Buried In a Bog

by Sheila Connolly

  The whites of young Jerry’s eyes flashed, although he kept his mouth shut.

  “Hang on,” Maura said more slowly, as bits and pieces came back to her. “The next day—the day they found the body—I went to the garda station, because I wanted to give somebody the letter I found at the pub.” Detective Hurley was watching her curiously, and Maura turned to him. “I didn’t get to give it to you then because you were all so busy with the murder, but when I was leaving I saw Jerry here lurking in the parking lot near my car. Did you follow me there, Jerry? Were you wondering what I was going to tell the gardaí? That I knew you’d seen Bart Hayes, and I knew you’d left not long after he did?”

  Hurley gave her an approving nod, then turned back to Jerry. “So you and Danny ended up in Skibbereen, and you saw a chance to help yourselves to some quick cash?”

  “No, it weren’t me—Danny did it!” Jerry now looked terrified.

  The detective pushed on. “Did he know he’d killed the man?”

  “Honest to God, no, sir! I didn’t know what he was planning, neither. We split up for a bit in Skibbereen—he said he had something to do, and I didn’t ask what. But then he shows up with a pocket full of money, and when we’re back here he brags that he’d seen this guy—Hayes, you said?—and he’s not too steady on his pins, flashing some bills. So Danny said he followed him and kind of hustled him into the alley and down he went. And that’s all I knew, until I heard people talkin’.”

  Maura wondered just how much of Jerry’s story was true. She had no doubt that Danny had done the deed, but would Jerry really have gone off on his own? Would Danny have let him? There was probably no way to prove it.

  “Did you see it happen?” Hurley asked.

  “I did not,” Jerry protested quickly, “and that’s God’s truth.”

  Hurley glanced at Maura. “Can you tell me why Danny was threatening this woman, then?”

  “He figgered she was the only one could tie us to the dead man. He thought she’d be easy to scare off, so he started giving her a hard time. He took the car.” Jerry appealed to Maura, “You saw him, in the car, right? I wasn’t there, was I?”

  “No,” Maura said slowly. “I saw only one man in the car. And only one man at the cemetery.”

  Jerry turned triumphantly back to Hurley. “There, you see? It was all Danny, like. Not me.”

  For the first time Maura realized that Denis McCarthy was staring at her. “There’s more to the story,” he said, “though young Jerry here doesn’t know all of it.” He looked squarely at Detective Hurley. “But it’s a long tale.” With a gleam in his eye, he said, “Will you drink with me?” When he hesitated, Denis added, “It’s a rare story I have for you, but a dry one.”

  Hurley cast a quick glance toward Maura, then spoke, “My pleasure, sir.” He picked up the whiskey bottle, which had miraculously remained upright through the scuffle, and filled two of the glasses with an inch of the whiskey each, then handed one glass to Denis. He didn’t offer any to Jerry or Maura, but she figured there was some obscure ritual going on in front of her.

  When they were supplied with drink, Denis took a substantial swallow from his glass before launching into his story. “It’s an old story, not a new one. And I’m thinking you’d be a part of it.”

  He was looking at Maura.

  Chapter 27

  Old Denis returned his gaze to the detective.

  “You, sir, have you not put a name to the body that came out of the bog at Killinga?”

  “We have, sir. But I’m guessing you know who he was?”

  “I do. My father Jeremiah was one of the Carrigeeny McCarthys, and his father was Denis. There were four children in the family: Denis, Jeremiah, and the girls Bridget and Ellen. The farm wasn’t much, maybe forty acres, all bits and pieces scattered about, but it had been the home of the McCarthys for as long as anyone could remember, since the days of the old landlords.”

  Maura sat silently, her eyes intent on Denis’s face. She had a feeling that she knew what was coming.

  Denis’s eyes kept drifting toward Maura, although he spoke to Hurley.

  “And then came the Republic, and new laws and new ideas. My family was scraping by, but there was no way that two sons and their families could live off that land, and there were no jobs to be had. And then a bit later the government came round, saying they’d buy them out, get us a better place, keep the payments low and all. But it wouldn’t be in Carrigeeny.”

