“Your name?”
I gave my name, and he eyed the other officer who was already writing it down.
Colin ran his fingers through his wild red hair. I had never seen Colin O’Toole quite so undone. But he gathered his wits—you could see the change come over him—and he said, “My daughter is not here, Inspector. I’m sure she knows nothing that can help your investigation, but I’ll bring her to the Guards station so you can question her. Will you let me do that, sir? Will you give me a chance to go after her and bring her to you?”
It was arranged. The officials departed, and then Colin left for the old woman’s cottage where he presumed he would find his daughter.
“Bring her home,” Grace said. “Please, Colin, bring her home.”
In the States, I’d be saying, Get a lawyer. But this was Ireland. Colin would surely know what to do. I followed Grace back to the kitchen. “What can I do to help?” I asked.
Grace buried her face in her hands, but then, like Colin, she pulled herself together.
“I don’t want our guests to know about all of this, not yet anyway,” she said. “You can tell Alex, of course, but not the others.”
“I wouldn’t,” I said. “Can I help with breakfast?”
Grace began to fill trays with breakfast foods. “You’re a guest, Jordan.”
“Right now, I’m an old friend. Give me a job.”
She sighed. “You can take these trays to the breakfast room. My God, is Enya still asleep? Now, the time I need her most!”
All morning, we waited for Colin. Grace asked me to come with her and Little Jimmie to the keeping room, where he played with wooden stacking blocks. Adorable child, sweet-tempered. He called Grace Ma. Twice he crawled into her lap, sucked his fingers for a moment, and then went back to his play. Grace warmed up leftover stew for us. I wanted to keep her company, so I accepted her invitation to lunch. Waiting had to be so hard.
Enya had made a brief appearance to help with breakfast, but now she’d gone out. “Seems she’s made a few friends in town,” Grace said. “I suppose she needs a social life. She was quite the social butterfly in Dublin.”
“How long have Patrick and Enya been in Thurles?” I asked.
“About a year and a half. Little Jimmie was just an infant, and Bridget was getting worse by the day. Patrick started looking for a position at Tipperary Institute—now it’s LIT Tipperary, since they joined the Limerick Institute of Techology. He got a job, beginning winter term. We didn’t ask Patrick to come, but he has that sense of responsibility that Irish boys seem to have. Just like Colin brought his family to Ireland when his father was dying. I know Enya resents us because Patrick moved her out here.” Grace put a few more crackers on Little Jimmie’s tray. “I suppose I should give Enya credit. She helps out, but her heart’s not in it. Sometimes I could shake her! I want to say, Do you think it’s easy for any of us? For Patrick, your husband? Be a grown-up, Enya! Your days of partying are over!”
“Do you think she wants children?” I laughed. “I don’t know where I got that idea.”
“You know, she might,” Grace said. “You’d think caring for children would be the last thing on her mind, the way she acts, but she may just think there’s no chance for her and Patrick to have their own family as long as they’re so involved with us—and our problems.”
Grace was a little more settled now, discussing Enya instead of Bridget. Little Jimmie finished his lunch and Grace took him upstairs for his nap. Ian and Charles were playing chess in Reception, maybe winding up last night’s game. Alex and Doreen had gone to the little village called Tullahought to take the nature walk Doreen had so promoted. Alex drove. I was a little nervous about his driving, but Doreen had proven to be an excellent guide. Molly was going to her rehearsal today, and I was in no mood for sightseeing.
It was a sunny day, cool but pleasant. I went for a walk around the grounds. On the back of the property, a rock wall lined the perimeter of the lawn. Mr. Sweeney was sitting on the rock wall, not far from a swing set. I was curious about the man and took this as a good opportunity to make his acquaintance.
“Good morning!” I said. “Or maybe it’s good afternoon.”
He grunted.
“Today is much nicer than yesterday,” I said. I took a seat on the rock wall, a reasonable distance from him. “I’m Jordan Mayfair, from the States. Savannah, Georgia. We haven’t really met, but you’re Mr. Sweeney, aren’t you?”
