The Irish Manor House Murder (26 page)

*   *   *

They sat at a small table that hinged down from the wall. Padraic had put the kettle on. “I knew you were clever,” he told her. “Are you going to turn me in?”

She said she didn’t know. She kept looking at him; he still wore the light makeup around his eyes, but some of it had rubbed off, showing darkness.

The stove was kerosene, the blue flame was small under the kettle. “I might’ve known,” Padraic Collins said. “That newspaper item! A clever young woman like you. You fooled me that time in Ballynagh.” He sighed and gave her a smile. “You don’t let go, do you?” And when she waited, “Might as well tell you.”

*   *   *

Sitting opposite her at the hinged table, Padraic, his fingers turning a spoon over and over, said, “It was two days after Gerald Ashenden’s death on the bridle path. I couldn’t sleep for the horror of it all. By three in the morning, I was exhausted. And, finally, hungry. Helen had baked cranberry scones, my favorite. I knew there were some left. I went down to the kitchen. I got out the scones and butter. I opened a kitchen drawer, I was looking for a knife. And there was the knitting needle with its tip cut off.

“In the morning, I faced Helen Lavery with the knitting needle. She collapsed. She confessed she’d shot the knitting needle tip into Gerald’s horse. ‘I was afraid for you!’ she told me, ‘because of what you said when you came home from bandaging his shoulder! That you knew that Dr. Ashenden had killed Mr. Slattery in the bog. And that
he knew you knew.
’”

Padraic Collins glanced around at the kettle over the blue flame; no steam yet. He put two mugs on the table. “It had been my mistake, a terrible mistake! Losing my head, shaking with the horror of it, babbling. Blurting out too much to Helen Lavery! She was always
there,
just the way my governess had been when I was little, a trusted presence.” Padraic rubbed his eyes, the gesture brushed away even more of the light makeup. “So she wanted to save me. She’d shot Ashenden with my old pop gun. She’d found it in the nursery years ago. It was Swiss made and could shoot pellets a good fifteen feet. She always used it to shoot kidney beans at the rabbits to drive them out of the kitchen garden. She’d become an expert shot. Why a knitting needle? She never thought such a tiny puncture would be discovered. And it wouldn’t likely have been, but for you.”

Steam rose from the spout of the teakettle. Padraic turned off the flame, gave the china teapot a quick rinse, and put in a handful of tea leaves. He waited; then he carefully filled the teapot from the kettle.

“The gypsy woman had been nearby in the woods. She saw Helen Lavery shoot the knitting needle tip into Thor. So in the kitchen, that morning with Helen, I thought,
Get rid of this cut-off needle!
It was by then seven or so, the sun already up. I went outside to the pond by the garden wall and threw the cut-off needle as far into the pond as I could. It flew up in an arc, it was steel or aluminum, a good ten or twelve inches, the sun flashed on it, a pretty sight. Unfortunately witnessed by the gypsy woman who was hanging about. My second mistake! So she saw. And thought of course that Helen Lavery and I were in it together, that we’d murdered Gerald Ashenden.”

Padraic Collins carefully poured tea into the chipped mugs and set out butter and a plate of scones. “That pair of wooden knitting needles in the twist of green paper? That the gypsy brought to blackmail me? Naturally me, not Helen Lavery! I being the rich one, owner of Collins Court and eight hundred acres! She even came into my library at Collins Court and threatened me. Blackmail. If she told what she’d seen on the bridle path and that she’d seen me throw the evidence into the pond, Inspector O’Hare might well have the pond dredged. She threatened me with that. And laughed.”

Sipping from the mug, Torrey gazed at Padraic, who was absentmindedly running a finger beneath an eyebrow. He said, “Helen Lavery would go to prison! All my fault. I couldn’t let that happen. I was tempted to pay off the gypsy woman.” But then he’d thought that next year she would be back. And the following year. Blackmail is an open-ended business.

