The Death of Love (7 page)

McGarr shook his head, not wanting to speculate.

“Promise me you won’t flood this place with Guards.”

McGarr turned and walked away. He tried never to make promises, especially to somebody like Frost, who seemed concerned only with appearances.

In the sun room Jim Feeney, the hotel manager, assured McGarr that Nell Power née Nash was not staying at Parknasilla.

“Why would your head porter have conducted her to Mr. Power’s room?”

“Did he?”

McGarr nodded.

“Well, being from Sneem, Mrs. Power is known to all the staff. And then she’s been coming here for years.
With
Mr. Power.”

Tom, the head porter, was a short, square man who was nattily attired in tuxedo and tails.

“Did you see Mrs. Power depart?”

“I did, sir.”

“And when was that?”

“Just about the time that Mr. Power’s guests began assembling in his rooms for the reception yesterday afternoon. I believe she spoke to Miss Gretta Osbourne, a guest here, who was helping Mr. Power with the conference. After that, she left.”

“Did she have anything in her hands?” The note cards, McGarr was thinking; given the size of the case, their bulk would have been too great for a purse.

He paused, trying to remember. “I can’t say for certain, now, but had she anything sizable, like, I would have taken it from her and carried it to her car. So, I’d say she hadn’t.”

“Did you realize they were divorced when you let her into Mr. Power’s room?”

“I’d heard that, but not from herself. Or himself, for that matter.”

McGarr again asked to use the phone. When he finally located Superintendent Butler at home, he asked him to canvass the area for one Helen Power. “She might also be using the name Nash.”

“The wife.”

So, she was known to him too. Ringing off, McGarr drew on a cigarette and eased his back into the cushions of the manager’s desk chair. What did he have?

Until the postmortem report, which would not be available until tomorrow morning, nothing but Gladden’s allegation and the missing note cards. Even if they had been stolen, what would that prove or even imply? Certainly not murder, which was McGarr’s only concern.

Still, it irked him, the strategy Farrell had employed by means of his early morning phone calls: to bind him tight in the shackles of administrative guilt. If Paddy Power had not been murdered but Dr. Mossie Gladden insisted he had and rumor got out, McGarr would be guilty of a lapse in “discretion.” If Paddy Power had been murdered, McGarr would be guiltier still, doubtless in equal measure with the murderer, of the failure to conclude—as had Farrell and
Frost, who were expert in the matters of mortality—that Power had died a natural death.

McGarr tried to think of a way to keep Gladden from broadcasting his theory. As part of the investigation he could ask Gladden to “help the police,” was the phrase, and hold him incommunicado for forty-eight hours. But that might only extend a claim of official complicity to the Garda itself. And as Taosieach O’Duffy himself had said and Frost had reiterated only minutes before, Gladden was his own self entirely. Gladden would do what Gladden would do, and there was no stopping him.

The most McGarr could do was to cover his arse and maintain a studious neutrality. What would he need? Witnesses who were sure to be friendly, if his own actions were ever questioned.

Again reaching for the phone, he seemed to remember that Ruth Bresnahan, a new inspector on his staff, hailed from Sneem and would at least know of most of the major figures in the case—Power, Gladden, Frost, and their families. He would place her among the guests where she could nose about and ask questions, perhaps even stir things up. He would need to equip her with, say, a large new rental car and some attractive, pricey clothes paid for out of the squad’s “extraordinary expenses fund.”

McKeon and O’Shaughnessy, the squad’s two most experienced hands, he would place as delegates from two Irish banks where he had contacts. And finally he would put Detective Sergeant Hughie Ward in the bar.

He spoke to each of them in turn, requesting their confidentiality. “Have you phoned home?” Ward asked, when McGarr had finished.

“Not yet.”

“You should—your wife has been on to us twice that I’ve answered.”

“Has Madeleine et yet?” McGarr asked, when Noreen picked up.

“Of course she’s et. A half hour ago. How’s it going? Is it what they called you in for?”

“Care to dine out?” It was a cheap ploy; any invitation that included the word “out” was now irresistible to Noreen.

“Where?”

“Here, of course. Parknasilla.”

There was only the slightest pause. Any
normal
person would have challenged him on the fact that the hotel was at least a five-hour hard drive from Dublin. This was a time, however, to try a recently parturated, young professional mother’s soul, McGarr suspicioned, and Madeleine slept like a rock in their second car. It was a large, comfortable Rover that had been handed down by Noreen’s well-off parents, who changed cars every few years.

