The Death of an Irish Tradition (26 page)

O’Shaughnessy had. Even the
Press
, which was usually very much in McGarr’s corner, had noted in an editorial that it was unfortunate that the killer had not been apprehended in Galway, which would have prevented the bloody scene in Eccles Street. It hinted, however, that all had not been told of the incident.

Fergus Farrell had asked McGarr to issue a statement making clear the circumstances surrounding the Galway arrest attempt. McGarr had refused. Once he began justifying himself like that, he had said, he’d end up spending more time thinking of the public reception of his actions than getting on with the job, and it was incumbent upon Fogarty to clarify the matter. O’Shaughnessy agreed.

“And where the bloody hell is he anyhow? He set this thing up and now he’s run out on me.”

O’Shaughnessy kept his eyes on the screens.

McGarr had slept fitfully the night before, more because of the case than because of his injuries. They had every class of tantalizing evidence and information, it seemed, but one fact seemed to negate another, turn him in one direction and then lead him back.

For instance, earlier in the evening he had phoned Bechel-Gore at the Shelbourne about Frayne. “Is he the same Frayne I cashiered? I thought the name seemed familiar. If you check the records you’ll discover I showed him no mercy. A low, violent type and utterly unsuited to the military, as he’s since proved.”

“What about the Skorpions? General Ztod says he sent you six.”

There had been a pause. “That’s odd, I only received three. They came by post when the Czechs returned our tack. If
three
are missing—” he had left off.

McGarr had been thinking the same thing. The apples—how had they gotten into Kestral’s stall and how was it that Frayne and whoever had been with him had been so familiar with the Leenane countryside? Perhaps somebody on Bechel-Gore’s own staff—? If Bechel-Gore was telling the truth.

“I’d like to know why you thought you needed the Skorpions.”

“I should think that’s obvious, or at least should be to you.”

“You knew you were breaking the law?”

“How much did the law help you yesterday, Mister McGarr?”

But then Frayne had missed Bechel-Gore and why had he missed? And if Bechel-Gore had set about to put an end to Keegan’s blackmailing, to exact a modicum of retribution, to retrieve his daughter and only child and perhaps in so doing put the blame on Murray, a competitor (and no doubt ruthless) in the bloodstock trade, did Menahan and the incident at the Shelbourne fit into it too? Another device to cast suspicion on the others, like Menahan’s having visited Murray’s residence over the past several days? Could all of that have been staged?

And it had been with those thoughts about Menahan that McGarr had climbed out of bed and padded down the carpeted stairs to the kitchen. There in a pot he had brewed coffee, simply sprinkling the ground beans into water he had brought just to the boil. He covered the pot and glanced up at the clock, an antique that had been found in a tobacconist’s shop in Eccles Street, of all places. 3:37. He’d give it six minutes before straining the brew into his cup.

McGarr sat at the table, the white enamel of which the light bulb overhead made seem yellow. He hadn’t turned the handle of the tap off tight, and a steady drip of water was syncopating the ticking of the clock.

What was it Menahan had said to him the other day outside the church? The method, Descartes’s method, something McGarr had had to study in school but had forgotten.

He went over it, counting the steps off on his fingers.

Accept nothing as true which you do not clearly recognize to be so; accept nothing more than what is present to your mind so clearly and distinctly that you can have no occasion to doubt it.

Divide each problem into as many parts as possible.

Commence your reflections with objects that are the simplest and easiest to understand and rise thence, little by little, to knowledge of the most complex.

Lastly, make enumerations so complete and reviews so general that you should be certain to have omitted nothing.

In regard to Menahan himself, what did it mean? McGarr thought back.

By his own admission Menahan had been in the apartment until about an hour before the old woman was murdered. Menahan had been the girl’s piano teacher. He had realized her talent was such that it required further training, which he was unable to give her, and he had arranged for her to sit for the prize at the conservatory. He was from the same area as the Caugheys, Keegans, and Bechel-Gores. Leenane, County Galway. He had been in touch with the Murrays ever since the murder. He had accosted Grainne Bechel-Gore with the news that the baby she had thought had died at childbirth was alive, and that her sister Maggie Kate had been murdered.

