“Very.”
“Do you surf and roller-skate and wear very small bikinis and eat avocado on everything?”
“Oh, sure,” she said. “My favorite thing to do in the whole world is eat avocado while I’m surfing and wearing a very small bikini. Similarly, you probably run around saying ‘top o’ the morning’ and chasing leprechauns, right?”
“Guilty of stereotyping as charged.” He grinned and lit up a cigarette. “What do you need? Can I offer you something?” From the drawer of his desk he brought out a jar of instant coffee and a box of tea bags, held them up for her to see.
“Nothing, thanks.” She pulled a notebook from her purse, looked at her notes from their previous conversation and tried to separate the Niall Maguire she’d just kissed from the Niall Maguire she’d come to Ireland to write about. “You’d said the three of you grew up together. Tell me about when you were older. When did Maguire and Moruadh began to develop a romantic interest in each other?”
He sighed. “Like I told you, Moruadh always played us off against each other. While Maguire was away at university though, Moruadh and I…well, she was my girl. We’d go to dances, take the ferry from Roonah over to Clare Island. Take off all our clothes and go skinny-dipping in the strand.” He smiled. “All the things you do when you’re young and in love.”
“And what happened?”
“Maguire came home one summer, and I found them together.”
“So he stole her away?”
“You could put it that way, yes. But even after it happened, she still loved me. Maguire just dazzled her with all his fancy ways. It was always me she returned to, though, even after they married. Until, of course, he killed her.”
OF COURSE that was just Fitzpatrick’s interpretation, Kate decided as she opened the front door to the Pot o’ Gold later that evening. And Fitzpatrick was obviously bitter. Still, she realized that she was reluctant to accept anything that put Niall Maguire in a bad light.
In the kitchen, she learned from Patrick that Annie had gone to Dublin to be with an elderly relative who had broken her hip. She would be back the following evening, Patrick said. In a note slipped under Kate’s bedroom door, Annie wrote that she was dying to learn the name of the mystery man on the cliff.
Early the next morning, Kate wrote a message for Annie. She said nothing about the mystery man, or his real identity; nothing about kissing him. Just that she would be up at Buncarroch Castle interviewing Niall Maguire. She put the Mace in her pocket and, just for good measure, a police whistle. Kind of ridiculous, but she’d been a Girl Scout and she knew the whole thing about being prepared.
Maguire had just returned from walking his dog when Kate arrived at the castle; he seemed delighted to see her. He wore an Aran sweater and jeans and looked just as fantastic as he had yesterday. Behind him, the castle, silhouetted against the iron sky, looked just as sinister.
“I’ve found I do have some time for an unproductive day.” Kate felt her heart beat a wild tattoo. She bent to pat the dog in an attempt to hide the color she felt flooding her face. “Will today work for you?”
He smiled. “It will. Very well. But so your time isn’t entirely unproductive, what if I give you a tour of the castle? That way you won’t be consumed by guilt over the time you’ve wasted.”
“That’s very considerate of you.”
“Just an attempt to dispel the notion that there’s a lump of ice where my heart should be.”
Kate hunched her shoulders against the cold and watched him insert a large old-fashioned key into the rusted lock. The rain was back, drops tracing a familiar course down the back of her neck. Patrick had said that morning that the way to forecast rain was to look at the mountains. If you could see them, it was going to rain. If you couldn’t, it was already raining.
She shivered. Buncarroch Castle was definitely not a reassuring place. Last night, Patrick had mentioned the vengeful spirits that were supposed to haunt it. In the cozy warmth of the Pot o’ Gold’s kitchen, the story had struck her as quite comical. Now, it was less so.
“Nothing’s easy about this place,” Maguire said as he finally managed to unlock the door. “The locks are old and the wood swells in the damp. One of these days I’ll get around to putting new ones on, but they’re low on my list of priorities.” One palm flat against the wooden door, he turned to smile at her. “A week of this and you’ll no doubt be glad to get back to America.”
