The Irish Cottage Murder (11 page)

*   *   *

But the worst had been Donna.

It was as though when they’d opened the suitcase, a swarm of evil snakes had crawled out and entangled them.

Dr. Willinger’s death had not been enough. Nor his widow’s nervous collapse. Nor little Joshua being shunned for his father’s crime. And not even Luke Willinger having to leave Harvard and go to work for Hinkler Sons Landscaping to support his mother and Josh.

No. The worst was Donna Lefebvre, aged twelve.

30

At Castle Moore, at eleven o’clock that Friday morning, Winifred sprawled luxuriously in a tapestry chair in the library. She wore a white shirt and a khaki skirt, but she felt like royalty. It was
her
tapestry chair now, as was Castle Moore and all its attendant riches. On the Aubusson carpet at her feet lay the scattered newspapers. She and Sheila were watching the RTE television news in case of further reports on Desmond’s murder. Sheila was sitting on a fringed hassock.

“You never can tell what
lurks
in people,” Sheila said. “I’d never have guessed. Torrey Tunet seemed a perfectly nice young woman.”

“Oh,
nice!
So was Henry the Eighth nice, except when he was beheading his wives.” Winifred gave a huge laugh. She hugged her arms, her color was high, her eyes bright. “Besides, Torrey wasn’t nice. She had too much guts for
nice.
”

“Quibble, quibble, quibble,” Sheila said.

Winifred didn’t answer. All night she had walked the rooms of the castle, excitedly planning, breaking into sudden disbelieving laughter, and shaking her head. Sheila in her wake kept saying in a shocked tone, “How
can
you, Winifred? So callous! With Desmond murdered …
murdered!
”

Winifred, with a shrug of her big shoulders, had sardonically paraphrased
Hamlet,
with “‘T’was an obliteration devoutly to be wished,’” and at Sheila’s horrified gasp had qualified, grudgingly, “at least by a person who had a rage against him—somebody with something screamingly unbearable in his or her head.”

In the tapestry chair, Winifred flexed her big fingers, then relaxed them. It was a habit she’d had since childhood that somehow relieved her tension. As a child, growing up in Dun Laoghaire, wretchedly poor, she had been tense with embarrassment and shame at her torn stockings, cheap dresses, and the margarine sandwiches she’d brought to school for lunch. Rage ruled her heart. Being motherless was one thing. Having a feckless drunkard for a father was worse. That her father, Sean, was one of the rich Moores in America, neglected by them, was an injustice that in childhood made her clench her dirty little fists. She’d raged with the knowledge, somehow gained, that her favored cousin Desmond in America had a pony and went to expensive schools. Envy had tortured her.
If I were only Desmond,
she would think, sitting on the curb outside McCarthy’s Pub, flexing her fingers, or standing on the pier watching the ships depart with immigrants for England … and as, years later, in London, when Desmond inherited Castle Moore, she would say to Sheila in half-humorous despair, “Why
him?
Why not
me?
” Last year, at the time of the Dublin Horse Show, departing Castle Moore after their three-day visit from London, she had said broodingly to Sheila as they drove away, “There’s a thing or two I suspect about Desmond. Unsavory. None of my business. But if it’s true, I can feel a
little
sorry for him, rotten as he is.”

“‘Rotten?’” Sheila had said. “You’re just envious of Desmond. You’d do better to expend your energies on your poetry, Winifred. You’ve almost enough for a small volume. It could go for eight pounds. Maybe more. English pounds.”

But Winifred had shaken her head. “I said ‘rotten,’ Sheila, and I meant rotten. I don’t toy with language.” She’d made a wry face and added, “I hope to God that being a shit isn’t genetic.”

Now, in the library, Sheila picked up the television remote and fiddled with it, watching the screen. “That psychiatrist’s coming on again in a minute.”

“Dear, God! Another asinine know-it-all with a half-assed theory about why Ms. Tunet killed Desmond.”

Sheila spotted Luke Willinger in a duffle coat going past the library door. “Luke! Hello!” She turned down the sound on the television.

Luke paused. “Morning.” He glanced in at the newspapers scattered on the floor at Winifred’s feet. “Can’t stay. I’ve got to—”

“Please!” Winifred called out quickly. “Come in! Just for a minute. Please! We missed you at breakfast. Rose said you’d gone to Dublin.”

“Right.” He came in. He stood with his hands in the pockets of the duffle coat; the shoulders were spotted with rain. He looked from Winifred to the television screen, then back at Winifred. Their eyes locked. Luke shrugged. “Go ahead.”

