The Irish Cottage Murder (2 page)

Fourteen-foot-high bookshelves lined the walls of the library at Castle Moore. Arched windows soared. It was noon. A bronze clock ticked on the Florentine desk with its red leather top.

Fergus Callaghan, genealogist, working at the desk, flung down his pencil in exasperation. His wrist struck his teacup. Tea spilled onto the red leather desktop and onto Fergus’s tweed trousers. “Shit!” Fergus said.

On his feet, swearing, mopping with his handkerchief, Fergus thought enviously of the American girl in the red Mini-Cooper he’d seen earlier this morning disappearing up the oak-lined drive. He wished he had such freedom from care. He sighed and went back to feeling angry and frustrated.

“Mine is a noble and ancient Irish family,” Desmond Moore had announced to Fergus in his overbearing, pompous manner.

That had been at their first meeting. Desmond Moore had arrived by appointment at Fergus’s state-of-the-art office in the Dublin suburb of Ballsbridge.

“I want my family traced, Mr. Callaghan. Our lands were taken from us in the seventeenth century, at the time of Cromwell. This box is my grandfather’s records. It’s all I have. Search me out my branch of the Moores, Mr. Callaghan. You’ll provide a genealogical chart, of course.”

“But—”

“And a coat of arms.”

Fergus had swallowed. Integrity was his watchword. Genealogy was a tricky business. It had been his business for thirty years. He had a reputation.

That had been two weeks ago. From his office window on Boyleston Street, he had watched the retreating self-assured figure of Mr. Desmond Moore. He had found Mr. Moore unpalatable.

But he had accepted the job. He had accepted it because he was in love. He was in love with the widow, Maureen Devlin, who lived in a decrepit cottage in the woods a half mile from Castle Moore in Wicklow. Ordinarily, he would not have come to Castle Moore at all. He never worked on a client’s premises. He kept a distance. But—Maureen. So here he was.

Working with the handful of barely legible documents, he’d scoured regional archives, parish records, land grants. He’d tracked back through both Protestant and Catholic records so as not to miss anything. But even the Genealogical Research Office on Kildare Street at the National Library, usually an unfailing source, had failed him.

Now here he was, unhappily righting a teacup in the library of Castle Moore.

He ran a hand over his balding head. He was fifty years old this past April. This was his third morning at the castle. Disliking every minute.

“Keep on,” Desmond Moore had said at eight o’clock this Tuesday morning in the library. He had stood over Fergus, tall, hard-bodied, slapping his leather gloves against his riding breeches; he was off to a horse auction in Wexford. “Let’s see some progress. Let’s say, on the chart? Let’s say by next week?”—and significantly—”I expect you’ll come through, Mr. Callaghan”—hands in the pockets of his tweed hunting jacket, yellow-green eyes cold—“considering what I’m paying you.”

Provide me a genealogy chart-cum-crest out of your own noggin, Fergus Callaghan.
As though he, Fergus Callaghan, were a charlatan, a weasely faker of antecedents … so Desmond Moore, an arrogant thirty-six-year-old, could hang a tapestry coat-of-arms on the walls of Castle Moore in county Wicklow, Ireland. Fergus had blushed in shame at the veniality of mankind. A genealogy chart! Woven out of air.

Desmond Moore, with brassy fair hair and cold yellow-green eyes, had an eastern Massachusetts accent. He pronounced
chart
like
chaat.
His great-grandfather, Flann Moore, had been born in Hingham to Mary and Liam Moore, who had emigrated from county Wicklow in one of the “coffin” ships to escape starvation during the potato famine. “My grandfather, Erin, Flann’s oldest son, got rich in America,” he’d told Fergus when he’d hired him. “Cement, not politics. And not running booze through Canada during Prohibition.” Desmond Moore, smoking a Havana cigar: “My father visited Ireland twenty-six years ago and bought Castle Moore. It was Castle Comerford then. The Comerford family were English. Anglo-Irish. Usurpers. Six hundred acres, riding to hounds, the sheep-rich lands of Wicklow, Irish renters in thatched huts. Around nineteen-seventy, the Comerfords touched bottom. Stupid management. Bad investments. Buying the wrong horses.” Desmond Moore had laughed; he’d had a high-pitched laugh that had made Fergus wince. “They had to sell. Pa bought it. So the Comerfords were out. Likely weeping and rending their garments. I was ten then; I’m an only child. My mother felt lucky she’d managed the one. We spent a month here every summer after that. I own this place now. My parents died in a plane crash five years ago.”

