Authors: Dicey Deere

The Irish Village Murder (3 page)

BOOK: The Irish Village Murder

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“
I
nspector O'Hare Megan! Something wrong? I passed a police van on the drive.”

Roger Flannery, in a yellow plastic raincoat and carrying a well-worn briefcase, slicked a hand down his wet reddish-brown hair, which was drawn back into an inch-long ponytail tied at his nape. His freckled forehead was damp with rain. “The van skidded at the curve and almost ran into me.” His glance skittered across Torrey with a flicker of recognition. They had encountered each other perhaps a dozen times on errands in the village, so Torrey knew that Roger Flannery, a rail-thin, brown-eyed man with faint scars from an acned boyhood pitting the sides of his cheeks and jaw, and who looked to be in his mid-thirties, read
The Dublin Times,
always wore the same dun-colored pants and well-worn maroon jacket, had his shoes resoled, and drove an old Nissan that was often being repaired in Duffy's Garage behind the bed-and-breakfast on Butler Street.

“Roger â¦” Megan began, then made a helpless gesture, spreading her hands.

“That business about O'Leary's sheep again? That it?” Roger Flannery gave an exclamation of disgust. “John mentioned that it's just a question of O'Leary rebuilding the stone fence. John doesn't have
time
for domestic nonsense like â¦” His voice died
as he looked at Megan O'Faolain's pale face. “What?” he said. “What?”

“Not O'Leary's fence,” Inspector O'Hare said.

“Inspector?”

Inspector O'Hare told him.

“What,
what
?
” Flannery put up a hand and covered his open mouth. He stared, his brown eyes appalled, at Inspector O'Hare. Then he dropped the briefcase, pulled off his plastic raincoat, and sank down on one of the squat sofas. He was wearing his usual dun-colored corduroy pants and maroon jacket over a tan shirt. He ran a hand along the side of his acne-scarred jaw and shook his head from side to side. “With a shotgun!
Uhh!
It couldn't be moreâBut
who? why?
Do we have any idea?”

“Not yet, Mr. Flannery.” A touch of irritation in Inspector O'Hare's voice. Torrey suppressed a smile; Inspector O'Hare was edgy about being pushed. “You're presently staying here, Mr. Flannery?”

“What? At Gwathney Hall? Yes.” Flannery had a lower-class Limerick accent. “That is, I live here when John â¦ when Mr. Gwathney and I are working on an extensive block of research. As we've lately been doing. I've rooms on the third floor, above his study. So I'm staying here now.”

“And otherwise?”

“Otherwise, I'm in Dublin, on Pearse Street.”

“Ahh. And today? Why today in Dublin?”

Roger Flannery gestured toward the worn briefcase at his feet. “Doing research for Mr. Gwathney's next book. I worked all afternoon in the Ancient Manuscript Section of the Library at Trinity College. Then I had dinner at a Bewley's. Bit of trouble with my car, on the way back to Ballynagh. Needed an oil change.” He raised a hand and rubbed it along his jaw. Torrey, on his left, saw that his shirt cuff was soiled, a dark, oily-looking smudge.

Ten minutes later, Torrey and her groceries and luggage were in the backseat of the Ballynagh police car. Sergeant Bryson was at the wheel, Inspector O'Hare beside him. The rain had stopped, there was a bright moon, and clouds scudded across the sky. It was so cold that Torrey was glad of her sweater. In twenty minutes, thank God, she'd be home in the old groundsman's cottage. She had stopped being hungry and wanted only a hot shower, then to bed. She'd be up at seven and back to Gwathney Hall. “I'll expect you at eight o'clock tomorrow morning at the police station,” Inspector O'Hare had said to Megan O'Faolain as they left. “I'll be wanting a statement.”

“But â¦” Megan, in distress, had turned to Torrey. “Sharon â¦ I don't want herâ”

“Don't worry about Sharon,” Torrey had told her. “I'll come over and give her breakfast. I'll stay until you get back.” How could she not have offered? “What do I give her?”

“Eggs and one sausage, and buttered bread. She's used to tea, but with milk in it. She'll tell you she has ham, too, but she'll just be trying it on, so pay it no mind.” Megan added wearily, “Torrey, I can't thank you enough. I don't know what I'dâ”

“Nothing to it,” Torrey said. “She'll be fine. We're already best friends.”

