The Irish Village Murder (10 page)

BOOK: The Irish Village Murder
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A
t nine-thirty, Friday morning, Torrey bicycled up the drive to Gwathney Hall.
Kathleen, Sharon's nanny, was waiting on the stone steps. She was plump as a pigeon and was wearing a rust-colored overall a size too small, and an unzipped windbreaker. An outsized shoulder bag hung from one shoulder. She had a wide, pretty face and short hair of the smallest blond ringlets Torrey had ever seen.
“I've made Sharon's lunch, Ms. Tunet,” Kathleen said the instant Torrey braked her bike to a stop. She was already inching off to a Toyota parked in the drive. “Ham with peas, it's in the fridge and only needs heating up, and there's strawberry ice cream. So I'll be off.” She hitched her shoulder bag farther up her shoulder. “Sharon's in her room looking at her show on the telly. Second floor, above the drawing room.” Then, awkwardly: “I do appreciate it, Ms. Tunet.”
“That's all right. Glad to.”
Torrey watched the Toyota disappear down the drive. Two hours. She had at least two hours. Whistling under her breath, she ran up the steps of Gwathney Hall.
On the second floor, she went past a door on the left which bore an orange-crayoned sign:
Do Not Disturb on Pain of Death.
Squeaky animated voices emanated from the room. At the end of the hall, she went up a narrower staircase to the third floor.
At the far end of the hall, she found Roger Flannery's quarters. The moment she opened the door, she smelled the expensive cologne he'd worn at Winifred Moore's dinner party. So he still indeed used these rooms, as well as his flat in Dublin. She crossed her fingers and looked about. A comfortable sitting room with, at the far end, an alcove with a solid walnut bed and a marble-topped dresser. Through a half-open door in the alcove, she glimpsed a wainscoted bathroom with a claw-legged bathtub.

With intent to steal
,” she said softly. But she was no longer a thief. She was in Roger Flannery's rooms to get back the journal and address book that she was sure he'd stolen from her. She'd deliver them to Inspector O'Hare. The journal might shed light on who had reason to kill John Gwathney. Possibly that's why Roger Flannery had stolen it. So …
A half hour later, frustrated, she sank down on the edge of Flannery's bed. In the bedroom, she'd gone carefully through the bureau drawers, then through the clothes in his closet. In the bathroom, the cabinets had revealed nothing. She had even leafed through the magazines on the side table beside the couch in the sitting room. The drawers of the desk under the window had yielded nothing. Neither had the state-of-the-art office file beside the desk. Flannery had either destroyed the journal or it was in his flat in Dublin.
She sneezed. That expensive scent, cologne or perfume, whichever it was, she was allergic to it. She sneezed again. On the bureau, beside a silver-framed photograph of a saucy-faced young woman, was a box of tissues.
Of course. Sneezing again, she got up and crossed to the bureau. She lifted out the tissues. And there it was. The journal.
She took it out. But the address book was not there. Instead,
under the journal, were three little packets: cellophane envelopes of what looked like white flour.
Flour. But of course not flour. Torrey held one of the packets. So that's where Roger Flannery's money went. Flannery's run-down heels, his wretched car always in repair at Duffy's Garage, his worn shirt cuffs.
She put the three little packets back under the face tissues, then shoved John Gwathney's journal deep,
deep
into her jeans pocket. She sneezed again, blew her nose on a tissue, and left the room.
 
Wanting to think, she took the back road. It circumvented the village; a seldom-used road, she'd pass only Healey's farm and its pasture land. She'd likely meet no one, and she'd reach the access road only a few hundred yards north of the cottage.
Drugs. Little plastic bags worth God knows what. Roger Flannery. Looking at him, you couldn't have guessed. But the journal! With a feeling of anticipation, she ran a hand along her jeans pocket, feeling the journal's rectangular outline. First thing at the cottage, she'd settle down with a mug of tea and the journal. First—
The bike wobbled, the tire flat. She got off. Oh,
please!
But yes. Flat, flat,
flat
. Ahead, maybe around the bend, was Healey's farm, maybe they'd have a bicycle pump. Not likely, but
maybe
…
The sound of a car behind her. “Ms Tunet!”
She turned her head. Blake Rossiter in a gray Lexus. “Trouble?” He smiled, his teeth very white beneath his sandy mustache. He wore a wine-colored turtleneck.
Five minutes later, for the second time in a week, Torrey's collapsible bike was put in the boot of a car. “No trouble at all,” Blake Rossiter said, leaning over the boot and pushing aside an olive-green carton that, Torrey saw, was addressed to him care
of his gallery on Aungier Street, in Dublin. “I'll go south on the access road to the village and drop you off at Dugan's Garage. Then I'm off to Dublin.”
Beside him in the car, Torrey buckled her seat belt. “Thanks. Highly appreciated. Lucky you came along,
nobody
seems ever to use this back road.” She was looking at his strong hands on the wheel. There was paint under his fingernails. “You've been out painting landscapes?”
“What? Right … right. Autumn colors in a Wicklow landscape.” He ran a thumb and forefinger along his mustache and slanted a glance at her.
 
