The Irish Cottage Murder (18 page)

O’Hare cleared his throat. “I have here, on cassette, an eight-minute conversation between two people. You may recognize the voice of one of the speakers. However, the tape is in Gaelic. Not all of us—I, for instance—speak or understand much Gaelic, though Gaelic is Ireland’s official language and is now required study in our schools. Miss Tunet, however, adept in languages—her field—has printed out a translation that Sergeant Bryson will read aloud. Now if any Gaelic-speaking person among you would first like to hear the tape, for verification—”

“I would, Inspector!” Fergus Callaghan said loudly.

“Of course.” The cheese was in the trap. O’Hare leaned forward and turned on the recorder.

52

The cassette tape stopped. Brian Coffey, his lips white, stared with incredulity at the tape recorder. Fergus Callaghan sat slumped; his face had a shattered look like a crazed piece of china.

“Now in English, Sergeant,” O’Hare said.

Sergeant Bryson read the translation aloud from Miss Tunet’s printed pages. Finished, he squared the pages and put them down in a neat pile on Inspector O’Hare’s desk.

Dead silence. Then Sheila Flaxton said, “Oh, my!” She looked with avid interest at Maureen Devlin, who sat very still. Maureen Devlin’s eyes looked frozen upon a bitter sight.

“Shut up, Sheila,” Winifred Moore said. But she too looked at Maureen Devlin.

“All I said”—Brian Coffey cried out angrily, leaning forward in the folding chair—“all I told my sister Eileen on the phone was family stuff! I told her just that one little thing! About Maureen Devlin. Then we hung up. So why’s all this…?” And he looked aggrieved, yet frightened, at Inspector O’Hare.

“The one little thing,” Inspector O’Hare said softly. “Yes, indeed.”

“Yes! Only that Mr. Desmond went to screw with Maureen Devlin! He even said it that way! ‘A quick screw with the widow Devlin,’ and he laughed and made a dirty joke about it; then he rode off to the cottage while I waited on Bishop’s Path. ‘A half-hour screw,’ he said.”

No one spoke. There was a waiting silence, ears attuned to hear an outraged denial from Maureen Devlin. It did not come. No one looked again at her frozen face. Inspector O’Hare said, “Mrs. Devlin? If you would like to respond?” She looked at him, then gave a slight shake of her head. “No.”

“And the rest about her”—Brian’s voice cried out for justice—“that I knew about Mr. Callaghan always in and out the cottage, coming and going on his motorbike! And then that other man who was in bed with Maureen Devlin. That’s all I told my sister Eileen about!”

“So we heard,” Inspector O’Hare said. He turned to Fergus Callaghan for a fierce denial. “Mr. Callaghan?” But Mr. Callaghan, who had opened his mouth to speak, glanced toward Maureen Devlin and said, abruptly, “No. Nothing.”

“See? That’s all. Just to stop her nagging me to go see my Aunt Maureen and her Finola!” Brian Coffey looked bitterly at Maureen Devlin. Then, involuntarily, he cast a quick, startled glance at Inspector O’Hare.

“That’s clear enough,” O’Hare said agreeably. “You say you waited on Bishop’s Path, the bridle path, for Mr. Desmond to return from, ah … visiting Mrs. Maureen Devlin?”

To the inspector’s satisfaction, Brian Coffey seemed suddenly to shrink into himself; he wet his lips. “Yes, sir.”

“What day was that, Mr. Coffey, that you waited on Bishop’s Path for Mr. Desmond’s return?”

A cough, a sigh, someone murmured, someone whispered, the clock ticked. Brian Coffey looked down at his hands clasped between his knees. He matched his thumbs together, side by side, and stared down at them.

O’Hare said, “Might it have been the day you and Mr. Desmond rode to Wexford to buy a horse?”

Brian Coffey was absorbed in his thumbs. “The day? The particular day?” He flexed his thumbs. “I don’t exactly…”

“Take your time,” O’Hare said generously. He darted a glance at Miss Tunet. She sat with her legs crossed, watching Brian Coffey. She’d been right. Right and passionate, bursting into the station and setting the recorder smack down in front of him on the desk.

“What’s this? What’s this?” he’d said, angrily.

“A thread, a bloody thread,” she’d answered, “or is it only the English who say ‘bloody’?” She’d pressed the play button. “You might be smart enough, Inspector, to spin it into a noose.”

O’Hare looked back at Brian Coffey. He waited.

“The actual day?” Brian said. “I guess so. When we bought Darlin’ Pie. A mare.”

Inspector O’Hare spun the thread. “That would be the day before Sergeant Bryson and I visited Castle Moore and questioned everyone in regard to their whereabouts the previous day. We hoped for any kind of information. We were concerned about an abandoned yellow Saab and the disappearance of the driver—a Finnish gentleman from Helsinki.”

