The Irish Manor House Murder (15 page)

Cold, brisk October morning air. At nine-thirty, Torrey in duffle coat, woolen cap, jeans, and brogues pedaled fast up the oak-lined drive of Ashenden Manor.

“Oh, no, it isn’t too early! I’m always up at six,” Caroline Temple had told her when she’d phoned a half hour earlier, “Come right over! Scott calls them trinkets, those bequests. Would mementos be a better word? Or keepsakes? Can I give you breakfast? No? Well, anyway, yes. Now’s fine. I’m alone, Rowena’s already doing the horses at Castle Moore, and Scott’s off somewhere. Mark just left for his office.”

*   *   *

The “trinkets” lay on the sideboard in the dining room. Caroline had taken them from an envelope and lined them up. Torrey, still in her duffle coat, gazed down at them.

Her father’s will in hand, Caroline said, “I should’ve already gotten them off to Wickham and Slocum — they’re the lawyers. But anyway, I didn’t.” With a finger, she poked at a pair of cuff links, cameos set in filigreed silver. “These to” — she looked at her father’s will —“to Dr. Leon Seuret, in Montreal. And this” — she pushed at a gold tie clip shaped like a fish with a sapphire for its eye —“this clip to Dr. Clive Mahoney, in Galway.” Next, “The stopwatch — marvelous, isn’t it? — to Dr. Campbell in Edinburgh. And the gold ring with the silver inlay to Dr. Steensen in Copenhagen. My father did have an eye! All beautiful things. Which he wore.”

“Hmmm?” Torrey picked up the ring. It was a wide gold ring, inset with intertwining leaves in silver. She could see that there was an inscription inside. She held the ring up to the light and scanned the inscription. It was in Danish.

Caroline said, “I must ask Scott or Mark to drop these off at Wickham and Slocum tomorrow. If I remember. Honestly, sometimes I think I’m losing my —”

“Caroline? Could I possibly borrow this?” She was holding the heavy gold ring. “Until tomorrow or so? I’d like to show it to Jasper. He’s so keen on Danish craftsmanship, he’d be fascinated.” She almost bit her tongue on the lie.

Ten minutes later, the Danish ring wrapped in a napkin in her pocket, she pedalled as fast as possible back up the drive between the rows of ancient oaks.

*   *   *

“A message for you, Mr. O’Mara.”

Sara Hobbs, at the reception desk at Nolan’s Bed-and-Breakfast, slid the bit of blue paper from the cubbyhole. She blushed when she handed it to Mr. O’Mara. The note seemed so breezily intimate, so free and open, not caring who was looking or what might be forbidden. More like with a bit of laughter. She’d taken the message over the telephone, writing it down in her careful penmanship. The message was even somehow romantic:
Jasper — Skip today. Am on a hunt. How about a steak-and-kidney pie tomorrow night? And some kind of Irish tart? Besides this American one, ha ha. Love and kisses.

The note was signed, simply, “T.” But of course she knew it was Torrey Tunet who’d rented the old groundsman’s cottage. Ms. Tunet, who’d stopped in at Nolan’s a week ago, asking about Kathleen Brady from Galway. Sweet, bewildered Kathleen Brady who’d become Mrs. Gerald Ashenden and had visited her spinster aunt, bringing the thin-boned little Caroline. Ms. Tunet’s visit had called up her own dear childhood memories and made her eyes misty.

Anyway, Ms. Tunet. Something slantingly lovely about that young woman, though why she’d thought
slantingly,
Sara couldn’t really say. For some reason, Sara straightened and pulled up from a comfortable slouch. Shameful the way she was letting herself go.

“Thanks, Mrs. Hobbs.” Jasper slipped the note into his corduroy pants pocket, smiled at her, and took himself off down the carpeted stairs.

Sara Hobbs settled down at the desk and went back to working on the accounts. Mr. O’Mara had the best room, the one with its own bath. And a telephone besides. He made only a few telephone calls. Most of them to other countries. Spain, Italy, France. But lately only to Portugal. She carefully billed the calls to his account.

44

It was windy at Kastrup Airport outside of Copenhagen and about fifty degrees, though the morning was sunny. Torrey felt smugly pleased that she had thought to wear her heavy jacket. She took her knitted woolen cap from her shoulder bag and put it on: it was shaped like a casque and snugly covered her ears. She looked at her watch. Ten minutes past two. The eleven o’clock morning flight from Dublin airport had taken two hours. But there was the hour’s time change. She felt a familiar sense of excitement, something exhilarating that made her feel alert, as though her blood ran faster.
I’ve got the wind up,
she thought. The gold-and-silver ring with its Danish inscription was in an envelope in her shoulder bag.

