Malarkey (5 page)

He looked away. "Sergeant Kennedy thinks the investigators
will be here all night."

"Oh, no!"

"I have the name of a hotel on the N Eleven."

I groaned, remembering the one-lane road past the church
tower. Was I up to driving along Suicide Lane in my feeble
condition?

Fortunately, I didn't have to. Kennedy returned to the
kitchen and suggested that we spend the night at his sister's B &
B. She was sending his nephew over on a bicycle, and the young
man—he was a university student home for the Easter break—would
drive us to her farmhouse in the Toyota.

I barely had time to toss Dad's shaving kit and pajamas into
my carry-on before a bright-eyed kid wheeled up on a rackety old
black bike. His name was Cieran and he didn't talk much. I do not
remember the drive.

The sergeant's sister turned out to be a comfortable, gray-
haired woman in her fifties. She took one look at me and said, "Ah,
the poor thing." Clearly the sergeant had laid on the explanations.
"Show the two of them up to their rooms, now, Cier. There's a hot
water-bottle in the bed, lass, and breakfast at half eight. I'd tuck you
in meself but I'm serving dinner."

I could have wept on her neck, she sounded so kind, but I
was too sleepy. The stairway looked like a cliff. I scaled it. We had
separate rooms. Dad retrieved his gear from my carry-on. I think he
said good night.

As soon as the door closed on him, I crawled into the pink
sweats I sleep in in a cold climate, slid under the duvet, hugged the
water-bottle to me, and passed out. Naturally, I woke up at two in the
morning.

I would have called Jay but there was no telephone in the
room. For about half an hour I tried to coax myself to sleep, but my
eyes remained obstinately open. I pulled the thick paperback of
Phineas Finn
I'd been reading on the airplane from my purse
and resigned myself to nineteenth century politics.

His friends assembled at the wake,
And
Mrs Finnegan called for lunch...

Irish song

Somebody was scratching at the door. I surfaced from a
nightmare that involved four cars abreast on a two lane road. The
cars, camouflaged in jungle green like tanks, kept flashing their
lights.

Scratch. "Lark?" It was my father.

I pulled my limp arm loose from the water bottle and looked
at my watch. Nine o'clock. At night or in the morning? Had to be
morning. I had fallen asleep again at five. "Just a minute, Dad." I slid
from the bed and staggered to the door.

"Are you all right?" His tone was anxious, but his color was
good. He must have slept. "Mrs. O'Brien is serving breakfast."

"Why don't you go down? I'll join you when I've had a
shower. Where's the bathroom—down the hall?"

Dad laughed. "You
were
tired, weren't you? Look
around. Bathrooms in all the rooms and unlimited hot water. Quite a
change from the guesthouses of my salad days. I'll see you
downstairs."

He was right. Two steps up, in a corner of the pleasant room
and concealed behind what looked like a closet door, was a
sparkling, state-of-the-art loo. No claw-footed bathtub. No chain-pull
toilet.

British fascination with baroque plumbing had extended
across the Irish Sea, though, and manifested itself in the shower
controls. I decoded the mechanism after a minor scalding, showered,
and woke up. It had been, horrors, thirty-six hours since my last
shower. Fortunately, my hair is short and curls when it's wet. I threw
on my emergency jeans, the grungy pullover, and the suede boots,
gave my hair a perfunctory brush, and went out into the hallway.
Fifteen minutes.

My memory of having to scale the stairs was hazy but
accurate. As in many old houses, even the hall presented several
levels, and the requisite hairy plant on a small table sprawled out
onto the landing of the steep stairway. The floors were carpeted in
thick British Floral, the wallpaper was fresh but traditional, the
woodwork shiny white.

When I reached the ground floor I hesitated. A long hall
strewn with furniture—a coat rack, a table covered with brochures, a
stand full of no-nonsense umbrellas—led toward the back of the
house. Five doors, one on the left and four on the right, presented
more choices than I was ready to cope with in my pre-coffee
state.

I peeked in the first door on the right and startled a German
couple dressed for hiking. They were sitting in front of the unlit
hearth with a map spread between them. The room was done in
plush and mahogany. I decided it had to be the lounge. A television,
fortunately off, stared back at me. The woman hiker said something
in German that sounded friendly. I smiled and withdrew.