“Seamus Sweeney.” He took a long drag on his cigarette and exhaled.
I waited, hoping he might ask me a question or show some interest in engaging me in conversation, but when he didn’t, I asked, “Where are you from?”
“Dublin.” Now he darted me a glance that seemed to ask why I was being so inquisitive.
I took his reticence as a challenge. “Shepherds is nice, isn’t it?”
“Nice enough.” He flicked the ashes onto the ground and looked away.
“My uncle and I knew Colin and Grace a long time ago, when they were in school,” I said. “That’s why we’re here. Alex is working on a travel guide.”
He nodded. Whether signaling that he approved, I couldn’t tell.
“We went to Kilkenny yesterday,” I said.
“The castle,” he said. “I’ve been to it. Don’t expect I’ll go again.”
“What are you planning to see while you’re here?” I asked.
He dropped his cigarette butt and gave it a tap with the toe of his boot. “Don’t know,” he said. “I didn’t come here to see any sights.”
“Oh?” I didn’t ask Then why? but it was surely implied.
He blinked. A moment passed, an awkward silence that I thought I could wait out, but I couldn’t. “I’ve asked too many questions,” I said finally, standing up. “I just wanted to meet you and introduce myself, since we’re both guests here. Have a nice rest of the day.”
When my back was to him, he said, “My wife died last month.” I turned around to face him. He said, “I needed to get away from home for a while.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and before I could help myself I was asking another question. “Had you been married a long time?”
No hesitation this time. “Twenty-one years if she’d lived till July.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
I felt foolish for thinking so poorly of him. He was just grieving. But I wondered why he’d wanted to come to this place, in particular. According to Colin, Mr. Sweeney had been insistent. Maybe he and his wife had once visited the Dark Horse Inn. I wouldn’t ask.
He turned his eyes up to mine for the first time, and I saw the pain in his expression, but it was replaced quickly by indignation. “Any more questions? I’m not all that interesting.”
“No more questions,” I said. It seemed like a good time to walk away.
Colin returned shortly after that. Grace had finished her housekeeping chores and Little Jimmie was still napping. We were having tea at the kitchen table. Grace’s breath caught when she saw Colin without their daughter, but she didn’t ask what had happened. She had to know her husband would tell her everything. She simply began preparing tea for him.
Scooting my chair back, I told them I’d be in my room, but Colin stopped me. “Don’t go, Jordan. Maybe we could use your clear head. Mine’s a muddle, and Grace must feel the same.”
It was then that I said what I’d been thinking: “Maybe you need legal advice. Do you know a lawyer you could contact?”
“I could find one. I’m hoping we won’t have to do that, but—we would manage.” He took a seat at the table. A look passed between him and Grace. Were they thinking of attorney’s fees? Money they didn’t have, and where would they get it? Grace poured his tea. He added a few drops of cream and stirred. Grace did not hurry him. He sipped his tea, part of the ritual, it seemed they both understood, before he could launch into his story. “I think our girl is in the clear. The coroner says the doctor died early yesterday morning, and Magdala
, bless the old crone’s heart, she swears Bridget slept in the cottage that night and didn’t leave in the morning.”
“Did Magdala go to the Guards station, too?” It was the first question Grace had asked.
“It wasn’t quite like that.” Colin drew a long breath. “I had a wee bit ’o trouble with Bridget. I couldn’t make her go with me, short of throwing her over my shoulder like a sack of flour, which I didn’t think would look right at the Guards station. So I went back to the road where I could get phone service and called for Inspector Perone. He was at the Riordans’ house, thank God. I explained the situation to Garda Mallory the best I could. Told him Bridget was not well. I confess, I didn’t try to explain exactly why she was at Magdala’s cottage.”
“I don’t know how you could have explained,” Grace said. “It doesn’t make any sense, does it? I’m sure he thought it was peculiar.”
“Mallory spoke with a Sergeant Casey, and they came to us,” Colin said. “I don’t know what they thought or didn’t think, but both of them are good men just doing their job. The sergeant talked nice to Bridget, and she answered their questions the best she could, I think.”
