulnerable, with his pale skin and money-anxious eyes. It was hard for the Brian Coffeys in Ireland, the job market being what it was. But … a whiff of chicanery, a bit of deceit, a con here and there when needed. That much, she was sure, from this fellow in the cowl-necked olive sweater.

Brian Coffey met her gaze, blinked, and looked confusedly at Inspector O’Hare.

When Coffey was seated, the inspector glanced toward Miss Tunet. She was looking at the cassette recorder on his desk; her black-lashed gray eyes had an intense look.