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“And I won’t.”

She understood what that meant: It was a long-distance call that might well be monitored by an operator, and they discussed McGarr’s work only in private.

“Well, when I arrive, how will I get
my
dinner?”

McGarr smiled, having led her to the magic phrase. “Room service.”

There was another pause in which he guessed she was imagining all the delightfully restful ramifications of hotel living. “And you’ll be up when I arrive?”

“Count on it.”

“How long will we be there?”

“This week until Sunday.”

“But how will we pay? Parknasilla costs a bloody bomb.”

“It’s official.”

Noreen made a sound in the back of her throat that McGarr interpreted as delight.

NOREEN MCGARR AWOKE with a start Tuesday morning. Blinding her was a burst of golden light made all the brighter by starched linen drape liners, in the gauzy mesh of which the new sun now caught. It was scouring a storm-washed sky. She blinked, trying to clear her vision, but the dazzling, shimmering film punished her eyes, and she turned her head to the wall.

Panic struck. Where was she? More—where was her
baby?

She snapped her head to the other side and saw another large, but empty, unmade bed, a tasteful early-nineteenth-century chiffonier reproduction, and a stuffed oval-back love seat on a royal-blue carpet. Raising a hand to her eyes, she again tried to look out the two windows, which seemed to fill the wall of the room that had eighteen-foot ceilings.

There she saw sparkling green islands in a running jade sea. Closer was the corner of a terrace with white cast-iron furniture and a white iron rail. To one side was a boxwood maze patterning & lawn that swept down to a beach where the water was just the turquoise color of her eyes.

Parknasilla.

Noreen fell back into the pillows. Her hand reached out and lifted the receiver from the telephone. When a voice came on, she ordered scones and butter. “And scalded coffee with scalded milk. I don’t know if you still do that, but
there was a time—” A small voice on the other end assured her that she could have her wish. “And I wonder, have you seen my husband. I’m Noreen—”

“Oh, yes. I can see him presently. He’s with the other babies in the sun room, reading the papers.”

Noreen stifled a laugh and thanked the woman.

“You’re welcome, Miss Frenche.”

The woman began phrasing her correction, but Noreen said there was no need. After all those years—how many? Five, seven? No, longer. It had been
nine full years
since she had last been here, and somebody on the staff had remembered that she—or perhaps rather
all
of the Frenches—ordered scalded coffee with scalded milk. She would have to tell her mother and father. It was the sort of thing they appreciated, and provided the illusion that, in spite of being a tiny minority in an often exasperating country, they still belonged to the
right
things, some of which endured.

And yet, ringing off, she felt glum. Here she was in one of Ireland’s premier resorts, which her parents had visited for whole weeks at a time but she herself could afford only on a government freebie. Barring some windfall, Maddie would never get to know the little bridges and lovely shadowed walks through the groves of island willows, the small, hilly, difficult golf course, the great green bay that she could now see in front of the hotel.

Times had changed, and whereas she and McGarr enjoyed a combined income that on paper would have classed them as wealthy, no,
rich
—twenty or thirty years ago, they in reality had been caught in a kind of financial vise. Taxes on everything—income, property, gasoline, the V.A.T.—just seemed to go up and up, while inflation made what little money they had to spend worth less and less. At the same time property values had plummeted in the nine years since they had bought their house, which meant that they had lost money on their only real investment.

Well, maybe somebody or something would bail the country out, she thought, but in the meantime she would enjoy the place while she was here. Noreen was about to palm a pillow over her eyes, when she heard some rustling and looked out through the sitting room to see a large buff
envelope being eased under the door. On it was an official seal and stamp, and her languor was immediately dispelled. Paddy Power had died, her husband had been called in, and the envelope might tell her why.

A thin, quick woman, she hopped from the bed, and was soon back under the covers with the seal broken, the envelope open, and what proved to be Power’s autopsy in her hands. Tears came to her eyes, which she had to blot with the sheet, before she read, “Padraic Benedict Power, Age 58, Final Diagnosis.” A summation on the title page said Power had died of ventricular fibrillation brought on by acute digitalis poisoning. It then listed the effects of the fibrillation on his heart and body, along with signs of aging that were also discovered during the postmortem: a hernia, some arteriosclerosis of the coronary arteries, scarring in his kidneys, liver, and pancreas.

