Malarkey

by Sheila Simonson

"You can join your husband now in the ward. He's been sedated, but he's asking for you."

  I gulped, sure I was going to cry, and followed her down a squeaky clean corridor, into a lift, and up to the second floor. They had put Jay in a two-bed ward, but the other bed was empty and a privacy curtain had been drawn. A uniformed Garda withdrew discreetly as I entered the room.

  I poked my head around the edge of the curtain and startled a grizzled man in tweeds who was checking the dressing on Jay's head.

  He turned. "Ah, you're the missus. I'm Seamus Hanlon. They called me in because of the head injury. He's doing very well now we've warmed him up."

  "Lark..."

  I was at Jay's side in an instant, holding his free hand. The other was taped to an IV needle.

  "Mmm," he said sleepily. "Year."

  That's what it sounded like. I kissed his cheek. "Yes, I'm here."

  "George?"

  "Dad's okay."

  "I le' tha' sucker whop me on the head." He licked his cut lip. "Howzzat for incompetence?"

  "Outstanding," I said unsteadily. I stayed with him, stroking his hand, until he fell sound asleep.

  To my surprise, Dr. Hanlon was still waiting in the hall when I stuck my head out. He took me to the hospital tea shop over my protests—Jay wouldn't wake for several hours, he assured me—and fed me tea and scones while he gave me a thorough report. Much of what he said passed over my head. I was too dazed and tired to think, but I did gather that Jay was going to be fine. They were keeping him overnight for observation, and I could take him home in the morning. Meanwhile, I was welcome to stay in the room with him. The orderly would bring a cot. I liked that idea.

  Consequently, I was napping and my husband was still sleeping soundly when Maeve and my father, Alex, Barbara, Grace Flynn looking bilious, Artie, a silent Mike Novak, Mrs. O'Brien from Ballymann House, and Inspector Mahon all showed up in the corridor. Most of them seemed to be carrying flowers, and Maeve had brought my purse.

  She handed it to me once I had staggered to my feet to greet them.

  "What price folly?" she crowed.

  We grinned at each other like idiots.

  My father said, "I drove the Toyota."

  "Dad!" I felt obliged to protest, but I was proud of him.

  The Toyota was in the car park, he announced with satisfaction not untinged with guilt. "I followed Maeve." He beamed. "Jay looks splendid, my dear." How he could tell that from one glimpse through a crack in the privacy curtain I didn't know, but I wasn't going to argue. I kissed his cheek.

  "The creature!" Mrs. O'Brien said in tones of utmost admiration. She thrust a magnificent bouquet of daffodils at me. She must have cut them from her own garden. Commercial growers don't stock that many varieties. "I promised me brother I'd see how Mr. Dodge is faring in hospital. Joe sends his respects. He's writing up a monster report this minute, or he'd come in person."

  I thanked her. Strategic withdrawal? Evidently Joe and Maeve were still at odds—or possibly Joe and Chief Inspector Mahon. Mahon stood apart, quiet.

  So did Grace and Artie.

  I went over to Grace and hugged her. I also shook Artie's hand. His palm was damp and his eyes shifted. He gave a little giggle. Of such are heroes made.

  "How did you know, Grace?"

  "Sure, everybody knows there's a cave in the woods. Teresa Tierney called Mother, and mam sent Ellen, that's me sister, to tell me there was a search on."

  "And Artie admitted he knew the way in?"

  She gave Artie a look compounded of contempt and affection. "Didn't Tommy tell me all about them dirty pictures? I know Tommy. He'd have to show off to somebody. So I chased Artie down at work and told him to nip along to the cottage."

  Just like that. I thanked both of them again and so did Dad, and they left looking pleased with themselves. Mrs. O'Brien slipped out during Grace's tale. The crowd was thinning.

  Barbara and Alex thrust hothouse mums into my arms. I juggled the mums and the daffs to a table that looked like a small altar. A not-too-gruesome crucifix hung above it.

  Barbara said they were on their way to Wexford to see Liam, who had been airlifted to the county hospital to undergo emergency surgery. He was bleeding internally.

  "Then he's still alive? I'm so glad." I was glad—and puzzled. "Does anyone know how he came to be shut up in the folly with Jay?"

  "That's the million dollar question." Mike Novak's face was grim.

  Silence. Mahon cleared his throat.

