The Irish Cottage Murder (24 page)

Janet, after a moment, started to peel the potato. “Did I?

“Yes, Janet. Remember?”

“I guess.”

Ms. Tunet reached around and took another cracker from the sideboard. “What’re we having for dinner? Will that be mashed potatoes?”

“Scalloped. With a veal roast. Green beans with lemon and parsley.”

“Sounds heavenly. It’s so cool today.” Ms. Tunet started to leave the kitchen. But after a few steps, she stopped and turned around. “Oh, I forgot! It was really sensational at the garda station this morning! You were mentioned, Janet—Did you know?”

“Me?” Janet asked.

“Yes. It was when Brian Coffey told Inspector O’Hare that he heard you calling and coming toward the stables just after Fergus Callaghan had killed Desmond Moore. But that then you never came after all.” Ms. Tunet popped the rest of the cracker into her mouth.

“Did he?” Janet asked, “Brian Coffey? Yes, though about that time—But that’s right, I never went. I don’t remember why.”

Ms. Tunet said, “Poor Mr. Callaghan! Losing his head like that! And you know something odd, Janet…?”

Janet held the potato and peeler suspended. “Odd, Ms. Tunet?”

“Yes,” Ms. Tunet said, “I wouldn’t have thought Fergus Callaghan’d even have the strength to do it. He’s ‘all belted tweeds and shoulder padding,’ as I heard someone say.”

Janet said, “Well, Mr. Callaghan doesn’t
appear
to be strong. Still, you never—”

Ms. Tunet said, “Yes, of course. But such a pity, isn’t it?”

Janet said nothing; she was giving the potatoes her full attention. She didn’t look up when, a moment later, Ms. Tunet left the kitchen.

*   *   *

A nettle scratch that wouldn’t heal and was beginning to fester. Turning ugly inside as well as out. Janet ran her fingers over her pockmarked cheek. It wasn’t always fair the way life took you, swung you around like a cat by the tail, and threw you away. Except that, look now, this time it had not been her who at Castle Moore had been swung around and thrown away.

Ms. Tunet was onto it somehow. Onto something. Sensory, she was, or just putting different combinations together, like working on a puzzle, grabbing at bits, a word like niggardly, putting things in people’s heads, like she’d done just now in the kitchen. But Mr. Callaghan’d get off. Self-defense. She’d lay a bet on it. But it was what was in a person’s head that counted, what a person in his head did or didn’t do … like what would be left inside Mr. Callaghan’s head for the rest of his life? Not to mention her own head, where the nettle had already begun to fester. So, in a way, maybe she was glad of Ms. Tunet.

Janet bit a lip and got up. At the sideboard, she opened the drawer and took out a pencil and the ruled yellow kitchen pad used for making out the grocery list.

68

“Ms. Tunet!” Rose called out, searching, near hysteria. Where was she? One minute she’d been posing for the news photographers in her white shirt and jeans; the next, she’d disappeared.

Crying out, “Ms. Tunet!” Rose ran into the bedroom and looked wildly about the empty room. “Ms. Tunet!” The bathroom? No, the bathroom was empty. But a damp towel hung on one of the gold hooks and the glass-enclosed shower walls were wet. Ms. Tunet had recently showered. The scent of a cologne whose name Rose did not know, infused the bathroom.

Rose ran out of the bathroom, out of the bedroom, and down the curved main staircase.

“Ms. Tunet! Ms. Tunet!” She was almost crying. She yanked open the door to the library and bumped into Mr. Willinger. “Hey there!” Mr. Willinger grabbed her arms. “What’s wrong?”

“Ms. Tunet! Have you seen her?” Her face felt hot; she tasted salt and knew in shock that it had been too much for her, on Hannah’s account—she had been crying. Because she might be too late, because of what Janet had told her Ms. Tunet had said in despair when she’d opened the envelope delivered by hand from the
Garda Siochana
and taken out the heirloom necklace. Rose saw Mr. Willinger through a haze. “Ms. Tunet! I must find her!”

*   *   *

She was astride what’s-her-name—Blithe Spirit, Sweet Baby, Darlin’ Pie—galloping across the fields. Either she or the mare was out of control; she was not sure which. She was free. She had fought and won. But there was the other war she had lost. She had failed. Unbearable, unbearably bitter that she would have to tell Donna, “Maybe in a year, two years, I’ll have the money.”