  He stopped to take another drink from his glass.

  “Problem was, Denis—he was the oldest—didn’t like the idea. He thought he could make a go of it in Carrigeeny, and he didn’t want to leave the old place. Jeremiah—me da—thought different. He wanted to sell. He wanted to improve things, put up a better house. And they fought about it, time and again. Bitter fights, I remember, even though I was only a young lad. Near tore the family apart.”

  The thin voice drifted to a stop as the old man lost himself in his memories. Hurley caught Maura’s eye and signaled patience. Not that she would have dared to break the fragile spell in the room. Finally Denis’s eyes focused again, and he surveyed his audience before resuming.

  “And then one fine spring night, back in the early thirties, if memory serves, me uncle Denis went for a pint of an evening, like he always did, but never came home. Days passed, no word. And then months, and years. Gone, just like that.”

  “What did the family do, sir?” Hurley’s voice was gentle. “Did anyone ever report him missing?”

  The old man shrugged. “What was there to do? The family asked around amongst the relatives and neighbors and at the pub. No one had seen him. You have to remember the days—hard times they were. Sometimes people got fed up and went away. Maybe to America if they could scrape up the passage money. We just figured that was the story.” His eyes shifted to Maura once again.

  “And what happened with the farm?”

  “Ah. There’s the tale. Me uncle Denis was gone, no sign of coming back. And then one day not long after, Da ups and says, ‘Denis signed the farm over to me, and it’s mine to do what I want with.’ And he’s got the paper in his hand.”

  “What did Denis’s wife have to say about that?”

  “Hanora? Ah, she was weak. And she wouldn’t say it, but she couldn’t read—never learned. No way she could tell what was on that paper or what her husband might have signed. In the end she took her daughters and went back to her family, up past Dunmanway, and Jeremiah took over the farm. And me aunt Bridget, seein’ which way the wind was blowing, married and lit out for Australia. After things had settled for a bit, Da swapped the farm like he wanted, and came to this place—1933 it was. And here we’ve been ever since.”

  Maura felt like she had wandered into a stage play, one set in some other time. Nothing seemed real—certainly not the wizened old man in front of her, telling tales of days gone by. But given the detective’s patience with Denis, apparently he thought it was important to hear him out, or maybe he was just being respectful to his elder. “There’s more to the story, isn’t there?” Hurley said now, not unkindly.

  Denis met the detective’s look squarely, and there was another silent exchange.

  “There is, sir. My father wasn’t a bad man. He made a success of the farm here, and he raised us children right. But at the end of his life, his conscience came to bother him, and he wanted to die in the good grace of the church, which he couldn’t do with this weighing on his mind and heart. And one night after he’d lifted a few pints, he told me the rest of the tale. He’d gone to the pub with his brother that night, and they’d started to walk back together after closing. He’d asked his brother again to consider selling, and his brother had said no, like always. And Da lost his temper and rose up and hit him with his stick, and Denis fell down dead in the road. Da swore he hadn’t meant to kill him, but once done, he couldn’t undo it. So he looked around, and there they were in the dark alongside the bog, with no one about. He dragged Uncle Denis over an
d sank him. Put some rocks on him, so he wouldn’t come back up.” The old man was lost in his memories again. “I’ve been waiting all these years for me uncle Denis to turn up from the bog, wondering if he ever would. And in the end he did, didn’t he?”

  Hurley nodded. “Yes, he did. How did you come to learn of the body?”

  “I watch the telly now and then. When I heard the place he was found, I knew.”

  All right, this is getting weird, Maura thought. The body that was found in the bog and the body of the poor guy in Skibbereen—they were connected, to this house, this family, even though they were eighty years apart? Those two deaths had somehow led the police—and her—to this seedy farmhouse?

  “The letter,” Maura said suddenly. “Jerry, you were at Sullivan’s when I was talking about the letter from Australia. And you told your grandfather about it, right?”

  Jerry’s eyes darted to Denis’s, and it was Denis who answered. “He didn’t know the story then, but when he came home talking about it, I knew that if you went to the gardaí with it, they’d figure it out soon enough.” Denis’s eyes flooded with a new kind of sadness. He spoke directly to his grandson. “Tell them, Jerry.”

