Cruel Winter: A County Cork Mystery

by Sheila Connolly

  Several men raised their glasses.

  “And they’ll ask different questions as well. Am I right?”

  Nods all around.

  “So, back then, a reasonably attractive woman, not yet forty, was found dead outside of her home. No sign of robbery or assault before the vicious stabbing that killed her. Nothing was stolen or disturbed in the house. No one nearby—not that there were many—saw or heard anything out of the ordinary. If you toss out the random homicidal stranger, as Maura suggested, and aliens from space, there’s nobody who wanted to kill the woman. So the male police force jumped to the conclusion that this was about sex.”

  That statement met with stony silence. “Didn’t anybody have a better idea?” Maura asked.

  Diane shook her head. “Not that I heard. The problem was, nobody would say it out loud. Sure, it was a different time, but this was an official investigation, not just some sniggering in the pub.”

  “Okay,” Maura replied, “I can see why that wouldn’t fly in the press. Was there censorship then? Things that the papers couldn’t say or print?”

  Diane sniffed. “The journalists had a grand time dancing around the subject, and everybody knew what they meant. They stayed within the letter of the law. But it made a better story and sold more papers if there was a whiff of scandal.”

  Maura considered her options. Clearly the men, most of them not young, were uncomfortable talking about this subject, even though they had probably thought of it before in connection with the murder. “Why your husband? Was there nobody else around that was a good fit?”

  Diane shrugged. “There’s a whole handful of reasons—take your pick. Our house was closest. We all knew that stretch of ground, so it would have been easy. We didn’t have children to get in the way. And as Seamus pointed out, someone else coming by regularly would have been noticed. No one was.”

  Maybe she should come at it from a different direction. “Okay then, let’s take another tack,” Maura said. “Sharon was married, right?”

  “She was. But as I’ve said, her husband was a few hundred miles away, drinking with his mates. Unless he had a twin brother, he couldn’t have done it.”

  Maura looked around at the group. “Anybody know of a twin? Or someone who could be mistaken for him? Six cousins who all look alike?” Nobody answered.

  She turned back to Diane. “What was their marriage like?”

  Diane shrugged. “I can’t say. I’ve told you that I didn’t know Sharon well. When we did see each other, we talked about simple things, like the weather or airfare or some such. I might have met her husband once or twice, but I can’t recall if I ever had a conversation with the man. Of course the gardaí covered all that with me. I’m not sure they believed me when I said I didn’t know either of them well. They seem to have assumed that the entire English crowd spent their time together.”

  “Did she and her husband usually travel here together?”

  “Sometimes. Not always.”

  “How did they come to buy the house in this area? You said you had family connections, but did either one of them?”

  “Maura, I never gave that much thought,” Diane replied, looking bewildered. “I think she told me once that she and her husband had driven through once, years earlier, and she’d always thought it looked like a pretty, peaceful place. But I can’t say if that was their reason for returning. He was a property developer—maybe he thought it was a good investment.”

  “There were and are a lot of people from other countries out that way, aren’t there?”

  “There are—we were considered ‘blow-ins.’ For a time, it was fashionable in certain circles to own a country house in West Cork. There were English, then Germans. I’m told the Belgians have moved in more recently, but I haven’t spent much time around here in the past few years, so things could have changed again.”

  “The area’s been popular fer a while,” Bart answered. “Mostly because it’s pretty, and the land was cheap, at least compared to other places. Not much use fer more than the scenery, unless you want to graze yer cattle. Which the blow-ins did not. They liked to tell their city friends, ‘Oh, I have a cottage near the coast in Ireland.’ Trendy, it was, fer those who could afford it.”

  “Did these blow-ins and the local people hang out together?” Maura asked, trying to find a different angle.

  “Yer askin’ us?” Joe said. “We weren’t exactly invited to their parties, yeh know. They might buy a load of turf off of us if they hadn’t already put in the central heating.”