“Yes.” Winifred eyed him. “I read this morning’s
Irish Independent.
It’s delivered. That North Hawk story about Torrey Tunet … You read the
Independent?
”

“Yes.”

“That psychoanalyst in North Hawk who shot himself—that was your father?”

“Stepfather.”

“What the
Independent
says—that’s what happened?”

“Just about.” He dropped into one of the red leather chairs beside the fireplace, stuck out his legs, and waited. The collar of the duffle coat was rucked up in back.

“I’m sorry,” Winifred said. She’d read the story twice. There was poetry there, a dirge, an epic, a saga; yet it was really only a sketchy little event in a small American town.

Sheila was nervously fiddling with the television remote. The sound suddenly blasted, an interviewer’s voice booming, “In your opinion, Doctor?” and a man in rimless glasses screamed back, “Guilt! Her enormous guilt made her do anything,
anything
to get money to pay for the young woman, Donna Lefevbre’s surgery. Even …
murder.
”

“Turn that thing
down,
dammit!” Winifred yelled. Sheila fumbled wildly. The volume rose to deafening; the psychiatrist’s voice thundered, “She wanted the Moore diamond necklace at any cost, even murder. Why? To expiate her former crimes—thievery, Dr. Willinger’s suicide, and paralysis of the younger girl, Donna Lefebvre.”

“Sheila! For God’s—” The television screen went blank. Sheila, pressing buttons frantically, had turned it off.

They sat. Sheila said, finally, appalled, “Paralysis? What paralysis? The paper didn’t—And we must have missed it on the TV.… Oh, Winifred!”

“For God’s sake, Sheila,” Winifred said, “don’t start that. You sound like a soap opera.” She looked at Luke in the red leather armchair. “What’s that idiot psychiatrist talking about? What paralysis?”

Luke rubbed a hand over his face, pulled his nose, coughed, then shrugged. “When it happened—the thievery, my stepfather’s suicide, all the publicity—Donna’s parents were devastated. They were in shock. George Lefebvre, Donna’s father, was a postal worker at the North Hawk post office. When the story broke, he found himself a public spectacle. Half the people in North Hawk suddenly needed rolls of stamps and a dozen other post office services. Poor George! The Lefebvres, with three younger kids, all boys, were a decent French-Canadian family, plenty like them in Massachusetts.

“Anyway—two days after my stepfather’s suicide, Donna’s mother found her packing some clothes in an old overnight bag. It was just before supper. She was terrified that Donna was so ashamed that she’d try to run away. So after supper, she and George Lefebvre sent Donna upstairs to bed and locked her in. They planned to consult their priest in the morning.”

Luke Willinger stopped. He gazed at the pattern on the library rug. He looked from Winifred to Sheila. He took a breath.

“Late that night, an ambulance brought Donna to the North Hawk Mercy Hospital. She was unconscious. They said later that she was claustrophobic. Locked in the bedroom, she was like a terrified bird, wild to escape. She jumped out of the second-story bedroom window. It did something to her spine. She couldn’t move her legs. She was paralyzed. For life.”

*   *   *

Neither Winifred nor Sheila moved. Then Sheila, hand at her throat, whispered, “For life … Oh, that poor … that poor—Winifred, I need a drink. I know it’s morning, Winifred, but I
need
it.”

“Not when you’re upset,” Winifred said impatiently. “It’ll make you sick,” and to Luke, “An appalling tale. What’s it got to do with Torrey Tunet stealing the Moore necklace?”

“Surgery. There’s a new disc operation, possible for Donna’s kind of spinal injury. Very delicate surgery. The tab, what with the hospital, therapy, medication, the works, has got to run forty, fifty thousand dollars. Maybe more.”

“So that’s what that jackass psychiatrist meant? Why Torrey Tunet stole the necklace? That, about guilt? Torrey wanted the money to pay for the operation?”

“Right.”

“God! It must have broken Torrey’s heart. Donna’s being paralyzed. She would’ve blamed herself.”

“Not to mention,” Sheila said, “that everybody in North Hawk would have blamed her, too. And for the suicide. They’d’ve treated her like a pariah.”

Winifred eyed Luke. “You, included, of course.”

He met her speculative gaze. “Naturally.”

“Balls!”
Winifred’s voice crackled with outrage. She rose like a thundercloud from the tapestry chair. Her square-jawed face with its high color was furious. “Balls! For God’s sake! A daring, mischievous fourteen-year-old finds an illegal cache of money—and a twelve-year-old kid wants some drums! Where do you keep your head, Mr. Willinger? In a box buried underground?”