  Jerry avoided his grandfather’s eyes. “Grandda, won’t help nothin’.”

  “Tell them!” The old man’s voice still held a hint of steel.

  Grudgingly Jerry said, “Me da didn’t want to have nothin’ to do wit’ farmin’. He took himself off to Dublin, and he’s there yet. But like Grandda said, he’s still here, and the land, so Da sent me back to help out. But when we heard the news about the body in the bog, and Grandda told me about what the old man had done, I come to think maybe we didn’t exactly have the right to the place, since we don’t know if Jeremiah McCarthy got it honest, like, and we might lose it if the body came back to us. I told Danny I seen you going into the garda station, and he thought you’d be telling about seeing us at Sullivan’s, close to the time that man was killed, and I let him go on thinking that. That’s when Danny decided to try to scare you off, and I didn’t try and stop him, because I wanted you gone too, for the other thing. You”—he turned to Maura and spoke with surprising vehemence—“you coulda let us be, just gone home and left us alone.”

  Maura glared at a belligerent Jerry. Then she found her voice. “You idiot! This is my fault? I came here minding my own business, not bothering anybody, and that pal of yours tried to kill me! He seriously thought I’d just pack up and take myself back to wherever? It was a coincidence that I knew about the man from the bog—your relative—because I was driving by when the gardaí pulled him out of the bog. But if you two hadn’t come after me, I might have just gone home like you wanted, and that would have been the end of it. But it was because you two who were so thickheaded that I ended up leading the gardaí right to your door.”

  Maura fell silent, realizing only slowly that everyone was staring at her. Well, let them; she knew she was right. “So, Mr. Detective, what’re you going to do now?”

  “Yes, Detective, are you going to charge the boy?” Denis’s voice was surprisingly strong.

  Hurley looked at Denis for several seconds without speaking. “I haven’t decided. At the least, he’s been conspiring with his Dublin friend, and we’ve plenty to charge him with.”

  “Jerry here’s not a bad ’un, just…he doesn’t use his head. That’s no crime, is it?”

  If it was, a whole lot of people would be in jail, Maura thought. She couldn’t sit still any longer. Abruptly she stood up and stalked to the edge of the room. Without thinking, she started picking up pieces of the bric-a-brac that had been tossed around and broken in the brief struggle. Someone had collected these things, years ago, and placed them around the room, and there they had sat for decades, until a policeman and a Dublin thug had smashed them to bits. She sneaked a glance at Denis McCarthy. He looked older than he had when they arrived. Jerry had settled into an expression that was one part surly and two parts scared. She almost felt sorry for him.

  Among the debris was an old carved pipe, its stem snapped off—and she recognized the carved pattern on it. Mutely she handed it to Hurley, who looked at Denis. “I’m guessing this was your father’s?” he asked.

  “It was, and me uncle had one like it—I remember my father carving them by the fire at night.”

  Hurley nodded once and slipped the broken pipe into an inner pocket of his jacket. Maura might have smiled: not exactly a standard way to collect evidence. She’d put money on that pipe matching the one taken from the Bog Man’s pocket.

  Hurley finally said, “This isn’t the first time you’ve been in trouble, is it, Jerry?”

  The old man sighed, then answered for him. “Nah. His da thought maybe things would be different for him here. But he’s no farmer, and he still finds trouble, or it finds him. I don’t know what to do with him. He never finished his schooling, and he has no trade. There’s no other work for him here, nothing apart from the farm.”

  True, Maura thought, stacking shards of china in her hand. Jerry’s future looked dim, with or without the farm. And yet…he’d been willing to fight to let his grandfather keep the farm. Maybe there was some good in him? Over the mantel hung a standard religious print, framed in chipped gilt, festooned with desiccated palm fronds. The mantle had been crowded with framed photographs, until they had been swept to the floor, where they now lay amidst slivers of broken glass. Maura gingerly extricated the pictures, shaking off the glass. The photos covered several generations. So many ancestors, and yet this branch of the family had dwindled down to this poor mismatched pair, grandfather and grandson.

