But it was no mad woman waited them, only one just dead. In his little absence Peg had put the jagged bottle to a last use, driving it into her own heart.
The policeman looked down at them a long time, complaining of the light from the jet. “Get a lamp, man,” he said, and Dennis obeyed him. But he used the light of it to explore Dennis himself. He said then with great care and meaning, “This is the way you found them when you got home tonight, Mr. Lavery.”
Dennis hid his own eyes from the look in the other’s, a look without horror or pity, ladened only with calculation. He raised his voice and called out: “Norah, Norah, where are you?”
5
NORAH CAME TO THE Dunne house late the next afternoon. She wore a black bonnet and her face beneath it as white as a nun’s wimple. “I’m Mrs. Dennis Lavery,” she said at the door, giving a bob of a curtsy to Priscilla, and unknowing that Vinnie was watching her from the parlor. “I wish to see your husband.”
“You had better go upstairs, Jem,” Vinnie said. “I’ll come as soon as I can. We must soon go.”
The boy put down the magazine. If he had been reading it, Vinnie did not know. He had been turning the pages at least. “I shall go and see Nancy,” he said.
“Do,” said Vinnie, and then called out: “In here, Priscilla.”
Jem needed to stand aside at the door for Norah. He bowed, making way for her, and Norah paused.
“You’re Mr. Farrell’s son,” she said. “I’ve one like you myself and four older. God love you, young sir.” And she came on to Vinnie.
“I’m sorry for your trouble, Norah,” Vinnie said.
“If I didn’t think you were I’d not be bringin’ it,” she said, taking the chair he offered her.
“Shall I bring a pot of tea?” Priscilla asked.
“Do,” Vinnie said.
“That’d be a great kindness, Mrs. Dunne,” Norah said, and when Priscilla was gone: “I cannot weep. I used to wonder at Peg that she couldn’t, and now I cannot myself.”
“Nor I,” said Vinnie.
“Dennis is in jail. He’s in the Tombs.”
“I have only loathing for him, Norah. That is why I cannot weep. I have been sitting here all day and wishing for the first time in my life that I were a prosecutor.”
“That’s the greatest pity of it all, isn’t it?” Norah said after a moment.
Vinnie did not answer.
“Couldn’t you’ve stopped Mr. Farrell from comin’ to our house last night, Vinnie?”
“No.”
“Or come with him then?”
“I didn’t know he was going, Norah. When I left him he promised to go home.”
“All their promises,” Norah said, “and me chasin’ off like a wild goose in the night when all of them needed me most.”
“Do you know what was said in the City Hall park last night, Norah?”
“I was there when he said it. I went down with Peg in her gladness. Ah, but that’s another story and yet part of the same. He saw her there and construed the blame hers for them cheerin’ Farrell. He’s a mad man with his tongue when he’s cornered.”
“With more than his tongue,” Vinnie said.
“Goin’ always so far he cannot turn back…till someone comes and gets him. Like a child, like a willful, terrible child. But do you know, Vinnie, he wouldn’t be in jail at all if it wasn’t for me? There was no one alive to tell the true story exceptin’ Dennis. The policeman he took to the house gave it out on the telegraph first it was Peg killed Mr. Farrell and herself. Then Dennis found me and made me go with him and tell them the truth.”
“No doubt because he was proud of it,” Vinnie said.
“If that’s what you want to believe, Vinnie Dunne, I’m sorry I came.”
“Of course it’s what I want to believe! Stephen Farrell was my friend. Shall I forgive the man who boasts his murder any sooner than I would forgive him for concealing it? You forgave him Mr. Finn’s murder, Norah. I did not. If he had answered for that crime he would not now need to answer for this one. If God is just he will answer now for both of them.”
“Dennis and me expect to answer, Vinnie, and in their time our childer’ will need answer for us as well.”
Each of them sat silent while Priscilla brought the tea. She was about to withdraw when Norah said: “I wish you’d stay a minute, Mrs. Dunne. I’ll not stay longer myself.”
Vinnie gave his chair to his wife. “What is it you want me to do, Norah? Defend Dennis I cannot.”
“I can see that now,” she said.
“Did Dennis ask it?”
“No. But he didn’t tell me not to when I told him I was comin’. And I wanted to tell you about Peg, and you, too, Mrs. Dunne, for she took a great likin’ to you. She was goin’ back to work today at the Broadway Theatre. I saw the letter myself to prove it. She’d not a drop taken since the summer until last night. I was that proud of her…” Norah almost broke then, skewering Vinnie with her words.
Priscilla leaned forward and touched her hand to Norah’s clenched fist. “And aren’t you proud of when and how she died, Mrs. Lavery?” she said very softly.
“I am, God have mercy on me.”
Norah sipped a mouthful of tea and asked when Mr. Farrell’s funeral would be and from where he would be buried. Peg would be buried in the morning, and from the church, having been deemed mad at the time of her suicide. A few minutes later Vinnie sent out for a cab. He and Priscilla went to the door with her.
“I am very sorry, Norah,” he said again.
“Listen to me, Vinnie Dunne, and then you can do what your conscience as well as your grief and your righteousness tells you: if Dennis was proud of what he had done, he’d not’ve needed my help to boast it.”
She went down the steps without faltering, and never looked back.
“And if he expected his freedom,” Priscilla said when Norah was out of sight, “would he accept you as counsel at all?”
“You are getting to speak like the Irish,” Vinnie said, “as well as acquiring their logic.”
But before the night was spent he went to visit Dennis in the Tombs. On the way he heard the newsboys out with their first extras: DEAD MAN WINNING ELECTION. How the Irish loved their martyrs.
About the Author
Dorothy Salisbury Davis is a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America, and a recipient of lifetime achievement awards from Bouchercon and Malice Domestic. The author of seventeen crime novels, including the Mrs. Norris Series and the Julie Hayes Series; three historical novels; and numerous short stories; she has served as president of the Mystery Writers of America and is a founder of Sisters in Crime.
Born in Chicago in 1916, she grew up on farms in Wisconsin and Illinois and graduated from college into the Great Depression. She found employment as a magic-show promoter, which took her to small towns all over the country, and subsequently worked on the WPA Writers Project in advertising and industrial relations. During World War II, she directed the benefits program of a major meatpacking company for its more than eighty thousand employees in military service. She was married for forty-seven years to the late Harry Davis, an actor, with whom she traveled abroad extensively. She currently lives in Palisades, New York.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1956 by Dorothy Salisbury Davis
Cover design by Tracey Dunham
978-1-4804-6094-2
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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