‘Thank you,’ Strafford said. ‘Very kind.’
Here again was the shadowy passageway between two corridors where the priest had been stabbed. Strafford stopped and peered about in the gloom. ‘We need to find that whiskey glass,’ he said. ‘If he was carrying it and dropped it, it must be here.’ He turned to Sergeant Jenkins. ‘Get those two galoots you have guarding the front door on to it, it’ll keep them from falling asleep. The glass probably rolled under something.’
‘Right.’
Strafford looked upwards. ‘Is there usually a bulb there?’ he asked, pointing to an empty socket, which was set inside a shade hardly bigger than a teacup and made of what might have been human skin, stretched and dried and translucent.
Colonel Osborne examined the socket. ‘Should be a bulb, yes, of course there should. Didn’t notice it was missing.’
‘Someone removed it, then?’ Strafford asked.
‘Must have, since it’s not there.’
Strafford turned to Sergeant Jenkins. ‘Tell those two to look for a bulb, as well as the glass.’ He gazed up at the empty socket again and put a finger and thumb to his chin. ‘So it was planned,’ he murmured.
‘What’s that?’ Osborne asked sharply.
Strafford turned to him. ‘The murder. It must have been premeditated. That should make things a little easier.’
‘Should it?’ The Colonel looked baffled.
‘A person acting on impulse can be lucky. He’ll strike out without thinking, and afterwards everything looks natural, because it is. But a plan always has something wrong with it. There’s always a flaw. Our job is to find it.’
There was a commotion below, shouts, and a dog yelping. A draught of cold air came sweeping up the stairs, followed by the sound of the front door slamming. ‘Hold on to him, for God’s sake!’ someone bellowed angrily. ‘Mrs Duffy will have a fit if he puts muddy paw marks on the carpets.’
Strafford and the two men with him leaned over the banister and peered down into the front hall. The stable boy, Fonsey, was there, with his mop of red hair and his leather jacket. He was struggling to restrain a large and very wet black Labrador retriever by jerking violently at its leash. At the door, taking off a pair of leather gauntlets, was a young man in a checked overcoat and a hat with a feather in the band. His wellington boots were muddy, and stuck with dabs of melting snow. A long staff with a shepherd’s crook was leaning against the hall table. He removed his hat and gave it a vigorous shake. It was his petulantly commanding voice they had heard.
‘My son,’ Colonel Osborne said to Strafford, and then called out, ‘Dominic, the police are here!’
The young man looked up.
‘Oh, hullo,’ he called.
At sight of the Colonel, Fonsey let go of the dog and lumbered hurriedly to the front door and was gone. The dog, suddenly losing interest in being excited, splayed its large paws and shook itself thoroughly, throwing off a spray of snow-water in all directions.
Colonel Osborne led the way down the staircase. ‘Dominic,’ he said, ‘this is Detective Inspector Strafford, and – and his assistant.’
‘Jenkins,’ the sergeant growled, spacing out the syllables. ‘De-tec-tive Ser-geant Jen-kins.’
‘Sorry, yes, that’s right,’ Colonel Osborne said, colouring a little. ‘Jenkins.’
Dominic Osborne was classically handsome, with a long straight jaw, a slightly cruel-looking mouth and his father’s flinty blue eyes. He glanced from one to the other of the two detectives, and a corner of his mouth twitched, as if he were seeing something funny.
‘The long arm of the law,’ he said with arch sarcasm. ‘Who’d have thought it, here in Ballyglass House?’
Strafford studied the young man with interest. He wasn’t as cool as he was pretending to be, and his voice was strained behind its languid tone.
The dog was sniffing at Strafford’s shoes.
‘Come along,’ said the Colonel to the two detectives, rubbing his hands. ‘Let’s see if that lunch is ready.’
Strafford leaned down and scratched the dog behind its ear. The animal wagged its tail and let its tongue hang out in a friendly grin. Strafford smiled. He had always liked dogs.
From the start there had been something odd about this case, in a way he had never encountered before. Something had been niggling at him, and suddenly now he realised what it was. No one was crying.
