The Death of an Irish Sinner (17 page)

Bresnahan shook her head.

“Permanent, like. We all know his fate—four sheets to the wind in the seed room, having been hoisted on his own come-along.”

“
Four
sheets?” somebody asked.

“The three that loosed him onto the rocks that we found in a glass beside his corpse. And the fourth that strung him up.”

“Now that’s a stretch.”

“Questions: One, could he have accomplished the feat on his own in his condition, which was jarred? Two, how could a murderer, not possessed of significant strength, have helped him along? Cranking the lever of the come-along would have required muscle.

“There’s the matter of the nifty and appropriately titled ‘blood hitch’ that was tied to the hook of the come-along. In other manipulations around the estate, Mudd seemed capable of only the half hitch and unimproved clinch knot, according to a memo by Inspector Swords, who sails.

“Also, we have the complications of Dery Parmalee, who seems to know all, courtesy of the bugs he deployed around Barbastro. He, as we know from today’s
Ath Cliath
and an earlier report by Peter, is not a disinterested party, pursuing a…vendetta, it would seem, against Opus Dei and being capable of every class of troublemaking. I have that on good authority.”

McKeon’s eyes glanced off Ward’s. “Consider, as
well, the priests, Fred Duggan and…Sclavi, who like all people from his neck of the woods has eyes either like a hangman or a pelota player.”

“I beg your pardon,” said Sinclair. “My mother is Spanish.”

“Really?” McKeon paused dramatically, canting his head to one side. “Which team does she play for?”

The grumbles and complaints were immediate.

“Setup,” one said.

“That joke is
older
than yehr mudder.”

“In ahn-ny case,” McKeon went on in broad Dublin tones, “one of the collars, Duggan himself, stands to gain millions with Ms. Stanton’s death. With by far the biggest beneficiary being Opus Dei.

“They were on the premises, Duggan had control of the security system, and again Peter reports”—McKeon shuffled the documents until he found yet another report—“Duggan has no aversion to pork.” He looked up and scanned the small room, his dark eyes merry.

Ward shook his head. “Bernie, you’ve used this before.”

“I have? When?”

“Only last year.”

“Well, don’t ruin it then. You seem to be the only one who remembers.”

Said Bresnahan, “The report says that Duggan’s demeanor, both when seeming to remember the existence of the security system and its tapes, and later, when telling Peter how he searched his copies and noticed that Mudd had removed the water bottle, seemed rather histrionic. Ergo, Duggan was…” She paused so the others could join her.

“Hamming it up,” several said together.

“I like yous,” said McKeon. “Yous have got potential and a certain…shtick sense of humor. Which brings us to Geraldine Breen, who we can conclude is prone to violence and is often good at it. And Delia Manahan Foley, about both of whom we just heard Superintendent Ward speak. Both were present when the Stanton woman was slain. Yet only Breen will benefit from her death. Manahan is not mentioned in the will.

“Finally, Peter has filed yet another report regarding Charles Stewart Parnell—‘Don’t-call-him-Ape-neck’—Sweeney, who, you should know, has tried to butt into the case. It seems said sempiternal bagman and hale-fellow-well-wet has turned detective and knows definitively that Mudd did Stanton and then did himself. Over and out, case closed. We might expect more of him.

“So”—McKeon straightened the reports and, reaching over, placed them before McGarr—“who done it?”

“Acting for Parmalee, Mudd did Stanton, then Parmalee did Mudd,” said Bresnahan, doodling on a notepad.

“Why would Parmalee want Mudd dead in a manner that looked like suicide?” Swords asked. “If the purpose of his shrift, as detailed in today’s
Ath Cliath
, is to blacken the name of Opus Dei?”

“Two things,” said Sinclair, a handsome older man with silver hair and precise features. “To shut him up and also make it look like an impossible suicide, a murder masked as suicide. We’re dealing with a smart—perhaps a brilliant, but definitely bent—man in Parmalee. He knew Opus Dei with its Sweeneys would
jump on Mudd’s supposed suicide and want to wrap everything up in a neat packet to quell any suspicion of their involvement and close the investigation into Stanton’s death.

“And from his listening post in the village, Parmalee would have been monitoring both our investigation at Barbastro and whatever went on between Duggan, Sclavi, and Manahan, perhaps phone conversations with Sweeney, and whoever else they consulted. He would have known the level of their concern.”

