The Irish Cottage Murder (6 page)

“So
that’s
how you grew up in Ireland. You never wanted to say.”

“Yes … Grew up in Dun Laoghaire, with the piers reaching out to the sea, the harbor with the mail boats leaving every day taking emigrants from Ireland to seek their fortune in London. I ached with longing, a dirty-faced kid whose father wept in pubs. I grew up scribbling, then cleaning rooms in a guest house and taking the bus to Dublin to study lit at Trinity. Then the bus back to Dun Laoghaire, where I’d stand at the harbor watching the boats move off, whistles tooting. A month after my father was killed, I bought my boat ticket. It cost all the money I had. I was nineteen.”

“So your father was a ship’s chandler’s clerk? If the Moores were so pissed—so angry at your father—how come you’re in line to inherit Castle Moore?”

“Moores for the Moores. It was in Sean’s will that the Moore property devolve on the Moores. So if Desmond died and left no wife or progeny, the property would go to Danny or his progeny. That’s me, darlin’.” She dropped her pizza crust on the table. “
Damn
Desmond! I could have done with a decent dinner and a bottle of Desmond’s vintage wine. And Rose said there was a rhubarb pie and some special bread a woman bakes for Desmond.
Damn
him! And tonight. Just trying to torture me!” She glared at her pizza crust. “Sometimes I’d like to kill Desmond.”

16

In the wooden changing cubicle beside the lake, Torrey pulled off the silk knitted sweater. She got out of her flat black sandals and slipped down her pants and panties. The swimsuits were in a big woven basket. They were all bikinis. She chose a dark blue that looked a fairly decent fit and put it on.

She unclasped the diamond necklace and laid it on top of her clothes on the folding canvas stool. She stood still, looking down at it. She was aware of a faint rustle of leaves; a small breeze had come up. She heard voices outside, Desmond Moore and Luke Willinger making their way down to the lake. Their voices became fainter. She heard splashing; they were already swimming about.

She turned from the necklace. Don’t think.
Don’t think.
There was a basket of Japanese rubber sandals near the little swing door. She chose a pair and put them on.

She opened the door to leave. For a moment she stood there, looking out. In the moonlight she saw that the two swimmers were already a couple of hundred feet from the edge of the lake.

She turned back. She picked up the diamond necklace and clasped it around her neck. She ran out and down to the lake. She waded, gasping, into the icy water, then dived into the blackness.

17

In the stables, the bay mare, Darlin’ Pie, neighed and stamped. “’Tis the moonlight,” Brian Coffey mumbled, turning in his bed. His rooms were a former gardener’s quarters at one end of the U-shaped stable, right over the mare’s stall. He’d put Darlin’ Pie in box number three because he liked to keep an eye on a new-bought mare, “tune in to her,” was the way he put it.

He sat up. Eyes half-closed, he got out of bed and went sleepily to the bathroom. When he came back he sat down on the edge of the bed, head hanging, elbows on knees, pushing his fingers through his red hair, rubbing his scalp.

Outside the stables, voices. Brian lifted his head, listening. Mr. Desmond’s voice, a woman’s, and that landscape man’s, the American’s. They’d be coming from the lake. Three people. Usually it was just Mr. Desmond and a woman. Once it was an English society girl; another time a student from Trinity College; once, a village girl, just a kid. All kinds.

Brian pulled the sheet back over him, shut his eyes, and burrowed his face in the pillow. Some things he didn’t want to know about.

18

“I don’t
know!
” Torrey Tunet said, flinging out her hands. “I forgot I was wearing it! Then when I came out of the water, it was gone!
Gone.
Oh,
God!
”

By Luke’s estimate, this was the sixth time Torrey Tunet had repeated those words since they’d left the lake and started up the path in the moonlit dark. She was walking ahead with Desmond, who had a comforting arm around her shoulders and kept nodding his head.

“In the morning, we’ll get a diver,” Desmond said, also for the sixth time … or was it the seventh? “Though frankly, I doubt we’ll find it. Muddy bottom. You could sink the Eiffel Tower in that lake and never find it. Though maybe, on the shore…” and he shrugged.

“I’m so terribly sorry,” Torrey said. “Your family heirloom! Your grandmother’s necklace! Was it insured?”

“Not for nearly its worth,” Desmond said, “unfortunately.”

