The Irish Manor House Murder (21 page)

Helen looked down at her hands in her lap. Her heart had begun to thump so hard she could almost hear it. “Well, like I told Ms. Tunet when she stopped in, but Dr. Collins was out on an emergency. We somehow got to chatting about the gypsy pestering everybody and their tricks and presents and such. And Ms. Tunet asked me the very same thing: Was the present the gypsy gave me for Dr. Collins in a twist of green paper? She said that was the gypsy’s most usual way, in green paper.”

“And…?”

She felt helpless. “And so it was.”

Inspector O’Hare said softly, “Thank you so much, Ms. Lavery.” Helen could see that sweat had darkened his shirt collar.

61

Mystified faces. Inspector O’Hare stood a moment, then let out a whistling sigh and rolled his head around to relax tense muscles. There wasn’t even the sound of shuffling feet or coughing or nose blowing, only the tinny clock ticking and the hum of refrigeration from the Coke machine. But as Winifred Moore said later to Sheila, “Did you see that look between Torrey Tunet and Inspector O’Hare? As though an electric current zinged between them. If you can imagine such a thing between
that
pair.”

But to Dr. Collins, it seemed that Helen Lavery’s words were no more significant than a dust mote. He sat gazing abstractedly before him as though his interior thoughts took precedence over whatever was happening in this police station on Butler Street.

Inspector O’Hare said, “Dr. Collins?”

Dr. Collins blinked and looked inquiringly back at Inspector O’Hare. “Yes, Inspector?”

“What was the present the gypsy brought you? In the twist of green paper.”

“The present? But how does that — in any case, I didn’t bother to look. I threw it away. Some gypsy geegaw, I imagine.” Dr. Collins closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers.

Inspector O’Hare reached around behind him to his desk and picked up a slender object wrapped in green tissue. Carefully he removed the tissue. “Then of course, Dr. Collins, you wouldn’t recognize these?” He held out the object to Dr. Collins. Necks craned. It was a pair of wooden knitting needles, held together with a rubber band. A thick, heavy pair, the kind used for taking big, loose stitches.

Dr. Collins’s balding head gave a sidewise jerk as though struck by a slight buffet of wind. He stared at the knitting needles. He licked dry lips. “So that’s my present from the gypsy, is it? Came across it, did you? A bit odd for a present!”

“Odd?” O’Hare tried not to sound ironical. “Not odd, if these needles weren’t meant for you to knit with, Dr. Collins, but rather” — he ran his fingers slowly along one of the wooden needles —“to hint that she, this gypsy, knew something that might be of interest to you.”

“But what an absurd — ! How could —”

“To hint that she had,” O’Hare pressed on, “possibly
seen
something of interest to you?”

Dr. Collins gazed back at Inspector O’Hare. Then he gave a sigh and sat up straighter and pulled down his vest so that his round belly no longer bulged. “I have a habit of slumping. But I try to remind myself that even at my age —” Another sigh. “I don’t exactly follow, Inspector.”

But O’Hare felt a rush of blood, his stepped-up heartbeat. It always happened when he was closing in and the click occurred, the click that boded revelation.

And now he became aware of a bated-breath stillness from the listeners, and not even the creak of anyone shifting in a folding chair. He wet his lips.

“Let’s say that the gypsy saw something in the woods, perhaps, where she kept her pony and wagon. Near the bridle path. Saw something happen.” O’Hare pulled at his chin, gazing at Dr. Collins.

No answer. The old tweed cap lay in Dr. Collins’s lap. He began turning it around and around, his fingers working along the worn edge. Then, as though becoming aware of what he was doing, he looked down and his fingers went still.

O’Hare said softly. “Blackmail, Dr. Collins? The gypsy saw something happen, something so terrible that —”

“No!”

“— that you couldn’t let her reveal it.”

A heartbeat of time. Then Dr. Collins looked wearily back at Inspector O’Hare. “That gypsy.” He shook his head. “That greedy gypsy! I had no choice.”

The tinny ticking of the clock. Creak of a folding chair as someone shifted. Indrawn breaths, and from someone a whispered, “My God!”

*   *   *

Cigarette smoke lazed across the room, alerting Sergeant Bryson. Winifred Moore again. So engrossed, so fascinated, as to forget herself. Sergeant Bryson coughed loudly. Ms. Moore looked at him, swore under her breath, then leaned down and ground the cigarette under her heel. From the others, then, a slight stirring. Rowena Keegan, beside her brother, Scott, shook her head, incredulity in her green gaze. Mark Temple sought out his wife’s hand. Helen Lavery made a strange, whimpering sound, like a cat in pain. Inspector O’Hare glanced toward Torrey Tunet, whose only reaction was to slip Nelson a cookie.

