The Irish Cottage Murder (26 page)

Inspector O’Hare, reading the report and listening to Sergeant Jimmy Bryson, was wondering the same thing. He was fifty-four years old, and had been Inspector in Ballynagh for the past twenty-two years. There was little he didn’t know and much that he remembered. He was recalling now that from the time Rowena Keegan was three or four years old, she’d been her grandfather’s darling. Dr. Ashenden taught the child to ride, to swim, to fish, to play tennis. By the time she was twelve, they rode together daily when Dr. Ashenden returned from surgery in Dublin. Whenever Rowena Keegan caught a cold, had an earache, or cut a finger, Dr. Ashenden treated it like a major emergency. In the village, they laughed about it, what with Rowena Keegan being such a bloomingly healthy young woman.

In any case, the bloomingly healthy young woman was presently not in residence at Ashenden Manor. She was, instead, in the only cell that the police station in the village of Ballynagh possessed, exactly twenty-five feet away from where Inspector O’Hare now sat. At half six o’clock, Sergeant Bryson would go across to Finney’s to get her dinner. It was Friday night. Baked shad, mashed potatoes, spinach.

*   *   *

The cottage was chilly when Torrey woke up. She hadn’t known about October in Ireland. Shivering, she took her morning shower; the water was lukewarm as usual and only a frustrating dribble. Back in the damply cold bedroom, she put on a gray woolen skirt and her heaviest cotton jersey, a red turtleneck that she’d bought two months ago back home in North Hawk, just before going on to the Boston airport. “Have a nice trip, Ms. Tunet,” the elderly clerk had said, taking her credit card, “How I do envy you!”

“Thanks.” But this time it wasn’t her usual trip. It wasn’t an interpreting job, staying in Europe’s luxury hotels, speaking Danish or Italian or any of her dozen other languages, wearing her tailored suit, her time-sweep efficient watch on her wrist. No conference rooms and occasional evenings of polite formal dinners, wearing glittering earrings and discussing political and common market problems.

No: This time it was the dilapidated old groundsman’s cottage in Ballynagh. The Children’s Language Institute had offered her a contract: a three-language series of books for kids. She hadn’t been able to resist. Kids and languages! Four months of hard work and she’d deliver the first book in the six-book series. “Half payment in advance,” they’d stipulated cautiously about this first book, “the other half on delivery and acceptance.”

Hardly enough money to scrape by on. She had no savings. Having grown up poor, she enjoyed spending. So now it was back to her early days of half-cans of tuna fish, dried beans, powdered milk. But irresistible. Kids and languages!

She’d thought back to the time in North Hawk when she was twelve and won that prize of twenty-five dollars translating for little kids from Spanish-speaking countries who didn’t speak English. She’d learned Spanish from tapes she took out of the library. Why? “I don’t know,” she’d told the
North Hawk Weekly
reporter. These days they said it was genetic, her peculiar language ability. Her Romanian father had been the same. So had two other interpreters she’d met at the United Nations. Yet how she had slaved for years to learn! She was now twenty-eight, and had a passport stamped with exotic foreign destinations and an unflattering, rather wistful-looking photo showing her dark, wavy short hair, her narrow chin, and her gray eyes that somehow looked better without mascara. She was five feet four, slim, and addicted to pasta and to chocolate bars with almonds. She was also helplessly fascinated by other people’s lives. Nosey, some people called it.

Fingering the check from the Language Institute, she’d thought at once of the old groundsman’s cottage in Ballynagh. It would be a cheap rental. There was blood in its recent history. She knew that well enough. She’d been in Ballynagh four months ago, when she’d worked at the conference in Dublin. The Ballynagh villagers still shuddered and steered clear of the cottage in the woods, in spite of a low rent. So, cheap. Hopeful, she made a long-distance call to the owner, Winifred Moore of Castle Moore, and pinned down a six-month lease of the cottage. Already she’d been here two months.

Still shivering, she picked up her jeans from the chair beside the bed. They were muddied and grass-stained at the knees from when she’d knelt in the meadow beside the body of Dr. Ashenden.

She stood holding the jeans. She had a sudden, flashing vision of Rowena Keegan astride the stallion, the upraised hooves, Rowena’s enraged face.

Torrey gazed down at the jeans. She saw herself yesterday afternoon standing in the great hall at Ashenden Manor with Sergeant Bryson in his blue uniform and cap. She heard her own smoothly lying voice, protecting Rowena. Then, footsteps: Chubby, balding Dr. Collins, Dr. Ashenden’s old friend, coming down the staircase in his familiar olive-green tweed jacket, bringing the reassuring news that Dr. Ashenden’s main injury was a sprained shoulder. Dr. Collins’s kindly voice, and his honest blue eyes, made her feel ashamed of her lying.

Stay out of it.

But of course she wouldn’t. She never could. Besides, having lied to the police, she was already in it. And Inspector O’Hare was not one to let sleeping dogs lie. He’d kick them awake. Or more likely lure them awake with a biscuit held under their noses. Better not underestimate the paunchy, comfortable-looking Inspector O’Hare.

But above all, Rowena! There had to be an explanation to that horrifying scene in the meadow, that scene of madness.

