The Private Wound (23 page)

“We've had suspicions since early this year, but nothing to go on. Mr. Eyre gave us the first clue.”

“Did I indeed? What was that?”

“You remember overhearing the stranger say to Kevin in his study, ‘Force is no good at all'?”

“Yes. But—”

“It was the man's pronunciation of Pfaus. Oscar Pfaus is a German-American journalist who came over here in February. He and his masters were the most ignorant eejuts—would you believe it?—Pfaus was sent to contact the I.R.A. through General O'Duffy!”

“Good Lord!” I exclaimed. “Like trying to contact Harry Pollitt through Oswald Mosley.”

“I wouldn't know about them fellas. Anyway, this Pfaus did in the end get round to Twomey, Russell and a few other I.R.A. extremists.”

“The idea being for the I.R.A. to create enough trouble in the North, when Hitler starts his war, to draw a lot of British troops off him?”

“That's roughly it, Mr. Eyre.”

“And my brother was mixed up in this nonsense?” asked Flurry.

“Well, he was and he wasn't. He had bigger ideas. The man Mr. Eyre heard talking to him—the Special Branch tracked him down in the end—is a fella called Geogehan. He and your brother are undercover members of an ultra-extremist group of the I.R.A. This group was planning to seize political power, not just to divert some units of the English army.”

“It sounds fantastic,” I said.

“You'd be surprised what can happen in this country. Kevin Leeson is the new type of Irishman, God help us. An organiser, a businessman—he's interested in power for himself. Travelling around the country, he'd whipped up quite a following, in political and business circles.”

“But he'd never win the Army over,” said Flurry.

“Armies do what they're told by politicians. Even Irish armies sometimes.”

“But you mean he was planning to set up some kind of dictatorship?” I asked.

“Him and Geogehan and a few others. With German help. We've got them all in the bag now. The Special Branch has been following them for the last month or so. It was a tricky business: we didn't want to jump the gun in one place, and alarm the others. We roped them all in, from different parts of the country, at the same hour this morning.”

There was a silence. Concannon rubbed his tired eyes with his knuckles.

“So you were right,” I said to Flurry. “Those attempts on me were made by your brother to frighten me out of the country and to ensure that I kept silent when I got home.”

“Kevin arranged that scare you had on the strand,” said Concannon. “Geogehan, Haggerty and another fella carried it out. The burning of your cottage is another matter. Kevin may well have been behind that: we have no proof yet.”

“But that was an attempt to kill me, surely, not just to frighten me away?”

“Oh, Kevin was beginning to lose his head by then. I was pushing him hard about the killing of Mrs. Leeson.”

“You suspected him of it then?”

“Never a bit. I wanted to break his nerve, so he'd do something foolish over the political conspiracy. And he did.”

“How was that?”

“He started telling lies and contradicting himself about that journey down from Galway. We knew he'd gone to Oughterard to consult with one of his associates in the plot—he was being shadowed, but we lost him. You see, he had to conceal the object of his Galway visit: but, when he thought we suspected him of the murder, he was between the devil and the deep blue sea. It was a matter of timing. I won't go into it all now. But he could only throw dust in our eyes about the Galway visit, if he admitted he was in the near vicinity when Mrs. Leeson was killed. Or vice-versa.”

“And he'd get off one horn of the dilemma by burning me alive in the cottage and faking my confession?”

“That's about the size of it. He didn't dare betray the political conspiracy. Geogehan's a firebrand and would have cut his throat. Anyway, Kevin got flustered under questioning about the murder: but it drew his attention off the possibility we might be after him for the other reason.”

“Things were simpler in my day. We had only the one worry,” said Flurry with a touch of sadness. He began to hum “It's the most distressful country”—

I broke in sharply, “So you've not had much chance, with all this excitement, to investigate the murder.”

“Time enough, Mr. Eyre, time enough.”

“There may be for you; but I've got to get home. I can't sponge on Flurry much longer.”

“You're welcome,” said Flurry automatically.

“You're going to transfer your war of nerves to us now, are you?”

