Pegeen dropped on to her knees, closed her eyes and began to move her lips silently. Timsy bit his lip and looked at Finn for guidance. Finn remained calm, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms but saying nothing.
‘Talking of monkeys,’ said Katty bravely, if unwisely, ‘you make a fine one yerself.’
‘Is that so?’ The face beneath the stocking mask underwent some sort of upheaval – I guessed a lowering of brows and a thrusting out of the lower jaw. There was a click as he cocked the trigger. ‘I’m not sure you haven’t just bought yerself a one-way ticket to purgatory with your big ugly mouth.’
A collective intake of breath could be heard from those sitting at the table.
‘Think what you’re doing, man!’ urged Father Deglan. ‘’Tis your soul will go straight to hell for eternity if you kill a helpless woman.’
‘Ha! Ha!’ jeered Terry. ‘You can’t frighten me with your bugaboos of hell-fire and imps of darkness. All that’s crap to keep the people under your great greasy thumb.’ He took a step nearer Katty, who lost some of her defiance.
‘You’ll not shoot a priest, I’m thinking.’ Father Deglan got up from his chair. Terry jerked the gun in his direction but Father Deglan continued to walk towards him until he stood in front of Katty. The gun was no more than two feet from his chest. ‘And if you’re so far cast out from the love of God as to commit such a sin, I took Communion this morning and I’m ready to meet my maker.’
He began to count the beads of his rosary and to pray aloud with his good eye turned up to heaven and his sad pearly eye looking at his persecutor.
‘Well done, old chap!’ called Basil. ‘A gallant action if ever I saw one.’
‘Shut it, you stupid old fool!’ snarled Terry, looking at Basil. ‘And you can shut it, too!’ he addressed Father Deglan. ‘I can’t abide your whining to heaven. I had enough of it as a kid. It makes me sick to my stomach to hear you with your beggings and bargainings. Shut it, I say!’
Father Deglan did shut it. He stood with his flushed, shining face perfectly tranquil but continued to turn the beads between his fingers.
‘All right, you two.’ Terry turned back to his helpers. ‘What are you waiting for? Go and find Quill.’
‘You heard the senator,’ grumbled the other man, who wore a black knitted ski hat pulled down to his eyebrows. ‘He ent here. T’is is a fecking castle. However should we search it?’
‘For crying out bloody loud!’ yelled Terry. ‘One of you start at the top and work down, and the other start at the bottom and work up, you useless cods. Christ! That I was given you two eejits to be working with!’
His henchmen departed, their hobnailed boots clattering on the oak boards. I hoped Danny would hear them coming in time to take evasive action.
‘You three’ – Terry waved the gun at Timsy and the girls – ‘can go and sit over there and we’ll wait and see what little fox my lads’ll flush out.’
‘I pity your poor mother, that’s all,’ said Katty and so far forgot herself as to spit on the dining-room floor. But to my relief she did as she was told. The three of them sat in a row on the window seat.
‘Sit down, Father, will you?’ Terry sounded frustrated. ‘And don’t give me any more trouble or begob it’ll be a pleasure to blast you to kingdom come.’
Father Deglan returned to his place and for several minutes we were all silent. Glancing at Liddy’s face I saw she was close to tears. It was a terrible strain, thinking of Danny, praying he would not be found.
‘I’ve had enough of this.’ Maud groped for her sticks and stood up.
‘Sit down, old woman,’ threatened Terry.
‘It’s obvious you were brought up in some bogside hovel or you’d have learned how to address your superiors.’ Maud shuffled round the table and approached Terry without the smallest sign of fear.
‘Get back, I tell you!’ Terry cocked the gun again. ‘Don’t think your age’ll save you.’
‘I shan’t trouble myself to think anything about it.’ Maud moved slowly on her sticks towards the door.
‘I’m warning you!’ Terry growled. ‘One step more and I’ll fire!’
‘Maud!’ said Finn. ‘Be careful!’
‘Listen to me, you ignorant peasant!’ Maud turned her head with difficulty to look at Terry. ‘I’ve arthritis in my spine, my neck and my knees. It’s coming into my wrists now and soon it’ll be in my fingers. I shan’t be able to hold a glass or a cigarette to my lips. I’ll be a helpless cripple, dependent on the do-goodery of those with queasy consciences. I’d rather be dead. If you want to, shoot me. Otherwise I’m going to my room.’