McGarr then divided the problem into Menahan’s relations with Bechel-Gore, the Murrays, and the Caughey-Keegans.

He had sold Bechel-Gore his family’s farm. He had been born and raised in that area and would know it and the locals as well. He had accosted Grainne Bechel-Gore at the Shelbourne.

He was the Murrays’ parish priest.

He had taught the young Caughey girl and had arranged for her to sit for the prize at the conservatory in London. He had been generous to them. He admired the girl very much.

McGarr then tried to make sense of each proposition. Was each true? What motivation would Menahan have had in every instance?

McGarr glanced up at the clock. Six minutes. He pushed himself out of the chair and shuffled toward the cooker. Placing his hand on the lid of the pot, he stopped. What was it he remembered? Something in Ward’s report of his interview with the girl, the official statement, the one taken back at the Castle? McGarr seemed to remember that the girl had said that the priest was against her studying in London. Could that be? He didn’t know and he’d have to check.

And then the incident at the Shelbourne.

McGarr carried the pot to the sink, taking care not to jar it. He held the strainer over the cup and poured off the clear, mild liquid. Late at night he preferred his coffee like that. He still had hopes of sleeping.

He raised the cup to his lips and breathed in the dark, rich aroma. Java beans. Noreen had gotten them in Bewley’s.

The Shelbourne. The priest and the poor, simple woman. McKeon had explained the way she had cocked her head, like a bird listening to a special call, unable to understand what was being said. And then the shock, the way she had had to be led into the hotel.

No—McGarr could not understand that. And from a priest.

McGarr was now sitting in his Cooper, down the street from the Caughey apartment. Ward had reported that Menahan was staying there and had, in fact, bought himself a number of “civilian” clothes—suits, shoes, and so forth.

Murray, the son, had already picked up the girl and left for the Show Ground to prepare for the Equizole and Thibenzole stakes, both of which were the first of the international jumping competitions of the show.

“Perhaps he’s not going,” Noreen said. She was sitting beside him.

If he didn’t, it wouldn’t surprise McGarr. The case was a continuing enigma to him, and it was Menahan who bothered him most. Was he working in concert with Bechel-Gore or the Murrays, or was he on his own, just the unknown in the equation, the vice, as it were, the meddler? McGarr didn’t know.

And other reports from Bresnahan had proved no more availing. Murray’s, the father’s, blood type was O, the same as the blood on the towels that had been found in the bathroom of the Keegan place in Drogheda, but that too really proved nothing. There were thousands of people in Ireland with type O blood.

Then Doyle, the garage mechanic at Ballsbridge Motors Ltd., and Frayne had served stints together in the Longkesh internment camp in the North, having been in the very same barracks for a seven-month period.

Finally, Bresnahan had managed to put the computers to further use in determining the condition of Menahan’s finances. With a court order she and Delaney had visited the records departments of the nine major banks over the night. Scattered in six of them were accounts totalling over £53,000.

Menahan—was he the key to the whole matter? McGarr hoped so.

“Mother,” said Noreen, “get the full of your eyes of that one.” She was looking up the street. “Blazer, ascot, and all, how are you, and him out taking confessions from sinners for the good of their souls!”

The engine ignited with a turn of the key, and McGarr pulled up the street to the curb.

The priest was wearing a blue blazer, light gray slacks, and soft moccasins with tassels, and the light-blue silk ascot matched the color of the crest on the pocket.

“Give you a lift, Father?” McGarr asked.

Menahan smiled, looking almost handsome with his glossy black hair combed back. “You know, I was in Missus Brady’s just now, hard at trying to raise a cab, and I chanced to look out the window and there you were. ‘Here it is,’ says I, and she thought it a blessed miracle. Hadn’t I only me hand on the phone!”

What was it McGarr was hearing? Menahan was at once playful and acting beneath himself.

“Aren’t you the nobs this morning, Father,” said Noreen, sliding out of the Cooper and into the back seat.

“In full bloom, girl, and without the pale, hunted look your man here was expecting.” He dropped his bulk into the seat and jarred the machine. He slammed the door and turned to McGarr, offering his hand. “Janie, Inspector, you look a sight, so.”

McGarr accepted the hand and glanced down at the crest. “You’re a Trinity man, I see.”

