Death in Dublin - Peter McGarr 16 (22 page)

“But I need fresh art, you know, to do the journalist thing. People see the old art, they’ll think, nothing new,
when in fact—thanks to you, darlin’ man—I’m scoo
p
ing the entire fookin’ world.”

“You should be happy with that.”

“If I were a man, I’d thump you bloody and take it right away. But come closer while I tell you.” When McGarr turned to her, she threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. They staggered into the door.

“Hello?” Kara Kennedy’s voice said through the i
n
tercom. “Hello? Is somebody there?”

“You’re brilliant, you are, McGarr. The fookin’ Man himself altogether and without equal. When you tire of librarians and want a real woman, give me a jingle.”

“Hello? Hello? Is somebody there?”

Digging her cell phone from her jacket, Orla Ban-non stepped quickly toward the gate.

McGarr leaned into the intercom. “Kara, it’s Peter McGarr.”

“Oh, Peter, I’m so glad it’s you. Haven’t I been watching what Kehoe had to say about the books, and then Sheard about you. Both are outrageous. Don’t they realize that one Monet sold for over fi?fty million pounds some years ago? And not a very good Monet at that.

“But don’t stand out there. Come up, come up.”

The lock buzzed, and McGarr pushed open the door. As he climbed the heavy, carved staircase, he heard her saying from above, “I’m...I’m over the moon that you’ve come back to me tonight.”

She then appeared at the top of the stairs, looking more beautiful than he had remembered. Again she was wearing the pearl-gray silk dressing gown pa
t
terned with deep red roses.

Perhaps it was the sash, which she had cinched tight
about her narrow waist and emphasized the fl?are of her hips; or her deep brown hair, which had been permed and fl?owed in waves onto her shoulders; or the heelless open-toed pumps that had replaced her moplike booties and added a few inches to her height.

But she was resplendent with what McGarr thought of as a million-quid smile lighting up her features: her high forehead and high cheekbones, slightly aquiline nose, and defi?nite chin. Her jade eyes were sparkling.

Instead of moving when he got to the top of the stairs, she remained in front of him. “Sure, it couldn’t have been a worse day for either of us, I’m thinking— both humiliated, both sacked.

“But your being here—well, you don’t know what it means. Come.” She reached for his elbows and, ste
p
ping back, drew him onto the landing with her and kissed him. “What’s wrong?”

McGarr had not raised his arms to embrace her. “You say you were sacked?”

She nodded.

Stepping around her, he moved toward the open door of the fl?at. “Who sacked you?”

“Trevor Pape.”

“When was this?”

“Today at work.”

“Can he sack you? Does he have the authority?” McGarr sat on the couch.

“Whether he does or not, he did it in a most unprofessional and, as I said, humiliating manner.” Closing the door, she reached for a glass that was sitting on a table. It was half fi?lled with what looked like wine. “I was in the Treasury where, fi?nally, the police—your Mr. Sheard—had allowed us to clean up. And there
must have been a half-dozen others about, helping in the effort.

“ ‘Kara,’ he says from the doorway. ‘Put down that broom and get out. You’re sacked.’ I didn’t think I’d heard him correctly. ‘You’re sacked, fi?red, terminated. How can I make it clearer? Pack up your personal b
e
longings and get out immediately.’ ”

Her jaw trembled as she raised the glass to her lips, took a sip, and set it down. “ ‘Why am I being sacked?’ I asked. ‘Because all of this is your fault. You’re su
p
posed to be the keeper of old manuscripts, and during your watch we now have far less to keep.’

“ ‘But it was you who instituted the new security procedures,’ I complained. ‘I wasn’t even consulted, and I have it on good authority that Raymond was in league with the thieves.’

“ ‘Whose authority?’ he asked, and I’m afraid I me
n
tioned your name. I hope you don’t mind. And he said, ‘Him? He’s an incompetent scut and a liar, who is to be sacked himself. You make a likely pair.’

“With that I’m afraid I began to cry, and I said som
e
thing to the effect of ‘How will I ever get another pos
i
tion? First the books are stolen and then I’m sacked. Who will have me? It’ll look like I’m responsible.’

“ ‘Which is not an inaccurate perception,’ he said, turning on his heel and leaving.

“After I composed myself, I told the others that I had no intention of leaving, that it would take guards and a letter from the provost to make me leave. And do you know what? I still can’t believe it.”

McGarr waited.

“Nobody spoke up. Nobody came over and put an arm around me, not even my assistant with whom I
thought I was on the best of terms. In utter silence they just continued the cleanup.”

“Fearful of losing their own positions,” McGarr said, standing and moving past her into the kitchen where she kept the liquor. “May I ask you something?” Opening the cabinet above the sink, he pulled out the bottle of malt he had been served from on the night b
e
fore. “Why ever did you have anything to do with Pape?” McGarr splashed the amber fl?uid into a glass.

There was a pause before she said, “So that’s it. Your digging has unearthed my lurid past.”

Glass in hand, McGarr turned in time to see her jaw tremble and tears burst from her eyes. She lowered her head and other tears splatted on the tiles by her feet.

The three toenails on each foot visible through the open shoes looked recently painted with a lacquer that matched the deep red shade of the roses on her hous
e
coat. McGarr drank from the glass.

As much as it troubled him to bring her pain, as much as his urge was to reach out and comfort her, he also wanted an answer.

She raised her head and then the glass, regarding him sidelong through tear-blurred eyes as she drank. Then, “I don’t know—maybe I’m just a woman who can’t do without a man. If anything, the past year or so has taught me that. And Trevor came on to me when I fi?rst came here to Dublin and had broken off a relatio
n
ship I’d had in Edinburgh, knowing that the distance between there and here was simply too challenging to continue.