Now, in the police car, Inspector O'Hare said, “I'll be wanting a statement from you as well, Ms. Tunet. Ten o'clock, please.”

Sergeant Jimmy Bryson, driving, said, “Good thing Mr. Flannery is staying at Gwathney Hall.”

“Yes.” Torrey looked out at the dark woods.

“Protection,” Sergeant Bryson said, “having a man about.”

“Definitely,” Torrey said.

A
t nine o'clock on the kind of crisp, sunny morning that Winifred Moore called brilliant, she took the shortcut across the pasture toward Gwathney Hall. She drew in deep, heady breaths of the October air. Ah, juniper, apples andâshe raised her head and sniffedâeven wood smoke. And now, ahead, she could see the smoke rising from the chimney of the pottery shop, a quarter mile from Gwathney Hall. Liam Caffrey's shop.

She stopped at the edge of the pasture. She was wearing oversized corduroy pants, an olive pullover, and on her head her dashing suede hat with the brim pinned up on one side. Hanging from her shoulder was her leather hunter's bag. It held her binoculars, water bottle, cell phone, matches and the three cigarettes she allowed herself between breakfast and lunch. It was almost ten o'clock, so she owed herself that second cigarette, right? Right, Sheila. She snapped open the bag and took out the cigarette. She lit it, breathed in the smoke and let it out through her nose, which Sheila Flaxton said was an absolutely disgusting habit.

Smoking contentedly before going on, Winifred contemplated the pottery shop. It was set back off the road and reached by a narrow path bordered by briers. Once a dwelling, it was a stone building with small windows and a single chimney. It had been in disrepair and deserted for years, until Liam Caffrey had
arrived in the village. Winifred flicked ash from her cigarette. Odd sort of man, Liam Caffrey. A potter, he'd appeared in Ballynagh two years ago. From Glasgow, she'd heard. Now there were rows of glazed pots on shelves in the front room, and next to the fireplace and the wood box was the potter's wheel where Liam Caffrey worked, sleeves of his blue shirt rolled up, strong brown hands shaping, shaping. Winifred had come across two or three pieces of his work in an outdated art magazine. But so far, none of the buses with specialty-tour groups had begun visiting Liam Caffrey's shop. Nor had he made friends in Ballynagh, though he'd occasionally drop in at O'Malley's for a beer, and two or three nights a week he'd have supper at Finney's. He was a lean, flat-bellied man with narrow dark eyes, a laconic look around his mouth, and a stain of red on his cheekbones. He might be in his late thirties and was certainly attractive to women; at least, as Sheila pointed out one evening when they were having supper in Finney's, the two Finney daughters who were the waitresses fluttered like butterflies around Liam Caffrey's table, vying to fill his water glass when he'd barely taken a sip. But he hadn't appeared to notice.

Winifred shredded the cigarette butt. She patted the pocket of her corduroy pants. She'd made some notes about Queen Maeve to discuss with John Gwathney. She'd better get on. She took a step forward, and at the same time she saw Liam Caffrey come from the woods across the road. He'd clearly come from hunting because he had his shotgun in the crook of his arm and was carrying a brace of rabbits he must have bagged.

“
T
his egg is
runny
.” Sharon poked the fried egg with her fork and gave Torrey a reproachful look. Sitting at one end of the servants' table in the high-raftered kitchen at Gwathney Hall, she was sleepy-eyed but had combed her short straight brown hair. She wore a long-sleeved blue jersey and navy pants. She frowned at the egg. “It isn't cooked enough.”

“Hmmm? I'll do it more, honey.” Torrey slid the egg off Sharon's plate and back into the frying pan. She knew she was a terrible cook. Jasper, who, besides being Jasper Shaw, investigative reporter, was also JASPER, who wrote a food column in the
Irish Independent,
had, grinning all the while, managed only to teach her to make passable scones.

Besides, she wasn't paying attention to fixing Sharon's breakfast. She was thinking of the grotesque horror of John Gwathney's blood-spattered body. She was seeing Megan's tired face that morning before she went off to the village to give her statement to Inspector O'Hare. It would be a twenty-minute walk, at least, but Megan had still gone on foot. “Walking will clear my head,” she'd told Torrey. Torrey, frowning, had watched her walk down the drive.

With the spatula, Torrey turned over the egg. She wondered if Roger Flannery was still asleep in a bedroom on the third floor. His Nissan was in the circular gravel drive. What would
Roger Flannery do for a job, now that John Gwathney was dead? Likely he'd be in demand as a historical researcher. After all, to have worked with John Gwathney!

