Strafford remembered the smell of medicine in the room, and the stifling warmth, all the windows shut and the air as dense and cloying as wetted cotton wool. She used to have him bring her the brandy decanter from the sideboard in the dining room, wrapped in a newspaper. By that stage she was allowed all the brandy she could drink, though it pleased her to pretend it was their secret, hers and his.
He sat upright in the chair, pushing these recollections to the side of his mind. How they cling, he thought, the dead.
‘Tell me about last night, will you?’ he asked, clearing his throat.
Dominic shrugged. ‘What is there to tell you? I’m sure by now you’ve heard everything there is to hear.’
‘Oh, I’m sure I haven’t. Anyway, I’d like to know your version.’
After a pause, the young man spoke.
‘I came down from Dublin on the afternoon train. Matty had borrowed the Recks’ van to collect me from the station—’
‘Matty?’
‘Sorry. Matty Moran. He works, if that’s the word, at the Sheaf of Barley. My father borrows him now and then, to trim the hedges, keep the rats down – odd jobs. If you’re staying at the Sheaf you’re bound to run across him, since he as good as lives in the bar there. That will be a treat for you.’ He suddenly made a jester’s unfunny face, drawing his mouth down at the corners. ‘Matty is a Ballyglass “character”, I’m afraid. One of many.’
‘Was Father Lawless here when you arrived?’
‘Yes, he’d come over for lunch, I believe, and then couldn’t get back, because of the weather.’
‘Did he spend a lot of time here? – generally, I mean.’
‘Well, we stable his horse for him—’
‘Yes, I know,’ Strafford said, interrupting, trying not to sound impatient. He always found it a tedious business, extracting information from those too dim or distracted to offer it unprompted. Only the guilty were garrulous. ‘So he was here quite frequently, yes?’
‘Yes, I suppose he was a bit of a fixture. Why? Is that significant?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He liked it here. Why wouldn’t he? Free bed and board, civilised people to talk to, if you don’t count my sister. I don’t think he should ever have become a priest. He wasn’t suited to it.’
It was said with amused disparagement. What had this young man made of the priest who shouldn’t have been a priest? So many questions to be asked, so many stones to be turned, in search of what might wriggle out from under them.
They were silent for a while, listening to the hiss and crackle of the fire. It was Dominic who spoke.
‘Your job,’ he said. ‘I’m curious. It must be like trying to assemble a particularly intricate jigsaw puzzle, putting the pieces together, looking for a pattern, and so on?’
‘I suppose so, in a way,’ Strafford replied. ‘The trouble is, the pieces don’t stay still. They tend to move around, making patterns of their own, or what seem to be patterns. Everything is deceptive. You think you have the measure of things, and then it all shifts. In fact, it’s more like watching a play, one in which the plot keeps changing—’
He stopped, and with his fingernails tapped a rapid tattoo against his front teeth. Yes, he thought, yes, that was what had been nagging at him, from the moment he had first arrived at Ballyglass House. Everyone seemed to be in costume, seemed to be dressed for a part. They were like a cast of actors milling about in the wings, waiting to go on. There was Colonel Osborne – he must have spent an hour in front of the looking-glass, rigging himself out as what he was or what he wished to seem to be – country squire, hero of Dunkirk, handsome still despite his years, wielder of a straight bat, blunt, bluff and safely dim. And here was his son, got up to look as much like him as could be managed, in tweed and twill, brown brogues and checked shirt, with his hair slicked back military fashion. There was Lettie, too, when Strafford had first encountered her, togged out in jodhpurs and riding jacket despite the fact she never got on a horse. And there was Mrs Osborne, who so far had played at least two roles, first as the madwoman in the attic, and then, in that absurd tea party charade, as a pert young royal, with Queen Elizabeth pearls and her blue frock and clipped vowels.
Why, even apple-cheeked Mrs Duffy was all too plausibly the stock family retainer.