  “Yeah, I get that. But did one person arrive and buy a place, and then tell all his friends back home, and then they all showed up and bought places? So they sort of knew each other?”

  Mick stepped in. “Maura, we wouldn’t know. It’s a ways away from here.”

  Maura swallowed a comment about how a place ten miles away could be considered unknown territory to the local men. They might know the townlands nearest to their home down to the last rock, but someone from the next town over would be said to come “from away.” “How many people are we talking about?”

  “Maura, what’re yeh gettin’ at?” Mick asked.

  “I want to know how big the suspect pool was. Ten people? Fifty people? And how far away was considered too far to be on the list? Did people drive? Walk? Ride bikes? A horse? Look, it comes back to my question: were there no other suspects?”

  “When the gardaí learned that my husband was having an affair with Sharon,” Diane said quietly, “they thought they had their answer.”

  Maura took a deep breath. “Who told them?”

  “It wasn’t me, although I confirmed it when they asked me. So someone else told the gardaí,” Diane said.

  “Did you know?” Danny asked. “About the two of ’em?”

  Diane turned toward him. “I knew but I didn’t, if you see what I’m saying. We came down to Cork for a mix of business and holiday. My husband Mark had started making money with investments. Paul’s construction company was doing well, and he had local clients. In fact, he may have remodeled some of those houses the newcomers were snapping up. For all I know, they may have done business together—I never asked.”

  “So why did you say you thought you knew that he and Sharon were . . . you know?”

  Diane smiled without humor and looked at the others in the room. “Shall we pick a term to use? I don’t want to offend anyone here with my language. Would you prefer ‘getting it on’? Shagging? Sleeping together?”

  “Let’s stick to havin’ an affair,” Bart said. “It was physical, was it not? Not just longing gazes across the bog?”

  “As far as I know, it was. But I wasn’t looking for proof. It was easier to turn a blind eye.”

  Diane’s bald statements were not making her popular with the people here. Had she used the same line with the gardaí, originally? If so, it wouldn’t have been surprising that they’d held it against her.

  “How did they manage to carry on an affair?” Maura asked suddenly. “I mean, you were married, Sharon was married. You both lived somewhere else, not here. You both came over here when you felt like it, not on some regular schedule. Sometimes alone, sometimes with your husbands. So when and how did they find the time to carry on? Did they meet up back in England? Somewhere else? Weekends in Paris or Spain? How did this work?”

  Diane and several other people were staring at Maura now, but she went on, “I mean, seriously, how many ‘meetings’”—Maura made air quotes—“does it take to make it an affair? One a year? Once a month? And were they in love, or were they just scratching an itch? Or messing with your head or Sharon’s husband’s?”

  Now people were gaping at her, and Maura was getting frustrated. “Oh, come on, people. You must have thought these things at some point. Somebody died. Have you heard anything that tells you that anybody involved felt strongly enough to kill that person?”

  “I can only speak for myself, Maura,” Diane began. “My husband and I were not in love
at that point, but we had a decent enough relationship. If he was carrying on with Sharon, I have no proof, as I said. I never came upon them together doing anything suspicious. And this was not the first time or the last for Mark. We’re still together. I know that may be hard for most of you to understand, but it works for us.”

  “Did yeh stay with him fer the money?” someone asked.

  “I’ve worked most of my life, and I inherited a bit from my parents. I didn’t need his money. And if I’d wanted that, I could have killed him rather than Sharon. He had plenty of insurance.”

  “Yer tellin’ us that you didn’t care that he was seeing another woman right under yer nose?” Danny asked, his tone incredulous.

  “Well, it wasn’t exactly under my nose, but that’s what I’m saying.”

  “And had you had . . . flings of yer own? As payback, say?”

  “No, I did not. Not here, and not in England.”

  “Did anything change for your husband or both of you when Sharon died?” Maura asked. “Did he stop catting around? Was he depressed? Angry?”

  “I’d say he was relieved.”

  Maura stared at her. “Why do you say that?”