My second guess—the last door at the end of the hall—hit the
mark. As I entered the large room, a party of four hikers, Dutch or
German, broke off their conversation and stared at me. I smiled
again.

Tables covered with pink cloths seated two family groups
and another set of hikers. I spotted my father in the far corner
behind a pillar. The hikers resumed their discussion. Tableware
clattered. I squeezed past a teenaged boy helping himself at the
cereal bar and slid into the chair opposite Dad.

He had reached the bacon and egg stage. Toast was cooling
to crispness in a metal rack by his plate. A basket held soda bread
wrapped in a pink cloth. Dad smiled and waved a piece of toast.
"Want to share my tea?"

"I'll wait, thanks. Do they do coffee?"

"I believe so." He attacked his black sausage with gusto. I
thought of clogged arteries.

"Good morning, Mrs. Dodge. Sure, I didn't hear you come
down." The sergeant's sister materialized at my elbow.

I said, "You have a lovely house, Mrs. O'Brien. Especially the
shower."

She laughed. "A grant from the farmhouse association.
Didn't we have four new baths installed this winter, and Toss
Tierney in and out with his great muddy boots? He started at New
Years and said 'twould be done in six weeks, but he finished the last
one on Holy Thursday itself." Her eyes flashed at the thought of Mr.
Tierney. She heaved a dramatic sigh. I wondered if role-playing ran
in the family. "But all the rooms is
en suite
now."

"And very nice. I slept...er, well." I was going to say like the
dead and caught myself. I didn't mention the hours I had spent
reading Anthony Trollope in the middle of the night either. My bout
of wakefulness was not her fault.

"Grand." She indicated an aproned sprite at her side. "This is
my daughter, Eithne. She'll take your breakfast order when you're
ready."

I wasn't, quite, except for the caffeine lust, but I made my
selections from a bewildering list of choices. Eithne, who looked
sixteen, rejoiced in hair the color of a bonfire. When she had jotted
my order on her pad, she and her mother bustled out the service
door and back to the kitchen. I must have been the last guest
down.

"I hope Mrs. O'Brien didn't have to turn people out to
accommodate us." I eyed Dad's soda bread.

"No, but we took the last two rooms." Dad mopped egg yolk.
"Free range hens."

"Is that an explanation?"

"Now, Lark, you promised not to fuss. This is a grand place."
Grand seemed to be the adjective of choice. "I spent more than an
hour in the lounge last evening talking to young Cieran and a
charming couple from Birmingham. They're hiking the Wicklow
Way. Cieran says there's a Quaker museum at Ballitore. He's reading
history at Trinity, you know."

"Is he?" I felt a flicker of amusement, but I was pleased that
my father had found himself a history student. He attracts them. The
sprite reappeared with bread and a cafetière. I inhaled coffee
scent. "Where's Ballitore?"

Dad sawed bacon. "Not far at all on the backroads."

Backroads. I suppressed a groan.

"It's in Kildare. Cieran got out the AA atlas and showed me
the best route."

"Then let's go there after breakfast."

"Do you feel up to it?"

Not really. I shied from the thought of driving at all, but I
was in Ireland as Dad's chauffeur. "Of course."

"Splendid." Dad poured a last cup of tea. "I suppose we
ought to check with the Gardai first."

I shoved the plunger of the cafetière down and
poured myself a cup of coffee. While I laced it with free range cream
and sucked down half a cup, I considered the prospect of another
police interview. Inspector Mahon was bound to take us over the
ground Sgt. Kennedy had already covered.

I almost said, "What a bore," but bit the remark back
unspoken. My father would not have approved. A man was dead. It
was our duty to cooperate with the police.

I was a little surprised that Dad didn't seem depressed over
the incident—I was trying to think of it as an incident. Evidence of
violent animosity horrifies him. He broods over tiny news items. In a
sense, his entire academic career had involved brooding over the
Civil War. And here was a corpse on his doorstep.

It was true that Dad hadn't seen the body, as I had, and also
true, though I had doubts, that the victim might have died of natural
causes. Still, Dad's jolliness in the face of sudden death seemed as far
out of character as his display of temper the day before.

I buttered a chunk of soda bread and heaped it with
marmalade. I drank my orange juice. I meditated. Was my father's
cheerful demeanor evidence of a personality change? I had heard
that stroke victims sometimes underwent such a change. I hoped not.
I liked the old Dad.