But for whose benefit had they got themselves up to be so thoroughly convincing that, like even the best actors, they didn’t quite convince? And who was it that had called them together and allotted them their parts in the shadow play?
Or was he imagining it all? There was always the danger, in his job, of seeing things that weren’t there, of making a pattern where there wasn’t one. The policeman insists that there be a plot. However, life itself is plotless.
Yet a man had been murdered, and someone had murdered him. That much had happened. And the person who had done the deed was hiding somewhere here, in plain sight.
Dominic spoke now, breaking in on the detective’s thoughts. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Of course.’
‘Why did you decide to become a detective?’
‘Why?’ Strafford looked away, suddenly self-conscious. This was the question he most disliked, and found most difficult to answer, even when he asked it of himself. ‘I don’t know that I can remember,’ he said now, evasively, his eyes on the fire. ‘I’m not sure that I did decide – I’m not sure anyone decides anything. It seems to me we drift, and that all our decisions are made in retrospect.’ He paused. ‘Why did you opt to study medicine?’
Now it was the young man’s turn to look away. ‘Like you, I don’t know. I probably won’t stay the course. I can’t see myself in a white coat, dispensing placebos and peering up people’s bums.’
‘What would you prefer to do?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Be a beachcomber, on an island somewhere, anywhere, just so long as it’s not here.’ He looked about the lamplit room, with its shadowed corners. ‘The house is haunted, did you know?’
‘Yes, your sister told me. What sort of ghosts do you have?’
‘The usual kind. It’s all nonsense, needless to say. The dead don’t come back – why would they? Anywhere would be better than this, surely.’
He reached down for his book on the floor. Strafford took the hint.
‘Sorry,’ he said, making to rise, ‘I should leave you to your studies.’
‘Ah, yes, my studies,’ the young man said, with a sardonic laugh, sounding more like his sister than surely he would care to know.
Strafford was on his feet now, but still he lingered, with his hands in his pockets. The dog, half waking, raised up a little and looked at him, then let its head fall back on the carpet with a thud.
‘A last question, Dominic, if you don’t mind. May I call you Dominic?’
‘Suit yourself. And go ahead, ask whatever you like.’
‘Who was here, who was in the house, the night your mother died? Do you remember?’
The young man looked up at him quickly, with a puzzled frown. ‘The night my mother died? Why do you want to know? It was years ago. I was a child.’
‘Yes, I know.’ Strafford assumed what he thought of as his most disarming smile. ‘Can you remember, though, who was in the house?’
‘No one in particular. Daddy, my sister – she was only, I don’t know, seven or eight.’
‘Mrs Duffy?’
‘Yes, I suppose so. And we had two maids then, they had rooms in the attic. I can’t remember their names.’
‘And that was it? No one else?’
There was silence, and then from outside in the darkness there came a faint, soft, slipping sound. A section of snow, Strafford thought, must have slid off of the roof. Was a thaw setting in? Then there would be slush, first foe of the sleuth in search of clues.
‘I believe she was here,’ Dominic said.
‘“She”?’
‘Miss Harbison, as she was then. My stepmother-to-be.’
‘Your stepmot
her?’ Strafford said, startled. He had the sense of another soft slippage, but not outside this time. ‘She was here when your mother—? I don’t understand.’
From the hall came the hushed, reverberant note of a struck bronze gong.
‘Yes,’ Dominic said with a shrug. ‘She was a friend of my parents. Didn’t you know that? Well, a friend of my mother’s, anyway, supposedly. That was the dinner gong, by the way. Will you be eating with us? I wouldn’t advise it, frankly – are you familiar yet with Mrs Duffy’s cooking?’
Strafford said nothing, only smiled. He was thinking of the steak-and-kidney pudding.
13
And no, he would not be staying. Colonel Osborne had invited him to dine, but he had excused himself, saying he must get over to the Sheaf of Barley, since it was late already, and the roads would be increasingly treacherous as the night went on.