  Diane looked down at her hands in her lap. “As I said, I don’t really know the facts. I’m only guessing. I think Mark enjoyed the hunt, the secrecy, the drama of an affair. He enjoyed the company of women—in all ways. But he also had a short attention span, if you will. Once he’d made his conquest, he got bored quickly. He had Sharon, he tired of Sharon, end of story.”

  “So yer sayin’ he didn’t care enough fer the woman to kill her?” Billy asked.

  “That’s about it. I’d say she cared more than he did. It would have been more likely that she would have killed him—not the other way around—if he left her.”

  “Who’s to say she didn’t try, and he ended up turning the tables on her?” Danny asked.

  “I told you, he was in England when Sharon died. The gardaí did check that.”

  “Can we go back to where we started?” Maura said. “Diane, you’re saying the gardaí decided you were their favorite suspect only because your husband Mark was having an affair with Sharon?”

  “Yes. For them, it appeared to be the easiest answer. They boiled it down to: my husband was having an affair with Sharon, I found out and got angry, I killed her in a fit of rage, hence all the stab wounds. That was enough for them. That and the fact that they had no one else to look at after interviewing everybody else in the area.”

  Billy asked suddenly, “Diane, would yeh be kind enough to stand?”

  After a confused look, Diane stood up.

  “Maura, could yeh come stand by her?” Billy went on.

  Maura moved closer to Diane until they were side by side.

  “Maura, how tall would yeh be?” Billy asked.

  “Uh, five seven, maybe?”

  “And Diane here’s a bit shorter. How tall was Sharon, do you recall, Diane?”

  “About my height. And we weighed about the same.”

  “Ta. Gentlemen, can yeh picture this lady grabbing up a knife and inflicting the kind of wounds we know Sharon suffered?”

  The men stared for a long moment, then a few shook their heads.

  “Mebbe one blow to the heart, but many?” Billy pressed on.

  “What happened to the knife?” Joe called out.

  “It was never found,” Diane said. “Plenty of bog there, so it would be easy to throw it away.”

  “How did the gardaí describe the weapon?” Maura asked. “How big? What kind?”

  “They thought it could be a medium-size kitchen knife with a blade about an inch wide,” Bart said.

  “And they assumed that would be a woman’s weapon? If it was from a kitchen?”

  Diane shrugged. “They might have done.”

  “You and Sharon both had knives in your kitchen at your cottages?”

  “I assume. After all, we both cooked for ourselves and for our husbands. For guests now and then.”

  “Were they in sets?” Maura asked. Then she realized she couldn’t remember ever buying knives for herself at all. She was still using whatever Old Mick had left behind—not that she cooked much anyway.

  “No. Look, this was a holiday cottage. We didn’t exactly outfit the place for show. There were probably three, four knives in the kitchen, large and small. I don’t recall that any went missing, but things were a bit unsettled at the time, so I couldn’t say for sure. And after Sharon’s death, after the investigation, we never came back.”

  “Until now,” Maura reminded her. “You didn’t have to, you said. You could have let a lawyer handle everything.”

  “Yes. I suppose I thought enough time had passed . . . Oh, I don’t know what I was thinking! But I do know that once I was happy there, and ever since Sharon died, I’ve been angry that someone took that away from me. I did nothing to deserve that, yet people still assume I had something to do with her death. It’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not,” Maura said. “So let’s do something about it.”

  Fourteen

  Maura looked around the room. She was surprised to see that some of the younger guys had crept in from the back room. Cold? Looking for another pint? Or just bored? Whatever the reason, she didn’t mind. Fresh eyes on the cold case if they stuck around.

  “Diane, let’s back up a sec,” Maura interrupted. “You said your husband was in England when the murder happened, right? And so was Sharon’s. How long did it take them to show up in Cork?”

  “You’re thinking of their alibis? I don’t remember the flight schedules back then, and there were ferries, too. But neither ran often—maybe twice a day?” Diane appealed to the rest of the crowd.

