Death on the Holy Mountain (16 page)

Powerscourt found himself praying that Richard Butler would keep his mouth shut. His prayers were answered. ‘I need time to think about that suggestion, Powerscourt. It has merit, I can
certainly see that. I thank you for it. What do you think are the chances of the intelligence people finding the thieves? Evens? Three to one against? Worse?’

‘Difficult to say, Ormonde,’ Powerscourt replied, remembering a commanding officer’s advice that when the time came to blow your own trumpet you didn’t pussyfoot around
but gave it as big a blast as you could manage. ‘I have been involved in intelligence work in India and I was sent out by the Prime Minister in person to reorganize the supply of military
intelligence for the British forces in the early stages of the Boer War. And I had dealings with the gentlemen from Dublin Castle in an affair at the time of the Queen’s Jubilee which must
remain secret to this day. I have a great deal of respect for the Dublin Castle men. If anybody can locate these thieves, they can.’

‘Didn’t realize you had all that military experience, Powerscourt,’ Ormonde said, rising from his seat and beginning to pace up and down his dining room as the remains of the
pudding were cleared away. Up and down he went, Powerscourt and Richard Butler sitting as stiff as they could, like children playing a game of statues. At last he spoke.

‘I’ll do it, Powerscourt,’ he said, ‘I’ll do it with one condition. Can we set a time limit for the intelligence people? Can’t stand hanging about waiting for
other people to do things myself, makes me nervous. If they haven’t solved it in a given time limit, I bring in my Orangemen. What do you say?’

‘What do you say,’ Powerscourt replied quickly, ‘to the time limit?’

‘A week,’ said Ormonde, ‘would a week be satisfactory, from your experience of military intelligence?’

‘A week would be splendid,’ said Powerscourt, relieved that the man hadn’t asked for forty-eight hours.

‘Done,’ said Ormonde, his mood lightening. ‘Now then, what do you say to a walk in the grounds? Or we could take one of my boats out for a sail round the bay? Would you like to
stay the night?’

‘I would be delighted to stay the night,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but I have left my wife behind at Butler’s Court and she has only just arrived in the country.’

‘You should have brought her with you,’ Ormonde was the genial host now, ‘she could have kept my wife company. Always keeps well out of my way, the wife, when I’m in a
mood. She calls them my Attila the Hun days. But you will bring her with you when you come back to confer with the intelligence people, won’t you?’

Nothing, Powerscourt assured him, would give him greater pleasure. At Westport railway station he eluded Richard Butler for a moment and had a brief conversation with the stationmaster. Westport
and the neighbouring parishes, the railway man assured him, were part of the Archbishopric of Tuam whose current incumbent was His Grace the Most Reverend Dr John Healy, resident in the
Archbishop’s Palace, Cathedral Street, Tuam, County Galway.

Lord Francis Powerscourt was sitting in the Butler library, staring intently at a sheet of writing paper. In ten minutes’ time Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald were coming
for tea and barm brack and a conversation about the way forward. It was difficult, he thought, to write a letter when you couldn’t say what you meant. It was a contradiction in terms. Maybe
he should have learnt Morse Code.

‘Your Grace,’ he began, for his correspondent was none other than the mighty prelate Dr John Healy, Archbishop of Tuam, ‘I am writing to you on a matter of the gravest
importance which could have dire consequences for your flock and for the politics of this country. I am reluctant to divulge any of the details in this letter.’ Powerscourt was sure the man
would know what he meant. ‘I am an investigator, currently working on a case here in Ireland. In the past I have given service to the household of the Prince of Wales and to the previous
Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury. I fear I must emphasize not only the gravity but the urgency of this matter. I believe the situation could turn very serious very soon. I would be most grateful if
you could grant me an audience’ – did one ask for an audience or an interview with an archbishop? Just have to take a chance – ‘at your earliest convenience where I could
lay the matter before you with all the details. I do hope you will be able to help, for your help, I firmly believe, could be pivotal. My apologies for such an importunate request, Yours,
Powerscourt.’ He wondered if there was some special formula you had to insert at the end of ecclesiastical correspondence as if you were writing letters in the French language, but there was
no time to find out.