He had a gash on his forehead and bruises on other parts of his body, evidently the result of a fall. There was evidence of burn scarring from some prior accident on both hands. The digitalis in his system was “…far in excess of what might be expected from the administration of the maximum dose of two 1 mg. tablets, as prescribed as a remedy for an attack of tachycardia,” the report concluded.

Digitalis poisoning—was it unusual? Why else would her husband have been called in?

Noreen was now wide awake. The details of McGarr’s investigations were a kind of leitmotiv in her life: a constantly unfolding, complex subplot, the installments of which she wheedled from him over breakfast in the morning, over drinks before dinner, and sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep and had nothing good to read, late at night. A native Dubliner, she could not resist the least bit of information concerning anybody she even vaguely knew, much less an investigation surrounding the death of a person of Paddy Power’s caliber and…potential. Again tears rose to her eyes.

But when the news got out, she now realized, Parknasilla would be besieged by journalists. When she had arrived last night, she had found only a team of Gardai at the gates. She wondered how long Power’s death could
be kept a secret. Or his
murder
. My God, what a story, and there she was in the thick of it. She almost wished she were back in Dublin where she could make “insider’s capital” of what she knew.

Noreen tossed back the covers to swing her legs out of bed when the phone rang.

Said McGarr, “We’re having breakfast in the dining room in ten minutes. Maddie, me, and Ruth Bresnahan.”

“But I’ve just ordered coffee.”

“You don’t drink coffee.”

“I do here.”

“I’ll have it brought to the table instead.”

“Ah, Peter. We’ve just got here, and I’m shattered from the drive and all. I thought we might have a simple breakfast, just you, me, and Maddie.”

There was a pause, and McGarr said, “So—the postmortem arrived.”

“It did, sure, but I’d just like to be brought up to speed on the matter.”

“So you will. Over breakfast. Unless, of course, you prefer to sit this dance out.”

Hanging up the phone, Noreen heard a noise and turned her head to see another envelope—small and white—being fitted under the door. The official Garda seal did not deter her. It was from Superintendent Butler of the Kenmare Barracks, saying that Nell Power was presently registered at the Waterville Lake Hotel, another resort that was only twenty-five or thirty miles away.

Noreen showered and dressed quickly, and soon found herself on the carpeted stairs where she tripped past Detective Sergeant Hughie Ward without recognizing him.

Little wonder, Ward thought, glancing at himself in a mirror. He looked like a character out of Dickens, he decided. A reverse Copperfield who had been snatched from the comfort of his familiar urban surroundings and thrust headlong into rural domestic service.

A former international boxer in the seventy-kilo weight class, Ward was a small, dark, handsome man who took pains with his appearance. Thrice weekly he toned up his well-muscled body by jogging, bag work, and sparring at
Dublin’s newest sport facility, and every month without question his largest personal expense was on clothes. Ward was nothing if not dapper. Undercover here, literally, in a servant’s swallowtail tuxedo that was a size too large, he looked bereft and juvenile.

Stopping his work of washing glasses for a fifth time to scan the hall, Ward at last caught sight of Bresnahan, who was standing at the reception desk, speaking with the manager of the hotel, who was yet another large person.

Christ, he thought—making sure Sonnie, the tall beverage manager, was nowhere in attendance—his situation had changed from Dickens to Swift—that is, bad to worse. He was surrounded by a hotel of Brobdingnagians, and his only hope was that its womankind would treat his Gulliver as immodestly.

It was a sleazy, macho, sexist thought, but Ward, who had long ago learned how sexually expedient it could be to sublimate the macho elements of his personality, was not feeling very good about himself today. and Bresnahan looked smashing—there was no other word for her—in a new outfit, the brilliant colors of which made a point of her stature and angularity.

A tall, shapely young woman with stormy gray eyes and waves of bright red hair, Bresnahan was today wearing a speckled—was it cashmere?—three-piece suit with white arabesques flowing across the front of a tight crewneck top. The graceful designs were repeated on a midthigh-length cardigan jacket. This last had blousey sleeves and on most women would have required padding in the shoulders, which were cut wide. The color was cobalt blue, as were her shoes, the silk scarf around her neck, and her knitted cashmere gloves, which suggested that she had just come in from outside.