At Dugan's Garage, behind Nolan's Bed-and-Breakfast, Blake Rossiter said good-bye and watched Ms. Torrey Tunet wheel her bicycle over to young Billy Dugan. Then he turned the Lexus and headed for Dublin. Ms. Tunet. A kind of boyish elegance, even in jeans. Driving, he reached up and tipped the reflecting mirror down. He looked at his reflection. At his age, still handsome. His baldness didn't detract, what with the sideburns against his tanned skin. And with his lean figure, he didn't look sixty. Well, sixty-two.
Ms. Tunet. Intriguing thought. Slender, but naturally high-breasted, likely didn't even wear a … But … He frowned. Stay clear, stay clear, or before you knew it, she'd be dropping in at the lodge. He couldn't have that.
 
 
M
onday, twelve noon, Michael McIntyre, at his table beside the window in O'Malley's Pub, ruffled his thicket of white hair, sipped from his pint and hopefully scanned the street through the window.
Three days of deprivation. Three days without even a glimpse of Ms. Torrey Tunet, thus depriving him of one of his daily pleasures. No jeans-clad Ms. Tunet, peacock bandanna around her wavy hair, skidding her bike to a stop and buying greens across the street at Coyle's or stopping next door at O'Curry's Meats for a chop or two, or, farther down Butler Street, going into Miss Amelia's Tea Shoppe for some ladylike sustenance. No Ms. Torrey Tunet, of the flower mouth and cool gray eyes starred by black lashes, dropping in to O'Malley's at lunchtime for the Daily Special and a chat.
“The Special,” he said to Corinne, who appeared at his side. “And another pint.”
But he knew Ms. Tunet was in Ballynagh. A jaunt last evening up the annex road, and through the hedge, and he'd glimpsed a light in the old groundsman's cottage. Was she all right? … Or perhaps lying sick and delirious within? He'd hesitated, then gone through the hedge and around the little pond and looked through the window beside the door, at the same time hearing an odd
slap, slap, slap
from within. And there she
was, Ms. Torrey Tunet in jeans, at eleven o'lock at night, jumping rope,
slap, slap, slap
of rope on the floor, Ms. Tunet's brows drawn together in concentration. So she was all right. After a fashion.
Now, at noontime, McIntyre drained the pint, and over its rim saw, through O'Malley's window, Roger Flannery's new green Mercedes with its silver monogram glide by. The fellow was still back and forth between Gwathney Hall and Dublin. Spending his fortune. Buying an expensive house in Dublin. Boylston Street, in Ballsbridge. Hiring a decorator fellow. Flannery had got self-important. Had even—“The Special, Mr. McIntyre,” Corinne set down the plate—had even last night at Finney's, having dinner with Blake Rossiter, the art-dealer fellow, been overheard giving Rossiter his opinion on the current market for artworks, and filling Rossiter in on the history of famous works of art. Rossiter, a handsome balding fellow in his sixties, with a peanut-colored mustache, had unconsciously clenched his fists on his knees, a fact that had been noted and reported to McIntyre himself by his old friend Dennis O'Curry of O'Curry's Meats: “It was like maybe Mrs. O'Brien telling me, for instance, how to cut pork for a crown roast! I'd crown
her!

McIntyre forked up the last mouthful of mashed potatoes. It was likely that Rossiter, the art-dealer fellow, suffered having dinner with Roger Flannery in hopes of selling him an expensive painting or two for that elegant house in Ballsbridge. Painful way of life, that must be, cozening up to—
“Dessert, Mr. McIntyre?” Corinne was at his elbow. “Today's is apple crisp.”
McIntryre pulled his nose. “Guess not. I'm full up, Corinne.” Waiting for his change, he spied across the street that pretty overweight Kathleen Hurley with Megan O'Faolain's little niece, both of them eating some sort of chocolate-looking bars.
Megan O'Faolain. McIntyre rumpled his thatch of hair. He
knew who had stolen Jack McGuire's hog, knew which innocent-faced girl bedded a neighbor's husband, why this or that wife wept at night, and who hid gambling winnings under a board in his barn.
But as for Megan O'Faolain and Liam Caffrey, he knew only that Megan O'Faolain was sick in love with the man. He'd seen them walking together on the road below Castle Moore well over a month ago. He'd seen Megan turn her head and look up at Liam Caffrey walking beside her. And he, Michael McIntyre, who was seventy-six and had voyaged the world, and had strange and wonderful memories, had, for an instant, felt, sharp as a knife, a stab of envy.
 