“Any other relatives who’d have Moore family records?” Fergus had asked hopefully.

“None. I’ve only got one cousin. Winifred. Winifred Moore. She’s thirty-eight, two years older than me. A lesbian. Looks like a walrus. Lives in London. Writes poetry. Doesn’t believe in antecedents, family stuff. If she’d had family records, she’d likely have torn them up. Or burned them.” He shrugged. “A bitch. Doesn’t like me any more than I like her.” So that had been that.

Standing beside the Florentine desk, Fergus looked for the tenth time at his watch.

Quarter past twelve.
Now.
He shoveled the documents from the desk into his briefcase. His heart beat faster.

*   *   *

Outside, he put the briefcase in the basket of his motorbike. Getting on the bike, he felt sweaty and ugly. He was five feet, seven inches tall and twenty pounds overweight, and his belted tweed jacket was too heavy for the July day, though in this part of Wicklow the summer temperature was sometimes as low as twelve Centigrade, and this morning when he’d arrived at Castle Moore, he had shivered in the chilly air. Lately, he’d felt the cold more. He shrank from thinking of his age. He felt drearily that he had a nerve being in love with a widow who was only thirty-one.

In love. This morning, as always, he’d left his brand-new white Toyota in Dublin and ridden the thirty miles to Castle Moore on the motorbike. That way, returning to Dublin, he could take the bridle path that wound through the woods; he could leave the bike on the path, skirt the bogs, and a five minutes’ walk through the woods would bring him to Maureen Devlin’s cottage near the hedgerow. He’d just as lief not be seen visiting her; he felt a romantic fool. Others would agree. So he didn’t want to leave his Toyota parked on the access road by the hedge for all to see.

He started the throttle on the motorbike and glanced at his watch. Almost twenty past twelve. Just right. Any minute, Maureen would be arriving back at the cottage from her morning job in Ballynagh. His excuse to visit her would be that he’d come for a loaf of her bread. It was always the same excuse. But the truth was that just the sight of Maureen Devlin would ease his heart.

4

Twelve-fifteen. On the narrow access road between the tall hedges of blackberry bushes, thistle, and holly, Maureen Devlin, six years widowed, wheeled her bicycle to a stop. In her bicycle basket were two five-pound bags of flour. In a few minutes she’d be home in the cottage with her feet in a basin of hot water. Then she and Finola would have a tomato sandwich for lunch and a cup of tea. After that, she’d bake the bread. She already had three orders.

Who had left that yellow Saab parked near the hedge? The car door was hanging open. Maureen looked around. Nobody. No sound except for birds and the rackety hum of a mowing machine in the McInnerny’s field a quarter mile away.

She wheeled the bicycle toward the break in the hedge. She could feel the pebbles through the soles of her black sneakers, though she’d put on heavy woolen stockings against the early morning cold. The full skirt of her navy cotton dress came almost down to her ankles. She had rolled up the sleeves of her faded red sweater so that the raveled cuffs and elbows didn’t show. When Desmond Moore paid her for the loaves, she’d buy the blue dress at Clery’s in Dublin for Finola’s birthday. Finola would be eight next month. Maureen would take the bus to Dublin on her next day off. She got one day off a month. Mr. Moore wanted six loaves. He had guests. He paid her two pounds a loaf. But the way he handed her the money! Holding out the pound notes folded the long way, his head turned a little aside, as though to avoid contamination. Lord-of-the-manor dispensing largesse to a beggar. As though those Moores hadn’t come up from a dung heap! Come
up?
What did she mean,
up?
Joyce to Desmond Moore was likely only a girl’s name. And the poetry of Seamus Heany so much gobbledygook.

But baking bread was the only way she knew to make a living. Working in O’Curry’s butcher shop in Ballynagh from six in the morning to twelve noon came to only thirty-five pounds a week. Still, what choice did she have? In Dublin they wanted young girls for the jobs. Besides, her looks were shot—her skin was no longer soft and creamy, and although her curly brown hair still had a burnished gold look, it was striated with crinkled gray strands. Gone was the passion, the surging love and wild whispering nights and her skin throbbing with joy. Now she had no husband. But at least there was Finola.

That yellow car. A Saab. Maybe a man had stopped to urinate behind the break in the hedge? A pity, a perishing pity if he was modest. She had to get home!

She gave a loud cough to warn the fellow urinating and made her way as usual through the break in the hedge.