  "Do you know, inspector?"

  "I do not. We're waiting until Hanlon lets us interview your husband."

  That explained the Garda on duty at Jay's bedside. The man was standing out in the corridor as he had been since my arrival, patient and silent. I wondered what he was thinking.

  Barbara said, "We'll have to destroy the folly."

  Maeve gave a muted shriek. "You will not. It's a National Treasure, and I intend to excavate it."

  Alex's mouth curved. "What about the Victorian porn?"

  "Regency porn," Maeve corrected, prim. "When I've done with the dolmen, set up a turnstile and charge admission." Everyone but Mahon laughed.

  I said, "I think I missed something. Did you enter the folly?"

  Maeve looked smug. "Chief Inspector Mahon kindly allowed Professor Dailey and me a glimpse."

  "When the crime scene lot had finished their work," Mahon said with the air of a man confessing mortal sin to a cardinal. I could see he was embarrassed, either by the dirty pictures or by his concession to Maeve's curiosity.

  "That's what took us so long, Lark," my father explained. "We didn't hurry. We knew you'd want time alone with Jay. The megalith is perfectly splendid!"

  If I looked at Maeve I'd fall into uncontrollable giggles. "Never mind the dolmen. What about the pictures?"

  Maeve gave an impatient shrug. "The usual. Gentlemen in starched cravats and naked women. I daresay the artwork is well enough in its way. The stone at the entrance reminds me of the architectural oddments in those huge display rooms at the Victoria and Albert."

  I ransacked my memory. "The rooms they set up for art students?"

  "Precisely. The Victorians were clever at reproduction. When I was an undergraduate I could never tell the real stuff from the plaster casts without reading the labels. Not that our door is plaster. Some native craftsman shaped a real stone and mounted it on bearings. I fancy my colleagues in industrial archaeology will find the workmanship interesting."

  "Clever," Mahon muttered. He was still embarrassed.

  "This is all very well," Mike Novak grated, "but Liam's in post op by now. We'd better head for Wexford."

  The Steins took a subdued leave of us and went off with Mike in the lead.

  While Dad and I said goodbye to Alex and Barbara in the corridor, Maeve had taken a long look at Jay. "He'll be out for hours yet," she observed when I joined her at the sickbed.

  I touched Jay's hand. He frowned a little and made a vague noise, then settled into his form like a hare. His breathing came slow and easy. The frown smoothed.

  "Come with us," Dad urged. "We're meeting Maeve's students for pizza. You need sustenance."

  I explained about the scones. "I want to be here when Jay wakes up." Mahon looked disappointed.

  Dad and Maeve left, promising to return for me, and Mahon and I settled in to wait each other out. I had no intention of permitting the police to interrogate Jay unless I was there to run interference. He'd undergone a horrifying ordeal. I would have trusted Joe Kennedy to question him, but not Mahon. I didn't know Mahon well enough.

  I sat on the cot and the chief inspector sat on a visitor's chair by the impromptu flower stand. He said polite things about Jay, and I said polite things about Garda responsiveness. Finally he gave me a small, wry smile and stood up. "I'll return in an hour or so, Mrs. Dodge. We do need answers, you know."

  I rose, too, and said I understood. God knows I had a few questions myself. As I drowsed on the cot the questions chased each other
through my mind. If Liam hadn't abducted Jay, had Tommy? Why? How had Liam come to be in the folly? Had Tommy knifed him? Who killed Slade Wheeler? And so on.

  Since I didn't have any answers I let my thoughts drift. An astonishing afternoon. I would have to call Mother and the Dean. I'd forgotten the Dean. I hoped he hadn't watched the eleven o'clock news. I wondered what Ma would think of Grace Flynn.

  Grace and Artie. I thought about Artie, whom nobody except his mother and my father would ever call Arthur. Artie was a born henchman. He had been Tommy Tierney's henchman. Now he was Grace's, a step in the right direction. As for Grace, she might not be the Grainne of Maeve's legend, but she was a personality to be reckoned with.

  Grace was the kind of woman men burn cities for. I thought of lines Yeats wrote about his own peculiar Grainne.

  She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,

  That nobody looks; her feet

  Practice a tinker shuffle

  Picked up on a street.

  Like a long-legged fly upon the stream,

  Her mind moves upon silence.

