The Irish Cottage Murder (3 page)

“Rose,” Winifred said, “some fool, some
oaf,
has parked a yellow Saab a couple of hundred yards up the road on the wrong side. I almost ran into it. You might ring up the village police. If the car is still there, it should be ticketed.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

*   *   *

“What a clever apple, that Desmond!” Winifred said to Sheila. “Landscaping! Taxes. That’s what Desmond’s about.”

They had unpacked and were drinking lager and orange juice and eating ham sandwiches with mustard on Irish soda bread on the stone-flagged balcony of the bedroom that Janet Slocum had chosen for Winifred.

“Delicious bread,” Sheila said. “I wish I could gain.” She was thin and anemic. “Taxes?”

“In Ireland,” Winifred said, “if you have a Georgian house or castle or other historical gem and you open your gardens to the public one month of the year, on a certain day of the week each week of that month, you don’t have to pay a property tax.”

“So … your cousin, Desmond…?”

“It’ll save him a pile in taxes. But—” Winifred frowned down at her sandwich—”on second thought, I don’t think that’s exactly it with Desmond. I wish it were. I wish it were just money.”

“You sound weird, darlin’. Maybe your cousin Desmond simply loves gardens. People do.”

“Not Desmond. It could be more of his autocratic—that overlord obsession of his.”

“What d’you mean, ‘overlord’?”

“Oh…” Winifred shrugged. “His trying to be an autocrat like those Anglo-Irish Comerfords who once owned this castle.” Winifred bit into her ham sandwich. “Getting even, somehow.”

“I never can understand,” Sheila said, “why people can’t just be themselves.” She took a last sip of her orange juice. “Anyway, I’m sleepy. I’m going to take a nap. Wake me in an hour, will you?”

6

In Dublin, at lunchtime Torrey left the four-star Shelbourne Hotel on Saint Stephen’s Green. The first session of the Hungarian-Belgian conference had been long, grueling, exhausting, and exciting. It was always a high-wire act. Each time she was confident she could perform flawlessly. One misstep wasn’t sure death to her career, but close. She loved it.

She walked fast, aimlessly, taking deep breaths. The conference promised to be a challenge. The Hungarian representative had been fussy, contradicting himself, stumbling and stuttering besides. Stock exchange was
tozsde
in Hungarian; gold was
arany,
government was
kormany.
She needed to keep her head clear.

“Oh, look! Lovely rings, aren’t they, Albert? And look at those turquoise earrings!” A woman’s breathy English voice; Torrey could see her dumpy figure reflected in the jewelry shop window, the man beside her. “Come on, Alice,” the man said. “You think I’m the Bank of England?” The two people disappeared up the street.

Why was she standing here on Grafton Street staring into the window of this elegant jewelry shop? Why? Her eyes widened; her heart beat faster. In the back of her mind, was the question lurking: Did they sometimes buy jewelry, as well as sell it?

“No!”
she said, aloud, vehemently. But—

Money, money, money. Money makes the world go round.…
Liza Minnelli, spangled, strutting and singing in
Cabaret.
Joel Grey, deadpan, comic-grotesque stick figure mincing on a nightclub stage, rouged cheeks, white face,
Money, money, money.

She bit her lips. Her theft in North Hawk those years ago had led to such terrible tragedies. But now she had a chance to make up for one of those tragedies: The new surgery for that particular kind of injury, the surgery that could make a person with useless legs stand up and walk again. It could be done. It would cost forty thousand dollars. But if she couldn’t pin down the time frame by committing the money within the next three weeks, there would be the wait of a year. Another year of Donna’s thin body in the wheelchair.

“Watch out, ma’am!” Two young boys on skateboards swooped past, one after the other. Torrey looked unseeingly after them, then walked slowly up Grafton Street away from the jewelry shop.

7

That goddamned plate of asparagus soup.

Luke Willinger swore under his breath. Jet-lagged, head aching, eyes grainy, he stood on a gravel path in the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin. It was Tuesday. A clock bonged the noon hour; he’d head for Castle Moore after a pub lunch. Desmond Moore had given him the directions. And he had a map, courtesy of the car rental company at the Dublin airport.

But, goddamn it!—

Torrey Tunet. The thief. She was far worse than a thorn in his side. Torrey Tunet. Destroyer of his family. Through her, destruction and death. His mother’s tears, his kid brother’s numbed little face, the black-bordered notice in the
North Hawk Weekly.

And now, like him, she was a guest of Desmond Moore at Castle Moore. Tonight, and all week, he’d be sleeping under the same roof as Torrey Tunet. Christ!