“So, Dr. Collins?” For some reason he could not understand, Inspector O’Hare spoke gently.

Dr. Collins was again turning the old tweed cap around and around. “I had no plan. I only was looking for her near her wagon by the bridle path. To pay her to go away? To beg her? I didn’t know. It kept shifting in my mind, changing, like a tide going in and out.

“It was dusk. I started to follow her.” At the groundsman’s cottage, the gypsy had pushed open the door. “I looked through the window. She was there alone, drinking. She pulled a nightgown off a drying rack. It was white, with yellow daisies. She took it into the bedroom.”

Quietly he’d entered the cottage. “I still didn’t know. The bedroom door was open. She was in the nightgown in front of the long mirror, her clothes on the floor.

“She looked at me. She was almost too drunk to stand. But she laughed when she saw me. Her earrings were gold coins. When she laughed, she threw her head back and the gold coins glittered. I pushed her down, and she fell on the bed. A strong woman, but weak from drunkenness.” The tweed cap turning and turning in his hands. “I held the pillow over her face.”

62

Inspector O’Hare felt compact, organized, in charge, alert, pleased with himself, and triumphant. The police station was a stage; he was the principal actor, the protagonist, as they called it. He was exquisitely aware of his audience on the folding chairs. He straightened his jacket to make sure it was perfectly horizonal across his thighs. He looked down at Dr. Collins, who again sat slumped, belly protruding below his vest like a small, water-filled balloon.

“So,” O’Hare said, and now he swept a glance around at the mesmerized faces and spoke to the room at large, “the gypsy was smothered. Murdered. All because on the bridle path she saw Dr. Collins shoot the knitting needle that resulted in the death of Dr. Ashenden.” He wanted to add something philosophical but couldn’t bring anything to mind.

Dr. Collins jerked his head up. “
What?
Oh no, Inspector! No! No!” The expression on his face was one of astonishment. “I — only because she’d threatened she’d swear to the Gardai that she saw me do such a thing! That murderous attack on Gerald! Oh no, Inspector! I did nothing of the kind!”

63

Stunned, Inspector O’Hare stared at Dr. Collins. What was this he was hearing? Impossible! He was still holding the pair of wooden knitting needles. Im
poss
ible.

“My, oh my!” Sheila Flaxton’s whisper, followed by her nervous giggle. Then silence.

Dr. Collins, clutching that tweed cap in his lap, gave Inspector O’Hare a shocked, reproving look. “As if I would harm Gerald! Never! My best friend! My dearest friend! All our lives, Gerald and I!” — Dr. Collins’s gaze sought out Caroline Temple in the third row. “His daughter can attest to that!”

“Yes! Oh, yes!” Caroline Temple’s slender figure leaned forward. “That’s so, Inspector! Padraic and my father! Padraic — Dr. Collins — never would have —” Her voice broke. “Never!” she managed, and sank back to the comfort of Mark Temple’s encircling arm around her shoulders.

Inspector O’Hare glared at Dr. Collins. He said, between gritted teeth, “Exactly why, Dr. Collins, did you think folks would believe the gypsy if she claimed to’ve seen you shoot the knitting needle into the stallion? How could you think anybody’d take a gypsy’s word for it against yours?” O’Hare half turned and angrily threw the pair of knitting needles down on his desk. Then, jutting his jaw at Dr. Collins, “Ridiculous! On the face of it, ridiculous!”

A silence. A waiting. The refrigeration of the Coke machine started up again. Dr. Collins fussed with his vest, settling and resettling it. Then he said, low, “But you see, the gypsy thought —” He gazed somewhere around the chest button of O’Hare’s blue uniform. “You see, the gypsy thought that with those knitting needles she’d frightened me into giving her money. Otherwise, she’d tell that … that…” He looked down.

“That
what?
” O’Hare said, baffled, exasperated. He saw in amazement Dr. Collins’s pale face begin to redden as a blush spread slowly across it.

Oh. Oh. Inspector Egan O’Hare, gazing at the revealing blush, at that instant felt he knew the depth of shame in Dr. Collins. The respected Dr. Collins, family-proud, grave-faced ancestral portraits on the walls of Collins Court. Padraic Collins, that secret frequenter of hookers in Cork and God knew where else. And Inspector O’Hare wondered on which stormy night, with the roads deluged, had Dr. Collins found his way in the woods to the gypsy’s wagon.

