The Irish Manor House Murder (11 page)

“But he married her, Mr. McIntyre. He did the only decent thing, he married Kathleen Brady.”

“Decent? My dear Ms. Tunet, I would not necessarily say
decent.
I would possibly say
cornered.
”

“How, cornered?”

“I ruminated back then, Ms. Tunet, over
why.
I do not know. I can guess. His parents? You’d have thought the Ashendens would have found a way to obstruct such a marriage, when they discovered — and by chance they discovered it, they were not told — that Kathleen Brady was pregnant by their son.”

“Yes. I would have thought — not being cynical, only realistic about how people, influenced by society —”

“Hogwash. There are people and there are extraordinary people. Gerald Ashenden’s parents were extraordinary. Not religious people. I think they bundled it all together: Catholic or Protestant, Old Testament or New, Buddism, Judaism, Confucianism, the like. Polite, didn’t talk about it.

“Ethical, that was it. Old Miles Ashenden had a maxim, ‘Don’t do that which, if everybody did, it would destroy society.’ Can you top that one, Ms. Tunet?”

“Not even if hard-pressed, Mr. McIntyre.”

“Indeed! Indeed! I can see it, the elderly old father, white-mustached, he was, in the library with young Ashenden, ‘Who do you think you are, Gerald? That immoral Tolstoy who’d go strolling on his estate and push any passing peasant girl into the bushes and use her? Then dry himself on her clothing and stroll on? You’ll marry this pregnant Catholic girl, Gerald. Or you’re no longer my son.’”

McIntyre’s color was high, his keen eyes sparkled. “What a scene it must’ve been in that library! For Gerald Ashenden, it would be good-bye to the money to open his office on Merrion Street in Dublin, good-bye to the Ashen-den estate and its five hundred acres. Even good-bye to his mother. The doors of Ashenden Manor closed against him. Disowned. Cast out! Cast out like … like somebody in the Bible. Can’t remember. Some fellow. Who was it, Ms. Tunet?”

“Isaac? Jacob? I don’t remember either, Mr. McIntyre.”

*   *   *

By half past twelve, it had gotten noisy in O’Malley’s, and several people, beer glasses in hand, had come up to their table to say hello to McIntyre and things like, “Back from Australia, McIntyre? Seen any kangaroos? Waltzing Matildas?” But by one o’clock it was quiet again, customers gone back to work. An occasional clash of dishes from the kitchen; Sean O’Malley at the bar, washing glasses and watching a rugby game on the television, keeping the sound low. He had put more logs on the fire: the warmth enveloped McIntyre’s table. Replete, McIntyre mused, “It wasn’t any wonder that Kathleen Brady Ashenden came often to O’Malley’s. ’Twas the only warm place in her life. Coldness at home can turn a person to drink. Coldness and misery.” The once-beautiful Kathleen became not so radiant. “More on the thick side. Gray in her hair, hair that had been black satin. The blue eyes not so blue, the electricity diminished. They were wavering eyes, pleading eyes. Bewildered. It wasn’t Gerald Ashenden got trapped, but Kathleen Brady. Poor little hen!”

Torrey gazed at the fire, which flared up suddenly. “She died so young. A brushfire, wasn’t it? Rowena once told me about it. She was only about…?”

“She was thirty-one. Had that little girl, Caroline, eleven or so, at the time.”

A silence. Something about the silence made Torrey turn from the fire and look at McIntyre. He was watching her, an assessing look. Somewhere in the past she’d seen that look, doubtful, not quite sure, saying silently: Does she qualify, can I tell her? Torrey looked steadily back into the keen old eyes. “Tell me.”

McIntyre tipped up his pint and drank, a long drink. He put it down and wiped his mouth. He gave Torrey a nod. “She was here in the pub that night, before the brushfire started. The last night of her life. She sat where you’re sitting. She started to talk, low and halting. ‘When I was little, I would worry so. I would say to my mother, “When I grow up, who will marry me?” I thought no one would ever want to marry me. And my mother would laugh and say. “Don’t worry. Someday a knight will come along on a white horse and marry you.”’” McIntyre shook his head. “Blue eyes awash with drunken tears, yet tears to break the heart. ‘I thought Gerald was the knight.’ She raised her glass of beer to drink, and her hand shook so that half the beer spilled over the table and onto her skirt. I said, ‘Here, now,’ and tried to hand her a paper napkin to blot it, but she pushed my hand away and looked down at her skirt, ‘It’s done for, same as me. Done for.’ She left then. I didn’t think twice about anything deeper. But when I went to light my pipe, my folder of matches was gone.”

