The Irish Manor House Murder (12 page)

“She didn’t say. I just assumed tomorrow. If she doesn’t come by afternoon, I’ll go crazy! I’ll look for her in the woods; I’ll ask in Ballynagh where her wagon is. Someone’ll know.” She shivered with excitement. “She
knows!
My God, she
knows!
”

“Don’t go looking for her.” Jasper was frowning down at her. “I know enough about gypsies to know it would be a mistake. She’ll come when she’s ready.”

“Well, if I can stand it.”

“Torrey, another thing. You’re making an assumption.” Heavy, serious, Jasper’s baritone voice.

“Yes? What?”

“You’re assuming that whoever shot that knitting needle into Ashenden’s horse wasn’t Rowena Keegan.”

Torrey said, “Rowena? If the world stops spinning tomorrow, I’ll believe it was Rowena.”

33

Elated. Thrilled. In the morning, Torrey, working at the computer, turned her head a half dozen times toward the door. Any minute the woman would appear, the gypsy in her purple skirt with her secret to tell. Torrey shivered with anticipation. Already she saw herself finding Rowena in the stables at Ashenden Manor or at Castle Moore and smilingly telling her, “I have a witness to your grandfather’s murder.” Or maybe she’d say, “You’re safe, now, Rowena. The most amazing thing happened.” And she’d tell Rowena who had shot the knitting needle into Thor. And there’d be inexpressible relief on Rowena’s face, so drawn now, the green eyes with the lids lately so tinged with pink.

She worked to one o’clock, concentrating on a basic simple vocabulary, thinking of French children who by the time they were six would be trilingual, speaking English and Spanish as well as their mother tongue, moving with ease from one language to another. She hoped, she hoped! The second book would be American kids speaking, let’s see … Never mind! Finish working out this one first. When it came to the illustrations, she’d have to tie her hands behind her back and put tape over her mouth to keep from meddling.

At one o’clock she stopped for a lunch of leftover curried carrot soup that Jasper had made. It was a sunny day and warm enough for her to take the bowl of soup outside and sit in the sun on the old wooden bench beside the door. From there she could see anyone coming. Wind made the leaves rustle, a bird trilled, but among the trees and near the hedge was no touch of purple.
A reward, is there? I saw something evil.

Back in the cottage she worked until four. Then just sat, biting the inside of her lip. Could the gypsy’s
I’ll be back
mean not today, but tomorrow? Frustrating and exasperating, not to know.

At five o’clock the low sun glimmered gold through the trees. Torrey put on her heavy shawl-necked sweater against the evening chill. She’d walk up the access road a bit. Just a bit. A few steps. Maybe the gypsy had missed the break in the hedge? That was perfectly possible, wasn’t it?

She wrote a note for Jasper. He was going to make dinner. She never knew where he was during the day. Riding around the countryside on his bike, he’d told her, looking for old books. “You never know what rare books you might find in these villages. I’ve a friend who found a first edition of Homer’s
Odyssey,
with the N. C. Wyeth illustrations, in a cottage in County Kerry. He bought it for two pounds, worth maybe, in your American money, two thousand dollars.” But now that she thought of it, Jasper had never shown her any of his lucky finds. Not once. That Steinbeck book,
Winter of Our Discontent,
that he’d brought to the cottage didn’t count. She’d even seen one like it on the secondhand shelf in the little variety store in Ballynagh.

She went through the opening in the hedge and started up the access road. The bus from Dublin came up behind her and went past, south toward Cork. A group of teenage boys in their home soccer jackets bicycled north. She heard a car behind her slow down.

“Ms. Tunet! Torrey!” The car came abreast. It was Caroline Temple. “Can I give you a lift?”

Torrey halted. The road ahead was empty, nobody in clinking bracelets and a voice with a Romanian gypsy accent to tell her the wished-for revelation of the murderer. She might as well go back to the cottage.

“Torrey?”

“Thanks, Caroline. I was getting chilled.” She got in the car.

*   *   *

The car was at least a dozen years old, but luxurious, a Mercedes with worn, dove-colored upholstery. “I was at Fogerty’s farm, getting asparagus. They don’t sell to grocers.” Caroline’s voice was falsely bright and chatty as she drove on. “You have to go yourself.” Her pale face was strained, her hands on the steering wheel trembled. She was wearing an old chinchilla coat that looked definitely motheaten. “Asparagus,” she repeated. She put up a hand and rubbed her forehead. “I’m a bit distracted lately. I went to see Inspector O’Hare. He was polite and sympathetic. But I saw
at once
that he’s convinced Rowena killed my father.
Convinced!
”

Caroline gave a little whimper. She tipped her head down and momentarily closed her eyes.

