The Irish Manor House Murder (14 page)

What?
Scott disinherited two years ago. Torrey looked down again at the will. Had Dr. Ashenden found out something about Scott that … what? Enraged him? Disgusted him? Were Scott’s sexual preferences the cause? Or perhaps his extravagance? Scott had a taste for luxury. His jackets were enviable, the finest cashmere; his watch was melted gold on his wrist, his shoes handmade. He must have a good income from somewhere. Possibly through his late father?

Whatever the reason, his grandfather’s punishment had crashed down on Scott. A legacy of ten pence.

Torrey put the will back and closed the drawer. Had Scott known that he’d been disinherited? Or, at his grandfather’s death, had he expected a sizable inheritance?

She barely knew Scott. She’d been in Ballynagh only three months and friends with Rowena not that long. And Scott seemed to be always off to Dublin. What went on in his handsome head? Bitterness, for one thing: it showed in the downward little twist at a corner of his mouth. Cheated. He’d been cheated. His crippled leg. As a child, had he cried at night about it? Did he even now think, wretchedly,
Why me?

Standing beside the desk, Torrey hesitated. So quiet, this manor house. But of course there were servants in the kitchen, Jennie O’Shea and the other girl, Mary. Possibly already preparing dinner? The upstairs work done?

Scott gone off somewhere. Caroline and Mark Temple out walking. Rowena studying.

Two wills, two years apart. And Rowena in Inspector O’Hare’s sights. Torrey drew a breath and left the library.

*   *   *

Upstairs at the west end of the hall, the arched walnut door she knew was Scott’s room. She turned the knob.

Simple, even chaste, this bedroom with its high, vaulted ceiling and arched fireplace. There was a single bed with a plump, white down comforter. The walls were papered, once red, but now faded to pink. There was a chest of drawers of polished tiger maple. On it was a photograph of a rock group with a young woman. Torrey approached and saw that the fair-haired young woman with a circlet around her brow was Caroline, who must then have been Caroline Ashenden. The man beside her, holding a trumpet in the air in a gesture of triumph must have been Tom Keegan, Scott’s father.

She glanced into a tiled bathroom, then went through a dressing room to a comfortable sitting room with a table holding a scattering of magazines. There was an upright piano and piano bench on an oval rug and a rack piled with sheet music. Beyond was another door. Opening it, she saw it led into the back hall, a staircase going down.

What am I doing here?
She didn’t exactly know. But stubbornly, back again in the bedroom she poked impatiently through the dresser drawers hoping to find … what? In any case, she found nothing.

Enough! In the sitting room, she stopped abruptly beside the piano. Leave it.
Go!
You’re not helping Rowena by snooping around Scott’s rooms. You’re reaching for something more ephemeral than a spider’s web. In exasperation she thought:
There is nothing here to help!
Then on impulse, lifted the top of the piano bench.

Letters. She knelt on the floor. Two bundles of letters. She shuffled through them. Square, creamy, expensive envelopes addressed in an elegant script to Dr. Gerald Ashenden. Danish postmarks. Old. Years old. Picking up one of the letters, she saw underneath a small red leather notebook. She opened it. It was a list of checks received from Dr. Gerald Ashenden. Amounts in thousands of pounds. Checks made out to Scott Keegan, their dates going back from two weeks ago to two years ago.

Torrey sank back, staring at the list of checks. So that’s where Scott’s money came from! Blackmailing his grandfather. He must have found these letters two years ago. That’s when he had suddenly become rich. Blackmail. Scott’s secret river of gold. But
why?
Why risk his inheritance? She itched to read the letters. She picked up one of the square envelopes and began to slide out the letter — and heard, beyond the dressing room, the door to the bedroom open. Then Scott’s voice, “Put it down there, by the door. Easy, now, easy! It’s breakable, and one of a kind. Careful!
Careful,
for Christ’s sake!”

She dropped the envelope back into the piano bench. In a minute she was through the sitting room door and down the back stairs, wishing she had dared steal at least one of the letters.

41

In the Jeep, coming back with Sheila from an Irish Women Poets Society reading in Dublin, Winifred had to slow down to go around the delivery truck parked by the side of the road.
Bellinger’s Bedding,
the truck read,
Instant Delivery and Pickup.
Two delivery men in heavy tan sweatshirts were coming from the break in the hedgerow that led to the groundsman’s cottage. They were carrying a bed whose rails were flecked with rust and peeling paint.