*   *   *

On the cobbled street outside O’Malley’s, Torrey stood in the bright sunlight beside her bike that she’d left leaning against the brick wall. Brilliant blue sky, white clouds, a fresh breeze. But she felt heavy with McIntyre’s story about Kathleen Brady. It seemed somehow to cast a shadow over the sunlit village street.

Pensively, she ran a finger down the side of her nose. Next door to O’Malley’s, a woman with two small children was shopping for vegetables at Coyle’s stand. A farm truck went past. The driver, a girl, honked a greeting to Coyle’s boy, who waved back. Farther down the street, a few people went in and out of shops. A bell jangled as someone entered Grogan’s Needlework Shop across the street. Beside the needlework shop entrance was another door, a wide, handsome door with a curved top and a fresh, lace curtain across the glass. Nolan’s Bed-and-Breakfast.
She came from Galway to live with her spinster aunt above the needlework shop.

It was like being drawn on a string. How could she not? Torrey crossed the street.

*   *   *

The stairs were wide and carpeted in dark green, the bannister was polished mahogany, the walls were rose-patterned. Pristine.

A buzzer sounded as she entered a small parlor with the same rose-figured wallpaper. A fresh-faced, dark-haired woman, possibly in her midforties, hair in a bun, navy cardigan over a blue dress, came through a doorway, smiling. “Good afternoon. I’m Sara Hobbs. Mrs. Greer, isn’t it? The room’s ready, Number six, double bed, that you asked for. Mr. Greer will be bringing up your baggage? Or I can send my boy down.”

No, Torrey explained, she was not Mrs. Greer. She was a friend of … of Caroline Keegan Temple, who’d been Caroline Ashenden. “Caroline’s mother, Kathleen Brady Ashenden, had an aunt who lived here years ago, I don’t know her name.” She felt a fool, what was she doing here? “Way before your time, of course, Mrs. Hobbs. It isn’t likely you’d have even been —”

“Alice Coggins! My heavens! Of
course!
Of course I remember! A good thirty-five or forty years ago. My mother was the proprietor then. Good heavens, yes! Dr. Ashen-den’s wife. Kathleen. She’d often come to visit her aunt, an unmarried lady. She sometimes brought her little girl, Caroline. We were the same age, and we’d play together. Alice Coggins made us each a rag doll out of sewing scraps; mine had a blue dress, and Caroline’s was pink. We’d play tea party. I still have my doll. I’m sentimental — I loved my childhood. I keep the doll on my bedroom shelf with my old dolls’ tea set. Brian, my husband, laughs about it.” Sara Hobbs, marveling at the past, grew misty-eyed.

“Alice Coggins died about a year after Kathleen Ashenden was killed in a brushfire. I was too ashamed to send Alice’s poor things to them at Ashenden Manor, bits of material, sewing things and such: It would’ve been an embarrassment to her. I was betwixt and between, you might say. But I couldn’t throw them out. As I told you, I’m sentimental. Her box must still be in the attic.”

“Mrs. Hobbs? I’m Mrs. Greer.” A ruddy-faced woman in a plaid cape was coming in, panting a little from the stairs. “My husband’s on the the way up. The roads! Crowded! We’d have thought to get here earlier. Is it possible to have tea when we’re settled in?”

On the way out, Torrey looked back and mouthed “Thank you” to Sara Hobbs, who smiled in response.

31

It was past four o’clock when Torrey pedaled back home along the narrow access road between the hedges that were higher than her head. Behind the hedges, unseen, would be an occasional cottage, a farm, a field with cows, she could only guess at the hidden landscape. At Nolan’s Bed-and-Breakfast, listening to Sara Hobbs talk of Kathleen Brady, she’d had that same feeling of a hidden landscape.

A wind had sprung up, the sky had turned a cold gray. Overcast. Traitorous weather, a promise betrayed. There’d be sneezing and runny noses tonight in Ballynagh and in cottages in this mountainous corner of Wicklow. People would be opening storage chests and digging about for the warm clothes they’d put away last spring.

Luckily, Torrey had left her sleeveless padded vest in her bicycle basket. She stopped, planted a foot on the road on each side of the bike to hold it steady, put on the vest, and zipped it up. And at least it was less windy on the access road; the high hedges were good protection from the wind. And it wasn’t far now to the cottage.

A half mile farther up, she reached the break in the hedge. She got off the bike and wheeled it through the opening and past the marshy little pond. Because of the woods, it was darker around the cottage than on the road. Except for the little vegetable garden in the patch that the sun could reach, there were tall trees all around, and at this season the green grass was mottled with brown.