“My mam makes the yellow part hard,” Sharon said. “This sausage is all right, though. So is the toast. I
like
it burned.”

“Hmmm?” Torrey put the egg back onto Sharon's plate. Last night, Inspector O'Hare and Sergeant Jimmy Bryson in the police car had let her off on the access road, a dozen yards from the old groundsman's cottage. She'd gone through the break in the hedgerow and past the weedy little pond to the cottage, the moon so bright that it made patterns through the trees on the thatched roof.

Inside, closing the door behind her, she'd shivered. It was chilly in the fireplace kitchen, with its worn couch and the scarred wood table and mismatched chairs. Besides this room, there was only the small bedroom and minuscule. bathroom; they'd be even colder.

First thing, she lit a peat fire to warm the kitchen. Next, she put away the groceries. Then she zipped open her carry-on and unpacked the three things she was never without: the jump rope; a box of a dozen chocolate bars with almonds; and the silk scarf scrolled with peacocks of turquoise, orange and black. Those three. She was, at twenty-seven, sleek and slim, despite a taste for pasta and chocolate bars with almonds. As for the jump ropeâjumping rope, she was positive, helped her to think, even to conjugate Italian and Turkish verbs, never mind that it also got her blood circulating and made that geranium color rise in her cheeks. “Rappaccini's daughter,” Jasper had said. “Hawthorne, wasn't it? All aglow, a dangerous maiden.” She wished Jasper were here now, instead of in Derry on another investigation.

As for the peacock scarfâit had been hers since that heartbreaking, unforgettable day when she was twelve. Holding it now, feeling its silkiness, she thought of her father's laughing
face, his teeth a flash of white, before he'd left North Hawk, north of Boston, for a more adventurous life. The peacock scarf was the one possession she truly cared about.

She unpacked the rest of her things in the carry-on, then had a supper of a ham-paste sandwich and a pot of tea. She was in bed by eleven, half expecting to have a nightmare about John Gwathney being murdered.

When she awoke, after a dreamless night, it was six o'clock with an early morning gray light through the window of the little bedroom; and the window itself rattled in the October wind. The bedroom was cold, and she shivered, but after she'd jumped rope for ten minutes she was warm enough. Then, dressed in jeans and her mustard-colored sweater, she swallowed a cup of coffee and ate a store-bought muffin that would have made Jasper gag.

It was seven o'clock when she got on her bicycle. At the last minute, she tossed her Georges Simenon paperback mystery in Portuguese into her bicycle basket. If the Portuguese assignment came through, she'd be prepared. She always read a Simenon mystery or two in the language of her next assignment to get back her facility in that language. Lucky for her that Simenon had been published in more than forty languages.

And now here she was, in this big Victorian kitchen of Gwathney Hall, making a barely edible breakfast for eight-year-old Sharon.

“This house is
spooky,”
Sharon said. “It's too
big.
When does my Auntie Megan get back? Why'd she have to go to the village, anyway?”

“She had some shopping to do,” Torrey lied. She glanced at the wall clock. Quarter past eight. It wouldn't take more than half an hour for Megan to give her statement to Inspector O'Hare. “She'll be back soon. Another piece of toast?”

“No, thank you,” Sharon said quickly. “Can I play outside? I won't go far.” Pale little face! She could use some sun.

“It's cold out.” Torrey smiled at Sharon. “Better put on something warm.”

Sharon gone, Torrey did the few dishes. It was so quiet; there was only the ticking of the clock. She looked about at the raftered ceiling, the black gleaming stove, and the table that surely could seat a dozen domestics. In earlier times, white-aproned servants had bustled about in this kitchen, baking, cooking, basting roasts in the oven and on those iron grills. Smells of roasting meat, rosemary, garlic and thyme. Tureens of steaming soup carried off to the dining room. Platters of meats and covered dishes of hot vegetables borne off.

Gwathney Hall. Built at a time when such country residences contained suites, when hallways and passages led to elegant rooms with carved mahogany beds or to private quarters that might be a master's study or even his gun room.

Torrey hesitated. Gwathney Hall. Never mind the Simenon in Portuguese for now. It wouldn't hurt to have a look about.

She glanced once more at the clock and left the kitchen.

BOOK: The Irish Village Murder

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