‘I’ve been taking the lie of the land, as you might say.’ Johnny Fitzgerald was munching his way happily through his third slice of barm brack and butter.
Powerscourt and Lady Lucy smiled at each other. Taking the lie of the land for Johnny usually meant spending a lot of time in the local pubs. ‘It’s not bad, MacSwiggin’s down in
the square, though they start singing very early in the evening if you ask me. Anyway, the power in the land is that grocer man Mulcahy with his shop very near the hotel. It’s not the bread
and ham that make his fortune, it’s the loans. Fall behind with your rent, Mulcahy’s your man. Need some ready cash to marry off a daughter and give her a dowry, the Grocer’s Bank
has the answer. I don’t think he’d lend you money to bet on the horses but I wouldn’t be surprised. One fellow said Mulcahy had more money circulating, as he put it, than the Bank
of Ireland.’

‘Are you allowed to set yourself up as a moneylender like that, Johnny?’ Lady Lucy asked.

‘This is Ireland,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘Ask no questions, hear no lies.’

‘Any word about the paintings at all?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘I’m coming to that,’ said Johnny. ‘I’ve absolutely no doubt that they all know something is going on, but the rumour factory has been working well. It’s the
stout, I’ve always believed that stout makes people exaggerate things. One old boy, sitting under the Blessed Virgin Mary all evening and not moving an inch, claimed it was the furniture that
had gone. All of it. There’s not a chair to sit on or a table to eat your bread off in the whole of Butler’s Court. He was certain of it. Another fellow maintained it was just the table
in the dining room and the big mirrors that had been taken. Said it had been lifted to order for some coal merchant in Dublin who wanted antique stuff to furnish his new house. This theory
didn’t take any account of the other robberies – maybe they went for the drawing-room furniture at Connolly’s and the beds from Moore Castle. Word of Ormonde House hasn’t
reached them yet, which is surprising seeing that news usually travels faster than the railways round here.’

‘And the Orangemen? Any word of the Orangemen?’ Powerscourt wondered what they would make of that in the snug in MacSwiggin’s Hotel and Bar.

‘Not yet,’ said Fitzgerald cheerfully. ‘When that hits town it’ll probably be an army three thousand strong, enough to take Galway in a siege. I tell you one sad thing,
Lady Lucy and Francis. I was talking to the middle Delaney – who’s one of the three Delaneys, solicitors with offices in the square, Lady Lucy,’ – Johnny remembered she had
only arrived recently – ‘in the saloon bar of MacSwiggin’s, a nice place to take a drink if you like to be surrounded by religious pictures, and he was telling me sad stories
about the cricket team. He’s a great fan of the cricket, Bartholomew Delaney, been playing for the local team for ages. He says it’s dying out, the Butler’s Cross Eleven, no new
recruits coming in at all. Soon, according to Bartholomew, there won’t be any young fellows left out in the field to chase the ball and cut it off before it reaches the boundary. The opposing
batsmen, he said, will just have to hit the bloody ball and it’ll go for four. Butler’s Cross fielders will all be too decrepit to run after the thing. The opposing side will make
hundreds and hundreds of runs. Butler’s Cross cricket team, old age pensioners a speciality, will never win a match again.’

‘What’s happened, Johnny?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘Where have all the young men gone?’

‘They’ve gone Gaelic, that’s what they’ve done. The Gaelic Athletic Association, or GAA as it’s called, is very strong in these parts. They’re allowed to play
Gaelic football and hurling, but only Irish games. Once you sign up, you can’t play cricket or soccer, it’s against the rules. Ping pong, Bartholomew Delaney maintained sourly, was
still allowed but the rest are proscribed as the games of the occupying power.’

‘And who runs this GAA, Johnny?’ Powerscourt had an improbable vision of the Pickwickian Father O’Donovan Brady, whistle in hand, refereeing a match, whiskey flask concealed in
his baggy shorts.

‘Ah,’ said Johnny, ‘there’s a thing now. It’s the Christian Brothers, so it is. Militant for independence and Home Rule, most of them. There’s another thing,
Francis, I nearly forgot. They’ve heard all about you down there in MacSwiggin’s – well, in the public they have. I’m not sure about the saloon. They say you’re a
great detective man from London who’s never failed to solve a crime, so they do. You’ve got almost magical powers, according to them, a Merlin come to Meath.’

‘God in heaven,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I’m not sure I want my name bandied about in Diarmuid MacSwiggin’s Bar and Hotel. I might pick up all sorts of unappetizing
clients.’

‘At least they’d be able to pay you,’ said Fitzgerald. ‘Quick loan from Mulcahy the grocer and they can pay you straight away.’

Powerscourt turned to Lady Lucy. ‘Time to get serious. Lucy, we need some advice. This case seems to revolve around the men, Connolly, Butler, Moore, Ormonde, but I’m sure the wives
are at least as important. Have you had time to have a proper talk with Mrs Butler? What would you do if you were the mistress of one of these embattled houses?’