6
The ambulance was still on its way from Wexford General Hospital when Strafford was called to the telephone to be told by his boss, Chief Superintendent Hackett, to cancel it.
‘We’re sending down a wagon from here,’ Hackett said above the crackling on the line – he might have been speaking from outer space, so poor was the connection and so distorted the sound of his voice. ‘I want the body brought to Dublin.’ Strafford made no reply to this. He knew from the Chief’s tone that the makings of a cover-up were already being put in place, like the props on a stage set. Strafford wasn’t the only one to see himself in the role of stage designer. There were others, more determined and far more skilled than he at painting fake scenery and making silent alterations to the plot. ‘Are you there?’ Hackett barked irritably. ‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘Yes, I heard.’
‘And?’
‘It’s too late to cancel the ambulance, it will be here any minute.’
‘Well, send it back! I told you, the corpse is to come up here.’ There was another pause. Strafford could sense Hackett’s irritation rising. ‘There’s no point in standing there with your trap shut,’ the Chief Superintendent growled. ‘I can hear you doing it.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Saying nothing! You know damn well this thing will have to be handled with kid gloves.’ There was a sigh, heavy and tired. ‘The palace has spoken to the Commissioner. Officially, so far as we’re concerned, the priest’s death was an accident. And by we I mean you, Strafford.’
The palace was the residence of the Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid, the most powerful churchman in the country. The Garda Commissioner, Jack Phelan, was a prominent member of the Knights of St Patrick. So there it was – the Church had stepped in. If His Grace Doctor Mc-Quaid said Father Lawless had stabbed himself in the neck by accident and thereafter had cut off his own genitals, then that’s what had happened, so far as the public at large would be permitted to know.
‘For how long?’ Strafford asked.
‘For how long what?’ Hackett snapped back. He was tense. Hackett wasn’t often tense. Jack Phelan must have laid it on with a vengeance.
‘How long are we expected to keep up the pretence that this priest was stabbed by accident? It’s rather a lot to ask people to believe.’
Hackett sighed again. When there was a lapse like this on the line, if Strafford listened hard he could hear, behind the electronic crackles, a sort of distant warbling. It always fascinated him, this eerie, cacophonous music, and gave him a shiver, too. It was as if the hosts of the dead were singing to him out of the ether.
‘We “keep up the pretence”’ – it amused Hackett to mimic Strafford’s accent and his finical turns of phrase – ‘for as long as it bloody well takes.’
Strafford tapped two fingernails against his front teeth.
‘What was that?’ Hackett asked suspiciously.
‘What was what?’
‘Sounded like somebody knocking coconut shells together.’
Strafford laughed soundlessly.
‘I’m going to send Jenkins back with the corpse,’ he said. ‘He can give you a preliminary report.’
‘Oh, going it alone, are we? Gideon of the Yard solves the case single-handed.’
It was never clear to Strafford which the Chief resented more, his deputy’s Protestant pedigree or his preference for doing things in his own way.
‘Do you want me to write up a report now,’ Strafford asked, ‘or will I leave it to Jenkins to give it to you in his own words? There’s not much to report on
, as yet.’
Hackett didn’t reply, but asked a question instead. ‘Tell me, Strafford, what do you think?’ He sounded worried – as worried, Strafford told himself, as only a diktat from the palace could make him.
‘I don’t know what I think,’ Strafford said. ‘I told you,’ he continued, ‘I’ve next to nothing to go on, yet’ – adding, perfunctorily – ‘sir.’
He was cold, standing with the phone receiver clammy in his hand and a draught from under the front door curling round his ankles.
‘You must have some sort of an idea of what happened,’ Hackett persisted, making no effort to hide the irritation in his voice.
‘Colonel Osborne believes the killing was done by someone from outside – he insists there must have been a break-in.’
‘And was there?’
‘I don’t think so. Harry Hall had a good look round before he left, and so did I, and neither of us found any sign of a forced entry.’
‘So it was someone in the house, then?’
‘It must have been, as far as I can see. That’s the assumption I’m going on.’
‘How many people were there last night?’