Kate smiled back at him. The sizzle hadn’t cooled one bit. The possibility of ending up in one of the bedchambers was definitely there. Which also explained why her verdict had inched still further along the spectrum from probably guilty to unjustly accused. Either that, or she just couldn’t deal with the idea that she’d kissed a possible murderer. No, he wasn’t a murderer. She’d know somehow. He’d be sending out murderous vibes. Plus, he had a dog. A big, goofy dog who right now was licking her fingers. That didn’t go with being a cold-blooded murderer.
She absorbed the details that six days from now would be only memories. The slight tilt of his head as he turned to smile at her. The narrow planes of his face. His hand, pale against the dark wood grain of the door. Long slender fingers—an artist’s hands. And then she blinked because it wasn’t the wooden door she was looking at under his palm. It was Moruadh’s back.
As clear as a picture held before her eyes, she saw Moruadh at the edge of the cliff. Tiny yellow flowers on her sundress, the way her dark glossy hair fell in smooth waves to her shoulders and there, just where the hair ended, Niall Maguire’s hand.
“Kate.” He peered into her face “Are you all right?”
“Huh?” She shook her head to dislodge the image. “Yeah, I’m fine. Fine.”
“What is it?” Niall stood in the open doorway. “You’re white as a sheet.”
“I’m fine. It’s just the cold.” Unable to meet his eyes now, she slipped past him, through the door and into the castle’s great hall. In her pocket, her fingers touched the can of Mace. Niall followed behind her.
“Have a seat.” He gestured at the battered leather armchairs grouped around the fireplace, then began to move around the cavernous room. All motion, he blew into his hands, turned on lamps and sent several glances. “Will you have some tea? No. A shot of whiskey? Egg and chips? You’re hungry, is that it?”
“I’m fine.” The image was fading now. She smiled, touched by his obvious concern. Once, on a ski trip with a man who’d professed to love her, she’d broken her leg and he hadn’t given her a fraction of the attention. But still. “Listen…” She glanced at the phone. “Could I—”
“Let someone know where you are?”
She felt her face color. “I didn’t mean…”
“I understand.” He seemed about to say something more, then stopped. A moment passed. “While you’re phoning,” he finally said, “I’ll feed Rufus. Back in a minute.”
The door slammed and she heard the sound of his footsteps across the gravel and then his voice as he called to the dog. She picked up the old-fashioned black receiver, started to dial, then replaced it again. Why was she hesitating? Even if the rumors about him eventually proved false, it made sense to play it safe, right? And Annie may not have found the note.
She dialed Annie’s number, heard the machine click on and left a message that she was at Buncarroch Castle and would be back around four.
She hung up, blew into her hands. Stamped her feet. Tried again to separate the Niall Maguire who might have killed his wife from the man she’d kissed on the cliff. The man she wanted to kiss again. No, she couldn’t think about the kiss. She would erase it from her mind and concentrate on the article. If she could win Maguire’s trust, he might talk about Moruadh. Trust was a two-way street. If she trusted him, he should trust her.
Too cold to sit still, she paced the hall. The room was about the same temperature as her freezer in Santa Monica. The air even smelled cold. An earthy, moldering whiff from the stone floors and walls that made her think o
f graveyards. Outside, the wind had picked up, producing a cacophony of ghostly whistles and sighs. A floorboard creaked behind her. Heart hammering, she turned, half expecting to find a bony skull leering at her.
Okay, enough with the Gothic. She took some deep breaths and started on a little self-guided tour of the great hall. Niall Maguire obviously owned a huge chunk of real estate. This room alone could have comfortably accommodated a couple of marauding armies. With space left over to squeeze in her entire apartment. A little short on charm, though. She squinted up at the tattered banners emblazoned with faded coats of arms that fluttered from the ceiling. Tried to avoid eye contact with the assorted fox and stag heads along the walls. Irish feudal. With strong accents of Early Taxidermy.