‘I know what I would do,’ Lady Lucy said firmly, ‘and I think I know what they are going to do. This being Ireland, you won’t be surprised to hear that they are not the
same thing. It’s the children, you see, for me. And there seem to be so many of them running around. They would be even easier to steal than the pictures. Maybe the thieves would face such
unpopularity if they kidnapped little ones that they couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t take the chance, myself. I’d take the whole lot of them over to England and wait till
everything’s blown over.’

‘And Mrs Moore and Mrs Butler and the rest?’

‘I think they will stay. You and Johnny would understand this much better than I do, coming from here in the first place. It’s all this history, Francis. I’ve never known a
place with so much history. They’ve been through so much of it, these families, wars in Cromwell’s time, the Battle of the Boyne and all that, the rising in 1798 I think it was,’
she looked at Powerscourt who nodded encouragement, ‘the famine, the land wars, it never seems to stop. At any point these Moores and Butlers and Connollys could have sold up, packed their
bags and left.’

‘Wouldn’t have got very much for the land, selling up during those upheavals,’ said Johnny. ‘Sorry for interrupting.’

Lady Lucy smiled. ‘The point is, Johnny, that they didn’t sell up. They stuck it out. Sticking it out seems to be a key component of the Anglo-Irish character. They’ve all
inherited these places from their fathers. When they look at all these adorable children they can see the Big Houses passing on to them. The children are tomorrow. If you take them away you take
away the future. What’s the point of being here if you run away when a painting is taken from the walls?’

‘Too much history, that’s the trouble with Ireland,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Pity you can’t sell bits of it off to some of these new places where they haven’t got
any at all.’

He rose from the tea table and went to the window. A loud game of tennis was taking place on the grass. Three small boys were having climbing races up the trees.

‘Johnny,’ he said, ‘I’d like you to keep your eyes and ears open down in Butler’s Cross. Somebody may say something they shouldn’t one day soon. Lucy, can you
keep us informed about the state of feminine opinion about the place? I’d be most interested to know exactly what was in that letter the thieves sent Richard Butler. If you can winkle that
out of Sylvia Butler it’ll be champagne all round. Now I must go down to the town to post this letter.’

Powerscourt went round to the far end of the stable block to collect his bicycle. It was a fairly old model with no known owner. He had been riding it for some days now and the stable lads kept
it in a special place for him. He was thinking about what he might say to the Archbishop as he set off. The ground between Butler’s Court and the town rose slightly as you left the house and
then dropped down steeply towards the square. Heavily laden carriages had been known to slow to walking pace or less as they toiled up the slope. Cyclists preferred the outward to the inward
journey. Powerscourt pedalled hard as he began the descent for the last post was but minutes away. About halfway down his hair was streaming out behind his head and he thought he should slow down.
He pulled on the brakes. Nothing happened. He tried the other right-hand brake. Nothing happened. He was travelling very fast now as he tried both brakes again. Nothing. At the bottom of the drive
there was a great stone wall. Powerscourt knew he couldn’t control the bicycle much longer. It was never designed to move at this speed and it had begun to shake violently. Anything could
happen now. He turned the handlebars slightly to the left and tried to steer a path into the woods where the undergrowth would slow him down. That wall at the bottom would surely kill him. Still
travelling at slightly over twenty miles an hour he crashed into the brambles. The front wheel ran over a branch on the ground and Powerscourt was catapulted out of the saddle and dragged along the
ground by the momentum until he hit a tree. For a moment or two he was unconscious. He had a gash on his right leg. His wrist ached. Blood was pouring from a long wound on his head. Briefly he
thought of Lady Lucy. They were sitting in the drawing room in Markham Square. Then some sense of duty called him. He remembered his letter. Limping, lurching, occasionally dragging himself along
the ground, he made his way to the end of the drive. He reeled across the street and posted his letter in the box. He turned and crawled back towards Butler’s Court and Lady Lucy. He
collapsed by the ornamental arch at the gates, his blood dripping on to the hard hot ground. His last thought before he passed out was that if he was going to die, it was good that his last letter
should have been to an archbishop. A stone lion with a stone ball stood sentry above him. Outside MacSwiggin’s an elderly customer nursing his pint watched in astonishment as the apparition
vanished from sight. He didn’t think he’d been drinking that much. Later on, as he retold his story in the public bar, he remembered that the wraithlike figure reminded him of an
engraving in his auntie’s parlour. It was, he averred, and many believed him, the ghost of Theobald Wolfe Tone, the man had a definite look of Tone about him, come to post a last letter to
the French, asking for reinforcements.