She continued to the door. I admired her enormously at that moment.
‘Splendid woman!’ cried Basil. ‘I take my hat off to you, Maud. You’re a champion!’
‘Damn you to hell!’ Terry raged. ‘All right, go on then, you old streel. But don’t think you’ll call the Garda,’ he shouted after her. ‘We’ve cut the bleeding wires!’
Maud’s departure seemed to inflame Terry’s temper fearfully. He muttered and cursed, taking aim at each of us in turn and making exaggerated movements of his trigger-finger to frighten us. In my case he was extremely effective. I was terrified. ‘Stupid old bitch,’ he groaned. ‘Cripple! Huh! There’s little enough she can do. It’d take her a year to hobble to Kilmuree! Let her stew! The old bitch!’
After five minutes of this our nerves were pretty much at snapping point.
‘Excuse me.’ Constance raised her hand politely as though about to ask a question of a visiting lecturer. ‘I’m afraid I need to … answer the call of nature.’
‘Sit down!’ Terry bellowed.
‘Please! I really must!’ She pushed back her chair and took a step away from the table. As she had been sitting on the side nearest the door, the step brought her very close to Terry.
‘Move and you’re dead!’ Terry aimed the muzzle at Constance’s heart.
What happened next seemed to take place in slow motion. Constance crossed her legs and made an awkward wriggling movement.
Terry must have thought she was preparing to spring at him. ‘You’ve asked for it, bitch!’
Finn jumped up and shouted, ‘Con!’
Eugene launched himself in front of Constance half a second before Terry squeezed the trigger. A brief flash was followed by a crack louder than any sound I’ve ever heard, which brought down a section of plaster from the ceiling smack into the middle of the dining table. Eugene dropped like a stone.
‘Eugene!’ Constance threw herself on to her knees beside him. She pushed his hair from his forehead and stared at his white, still face. ‘Oh, my darling! No! No!’ She fell forward on to his chest and broke into a paroxysm of weeping.
Terry hesitated and I saw that the hand which held the gun was shaking. I wondered if in fact this was the first time he had fired to kill.
‘Shut that row, for God’s sake,’ he yelled at Jasmine who was wailing like a factory siren.
Kit put his arms round Jazz and murmured words of comfort but she was hysterical. I did not blame her. I felt on the verge of hysteria myself. Violet and Flavia were crying only a little less noisily while the rest of us were voiceless and ghastly with shock. Flurry was sitting with his face screwed up, his eyes closed and his fingers in his ears.
While we remained more or less unmoving, horror having suspended our capacity for reason or action, a clatter of hobnailed boots could be heard in the hall. Liddy put her hands over her mouth and her eyes became enormous. I knew she was dreading seeing Danny between them.
Sean and his companion came in alone. ‘Boss, we been up and down and in and out and we ent found—’ They caught sight of Constance weeping over Eugene’s lifeless body. ‘Bloody hell!’ The black-hatted one had to shout because of the din Jasmine was making. ‘Boss, is it kilt he is?’
‘I didn’t mean—The gun fired wide! I was only going to frighten her! What’s that, in the name of blazes?’
We
listened in amazement to a sound that, though some way above us, split the sky with reverberating strokes.
‘What the hell is it?’ moaned Sean. He gripped Black Hat’s arm. ‘Lord, have mercy! ’Tis the Day of Judgement!’
Finn smiled suddenly, an electrifying sight in the context of our panic-stricken petrifaction. ‘It’s Scornach Mór, the alarm bell. Who’d have thought Maud would have had the strength to pull the rope? She’s a wonderful woman, my mother-in-law.’
‘Big Throat’ smote the air with increasing volume as if in confirmation of this rare encomium.
‘Well, boys,’ said Finn. He continued to look amused, which seemed a little heartless, considering that Eugene had just been murdered. ‘You’re in a spot now. In ten minutes not only the Garda but the Fire Service and the Ambulance – and everyone else who decides to come along for the ride – will be here. And they’re going to find you with a corpse on your hands and more than a dozen witnesses who saw you kill him. It’ll be twenty-five years, at least. And you two’ – he smiled pleasantly at Sean and the man in the black hat – ‘are accessories.’
‘Oh, feck! Boss, I’m going!’
