Death on the Holy Mountain (37 page)

‘My God, Richard, this is terrible! So soon after the paintings and everything. What are we going to do?’

‘I don’t think we have any choice,’ said Butler. ‘They’ll have to go away. They’ll have to go almost at once before things get out of hand.’

‘We can’t do that. They may have misbehaved, those two, but they’re our kith and kin. We can’t let them down. What will people say? That Father O’Donovan Brady,
that horrible little man, preaches a sermon at half past eleven and the Protestants cave in first thing in the afternoon? You can’t take a high and mighty line with the blackmailers, Richard,
and then betray your own after they miss out on the carrots and the cauliflower!’

‘Ah, but there’s a difference,’ said her husband. ‘We’re in the right over the paintings. We’re in the wrong, very much in the wrong, about the adultery.
Would you have the locals say our house is a refuge for adulterers, that the people who break God’s commandments can find sanctuary at my house? It won’t do. My mind is made up, Sylvia.
They’ve got to go. You might tell them to pack their bags right away. I wish Powerscourt was here. He’d have something sensible to suggest. I’m going to speak to the vicar. Maybe
he’ll have some thoughts about where they could go. I don’t think anywhere in the south of Ireland is going to be safe for them. The word will shoot round the Catholic grapevine at
lightning speed.’

Five days after his escape from his captors on the Maum road Lord Francis Powerscourt was sitting in the reception area of Messrs Browne and Sons, Land Agents and Valuers, of
Eyre Square in the heart of Galway.

The dinner at the Leenane Hotel had been a riotous affair, graced with lobsters and champagne. The Major had indeed attempted to sing a song, ‘The Ash Grove’, deemed too English by
local taste and drowned out by Dennis Ormonde and Johnny Fitzgerald belting out ‘The West’s Awake’ and ‘The Wearing of the Green’. The dining room, the landlord
observed to his wife, was little better this evening than the public bar on a Saturday night. Ormonde had brought some correspondence for Powerscourt, the letter from Inspector Harkness that had
arrived at Ormonde House just ten minutes after he left in search of the missing women. It was cryptic. ‘It is as you thought. Here are the dates and the figures for the person you mentioned.
H.’ And there was a note from the Archbishop’s Chaplain reminding Powerscourt that the Archbishop of Tuam was anxious to see him before he left Ireland. An appointment had been fixed
for later that day. Johnny Fitzgerald had been dispatched on a fishing expedition to locate and investigate Pronsias Mulcahy’s brother, Declan Mulcahy, believed to be a solicitor somewhere in
the west of Ireland.

Richard Browne, senior partner in the firm that bore his name, was a small, silver-haired man in his middle sixties. He was wearing a very elegant dark suit that Powerscourt did not think had
come from a Galway tailor with a cream shirt adorned by ornate silver cufflinks. He carried about him an air of great respectability. The room was large, with a fine marble mantelpiece, a desk by
the window, a sofa and some easy chairs loosely grouped round a Regency table. Powerscourt was relieved to see that there were no stuffed animals in sight.

‘Lord Powerscourt, a very good morning to you. How can I be of assistance?’

‘Dennis Ormonde of Ormonde House suggested I call on you, Mr Browne,’ Powerscourt began. ‘Let me give you a little background, if I may. I am an investigator, sir, summoned to
Ireland to look into a delicate matter of stolen paintings. So far there have been two deaths and a serious kidnapping during the course of my inquiries. I need to know about land, who is buying,
who is selling, the general state of the market. Land is always central to what goes on in Ireland, I think. Dennis Ormonde said you would be the best person to consult in the whole of the west of
Ireland.’

The old man laughed and began filling his pipe. ‘He flatters me, Lord Powerscourt. I shall be happy to oblige though I find it hard to detect the link between land and pictures. But tell
me, didn’t your people once own a huge estate in County Wicklow? And Powerscourt House itself? All sold now, of course, but in its day, surely, it was one of the finest of its kind in
Ireland.’

‘We did own it, Mr Browne. It was I who sold it, for reasons I won’t burden you with. There are no lands or houses owned by Powerscourts in Ireland now, I’m afraid.’