  The largest picture was a handsomely matted ensemble, the work of a professional studio: a cluster of oval shots, with one larger central picture. From the faded sepia tone of the photos, and the hairstyles and dress, she figured it had to be from about 1900. It must have been expensive for a farming family. A stiff portrait of a middle-aged man and woman occupied the central place of pride: the parents? There were younger people in orbit around them, two boys and two girls, all in their finest clothes. The family resemblance was undeniable.

  And then her eyes widened. She had seen one of those photographs before. She set the picture down carefully and retrieved her bag from where she’d left it under a chair. Fishing in its depths, she pulled out the envelope that held everything she’d brought to show anyone who had known her grandmother. The sad fact was, that single slender envelope held almost every personal document and picture that her grandmother had kept over the years. She leafed through it and found what she was looking for: a picture that was a match for the one she’d picked up from Denis McCarthy’s floor. The mother and father in the picture were her own great-great-grandparents, and one or the other of the girls had been Gran’s mother. Which meant…

  “Maura?” Hurley’s voice broke into her thoughts. “Are you all right? You’ve gone pale.”

  Maura turned to him. “I’m fine, but…Wait a moment.”

  She retrieved the group photograph and perched on the chair next to Denis McCarthy, whose eyes—old but still sharp—were on her face. She leaned forward.

  “Mr. McCarthy, when I first came in, you were staring at me. Why?”

  For a long moment the old man’s eyes looked inward, searching his memories, and then he spoke. “You reminded me of my aunt Ellen. I knew her only a short while, until I was maybe six or seven. That was at the old place. You have the look of her.”

  “I think she was my great-grandmother,” Maura said. “My gran didn’t have many pictures, especially from Ireland, but she had this one, and she told me about it when I first found it in a drawer. My grandmother married Ellen McCarthy’s son James Donovan.” Maura showed the old man her copy, and gestured at the group shot. “Which one was Ellen?”

  “Bridget—she’s the one on the left—went to Australia, and Ellen’s on the right.” He held on to the picture, lost in thought.

  Maura turned to Patrick Hurley. “So that makes Denis Fla
herty, who wrote the letter, Bridget McCarthy’s son, not to mention some kind of cousin of mine. And I’m related to poor Denis from the bog, and to Denis here, and to Jerry. Detective, everybody in this mess is related!” She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Except maybe Old Mick, and who knows how Denis Flaherty found his name.” She turned to Denis McCarthy. “I’m sorry if I stirred up…things that might have been better left alone. I didn’t mean to.” What would Gran have made of this mess?

  The old man shook his head. “No fault on you—it’s not your doing. My father did wrong, and you shouldn’t have to pay the price. And now we can give my uncle a proper burial.”

  Maura was relieved when Patrick Hurley stood and said, “Mr. McCarthy, I need to get back to Skibbereen and see to Danny Mullan. Jerry?” He turned to Jerry, who looked at him with feeble defiance. “Your grandfather needs your help here. If I don’t charge you, can you keep yourself out of trouble? And I’ll need you to testify about what Danny did.”

  “Yes…sir. And, uh…” He seemed confused about what to say to Maura. “I’m sorry about Danny—I shoulda stopped him, only I didn’t know how.”

  “Thank you.” She looked to Hurley for guidance. “And thank you, Detective Hurley. Jerry deserves a chance. Mr. McCarthy? Maybe I can come back and talk to you again, when things aren’t so crazy.”

  Hurley said gently, “Maura, we need to be going now. I’ll drop you back at Leap.”

  “Sure. Fine.” Maura followed him wordlessly out the door and sat in the car while the detective went around to the other side and started the engine, then pulled out of the farmyard. Then she asked, “How much do you know about fraud and inheritance and property rights and all that stuff?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because to me it sounds like Denis’s father killed his brother so he could get control of the farm and sell it, or at least swap it. That document he came up with was probably a fake, which means he stiffed the poor widow and her children—isn’t that fraud or something? So who does the farm really belong to? Jeremiah sold the old place in Carrigeeny based on a murder and a forgery, but is there a statute of limitations for this sort of stuff?”