The Nightingale Sings

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘Who you I’ll bet still say was murdered and who I still say committee suicide,’ Cassie interrupted. ‘I just don’t see them killing the guy – it simply wouldn’t have been necessary.’

  ‘He might have been asking for some more dosh,’ Joel suggested.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Cassie insisted. ‘I think he simply had an attack of the guilties when he saw how far in he was, and so he killed himself.’

  ‘It’s not what the evidence indicates.’

  ‘It’s not what your version of the evidence indicates, Joel. The official verdict was death by misadventure and I think we should go along with that. I really don’t see murder as part of the overall plan.’

  ‘Maybe because you don’t want to. Come on, Cassie, look what they did to your horse.’

  ‘People like that see horses differently,’ Cassie said stubbornly. ‘They see them as a means to an end. A murder like that – if it was murder, which I don’t think it was – would be pursued far harder than the highjacking of some apparently well-insured racehorse. It’s a different sort of ball game, murder, and even if the gate man had been asking for more money, I’d say in this instance where money seems to have been no object they’d have paid up.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ Joel said reluctantly. ‘I’ll give you that point, but only because I don’t want us to get hung up on it. I suppose I’m hanging on to my theory because what happened to Mr Waldron deceased was the event that first really got me on to the case, so OK, we’ll let that one go and pick up the story at the racetrack. Like I said, everything went according to plan, they got the horse away from the course and into a safe house somewhere where after lying low for a while the animal was taken back to Ireland amongst a whole contingent of horses. We don’t know the hows of this particular bit, but this we do know – the horse was not taken abroad. He was taken back to Ireland and returned unceremoniously to you without his vital equipment. As far as they went, that should have been that, particularly when the horse nearly died from a twisted gut. No-one could have foreseen him coming back, and if they did, it certainly wouldn’t have been over the jumps. As far as those who hate you were concerned, Mrs Rosse, to all intents and purposes it was a knockout blow.’

  Cassie nodded thoughtfully. ‘I’ll buy that,’ she said. ‘The way you put it, it’s what’s known as a slam dunk.’

  ‘It would be, Mrs Rosse,’ Joel agreed, ‘if we had some hard evidence. All this is purely hypothetical, as you know. It’s all one hundred per cent conjecture.’

  ‘To hell,’ Cassie said through half-gritted teeth. ‘We must be able to come up with something solid.’

  ‘Only if some little birdie sings,’ Joel replied. ‘And I can’t see any of this lot singing. This lot are more like vultures than little birdies.’

  For the next half an hour they both examined every possible avenue there was to examine, yet neither of them could come up with anything approaching a feasible suggestion for obtaining the proof they so badly needed.

  ‘Don’t despair,’ Joel said when they’d finally ground to a full stop. ‘Having come this far we’re not going to concede now.’

  ‘You said it,’ Cassie agreed.

  ‘Something will come up, Mrs Rosse. Now don’t think me rude, because if I had my way you could stay here all day, but I have to give a class in about two minutes.’

  ‘And I have a plane to catch,’ Cassie said, checking her watch and realizing how the time had flown. ‘Look, I’m sorry for spending the whole time discussing the kidnap business, because there were all sorts of other things I really wanted to talk about.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Joel agreed. ‘But I’m out of here next month.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Cassie said. ‘Maybe everything can wait till then.’

  ‘Thanks for coming. It’s been good to see you.’ Joel got up and then leaned across the table to kiss her on the cheek. ‘I’ll let you know what my plans are as soon as I know them.’

  ‘OK.’ Cassie smiled back at him. ‘Make sure you’re out in time for Cheltenham.’

  ‘Even if I have to tunnel out,’ Joel said. He smiled once more, then, seeing his students lining up outside the door, he turned back to prepare for his class. Cassie picked her bag up from the table and hurried out as Joel’s class began to file slowly in past her. As she walked away down the corridor she realized she had left the photographs of Padraig on the table and hurried back to get them before Joel got too far into his class. She was just about to knock on the glass panelled door when she saw Joel with his back to her unveiling the bust from under the cloth he had thrown over it on Cassie’s arrival. When she saw the head Cassie took a step back into the shadows behind her because even roughed out in clay, the woman’s likeness was unmistakeable.