5

“Ah, my darlin’ Sheila!” Winifred Moore said. “Look at that baby-sized castle! Eighteen bedrooms. Desmond won’t dare protest that he hasn’t room to put us up. Though he’d rather have a cobra than me!” The Jeep she drove with careless expertise through Castle Moore’s iron gates was from Hertz, rented in Dun Laoghaire when the ferry arrived from England.

It was Tuesday noon, half after twelve, lunchtime. The sun was high. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of a mowing machine. A wind blew the faint sweet-sharp smell of cut grass from a meadow.

“I’ve a mind to say in front of Desmond’s servants that I haven’t got two pence to nestle together,” Winifred went on. “Desmond’ll start blinking his yellow-green eyes in a rage, hating me to say it before servants. ‘Blinky’ Desmond’s how I always think of him.” She laughed her full-throated laugh, showing strong white teeth. Her face was square-jawed. Her cheeks had a high russet color, like a stain. There was a look of suppressed humor about her mouth and in her hazel eyes. A worn, tan suede hat with a floppy brim was pulled down over her brown hair, which was twisted up into a knot just above the collar of her navy shirt. She was big-boned, but with little fat. She wore jeans and sturdy brown brogues.

“Winifred,
really!
” Sheila turned to look at her, “You
know
I can deduct our expenses, everything from London on.” Sheila Flaxton owned and edited London’s well-known
Sisters in Poetry,
six issues a year, fourteen pounds annually.
Sisters
had published the four poems for which Winifred Moore, born and bred in Dun Laoghaire, this coming Friday, would receive the year’s Irish Women’s Poetry Award at the Women’s Academy in Dublin. The prize was one hundred Irish pounds. A tea would be laid on.

Sheila was forty, short and wispy, with a blue-eyed look of innocence in a somewhat squishy-looking, pasty face. She favored long, flowered skirts and wore flat-heeled shoes that looked vaguely like ballet slippers. She recognized quality in literature and admired Winifred Moore’s poetry tremendously. A pity there was little money in it and, often, none.

A maid in a white-aproned, blue uniform was washing a flower-filled iron urn on one of the pedestals that flanked Castle Moore’s great curving sweep of stone steps. She turned and squinted toward them as Winifred Moore drove up.

“Rose?” Winifred Moore called out, “Is that you? Remember me … from last August? Time of the Kerrygold Dublin Horse Show? Winifred Moore, Mr. Moore’s cousin, from London.”

“Of course, Miss … Ms. Moore.” Rose smiled, twisting the damp rag in her hands.

“I didn’t phone. I thought I’d just come out. Need digs for a week.” Cheap digs, free digs. She was the poor mouse, Desmond the rich one. The pity of it was that she would likely never inherit because Desmond was still young, alas, two years younger than she and healthy as a prize hog. And what if he were to marry? “I figured Mr. Moore would have room to put us up. This is Ms. Flaxton, from London.”

“Yes, ma’am. How do you do, ma’am. Mr. Moore’s off at a horse sale in Wexford. I’ll just let Janet Slocum know you’re here. She’s the maid in charge. She’ll see to getting you settled in.”

“A sandwich first thing, if you don’t mind, Rose, we’re starved. And a lager. Orange juice for Ms. Flaxton, though.” Winifred sprang from the Jeep, then reached back, yanked out two soft-pack suitcases, and went up the steps. Sheila followed.

In the great circular hall, Winifred asked, “Any other guests, here?”

“Just one, ma’am. An American young woman, Ms. Tunet. Ms. Torrey Tunet. She arrived last night.”

Winifred’s brows went up. She grinned at Sheila. “Desmond’s latest, no doubt!—another eager young woman who thinks, erroneously, of marriage-cum-Desmond. Disillusionment, followed by tears enough to overflow the Liffey.” And to Rose, “That’s all?”

“Yes, ma’am. But there’ll be a landscaping man. Architect is it? Coming this afternoon.”

“Designer, you mean?”

“I guess, ma’am. For laying out the gardens.”

“Gardens? What d’you mean,
gardens,
Rose?”

“Something about the taxes on the castle, ma’am. Mr. Desmond saw in an American magazine about how this architect, pardon, ma’am,
designer,
laid out a garden for Laughlin House in county Meath. So last month—June, wasn’t it, when he was in America—he visited that architect—designer, I mean, excuse me, ma’am—and…” Rose stopped. It was getting too complicated. And Winifred Moore was looking at her as if she wanted to laugh. Rose herself wanted to cry. She so envied people who didn’t get flustered but could explain things without blushing and being afraid of mixing everything up.