  “Could be right,” someone answered. A couple of others nodded. Maura guessed that few of them had done much traveling back then.

  Maura started again. “So Sharon was killed late at night. Her body was found the next morning. The gardaí were called in, and it took until afternoon to sort out who was in charge. When did they notify Sharon’s husband?”

  “How would I know?” Diane protested. “They knew who she was, and they would have found quickly that she was married. I assume there was a phone number for the man somewhere in her cottage. But I can’t say for sure.”

  “How quickly did you call your husband?”

  “I . . . I’d have to think. The word of the death didn’t go out immediately, you know.”

  Is she avoiding answering the question? Maura wondered. Had she been afraid to give bad news to her husband—or afraid that he wouldn’t be where he’d said he would be? Or was she just waiting for garda approval to tell anyone else? “How did you find out that Sharon was dead?”

  “You mean, who told me? I think it was my nearest neighbor, Mrs. Foster. Her house was on the larger road, a couple of fields over, and she would have noticed the garda vehicles passing by—that was a rare event then.”

  “So she decided to spread the word? Without checking with the gardaí?”

  “Well, at first she wouldn’t have known what the trouble was, only that there was something going on down the lane. But her sister’s son was a garda over at Bantry, so she may have called her sister to find out what was going on.”

  Pretty casual communications for a major case, Maura thought. “When?”

  “Maura, what are you goin’ on about?” Mick asked.

  She turned to him. “Look, the gardaí didn’t know what they were dealing with for a while. They certainly wouldn’t have been making public announcements until they knew who was in charge. And remember, this was before mobile phones. So who would have announced that Sharon was dead, and who would they have told? And when?”

  “It coulda happened the way Diane said—that Mrs. Foster found out from her nephew or someone at the garda station in Schull,” Mick said.

  “So what did Mrs. Foster do?” Maura shot back. “Did she start running around the fields telling everyone she could?”

/>   “The woman was past sixty!” Diane protested. “With arthritis.”

  “So did she get in her car and drive around to tell people?”

  A number of people were now looking at Maura as if she had gone crazy. “What?” she protested. “I’m just trying to work out a timeline. In January, it gets dark like at four thirty, right? What time did Mrs. Foster arrive to give you the news, Diane?”

  “I really don’t recall,” Diane said apologetically.

  “All right, how about this?” Maura rushed on. “When they heard about Sharon’s death, did your husband or Sharon’s husband take the ferry or fly over?”

  “My husband caught a plane,” Diane said. “I can’t speak to how Paul arrived.”

  “And the Cork airport is what, an hour by road from your place?”

  “A bit more.”

  “When did Mark arrive?”

  “The next morning.”

  “Ah,” Maura said.

  That made Diane angry. “Ah, what? I called him at our home once I knew that Sharon was dead. Yes, I reached him at home, if you’re wondering. He hadn’t planned to come over here then, but he caught the first plane he could. Which wasn’t easy, since it was the end of the holiday season. He arrived at our cottage about mid-afternoon. The day after Sharon was found.”

  “Wait—you hadn’t spent the holidays together?”

  “No, we didn’t. Mark had a son by an earlier marriage. He wanted to spend the time with his son. I was fine with that. I never minded being at the cottage alone. So, if you’re asking, we hadn’t had a fight, nor were we separated or anything like that.”

  Maura wondered if that was the real reason or only the public one. Once again, she wondered what kind of impression Diane had made on the West Cork gardaí when they’d first talked to her. She came across as cold. She traveled alone and didn’t seem very close to her husband. The question of whether she knew about his affair—or multiple affairs—must have come up in some interview sometime after the first frenzy, and Maura doubted that the young Catholic men who made up the gardaí had been particularly sympathetic, especially since Diane was English, not local. Had that colored their opinions? Or worse—their official reports? Maura didn’t want to think that Diane had been considered a suspect merely because she wasn’t particularly likable, but her attitude might have tipped the scales.