‘Pity, that,’ said Richard Browne. ‘The family went back a very long way. Now then.’ He forced a final lump of tobacco into his pipe and began fiddling with his matches.
‘Land, Lord Powerscourt, land in Ireland. Dear me. Where should I start? Two years ago, I tell you, I was going to retire. My wife and I had spent over a year planning a great journey round
Europe by train. It was going to take three months. I have always wanted to see some of the great art galleries. My wife is very keen on gardens and great chateaux. We had the route planned, we
even had the names of the hotels where we were going to make reservations. Then I heard about this Wyndham Act, the one that encourages the landlords to sell out and gives them a bonus of twelve
per cent on the price for doing so. You know about this Act, Lord Powerscourt?’

Powerscourt remembered William Moore talking about it. He nodded.

‘Mabel, I said,’ the land agent went on, thin wisps of smoke beginning to curl out of his pipe, ‘in forty years in this trade I have never seen an opportunity like this.
Business for a while will be brisker than we have ever known. I could not sit happy in Gstaad or Portofino and think of all those missing profits. So we postponed the trip. I had to buy Mabel a new
house to make up for it, mind you, a Georgian place out near the coast, cost me a packet but it was well worth it.’

‘Did business boom, Mr Browne? Were your expectations justified?’

The land agent laughed. ‘It has been better than my wildest dreams, Lord Powerscourt. These Anglo-Irish landlords, you know, they’ve never been very good with money, most of them.
They’re extravagant. If a neighbour builds a Gothic extension to his property, then you have to do the same. Most of those estates are lumbered with loans and mortgages of unimaginable size.
Sometimes half or even two-thirds of the income goes on servicing the debts. If agricultural prices are good then the rents can be high. But they’ve not been too good for a long time with all
these foreign imports of wheat and so on. So when George Wyndham proposed this Act, the landlords thought it was manna from heaven. Sell some of your land, sell all of your land, collect the bonus,
and it’s a golden opportunity to pay off a lot of those debts and still be left with plenty of money. I’ve had people coming in here at a rate you wouldn’t believe, as if I was
the bookmaker round the corner.’

‘So you have lots of sellers,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Who is buying? And might I make so bold as to raise the religious question? Dennis Ormonde said you dealt with all the
Protestant sales. But it doesn’t sound as if there are many Protestant buyers on the market.’

Richard Browne puffed vigorously. ‘Good question, my lord, good question. Very rarely will a Protestant enter the market to buy. Some of the most efficient farmers have increased their
holdings, it is true. But most of the time the land is offered to the existing tenants. That’s only fair, after all. It’s after that the business really takes off. Many of these people
– we’d have called them peasants in days gone by – didn’t have very much land. If they sold it they might have enough money to emigrate or to pay off some of their debts. Or
they could stay on and work on the land for the new landlord. Some of the larger Catholic farmers have amassed enormous amounts of land by buying out their co-religionists. Sometimes, I understand,
they’re even harsher landlords than the ones who sold up. The key point is this shift in the ownership of land towards the native population and, in particular, the acquisition of these huge
holdings. It’s history running backwards, my lord. Out go the Protestants who acquired or stole the land from the Catholic population hundreds of years ago, in come these great Catholic
speculators buying up the Protestant land with the help and encouragement of the British Government in London. It could only happen in Ireland.’ Browne’s pipe had gone out. He began
again the difficult search for matches, never to be found in the pocket where you thought you had put them.

‘Is that clear to you, my lord, the general picture, I mean?’

‘Admirably clear, Mr Browne, you have explained the situation very well. Might I trespass on your knowledge yet further and trail a couple of names before you, names of Catholic gentlemen
who might be buying up the land in the manner you adumbrated so well?’

‘I’m afraid, my lord,’ Richard Browne had finally managed to relight his pipe and was now blowing great lungfuls of smoke in Powerscourt’s direction, ‘that at
certain points the priorities and preoccupations of investigators, however distinguished, diverge from those of humble land agents like myself. We have a duty of confidentiality to our clients. It
is not as rigorous as the duty that binds the priests in their confessionals, but we break it at our peril.’

‘Goodness me, Mr Browne,’ said Powerscourt, ‘forgive me, I was not thinking of anybody with whom you might be doing business here in Galway or Clare or however far your remit
runs. I was thinking rather of somebody in the Midlands, somebody whose land agents would probably come from Athlone rather than Galway.’

