The Irish Manor House Murder (7 page)

“Yes, fascinating.” Somewhere out there.

16

At half past eight, in the Ballynagh police station, O’Hare picked up the phone and called the Murder Squad at Dublin Castle, Phoenix Park. Five minutes later he hung up. The van with the Garda Siochana technical staff and their equipment would arrive from Dublin within the hour. The murder scene.

O’Hare stretched. Getting somewhere. Finally. He smiled. Something to tell his wife tonight. Noreen had been complaining about such poor mysteries on television lately. Noreen liked a good mystery. Well, here’s one for you, my lass. And an odd one indeed. Ashenden dead. And the irony of it. Brought down the temple on his own head, trying to protect his granddaughter. O’Hare frowned, puzzled. Something Dr. Ashenden hadn’t wanted to come out.

Peculiar. Something altogether odd about the Ashenden family. He’d always sensed it. But difficult to make out. One thing he could swear to, in any event: Dr. Ashenden’s death was a family affair.

“Morning, Sir.” Sergeant Bryson. Fresh-scrubbed, shiny face, wet hair still showing signs of the comb.

O’Hare said, “Feed Nelson, Jimmy. Then you’re coming with me.” In the woods around the bridle path, the technical squad from Dublin would inch over the ground covered with clotted, dank leaves after last night’s rain. They’d take photographs, they’d find something. A strand of red hair that had caught on a branch? Or, say, the print of a narrow boot, fitted, in the end, like Cinderella’s slipper, to Ms. Rowena Keegan’s foot?

17

“Inspector?” The shorter garda, Daly his name was, came up, red-faced from having climbed up to the bridle path from the gully. “Here’s something. Notebook. Wet from the dew, overnight.” The notebook was already encased in a clear plastic bag that Daly had zipped closed. “Found down in the gully. Have a look.”

Torrey quickly stepped to O’Hare’s side. She saw through the plastic the smeared, inked words on the cover:
Horse diseases. Notebook #2.
and under it:
Rowena Keegan.
Her mouth went dry.

“Take your time, Ms. Tunet, take a good look,” Inspector O’Hare said sarcastically. What the
hell
was she doing here? Always on his heels! He handed the notebook back to Daly who would take it to the crime laboratory in Dublin. The technical crew from the Garda Siochana was already packing up, getting into the van. They were done with searching the murder site and surrounding woods. They’d been here an hour. They’d found no footprints, no abandoned weapon, nothing — except, down in the gully, this notebook, an empty half-pint bottle of Bushnell’s, and some long-rotted prophylactics.

Inspector O’Hare gave a half salute to the departing van with its crew and, with a final triumphant look at Torrey, strode off through the woods.

18

At two o’clock, a fax of the notebook, clearly dirty and water-stained, lay on Inspector O’Hare’s desk.

Rowena Keegan stood beside the desk. She had refused to sit down. She wore a white turtleneck jersey, a big, heavy brown cableknit sweater, and an old pair of stained jodhpurs. Her curly red hair was pushed carelessly behind her ears. She held a can of diet Coke from the Coke machine beside the door. Inspector O’Hare was irritated that Nelson was nudging Rowena’s leg, his tail wagging.

“No, I don’t know how my notebook came to be in the gully,” Rowena said. “I can’t imagine. Unless someone —” and she hesitated and looked off into space. “It could have been taken from … from…” She shrugged and took a sip of Coke.

It was obvious to Inspector O’Hare: Rowena Keegan was suggesting that someone had been setting her up for the murder of her grandfather. O’Hare slanted a glance toward Sergeant Bryson. Bryson was standing nearby rocking back and forth from one foot to the other. Exasperating. Would he never grow up?

And could Ms. Keegan remember where she was at the time of her grandfather’s murder? O’Hare tried to keep sarcasm out of his voice.

“I was walking about.” Walking about? Walking about, exactly where? “Oh … through the fields, the woods, near Castle Moore.”

Evasive, a lie. The lie rang like a gong, the way Rowena Keegan’s green-eyed glance slid away, the flush that rose and stained her pale face, cheeks to brow. Trickles of perspiration slid down from her temples, darkening the red hair that framed her face. So familiar to him; he’d seen her grow up. Only — he blinked, as though to clear his vision — only wasn’t there something a bit different about her? More … solid? A creamy softness, a richness. Puzzling. Reminded him somehow of his wife. Not that Noreen looked at all like Rowena Keegan.

In any case, a liar. She’d been in the gully and dropped her notebook. But not enough evidence to arrest her for murder. O’Hare’s jaw was beginning to ache. He’d been gritting his teeth again.