 
A
t the kitchen table, the journal open before her, Torrey straightened, groaned, stretched and rubbed the back of her neck. The journal had the previous year's date on the first page, so John Gwathney had begun it in April, eighteen months ago. Black scratchings, a minuscule handwriting, sometimes digging into the page, other times gliding lightly as a swan on a lake.
Torrey rubbed her eyes. Exasperating that her poor knowledge of Greek made reading the journal that much more of a struggle.
Three days ago, that first afternoon, reading the journal and feeling guilty, she had stumbled on through the afternoon, hoping to find a clue that would point Inspector O'Hare's suspicions toward someone other than Megan O'Faolain. But those early pages had turned out to be John Gwathney's prosaic accounts of buying a plane ticket or going off by car or train to research old documents in musty archives. Disappointing. And next morning she was going to bring the journal to Inspector Egan O'Hare.
Yet, she had not. Because, next morning, at breakfast, opening the journal at random, she read in Greek:
Yes! Yes!
Exultant, Gwathney's pen digging deep.
Yes! Yes!
Followed by something illegible, and then, unexpectedly in English,
It was through the toothless beggar in front of the kiosk
…
A shiver slid down her spine. And she thought: No, Inspector O'Hare, not quite yet. She had glimpsed a tale that would surely become clear. Go back; go slowly.
She turned back the pages.
That second day, and through the evening and then until midnight, she had pored over the journal, feeling guilty and munching chocolate bars. Yet she'd managed to struggle through only a few more prosaic pages.
The morning of the third day, she put the journal in her shoulder bag, locked the cottage door, went out to the access road and flagged down the bus to Dublin. She returned at noon with a sackful of books that she dumped on the kitchen table: a Greek translation of Simenon's
Maigret and the Yellow Dog,
and a Greek grammar and dictionary. For a moment she stood looking down at the books. She had an odd feeling, like a fast heartbeat, or maybe it was something to do with the hasty pot-roast sandwich she'd had at a Bewley's; but she shivered. Anticipation? Apprehension? She could see Jasper's raised, questioning eyebrows, a little smile hovering around his mouth. He knew her too well.
In the late afternoon, when the phone rang, she didn't get up from the kitchen table where she sat with the journal, the Greek books, some scribbled notes of her own and a tepid mug of tea. From her answering machine she heard Myra Schwartz's voice from Boston: “Torrey! Why do you
have
e-mail if you never read it? Or are you out sheepherding or whatever you do in that bucolic corner of Eire? Portugal is on again, the embassy. Can you make it in three weeks? Are you, for God's sake,
there?
Hello to that Jasper of yours.”
Absorbed, she barely heard. She lifted her head from the journal. She was hungry, she'd forgotten to have lunch, and anyway, she was almost out of food; she should stock up in the village. Maybe later.
The phone rang again. Carefully she put the sugar bowl on
the journal page to hold her place, and crossed to the desk. “Hello?”
“My love, you sound twenty leagues under the sea. Surface. Tell me all.”
“Jasper, I have John Gwathney's journal.” She told him about finding the journal in Roger Flannery's rooms, and then about the drugs. “So that must be where Flannery's salary was going.”
“Right. Up his nose or into his arm. Could've been costing him plenty. More than he had? Drug dealers at his heels? In any case, lucky for Flannery that he inherited the Landseer. But his stealing Gwathney's journal from the cottage … Why? Maybe afraid the journal would reveal his addiction.”
“I left the drugs. I only took the journal. Of course I'll give it to Inspector O'Hare. But I'm sort of dipping into it. Just to take a look. I was hoping, I'm
still
hoping to find a lead that will clear Megan O'Faolain. Inspector O'Hare is up on his hind legs, sniffing the air, determined to indict her and Liam Caffrey for Gwathney's—”
“And you've found?”
“So far, nothing to help Megan. The journal's early part, which is as far as I've got, seems to be about John Gwathney's research, that book he maybe burned. He seems to be searching for something, I don't yet know what. Involves Irish history, something about Baltimore, in Cork.”
“West
Cork. Baltimore, on the harbor, is down in that wild sea area, all touristed up now. Not far from Kinsale, the best gourmet food in Ireland. Crabs in a butter sauce with just a hint of—”
“Aside
from the crabs.”
“Old history. Infamous.
The Sack of Baltimore.
In the mid–sixteen hundreds, around sixteen-thirty, Algerian pirates landed and raided Baltimore, massacred some inhabitants and captured over a hundred people and took them away as slaves to North Africa. Children and all. God help them. Torrey? You there?”
“Barely.” The phone was slippery, her hand was wet.
“Barbary pirates. The seas were teeming with them. Algiers, Morocco, Tunis, Tripoli. Kidnapping along the coasts. If you were lucky, you might be ransomed. That seldom happened.”
Torrey took a deep breath. She looked over at John Gwathney's journal on the kitchen table, the sugar bowl holding down her page.
“Torrey? You're on my mind,” Jasper said. “But when are you not? I called to tell you that eight days from now you may find me on your doorstep with a heart full of devotion and a recipe for crab-and-shrimp torte. If I'm lucky, you won't have been co-opted by Interpreters International. Or …” He paused. “By anything else.”
BOOK: The Irish Village Murder
11.47Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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