Colin finally got around to saying why the police had believed Bridget was the last person to see Dr. Malone. The doctor and his wife, who was Liam Riordan’s daughter, were separated. Norah Malone was living at the Riordan house. She’d been on the phone with the doctor after he came in from the pub, and he’d told her someone was at the door.
“Mallory probably wasn’t supposed to tell me, but the sergeant didn’t object. Norah Malone heard a woman shouting, the doctor trying to calm her, and then he came back on the line saying it was Bridget O’Toole, she was hysterical, and he had to take her home.”
I wondered if a doctor would use those words—“she’s hysterical”—about his patient, but maybe to his wife, his estranged wife, he would.
“Was this at the doctor’s office?” I asked.
“He lives above his office,” Grace said.
“Bridget didn’t deny going to see him, but she didn’t remember much about it. You know how she was when we left her that afternoon, when we brought Jimmie back home.” Colin regarded Grace with that look, that acknowledgment of what they’d both experienced.
“Did she tell the reason she went to see Dr. Malone,” Grace said, “why she was out in the dark night, walking through the woods and into town?” It was a chilly night, too, I remembered.
“I don’t think she knows why,” Colin said. “She began to get all—anxious—with the questions and said she didn’t remember. But it seems the doctor did take her back to the cottage. Magdala couldn’t say what time Bridget returned—they don’t have any timepiece out there—but she said the moon was high, and Bridget just came in and went to sleep after that.”
“It’s a bit of a flimsy story,” Grace said. “A girl who doesn’t remember and a woman who’s not right in the head. I’ll be surprised if the Guards really believe it.”
“Maybe they do and maybe they don’t, but unless they get something else on Bridget, I don’t see how they can—blame her.”
A moment passed. It was clear he’d meant arrest her.
“Do you think she’s taking her medications?” Grace asked.
“Maybe. She wasn’t like we’ve seen her, the awful ups and downs.” He gave a weak smile. “Sure, she refused to go to the Guards station, but she’s a willful girl, our Bridget.”
“And she refused to come home,” Grace added.
I excused myself. Grace said she needed to get Little Jimmie up, or he’d never go to sleep tonight. Colin said he had work to do, phone messages and e-mails from that morning when no one was in the office. “Inquiries about reservations, we can hope,” he said. I took my teacup to the sink.
Another question occurred to me. “How did Bridget come to know Magdala?”
“Bridget was doing volunteer work for Dr. Malone when she was in high school,” Grace said. “I think I told you she wanted to be a nurse at one time. Someone—one of Magdala’s neighbors, I imagine—contacted the doctor and said Magdala was very sick, and he went out to see her. She had a bad case of flu, I think it was, and he treated her.”
“Bridget went with him to the cottage?” I asked.
“Maybe not that first time,” Grace said, “but Dr. Malone was good to Magdala. He kept going out there, probably has continued up till now, taking her vitamins and cough syrup and sometimes prescription medicine when she was sick. Bridget would go with him, as long as she was volunteering in his office. That’s how she met Magdala.”
“Something about the old woman,” Colin said. “Bridget kept on taking her food and warm sweaters and such.”
“After Jimmie was born, you mean,” I said.
“After she left school, and was no longer volunteering with Dr. Malone,” Colin said.
“After she got pregnant,” Grace amended.
So Bridget had befriended Magdala, and now Magdala was befriending her. I didn’t know what to make of it, but maybe it shed some light on why Bridget retreated to the cottage in her dark times.
“Bridget has a kind heart,” Colin said. “Always has.”
“I wish she’d share some of that goodness with her baby,” Grace said, flaring suddenly. “I can only hope the effects of all of this on Little Jimmie won’t be too bad.”
Colin reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Hope, ah yes,” he said. “We must hang on to hope.”
CHAPTER 7
Finnegan’s Pub was even livelier tonight than it had been two nights ago. Not just crowded, with more customers standing than seated at the bar, but spirits were brighter tonight, as strains of Irish music filled the air.