So that was it. Frightened and ashamed, Dr. Collins, desperate to conceal his unbridled sexual need, had ended by killing the gypsy. Never mind that he had not meant to. He had done it.

“Dr. Collins,” O’Hare began, then stopped. He rubbed a hand across his face. Must he force Padraic Collins to reveal to the listeners the sexual weakness that had made him vulnerable to the gypsy’s threats? No. Spare Padraic Collins that shame. Later, he’d have Collins’s written confession.

O’Hare sighed. Disappointment plunged him down, flattened him. For perhaps four glorious minutes he’d thought he had the killer of Dr. Gerald Ashenden. Surely, Ms. Tunet must have thought so too. A mistake. But, at least, the gypsy. He could thank the exasperating Ms. Tunet for that.

But this informal little inquiry of his was over. No point, just now, in going on. Everybody go home, except for Dr. Collins. And he thought grimly,
I’ll continue my own investigation, Ms. Tunet.

“Well,” he began and swept a glance around the room. A bitter taste of disappointment was in his mouth. The murderer of Dr. Ashenden was in this room. Possibly even laughing at him. His gaze stopped at Scott Keegan. It flickered over Dr. Mark Temple, then over Caroline. It settled on Rowena Keegan. He’d been right all along. “Well, under the —”

But the flutter of something caught his eye. Torrey Tunet was holding up that peacock-strewn turquoise bandanna, waving it at him. A signal? She was shaking her head violently. O’Hare clicked his tongue in annoyance. That exasperating ex-thief, Ms. Torrey Tunet! True, she had delivered one murderer to him. Not that the rich Dr. Padraic Collins would be prosecuted, under the circumstances of a roving, blackmailing, lying gypsy; that was the way of the world. But Torrey Tunet would do anything to protect Rowena Keegan. She was smart. Tricky too. O’Hare reminded himself that she had no regard for law. She’d lied about Rowena’s murderous attempt in the meadow, hadn’t she? No regard. Not when she’d gotten some conviction in her mind. Still, his curiosity was an itch. Who knew? Whatever she had in mind could be grist for his mill.

That bandanna, waving. O’Hare said to the room at large, “I think a short respite’s in order.”

64

They’d gone, Winifred Moore striding off toward O’Malley’s pub, Sheila hurrying to keep up. Rowena and Scott had accompanied Caroline and Mark Temple across the street to Finney’s, likely for a midmorning snack of Finney’s specialty of fried soda bread and tea. “We’ll continue at half past twelve,” Inspector O’Hare had said.

Helen Lavery, however, remained, crouched on one of the folding chairs, wiping her tear-reddened eyes. Aside from Helen Lavery, only Torrey and Dr. Padraic Collins had stayed behind in the police station. Outside, the day had turned gray; dark clouds obscured the sun. With the grayness had come a chill.

Over at his own desk, Sergeant Bryson was laboriously taking down Dr. Collins’s statement on the computer. Dr. Collins stood over him, recounting his unhappy tale in broken phrases, then correcting himself. “Did I say yellow daisies? Or dandelions? On the nightgown.
Are
there yellow daisies? Botanically?” Sergeant Bryson sweated.

Inspector O’Hare, standing beside his desk, said to Torrey Tunet, keeping his voice low, “Well, then?” But he was shocked at the way she looked. For a quite lovely young woman, she looked dreadful. Her face had gotten pale. Tension narrowed her eyes, and her brows were drawn together, creating two deep lines between them. Her lips, admittedly quite bewitching lips, were dry. Ms. Torrey Tunet looked as though she would never smile again. Yes. That unhappy. Or tragic. Surprising. Before Dr. Collins’s confession, she had not looked this way at all. Quite the opposite. Lively, eager, owning the world, confident about the information she’d put into the inspector’s hands. But something had gone off the rails.

Inspector O’Hare, confused, but with a sudden feeling of compassion said, “You’re all right, Ms. Tunet? Nothing’s the —”

“I’m fine.” Torrey Tunet bit her lips. “I’d hoped … Inspector, I can still help. There’s a road … I’d hoped not to have to travel down that particular … Will you trust me?”

Trust
her? Inspector O’Hare stared. He almost had to laugh.
Trust
Torrey Tunet? He’d never gotten over that she’d been a thief, never mind how young. Moreover, she was given to illegal snooping on private property and among other people’s personal possessions. Had she done more of it, her snooping, in this murder of Dr. Ashenden? Undoubtedly. But —

He said, and then stood stunned at his own words, his incredible words of comfort, “Ms. Tunet, I believe that murder because of incest, particularly incest since childhood, has in some cases led the court to be lenient with —”