Inspector O’Hare leaned forward. “If I remember correctly, Mr. Coffey, you told Sergeant Bryson that you and Desmond Moore had traveled Bishop’s Path together to the access road. Nothing about your waiting alone a half-hour there in the woods while Mr. Moore was at the groundsman’s cottage. The bridle path is not far from the bog where … where later the missing man’s body—”

“What’re you trying—?” Brian Coffey cried out. His skinny body in the cowl-necked sweater gave a violent shudder. “Just because I didn’t tell!” Another shudder. “I didn’t do anything!” His white face went even paler.

“Mr. Coffey—,” O’Hare began.

“No!”
Brian Coffey looked with clenched fists at Maureen Devlin. “How could I tell and shame my family? Maureen Devlin being my Uncle Danny’s widow!” He looked wildly around the room, then back at Inspector O’Hare. “Now
they
all know.” A bitter cry. “If I’d told when you and Sergeant Bryson came to Castle Moore that morning, it’ud get about. A village like Ballynagh is all gossip.”

“I guess that’s so,” O’Hare said. Coffey was right, God knows. The gossip in Ballynagh, the sly whispering, the rumors. Every village the same.

“Well, now,” O’Hare said, “I think we all understand about that. But let me get to—The important point, Mr. Coffey, is that while you were waiting in the woods, did you see anyone? Or hear anything out of the ordinary?”

“No, nothing. It was just the woods.” Brian Coffey’s voice had the ring of truth.

O’Hare sighed. From the street he heard the bus rumble past on the way to Dublin. In the garda station, there was only the sound of Nelson snoring in his corner. Miss Tunet and the others were looking at him, waiting.

“Well,” he said. “Well…” Helplessness washed over him. He swallowed. This meeting, Miss Tunet’s brilliant idea, wasn’t so brilliant after all; it could’ve been a mistake, just the public ruination of Maureen Devlin. He felt sorry for Maureen Devlin, her sexual weaknesses, her desires, her passions. And there she sat, shoulders straight, her face tipped down and sidewise, her blue eyes looking into space. Admission of a lascivious half-hour’s dalliance with Mr. Desmond Moore. Yet, oddly, O’Hare thought of the downbent head of the plaster Madonna above the doorway at the Ballynagh library.

O’Hare cursed inwardly. Threads into a noose? A mouse to the cheese? It was only for family shame that Brian Coffey had kept silent about that half-hour alone in the woods. O’Hare coughed. He could not look again at Maureen Devlin for the shame of her.

Momentarily at a loss, he temporized, “Well—”

“Inspector, may I ask Mr. Coffey a question?” Miss Tunet interrupted. She was not looking at him; she was gazing at Brian Coffey.

O’Hare shrugged; he waved a hand signifying yes.

Torrey said, in her lilting voice, to Brian Coffey, “I don’t want to drag you back to such unpleasantness, Mr. Coffey, but”—she glanced toward Maureen Devlin—“I am thinking of your aunt’s reputation and how important you say it is to you and your family. I—”

“It is that!” Brian nodded his red head. “Important! The Devlins—”

“Oh, absolutely,” Ms. Tunet interrupted. “But you have told us”—here she waved a hand encompassing Winifred Moore, her friend Sheila, Fergus Callaghan, Luke Willinger, and Sergeant Bryson—“that your aunt, Maureen Devlin—a whore as you call her—slept with three men.”

“So she did! So she—” Brian Coffey stopped, mouth open. His eyes widened on Ms. Tunet.

“—and I’m sure,” Ms. Tunet went on, “you would not want to leave us with that impression … if it were not true.”

“No. No, ma’am.”

“There was Desmond Moore, who told you he himself was sleeping with Mrs. Devlin.”

“Yes.” Barely a whisper.

“The second lover—Mr. Callaghan—was that more or less a guess?”

“Let me alone!” Brian Coffey’s voice shook.

“And then,” Ms. Tunet said, and recrossed her legs, “you said there was a third man. Who was
he?
”

Brian Coffey said, “I’m going to be sick.” One hand flew up to cover his mouth. Sergeant Bryson leaped up, grasped Coffey by the shoulder, and propelled him swiftly across the room and into the toilet.

53

They stood outside the Ballynagh garda station on the sunny street, talking and looking at their watches, waiting to go back inside. Five minutes went by. Winifred Moore, in a denim skirt and belted navy jacket, smoked a brown cigarette, holding it between thumb and forefinger; she kept looking impatiently past Sheila at the station door so as not to miss seeing Sergeant Bryson the moment he appeared to allow them back.