“A bit
too
finicky,” Sheila said, as they drove on. “For instance, at Castle Moore,
generations
have died in the same family beds.”

“But not assisted by a pillow mashed down on their face,” Winifred said. “It rather changes things when you get under the blanket and turn out the light.”

“She’s a darling-
looking
young woman,” Sheila said. “Torrey. Those gray eyes and that swag of dark hair that keeps falling over her forehead. I quite see how Jasper O’Mara can be taken with her, but —”

“And she with him. He’s a fine piece of meat, that Jasper O’Mara. And a mind that sings.” Then, thoughtfully, “But why it’s singing in Ballynagh wonders me.”

Sheila, though, was off on another tack. “Winifred? Awful as it is, maybe Rowena Keegan
did
kill her grandfather. Torrey Tunet would never believe it. Torrey will likely be claiming that the
real
murderer of Dr. Ashenden meant to smother
her,
Torrey, not the gypsy, because she’s getting on to him.”

“Or her,” Winifred said automatically. She stepped harder on the gas. She wasn’t going to tell Sheila of her dismaying suspicion, having these last few days from her study window seen Rowena walk Gravy Train back to the stable, that heavy walk that somehow … Yes, thinking back and back about Rowena and her grandfather. Obsessed with the child. It could be. A tragic poem she’d never write.

She hoped Inspector Egan O’Hare had no inkling.

*   *   *

At the Ballynagh police station, at four in the afternoon, Inspector Egan O’Hare absentmindedly watched Sergeant Bryson squeeze a little plastic envelope of mustard onto a corned beef sandwich, Bryson’s idea of a teatime collation. He himself was having a mug of tea and a scone.

“Two murders in ten days.” Chief Superintendent O’Reilly’s voice on the phone from Dublin an hour ago had been silky smooth. “Any connection, Egan? Between the two murders? An eminent surgeon and a gypsy! What’s going on there?”

What was going on was that he had let a murderess out of jail, and a drunken gypsy had got herself killed by being in the wrong bed. The bed of the meddlesome Ms. Tunet who might have been murdered if she hadn’t been off at the movies and then rounding off her evening at O’Malley’s.

If only he had the one missing piece! That tantalizingly missing piece: the
why
of Rowena Keegan’s murdering her grandfather.

Tantalizing. It couldn’t have been money. Dr. Ashenden would have given that girl the moon. O’Hare, exasperated, blew out a breath and shook his head. Evenings at home, staring at the television screen while Noreen was doing the dishes with Marcy’s help — Marcy at eighteen was still at home, but the boys already off on their own — he’d kept trying to get at it. The
why
of the girl’s murderous action. If he had that, the rest would be easy.

In the police station, the smell of mustard reached him. He looked over at Sergeant Bryson. “You’ve got that list, Jimmy?”

“Right here, Inspector.”

Sergeant Bryson tossed the empty packet of mustard into the wastebasket and brought the list from the file.

Inspector O’Hare only glanced at it, after all. He knew it by heart. Not an alibi in the lot. Interrogation after interrogation. Wasting his time, reading it for the thousandth time,
Just walking about, Inspector … No, Inspector, can’t say I did run into anybody … Lured out by the foliage, Inspector. Didn’t see a soul, though.
One after another. Winifred Moore, Sheila Flaxton, Scott Keegan, Mark Temple, and the others.

Inspector O’Hare threw down the list. “Who’s that writer fellow said, ‘No man is an island’? Donne. John Donne. Well, Mr. Donne, each possible suspect in Dr. Ashenden’s murder is an island.”

“And what about the gypsy’s murder, Inspector?” Sergeant Bryson asked.

O’Hare didn’t even hear. He was thinking of Rowena Keegan. He was seeing again the fax of the water-stained notebook from the gully lying on his desk, seeing Rowena beside the desk in an old pair of stained jodhpurs, holding a can of diet Coke. Rowena lying to him, beads of perspiration on her forehead darkening the red-gold ringlets that fell across her brow. And something else. Something different, that creamy softness, an indefinable fullness, a heaviness like his wife Noreen when —

O’Hare caught his breath.

42

“So —” Jasper was refilling his glass with the dark beer; the firelight reflected on the glass. “So your shameless snooping in Scott’s rooms indicates exactly what? That he’s absolutely not the murderer because killing his grandfather would’ve dried up the stream of his blackmailing riches? So that lets him out?”