Sean suited his behaviour to his words and was swiftly followed by his companion.
Terry hesitated for no more than a few seconds while Scornach Mór shook the heavens. ‘May you rot in hell, every one of you!’ he hurled at us as he ran from the room.
‘Every man, be he ever so bad, thinks of salvation in a crisis,’ said Father Deglan in a voice that trembled as he made the sign of the cross over Eugene’s head. ‘Ah, my son, my poor brave boy! Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine—’
‘Quiet, everyone!’ shouted Finn. ‘Will you women stop crying this instant! That includes you, Con. Father, your offices are premature. I doubt if it’s possible for a bullet to pass through a body and be deflected upwards with sufficient force to dislodge a lump of plaster twenty feet above. Eugene’s fainted, that’s all.’
Seizing a glass of water from the table Finn threw it over Eugene’s face. We all stopped screaming, crying, moaning or whatever means we had found to express our acute terror and gathered round the body. Almost immediately our self-restraint was rewarded as Eugene fluttered his eyelashes and groaned.
‘Eugene!’ Constance lifted his hand and cradled it against her cheek. ‘Speak to me!’
‘Ohhh … Ahhh … Who … What …?’ He gazed in an unfocused way at the circle of faces above him. ‘What’s that noise? Constance … My dear, you’re crying!’
‘I thought you were dead! You did it to save me … It was the bravest thing I’ve ever, ever…’ A sob rendered her momentarily inarticulate. ‘You sacrificed your own life for me …’
‘I did?’ A gentle smile played over Eugene’s plump lips. ‘Really?’
‘You threw yourself in front of me and took the bullet!’ Constance kissed his hand. ‘My … hero!’
A look of concern clouded his gibbous eyes. ‘Am I very badly hurt?’
Constance opened his jacket to expose a shirt front unblemished but for a few spots of egg. ‘I don’t think so. Do you feel pain anywhere?’
Eugene sat up and felt himself carefully. ‘I seem to be all right. Except’ – he touched his collar – ‘I’m soaking wet. Has it been raining? I must dry my jacket at once in case it shrinks.’
‘Never mind, darling.’ Constance beamed at him. ‘If it does we’ll get you another one from the poteen fund. You’ve earned it.’
‘Did you just call me … darling?’
Constance nodded, her cheeks suffused with emotion.
‘Well, that’s very agreeable. Do you think you could … say it again?’
Constance leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. ‘Darling!’
‘Darling,’ he reiterated, rolling the word round on his tongue as though savouring a new taste. ‘Constance … darling.’
‘Yes, dearest Eugene?’
‘Would someone help me up? My legs have gone to jelly.’
Kit pulled Eugene up by his armpits as Scornach Mór fell silent. My ears throbbed in the absence of noise. After Eugene had flexed his limbs and smoothed down his hair, he became aware that we were staring at him, as enthralled as a circus audience watching a high-wire act.
‘Constance.’ He held out the crook of his elbow. ‘Come with me. I have something to say to you.’
Eugene and Constance left the room, arm-in-arm, as though they were stepping on air.
‘I’m shafted!’ growled Timsy.
At the time I wondered why Timsy was so annoyed. Just then the Garda, accompanied by every person of importance in Kilmuree, including the bank manager and the undertaker, swarmed into the hall. For several minutes everyone talked at once. Maria and Osgar, having been released from the cloakroom where they had been incarcerated by Terry and his friends, dashed round barking their heads off. It was pandemonium. Finn drew Colin McDaid, the chief of the Garda, into the dining room and closed the door so they could hear themselves speak. He pre-empted the policeman’s laborious questioning by giving a concise account of recent events.
‘So no harm was done,’ he concluded. ‘We were lucky to get away with nothing worse than a hole in the ceiling.’
I contemplated with sorrow the eighteen square inches of lathes in the La Franchini brothers’ masterpiece.
‘Were any of them local, would you say, Mr Macchuin, sir?’
‘I couldn’t tell. They were all wearing stocking masks.’
‘One of them was,’ said Kit who stood nearby, sharing a cigarette with a trembling, tearful Jasmine. ‘Sean Donoghue, Katty said.’
‘Well, Katty Kicart?’ Colin McDaid turned to her. ‘You knew the lad, then?’
Katty glanced at Finn. He gave the tiniest shake of his head, unseen by the policeman.