Her long, shapely legs, set in ballet’s first position as she conversed with the manager, were attracting the darted stares of passing men. Wrapped in longitudinally ribbed bright orange hose that was the same color as her hair and, in fact, a nearby tangerine banquette, they made her look like a stunning ornament of the sumptuous lobby. In all, she was a match for the tall, coolly striking models who graced the pages of slick women’s fashion magazines that
Ward considered more tantalizing by far than the graphic nude glossies some of his friends perused. All this Ward’s eyes took in at a glance.

And to think, he thought, that of all the rich and powerful men presently resident in Parknasilla—heads of international banks and lending institutions, finance ministers of various countries, from what Sonnie had told him—only poor he (amateur pugilist, detective sergeant, barman) knew her intimately. It was an even sleazier thought, but Ward believed he had never desired Bresnahan more, and his mind flooded with the potential for quick, secret, occupationally illicit sex that the hotel might afford.

Bresnahan would be given a room, or so he assumed; and he, inconspicuous servant that he was, had access to
all
parts. After all, in spite of her recent cosmopolitan pretensions, she was merely a farm girl from one of the hills he could now see outside the windows. And in Ward’s precociously bountiful experience with farm girls, he had noted a singular approach to the male of the species. They treated men like cattle, namely, the Bull; often Ward had found such a stance availing.

But another disturbing thought struck him as well.
Where
had she gotten that suit, and
how much
had she spent? Ward knew the price of clothes, and, if her suit was woven of cashmere, as it appeared, she had either happened upon the buy of the decade or—his ears pulled back—she had been given the brilliant blue suit as a present by another admirer. It had to have cost the sort of packet that no detective inspector in her right mind could splash out.

Seeing her now approach him down the long, carpeted hall, Ward moved to the shadows of an alcove. “Psst—Rut’ie,” he whispered, as she powered her orange legs and cobalt-blue heels past him. “Rut’ie—here. C’mere a minute.”

Bresnahan looked both ways before joining him. She smiled. “What do we have here, an apprentice barman? Should I be speaking to you? May I congratulate you on your humility, if not your appearance. I must get a camera.”

Ward waved a hand to mean he was unfazed and it was
all in a day’s work. “God, you look brilliant this morning. Really. Where did you get that dress?” He reached out and touched her elbows.

It
was
cashmere, but she only smiled at him. She was not telling.

“Turn around now, so I can appreciate you in all your exquisite totality.” Ward was a great man for compliments, which cost nothing, and his hand lingered on the significant curve of her hip. They had been “dating” now for nearly a year. Discreetly. Apart from eye contact, they had made no acknowledgment of their liaison while at work, lest one of them be transferred to some other squad. “Grand, really. Glorious. To be sure, you’re the best-looking woman on the ground floor of Parknasilla—foyer section, bar part.” His hand slipped farther. “Look—do y’have your room yet?”

She nodded.

“What’s the number?”

“Why?”

Ward’s head moved back dramatically, and he regarded her with quizzical dismay. “Well, you know, I thought—”

Bresnahan’s smile muted. It became brittle, pouting her cheeks and making her eyes seem overbright. Ward’s hopes plummeted. He had seen that smile before; it was the smile that said no.

“You thought wrong, and I think you know it. Not only are we on duty, we’re on my turf now, and I’ll not have a word said of me that isn’t already in circulation.”

Ward opened his mouth to object, but she placed a finger on his lips. “Listen to me now while I tell you, and don’t take offense.” She waited until he looked at her, and he fell into the limpid pools of her slate-gray eyes in which he would have—and sometimes feared he already had—happily died.

Ward was put in mind of a deer startled in a field. The impression was of abundant and even
animal
good health. One perfect nostril, arced like a cashew, flared as she drew in a large chestful of charged, serious air.

“You might think you know about country places like this, but you don’t. A city fella like you
couldn’t
without having lived here yourself, and maybe not even then.

“Parknasilla, this hotel, is in Sneem, and Sneem is my village. There’s not a person who works in this hotel, including Sonnie, your boss, who doesn’t know every public detail about my family, high points and low, within memory.” She pointed down the hall where they now saw the head barman standing, hands on hips, his head turning this way and that, looking for Ward.