A light in the cottage. Ah, so Jasper was there. The thought warmed her. They’d get a fire going and have a late tea with some of Jasper’s delicious biscuits, the ones with currants. There were three left; she’d heat them up. And there was bread and canned salmon. He’d tell her about his trip to Dunlavin.

She leaned her bike against the cottage and opened the door.

*   *   *

“Hello, Missus!”

The gypsy stood beside the kitchen table. Purple skirt, ragged tan sweater, the mass of dark hair. One of Jasper’s bottles of Bordeaux was open on the table and half empty.

“Hello, Missus!” The gypsy’s teeth flashed a smile. Gold bracelets clinked as she waved a wineglass, one of Torrey’s two Waterford wineglasses, then brought the glass waveringly to her lips and sipped, her head tipped down, her dark eyes on Torrey over the rim of the glass.

“What are you doing here? What do you want?” Somehow, the gypsy being a Romanian made it worse. And now she saw that the woman was tipsy, no, not tipsy, she was drunk, drunk on Jasper’s precious wine.

“Ah, Missus!” It was unpleasant, a snigger. “Your kindness brought me back. You’ll be glad you gave me that bit of tea! And that you’re a Romanian, besides
Tunet,
thunder, Missus. And
fulger,
lightning. And
furtuna,
ah!
Furtuna,
a storm!”

“What are you talking about?” Torrey said impatiently. She was tired, she was hungry, and where was Jasper? She wanted to clean up the table and put on a fresh tablecloth and change her clothes, and —

“Something evil.” The gypsy sniggered. “Yes, Missus, evil. I saw something. Something evil. But a gypsy’s words, they might be smoke. A lady like you is different, could make something of it. A reward, is there?” The gypsy swayed and reached for the bottle of wine. “You’ll give me half, and I’ll buy a pretty nightgown like yours, all yellow daisies.” She lurched against the table. The bottle fell and rolled on the floor. The gypsy stared at it until it rolled against a chair leg and stopped. Then she shook herself and went to the door. “
Tunet, fulger, furtuna.
You think, Missus. You think about it. I’ll come back.”

32

“Jackpot! Out of the blue!”

“Take it easy,” Jasper said. “You’re assuming —”

“Come
on,
Jasper. She’s got a caravan or wagon or something in the woods; everybody knows that. She saw something evil, and she’s going to tell me. All because I —”

“Gave her a cup of tea and some soda bread? And tomatoes? Torrey —”

“And because I’m Romanian. And she wants a reward. She’s already got the taste of money on her tongue. I could tell. You know what this means, Jasper? It means
she knows who killed Gerald Ashenden.
”

*   *   *

For dinner Jasper made a
poulet en cocotte,
the chicken browned to a golden color in the casserole. With it, they had a bottle of the Bordeaux. Torrey could hardly eat for excitement. Who? She’d know soon who’d murdered Ashen-den. Strange, unbelievable. But so.

After dinner, Jasper turned on the radio to RTE for the political news and was instantly absorbed. But Torrey walked around in circles, saying “because of tomatoes!” and “freakish chance!” and “a windfall, right in my lap!” Rowena, Rowena would be the first she’d tell. Though rightly she should go first to Inspector Egan O’Hare, bringing the gypsy with her. Her eyewitness. An eyewitness who had seen the killer shoot the knitting needle into Ashenden’s horse.

She looked at Jasper, her dark-haired love, so comfortably heavy, chin in hand, unaware that his eyes were narrowed and his long face intent, and that a muscle twitched in his jaw. He was fiercely outraged at the so-called real IRA bombings. He was, he’d once mentioned, originally from Cork, with a Catholic background. Seeing his narrow-eyed intensity, she’d wondered at first if he was more than a bystander, somehow politically involved. But when she’d asked, he’d laughed away the notion. “I’m a man of inaction, love, a sit-by-the-fire idealist. Books are my passion, not politics.” It seemed to her a lot of protest to her simple question. But why pry?

At nine-thirty they did the dishes, then settled on the couch. Jasper said the estate library in Dunlavin was a bust. “Popular hardback trash.” He’d bought nothing. But in a poor cottage, he’d found a copy of Steinbeck’s
Winter of Our Discontent.
“A paperback not worth ten pence, but I paid a pound for it — I’m in the mood for Steinbeck.” He poked up the fire and read a chapter aloud. He had a rich baritone that brought the scenes alive, “In the doorway stood…” and so on. Torrey heard nothing beyond the first sentence.

At ten-thirty they were in bed, making love; at eleven-thirty Jasper was off to Nolan’s on his bike. Before he left, he stood beside the bed looking down on her. “The gypsy. Said she’d be back, all right. But when?”