Leaving the police station Rowena Keegan put the can of soda on top of the machine. “I only drank half,” she told Sergeant Bryson. “It’s diet, no sugar in it. That’s okay for Nelson’s teeth. In case he’d like the other half.”

19

“Gully,”
Torrey said to Jasper. They were in the kitchen at the cottage. “Short for ‘gully knife’ in English dialect. As in, ‘He cut the bastard with a gully.’”

Jasper didn’t answer. His back was to her. He was putting prunes and apricots around the pork roast that would go into the oven for tonight’s dinner.

“Just
why
Rowena’s notebook was found there, what about this?” Torrey hesitated. Was she telling Jasper too much?

“What about what?” Jasper shook out a skimpy handful of brown sugar and sprinkled it into the roasting pan.

“Well,
suppose
someone put Rowena’s notebook there, setting her up. Or she was in the gully to meet someone and doesn’t want to say who.” The gully. That hidden pocket in the woods. The thought was irresistible: Rowena, the pregnant Rowena, meeting her … lover? Because,
Where did you come from / Baby dear?
A lover. Alive and somewhere out there. If only it were so.

But she was revealing too much. She slanted a glance toward Jasper. He was sliding the pork roast into the oven.

“That’s the last of the cloves.” Jasper’s head was turned away, his voice muffled. “What? Oh, sure. A possibility.” He closed the oven door, straightened, and set the timer for the roast.

20

At eight o’clock Wednesday morning, Padraic Collins, his nose red from an unexpected morning chill, parked his old Honda in the drive at Ashenden Manor. He found Caroline pacing the vegetable garden, wearing a moldy old chinchilla coat. She was frowning in apparent intense concentration.

“I was passing,” Padraic said. “I’m on my way to O’Doyle’s. Touch of flu, the O’Doyle kids. Thought I’d stop by, see if there’s anything I could —”

“The
will,
Padraic,” Caroline said. “My father’s will. I distinctly remember him saying to me — it must’ve been two years ago? — he’d just come from his lawyers, Wickham and Slocum, in Dublin. ‘I’ve made a new will,’ he told me. ‘Had to make a change.’ He looked so … is there an expression ‘quiet rage,’ Padraic?”

“Dryden? Something about swelling the soul to quiet rage?”

“Hmmm? So anyway, now I’ve no idea who’s inheriting what. I know I was to’ve gotten the Ashenden Manor estate. I hope so. Mark seems so … so
enchanted
by it. But it’s Scott. Scott has so little income of his own, just those bits of royalties of his father’s. And his crippled leg…”

Padraic said, “What about Kildare? Your father once mentioned some Ashenden property in Kildare. Three hundred acres, a Georgian house, stables, good grazing land, a — what’s the matter, Caroline?” She had gone quite pale. Padraic felt a rush of concern.

“I haven’t had breakfast.” Caroline drew her coat closer. “I wanted some air, first. Yes, Kildare. Supposed to go to Rowena. It was promised…” Her voice faltered. “But as for Scott…” She shook her head, her hazel eyes anxious. “I’ll call Wickham and Slocum and arrange for the reading of the will this week, definitely.”

Puzzled. Padraic frowned. Caroline out here in the cold, distracted, worried, hadn’t even had breakfast. She wasn’t strong enough for such nonsense. He remembered the frail little thing she’d been. The nurse fed her with an eyedropper, like a baby squirrel. It was no wonder Gerald refused to have more children. A pity for Kathleen, Catholic and anyway hungry for babies. But Gerald was a rock. “Look at that child!” he’d grumbled angrily to Padraic when Caroline was an aching, whining two-year-old. “Does Kathleen want another one like that?”

So, only the one child. Caroline. Thin-bodied, big-eyed, this fragile, frightened child, Caroline. But an unexpected spirit had suddenly surfaced in her. She couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve when she’d abruptly cocked a snoot at her father. And a couple of years later, when she was barely fifteen, she audaciously went her own way, an adventurous way, as it turned out: Dublin, London, Rome. A bit part in an Italian film, some cross-legged, meditating nonsense in India, then Dublin again, and finally marrying that guitar-playing Irish rock star, Tom Keegan. A Catholic! Ashenden had tried to pay the fellow off. No good. To Tom Keegan, Caroline Ashenden, with her hazel eyes and her long, straight, fair hair, was the heartbreaker of the world. Without her, Tom would have no world, only ashes. He made that plain.

Padraic said, “I’d better get on to the O’Doyles. And
you’d
better have Jennie O’Shea make you a solid breakfast. Fruit, eggs, scones, tea.”

