The Irish Manor House Murder (20 page)

Next, on foot, having parked their car farther down in front of Coyle’s market, here came the Temples. Passing McIntyre, the fair-haired Caroline, mother of the possible murderess, turned her head, and her great beautiful hazel eyes looked at him. Slender woman in a long black coat. He always had an eye out for a glimpse of her in the village. She had a cocky jaw, a bit of mischief there, but this morning somewhat in absentia because of the circumstances. Her new husband, Dr. Temple, manipulator of folks’ bones, wore country squire clothes. He had short, rusty hair, and his body had the thickness of a wrestler.

Butler Street was empty now except for the tea and coffee container drinkers. McIntyre took the last bite of the sausage bun. Where was the darling young woman, the American? Listened like a shadow on the wall, listened like a moth at the edge —

Here came Dr. Collins. Padraic Collins in his father’s old tweed cap. Family-proud Anglo-Irish, generations of it. Collins Court. At Dr. Collins’s elbow was his housekeeper, stocky Helen Lavery, in a rump-sprung wool skirt and buttoned jacket that strained across her bosom. Dyed hair, must’ve dyed it herself, a waste of dye. But known to be a kind woman and hardworking. Took care of Dr. Collins’s needs except for sex, which McIntyre’d heard the good doctor found elsewhere … though Helen Lavery likely was pining away with love of him, housekeepers always were. Or governesses. Jane Eyre types abounded. What a —

Ah,
there!
Riding up on a bike, the American young woman, Torrey her name was. Lovely looking thing even in the navy pants and red sweater. A gray-eyed, satin-haired young woman with a mouth like a flower. Parked the bike, and going past him into the police station, gave him a bit of a nod and a wink. Sassy. High color in her cheeks, back straight as a soldier’s.

“Well, then, McIntyre, what’s it about?” Someone behind him gave a laugh and jogged his elbow. “You always know.”

“About modern life,” McIntyre said, “and civilization, or the lack thereof, from the time of the Ice Age.” One of that lot, now inside the police station, was a murderer. Or maybe two of them were killers — there’d been the gypsy mixed up in it too.

Good luck to you, Inspector Egan O’Hare.

58

Inspector Egan O’Hare, half sitting on the edge of his desk, looked at his watch. Five minutes to ten. There was low talk and rustling. They’d all arrived.

Yesterday afternoon when Torrey Tunet had burst into the police station, he’d listened skeptically to her startling tale. He’d even smiled. After all, he already had the Ashenden murder case well in hand.

Yet … yet. Such an incredible tale! And, strangely, unwilling as he was to think so,
possible.
And he’d thought,
Best to cover myself,
because what if in fact there was something valid in Torrey Tuner’s astonishing tale? If he ignored it, he risked ending up having bet the wrong horse. A thousand-to-one chance. Still … So “an informal meeting,” he’d told Sergeant Bryson.

Now here they all were.

*   *   *

The clock on top of the Coke machine gave its tinny chimes. Ten o’clock. The low talk and rustling subsided. Winifred Moore, glaring, crushed out her cigarette in the paper plate that Sergeant Bryson held out while he shook his head and mouthed, “No smoking.”

O’Hare cleared his throat. He remained half sitting on the front edge of his desk, swinging one leg. Informal, that was the ticket. He smiled at the attentive faces. Nine people. “It may seem odd, this informal inquiry. But in earlier cases, I’ve found that bringing together those concerned invariably elicits remarkably helpful information that —” Smiling, smiling, on he blathered, knowing that he wouldn’t get a damned bit of new information from the eight of these nine people he’d questioned in the past weeks. He’d questioned all of them. All but one. Fake it. Go through it. Question the lot. Lull that ninth witness.

“Ms. Sheila Flaxton,” he began, “now you stated that…”

*   *   *

In the next hour, he questioned one person after another with seeming narrow-eyed intensity. He had never before practiced such trickery.

He carefully did not cast even one glance toward the seated figure at the left who, not yet questioned, was the key to not one murder, but two. At least according to the information from Ms. Torrey Tunet. In any case, he was still having the Gardai in Dublin follow the pregnant Rowena Keegan.

Several times during the questioning, he slid a glance toward Ms. Tunet, who stood against the wall beside the Coke machine. Nelson lay at her feet. Nelson’s tail thumped each time Ms. Tunet shifted, which Inspector O’Hare noted was often. Edgy, a high color in her cheeks. She’d brought him such an astonishing revelation, a revelation that, if proved true, would in the next few minutes certainly exonerate Rowena Keegan. Ms. Tunet obviously thought she had placed a sword in his hand. Well, that remained to be seen. No wonder she was edgy, and Nelson sensed it.