A boy and a girl were walking on the road toward them, laughing, the boy’s arm around the girl. The road was narrow, but the Mercedes didn’t slow down or start to swing around the couple. The girl’s eyes widened in fright; the car was headed straight toward them.

“Oh,
God!
” Caroline screamed and wrenched the steering wheel and the car drove into the hedge. The boy and the girl went hurriedly up the road.

Caroline put her elbows on the steering wheel and dropped her head in her hands. “Dear God!”

Torrey, mouth dry, gazed at the nose of the Mercedes buried in the hedge.

“Dear God! Dear God! They have men guards in prisons. They do what they want to the women prisoners! Rape!
Anything!
I saw a report on television! It was horrible.” The words came out muffled; Caroline’s face was still buried in her hands. She shook her head back and forth.

“They won’t,” Torrey said. “They won’t put Rowena in prison.”

“Oh, yes! Inspector O’Hare. He’ll find miserable little bits and pieces enough to make it look as if Rowena killed my father. Dublin Castle reprimanded him. He’s got to prove he was right to jail her in the first place. He’ll do
anything
to prove it.” Pale face, fair hair in disarray, eyes awash with tears.

“You folks all right?” A kindly red face, bushy white eyebrows, a bald pate; a farm truck behind him. “Get yourself out of the hedge, can you?”

Torrey answered for Caroline. “Yes, thanks. We can manage.”

And then, as Torrey was later to realize, that was when she made her mistake.

The farmer gone, Torrey put a compassionate hand on Caroline’s shoulder. “Listen, something’s come up. I think someone was near the bridle path, may have seen what happened. She saw —”

“A witness? Someone saw…?”

“I
think.
I only
think
that
maybe
someone saw. I’m not saying for sure. But it’s a possibility. Only a possibility. I’m waiting to find out.”

“You mean there’s a chance that — Find out? When?”

“I don’t know. Maybe tonight. Or tomorrow. I’m not … not positive.” She was suddenly overwhelmingly weary. She wanted to say,
But it may come to nothing.
Yet she could not. She looked at Caroline’s hopeful face framed in the collar of the old coat. No, she could not. Instead she said, “That’s the softest fur, that fur you’re wearing! Chinchilla, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

34

As Winifred Moore said near midnight that Tuesday, when she and Sheila got back to Castle Moore, “It was like an underground trickle, a whisper here, a whisper there, and who knew who was tapping into it? The source, of course, was Torrey Tunet. Her telling Caroline in the first place. A pity. So, trickle, trickle, reaching the ears of a murderer.”

Sheila said, “I guess. I wish I hadn’t been there. It was so
gruesome.
”

*   *   *

All that Tuesday it had poured. When Torrey got up, the first thing she thought was,
The gypsy won’t come today.
By late afternoon, looking out the window at the rain pounding down on the trees and at the overflowing pond, she was unhappily sure of it. “Maybe the gypsy was just so drunk on the Bordeaux that she didn’t know what she —”

“She’ll turn up tomorrow,” Jasper said, “This rain’s enough to drown in. Don’t worry. She hears the clink of gold.” He was lying on the couch by the fire, reading her copy of Dickson’s
The Official Rules.
“How about this one: ‘The Umbrella Law. You will need three umbrellas: one to leave at the office, one to leave at home, and one to leave on the train.’” He put down the book and swung his legs off the couch. “Stop thinking about the gypsy. I won’t make dinner. I’m taking you to the movies.
The Governess
is playing in Dunlavin. We can take the bus, village, at O’Malley’s. The best sausages and mashed in Wicklow County.”

“All right.” She smiled at him.

They were at the bus stop on the access road, both under her umbrella, when she said, “I didn’t lock the door. Did you?”

“Hmmm? No. There’s the bus.”

35

At half past nine they were in O’Malley’s pub eating hot mashed potatoes and sausages with Winifred Moore and Sheila Flaxton, who’d been at the movie and given them a lift back to Ballynagh. The rain had stopped.

