The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters (59 page)

Ida shouted at the bell-pull, ‘Go away, Mr Policeman!’

‘No, Ida,’ said the Eileen O’Reilly. She looked at me. ‘Don’t be lettin’ the heart fail inside ye, Manticory.’

From the red rims of her eyes I had already deduced that she’d passed the night rehearsing word and gesture. I had heard her voice from Darcy’s room, trying out different levels of emphasis, but I could not make out the phrases.

The doorbell chimed again.

‘Lay him on,’ said the Eileen O’Reilly. ‘I am ready.’

Viaro came puffing up the stairs, his face moist from the heat of the morning. The polite salutations tensely achieved, he opened his notebook, in which he had written a list of questions.

The Eileen O’Reilly stood herself next to him. Boldly, she reached out and closed his notebook.

‘Le Signorine Swiney
,’ she told the policeman, ‘have asked me to speak for them.’

We nodded vigorously. Pertilly clasped her hands together in a thank-you.

‘Ye may be wanting to take a seat for yourself,’ the Eileen O’Reilly told Viaro. ‘This will be some time in the telling.’

I offered him the least lumpen of the armchairs, and he sat upon it delicately.

The Eileen O’Reilly commenced to pace, and to talk. ‘It was only after ye left yesterday, Capitano, that the workings of my mind began to put the pieces together. Ye yourself may have already gathered all the facts – sure ye have – but I may have somethin’ to add. Where to begin, where to begin? The whole story is like a string danglin’ in front of a cat. I am fair exhausted from battin’ it around all night on my sleepless bed.’

She made a vague and helpless gesture with her hand, to indicate the great business of innocent disorganisation in her thoughts.

The more dowdy her presentation, the surer I grew that she had scripted herself perfectly.

It is the Eileen O’Reilly who should have been up on the stage, not myself
, I thought.
All these years, she should have been up there, the Swiniest of us all
.

‘So.’ She stopped still and looked her man in the face. ‘No doubt ye have found out since yesterday, with the great thoroughness in ye, that I am here in Venice on behalf of the alimentation business of my uncle Declan back in Ireland? I expect no less of ye, great man that ye are.’

Viaro shook his head. She feigned surprise. ‘Ah, then, here is the nub of it. My uncle Declan’s a grand importer of your Italian white wine and your stuffed olives and your white anchovies that are a wonder in themselves. So I am here that the wine and olive merchants may meet with me with greatest convenience and for to keep an eye on our Venetian agent and stop him palatherin’ at girls when he should be doing the books.’

With the policeman’s eyes engaged on the expansive gestures of her hands, I was able to make a cutting motion with my hand across my throat without his seeing me.

She nodded. ‘But there’s me discoorsin’ and discoorsin’. The point is that it suited me to be in Venice at this particular moment because I had . . .
business
’ – she seemed to falter – ‘with the newsman St John Millwillis.’

From somewhere, she produced a blush.

‘Mr Millwillis was not a good species of a creature. In fact, I must confess that he was a very sordid thing of a man in my own respect, and abused my own trust in ways that bring shame on our whole family. It’ll look bad on me, I know. But I must confess it, for there’s no denying it.’

She squeezed a tear from her blue eye. The policeman made soothing noises like a pigeon in the back of his throat. ‘Dear
signorina
,’ he said paternally, ‘when one’s blood is young and fierce, these things happen. It need not stain your life for ever.’

‘It is true,’ she sniffed, ‘that I cannot hold hatred against Millwillis any more, for the man died a terrible death.’

‘And you have something to tell me about that, my dear?’

‘Millwillis was wantin’ to be here in Venice on his own account, about the nasty book he was writin’, the one about the Swiney sisters. I was black afraid of the use to which he’d be puttin’ my own nigglety words. I had spoken rashly to him and I was full to the neck of regrets.’

She looked into my face. ‘It is true, full to the neck,’ she said sadly.