‘No,’ she said. ‘They was none of them from these parts.’
‘There’s a Sean Donoghue lives over at Ballygortin,’ said the policeman. ‘Are you sure now, Katty, what you’re saying?’
Katty pursed her lips as if to spit but thought better of it. ‘None of them.’
Colin McDaid turned back to Kit. ‘What made you think, sir, that that was the name?’
Kit made an angry sound. ‘I damn well know it was.’
‘But there are at least ten witnesses here to say that you misheard.’ Finn folded his arms and returned Kit’s look coolly.
Colin McDaid frowned. ‘Did anyone in this room hear mention of a name like Sean Donoghue?’
‘I was here all the time.’ Father Deglan’s eyes were watering with shock but he fixed his good one on the policeman without wavering. ‘And I can say for certain that name was never spoken.’
Colin McDaid looked at the rest of us. We all murmured denials except the colonel who blew his nose hard.
Kit ground out his cigarette in Maud’s ashtray, looking not so much angry as contemptuous. ‘I must have made a mistake then.’
‘In that case’ – the policeman’s tone was regretful – ‘we’ll pursue our inquiries for three persons unknown. I doubt we’ll catch them. You know how it is round here, sir.’ He gave Finn a reproachful look. ‘Everyone’s related and so dashed shy of talking. I’ll put out a message on the radio. You’re sure now no one was hurt?’
He glanced across the table at Flurry who was sitting patiently with his eyes closed and his fingers in his ears.
Liddy pulled his hands away. ‘It’s OK, you dolt. They’ve gone.’
‘Is Eugene dead?’ asked Flurry in a dispassionate voice.
‘Finn,’ called Violet in a faint voice. ‘I’ve been so frightened. T-take me upstairs.’
‘Nonsense!’ Maud stood in the doorway. ‘What you need is a stiff drink. Carry her into the drawing room, Finn, and I’ll see to her.’
‘Mr Macchuin says it was you, ma’am, that rang the alarm,’ said the policeman, looking respectfully at Maud. ‘That was quick thinking.’
‘No doubt it seems so to you,’ said Maud, with deeply unfair r
udeness, turning her back on him. ‘We are not all imbeciles. Come, Violet. And you, Basil.’
Violet held Finn’s neck tightly and buried her face in his jersey as he carried her out. Flavia followed them with her mother’s cigarettes and fur wrap.
‘I’ve never been so scared in all my life!’ said Jasmine in a squeaking voice. ‘It’s been perfect heaven, Bobbie, and I’ve loved coming to stay in a real castle and everything, but I think I’ll go home now.’ Her mouth was quivering.
‘Poor Jazz. I’m so sorry. I was absolutely terrified myself. But we’ll feel much better after a good night’s sleep.’
‘I couldn’t spend another night here. I positively couldn’t! If someone would be an angel and run me to the station?’
‘I’ll do better than that,’ said Kit. ‘I’ll drive you back to England. I was planning to leave soon, anyway. We can go tonight, if you like.’
‘Oh, thank you! That is … Bobbie, you won’t be hurt?’
‘Not a bit.’ I kissed her. ‘Of course I’ll miss you and you’ve been a marvellous help but I quite understand.’
‘I’ll go and pack at once. I’ll only be half an hour.’ Jasmine skipped out of the room, restored to cheerfulness by the prospect of escape.
‘Are you all right, Flurry me boy?’ asked Father Deglan kindly, seeing the child sitting so pale and immobile. ‘Wouldn’t it be a good thing now for us to offer up a prayer of gratitude for safe deliverance?’
Flurry got up hurriedly. ‘I’m going to saw.’
He was almost mown down in the doorway by Timsy, Pegeen and Katty all rushing to leave the dining room. Liddy had run away some minutes before, presumably to find Danny. Only Kit and I were left, two Protestants, worse than heathens in Father Deglan’s eyes.
‘Arrah!’ He was philosophical. ‘When they need the Lord’s help they’ll not be slow to ask for it. ’Tis always the way. I’ll take me leave of Finn and go now. God bless you both.’
The priest hurried out. Kit and I gave each other nervous, insincere smiles.
‘That was a shattering experience.’ I leaned over the table to take a spoonful of canary pudding from the serving dish to calm myself.
Moonshine Page 72