Dr. Steensen. The address was in Nyhavn. That would be the old harbor area. Torrey remembered it from two years before when she’d been in Copenhagen on an EU interpreting job. Nyhavn was an old part of the city, hundreds of years old, and the one-time notorious hangout of sailors, roving and drunk. But in recent years Nyhavn had become an elegant quarter of Copenhagen. The conference at which Torrey had interpreted had been held at the eighteenth-century Hotel D’Angleterre in Nyhavn, the most expensive hotel in Copenhagen. The roistering harbor was now fashionable apartments and elegant private houses.

Dr. Steensen’s address was on a narrow street that was quiet and spotless. It was one of a row of low, cream-colored buildings.

*   *   *

“Ms. Tunet? Dr. Steensen is expecting you.” The girl who opened the door spoke in English. She was not much more than a schoolgirl, with short-cut blonde hair, and wearing corduroy jeans and a round-necked sweater. She was pulling on a puffy red windbreaker, one arm already in a sleeve. “I’m on my way out. Dr. Steensen’s in there,” she added as she jerked her head back, grabbed up a shoulder bag from a chair, and was out the door. It closed behind her with a solid click.

Torrey pulled off her knitted cap and combed her fingers through her hair. It was so quiet, so
richly
quiet. The hall had ivory walls and a rainbow-patterned rug on the bleached oak floor. A V-shaped translucent wall sconce sent soft light upward. Nothing else but a small green chair beside the door and an antlered coat stand of pale, polished wood. Torrey blew out a sigh of sensuous pleasure. Then she took off her jacket, hung it on an antler, and walked down the hall.

*   *   *

The room she entered struck her as dazzling yet comfortable. To her left was a brushed steel spiral staircase. In the center of the room, two brilliant red couches faced each other across an African woolen rug. Between the couches was a low black coffee table that held a few tattered magazines, a dish of cookies, and a Danish silver tea service that Torrey recognized as Jensen. Beyond, a scattering of rattan chairs faced a half-moon fireplace in which a small fire burned. The room smelled of hickory smoke.

But Dr. Steensen? The room was empty. Prickles of anxiety slid down Torrey’s spine. Could Dr. Steensen have decided against seeing her? Would an efficient secretary appear with an excuse?
I’m sorry, Dr. Steensen has been taken ill.
Or maybe,
Dr. Steensen was unexpectedly called away.
Some excuse. Any excuse, having had a change of heart.

Too apprehensive to sit down, Torrey picked up one of the tattered magazines from the coffee table and flipped the pages. A bit of blue paper marked a page. Torrey read, “Dr. Steensen invariably looks as though she has just returned from Africa or the Far East, having dispensed vitally needed medicines and information on pedriatics. That often is true. Primarily in —”

But she was interrupted by quick, sure footsteps and a contralto voice, “So sorry! A phone call!”

Dr. Ingeborg Steensen, tall, straight-backed, came toward her. She wore a lavender silk-knitted sweater and gray flannel skirt. Her long fair hair was drawn back from her forehead and worn in a bun at her nape. The hand she held out, and that Torrey clasped, was warm and strong.

Torrey gazed at Dr. Steensen. She thought that a Scandinavian princess of a thousand years ago might have had that perfect face. Dr. Steensen must now be in her midseventies. There were fine wrinkles around her brown eyes and on her oval, tanned face. There were silvery streaks in the flaxen hair.

And just now, a scrutinizing, unsmiling look in Dr. Steensen’s brown eyes as she met Torrey’s gaze. “Please sit down, Ms. Tunet.” As they sat down opposite each other on the red couches, Dr. Steensen said, “I see you’ve been trapped by one of the magazines my grandchildren insist on keeping.” But it was a mechanical phrase, and Torrey was aware of a waiting tension in Dr. Steensen’s straight back. How to start?

“Tea?” Dr. Steensen asked. “This is African; I think you’ll like it. Very popular in Ireland, I remember.” Dr. Steensen’s contralto voice faltered over the word
Ireland.
She poured tea and held put the plate of cookies, “These are —” But abruptly she put down the plate, her hand so unsteady that the cookies slid off the plate onto the table. She looked squarely at Torrey.

“When you called me from Ballynagh, you said, ‘about Dr. Gerald Ashenden.’ I knew he was dead. Murdered. It was on the RTE news from Ireland. I don’t know who you are. You said you wanted to bring me something. You said that it might help reveal who … who —”

“Yes. Reveal who murdered Dr. Ashenden.”

“But,” Dr. Steensen looked puzzled. “But according to the reports, the Gardai already have reason to believe they know who killed him. It was his granddaughter, Rowena Keegan.”