‘Five, six, including the dead man and the housekeeper. There’s a scullery maid who comes in, but she lives locally and would’ve gone home. It’s always possible someone had a key to the front door – any footprints outside would have been obliterated by this morning.’ He winced. His boss didn’t care for big words.
‘Christ almighty,’ Hackett muttered, with an angry sigh. ‘There’s going to be some stink over this, you know that?’
‘Pretty whiffy already, wouldn’t you say?’ Strafford suggested.
‘What are they like, the family?’ Hackett asked.
‘It’s a bit public, where I’m speaking from,’ Strafford said, loudening his voice. ‘Jenkins will fill you in.’
Hackett was thinking again. Strafford could picture him clearly, leaning back in his swivel chair in his tiny, wedge-shaped office, with his feet on his desk and the chimney pots of Pearse Street dimly visible through the room’s single, small square window, the panes of which would be hazed over with frost, except for a clear oval in the centre of each pane. He would be wearing his blue suit, shiny with age, and the greasy tie that Strafford was convinced he never unknotted, only loosened at night and pulled over his head. There would be the same years-old calendar on the wall, and the same dark-brown stain where someone had flattened a bluebottle uncountable summers ago.
‘It’s a queer bloody business,’ the Chief said now, ruminatively.
‘Queer, certainly.’
‘Anyway, keep me up to date. And Strafford—’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Remember, they may be the gentry, but one of them did for that priest.’
‘I’ll keep it in mind, sir.’
Hackett hung up.
It was only when he returned to the kitchen that Strafford realised just how cold it had been in the hall. Here, the range was lit and the air hummed with heat, and there was a smell of roasting meat. Colonel Osborne was sitting at the table, drumming his fingers on the wood, while Sergeant Jenkins stood leaning against the sink with his arms folded tightly across his chest and all three buttons of his jacket fastened. Jenkins was a stickler for what he considered good form. Strafford had the feeling the two men hadn’t exchanged a word since he had been called away to the phone.
‘That was Hackett,’ he said, addressing Jenkins. ‘There’s an ambulance on the way from Dublin.’
‘But what about—?’
‘The one on the way from Wexford we’re to send back.’
The two men looked stonily at each other for a moment. They had both known this case would be complicated, but they hadn’t expected the machinery to have had so many spanners tossed into it so soon.
Outside the window above the sink, a robin alighted on the sill and regarded Strafford with an eye like a shiny black bead. The sky was a mass of swollen, bruise-coloured cloud hanging so low it seemed it must be resting on the roof.
‘Lunch is on the way,’ Colonel Osborne said, in an absent-minded tone, looking at nothing in particular. He drummed his fingers again. Strafford wished he would stop. It was a sound that always grated on his nerves.
Mrs Duffy had returned from her sister’s, and now she bustled in from the pantry. She too, like everybody else Strafford had so far encountered at Ballyglass House, had the look of a character actor hired that morning, and fitted the part altogether too convincingly. She was short and dumpy, with blue eyes and plump pink cheeks and steel-grey hair gathered in a bun low at the back of her neck. She wore a black skirt and a spotless white apron and fur-lined black bootees. She began to lay out plates and knives and forks on the table. Osborne, rising from his chair, introduced her to Strafford and Sergeant Jenkins. She blushed, and for a moment it seemed she might be about to curtsey, but if so she stopped herself, and turned instead and went to the range and gave the firebox a vigorous riddle. Her broad back expressed a deep and general disapproval.
‘Sit down, gentlemen, do,’ Osborne said. ‘We don’t stand on ceremony here.’
They heard the front doorbell ring.
‘That will be the ambulance from Wexford,’ Strafford said. He glanced at Jenkins. ‘Do you mind? Tell them we’re sorry, but they won’t be needed.’
Jenkins went out. Osborne had fixed Strafford with a shrewdly searching eye.
‘What’s up?’ he asked. ‘Why are they sending down a second ambulance – why won’t this one do?’
‘I imagine it’s a question of expediency,’ Strafford said coolly. ‘The sooner the post-mortem is done, the better.’
Osborne nodded, but his look was sceptical.