When Eithne brought my egg and bacon, my father asked for
more hot tea water. Then he rose. "I'm going to get that road atlas
and show you the short cut to Carlow. From there it's a straight run
up the N Nine."

I gave him an absent smile and dived into the pool of
cholesterol. I would eat cereal tomorrow. Dad returned as Eithne
was bringing him a fresh pot of tea. She also offered to get me more
coffee, but I declined.

The road atlas was rather large for the table. Dad
disappeared behind it as I addressed my bacon and fried egg. Free
range eggs did taste better than the supermarket kind. I dipped
buttered toast in the warm orange yolk. Luscious.

"We could drive through Avoca and Woodenbridge," he
mumbled.

I buttered another morsel of toast and dipped. "Did you call
Mother last night?"

"Hmm? Yes, briefly. She's leaving for her workshop
tomorrow."

"I ought to call Jay."

"Isn't it the middle of the night there?"

"True." The thought cheered me. I did not want to explain to
my husband that I had entangled myself in yet another police
investigation. I polished off my egg.

Dad found Ballitore. He showed me a map criss-crossed by
what looked like tiny lanes. He gulped tea and told me about the
museum, his eyes sparkling. I warmed to his enthusiasm.

We left the breakfast room replete. I watched Dad's
progress up the stairs. He didn't leap upward like a goat, but he was
moving faster than he had the day before. When we reached the top
of the stairs, I said, "I suppose we ought to pack and check out."

He looked guilty. "I booked us for another night."

"But you're already paying for the cottage!"

"I like it here."

A new, willful father. I regarded him with a mixture of
bafflement and affection. "Well, okay, but I'll have to get some
clothes from the cottage." After another day of driving, my sweater
was going to stick to my skin.

We reached the cottage without incident, though it was a
good thing Dad navigated. I had no recollection of the road I drove
on. A patrol car and an anonymous sedan sat on the gravel by the
front door. The ambulance had gone, I hoped with the remains of
Slade Wheeler.

As we emerged from the Toyota, a uniformed constable
stepped through the door and held up his hand, palm out. "Crime
scene."

I introduced Dad and myself as the lawful tenants of the
cottage and explained that I had found the body.

"Wait here." He disappeared inside.

A damp wind was blowing from the southeast. After a chilly
five minutes, a man in a rumpled gray suit came out to greet us. He
told us he was Chief Detective Inspector Mahon, and he
commiserated with us on the unpleasant start of our holiday. We
shook hands all round.

Dad said crisply, "We're not on holiday. I'm here to do
historical research. And I've been here—in Dublin, that is—for ten
days. My daughter and I intend to visit a museum in Kildare this
morning, if you've no objection. However, we're entirely at your
service."

Chief Inspector Mahon frowned. He was a balding, heavy
man of about fifty. "Come in, come in. It's cold out here, and I need to
clarify a few matters."

We followed him into the kitchen where there was evidence
of tea drinking and fast food. If the police had been there all night,
they were entitled. Mahon sat us down in the living room, offered us
tea, which we declined, and took us through our statements.
Someone had typed them. The constable took notes. I wondered
where Sgt. Kennedy was but didn't ask. I could hear voices below
stairs.

Mahon seemed awfully interested in the scuff marks I'd
found inside the doorway. I was unable to elaborate on what I'd
seen, a mere impression.

"You walked all over the marks, I take it."

I kept my voice mild. "I didn't anticipate finding what I
found."

"I daresay not." He looked depressed.

I did want to cooperate. "I'm wearing the boots I wore
yesterday. Why don't you take them down and eliminate my
footprints?"

That cheered him a little. He vanished down the stairs. More
rumbling and scuffling. I contemplated the toes of my socks. Hadn't
Barbara Stein said something about workmen's boots? No. What was
it?

Toss Tierney. I was telescoping Mrs. O'Brien's comment
about the great muddy boots and Barbara's similar exasperation
with Tierney. I wriggled my toes. Should I say something to Mahon?
According to Barbara, Tierney was supposed to have finished the
tool shed. Obviously, he hadn't. If he had tried to, wouldn't he have
found the body? I squirmed, uneasy. On the other hand, Sgt. Kennedy
had said he was going to question Tierney anyway. If the man had
entered the shed in the past few days Kennedy would find out.