“Us?” Concannon's heavy eyes turned on me.

“Flurry. Myself. And—” I cut it off.

“And?”

“And anyone else you may suspect.”

I could not say Maire's name. I simply could not bring myself to put into words my uneasiness about her. I have enough Irish in me to shrink from the word “informer.” I had done enough harm already.

“I've a diver coming from Cork to-morrow,” said Concannon.

“Have you now?” Flurry's voice was uninterested, but I felt a new attentiveness in him.

“To find the knife?” I asked.

“There's plenty knives here.” Flurry gestured vaguely round the fishing room.

“And here's the ones I took away,” said Concannon, unloading his pocket. “They've been tested. Result negative.”

“So you'll find the murderer's knife in that deep pool and hang him on the strength of it? Is that your idea?”

“We'll find the knife first, and then go on from there.” Concannon gazed fixedly at Flurry. “Of course, it won't have your wife's blood on it still”—the superintendent rapped this out like an accusation; I never liked those calculated brutalities of his—“but I daresay it'll give us all we need.” Flurry showing no visible reaction, Concannon added, “Aren't you interested in me finding your wife's murderer?”

“Oh, sure I am.” Flurry stabbed one finger in the direction of Concannon's chest. “But let me tell you, boyo—you'll be wasting a man's time leaving him by the Lissawn till your diver comes.”

The superintendent was disconcerted. “What are you talking about?”

“You know,” growled Flurry. “That pool's eight foot deep now, and the water still rising. I'm no bloody swimmer. If you expect me to plunge in to-night and retrieve the knife and hide it somewhere else, you're an eejut.”

Concannon gave a grim smile. “I'll be leaving a man here for all that. I wouldn't like you to drown.”

The two men had become antagonists—worthy of each other too—I imagined an invisible salute passing between them. Concannon, I thought, is the sagacious hound, weaving and feinting round the bear—Flurry's small eyes had a wary glint in them, his huge paw-like hands hung down relaxed. I felt suddenly suffocated by the knowledge that in this duel it was Concannon who would surely win.

“If you think Flurry could have killed Harriet, you'll be making the most unforgiveable mistake in your life.”

“Thanks for the unsolicited tribute, me boy.”

“It's very touching,” said Concannon. “And Flurry will say just the same for you, no doubt.”

“I will. And let me tell you this, Concannon. If ever I swing for anyone, it'll not be Harriet. Will you take a bet on it?”

The Superintendent shook his head, with an appraising look at Flurry. They seemed to be trying to outstare each other, like children. Then Concannon said a brusque farewell.

Flurry watched him through the window as he went to the car. “Look there, Dominic. Just as I thought. He has a fella with him; and the poor sod'll have to stay up all night watching for me to plunge into the Lissawn. It's a great shame. We'd best bring out a bed for him.”

I was in no condition to enter into Flurry's high spirits.

“C'mon. Drink up. That's better. I hope you don't walk in your sleep.”

“Why—?”

“You're a great swimmer, aren't you? Don't go taking a fancy to walking in your sleep and diving into the river. It'd look bad.”

For a long time that night I could not get to sleep. It was still only the fifth night since Harriet's death, but that seemed to have taken place in another life of mine, ages back. Murders are seldom solved in a week, I imagine; yet I felt an unaccountable impatience with Concannon. I wanted to be put out of my misery and uncertainty. I could understand the murderer's state of mind, which leads him consciously or unconsciously to break the log-jam in it by giving himself up, or giving himself away.

Once again I was possessed by the terror lest I had killed Harriet myself in some paranoiac frenzy. I was the highest up on my own short list of suspects: perhaps Concannon, a patient man, was waiting for me to betray myself. Kevin was now struck off the list. There only remained Flurry, Maire, me, and a shadowy X—the wandering man Maire had seen as she bicycled home, who then appeared to have vanished off the face of the earth.