“I couldn’t let the gypsy tell Inspector O’Hare what she’d seen on the bridle path! Helen Lavery had done it to save my life! To save me from Gerald. Can you imagine, Ms. Tunet, what it must have cost Helen Lavery to do that? A decent, hardworking, honest woman become a killer? In all my books about romantic heroines with flowing golden hair, I’d never found a one like Helen Lavery.”

80

In the pub, waiters were beginning to get tables ready for the noontime crowd. Jasper O’Mara, chin in hand, couldn’t take his eyes from Torrey Tunet’s intense face.

“So you see,” Torrey said and sat back. She ruffled her drying hair.

Jasper said, “And the gypsy? Smothered in your bed. Are you going to tell me now that Helen Lavery also killed the gypsy?”

Torrey shook her head. “Oh, no! It was Padraic Collins killed the gypsy, just as he told Inspector O’Hare. And as Padraic Collins said to me in Clonakilty, in that gypsy trailer, ‘Blackmail’s like a mushroom growing in the night. It gets bigger and bigger. So I had no choice.’”

“I see.” Jasper nodded. “But —”

“Shaw! Back, are you!” A beaming red face, flat blond hair. Jasper introduced him. Matt Quinn, of the
Sunday Independent.
Full of news and questions. Torrey didn’t even hear. Clonakilty …

Outside the trailer, men’s voices, a horse neighing, a radio was playing rock and roll. Inside the trailer, Torrey asked Padraic Collins, “And you have no … no guilt over it?”

“Oh, yes! Yes, Ms. Tunet! Guilt is what I live with,” Padraic Collins said, “Guilt. And expiation.” Again running his fingertips under his eyebrow. “It’s mostly the children that need medical care. Hospitals aren’t friendly to gypsies and travelers — ‘tinkers,’ they’re called. Ireland is changing, the government is trying, but still…”

*   *   *

“Nice meeting you, Ms. Tunet.” Matt Quinn departed. It was already noon; customers were shrugging out of parkas and coats, waiters were, beginning to take orders. Jasper blew out a breath and regarded Torrey. “How about lunch? They have a Wednesday special. And a good cook in the kitchen.” He paused. “Or would you rather…? I’ve missed you.”

“I’d rather.”

*   *   *

After, as they lay near naked side by side on the bed in Jasper’s apartment on York Street, Jasper, one arm beneath Torrey’s head asked, “Are you going to turn him in? Padraic Collins?”

Torrey was quiet. Then, “From almost the first,” she said, “when I came into the trailer, I knew something. Padraic Collins’s face. Something about around his eyes. And when he poured tea into the mugs, and I looked more closely, there came into my head,
The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold, / And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold.
”

“Blake? Kipling? But why?”

“Byron. It was the word
wolf.
At first I didn’t know. Then I did.”

“Know what?”

“That Padraic Collins had been concealing something else. Out of vanity, likely …
I
don’t know.”

*   *   *

It was like a mask that Padraic Collins had tried to hide. So faint, but clear, the wolflike shape of that darkness, when Collins, absentmindedly brushing fingertips around his eyes, had rubbed away the makeup, and she saw. And at first, was puzzled.

Now, lying beside Jasper, she sought out his hand and laced her fingers with his, as though to hold onto his strength. She said, “Jasper? In the trailer, looking at Padraic Collins while he talked, I thought at first: In Greek,
wolf
is
lykos.
Then I thought: And in Latin,
wolf
is
lupus.
The wolflike shadow, like a mask across the eyes.”

Jasper’s fingers, after an instant, tightened on hers. “Lupus. Lupus erythematosus.” He was silent. After a moment, he slid an arm beneath Torrey’s head and drew her close. “Is that why you didn’t turn him in to the Gardai?”

Torrey nodded. “How could I? Padraic, in his late seventies, and on the run, living a gypsy life and doctoring whoever needed medical help. And with lupus! Lupus demands proper care. How long could he last without it? Collins knew it was risky. But he made his choice. And you know” — she tipped up her head within Jasper’s encircling arm —“I love him for it.”