  * * *

  Among the correspondence awaiting Cassie’s attention when she returned to Claremore there were two letters which, even though she had been half expecting them, none the less all but removed what little wind was left in her sails.

  One was from Joel, the letter he had told her he had written and which due to her trip to England she had not received when Joel had thought she would receive it. Had she done so, she would have understood not only Joel’s evasiveness and the distance he had put between them but the entire nature of their meeting at Radford.

  The letter read:

  Dear Cassie

  I don’t know exactly when I’m going to see you, hence this letter.

  Obviously this past year has sorted me out. Even in this sort of prison, porridge is porridge and it gives you plenty of time to think.

  OK – now before I write anything more, I want you to know that you’re the greatest person I’ve known, ever, and don’t argue. But. What next? What we both want is different maybe, which is why I reckon we can’t go on, certainly not like this (if you follow).

  What you want is not to marry me. No, it’s true – you don’t. Whereas I would like to marry you but can’t, the main reason being because it isn’t possible, and if I can’t marry you, then what do we do? Drift on till it’s over? I don’t think so.

  If you want to know why you can’t marry me, it is not because I’m always right and you’re never wrong but because you haven’t let go of the past and the reason for that is because you don’t want to.

  Look. If it was me who’d been married to you and I’d lost you the way you lost Tyrone, I wouldn’t ever want to let go either. I certainly wouldn’t want someone gatecrashing my life and telling me I had no business to go on loving someone who was dead just so that they could have the sole copyright. There’s no reason for you to want to get married again. You’ve done marriage. You’ve done it better than anyone could ever hope to do it. If I’d had a love like you had with T the last thing I’d want would be to be married to somebody who’s going to make me try to forget that love ever existed.

  This isn’t a criticism, I’ve loved you all the more because of your honesty and for your undying devotion to T. Trouble is I’m a mite possessive (as you may have noticed?) so I’d want you to myself. I have too inflated an opinion of myself to live in T’s shadow – you know that as well as I do.

  I know you’ve given this a lot of thought as well because I reread your letters to me all the time. And some of the things you haven’t said to me have made it quite clear what’s been going through your beautiful head. It seems what you want is the love of someone who’s perfectly willing to share what’s gone before, and that’s not me, as you’ve found out. Someone maybe who’s also suffered a loss and whose whole thing would be more like a drum in tune with yours. My beat’s maybe a bit too militant – or rather insistent …

  There’s another reason I think we’ve come to a full stop and my suspicion is you know this reason already which is why you wrote and told me about that magical thing down in Dingle. Knowing you I’ll bet you saw long before I did that there was something else I wanted out of life, something which through no fault of your own you can’t give me. Maybe it’s got worse since
losing my own father, but there you are. Now there’s nothing I want more than to have kids of my own.

  I wanted to talk to you about all this when I saw you, but funked it. In case I got it wrong and I hurt you. But then when I saw you, I knew you were feeling differently too. We know each other too well now not to get those sorts of vibes, don’t you think? I feel we’ve settled into a friendship now, a deep one too, a lasting one I hope, I really do. But that something else has gone. The something else, perhaps.

  I’ve also met someone as well – someone who’s been visiting me here. I don’t feel for her – or about her – the way I did about you but then I never will feel that way about anybody. I just feel that because of the sort of person I am and the sort of person she seems to be we might just make it into parenthood. She’s called Polly, by the way, and she’s writing a book on euthanasia, which is why she contacted me in the first place.

  I hope this letter makes some sense. I don’t know where I’m worse at explaining, on paper or in person. But whatever you make of it, Mrs Rosse, I can tell you one thing for sure – I really never have loved anyone the way I loved you and that I never will.