A voice from the doorway, tired but amused, said, “What a lot of noise in here! Sounds like the overture to Wilhelm Tell.”

They turned. Torrey Tunet, in her rumpled navy business suit, stood in the doorway, briefcase in hand. Her face was pale, she looked exhausted; but she wore lipstick that looked freshly, carefully applied.

*   *   *

“You’re here?” Winifred stared. “I thought you were being held by the
Garda Siochana.
The paper said—”

“They let me out. On bail.”

“Bail? Where did you find the money for bail?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then who posted bail for you?”

Luke, in the red leather armchair, cleared his throat. “I did.”

31

In the rose marble shower with its fragrant soap, Torrey scrubbed off the linoleum-and-disinfectant smell of imprisonment, the echoing police corridors, the clang of metal doors. She slid her fingers at last through the clean silkiness of her dark hair and with her palms sleeked water from her breasts, down her waist and flanks.

“Ms. Tunet?” A knock on the bathroom door.

“Just a minute.” She stepped from the shower and snugged a towel around her breasts. In the bedroom she found Janet, the senior maid, waiting.

“Mr. Willinger wants to know if could you meet him at twelve o’clock, before lunch, at the five-bar gate. That’s just past the stables.”

“Tell him yes. Thanks, Janet.”

She was still stunned that Luke Willinger had showed up at her arraignment at the Pearse Street Garda Station and posted bail for her. Then, when she’d been in the toilet, he’d disappeared.

Bewildering. He despised her. And he believed she’d stolen the necklace. Cock-and-bull, he’d thought, when she’d tried to tell him the truth in the pub. Cock-and-bull. They
all
believed she’d stolen that damned necklace—the gardai, the Irish newspapers, the radio and television commentators, and the population of Ireland. And Luke Willinger. So what was he up to? Laying some kind of trap for her?

In the bedroom she sat down at the dressing table and began to put on her makeup. Behind her, Janet Slocum said, “D’you want this cleaned?” She was holding up Torrey’s dirty, crumpled navy suit. “There’s a place in Ballynagh that can do it in one day, if I ask.”

“Yes, please. And thanks.” In the mirror, she glanced at Janet, an angular woman in a pale blue uniform with a white bibbed apron. Janet had a long-jawed face and small, brown, monkeylike eyes. She was in her thirties and wore her brown hair in a bun. Something about her made Torry think she had lived hard.

*   *   *

Dressed in a gray flannel shirt, pink belt, dark pants, and comfortable walking boots, Torrey picked up her navy wool sweater. At the bedroom door, she turned back to Janet. “I thought Rose took care of this wing of the castle. Is she all right?”

“Oh, yes, ma’am. But Rose is away. She’s off in London for a couple of days’ holiday. She’ll be back tonight.”

Something in Janet’s voice made Torrey look searchingly at her. Their eyes met. Torrey had a feeling that Janet knew what was what in a world larger than that of Ballynagh.

32

“That mare’s to be sold,” Janet said to Brian Coffey in the stable yard. Brian Coffey had just trotted Darlin’ Pie back into the yard after a half-hour’s exercise.

“What! Says who?” Brian slid down from the mare’s back, ran a caressing finger down her nose, then gave her a slap on her glossy neck and handed the reins to Kevin, the new lad. Brian’s tan cotton jersey was wet with sweat, his red hair damp, with strands sticking to his pale, freckled forehead.

“Who says so? Ms. Winifred Moore, the new owner of Castle Moore. That’s who says so.”

“Ah, no! Ms. Winifred won’t be having the stables then?” Brian’s voice was stricken. He looked unhappily after the mare that Kevin was leading into the stables. “I’ll be out of a job again! Kevin, too. Not so bad for a young lad like him. But I’m thirty-two! And fellows lining up for my kind of job.” He looked miserably into Janet’s small, monkeylike eyes. “What about you? You and Rose?”

“Ms. Winifred’s keeping me on. Rose, too.”

Brian turned away. “I never have the luck.” His voice quavered.

Janet said, suddenly gentle, “Maybe Ms. Winifred’ll change her mind about the stables. She’s still bouncing around on the griddle. Rags to riches.”

But Brian only shook his head and turned away, shoulders sagging.

33

In the library, now that Torrey Tunet had gone upstairs to shower and Luke Willinger had gone off somewhere, Winifred and Sheila were alone. Sheila, sitting on a fringed hassock, looked at Winifred in the tapestry chair. “Heavens, Winifred! Mr. Willinger is ridiculously naïve. Bailing Torrey Tunet out of jail! Can he actually believe that Desmond
gave
her the necklace?”