“I liked the
concept
of the movie,” Sheila Flaxton said, delicately forking up a marble-sized bit of mashed, “but I didn’t actually like the
plot.
”

“Good evening.” Dr. Collins, passing their table, paused, smiling. Brown corduroy jacket over his woolen vest, and as usual wearing his old tweed cap. “Having a good dinner?”

“Dr. Collins!” Winifred said. “Hello! Join us? We’ve barely started.”

Dr. Collins shook his head. “Just came by to check on Sean O’Malley’s youngest. Hives.” He smiled at Torrey. “Take care in Ballynagh’s variable weather, Ms. Tunet. Don’t want another touch of the flu.” He nodded good-bye and went off.

“Really, a bitch of a night,” Winifred said. And to Torrey, “We’ll drive you home,”

“Right,” Jasper said. “And at the cottage I’ll give you and Sheila a nightcap, a cognac that brings tears of joy to a connoisseur’s eye.”

*   *   *

Winifred parked the Jeep by the side of the road. The wet hedges glistened in the headlights. Jasper led the way with the torch that Winifred kept in the car. They single-filed through the break in the hedge and past the pond.

The flashlight picked out the bulk of Jasper’s bike covered with its black plastic, leaning against the cottage wall. A wind tore at the plastic, making it billow. “Lead me to that cognac!” Winifred said.

Inside, Torrey turned on lamps in the kitchen and Jasper lit the fire. Torrey took down the globular cognac glasses. She loved the cottage like this, cozy, with friends, her lover, firelight. Jasper would warm the cognac with a candle flame; and they all would have a companionable nightcap. First she’d change her shoes. They weren’t exactly damp, but Dr. Collins was right about being careful, the flu.

In the bedroom, she turned on the bedside light. She glanced at the bed, and stood stunned. A chill of horror crawled down her back and along her arms. She put a hand to her throat, staring down, trying not to believe what she was seeing.

The gypsy, in Torrey’s nightgown with the yellow daisies, lay in her bed. The woman’s mass of dark hair was tumbled on the pillow. And her hands with the many rings lay still. The gypsy’s eyes did not flash. They stared, open, sightless. Her tongue protruded through clenched teeth.

36

Torrey sat beside the kitchen table, gazing down at the floor, police shoes going past, the police photographer’s flash reflecting repeatedly through the open door of the bedroom. She lifted her head when the Gardai wheeled the gurney with the sheeted body past her on the way out and she saw the van’s blue light beyond the hedge turning the hedge blue each time it revolved. She became aware that Jasper was leaning against the kitchen sink and that Winifred Moore was pacing the room from stove to fireplace.

“Whoever smothered that poor woman,” Winifred said, “meant to kill Torrey.”

At that, Torrey lifted her head. “I’m not sure. Was it in the dark? How much could the killer see?”

“What do you mean?”

“Simply,” Torrey said, “that the gypsy told me she’d seen ‘something evil’ happen on the bridle path: She wanted a reward for telling. It had to be that she saw who shot the knitting needle into the horse as Dr. Ashenden rode by. She was going to come back and tell me. She was —”

“A witness?” Winifred, hands on hips, leaned toward Torrey. “Did you mention it to anybody?”

“Only to Caroline Temple.”

“Hellfire!” Winifred said. “Caroline would’ve likely told Mark. And Scott. Encouraging them, getting their hopes up for Rowena.” She smacked a fist into her palm. “God knows who else Mark or Scott might’ve told.”

“Well, now!” Inspector O’Hare came from the bedroom, notebook in hand, flipping a page. His police cap was set firmly on his graying head; his color was high. He glanced around the kitchen, taking it all in at a glance; he was good at that and knew it. Had, in fact, in his early years, come out first in a voluntary police observation test. He turned to Torrey. “So, now. The gypsy woman. Smothered with a pillow. Dead approximately three hours. Smelling of drink. Succinctly” — Inspector O’Hare lingered over the word, it was one of his favorite words —“succinctly, must’ve been drunk. How drunk? The crime lab’s report will tell us. So: Her clothes lying on the floor. Wearing only a nightgown with yellow daisies. A nightgown of yours, Ms. Tunet?” The inspector’s ballpoint pen hovered over the notebook. And at Torrey’s nod, “Any idea, Ms. Tunet, how the gypsy came to be here in your house, in your bed, wearing your nightgown?”

Torrey shook her head. “The door was unlocked. I knew she was coming here to see me, but I didn’t know it might be tonight. I was at the movies. She must have come in. That’s all I know. Except that she liked that nightgown.”