Coming down the front steps, he stopped to look out over the gleaming fields. The sky had cleared, and stars sparkled in the depthless velvet dark. Far off, in the woods, a fox barked. The icy air made his face sting. He was tired, so tired. The day already seemed to have lasted longer than was natural, and it probably wasn’t done with him yet.
His car, an elderly black Morris Minor, was encased in a glittering shell of hoar frost. He scraped the ice from the windscreen as best he could. The engine wouldn’t start by the ignition key, and he had to get it going with the crank handle. Half a dozen shoulder-jarring turns were required before the thing would catch. He worried the handle would spin backwards and smash his wrist.
As he manoeuvred his way down the drive, he could hear the ice on the road crackling under the tyres. He turned to the left, slotting the front wheels into the two parallel black ruts in the snow. Frost-laden trees, ghost-white and stark, reared up at him in the headlights, their boughs thrown upwards as if in fright.
A jigsaw puzzle, Dominic had said, and he was right. The pieces were scattered, and there was no illustration on the lid of the box to guide him. There wasn’t even a box.
By the time he reached the Sheaf of Barley his eyes ached from the glare of the snow-lined road. He had been negotiating a particularly sharp and treacherous bend when into the light of his headlamps a white-faced form had come gliding down at him out of the darkness on wide-spread wings. It was a barn owl. He had flinched from it instinctively, this great savage creature, and almost ran the car into the ditch.
The Sheaf of Barley was no more than a long, low, whitewashed cottage with a thatched roof and tiny windows, all of them brightly lit tonight. He parked the car well in off the road and heaved his overnight bag from the back seat. He had brought only a toothbrush and razor, pyjamas, a couple of shirts and some changes of underwear. He approached the door of the pub – or an inn, was it? – with deep misgivings. He had put up at places like it in the past. His sole wish was for a hot meal and a warm bed. Gloom settled on his heart.
The door was on the latch, and when he opened it and stepped inside he was met by the reek of porter and an eye-watering fug of turf smoke. The bar was cramped and low-ceilinged, with a high counter and high wooden stools. Newspaper cuttings, unframed, were pasted on the walls. They were yellowed from age and curling at the edges. The stories in them told mostly of sporting victories of the far past. On the sill of one of the little windows there was a pair of miniature hurleys mounted on a varnished wooden plaque, the sticks proudly wound round with a ribbon dyed in the county colours.
The bar was empty. The turf-burning stove was crooning softly to itself in a corner.
Strafford’s spirits rallied somewhat, despite the watchful aspect of the place. The stove was giving out a good heat, and maybe his bed would be soft. There might even be something decent to eat. He had been to boarding school. His needs were modest.
He picked up a little handbell from the counter and shook it tentatively, and presently a woman appeared from under a wooden archway at the end of the bar. She must be Reck the well-read butcher-cum-barkeeper’s wife, for she was a female version of him, large, dark-haired, and soft-spoken and smiling.
He introduced himself, and she wiped a hand on her apron and offered it to him across the counter. He shook it. Her skin was surprisingly smooth. Despite the smile of welcome, he could see her taking the measure of him. Strangers were scarce, in these parts.
‘That’s a bad old night,’ she said, ‘and cold enough to kill a cat. I’ve your dinner on the go,’ she added. ‘Now, what will you drink?’
This question always put Strafford in a quandary. Though he had tried, over the years, he had not managed to accustom himself to the taste either of fermented grain or rotted grapes. This inadequacy, for it was nothing less, set him at odds with his fellow countrymen. Indeed, it made him an object of some suspicion, and in some quarters even of outright distrust. After years of anxious experimentation, always unpleasant and often emetic, he had fixed on whiskey and white lemonade as a mixture he could just about stomach. It was something like the soft drinks of his childhood, despite the bitter under-taste, which he had taught himself to ignore. Having made his request now – it required a portentous raising of the voice and a manly clearing of the throat – he braced himself for the usual startled stare and low chuckle of contempt. However, Mrs Reck was an accommodating soul, and she poured his drink and set it before him with no sign of disdain.