‘I imagine your chief is a worried man,’ he said.
‘He’s concerned, certainly,’ Strafford responded, blank-eyed.
He sat down at the table. Mrs Duffy came forward bearing a large steaming earthenware bowl, holding the hot sides of it with the aid of a tea towel. She set the bowl on the table between the two men.
‘Will I serve, Colonel,’ she asked, ‘or will you help yourselves?’ She turned to Strafford. ‘I hope you like steak-and-kidney pudding, sir?’
‘Oh, yes, certainly,’ Strafford said, and swallowed hard.
‘Just the thing for a cold day like this,’ the housekeeper said, folding her plump hands under her bosom. She glared at the detective, as if daring him to contradict her as to the compatibility of pudding and weather.
‘Yes, thank you, Sadie,’ Colonel Osborne said pointedly, and the woman waddled back to the pantry with an offended air. The Colonel gave Strafford an apologetic frown. ‘She will rattle on, if you give her the chance.’ He ladled food on to Strafford’s plate. ‘Reheated from yesterday, I’m afraid,’ he said.
Strafford smiled weakly. ‘Oh, I always think steak-and-kidney pud is better the second day, don’t you?’ He felt noble and brave. He could not understand how the kidneys of a cow had come to be regarded as food fit for human consumption.
Sergeant Jenkins returned, and shut the door behind him. Osborne frowned – clearly it still irked him to have to entertain someone from the ‘other ranks’ at his table – but he managed a friendly enough tone. ‘Come, Sergeant, sit down and have some of this excellent pie. The boiled eggs are small, as you see – they’re pullets’ eggs. Sadie’s – Mrs Duffy’s – husband rears them. In my opinion, the pullet produces a far finer and tastier egg than the larger varieties.’
Pullets’ eggs, and a dead body in the library. Life is strange, Strafford thought, but a policeman’s life is stranger than most.
Jenkins was hungry, Strafford could see, yet he held back from starting until the other two had taken up their knives and forks. His mother would have taught him to wait and watch. Choosing your cutlery was always a perilous business when you were dining among the gentry.
‘I imagine the driver wasn’t too pleased to be sent away again,’ Strafford said, ‘after coming al
l the way out here through snow and ice.’
Jenkins gave him a look.
‘I told them they weren’t needed, and they left,’ he said. ‘I didn’t notice whether they were displeased or not.’
The three men ate in silence for a time, then Strafford put down his knife and fork.
‘I have to ask you, Colonel Osborne,’ he said, frowning, ‘to give me an exact account of the morning’s events, insofar as you can.’
Osborne, chewing on a gristly knob of kidney, looked at him with raised eyebrows. He swallowed the piece of meat more or less whole. ‘Do we have to go into all that at the table?’ Strafford didn’t reply, only went on looking at him with a neutral gaze. He sighed. ‘It was my wife’s screaming that woke me,’ he said. ‘I thought she must have fallen, or bumped into something and injured herself.’
‘Why was she in the library?’ Strafford asked.
‘Eh?’
‘What was she doing in the library in the middle of the night?’
‘Oh, she wanders about the place at all hours,’ Osborne said, in a tone dismissive of the ways of women in general, and of his wife in particular.
‘Is she an insomniac? – has she trouble sleeping?’
‘I know what an insomniac is!’ Osborne snapped. ‘And yes, she is. Always has been. I’ve learned to live with it.’
But has she? Strafford wondered. It was not a question, he imagined, that her husband often posed to himself. Osborne’s second marriage seemed to have gone thoroughly stale. How long, the detective wondered, had the ageing soldier been married to his so much younger wife, the woman her stepdaughter had nicknamed the White Mouse – aptly, Strafford thought, from what he had seen of her in her brief appearance earlier.
‘So what did you do?’
Osborne shrugged. ‘I put on a dressing gown and slippers and went down to look for her. I’d been deeply asleep, so my mind was a bit fuddled, I imagine. Found her in the hall, sitting on the floor, moaning. Couldn’t get a word of sense out of her, except that she kept pointing to the door to the library. I went in and – and found him.’
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