She turned back to Viaro. ‘So I . . . travelled with him to Venice. In the train, on the way, he was only too happy to let me read all those pages he had written. He was proud of it, the dirty dog, so he was. Like with the articles, he had twisted my ignorance to suit his purpose, which was to denounce the Swiney girls as a shameless sack of charlathans in themselves. He twisted my memories from old ages ago! Millwillis was a
journalist
. He hated the truth. He lived off manufactured sensation.’

She shook her head sadly. She spoke in quiet tones now, as if in a confessional. ‘For the way I had helped him in that, I am sorry with all the veins of my heart, for they are good creatures, the Swiney sisters, for the most part. And it was only ever Darcy Swiney who deserved my raggin’, with the bitter hand she had and her black tongue, a livin’ terror she—’

‘Perhaps enough about Darcy?’ I suggested quietly. She nodded.

‘Millwillis was like a gravedigger, so he was. He tookt my little words and used them as a spade to dig deeper and to find more darkness. And the more he delved, the more he had changed his mind about the root of the evil in the Swiney Godiva Corporation. Through Mr Millwillis’s investigations, I have discovered that my uncle and I—’

‘Wait! Your uncle is involved with Mr Millwillis?’ Viaro had opened his notebook and was furiously scribbling.

‘No indeed. He’s a decent man himself. But aside from his importin’, my uncle Declan has a business called Growant. For the hair.’

‘You too are in the hair business?’ the policeman said. ‘It is an Irish thing, this great interest in the hair?’

‘It was a dark and revengeful thing, my own interest in the hair,’ admitted the Eileen O’Reilly. ‘Growant was set up to destroy the Swiney Godivas’ business. But that is not material to the case, as I am not, except to tell ye things that matter. And that is . . . that my uncle Declan and I have been very much mistaken in the characters of our two chief investors in the Growant business, the Misters Rainfleury and Stoker.’

‘The same men who are the patrons of the Swiney Godivas?’ Viaro waved his pencil. ‘It seems far from scrupulous that they should invest in a rival?’

‘That is the least of it!’ cried the Eileen O’Reilly. ‘Those two scuts of men have dealt unscroopilessly with the Swiney Godivas, embezzlin’ the profits out of the poor ladies—’

She put her hand on my shoulder and said, ‘And forcing them into unsavoury situations.’

I nodded and she continued. ‘Ye’d not be believin’ how they abused and exploited the trust of those fatherless girls. Gave them neither peace nor ease till they consented to all sorts. Manticory, can ye explain more?’

‘Indeed, sir, it is true. We were tricked, kept in the dark’ – I looked at Oona – ‘seduced’ – I turned to Berenice – ‘betrayed. We were unwittingly forced into the filthy human hair trade. And into quackery. How for
years on end
we Swiney sisters were nothing more than dolls animated by Mr Rainfleury and Tristan Stoker to enact their corrupt commercial desires. They always acted as if we were devoid of souls of our own. And finally, they were the ruin of us.’

‘I am sorry for all that,’ said Viaro gravely. ‘But the death of the newsman remains unexplained. And there is every reason . . .’

‘Now here is the material point at last,’ announced the Eileen O’Reilly. She bestowed on the policeman a gaze as unwavering as a Madonna’s. ‘Before he disappeared, I saw with my own eyes that Millwillis was livin’ in a terrible fear of his life. And the people he feared was not the Swiney girls but the two men, Augustus Rainfleury and Tristan Stoker. For Mr Millwillis was on the point of exposin’ Rainfleury and Stoker and
all their evil doings
. In his book.’

The policeman agreed. ‘It is true that these men’s characters would be ruined by that manuscript, if it were published.’

Eileen commenced once more to roam about the room. Her gestures amplified. Her hands described wider circles. One long lock of hair loosed itself from her chignon and tumbled down her back.

‘Millwillis’s murtherin’ lies on the consciences of Rainfleury and Stoker,’ she said. ‘Think on it.
They was the ones who had every motive in the world
to destroy Millwillis. As for the Swiney girls, well Millwillis was the best thing that ever happened to them, for he was the first person to open their eyes to the ways those scoundrels had abused their innocence.’