“On Friday nights the local musicians come in and play in the back room,” Finn said, serving up a Guinness for Alex and an Irish coffee for me. We’d managed to squeeze in at the bar to order. “Go on back,” Finn urged. “People come and go.”
The room at the back of the pub was full, and even the doorway was jammed, but, as Finn had promised, people came and went, so we made our way to where we could see the musicians, and finally a couple of seats opened up. Wall sconces provided dim lighting in the small, intimate room. No more than twenty people at a time could squeeze in at the tables. One could imagine a parlor gathering. Five men and a woman sat in straight-backed chairs in a semi-circle. As we edged in at one of the tables, they were playing an Irish jig. The fiddler was the obvious leader of the band. The other musicians played the mandolin, guitar, wooden flute, a whistle, and a drum-type instrument called a bodhran, I learned when the fiddler announced, “Kevin Conner on the bodhran has a fine new baby boy. How ’bout that?”
On the next tune, everyone joined in, singing, “In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty, I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone.” I remembered the statue of Molly with her cart in Dublin. “A street-hawker she was,” the tour guide had said. “A woman of the streets who died young, and Dubliners have made her a legend. ‘Molly Malone’ is a favorite drinking song, sung with the fervor of a national anthem.” We’d heard the song several times in the pubs of Temple Bar, the cobbled-street area of Dublin. I joined in on the chorus, and the last time around even Alex sang: “Alive, alive, oh, Alive, alive, oh, Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!”
After a while, I said, “We should give up our seats.” Alex frowned, but when he glanced at the doorway, packed with onlookers, he nodded.
Back at the bar, we found Helen and Charles engaged in conversation with Finn. Another bartender seemed to be doing most of the work tonight. “Me boy, Brendan,” Finn explained. “Takes both of us on nights we have the music.” He winked.
“Finn was telling us that he also operates a tour service,” Helen said.
“What I said was, if you’re wanting to go some place in the area, I can provide you with transportation,” Finn said. “I have no papers as a tour guide, but I’ve been living in County Tipperary all my life. My minivan seats s
even.”
“We should get a group together from Shepherds,” Helen said. “Where should we go?”
Finn leaned on the bar. “I can take you to the Cliffs of Moher—a sight to behold! The way the cliffs just drop off to the crashing sea. On a clear day, you can see all the way to the Aran Islands. Or Kilkenny if it’s a castle you fancy, and not far from Kilkenny is a village called Tullahought, where you can start the Kilmacoliver loop if you fancy a nature walk.”
“We went to Kilkenny yesterday, and Alex went back to Tullahought today,” I said.
It was the prompt Alex needed to tell Helen and Charles about the Kilmacoliver Walk. “It’s a two-and-a-half-hour walk, maybe closer to three if you take your time, and there’s much to see, so why hurry. The view from the summit of Kilmacoliver Hill is simply spectacular.”
“You can see five counties,” Finn added. “A spectacular view, it is.”
Alex raised his finger to call attention to something important. “At the summit there’s a circle of standing stones called the Burial Ground, believed to be a prehistoric tomb.”
“Dates back five thousand years, they say, and the stones aligned with the setting sun at the time of the Winter Solstice,” Finn said.
“Exactly,” Alex said. Helen’s eyes were fixed on him, expectant. He took a sip of his Guinness, and then it seemed he’d delivered most of the information he could come up with, regarding the Kilmacoliver Walk. “Interesting wildlife and woodlands, all very pleasant to see, especially on a nice day,” he said, without his initial enthusiasm.
“I’d like to do that. Wouldn’t you, Charles?” Helen said.
Charles gave a faint nod, one of those polite gestures that communicate more than words, and then he perked up. “Is that Lucas? I can’t say I expected to see him out tonight.” He craned his neck to look down the bar, to the far end, where a man sat drinking alone.
“Oh! Wasn’t that his brother-in-law found dead just yesterday? The doctor?” Helen said.
“Stabbed, I heard. Several times,” Finn said.
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