  Joel

  Cassie read the letter twice and when she had finished the second time through there were tears in her eyes, not because it was over but because she suddenly realized how much she had loved Joel. He had given and helped her so much. Until he had come so positively into her life she had been hiding herself away in Tyrone’s mighty shadow. Joel had made her step out of that shadow and his love and determination had given her the confidence to live her life as a woman again, yet she knew just as well as Joel that they could not live the rest of their lives together. Just as she had always thought and just as Joel had himself admitted, he wanted Cassie solely as his own, which by force of circumstance she could never be.

  Just as she could never give him the other thing he wanted from life, fatherhood. She had watched him for so long now, not just with Mattie and occasionally even with Josephine but most particularly with Padraig, and while she knew most men liked to indulge themselves by playing uncle with other people’s children, she had very soon realized this was not the case with Joel. There was a deep longing behind his love for Erin’s tousle-haired little boy. Behind his bluster and mock gruffness, Cassie had watched him melt every time Padraig appeared, watched as he never let slip an opportunity to sit the boy on his knee or carry him round the gardens, or tuck him up in bed and read him a story. It was there plainly in his eyes for any woman to see, most of all any woman who loved him and Cassie had seen it all too clearly. Now that his own father lay dead, what Joel wanted more than anything was a child of his own.

  Doubtless this was why Cassie had felt herself drawn more and more towards Theodore and perhaps for the very reason at which Joel had hinted in his letter, because like her Theodore had lost but not forgotten the great love of his life, his beloved Bree.

  Putting aside Joel’s letter, Cassie turned her attention to the second one, which was short and to the point. It was from the bank, pointing out that it was the opinion of the new manager, Mr Ignatius Pomeroy, who had been appointed the previous week, that in consideration of the situation regarding the insolvency of the insurance company which had held Claremore Racing’s livestock insured and which was in default of a due payment of one million pounds sterling, the loan made by the bank to Claremore Racing must be called in within a notice period of three months from the given date above.

  Cassie was interrogating Erin who was looking, for Erin, just a little embarrassed.

  ‘Now there was never any deception intended in that, I promise you, not at all. Mr Benson was always saying how much he wanted to do young Pad’s head, so here was the ideal opportunity I thought to meself. And since we’d had those lovely new pictures taken, what harm in sending him a few? Sure he adores the boy as if ’twas his own.’

  ‘There’s more to this, though, isn’t there, Erin? I think you forgot to post that letter by mistake on purpose, because you’ve thought all along that Mr Benson and I – that we weren’t right for each other.’

  ‘Now how do yous knows what I’m thinking, Mrs Rosse?’ Erin protested vigorously, sticking her hand deeply in the front pocket of her apron as she stood before the fireplace in Cassie’s study. ‘You couldn’t possibly knows what I’ve been thinking.’

  ‘I can feel what you’re thinking, Erin Muldoon,’ Cassie smiled. ‘I always have done. I can pick up what’s going through that head of yours as if you were a radio transmitter and I was a wireless. It’s nothing to do with approval or disapproval—’

  ‘I should hope not either,’ Erin protested again. ‘That isn’t my proper place, to be approving or disapproving of you.’

  ‘What I meant was I know how much you like Mr Benson, Erin, so that it wasn’t a matter of you thinking that he wasn’t the right sort of man, it was because you didn’t think we were right for each other—’

  ‘Will you listen now?’ Erin sighed, sitting down on the edge of the large wing chair by the fire. ‘There are some things that are easier for others to see rather than the people involved themselves. And while I saw the good Mr Benson was doing you, as well as the good you was doing him, I knew ’twould never be a match. I knew that when I was looking after him when he locked himself away, because of the way he talked and some of the things he said. I never asked him one single question about himself, but the more I listened the more he told me, and I saw that with his father lying dead, God rest his soul indeed, he’d a terrible longing to be a father himself. And it was ’ating at him, I can tell you.’