I was living now in a total unreality, as if in a vacuum, which made the happy times with Harriet equally unreal. It seemed incredible that I should have treated Flurry all those weeks in so despicable a way: it was not in my character, surely; but it had happened—a game I had played, as I felt now, with dream figures—with Harriet, who had turned me into a dream figure. Father Bresnihan had woken me out of the dream. Or was that a pretentious interpretation? Was it not simply that I had grown tired of Harriet?

But the dream-feeling obsessed me, as Harriet had done. If now our whole life together had this quality of dream, it seemed more than likely that I had put an end to hers in some sleep of consciousness.

That dark figure which, Maire said, had blotted out Harriet's white body—was it X or Flurry, or me; or Maire herself? I fought against the idea that it was any of the last three. Perhaps least of all did I want it to be Flurry, for I had him so desperately on my conscience. Yet it was he, I judged, whom Concannon now had his mind set on.

It occurred to me at this moment that I had never tried to put myself in Harriet's place. She is lying on the grass by the river, naked and rather tipsy. I have just left her, having said we must never again be lovers—having refused to make love with her a last time. She is angry, defeated, weeping. Would she not have soon put on her night-dress and hurried back to the house?

I myself had returned to the cottage and not gone to sleep immediately. Even if my mind had split, and I'd returned to kill her, she would surely not have been there still when I returned.

Oh yes, she might have gone to sleep, worn out with emotional stress.

But, if Maire's story was true, Harriet had been sufficiently awake to put her arms round the dark figure. If this figure was a strange man, our X, she would not do so: she would yell out and try to run away. If it was Maire herself, armed with a knife, Harriet would not have gone on lying there, like a lamb for the slaughter.

Flurry then? She opens her eyes and sees her husband standing before her. She would not inevitably cry out or run away. “What are you doing here?” he asks. “I was so hot. I wandered out, and went to sleep.” “Well, get up. You'll catch your death of cold out here.” “Come, Flurry —” she raises her arms to pull him down or for him to pull her up: she could always twist him round her finger, she thinks.

But there, my fantasy fell to pieces. Why should Flurry pull out a knife? Why, if he did, hadn't Maire heard her
screaming? Harriet would not have been an easy victim: she was certainly no death-wish girl. If Maire had waited a minute longer, she would have seen the struggle and its end.

But was there a struggle, apart from the usual sex-gymnastics? … The child she was carrying. Suppose that Flurry rejected her advances or was incapable of responding to them. I could just (but only just) imagine Harriet, in a fury of frustration, taunting him with this child—saying, or hinting, that it was not his. Flurry himself had told me what store he set on having a child by her: he never for a moment seemed to have doubted it was his. The shock of learning it was not would have sent him off his head. Her manner of death—all those little wounds, looked like the work of a madman, of someone striking out blindly again and again in a frenzy, as if the body lying there had become an object of extreme repulsion, a false and loathsome succubus.

The next morning would show how close I had come to the truth—and how remote from it I had been too.

Because I had slept so little that night, only dropping off at dawn, I did not awake till half nine. There were faint voices from below, and presently I heard the front door opened and footsteps receding through the garden.

When I got downstairs, I found Concannon's man chatting with Seamus over breakfast.

“Hallo,” I said to him. “I thought you were supposed to see none of us jumped in the river.”

He grinned sheepishly. “Ah, Mr. Flurry'll be safe enough with the Father.”

“Father Bresnihan's after arriving,” Seamus explained. “Flurry took him out fishing. He looks as if he'd seen a ghost. Maybe the fresh air will recover him.”

I ate the boiled egg Seamus had waiting for me in a cosy, and some soda bread.

“When will you be relieved?” I asked the young Garda.

“At midday, please God. Have you any more eggs, Seamus? There's a powerful hunger on me still.”

“What's Father Bresnihan want so early?”

“I didn't hear,” said Seamus indifferently. “I was too busy cooking for this fella. Why the hell don't you go and guard something, Rory?”

“And I destroyed with midges and the want of sleep? Have you no mercy at all?”

“Want of sleep, is it? Sure, I wager you'd not an eye open all night.”

“I did so,” exclaimed the Garda indignantly.