The Irish Manor House Murder (8 page)

“Oh? I’ll get on then to Ashenden Manor. Find her there.” She got up from the bale of hay.

“’Fraid not. They were off to Dublin.”

*   *   *

Torrey bicycled slowly back to the access road. Rowena not even leaving a message for her! And going off with Scott on a day’s jaunt to Dublin.

No. Rowena wouldn’t do that. Scott must have phoned her at the stables, then had come and picked her up. Or at that ceremony on the hill, had he, then — No use to suppose. Anyway, Scott was taking Rowena to Dublin.

Why? What purpose?

The bike wobbled. Did Scott know that Rowena was pregnant? His transparent looking, gray-blue eyes were sharp as was his mind; she’d met him enough to know that. He was in Dublin a lot, parties, clubs, he got about, knew people both savory and unsavory. If ever Scott needed to know something, whatever, it needed only a whisper here, a few pounds there —

No. Torrey stopped the bike. She stood on the road, a foot planted on each side of the bike. An appointment. For when? And it would be done in a room down some wretched side street. An illegal abortion. Risky. Occasionally a girl’s or woman’s body washed up in the Liffey. But it wasn’t possible for Rowena to get to Europe for a legal abortion. Not while the eye of the Gardai was on her.

22

“Well, well!” Scott Keegan, alone in the library at Ashenden Manor, raised his eyebrows. He was standing over his grandfather’s desk looking down at a blue document that lay on the desk, folded in thirds:
Last Will and Testament of Gerald Ashenden.
He picked it up.

“Here you are!” His mother, in the doorway. She came in. She was carrying a measuring tape and some sort of brochure. “Scott! I’ve been wanting to measure you for a vest, this new pattern. A bargello, not that easy to knit. But stunning.” She unwound the tape. “Where’ve you been all morning? It’s two o’clock!”

“Dublin. Doing this and that. At which I’m expert.” With Rowena, down narrow, squalid streets.

“Stand still.” His mother came close, holding the tape, surveying his waist. Her cardigan did not conceal how slight she was, her bony shoulders. Yet fair of face, and with an odd quirky humor to spare. Lucky Tom Keegan, lucky Mark Temple. She looked at the blue document. “What’s that you’ve got?”

“This? Your pa’s will.” He waved the document at her. “I was just — hey! You all right, Ma?”

“Yes, nothing’s the —” But she had gone quite pale. “That will, it’s dated when?”

He looked at the document. “Two years ago.”

“Oh.” She was gazing at the blue document as though it were a cobra or possibly a tarantula. “I called Wickham and Slocum. I thought it was time we had a reading. They said any time this week would be fine.”

“Sure, Ma. But we don’t have to wait for lawyers’ offices, all the heirs sitting around, smug smiles from the lucky inheritors, cries of indignation and outrage from the deprived. We can read it now.” He began to unfold the blue document.

“Is that
legal,
Scott? I thought wills were read in lawyers’ offices.”

“Who says so? I’ll read this now, Ma. Then let’s see if we can rustle up all the mentioned lucky and unlucky.” His leg was aching; the brace felt like an iron weight. Dublin with Rowena had been exhausting.

“Well, then, I guess it’s all right.”

23

Upstairs in her bedroom, Rowena slung the black nylon carrying case onto the bed. No need now to live above the stable at Castle Moore. From the doorway, a footfall. Torrey came in. “They said you were back.”

“Yes.” Rowena zipped open the bag. “The reason I phoned you this morning, I was getting frantic, and you lead such a cosmopolitan life, you
know
things, maybe even, uh, places. Anyway, it’s all right now. Sorry not to’ve left a note for you at Castle Moore. Scott turned up at the stable in his Miata and he had the motor running, and he’d thought —”

“An abortionist, right, Rowena?” She sat down on the window seat and stuck her jean-clad legs out in front of her and crossed her ankles. Smell of pine cleaner in the room; Jennie O’Shea must have had a go at the furniture. She looked soberly at Rowena, who stopped taking clothes from the black bag and turned to face her.

Rowena’s gaze met hers. “Yes. But then, Scott knew somebody who had a friend who … Anyway, Scott got an address and we went there, a place off the Finglas Road, back of the Glasnevin Cemetery. I made an appointment. He’s supposed to be good. Safe. Anyway, Scott’s friend said that —”

“Safe?” Torrey, imagining globs of blood on a not-too-clean floor, made a skeptical face. “When?”

“He’s … busy. But he can do it the twenty-second.”