  Grace didn't yet know her full power. I wondered what would happen when she found it out. The old stories about the Grainnes and the Helens are always told from the male viewpoint, but Grace was not going to adopt anyone's purposes but her own. I had never had her kind of power and never would, but I respected it.

  Chapter 19

  Even the wisest man grows tense

  with some sort of violence...

  Yeats, "Under Ben Bulben"

  Jay woke with something like a yell. I jumped from the cot and ran to his side, tangling myself in the curtain on the way. It was a good thing they'd removed the IV. I would have knocked the pole over.

  "It's all right, Jay. You're going to be all right." I started the mantra and held his hand—or he held mine. His grip hurt.

  After a while he opened his eyes. "That was a winner. How long have I been here?"

  I checked my watch. It was, unbelievably, only half past eight. "About five hours. Listen, Chief Inspector Mahon is coming back soon, and he's going to want to interrogate you. Are you ready for questions?"

  He licked his lips. "Jesus, I suppose so. Is Liam...?" His eyes squinched shut.

  "Liam is in Wexford, in the county hospital."

  "Ah, he's alive." He lay very still, eyes closed. "He kept talking. I couldn't say anything, nothing at all."

  "Joe said your mouth was taped shut."

  He shuddered and opened his eyes. "I don't know why that was so awful. It was dark and cold. I didn't like that." His voice thickened. "I wanted water. My wrists and my head hurt, and I was afraid it would take you a long time to find us. But the worst part was not being able to answer Liam. He thought he was dying."

  I sorted through the dozens of questions that sprang to mind, but before I could ask any of them Mahon pulled the curtain aside.

  He didn't yank it open. He was tentative, polite. "Sorry to intrude. Ah, Dodge, I see you're awake."

  Jay nodded, frowning. His grip on my hand had eased. Now it tightened again.

  "As you may imagine, I have questions for you. Are you up to answering them? I spoke with your physician."

  "It's okay."

  Mahon cleared his throat. "Mrs. Dodge—"

  "Lark stays."

  "Hmm." His face flushed, and he looked at the floor. "Well, then, before we begin, I owe you an apology, Dodge. Sergeant Kennedy relayed your feelings about the press release. By and large, you know, we let the public relations types handle the media. There were questions in the Dail over my conduct of the case, though, and your foreign service people were asking questions, too, because the Wheelers were U.S. citizens. The chief superintendent suggested I give the reporters your name as a consulting expert. 'Twas stretching a point, and I'd reservations of my own, but it flat out didn't occur to me that I might put you in jeopardy, lad. I hope you believe that."

  Jay sighed. "You exposed my wife and my father-in-law to harassment by the press. That was my main objection, though the fact that the cottage is isolated worried me, too. After the break- in..."

  Mahon said heavily, "What's done is done. I don't mind admitting I've had a very bad twenty-four hours."

  Jay's mouth twitched. "Not half as bad as mine, friend."

  "True, but your conscience is clear." Mahon gave a short laugh. "Shall I call in my man? I want a record of what you say." Mahon went out for his constable, and I brought a chair for myself.

  The Gardai seemed to think that was a good idea. There were other chairs in the room, and the three of us were soon seated around Jay's sickbed, they on one side and I on the other, like opposing diplomats at a bumpy truce table. Jay decided he wanted water, and we waited while the nurse fetched a covered Thermos carafe with a bent straw. Finally, the constable put a fresh cassette in his machine and pressed the record button.

  Mahon identified himself and got Jay's statistics into the record. "Now, then, sir, can you tell us the name of your abductor?"

  "Tommy Tierney," Jay said without hesitation. "He hit me over the head while I was walking down to Stanyon. He was waiting just beyond the rhododendrons that mark a split in the graveled drive leading to Stanyon Hall."

  "Did you see him as he attacked you?"

  "No, but I regained consciousness while he was dragging me over a stile into Stanyon Woods. I struggled with him, kicked him, but my hands were bound. He hit me again with a sap. I saw it coming. The next thing I knew I was in the...that tomb."

  "The Stanyon folly?"

  "Is that what they call it? It was cold as a tomb." Jay's grip tightened on my hand. "I thought it had to be somewhere in the woods, but I wasn't sure."

  "You were found in the Stanyon folly. Were you alone when you regained consciousness?"