Luke was treading on their shadows in the moonlight, the shadow of the little thief and Desmond Moore … only this time, was she innocent? There was no place on her body that she could have hidden the necklace. She didn’t even wear a bra under that thin silk sweater, that was easy to see. She had on just the black sandals, possibly skimpy panties, and those loose, thin black pants over her neatly rounded buttocks.

“You might really have dropped it in the dressing cubicle,” Desmond said reassuringly for maybe the eleventh time. But the three of them had fruitlessly searched the dressing cubicle, inching over it, in case Torrey had absentmindedly taken off the necklace and dropped it somewhere before going out to swim.

Luke frowned. Something bothered him, something peculiar about Desmond Moore’s reaction when Torrey had discovered the loss of the necklace and cried out in dismay. Puzzled, he gazed at the dark bulk of Desmond Moore with his arm around Torrey Tunet. He could have sworn that Desmond had been pleased at the loss of the necklace. But how was that possible? Unless the necklace was actually over-insured?

They were passing the stables when a suspicion about Torrey, the little thief, surfaced again in Luke’s mind: a possibility. To his surprise, he found himself edgily trying to brush it away; it was as though he wanted to believe her innocent. Was she?

*   *   *

Three
A.M.
In black jeans, navy turtleneck, and sneakers, she went softly down the stone steps and out by the smaller side door of the west wing to the path that led to the lake. The moon was still high, but anyway she’d brought the pencil flashlight that she never traveled without.

Dead still at the lake; a duplicate moon lay on the lake’s surface. At the pebbled fringe of the lake she shone the flashlight back and forth on the pebbles until she located the bigger gray stone. It was the size of her fist. She counted four stones to the right of the gray stone, and there, indeed, was the broad, flat piece of shale. She knelt and put down the pencil flashlight.

She lifted the piece of shale and drew out the diamond necklace.

*   *   *

He ducked into the bushes beside the path just in time. A whiff of perfume reached him as she went past. Something shone on her cheeks, as though the moonlight had turned her face to marble.

So! As he’d suspected! Still a thief. Was there some moral blindness in her mind, some inability to understand what her crooked actions did to people? This time there was no suicide and heartbreak and no tragic accident that destroyed a life. But in North Hawk, Massachusetts, she had destroyed more than one life; because what about the younger girl, her friend, now spending her life in a wheelchair?

He plucked a leaf from the bush and chewed it. Bitter. But this time the tragedy was not to someone else. This time the tragedy was the corruption of Torrey Tunet’s own decency, her morale. It was a rape of what she had since—supposedly—tried to become. Don’t!
Don’t do it!
he wanted to cry out to her. But she had already done it.

So bitter, that leaf in his mouth, so greenly bitter. What ailed him? Strange, to be so disappointed in Torrey Tunet, whom he hated and despised. Weird to be so angry at her for thieving again. Or—

It hit him like a shock. Not so weird after all. Torrey Tunet and
him?
Impossible!

And what was worse, he was going to turn her in.

19

In the bedroom she slid the necklace into the top drawer of the dressing table. She shed the black jeans, turtleneck, and sneakers; sat down at the dressing table; and creamed off her makeup, looking into her eyes in the mirror. She knew what she was going to do. Could she go through with it? She had to. But what was the extreme of temptation? She needed the forty-thousand-dollar miracle that lay in the dressing table drawer.

The phone buzzed.

“Torrey?” It was Myra Schwartz, Interpreters International, Inc., in New York. “Torrey? Lucky you gave me that bedroom phone number. Some fancy castle! Anyway—I know it’s four
A.M.
in Ireland, but I thought you’d want to know. Good news! I’ve got an assignment for you. Right up your alley. In Turkey, Ankara, with the French, some brouhaha about a boycott. You’ll be there three weeks. Tell me you’re pleased.”

“Myra, that’s great. Thanks.” It would be money in the thousands, maybe several thousand dollars. But not enough. She suppressed a wild desire to laugh.

“When?”

“Middle of August. In six weeks.”

“Count on me,” Torrey said, “and
tesekkur.
”

“What’s that?”

“‘Thanks,’ in Turkish.”

“Oh, God,” Myra said, “I barely speak basic English.”