But what could be the killer’s motivation, if Ms. Tunet was on the right track? Inspector O’Hare felt a chill, not coldness, but a kind of titillation of the nerves. If, in fact, he could in the next few minutes pinpoint
who
had murdered Dr. Ashenden, he still didn’t know the
why
of it.

“But
why?
” he had asked, stunned, yesterday afternoon looking back at Torrey Tunet, the peacock bandanna straggling down the back of her neck, her face blazing with what she had just told him. “
Why,
do you suppose?”

He’d been startled to see the blazing excitement in Ms. Tunet’s face change to an expression of … horror? Her face had gone pale. But she’d said only, “Tomorrow, then?” And he’d nodded. “Yes. Ten o’clock.”

*   *   *

Now, creeping up to eleven o’clock. Everyone intent, as though watching a police show on television. Only that cough again, a nervous-sounding little cough-and-whistle from Sheila Flaxton. Nerves? She sat in the folding chair beside Winifred Moore. Such a timid woman, Ms. Flaxton. No wonder Winifred Moore ran the show.

From the other side of the room, a clatter as something fell to the floor and rolled to O’Hare’s feet. A silver pencil. Sergeant Bryson picked it up and returned it to Dr. Mark Temple, who whispered, “Sorry,” and raised his brows half humorously at O’Hare. The much-divorced chiropractor with a long history of appearing in gossip columns.

O’Hare thought,
Now,
and he cleared his throat and studied his notes, as though to see whom he would question next. Then he looked up. He smiled toward the stocky figure of Dr. Collins’s housekeeper. She was seated beside the doctor. “Helen Lavery.”

59

At half past ten o’clock Saturday morning, on a narrow country road twenty-two miles north of Kilkenny, Jasper O’Mara wormed his way out from under the Jaguar where he’d been tinkering and sweating for the last thirty-five minutes.

He slapped at the dirt on his pullover and pants and got in the car. Behind the wheel, he took a breath. The sweetest sound he could think of would be that of the engine running. He turned on the ignition. The dashboard lights flickered, steadied. The engine purred.

Jasper turned his head and smiled his relief at the passenger beside him. She smiled back and said, “Lord love us, Mr. O’Mara! You’re a genius.” Her Dublin accent was from around the Glasnevin area of small lanes, with row houses, mostly working-class people.

“Or more likely a mechanic,” he said. Time lost, now he drove fast, north toward Ballynagh. Early this morning, trying again unsuccessfully to reach Torrey at the cottage, he’d called Ashenden Manor. Jennie O’Shea had answered the phone. “Ms. Tunet? No, Mr. O’Mara, she’s not here, But later this morning she’ll likely be at the Ballynagh police station. Ten o’clock. A sort of inquiry?”

An inquiry, damn it!
Too soon, too soon!
Driving, he was seeing the house on Butler Street with the front casement windows. He was hearing Sara Hobbs’s sherry-slurred voice yesterday afternoon telling him her favorite old tale. Sentimental Sara Hobbs, blue eyes misty with sherry. “Another cup of tea, Mr. O’Mara?” Chinese tray tipping in her hands.

He pressed down on the gas. He had to get to Torrey. An inquiry! She might already be in the midst of the horror of it, not guessing what he now suspected. But first —

“You go too fast!” his passenger chided.

“Yes,” he answered, but he did not slow down. Because there was more to it. More.

60

“Helen Lavery.”

It startled her, Inspector O’Hare calling her name. She turned to Dr. Collins, frightened. He looked a little surprised, but he gave her a reassuring smile. It steadied her down. If Inspector O’Hare asked her if she’d seen anyone acting suspicious around the bridle path, she’d remind him that it had been a Friday. That was her church evening, as everyone in Ballynagh knew. So how could she have witnessed anything, the bridle path being in the opposite direction from St. Andrews?

Helen crossed her legs at the ankle, thankful that she was wearing her good brown shoes, what with sitting in the front, over on the side, and Inspector O’Hare only a few feet away, sort of sitting on his desk and swinging one leg, so casual like, and smiling at her. They were even about the same age, she being fifty-four next June, and him being a year younger, which she knew from school. She felt better now. She smiled back at Inspector O’Hare.