All because of the asparagus soup that evening two weeks ago at the Waterside Inn in North Hawk. He saw himself and his new client, Desmond Moore, Massachusetts resident and owner of a castle in Ireland, being ushered by the headwaiter to his table, passing the candlelit table of the little thief, become so elegant a young woman … saw Desmond Moore’s sleeve accidentally brush her table, rucking up the white tablecloth and sweeping the plate of cold asparagus soup into her lap. Confusion, laughter, waiters, bus-boys mopping up … Desmond Moore apologizing, Desmond spotting the little thief’s book of Gaelic grammar on the table, his curiosity, then his awakening sexual interest as he looked into the gray eyes with their rim of short black lashes.

“Gaelic?” Moore had asked, nodding toward the book.

“Just recreation,” she’d answered. She was an interpreter and translator. She would be in Dublin on an interpreting job in a couple of weeks, French and Hungarian. Ireland was neutral terrain. “But I always like to be familiar with a few words of the language of any country where I’m working. Gaelic—I understand it’s called ‘Irish’ these days?—is the official language of Ireland, isn’t it? And still used mostly in the Gaeltacht parts of Ireland.”

“Dublin? You’ll be in Dublin?” Desmond Moore had exclaimed. “I’ve ruined your dress with that asparagus soup. You’ve got to be my guest at Castle Moore.”

“No, really,” with a laugh, “but thanks.”

And Moore, “I mean it! Twenty minutes from Dublin. I’ve a stable, good horses to ride, a lake…”

The rotten little thief had slanted a glance at Luke, a malicious glance, cold as dry ice, smoking cold. Almost as though she were daring him to tell Desmond Moore what he knew about her. Or was she remembering the stone shattering the windshield when she was eighteen and necking one night with Jeremy Lowe in Lowe’s car on old Forsythe Road? Who else but he, Luke Willinger, had flung it? Ten years ago. He was then twenty-two; now, at thirty-two, he flexed his fingers as though they were gripping another stone.

“… dating back to 1795”—a Botanic Gardens guide leading a tour group past, was saying—”twenty thousand varieties of plants, also including a rose garden and a vegetable garden.”

He left the Botanic Gardens. In a nearby pub he had a meat pie and coffee. An asparagus soup had ruined any pleasure in his forthcoming week at Castle Moore, where he’d be studying the terrain and working out landscaping plans. Desmond Moore was very rich. Luke swallowed the last of the coffee. Sixteen acres of garden, a challenging project. A good fee was in order.

As for the little thief—

He swore under his breath. Whatever he could spoil for Torrey Tunet, he would spoil. Whatever he could ruin, he would ruin.

8

At half after twelve, Fergus Callaghan wheeled his motorbike off the bridle path and propped it beside a stand of birches. He’d left his genealogical research for Desmond Moore in the Castle Moore library, and momentarily he felt happily free of it.

He walked through the woods. They were speckled with sunlight, leaves rustling in the breeze.

Fergus reached the cottage. A peaceful-sounding buzzing of grasshoppers came from the weedy grass. A rabbit stood on hind legs, eyed Fergus an instant, and vanished.

“Mrs. Devlin?” Fergus stood before the stone lintel of the cottage and cocked his head, listening. He could hear her singing to herself, an old ballad he couldn’t place. The door was not on the latch but open an inch.

Had she heard him? He waited patiently, gazing at the peeling green paint on the door. He’d be happy to paint the door for her. He could bring his electric sander and get rid of the bubbled old flaking paint. He would smooth it down, slick as peeled birch. Or maybe she’d like a different color. He’d bring a color chart; she could choose the color. Dare he suggest it?

He glanced around. Each time he came to the cottage, with the pretense that he’d come for bread, he thought it a pity that Maureen Devlin had no time for a patch of garden. Vegetables, maybe; the pleasure of picking her own vegetables. Not much space for a garden though. There were only a few feet of uncut grass and weeds, enough so that the cottage was not engulfed by the surrounding woods. There was a grassy path worn by Maureen’s going daily to and from the cottage, past the little pond and farther on to the break in the hedge in order to reach the road.

Fergus squinted at a trampled patch of weeds beneath one of the small windows. It looked scuffed; a clod of fresh earth was turned up. Perhaps a badger had been investigating, foraging for food. Anyway, that spot got plenty of sun. If ever Maureen had a vegetable garden, it should be there.

Low, her contralto voice humming now. Perhaps she hadn’t heard him. “Mrs. Devlin?” he called again, louder.

“Fergus Callaghan? Come in.”