This was what? The fourteenth? Eight days from now. Any later — frightening.

Rowena abruptly raised her hands and pressed them hard against her cheeks. After a moment she dropped her hands, leaving white welts on her cheek. She drew a deep, determined breath. “Two o’clock. In Glasnevin. Scott will take me. Then he’ll wait.”

24

At seven o’clock, a blue dusk, striated orange fading over the mountains, smell of wood fires in Ballynagh fireplaces. At the cottage, Jasper said, “Ruination!” and at the stove wiped a drop of gravy from the cover of his new
Cooking with Herbs
cookbook.

Just coming in, Torrey said, “Hmmm?” It was cozy inside, and she pulled off her sweater and walked about. “What’s this?” She lifted a cover from the iron pot on the stove. Awful-looking stuff, smelling heavenly. She stood absentmindedly holding the cover, thinking:
Scott.

Scott. How long ago had Scott found out that Rowena was pregnant? Had Rowena told him? And was Scott helping Rowena with this illegal abortion only because he was her brother? Scott was a dark card.

Torrey frowned, then shivered involuntarily.
Whisper.
That scandal sheet in Dublin. There had been innuendos in yesterday’s
Whisper,
salacious hints about Rowena, since a little girl the darling of her grandfather. The sexually used darling? And now, finally, an explosion of rage culminating in the murder of Dr. Ashenden. Hints in the gossip column. Nothing outright, but —

“That ladle on your right, hand it to me, will you. Torrey? Torrey! Wake up!”

“Oh, here.”

Salacious
Whisper.
Speculation. The sort of rumor that, burgeoning, had led to the conviction of many an innocent in a case of murder.

“If I snap my fingers, will you come out of it and be with
me?
” Jasper said loudly. “And rule one: Never lift a cover from another cook’s pot without asking.”

No, of course not. It was Rowena’s pot. Her secrets were her secrets. Pregnant Rowena. Pregnant by whom?

And worse —

“Move over, my pretty. I want to warm the plates in the oven.”

Worse, Inspector O’Hare must be hearing and reading the speculations. O’Hare was no fool. Behind the scenes he was industriously building a murder case against Rowena. Incest. O’Hare would seize on it. Revenge.
Whisper
had mentioned a case of a forty-year-old woman in Longford who’d axed her stepfather for using her thirty years earlier.

But Dr. Gerald Ashenden’s killer could have had any of a number of possible motives, right? There was murder because of psychotic imaginings. And murder out of jealousy. Hate. Lust. And the most common of all: murder for money. Money.

Torrey paused her pacing. Money. She was seeing Jennie O’Shea coming into Rowena’s room just as Torrey was leaving. “A meeting in the library before dinner, Ms. Rowena. No, Ms. Rowena, I don’t know, Mr. Scott didn’t say. But he called Dr. Collins to come over. Something about a will, Dr. Ashenden’s will. I was coming from the pantry.”

“Chervil,” Jasper said. “Smell this.” He was holding something green and pungent under Torrey’s nose.

“Very like … parsley? The Italian kind?” She smiled unseeingly at Jasper. Under the circumstances, Dr. Ashenden’s will would be very interesting.

25

It was chilly and damp in the stable at Castle Moore, making the smell of hay and horse more pungent. It was ten in the morning. In Fast Forward’s stall, Torrey watched as Rowena pulled the hackle again and again through the horse’s tail, ridding it of bits of straw and loose hairs. Rowena looked tired. Twice, she’d stopped to rest her arm and just stood, blowing out a breath. Her face was strained. The red curls that fell across her forehead were wet with sweat, and sweat glistened on her neck. Yet it was cold enough in the stall for the horse, snorting now and again, to breathe out a white vapor. And Rowena was wearing only jeans and an old blue shirt.

“What I meant was,” Torrey said, “if your grandfather left a will, it might indicate something. Or somebody that —”

“I know what you meant,” Rowena said tiredly. Her hand holding the hackle stopped. Her green eyes were bloodshot. “Look in my jacket on that nail. Left-hand pocket. We all met in the library for a reading. Scott had made copies of the will for each of us, like some kind of festivity, with him handing out party favors.”