Caroline suddenly leaned forward and kissed him. “I’ll walk you out to the drive.”

It was cold and windy, but the sun was strong. Padraic Collins had a skin so fair that five minutes in the sun turned his face bright red. Overnight, the redness faded, only to surge up again at the next day’s sun. He was never without the protection of that old tweed cap that had belonged to his father. He drove off in his dusty Honda, turning his head and waving back. He was an abominable driver; Caroline closed her eyes so as not to see, should he go into the hedge. It had happened twice before. A few seconds later, when she opened her eyes, he was already out of sight, fair-skinned Padraic in his father’s old tweed cap.

*   *   *

Tweed cap. She stood there on the stone steps. The world quaked. Rain-wet, that old tweed cap. It was just before her supper. It was raining, and she was seven years old, standing at a window, frightened. Rain spattered on the window, a sudden, end-of-April storm, the weather turned wild. Her mother was somewhere out there. Where? Blasts of rain against the windowpane. She knew where her mother had gone. But now her mother could be coming home. She saw her on the road, soaked with rain, blinded by the rain,
staggering on the access road,
falling, falling down, a truck coming, headlights, blinding rain, or a car, something would come and run over her. Get the big umbrella, hurry,
hurry!
She ran.

O’Malley’s pub. Someone sloshing out — “Christ Almighty! A kid, in this rain!” — and going off, hawking, spitting. A car stopping, a familiar car, “Get in the car, Caroline!” Padraic Collins, in his wet tweed cap, hurrying into the pub, coming out, pulling her mother along, ducking and splashing through the rain. The car starting up the street, she in the backseat, so safe the sound of the windshield made her feel. There was a smelly dog blanket; it comforted her, somehow. In the front seat, Padraic Collins and her mother, her mother’s black hair soaked so that Caroline could see the white tips of her ears. Padraic’s voice saying, “It must break Gerald’s heart, Kathleen, that you’re in the pub, always the pub. Don’t keep on, Kathleen! For his sake! Ah, don’t!” But her mother didn’t answer. In the backseat, nestled in the dog blanket, Caroline arrived slowly at a thought:
Something wrong.
There was something wrong that Padraic Collins didn’t know about her parents. She knew it. But what it was, was a mystery to her.

21

Torrey watched from the edge of the woods. It was ten in the morning. She could see, on the hill, the group of strangers and the Ashenden family and Dr. Collins within the iron-railed Ashenden cemetery. The ceremony was short: Caroline Temple turned over the first shovelful of earth; then Scott; lastly, Rowena. The square black box with the ashes of Dr. Gerald Ashenden was lowered into the earth. Now the —

A rustle in the woods to Torrey’s left. She glanced around. Nobody. Beyond was the stretch of woods and fields to the bridle path, nothing there but more woods and a gypsy wagon she’d glimpsed earlier. Or maybe it was a tinkers’ wagon; they moved about, “travelers” they were sometime called. Unattached to land, they roved about, footloose as her Romanian father who’d departed North Hawk when she was barely eleven.

Rustle. Only the breeze. She looked at her watch. It was getting on to ten-thirty. Rowena had phoned this morning, sounding worried. “Torrey? Can you meet me at the Castle stables around half past eleven?”

*   *   *

Torrey got off her bicycle in the stable yard at Castle Moore. Eleven-thirty. Smell of horse, smell of fresh hay. She could hear a stamp of hooves in a stall. Rowena would have watered and exercised the two horses. Cutting it close. Where was she? Maybe showering in the room above the stable.

Torrey sat down on a bale of hay beside the stable door. She looked up at the window of the room above the stable. Was Rowena up there? And what did she want? She’d sounded so anxious. Unnerved.

Five minutes. Ten minutes. Cool breeze, pungent smell of sun-warmed hay. Waiting, Torrey pulled a straw from the bale and nibbled it. She thought of Rowena standing in the groundsman’s cottage barely a week ago, face pale, green eyes desperate. So short a time ago. It was now only two and a half weeks before an abortion would be dangerous.

“Hello, there!”

Winifred Moore, denim-clad, looking like a robust farmer ready to do morning chores. “Looking for Rowena?”

“Hello. Yes, we’re supposed to meet here about now.”

“Ah,” Winifred said, “she’s gone. Been a change of plans, I guess. Gone off with her brother, Scott. He picked her up in that little red car of his — a Miata? — silly little bug, holds only two people. Romantic, I suppose,
if
one’s life is open to romance. Which is why I have a Jeep.”