  "No, sir. Tierney had propped me in a chair and was tying my feet. I kicked and yelled at him. He bound me then he whipped out the adhesive tape."

  "And you saw him clearly?"

  "Yes. He had one of those big electric flashlights. I think it was already in the chamber. He couldn't have carried it and me, not very far."

  "A torch," I supplied when Mahon looked blank.

  "Ah, I see. Go on."

  Jay rubbed his forehead. "He set the light down so it shone on me. The battery was starting to fade. Still, I saw him face to face, and I'll be happy to identify him when you take him."

  "He's in custody, charged with the break-in at the cottage."

  Jay expelled a breath. "Quick work."

  Mahon gave a gracious nod. "Go on."

  "Tommy told me his name after he'd gagged me. He slapped me around, taunted me. Then he went off and took the flashlight with him." Jay fell silent. I handed him the jug, and he sipped from it. His hand shook.

  When he set the water down, Mahon said, "How did McDiarmuid come to be in the folly with you?"

  Jay took my hand. "I can tell you what he explained to me, but you ought to ask him. All I saw—and this was some time later, maybe an hour later—was that Tierney had brought in another victim. The light hurt my eyes at first, but when they adjusted I could see it was Liam McDiarmuid and that he was bleeding."

  "You know McDiarmuid," Mahon interrupted—for the record.

  "Yes. I met him at Stanyon Hall."

  The constable jotted something in a notebook.

  "So young Tierney brought him into the folly."

  Jay nodded. "He tied Liam to the other chair. There were these two chairs like short-legged thrones, with arm rests and moth- eaten cloth back-rests and cushions. They smelled moldy."

  If they were nearly two hundred years old they were entitled to smell moldy, I reflected, but the smell must have added to the horror.

  Jay was saying, "He'd tied me to one chair, and he tied Liam to the other."

  "That's clear. Go on."

  Jay swallowed more water. His voice sounded rough, as if he had a cold coming on. "Liam had fainted. Tierney was ranting, laughing. I couldn't make much sense of wha
t he said, but I gathered he'd fought with Liam. My head ached. Maybe I passed out, too. I was fading in and out. When I regained consciousness, Tierney had gone and taken the light with him. I could hear Liam breathing."

  Mahon opened his mouth to ask the next question, but Jay said, in a less certain voice, "You're sure Liam's alive?"

  "Yes." Mahon had had plenty of time to call the Wexford hospital.

  Jay closed his eyes. "Okay. As I said, you should ask Liam what happened. He was out for quite a while. When he came to, he sounded weak. He wanted to know if I was all right, and I said mmhmm. Then he apologized."

  "Apologized!"

  "He said he'd tried to rescue me and failed."

  Mahon made a skeptical noise.

  Jay went on, dogged, "When he heard I'd disappeared, he was afraid Tommy had abducted me."

  "Wasn't that a leap of logic?"

  "Tommy'd seen the news stories."

  "And they put the wind up him? I see." Mahon sounded depressed.

  "Tommy called Liam at Stanyon and said he needed a getaway car. Liam agreed to help him escape to Shannon Airport and arranged to meet him in the lane west of the woods. Liam took a knife, drove there, and waited. He intended to force Tommy to take him to me. They fought and Tommy won." Jay's voice kept fading like a bad audio. "Tommy took Liam's cash and car keys and brought Liam into the tomb."

  "The folly," Mahon corrected, absent. "That had to be before we got the telephone message saying you were being held hostage."

  "There was a ransom demand?"

  "We have it on tape. The laboratory types think the voice was Tommy's." Mahon explained the phony political message, then burst out, "In God's name, why? Why would a respectable man like McDiarmuid agree to such a thing?"

  A considerable silence ensued. "Because Liam killed Slade Wheeler on Easter Sunday, and Tommy witnessed the killing." Jay drew a ragged breath. "And I wouldn't be telling you that if Liam hadn't also admitted he killed Wheeler's sister. I don't think the first death was murder. The second was."

  Mahon raised a heavy hand and the constable shut off the recorder. "You're saying Liam McDiarmuid admitted he was responsible for both deaths?"

  Jay nodded. He was tiring rapidly, and I didn't like his color. "Liam thought he was dying. He wanted me to know what had happened, because he believed I was going to die, too. Tommy meant to leave the country."