He must have left the door unlatched, for it was pushed open now without resistance, and there entered a fat black dog, short of leg and grey about the muzzle. It paid no heed to its surroundings, but made off at a measured pace for the rear parts of the bar. Mrs Reck addressed the animal in a loud voice. ‘Hey, you, have you nothing to say for yourself, Mr Barney?’ The dog fixed her with a baleful stare – with its grey whiskers and disenchanted eye, it had the look of an ill-tempered, stooped and squat old man – and then trotted on, showing them both its broad behind.
Mrs Reck looked at Strafford and shook her head. ‘Thinks he owns the place,’ she said. ‘No one ever told him he’s a dog. Besides which, he’s as deaf as a post.’
Strafford sat on one of the high stools and drank. He was warm, the whiskey was bearable, the atmosphere was homely. He thought that, despite initial misgivings, he might after all have come to the right place.
Mrs Reck wiped the counter with a wet cloth, leaving grey whorls of moisture on the wood. She talked of this and that. Yes, the Sheaf was not only a pub, but also a butcher’s shop, a grocery store and a modestly sized hostelry. ‘We used to do a funeral service too, but Joe got too old for it and gave it up.’
Joe, Strafford understood, was Mrs Reck’s name for her husband. This wasn’t surprising. ‘Jeremiah’ had an altogether too resoundingly biblical ring to it.
He told her about the barn owl that had flown into the headlights on the road and how it had startled him, yet how marvellous a sight it was. She said they were ‘fierce savage things, them owls’.
She gave the counter another swipe with her cloth.
‘Terrible business, up at the House,’ she remarked, studiedly casual, and not meeting his eye.
The ‘House’, as Strafford guessed, was how local people in general referred to the Osborne residence.
‘Yes, terrible,’ he said, looking into his glass.
‘Poor Father Tom – I hear he fell down the stairs and broke his neck?’
It was clear from the manner in which she said it that what she had heard was not what she believed to have been the case.
‘Yes,’ Strafford said without emphasis, ‘the poor man did indeed suffer injuries to the neck.’
She gave him a level look. ‘So they’re saying.’
And there they let the matter rest.
He took his dinner at a small table in a corner of a room adjoining the bar. This room was, by day, a combined grocery and butcher’s shop. The meat counter was hidden delicately from view under a sheet of grey canvas, with rusty smears of tell-tale blood on the edges of it. Ranged on shelves along the opposite wall were jars
of sweets and glass-lidded tin boxes of biscuits and cream crackers and lumps of broken fruit cake.
He was served by a girl with red hair and a broad face sprinkled all over with freckles. When she smiled she displayed an overlap in her front teeth.
‘Are you the detective?’ she asked. No beating about the bush here, he noted. When he said yes, she laid a hand on her hip and scrutinised him with friendly scepticism. ‘You don’t look like one.’
‘So people tell me.’
She set before him a plate of sliced corned beef, which, as he found when he tested a forkful of it, was juicy and soft but with a satisfyingly crunchy texture. On the side there were four large boiled potatoes bursting out of their jackets, and cabbage that was green and actually looked like cabbage, unlike the stewed grey mush that places such as this usually served up. He found he was hungrier than he had thought.
How pleasant it was, he reflected, and how easy, to let oneself subside into the old simplicities. It was like leaning one’s back against the sun-warmed side of a haystack.
Customers had begun to straggle into the bar next door. He could hear their voices, and the scrape of the legs of wooden stools on the tiled floor. Opening hours were flexible in the countryside, and tonight was no exception, even with an officer of the law on the premises. By now there would be no one in the townland, and beyond, who wouldn’t know who and what he was. A peeler was a peeler, even in a three-piece suit.
Mrs Reck, having shown him to his table, had returned to the bar to serve the newcomers. Now she ducked back in and asked if he was ready for another drink. He shook his head – he had taken no more than a few sips of the first one. Mrs Reck cocked an eyebrow.
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