‘And yet the Swiney girls are here in Venice where Millwillis died,’ Viaro pointed out. ‘But Rainfleury and Stoker are in Dublin. My colleagues there have ascertained their whereabouts. Securely.’

The Eileen O’Reilly blustered, ‘
Of course
neither of those criminals was here in Venice when it happened. They are too cunnin’ in themselves for that. Mr Millwillis knew this was so. But he was black afraid of a man he thought the minion of Rainfleury and Stoker. He had seen the man outside his house in Dublin many times, he told me. And also near his place of work.’

I mused aloud, ‘Could he have been that same man who had written threats against him in letters to the paper?’

The Eileen O’Reilly looked at me with wide eyes.

Viaro said, ‘Yes, there was a man who signed himself
PS
who promised a beating to Millwillis. Did the journalist say what he looked like?’

‘Indeed. He was a large, hairy man who would terrify a rhinoceros with his sideburns hangin’ halfway down to his knees and the evil expression on him enough to scare a Medusa.’

‘What a horror!’ cried Oona.

I shot the Eileen O’Reilly a warning look. She had gone too far. I wanted to tell her,
You cannot invent such a man. He sounds like a thing from a fairy story. You must make him seem more comfortable, like a common murderer
.

As if she had heard me, the Eileen O’Reilly insisted, ‘No, I
really
saw him, and he really was a monsther of hair. I saw him myself, exactly two days after Millwillis disappeared. I recognised him from Millwillis’s describing straight away. It is only now that all these things are fallin’ into place in the scattered brain on me.

‘On the day of his death, Mr Millwillis received a message from Rainfleury and Stoker. They wanted him to meet with their minion, a man he would recognise, they said, by his extreme hairiness. Millwillis suddenly realised why the hirsute fellow had been a-following him. His love of money were stronger nor his fears and he decided to meet with the hairy minion.’

The Eileen O’Reilly paused, clearly exhausted by her inventions. I admired her wholeheartedly. I’d never had to compose any of my fictions under the view of a policeman.

‘So,’ she continued, ‘that Rainfleury and that Stoker was dangling the prospect of a rich reward, if Millwillis would only leave their two names out of his Swiney Godiva book. That pair of beasts did not mind if the newsman destroyed the Swiney girls at all. The point they made was that Millwillis would still have a sensation on his hands, but he’d earn the double on the quiet. Millwillis went after the bait. And he ended up dead at the bottom of a laundry boat. And I’d be guessin’ that the hairy monster of a minion is at the bottom of that black deed.’

‘It is true,’ said Viaro, ‘that at the end of his book Millwillis was speculating that this man
PS
was a danger, and that he was employed by Rainfleury and Stoker.’

‘The manuscript is your evidence. From the victim himself. Ye have seen that Millwillis had not yet had time to erase their two names when he went to get his reward – he wanted his money first.’

The doorbell chimed again.

‘It’s Signor Bon,’ Pertilly reported.

An unaccountable smile stretched across my mouth, and it did not escape the Eileen O’Reilly.

‘From all I’ve heared told of that Bon since I’ve been among ye,’ she said, ‘he sounds any amount of a quality gentleman and can only do us good.’

I smiled at her ‘us’ and then my skin warmed with relief at the sight of Saverio’s sweet face.

‘Dear ladies,’ said Saverio quickly, ‘I was so worried when you did not come to my studio for the photograph that your
friend and saviour
Mr Millwillis had commissioned of you specially for his book—’

Dear Saverio
, I thought,
you have already contrived the same story as our own. Only you could do that; only you would offer yourself as our accomplice now. Only you and the Eileen O’Reilly
.

He stopped, noticing the Eileen O’Reilly. I saw him take in the absence of Darcy. His eyes met mine. I shook my head slightly.

Introductions made, he continued, ‘Then I saw in the
Gazzetta
this morning the reason for your absence: that the
Capitano
has somehow got to thinking of you ladies as persons of interest in the death of the foreign newsman. And so I made my way to the Questura to make certain facts available to him about your patrons Rainfleury and Stoker, who are the only ones who would really have a motive to silence that poor gentleman who was about to reveal
their
evil ways to the world.’