“So they suspect,” Torrey said. “But I don’t. She wouldn’t. Not Rowena! She’s my friend. I know her.”

Dr. Steensen sat back against the red cushions and folded her arms. The thin lavender sweater clung softly against her neck and shoulders; her brown eyes gazed at Torrey. She sighed and shook her head, and the light shone on her silvery hair. “And in what magical way do you think I can help solve this mystery? And save your friend Rowena?”

Torrey reached down to where she had rested her shoulder bag against the red couch. She slid in a hand and withdrew the envelope and handed it across the table to Dr. Steensen. “There’s this.”

Watching Dr. Steensen open the envelope, her heart began to beat more rapidly. All the way on the plane from Dublin, she had thought of that gold ring with its chaste design in silver. It was a man’s wedding ring with the inscription in Danish:
To Gerald, my love, to our union. October 1940. Ingeborg.

But Gerald Ashenden had married Kathleen Brady in August of that same year.

*   *   *

“Where did you get this ring?” Dr. Steensen’s voice was husky. She slipped the ring onto her middle finger, where it hung loosely.
“Where?”

“I borrowed it. Dr. Ashenden left it to you in his will. I have to return it so that it can be sent you properly, through the lawyers.”

“I see. And this is your magic? To bring me this ring! As though I could know something that might help save your friend? Your friend Rowena, who murdered her grandfather? Ah, no, Ms. Tunet! Ah, no!”

“But she didn’t! She didn’t kill him! When I read the inscription in the wedding ring, I thought,
Go to Dr. Steensen! Maybe she knows something that would help me.
Help Rowena, I mean.” She was gabbling, she knew, but she couldn’t stop. “I thought at least you could … could give me a lead. Or, oh, I don’t know!” Abruptly she felt ridiculous, a fool. What in God’s name was she doing in Copenhagen in this apartment with its satiny steel spiral staircase and red couches, looking across a Jensen teapot at this beautiful Scandinavian woman named Ingeborg Steensen who after all had not married the young Dr. Gerald Ashenden. Fool,
fool!
And what, anyway, had it to do with Rowena? Was she losing her mind? A wasted trip.

“I’m sorry.” She rubbed her temples. She would have to ask for the wedding ring back, then leave. She looked at Dr. Ingeborg Steensen, who gave no smile in return, nothing but a steady regard from her brown eyes.

“You see,” Torrey burst out impulsively, defensively, “Rowena is pregnant!” And then she thought,
But what has that to do with it?

Dr. Steensen’s brown eyes widened. “Ahhh!” It was almost a groan. Then, softly, “I pity her.”

“Pity her? Why? What do you mean?”

Dr. Steensen said quietly, “Because now I know that I truly cannot tell you anything that will help her.”

*   *   *

They sat staring at each other. “What?” Torrey managed at last. “What is it?”

Dr. Steensen turned the ring around and around in her fingers. She looked down at it. “I was a medical student in Dublin. I was in love with Gerald Ashenden. We were going to marry. Then something terrible happened. I learned of it only by chance from a drunken X-ray technician. When I learned of it, I was filled with horror. I packed my clothes and student books and fled home to Denmark.” Dr. Steensen drew a breath, “Yet” — she shook her head in disbelief —“yet years later I fell to answering Gerald’s letters. Even though, in my mind, I rehearsed over and over what he had done and why I fled from him. An endless round, round, and round. Strange. I had long since married. I had children, I have grandchildren.”

A silence. Torrey waited. She was seeing Ingeborg Steensen, a flaxen-haired young medical student, brown eyes wide with horror, stuffing clothes and books into a traveling bag with brass clasps. Yet, years later, letters …

“So, Ms. Tunet, I will tell you why I fled. Can it help Rowena Keegan? Alas, no. I can only tell you that, were I Rowena, I might have tried to kill him too.” Dr. Steensen put the Danish ring down on the coffee table and slid it slowly toward Torrey. “It is not a tale you will enjoy hearing, Ms. Tunet.” She looked at her wristwatch, then sat back against the red cushions. “We have time.”

45

“Winifred?”

“Sheila, you’re interrupting me. When I wear my cap on backward, it means the Muse is with me. Which you very well know.”

“Yes, but —” Sheila came farther into Winifred’s workroom in the old tower section of the castle. It was midafternoon, but dull. A green-shaded lamp glowed on Winifred’s heavy old oak desk with a blotter set in an old-fashioned blotter holder with leather edges. There was a glass filled with a miscellany of pens and pencils and a dish of paper clips and rubber bands. Right now, but not usually, a bottle of ink rested on a corner of the blotter. On a nearby table was a computer, temporarily shrouded with a kitchen towel.