Luke Willinger had managed to survive that hideous time in North Hawk sixteen years ago. His mother had married again. Luke’s kid brother, Josh, was a successful engineer. His thieving baby-sitter, Torrey Tunet, had not destroyed him. But Donna! Donna Lefebvre, with her paralyzed legs. “Maybe later on, Donna, I’ll have the money.”

For now, it was over. That one chance, with the surgeon from Texas, the eight-hour operation at Mass General in Boston.

She reined the mare to a canter, then to a walk. She had been riding wildly, dangerously. She was soaked with sweat, her hair plastered across her forehead. She was still in jeans, sneakers, and a white shirt. Around her neck was the Moore heirloom diamond necklace, the emerald below her collarbone. She had plans for it, for that necklace that had been hand delivered a half-hour ago from the
Garda Siochana
in Dublin.

High on a hill, she reined the horse to a stop. She looked west across the hills. She could see the woods that lay between Ballynagh and Castle Moore, the late afternoon sun gilding the leaves, casting shadows on the mountains. She narrowed her eyes, searching for the glitter of the lake, but the late afternoon had become warm and so humid that a low-lying mist hung over the lake, dulling its gleam to pewter. But there it was, down there to the left, her destination.

She guided the horse slowly down from the hills and through the woods toward the lake. She reached the lake and reined the mare to a stop. There, on the edge of the lake, was the little bathing hut. She looked along the shore and spotted the flat rock under which she’d hidden the necklace, outguessing Desmond Moore’s sexual strategy. She was no innocent not to know a game or two. There’d been a particularly touchy time in Morocco, another in Beirut. There’d be more. She was twenty-seven.

She sat for a minute, quite still, gazing at the lake. Then she pulled the diamond necklace, that wretched fake, off over her head. She rose in the stirrups, straight backed, and with her head up she flung the necklace into the lake.

“Jesus!” Something flashed past her, dove, and was gone.

69

The bathing hut smelled of pine and was dim and humid. Torrey felt so exhausted that she collapsed onto the folding canvas stool. Her white shirt was damp with sweat.

“So…” Luke Willinger, five feet away, toweled his bare back, water still dripping down his legs. He looked like a primitive in a kid’s TV series about a tribe of religious savages. He was barefoot and naked except for navy underpants instead of a loin cloth. Around his neck hung the diamond necklace, the emerald pendant against his chest.

“So,” he went on, “Rose told me that when you opened the envelope from the garda and found the necklace, you said to Janet … Uh, let’s see, I forget exactly—”

“I remember exactly. I said, ‘This damned phony necklace! Worth maybe five pounds! I’ll feed it to the fishes!’”

“Right. So—let’s see. You’d gone off riding. I put on sneakers—”

“Oh, God! Get on with it! I don’t care what you decided to wear. Is this a fashion conversation? What are we talking about?”

“Ah, yes.” He grinned at her. With the towel, he tousled his wet hair. “Janet mentioned to Rose what you said.”

“About feeding the fishes?”

“Right, again. When Rose heard that, she rushed around looking for you and ran into me. All tears and mottled face and having a fit. She’d switched the necklaces.” Luke Willinger put a hand up and fingered the diamond necklace, grinning at her. “You threw tens of thousands of dollars into the lake.”

*   *   *

Luke Willinger picked up his wet jeans between thumb and forefinger and regarded them distastefully. “Christ! As bad as wearing a hair shirt.”

She sat staring at him, incredulous. “The real necklace? Why’d she do that? Rose.”

“Who knows? I gathered she wanted—She was hiccuping and crying and bitter, but she wouldn’t say, just kept repeating, ‘I wanted the next girl to get the real necklace. She ought to have it! Whoever she might be!’”

Torrey said slowly, “And the next girl was me.”

“Uh-huh. Desmond kept the real heirloom in the wall vault in his bedroom. Sometimes he didn’t lock it; he was careless, especially if he’d been drinking, Rose said. She made the switch, putting the real necklace in the red leather case in the library.”

“Oh, my. Oh, my.” There, around Luke Willinger’s neck and resting against his somewhat admirable-looking chest, was the miracle, the answer to Boston. She got up from the canvas stool. “Don’t put on those wet jeans. Wait here and I’ll bring you some dry clothes from the castle.”

“Thanks.” He took off the necklace, came over, and put it around her neck. She felt his fingers along her cheek. He smelled like the lake, the hut, and his masculinity. His hands moved around to cup her head, turning her face up to meet his kiss.
Ah, yes,
she thought, the warmth of his lips on hers. Ah, yes, yes indeed; kissing Luke Willinger was exactly the way she had dreamed it would be all those years.