Torrey took the document from the jacket pocket and unfolded it. Only two pages. She read it carefully: To Caroline Keegan, Ashenden Manor and all the Ashenden estate with the exception of the Ashenden property in Kildare. To Rowena, the Kildare property of four hundred acres with its Georgian house and stables. To Padraic Collins, the prized, carved ivory Chinese chess set. Ten thousand pounds to a Dublin hospital foundation for research in thoracic surgery. Small keepsakes to four former medical associates, one now in Montreal, another in Galway, one in Copenhagen, one in Edinburgh. And lastly, “to my grandson, Scott Keegan, ten pence.”

Torrey looked up. Rowena, head bent, was cleaning horsehairs from the hackle with a kitchen fork.

“I’m rich now.” Rowena sounded exhausted.

“Yes, I see.”

Rowena said, “I’ve always had only an allowance. And my vet schooling at Dublin University paid for by my grandfather. Now, because of this inheritance, Inspector O’Hare’ll have more reason to think I did my grandfather in. Money, money, money! O’Hare’ll figure that I couldn’t wait. Grist for O’Hare’s mill. Planning to grind me exceeding small.”

“Hmmm?” But Torrey was thinking of something else. “What did your grandfather have against Scott? It’s so cruel leaving him ten pence.”

No answer. Torrey looked up. Rowena was standing with her forehead resting against Fast Forward’s flank, her hand with the hackle hanging down. She was crying.

“What?”
Torrey asked. “
What,
Rowena?”

A shake of Rowena’s head, then a broken, indrawn breath. “Oh,
God!
It goes back and back and
back!
”

“
What?
Back to what?
What
goes back? Rowena? What are you talking about?”

No answer.

26

On the west lawn, in the chilly midmorning, Caroline walked around the big oval of rhododendrons, her nose buried in the collar of her motheaten chinchilla coat. The coat had been in the Ashenden Manor attic for more generations than anyone could remember. It smelled faintly of perfume and mice. It had always been Caroline’s comfort in times of stress. In childhood, in the late afternoon, when she worried about her mother who was off at the pub in Ballynagh, she would climb to the fourth floor and take the old chinchilla from the closet and wrap it around herself and huddle on the floor. Sometimes she would fall asleep in the soft fur and awaken with a stiff neck and then a growing feeling of panic that her mother might not have come back, might never come back.

She stopped walking as Mark came toward her. He was on his way to get his car from the stable garage. He’d be late getting to his office in Dublin, but they’d been up talking half the night, lying there in the great oak bed in the bedroom that had once belonged to Caroline’s great-grandfather, oil portraits of earlier Ashendens on the walls and above the fireplace.

“My father murdered!” Caroline had said. “The killer could’ve been the husband or wife of one of my father’s patients! A thoracic operation gone wrong and the patient dying. And a wife or lover or husband blaming my father! People do get crazy.” She told Mark that yesterday she’d gone to Inspector O’Hare, and O’Hare had agreed that it was definitely a possibility to be explored.

“Yes,” Mark had said, “worth investigating. Definitely.”

They’d talked then about her father’s will, Caroline’s inheritance of Ashenden Manor and now her unexpected estate responsibilities. It changed things. “Maybe we should give up our plans for the house in Ballsbridge,” Mark had said, “and live at Ashenden Manor.” As for Scott —

In Mark’s arms she’d felt a surge of bitterness toward her dead father and love and loyalty to Scott. “Poor Scott!”

“Oh, I expect Scott will be all right without a bequest,” Mark had said comfortingly. “He seems to be in funds.”

At that, Caroline had gone quiet. Mark, too, seemed to have no more to say. He turned out the light and took Caroline in his arms.

Now on the west lawn, in the old chinchilla coat, Caroline said, “Mark, you look like an angel in that striped tie. Here’s Scott.” Scott was coming out through the terrace. He wore a long, black soft leather coat. A wide-banded watch glittered on one wrist. He was carrying something under his arm, hitching along; grass was difficult for him. He reached the rhododendrons. “Morning, Ma. And” — he raised his brows at Mark — “and Pa.”

“What’s
that?
” Caroline asked. It was a shagreen box, old looking, the edges worn.

“Delivery. The Chinese chess set. I’m taking it to Padraic Collins. His booty, right?”

Caroline said, “Scott, have you had breakfast? You look so, so peaked. You don’t eat enough.”

Scott smiled at her. “Who, me? I’m omnivorous. Ma, I’m leaving it to you to gather up the trinkets, those little bequests that the good Dr. Ashenden left to his former medical colleagues. Cuff links, tiepin, and so on.” He gave his mother and Mark a half salute, emerald on a ring finger. “I’m off to Dublin.”

“Scott? A minute.”

He halted. “Yes, Ma?”