20

Two hours before dawn, Rose, in her loose pink cotton nightgown, sat at the little desk scribbling a hasty note to Hannah in London. The note was more like a postscript to yesterday’s letter. But remembering what a naïve child Hannah was, Rose, sleepless, had gotten out of bed and at the desk was sending these few more words, “About Sgt. Jimmy Bryson—When you come back to Ireland, if you go out with him and it would be nice if you would, you always liked Jimmy Bryson—
you don’t have to tell him everything.
Some secrets are better kept.”

Rose sealed the note and addressed it. Better not to tell Hannah about the murdered Finnish man; a murderer loose in the vicinity of Castle Moore would only set Hannah’s mind to worrying about Rose.

Back in bed to keep warm, she saw the light of dawn, heard birds chirping. She had slept badly, she had been so upset and embarrassed—Ms. Winifred throwing her drink, vodka it was, in her cousin Desmond’s face. Not that she could rightly blame Ms. Winifred, her so poor and Mr. Desmond so rich, and him taunting her that way, clasping the necklace around Ms. Tunet’s neck.

Ms. Tunet! If only Hannah, so soft and trusting, were more like Ms. Tunet! Ms. Tunet wasn’t easy to fool. Ms. Tunet had given what they called a skeptical look at Mr. Desmond, such big gray eyes she had! A skeptical look. She’d known somehow that Mr. Desmond had only been using her to torture Ms. Winifred, clasping that necklace around her neck and saying, “Wear it during dinner.” He was like a bullfighter waving a red flag before a bull, maddening it. Ms. Winifred wasn’t a bull; she was a poet. Still …

21

At eight o’clock in the morning, Fergus Callaghan arrived on his motorbike at Castle Moore to pursue his genealogical research. Rose brought him a morning cup of tea in the library and told him about a dead man found in a bog west of the castle. “Strangled!” Rose said, eyes wide with horror. “Murdered!”

Fergus Callaghan stiffened with alarm. A murderer roving about! And those bogs were near to Maureen Devlin’s cottage. Maureen could be in danger. Maybe it was a madman, a serial killer. And Finola played in the woods. She, too, was a possible victim. This past Tuesday, when Maureen had given him a cup of tea and a sandwich for lunch, Finola hadn’t showed up by the time he’d left. Then, on the way back to Castle Moore from Maureen’s cottage, he’d glimpsed Finola in the woods. She must’ve been playing “buried treasure.” He’d watched, smiling, as she dug a hole beneath a bramble bush and buried something she took from a bag she’d brought. And it was such an oddly secret, listening way she’d hunched her shoulders and kept turning her head! He’d chuckled, remembering his boyhood when he was about Finola’s age. When she’d gone, he’d noticed something glittering among the brambles, something Finola must have dropped. He picked it up. A doll’s shoe, black patent leather, with a pink rosette; a tiny fake diamond centered in the rosette, it was the glitter of the glass diamond that had caught his eye. He was surprised. An expensive shoe like this belonged to an expensive doll. Yet, would Maureen spend such money on a doll? Still, Finola might have saved the money for it herself, selling the blackberries she picked.

Carefully, he wrapped the little shoe in his handkerchief, then scooped away a few handfuls of dirt above Finola’s buried treasure and laid the little shoe in the hole and covered it over, tamping down the earth and smiling to himself. Would Finola, later coming to dig up her treasure, think a leprechaun had found the shoe she’d dropped, and put it there for her all wrapped up? Leprechauns, in Irish folklore, were believed to reveal the hiding place of treasure if you caught them.

But now he shuddered, thinking of the dead man found in the bog. He had only a couple of hour’s work to finish up in the library at Castle Moore, then back to Dublin. He wished he could protect Maureen and Finola in some way. If he could only think how.

22

The clock was striking ten when Torrey came briskly down the great staircase. She wore her navy suit and a beige silk shirt. She had brushed her nape-length hair sleekly back behind her ears. A small purse swung from her shoulder. She carried her briefcase. She wouldn’t even have a cup of tea. She’d have a bun and coffee at the Shelbourne. “Foreign” in Hungarian was
kulfoldi,
“expire” was
lejar,
“document” was
okmany.
Hungarian was easy.

But before she left—

At the foot of the stairs, she paused an instant, smiling. This morning she would have smiled at the devil himself.

She went into the cavernous kitchen. Rose was standing at the long table putting rolls into a basket lined with a blue-checked napkin. A hanging brass lamp shed yellow light down onto the table. It was a gray, cloudy morning; no sun came through the windows. “Morning, Rose. Is Mr. Moore down yet?”