“So, Helen,” Inspector O’Hare began, but then instead of asking who or what she might have seen regarding Dr. Ashenden killed on the bridle path, he started rambling along about tinkers and gypsies traveling through the countryside. He went on for a whole minute, shaking his head over their thievery and their other unfortunate habits, and saying about himself having bought a dented little pot for two pounds six from from the gypsy woman, that gypsy who’d been murdered right here in Ballynagh. “I believe the unfortunate woman was somewhat of a nettle to some of our Ballynagh farmers. A nettle. And to other folk as well. Been seen hanging around Collins Court, that gypsy. Been a nuisance there too, had she, Helen?” and Inspector O’Hare looked at her expectantly.

Helen nodded. “Oh … well, yes. Hanging about. Pots and pans. Scary like, so sudden, there she’d be. And you hear such stories.” She stopped. But Inspector O’Hare was waiting for more, smiling at her, that expectant look.

“Scary, Helen? Scary how?”

Helen looked back at Inspector O’Hare. She had a feeling of obligation, that she was owing something, everybody sitting there waiting and looking at her, and she in her good brown shoes, being here. So it was as though she was obliged, she couldn’t keep it down.

“Well, last Monday — or maybe it was Tuesday — I’d gone to the village for fish for Dr. Collins’s dinner. Cod, it was. When I got back to Collins Court, that gypsy, she’d gotten into the house! She was in Dr. Collins’s study. He was shouting to her to get out. ‘What’s this?’ I said. I had the bag of fish and I raised it up like I was going to bash her with it. At that, she made a jabbing motion with her fingers at me but went off past me out the door. Dr. Collins’s face had got so white it worried me.”

Inspector O’Hare wagged his head, sympathetic. “Brazen, that gypsy. Other people complained too, you’re not the only one. And that was the last you saw of her? The gypsy?”

“Well, not the last. Next day she was back. I’d been out where a pesky rabbit was among my vegetables, and I’d left the kitchen door open for a minute. She came right in. Brazen, like you said. The nerve! I had some dried beans in my apron pocket and I’d almost a mind to throw a fistful at her. Dangled a pair of earrings at me, she did. ‘A present for you.’” Helen shook her head. “Awful-looking things, cheap earrings, fake rubies —
gypsy
things! Not worth two pence.”

Someone coughed, then coughed again. A thin, strangled sound. It was that English friend of Ms. Winifred Moore. She ought to let Dr. Collins have a look at her.

“Earrings?” Inspector O’Hare asked.

Helen nodded. “They do that, the gypsies, to have you on. Presents. ‘And here’s one for the master,’ and she dropped something in a twist of paper on the kitchen table. Just like that!”

Helen looked at Dr. Collins on the folding chair beside her. He was wearing his tweed jacket that she’d given a good brushing, and his vest and all. That pancake makeup around his eyes was all wrong; he didn’t know how to put it on. It looked too white. He needed a darker shade, to blend in more.

“So,” Inspector O’Hare was asking her in a kindly voice, “What did the gypsy do then?”

“Do? Nothing. She only went off, dirty skirts swirling. I threw the earrings in the garbage.” Helen looked around at the listeners. She had again that triumphant feeling, that she’d justified her presence at this whatever it was — informal inquiry — of Egan O’Hare’s. And in her good brown shoes.

But Egan O’Hare only kept on. “And the present for Dr. Collins as well?”

Indignation made Helen’s voice rise. “I should say not! I don’t take it on myself to — the present was for Dr. Collins, and it was to Dr. Collins I gave it. It was for him to throw away if he liked.” Generations of service in correctly run households was, Helen hoped, clearly implied in the set of her shoulders.

At that, O’Hare said, “I see.” He got off the desk, arched his back, and gave the small of his back a bit of a rub with his knuckles. Helen thought he would glance at Dr. Collins as though to say, You’ve an excellent housekeeper in Helen Lavery, Dr. Collins.

But instead, Inspector O’Hare slanted a glance over toward Torrey Tunet, who was standing by the Coke machine. Then he looked back at Helen. He smiled at her. “The present for Dr. Collins, was it by any chance in a twist of green paper?”

Helen stared at Inspector O’Hare. She suddenly felt funny. Fooled like. Like she was taking a walk along a safe, sunlit lane that all of sudden had somehow become something different. “Green paper? In a twist of green paper?” She turned her head slowly and looked over at Ms. Tunet. She moved her lips, a kind of nervous flutter that sometimes happened when she got upset.

“Yes, Helen? Ms. Lavery?” Inspector O’Hare’s voice was patient.