“Weak stomach, that chap, Coffey,” she said to Luke Willinger. “Needs to suck a lemon. Or is it that ‘Conscience doth make cowards of us all’? Got something up his pullover sleeve, no doubt. Can’t wait to hear.” She turned to Sheila, “What d’you think,
mon amie?
”

“I think you smoke too much,” Sheila said. She was gazing covertly at Maureen Devlin and Fergus Callaghan, who had gone farther up the street; they were walking slowly back and forth, heads bent, talking. “She has secrets,” Sheila said to no one in particular. Torrey, nearby, said, “There’s Sergeant Bryson. We can go in.”

*   *   *

Brian was back in his chair, facing Inspector O’Hare’s desk. The perspiration had dried on his forehead, but his face still had a sickly pallor. He looked, thought Torrey, as though he had had devastating word from a judge and was now in the hands of the executioner.

Inspector O’Hare pressed the recorder button and the cassette began to turn. “Go ahead,” he said to Brian Coffey.

“I was working in the tack room,” Brian said tiredly, arms folded, head bent. “It was the day after the Finnish man’s body was found. I was brushing and cleaning the tack myself. Kevin was out exercising Black Pride. I shook out Mr. Desmond’s favorite horse blanket, the black-and-red plaid. Clumps of dried vegetation fell off it. Yellowish stuff. I know that yellowish color. Bogs around here in Wicklow don’t have it; we have it in Oughterard. But the bog—that bog where they found the Finnish man’s body—that bog has it.”

Brian raised his head and looked at Inspector O’Hare. “It frightened me! I stood there holding the blanket. I felt like … frozen. Paralyzed. Just then, Mr. Desmond came into the tack room. He saw what I was looking at on the blanket: the yellow muck from the bog.”

Brian wet his lips. “Mr. Desmond told me then that a terrible thing had happened. ‘I’m confessing to you, Brian,’ he said.

“Then he told me that when he’d left me on Bishop’s Path and got to Maureen Devlin’s cottage, he’d found Maureen in bed with another man. It was the Finn. ‘He attacked me,’ Mr. Desmond told me. ‘He was savage, a brute. He tried to kill me. I defended myself. I tried to stop him. I got my hands around his neck. It was an accident that he died. I put him on Black Pride and took him to the bog.’”

Brian looked from Inspector O’Hare to Maureen Devlin in her black skirt and an man’s old jacket. “All I could think of was
her
and us Devlins and Mr. Desmond coming to the cottage and seeing what he saw!”

The recorder gave a click. Ms. Tunet said, “Damn!” and leaned quickly forward and gave the recorder a knock with her fist; then she blew out a breath and nodded an okay to Inspector O’Hare. Brian Coffey looked at her, a dazed look, but he seemed not quite to see her. He took a breath.

“Mr. Desmond said that if Inspector O’Hare found out we weren’t together for that half-hour on Bishop’s Path, I’d go to jail as an accessory to murder because I hadn’t told him the truth—that Mr. Desmond had left me in the woods for that half hour. And it had all been an accident! ‘Only an accident,’ Mr. Desmond kept saying. And he said, ‘You see!—I put myself in your hands, Brian.’

“So I kept quiet. What was the good now of saying anything? It’ud been an accident that the Finn died! And my telling would’ve made Maureen Devlin look the whore she is. And wasn’t there my little cousin Finola to think of? Her to be tarred with the mother’s dirty brush?” Brian looked around for approval. “Bad enough that Finola must’ve been seeing nasty things her mother was doing with men. And—”

“Stop it!
Stop it!
” Fergus Callaghan was on his feet, his face congested. In an instant Sergeant Bryson was at Callaghan’s side, his hand on the genealogist’s shoulder. “Sit
down,
Mr. Callaghan.” Mr. Callaghan, fists clenched at his sides, sank down.

“—and I didn’t want to go to prison as an accessory,” Brian Coffey finished.

O’Hare, choking with excitement, nodded. The poor young fellow. He’d been living in anguish.

*   *   *

They were all getting up, exclaiming, milling. No one headed for the door; it was all too incredible, too thrilling. The murder of Lars Kasvi all revealed in detail right here! Just now! Not five minutes ago! And added to that, the incredible revelation that it was Mr. Desmond Moore who had killed him. Desmond Moore!

Inspector O’Hare, stunned and exhilarated, accepted congratulations. “Can you imagine,” he heard Winifred Moore saying to Mr. Willinger, “my own darling cousin Desmond strangling that Finn and sinking him in the bog!” She gave a hoot of a laugh. “Frankly, I can imagine Desmond doing just that.” She paused and added, low, “And worse. Worse.” O’Hare felt faintly shocked.

Sheila Flaxton, congratulating O’Hare, said, “Life is so
startling,
Inspector. One thinks one
knows
another person, but actually, one never…”