  ‘What would you have done if I had decided to marry him, Erin?’ Cassie wondered, knowing that if there had ever been any such possibility it was now long past.

  ‘I’d have prayed for you, Mrs Rosse,’ Erin replied gravely. ‘I’d have prayed for you every day of my life. For when there are two people in a boat and they’re both rowing in different directions, sure as I’m sitting here the boat’s certain to end spinning round.’

  Thirty-Four

  With less than a fortnight to go until the big race, Cassie had all but given up any hope of getting a substantial bet on her horse, certainly one anywhere near large enough to collect sufficient for her now vitally pressing needs. The largest single bet she managed to lay herself was ten thousand to win one hundred and eleven, and once the word was out on that single bet the odds were slashed across the board down to 4/1 at best and in most places (and absurdly so according to the racing scribes) threes, the lowest price being 5/2 on Mike Gold’s books. Not that the newspaper experts denied The Nightingale’s ability, far from it. To a man they were sure the great horse still had the potential to win a competitive race, but without a proper and competitive race over hurdles, in spite of all the rumours of sensational racecourse gallops, they all considered odds of less than 10/1 about the horse as daylight robbery for a race as keenly contested as the Champion Hurdle, most particularly this year’s race which was considered to be one of the best for two decades. Even if The Nightingale was still as brilliant as his legion of admirers thought him to be, he was going to have his work cut out to win since the entries were headed by Glockamorra, last year’s easy and fluent winner of hurdling’s Blue Riband, Hello Absailor, the champion of the year before and runner up to Glockamorra twelve months later, Butler’s Perk, winner of last year’s Irish Champion hurdle, and the unbeaten Birdwatcher who had finished his preparations for Cheltenham by breaking the course record at Wincanton when winning the Kingwell Hurdle by a ridiculously easy fifteen lengths.

  All four of these exciting horses had the credentials to be ahead of The Nightingale on the books, yet only Glockamorra shaded him at 2/1, the others being available at up to 10/1 which was the current price of Hello Absailor, despite the fact that The Nightingale had yet to jump a hurdle in public.

  And in spite of the fact he was to be ridden by a woman.

  ‘It’s perfectly ridiculous,’ Cassie fumed one morning afte
r Mattie had given the horse a good piece of work. ‘Twelve to one about the horse would be the theoretically fair odds for him, not joint second favourite at threes and five to two.’

  ‘The bookies aren’t fools, Ma,’ Mattie sighed over his cup of tea. ‘You saw how the horse worked this morning, and so probably did they. If you were a bookmaker and I came back to you saying I’d seen a gallop as good as today’s piece of work, you wouldn’t be as keen as you are to lay the odds now, would you? I certainly wouldn’t. In fact knowing what I do I’d say three to one or even five to two was asking for trouble. If he’d had a race in public he’d be evens now, maybe even a shade of odds on.’

  ‘But he hasn’t, Mattie, and if I was a punter I’d want to know why the cramped odds,’ Cassie replied.

  ‘Oh, come on, Ma!’ Mattie threw his head back as he laughed. ‘It’s the punters’ money that’s bringing him down! I was talking to Con O’Neill in his betting shop only yesterday and he said he was looking to lay the horse off two weeks ago! There’s been a flood of money for him.’

  ‘Hmmmm,’ Cassie said, pouring some more tea. ‘Well, five to two isn’t going to save Claremore, I can tell you. You’d have to lay three and half hundred grand to win what I need and who’s going to take that bet?’

  ‘Not a lot of people, I’ll grant you that,’ Mattie said, putting down his paper. ‘But what do you mean about not going to save Claremore? This isn’t what all this is about, surely? I thought this was about making up the shortfall in the insurance money.’

  ‘Which is the amount of money I need to save Claremore,’ Cassie said succintly. ‘Look, I wasn’t going to tell you, but now there’s no point not, because if we don’t pull this off, that’s it.’ She looked Mattie right in his large grey eyes and shook her head once. ‘The bank has called in their money.’