“But how would he have got onto the property to do it.”

Sinclair shrugged. “Didn’t Duggan tell Peter that he’d deactivated the security system? Parmalee also said he’d spent some time at Barbastro writing a book with Stanton. He hinted broadly that he’d been her lover.

“Given the…snoop that he is, Parmalee could easily have discovered Mudd’s past and blackmailed him into doing what he wished. Also, he would have known Mudd’s weakness for whiskey, and Mudd would have drunk with him, if only for the free liquor. And finally, I think it would have taken the strength of a man to have strung Mudd up.”

“You’re all wrong,” said Bresnahan, whose drawing was that of a corpse hanging from a rafter. “It’s the two women, Delia Manahan and Geraldine Breen. They have a relationship, that much is plain, living together in two places, taking trips together, even co-mothering her children when they were younger.

“I don’t know what sort of relationship they have,
sisters in the spirit or the flesh, but it doesn’t matter. They were there and could have worked in concert, orchestrating both deaths.”

“But we know Mudd removed the water bottle,” said Ward.

“And what’s their motive?” McKeon asked.

“Mudd could have been brought into it by Manahan. Didn’t Peter say in one of his reports that Noreen noticed evidence of a woman—a brassiere, a lid of birth-control tablets—in his cottage that had disappeared after his death?

“As for motive, the millions of pounds that Breen was bequeathed would be enough for the two women to retire in great comfort for the remainder of their lives.”

“But why murder the woman?” Swords asked. “And why in that fashion? She was elderly, she wouldn’t live forever. And we can’t assume that either woman knew—knows—the terms of the will.”

“Also, Breen is a…wombat,” Ward put in. “A zealot of the worst sort who—Parmalee claims, and Peter and I can tell you—has been trained to enforce.”

Silence ensued, and the others looked toward McGarr.

He glanced up at Bresnahan and raised his coffee cup, meaning he’d like more. As the most recent addition to the staff, she was the gofer. It was too early—in the day, in the case—to form conclusions.

“What else have we got pending, Bernie?”

McKeon picked up another folder from the stack on the floor by his feet.

Noreen McGarr had planned her morning to be anything but dull. First, she would take a long ride with her mother and daughter. Maddie was becoming a fine horsewoman.

Later, she would shoot skeet with her father, who had been an excellent shot himself and was her shooting coach. Noreen harbored ambitions of entering the competition to represent Ireland in the over-forty European women’s championship that would be held in Denmark in the fall.

But it was while she was finishing up the breakfast dishes—and she knew the others were down at the stables—that she got the distinct impression somebody was in the room with her.

Turning around, she found Delia Manahan in the doorway. “Ooo—you startled me. How’d you get in here?” Noreen reached for a dish towel.

“The front door was open. I called out, once, but I don’t think you heard me. You were busy with breakfast, and I decided not to disrupt you. I waited in the sitting room.”

“Really?” It had been a good half hour since breakfast. “And how may I help you?”

“I’d like to have a confidential word with you, if I may. Which is why I came here. Barbastro really isn’t secure, if you know what I mean.”

“A word regarding what?”

“My relationship with Opus Dei and my…friend, Geraldine Breen. I rather got off on the wrong foot with your husband yesterday and thought perhaps you and I might chat more easily.”

Which sounded reasonable to Noreen, having been with McGarr during that painful noninterview. “Let’s go into the den where we won’t be disturbed if my family comes in.”

As they passed down the long hall to the other end of the house, Delia Manahan admired several of the furnishings. “Has Ilnacullin been in the family long?”

Noreen shook her head. “My father bought it as a near ruin from a family who had squandered their fortune on race horses.”

“Hence the vast stables where I parked my car.”

Noreen nodded. “Actually, they’ve come in handy now that so many more people can afford horses but have no place to board them.”

“What about all this weaponry?” Manahan swept her hand at the gun cases that lined one wall of the den.

“Actually, the guns are mine and my father’s.”

“Oh, that’s right. I read it in the papers. You’re the left-handed gunwoman.”

The word, which had been used in decades past to describe women members of terrorist organizations, made both of them laugh.

Noreen gestured a hand to a chair and sat across from the woman. “So.”