81

It was after seven and dark when Torrey got off the bus beside the break in the hedge that led to the groundsman’s cottage. In Jasper’s apartment, lying in bed, between talking, napping, and making love, hours had passed. Then in his state-of-the-art kitchen, Jasper had made them a high tea of a Turkish dish that was mostly eggplant and was indescribably delicious. At six o’clock he’d gone to an editorial meeting and Torrey had taken the bus.

A crusty snow crackled under her feet when she stepped down from the bus. She drew a deep breath of the pure cold country air. She could see the few lights of Ballynagh down the road. What was Ballynagh anyway, that she was in love with it? Nothing but a few streets and cottages and two or three manor houses and a castle owned by an ironic poet. Nothing but Nelson of the gold-brown eyes and wagging tail, and the smell of dark beer from O’Malley’s pub, and Finney’s crisp-fried cod and the white fluffs that were sheep grazing on the high hills. Nothing but the drawing in of a breath of air that was like a drink of pure, cool water. And the way, last night at dusk, the sun slanted across the mountains so that they became violet, then deep purple.

In the cottage, she turned on lamps. She knew that it was not over with Jasper O’Mara, or should she say Jasper Shaw? She was happy about that: Their lives crisscrossing, she going off on interpreting jobs, Jasper on investigative jobs.

But there were some things she wasn’t ever going to tell her darling investigative reporter, Jasper Shaw. For instance, what she knew about Helen Lavery having gone to live on her brother’s farm in Meath and a few weeks later reported to have disappeared. What she, Torrey, knew? Or did not quite know. But there in the gypsy trailer, at the hinged table across from Padraic Collins, she had suddenly asked, “Where is Helen Lavery?” her question startling herself.

Padraic was spreading butter on one of the scones. He didn’t even look up. “I’ve no idea,” he said. He put down the knife and bit blissfully into the cranberry scone.

*   *   *

So, no. Some things Jasper Shaw was never to know. And there was at least one thing she herself didn’t know and now never would. Why
had
the Romanian gypsy woman, drunk, thrown out that tantalizing hint?
A gypsy’s words, they might be smoke. A lady like you is different, could make something of it.
A backup? In case Dr. Collins resisted blackmail, and Inspector O’Hare wouldn’t likely believe a roving gypsy’s tale as against Dr. Collins’s word? Not believe it enough to have the pond dredged? Likely, that. But no way now to know.

Torrey looked at the clock. Getting late. She’d better pack a bag and go to bed. She was leaving for Greece at eight in the morning. Rowena’s husband, Flann, would drive her to Dublin; he had to be at his desk at the
Irish Times
early tomorrow. A month ago, after he’d appeared again in Dublin, there was always a car following his. Flann had glimpsed it in the rearview mirror. But no more. Whatever had been was over. Torrey forced herself not to ask of Flann, “Then your father, Rory. Is he safe, somewhere?” Flann and Rowena were living at Ashenden Manor. Rowena had passed her vet exams. Later, after the baby was born, they’d move to Rowena’s property in Kildare.

As for Ashenden Manor, Scott, hired by his mother, was totally absorbed in working with an architect and contractor on plans that would turn the manor into a country estate guest house with landscaped gardens, tennis, golf, riding, and a superior cuisine.

Her bag packed, Torrey set the alarm. She should go to bed. But then, looking around the fireplace kitchen with voluptuous pleasure, she couldn’t resist: She put on her heavy striped apron, spread some newspaper on the floor, and with a paint scraper began to scrape the peeling brown paint from the old kitchen chair. Later, she’d sand it, rub in an apple green tint, then wax it. When she returned from Athens, she’d also buy chintz for the shabby-looking couch beside the fireplace.

For the bare breath of an instant, she thought of Inspector Egan O’Hare and of the two false gypsies moving in a caravan somewhere along the roads of Ireland.

Rightly or wrongly, she decided, scraping off the old paint, she was content with her conscience.

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The Irish Manor House Murder

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