Torrey nodded. Her mouth was full. Jasper had made braised lamb and an Irish dish called colcannon, a mixture of hot mashed potato, cabbage, butter, and milk, with a touch of nutmeg. Tonight’s wine wasn’t a wine but the dark beer. Guinness.

Jasper said, “Aren’t you missing something, Torrey? Scott did himself out of his inheritance by blackmailing his grandfather. A mite shortsighted.”

Torrey shrugged. “Maybe he turned to blackmail because he hungered for money
now,
not fifteen or twenty years from now. His grandfather was hale and hearty and could’ve lived a long time. Besides, maybe Scott felt his grandfather didn’t think much of him — limping around on his skinny leg, and gay — so mightn’t leave him much of anything.” She sipped beer. “
I
don’t know. I’m just a worker in the fields.”

“All right,” Jasper said. “So what have we here? One blackmailing. Two killings. Quite a shocker in this village where in O’Malley’s pub the talk is of soccer and weather, with a bit of politics. And the wooded lands are like a poster, ‘Come visit this corner of Ireland, bosky dells and sweet —’”

“Bosky dells, yes. But death in these woods has happened before. Rowena once told me of a heavy rain one spring. It made a bit of a landslide the other side of Castle Moore. A child caught in it was lost. And Kathleen Brady, Gerald Ashenden’s wife, died in a fire in the woods.”

“I didn’t know.”

“And another death, one that gave me shivers, Rowena said that when she was young, she’d heard tell how years before, one night at a dinner party at Ashenden Manor, a guest from Dublin got so drunk he wandered off and fell facedown in a bog. Too drunk to get up. He suffocated. There’s a death for you!”

“Thanks, no. Glad I wasn’t the one to find him. Never had a strong stomach.” Jasper squinted at his glass of beer. It was a twenty-ounce draft glass, a pub glass. He’d bought two of them from Sean O’Malley.

“Dr. Collins found him,” Torrey said. “He’d worried and gone looking. But too late. He got Ashenden to help him carry the fellow’s body back to the manor. Padraic Collins didn’t have the strength. He’s small, too. And maybe pudgy back then, besides. Rowena says he likes his dinner too much.”

Jasper raised a brow and helped himself to more colcannon. His comfortably overweight body in a black corduroy shirt and loose pants was relaxed. But after a few mouthfuls, he put down his fork, got up, and went to the fireplace. “These logs are damp; the dew went right through the canvas.” With the poker he shifted the logs. The fire flared, then steadied. Jasper stood watching the licking flames, his back to Torrey. Then he turned. His long-jawed face was serious. “You’ve snared yourself in Rowena Keegan’s troubles, Torrey. Stop it. You could make things worse for her, antagonizing Inspector O’Hare. And you’re wearing yourself out.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I come in at four o’clock this afternoon and find you sleeping with your head on the computer. Not good.”

Torrey said, “But —”

“And what’s on your computer? None of your work. Just one word on the computer:
brev.
A few dozen times.
Brev, brev, brev.
What’s
brev?
”

“
Brev?
Danish. It means ‘letter.’ That batch of letters I told you about? In Scott’s piano bench? I must’ve been thinking about that.” She narrowed her eyes, concentrating. “There’s something I almost remember about Denmark, something recent, but I can’t quite…” She gave up, shrugged, and shook her head. “The sort of thing that can drive you crazy. Trying to remember something that’s always just escaping you. Denmark.
Denmark,
damn it!
Denmark.
” She blew out a breath. “Oh, well … This colcannon is strictly heaven. Why’s it called colcannon?”

“Gaelic. Irish Gaelic,
cál ceannan,
white-headed cabbage. It also…”

But Torrey no longer heard.
Brev.
Danish. Of course! She suddenly felt almost breathlessly on track. Dr. Ashenden’s will. Denmark. Bequests. “Well, well…!”

“
Now
what?” Jasper’s black brows were drawn. He was studying her sharply. Torrey smiled at him. It warmed her, Jasper’s concern for her. Lucky she was, that Jasper had come into her life, come by chance, come out of the blue. Caring, loving. As for tomorrow —

She shivered with anticipation, impatient for tomorrow. Meanwhile —

She forked up a mouthful of the wonderful, Irish dish. “Delicious, this colcannon. I think it’s the nutmeg.”

43