“So.” Manahan drew in a breath, her hands twined at her waist in a way that emphasized the expanse of her bosom. “So, I entered Opus Dei almost a decade ago, after my husband was murdered.”

Noreen’s eyes widened.

“Gerry, who had been a client of F. X.—my husband was a solicitor—came to the wake and funeral and was very helpful to me and my children. And later,
when we were grieving. She was an assistant numerary, as she is now, and very religious.” Her light gray eyes met Noreen’s. “Belief, you know, provides the only solace.”

Noreen nodded, imagining that belief could be a great help during trying times.

“And over the years, Ger’ and I have become the closest of friends. She even has her own room in my house in Killiney.”

“And you at Barbastro.”

“
But
—don’t get the wrong idea. The relationship is strictly platonic and religious.”

Manahan could be a pretty woman, Noreen judged, studying her.
If
she didn’t insist on such a severe image.

She was wearing a plain gray suit with what looked almost like a clerical collar. On her feet were a pair of silver Mary-Janes. The plucked eyebrows and absence of makeup or jewelry only added to the effect. On her wrist was the sort of functional watch that you could buy in an electronics shop.

“Now, this is what I came to tell you, so you can pass it on to your husband. Dery Parmalee murdered Mary-Jo and—I suspect—Frank Mudd.”

“Your brother.”

Manahan’s eyes canted off. She shook her head.

“He’s not my brother, either. But it’s because of Frank that I know Dery killed M. J. You see”—she paused dramatically, raising one of the crescents of flesh that had been an eyebrow—“Frank told me in confidence that Dery had forced him—blackmailed him—into helping him do it.”

Noreen waited, as she knew McGarr would in such a situation. The woman had more to tell her.

“You see, after my husband died and before Opus Dei came into my life, I needed…I don’t know what I needed, but holding on to somebody of a night seemed like at least a temporary answer. And there was Frank, whom I hired to do all the things around the house that I couldn’t. I was so…needy I even grasped at the straw that he had the same first name as my husband.” She shook her head, as with shame and regret.

“Fortunately, he emigrated to America and I discovered that it was belief—and not a man—that I truly needed. But when he returned about five years later, he told me his tale and how he was afraid for his life. He begged me to take him in, and when I wouldn’t because of my religious commitment and my children, he begged me to help him in some way.

“I thought immediately of M. J., whose gardener had just passed away. It was Frank’s trade, and behind those walls he’d probably be safe. Well”—the eyes rose again—“I admit I lied to Mary-Jo, telling her Frank was a half brother, a by-blow of my father. Being a by-blow herself, I knew she’d fall for it.

“But that utter…bugger, Dery Parmalee, found him out and used him first to plant listening devices in the house, and then to murder M. J. in an attempt to lay the crime on the doorstep of Opus Dei—that’s what the
cilicio
was all about.

“Frank told me he disabled the camera with his jacket and on Parmalee’s instructions wrapped the
ghoulish thing around her neck, twisting the clamp down until she was dead.

“How Dery murdered Frank, I can only guess. But as his
Ath Cliath
tells it,
somebody
—meaning somebody from Opus Dei—got Frank drunk, then made it look like he cranked up the come-along himself and committed suicide.”

“
Ath Cliath
?” Noreen asked. “That paper doesn’t come out until Friday.”

“Special edition. It’s all over town today, a thick thing both literally and figuratively, with allegations that we Opusians murdered Mary-Jo to keep her from revealing that she was actually the daughter of José Maria Escrivá, our founder. Then we made Mudd’s death appear to be a suicide.

“He even claims he possesses the manuscript that Mary-Jo was about to submit to her publisher—a biography of Escrivá in which she documents his paternity. Parmalee says he’ll be publishing a chapter of it every week, beginning this coming Friday.”

“Does he say how he got ahold of it?”

“It’s right on the front page—she gave it to him, he says, because she feared for her life. He claims he’s even got a letter from her to prove it.”

Surely a publishing coup, thought Noreen. And what an irony.

Considering her will, instead of Opus Dei’s garnering another huge windfall by publishing an expurgated version of the book, Parmalee himself—Opus Dei’s bête noire—would certainly reap thousands, if not millions, while hoisting the religious order on the petard of its founder’s supposed sin.