“Why, yes.” Menahan’s jowls flattened against the ascot, as he tried to see it himself, his heavy beard showing blue in the grooves. “But—” his eyes met McGarr’s, “—Cambridge. It’s something that’s appreciated at the Show, I’m told. Not that I’m out to salve every lingering scald in a horsey heart, mind.”

“No,” McGarr said, turning the car back down the street. “You seem more like a man who takes care of his own, Father.”

Menahan’s brow furrowed. “I suppose you’re referring to my ‘chance’ meeting with the Bechel-Gores at the Shelbourne. Is that what’s brought you round?”

McGarr said nothing, only concentrated on driving down the tree-shaded street, the gray stone-and-brick houses set well back and neat behind hedgerows and iron fences. The day was again sunny but cool, with patchy clouds and gusts off the Irish Sea that would bring rain by evening.

“I thought it would,” Menahan went on. “That and my roll of bank notes.”

Yes, thought McGarr, turning to him again. Fat enough to choke a bull, and McGarr was hopeful.

“Prudent investments, the latter.”

“In Hibernian Building Supplies Limited, I suppose?”

“In part. But I’m also in horses.”

“You can prove that?”

“I can, if I have to.”

“Oh, you will. You certainly will, Father. Count on it. Now, about the other matter—”

Menahan paused for a bit, then said, “Think back on our last conversation, Inspector. We discussed the truth, I believe, and the impossibility of knowing it in all its particularity. Well, let’s say that I wasn’t really playing devil’s advocate with you and, lo and behold, my concern for truth in all its forms is no less than yours.

“Now,” he had raised his head, talking with his left hand, and he appeared didactic and smug and very priestlike to McGarr, “none of the…anomaly of the Keegan/Bechel-Gore situation, which was allowed to fester until it issued in the deaths of Maggie Kate and those four poor souls in the kip in Eccles Street, would have occurred, if our Mister Bechel-Gore hadn’t lied to Grainne about his marital state before he got her with child; if Maggie Kate hadn’t lied to her and him about the child who was placed in her care by the nuns at the hospital; if the nuns, having been misled about Grainne’s mental health, hadn’t lied to her about the child; if Jimmy-Joe and Maggie Kate hadn’t propounded that lie themselves; and then proceeded to extort—for only the very best reasons, of course—a livelihood from Bechel-Gore for the child, and so forth.”

“You knew about that?”

He nodded once, scanning the panorama of Ballsbridge, his hand around the back of McGarr’s seat, the other on the dash, like some minor potentate or…god, McGarr thought.

“I did. I did that.”

“And I suppose you didn’t tell me because I never asked.”

“I don’t hold that against you. You could not have known to ask.”

“But you did understand the nature of my commission when I spoke to you, as a representative of the police arm of the government, investigating a murder?”

“I’d be a fool if I hadn’t.”

“And you, as God’s representative here on earth, didn’t feel compelled to inform me of all you knew?”

“Ah, now,” he held up a hand, “when you asked about Keegan I told you, and our conversation wasn’t very long at all, at all.

“And then,” he sighed, and looked out through the windscreen and the side window as they approached the Show Ground. “’Tis a fine line between representing the right, as it has been perceived down through the ages, and becoming ignorantly righteous oneself.”

“But telling Grainne Bechel-Gore of her sister’s death there on a public street was not self-righteous?”

“God—less so than his keeping from her the death of her sister and the earthly existence of the child of her womb. I only succeeded in the first, since he trundled her away.”

“And you thought her capable of absorbing such news easily, readily, without any untoward results?”

He cocked his head. “The truth is sometimes difficult.” There was an off-note in that, and McGarr was put in mind of Murray’s remarks concerning his son.

McGarr lowered the visor with the Dublin Municipal Police pass on it, and a guard, recognizing him, saluted as they rolled to a stop at Gate II.

“Being such a lover of the truth, Father, I suppose you discussed the essential truths regarding the Caugheys, the Keegans, and Bechel-Gore with your business associate, Mick Murray?”

Menahan opened the door. “I suppose I should lie now, really I should,” he said, almost in a sort of an aside, “but what’s the point? I might have, yes.”