He pushed open the door. She was in the old rocker by the stove, soaking her feet in a dishpan. She looked exhausted and beautiful. Her navy skirt was rucked up above her white knees, which showed blue tracings of veins. The water in the battered dishpan reached above her ankles. Fergus felt a painful rush of love and embarrassment. He blushed. “You’re fine, I hope, Mrs. Devlin?”

“As fine as ever I’ll be, Mr. Callaghan.” Tired as she seemed, there was a teasing glint in her dark blue eyes. “You have a good reason for stopping by?”

“Reason? Stopping by?” He felt very warm. “Bread. Yes, I just left Castle Moore; I’d had an appointment. I was going past through the woods on my motorbike when I thought,
bread.
Bread. That you might be baking. Or have baked … might have baked…”

“You sound like a lad in a Latin class, Mr. Callaghan. What about ‘would have baked’?” She reached down and rubbed one of her bare feet. “I suppose you think I have no shame, chatting with a visitor with my feet in a dishpan? I haven’t a single loaf on hand, Mr. Callaghan. But I’m baking in an hour. Let’s see … That’s bread for tonight for Castle Moore; and baking in the night again for bread ready in the morning: three orders, two for in the village when I go to work. How many loaves would you be wanting? And when? The oven’s only so big. Six at a time is what I can do. Sit down while you’re thinking, Mr. Callaghan.”

Fergus pulled at his tie. Was she laughing at him? “Well.” Should he ask for two loaves? Two, at least. “I’m thinking two loaves. I could pick them up tomorrow noon … if that’s all right? I have to be at Castle Moore again in the morning. So I can come by afterward.” He looked away from her white knees with their delicate blue tracings. Was she ever lonely? Did she sometimes waken in the night and long for a man in her warm bed? Did she keen in the dark for her late husband? Emmet Devlin had been a carpenter. He had fallen from a ladder and struck his head and died two days later in the hospital. Six years ago. The little girl, Finola, had been only two.

“Yes, come by tomorrow. After Castle Moore.” Maureen Devlin gave Fergus a sidewise look. “And how are you getting on with the genealogy for Mr. Desmond Moore?”

“Well…” Fergus wished she hadn’t asked, “You know, like a lot of Irish Americans, Mr. Moore believes—But one can’t always trace a family back to … ah … ahh…”

“To Celtic kings? Or only to lesser nobility?” Derision in Maureen Devlin’s voice.

“Ah, well…,” Fergus said, awkwardly. He was remembering Maureen Devlin’s own antecedents, those Anglo-Irish, who they had been. And it had come to this, an old groundsman’s cottage with a fireplace kitchen for a living room, with its pine table and chairs and two worn chairs and a shabby couch. The black iron gas stove for the bread. Besides this main room, the cottage had a small bathroom and a bedroom, where Maureen and Finola slept. The cottage belonged to Desmond Moore, as did all the surrounding woodland, and the glens and streams and mountainsides.

Maureen Devlin took a clean, ragged towel from the arm of the rocker and began to dry her feet. So white, they were! “Did you see Finola outside?”

“No.” He shook his head.

“She must still be picking blackberries,” Maureen said. “I should buy her a watch. She gets thirty pence a box for the blackberries. I bring the boxes to Ballynagh. She wants a set of doll’s dishes with the money when she has enough.”

Maureen put down the towel. She smiled at Fergus. “I’m so lucky. Finola’s very capable for an eight-year-old. I go to work before six in the morning. Then she makes her own breakfast and does an hour’s reading. She’s afraid of not keeping up, for when the fall semester starts.”

“Kids!” Fergus said, sympathetically.

“She’s so good. She fixes us something to eat at noon, for when I get home from work. She makes sandwiches, peanut butter, or chopped egg, or tomato, and wraps them in plastic wrap and puts them in the refrigerator. She has the kettle filled, ready for tea.”

Maureen Devlin folded the towel and put it on the arm of the chair. She slipped her feet into flat rubber sandals and stood up.

“You’ll have a sandwich or two with us, Mr. Callaghan? And a cup of tea?”

“Well…” He wanted to. Oh, how he wanted to! “Thank you.”

“I’ll just add more water to the kettle,” Maureen said. At the stove, she lifted the kettle. Then, motionless, she held the kettle. “Why, I don’t—After all my bragging! Finola has forgotten to fill the kettle again. That’s the third time. Her mind’s off in the sky someplace. And not eating right. A bit worrisome.” Slowly she filled the kettle under the faucet. “And where is she? She’s always been so responsible.”