‘It’s very unusual, my lord. I’m not sure I could countenance giving out any information where I was not in the full possession of the facts.’

Powerscourt threw his hat into the ring. ‘Mr Mulcahey, Mr Pronsias Mulcahey of Butler’s Cross – does that name ring any bells, even distant bells, with you, Mr
Browne?’

Something in the land agent’s face told Powerscourt that he had scored a direct hit.

‘I couldn’t say, my lord, I really couldn’t say. Pronsias Mulcahey, grocer and moneylender of Market Square, Butler’s Cross. I couldn’t say, but you might be on to
something there.’

Jameson was unwell. His owner, Charlie O’Malley, was very worried about him. He was not old, for a donkey. He still worked for his living but his performance was
sporadic. Occasionally he sat down in the middle of the road and refused to move. He was not eating much. After their heroic efforts building the chapel on the summit of Croagh Patrick, Charlie and
his animals were currently employed building a new hotel and bar near the beach at Old Head, a few miles from Louisburg. The land was flat and the effort involved for donkeys bringing materials out
to the site was minute compared with the long haul up the Holy Mountain. Charlie had consulted widely among his cronies in the bar of Campbell’s public house. One had recommended large doses
of whiskey, another great helpings of vegetable soup, another swore his granny had cured a dying donkey by feeding it a diet of potatoes soaked overnight in stout. The goodness of the Guinness,
according to Charlie’s informant’s aged relative, soaked into the spuds and effected the cure. Charlie had tried them all. He had mentioned to his wife the possibility of the vet and
been soundly berated for his pains; how were the children to have clothes on their backs and shoes on their feet if all their hard-earned money was to be squandered on a delinquent donkey?

Charlie had virtually decided to have Jameson put down. The two of them and Bushmills had finished early for the day and Charlie was thinking of celebrating his release with a glass of
refreshment in the public bar at Campbell’s when it happened. Jameson stopped at the bottom of the track that led to the summit. He stared upwards. Then he began trotting purposefully up the
path.

‘Jameson!’ shouted Charlie. ‘Jameson! Where are you going, you stupid animal?’

The donkey did not deign to turn round. He continued, at a regular pace, in the direction of the statue of St Patrick. Charlie tethered Bushmills to the post outside Campbell’s and set off
in pursuit.

‘Jameson!’ he shouted, spying the beast some two hundred yards further up and cruising steadily past St Patrick. ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’

Jameson gave every indication of having a very good idea of where he was going. He was going up and nobody was going to stop him. By the time Charlie caught up with him, the donkey was almost at
the first station and looking as if he might break the All Ireland Donkey record for the summit of The Reek. Charlie himself was panting heavily. The fitness established on those trips up and down
to the chapel had long gone, eroded by the flat lands of Old Head and the stout of Campbell’s public bar. Anybody looking at the two of them now would have said that Jameson was the healthy
one and Charlie the invalid. Onwards and upwards went the animal, five hundred yards from the summit, then three hundred, then eighty. Charlie was feeling rather unwell and had taken to reciting a
series of Hail Marys. Jameson gave one triumphant bray when he reached the chapel he had helped to build and he peered out into Clew Bay, master of all he surveyed.

‘For Christ’s sake, Jameson,’ said Charlie, sitting down by the edge of the chapel, ‘won’t you take a rest? Sit down, in God’s name. You’re bloody well
killing me.’

Jameson took no notice. He trotted past Charlie without even a glance and set off back down the scree. Charlie floundered after him, slithering on the rough stones, and once sitting down very
uncomfortably. Charlie knew he had to stop Jameson disappearing off down the road at the bottom and escaping into some kind of donkey liberty. He redoubled his efforts but Jameson was too quick for
him. By the time Charlie eventually reached the bottom, holding on to his side and panting heavily, Jameson was next to Bushmills. They appeared to be having a conversation in donkey language on
the inadequacies of humans. Charlie tied the donkey up and staggered into the public bar. He had to be helped to a seat. He was too exhausted to speak. A variety of remedies were proposed.

‘Plain water, that’s what he needs,’ said a farmer from nearby Murrisk.

‘Plain water?’ said a carpenter from Westport. ‘You must be mad. When did plain water do anything for anybody, for God’s sake? Stout, that’s what he
wants.’