What could have happened to turn Rowena so murderous? Rowena was not that person on the galloping, plunging horse. The Rowena Torrey knew was a warm-hearted, loving young woman who was studying to be a veterinarian. Rowena had a gentle hand with horses, dogs, cats, and any living thing. A week ago, she’d crawled on her stomach through a rotting, maggot-ridden log to rescue a frightened kitten.

Torrey felt a stab of hunger. Breakfast was in order; it was already past eight o’clock. Sunlight flickered through the trees and shone through the small bedroom windows. Torrey went into the fireplace kitchen with its pine chairs and table and shabby couch. She’d have coffee and buttered day-old brown bread. Passing the table, she switched on the little radio that she kept tuned to RTE, Ireland’s national radio and television network. Slicing the bread she heard the weather report. There was a break-in at the Brewley’s on Grafton Street, thieves making off with two sides of bacon and a turkey. A fracas near Trinity College over a soccer match. Then the commentator’s voice said:

“Dr. Gerald Ashenden, Ireland’s justly famous thoracic surgeon, late yesterday afternoon suffered a riding accident at the Ashenden estate in Ballynagh. An expert horseman, Dr. Ashenden faults a broken stirrup which resulted in the fall that sprained his left shoulder. A speedy recovery to you, Dr. Ashenden!”

Torrey, holding the coffee pot, said softly, “Well, bless me for a bloody lie!”

“Yes,” Rowena said, from the open doorway. Torrey turned.

*   *   *

Rowena was standing just outside, on the lintel. The sun flickered on her red hair, which was short and curly. She came in. She wore a parka and jeans and well-scuffed brogues. A thick brown muffler hung from around her neck. Her tanned face was pale. Her eyelids were heavy and tinged with pink.

“Coffee?” Torrey said, with a great sigh of relief, “I’ve only one egg, but I can make us French toast.” She turned off the radio.

Rowena shook her head. “Nothing, thanks, I had breakfast at the jail. Sergeant Bryson sent over to Finney’s. He said breakfast’ll be covered by the Ballynagh taxes we pay. Can you imagine? It made me laugh.” She walked aimlessly across to the sink and back to the table. Her unzipped parka hung open, her hands were thrust into the pockets. “I came to thank you. I saw Sergeant Bryson’s report, what you said. You lied, didn’t you? You
saw.
”

“Actually, I didn’t see what happened,” Torrey said, lying again. There was something so strange and troublesome about Rowena standing there, so unlike the Rowena who was always whistling, laughing, speaking Gaelic slang to Torrey for kicks, or showing her how to feed a baby guinea pig. “Except it was a horrible accident.”

Rowena gave a skeptical, under-her-breath sort of laugh, “Oh, come on, Torrey! I wish you
hadn’t
seen what happened. You’re my friend. But there’s something I can’t tell even you. But thanks for sticking by me. Lack of evidence freed me, what with my grandfather raising hell with Inspector O’Hare—‘an outrage, arresting my granddaughter’… and ‘the damned stallion out of control, my granddaughter shouting at me, “I can’t stop him! Get out of the way!” Altogether, an accident…’ And now, as you just heard on the radio. My grandfather’s revised official version.”

Torrey nodded. And waited.

“Anyway, this morning after I had breakfast at the police station, I sneaked home. I went up a back staircase and changed my clothes. Then I came here. I can’t stay at Ashenden Manor. Can you imagine me having dinner across the table from my grandfather, with his sprained shoulder in a sling? Both of us pretending that in the meadow I didn’t try to kill him! Pretending to my brother Scott and my mother and her new husband that it was all a mistake, an accident that Sergeant Jimmy Bryson misconstrued!”

Torrey was thinking:
Why, Rowena, why?

Other titles from St. Martin’s
Minotaur
Mysteries

A MURDER IN THEBES by Anna Apostolou

AQUARIUS DESCENDING by Martha C. Lawrence

MY BODY LIES OVER THE OCEAN by J. S. Borthwick

MURDER WITH PEACOCKS by Donna Andrews

A COLD DAY IN PARADISE by Steve Hamilton

CROSSROAD BLUES by Ace Atkins

ROMAN BLOOD by Steven Saylor

TELL NO TALES by Eleanor Taylor Bland

FAREWELL PERFORMANCE by Donna Huston Murray

DEATH AL DENTE by Peter King

JITTER JOINT by Howard Swindle

LARGER THAN DEATH by Lynne Murray

A GIFT OF SANCTUARY by Candace Robb

THE SILLY SEASON by Susan Holtzer

SEARCH THE DARK by Charles Todd

EMERALD FLASH by Charles Knief

DEAR MISS DEMEANOR by Joan Hess

AGATHA RAISIN AND THE WITCH OF

WYCKHADDEN by M. C. Beaton

THE BEST-KEPT SECRET by Les Roberts

THE IRISH COTTAGE MURDER by Dicey Deere

Minotaur
is also proud to present these mystery classics by Ngaio Marsh

ARTISTS IN CRIME

CLUTCH OF CONSTABLES

LIGHT THICKENS

PHOTO FINISH

THE IRISH COTTAGE MURDER

Copyright © 1999 by Dicey Deere.

Excerpt from
The Irish Manor House Murder
copyright © 2000 by Dicey Deere.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 99-12841

ISBN: 0-312-97131-1

St. Martin’s Press hardcover edition / May 1999

St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / June 2000

eISBN 9781466848818

First eBook edition: June 2013