“Trevor was here, he was my mentor, and at the time he could actually be charming and warm when he was himself, which wasn’t always. And he was married, which made him safe for me, a poor research student
who didn’t have the luxury of actually falling in love. You know”—she glanced up at him again, as though appealing to him—“he was somebody to hold.”

McGarr wondered if that’s all he himself had been to her as well. “And how many somebodys have there been?”

“After Dan, you and you alone. And I don’t think of you as a somebody. I hope you understand.”

Stonily, McGarr regarded her. “And before your husband?”

She swung her head away and reached for the wine bottle on the sideboard. “I admit that between my u
n
dergraduate years and returning to university, I went through a period of what I think of as ‘wandering,’ and there were several somebodys. But always, always, I engaged in affairs, not...”

One-night stands, McGarr thought she meant.

“And may I say”—she poured herself another glass—“that, while I understand your need to know everything you can about me, that it’s really unfair to us—who we could be as a couple. And I hope it already hasn’t spoiled any chance we might have had to fi?nd that out.” With the back of a hand, she wiped the tears from her eyes. “I hate crying. Why do I have to cry?”

Finishing the drink, McGarr placed the glass in the sink. “What happened with Pape?”

“Well, I think you know. We were all the gossip. Everybody in Trinity and, you know, the arts comm
u
nity in Dublin heard about it, I’m sure.

“After his wife confronted him at a cocktail party, he told me he would leave her, and we would marry. Which I squelched immediately. I had no intention of marrying a much older man with a defi?nite and dif
fi?
cult problem.”

“His addictions.” She nodded.

“Also, I had come to know Trevor, and marriage to me—to anybody—would never suit him. Whether it’s the drugs or something in his personality, Trevor is promiscuous by nature. And in spite of what I’ve just divulged about myself, I didn’t want any part of that. I don’t—I’ve never—considered myself promiscuous.”

“What did he do?”

“Just what he did to me this afternoon—made my life diffi?cult in the extreme. After I requested a change in tutors away from him, he tried to poison my new a
d
viser against me, even wrote to the outside readers of my thesis in Britain, telling them he had washed his hands of me because my scholarship was suspect.

“Called on the carpet for that by the provost, he r
e
mained unrepentant. When the keeper’s post opened up and I applied, he did everything he could to get me rejected, and only the provost—God bless him—came to my defense. And I’ll admit this also: It could be that my winning the position was a kind of punishment of him, since he has tenure and while married was co
n
nected to the Guinnesses, who still support the college handsomely.”

McGarr folded his hands across his chest. Although unpleasant, the questions were necessary. Mainly, for him. “Tell me again about your husband—where did you meet him?”

“Here, in Dublin.”

“After Pape?”

She nodded. “Perhaps a year later.”

“How’d you meet him?”

She shook her head and gave him a disbelieving look. “I’ve already told you that—at an opening in your wife’s gallery. Perhaps you don’t believe me. You could
go back and consult her visitors’ logs, if you still have

them. As I remember, she asked everybody to sign in.”

“Tell me again the company he worked for.”

“I won’t tell you again, I’ll tell you for the fi?rst time, since you never asked—Dublin Bay Petroleum, Limited.”

“And he was...?”

“A broker. An oil broker, and quite successful—fl?at on Merrion Square, a big Volvo, holidays in the Ma
l
dives, shooting on Skye, fi?shing in Norway. Art, he bought a lot of art.”

“There’s no record of your marriage, nor did you fi?le your taxes as a married couple.”

“We were married on Cayman Brac, where Dan was a resident and paid his taxes. But he was and—I hope—is real enough. I’ll tell you what”—she reached for the phone on the wall—“why don’t we ring up his parents in Scotland? I call them daily, since he was an only child and they have nobody but me. They’ll tell you.”

McGarr shook his head. “It’s not necessary.”

“No, I insist.” She began dialing a number.

When McGarr attempted to walk out of the room, she seized his wrist and pulled him into her, where he breathed in the mélange of aromas—her perfume, shampoos, soaps, and other emollients—that had so enticed him on the night before.

“Bridie? Could you do something for me—speak to the man standing by my side. He’s a detective who’s investigating the Kells theft, and he has some questions about Dan.”

“Who is this?” McGarr asked, taking the receiver.

“Fionna Stewart.”

For the next fi?ve minutes, McGarr spoke to the
woman, whose heavy Scots burr made her nearly unintelligible. She hoped he could do something for Kara—“who’s the darlingest girl and has been so loyal to our poor Dan”—and perhaps launch a separate investigation into the disappearance of her son. “After all, he had a fl?at there in Ireland, and his fi?rm sold heaps of petrol and oil there.”

When McGarr hung up, Kara was gone. He found her sitting in the main room, arranged—it appeared— on the couch. The housecoat was now open to expose a nightgown different from the one she wore the night before; it had lace and was the color of lilacs with a lemony gauze behind.

Which blended rather well with her skin, lightly but defi?nitely tanned. The olive tone rather complemented her umber hair and jade eyes.

Christ, he thought, she might well be the most bea
u
tiful woman he had seen in...he had not actually been looking at beautiful women during the interve
n
ing years. But now her beauty actually stopped him. He came to a standstill and regarded her.

You can’t even remember when you last had food, he thought. You just had a stiff drink; she is the fi?rst woman you’ve been with since the loss of your wife. And she is a suspect in the most sensational and now important case in your career. The one that will defi?ne you in the mind of the public you’ve served for nearly thirty years.

On the other hand, you spent a night with this go
d
dess, and she is surely magic both to look at and be with. How lucky are you that she has decided you are— what was the phrase that Orla Bannon had used?—“da’ man.”