70

It was raining when he reached Kilreekill on the red motorbike, the bike getting muddy and his black bomber jacket with rivelets of rain running down it and the neck of his olive turtleneck getting soaked. His helmet kept his hair dry, but what was the difference, so sick about it all, he was. How could it help any anyway when he got to Oughterard to his sister Eileen’s? Because he couldn’t tell her. But just to see Eileen for a little! Just to be with her in Oughterard for an hour, the two of them over a pot of tea; then he’d go back to Castle Moore.

So about the same time the newsmen and photographers were leaving Castle Moore, he’d wheeled the motorbike from the stable and put on the helmet and fastened it under his chin.

Through the rain he glimpsed a turn-off sign, not yet Loughrea, though. He touched the zippered breast pocket of the bomber jacket where he’d put the note.
“I came around the west corner of the stable. I saw you standing over him with the knife that Mr. Callaghan had dropped.”

He was on N6 now, already minutes from the roundabout at Loughrea, then he’d go up through Athernry to skirt Galway. His bomber jacket smelled sourly of wet leather. The rain was pelting down harder; it was only three o’clock but dark gray with the heavy rain.
“I saw what you did.”

He’d just gotten on the motorbike at the stable when she’d come up. She was wearing her kitchen apron and handed him the note, no word, and had gone off. He’d revved up the motor, then with his feet on the ground for balance, he’d unfolded the note.

Ahead, he saw a road sign, but it was for a minor road, not the Loughrea roundabout sign.
“I’d thought to keep quiet about it. He deserved it. You don’t know the half of what I’ve seen at Castle Moore.”

Raindrops slid down his nose, and his wrists were wet with the rain and getting raw, chafing against the black leather. It was pouring so steadily now that he could barely see the hills; cars and lorries had their lights on.
“I keep my eyes open. I know what Mr. Desmond did so you got to hate him.”

Part of the wet on his face was not rain.
“So I thought at first I’d keep quiet about at the stable, what I saw. But it’s me I’ve got to think about, Brian. I can see that now. They’ve got to be told. It would go better for you if you’re the one who tells. A confession. Like your conscience made you go to them.”

Him tell?
“And them knowing why, that would make them more lenient like.”

The wet on his face, so much more than rain. How many nights in bed he’d awakened with tears on his face; and he’d lie sleepless, in misery. It was why when Fergus Callaghan had stumbled away from the stable with the gun, and he’d come down from the loft and seen that Mr. Desmond, bloody as he was, was only injured and not dead—It was why, in sudden rage, he’d picked up the knife and driven it into the rotten heart of Desmond Moore … had done it because of what Mr. Desmond had done to him, done, and done, and done, then given him the present of the red motorbike, like paying a whore, one of the boy whores of Dublin. Because now he could never feel the same about himself as a man.

Mr. Desmond’s blood had spurted onto Brian’s black jacket and later he’d wiped it off, though some had gotten into a couple of cracks near the zippered breast pocket. He was glad it was there, like some secret, in revenge. Forever.

A gust of rain blew into his face; he blinked it away.
“But if you don’t tell them, I will have to.”

Tell them? How could he ever confess, tell them why, for the shame of it?

Through the rain, he saw the sign for the Loughrea roundabout; a gas tank lorry snorted and rumbled close past the motorbike. In the rain, lights shimmered, reflecting everywhere, duplicating themselves on the shining wet road, the glistening sides of cars. The motorbike sputtered and he saw that he was out of gas. He tried to pull to the side, but his eyes were full of tears and shimmering lights. Out of the dazzlement a lorry loomed over him, and he cried out, “Eileen!” And for an instant there was the warmth and coziness of his sister smiling at him, and then there was nothing.

71

It was the first of September, the air crisp, sheep grazing on the hills of Wicklow south of Castle Moore. This morning it seemed to Rose, in the kitchen, as though the two murders of barely three weeks ago had never been. As for poor Brian Coffey!—

Rose slanted a glance at Janet Slocum, who was cutting up carrots for the stew. Janet was on probation; she had witnessed the murder of Mr. Desmond and kept mum about it. It was all proved by the note found in Brian Coffey’s jacket pocket. Later they’d found Mr. Desmond’s blood in a seam of Brian’s jacket.