Still pacing, she found herself at the far end of the hall, gazing up at a wall of portraits. Stern-eyed men and women with distant stares. One dark-haired woman with fine-boned features and pale gray eyes seemed to fix Kate with a disdainful look. Probably saw her as a fortune hunter, a hussy out for Maguire’s money. Amusing, but a reminder nonetheless of what—besides geography—separated the two of them. One day Kate hoped to scrape up enough to buy a condo. Maguire’s second home was a sixteenth-century castle; an ancestral home in which he could look up and see his own genes reflected in generations of painted portraits. Her family, which she couldn’t trace beyond her immigrant grandparents, dwelled in anonymous apartments and subdivisions scattered across America.
She wandered back to the fireplace. An eagle hung on the chimney wall, amber glass eyes, talons curled as though ready to pounce. The sight of it depressed her, and she looked away. Oscar Wilde had summed up her sentiments about hunters. The unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable. Was Niall Maguire a hunter? She didn’t want him to be. Any more than she wanted to believe he’d murdered Moruadh.
“Kate.” He was suddenly behind her, the dog at his heels. “Sorry it took so long. Rufus went off down the hill in search of his lady friend. Little tart of a Pekingese. I had to go and break things up.” He sighed. “Ah well, the course of true love never runs smooth, eh?”
“So they say.” She pointed to the eagle. “Your trophy?”
“God, no. It’s been there forever. I’ve wanted to take it down for a long time.” He waved a hand in the direction of the animal heads. “All of these things, but my former partner and I were talking about turning this place into a small hotel. She thought they added authenticity.”
“So you don’t hunt?”
“I don’t. Never have.” He gave her a quizzical look. “Why?”
“Nothing.” He’d unbuttoned his dark coat and his face was flushed from the cold. She smiled at him. “I’m just glad to hear it, that’s all.”
“Right.” He studied the worn carpet at his feet for a moment, then looked up at her. “Helps balance all the other things you’ve heard about me, does it? All the gossip and speculation.”
“I don’t believe gossip,” she said, but his eyes had darkened and the smile that had been there moments ago had disappeared. Something told her Niall Maguire wasn’t quite as detached and aloof as everyone portrayed him. For some reason, the thought reassured her.
But she took the Mace with her on the tour of the castle anyway, tucked discreetly away in her pocket. As they climbed stairs and walked endless corridors, the knowledge that Annie and Patrick knew where she was stopped Kate from panicking each time the image of Maguire’s hand on Moruadh’s back reappeared.
An image that warred for attention with the chemistry thing.
Once, as he helped her down a steep flight of stairs, his hand touched hers; another time she looked up to find him watching her. The moment of eye contact charged the air around them. An instant later, she stared at him and imagined the cold, calculating mind of a man who had murdered his wife. And then he smiled and the image dissolved like mist.
If the brain could have whiplash, she thought as she followed him up yet another steep spiral stairway, hers had a bad case.
“Only another couple of chambers and a few flights of stairs.” Niall glanced at her over his shoulder. “Knackered, are you?”
“If that means tired, I’m getting there.” Breathless, she climbed the remaining stairs and came out into a long, narrow hall. At the end, Maguire pushed open a heavy door and they walked into a dank blackness lit only by the beam of his flashlight. Involuntarily, Kate shuddered. The temperature had dropped by a good ten degrees and the silent, claustrophobic darkness seemed to close in around them.
“We’re in the west tower.” His flashlight cast an arc of light on moss-covered stone. “It’s the oldest part of the castle, built back in the late 1500s. If you look at the building from the outside, you can see how this section juts out over the ocean.”
Kate nodded, recalling the precarious tilt of the wing. It had to be safer than it looked, or he wouldn’t have brought her here. Still, she wouldn’t be sorry when this part of the tour was finished.
“It’s also the haunted wing,” he added in a matter-of-fact tone. “Well, the whole place is haunted, but most of the sightings occur here.” He pulled open another wooden door, and the flicker of a smile crossed his face. “Not scared of ghosts, are you?”
“I don’t believe in them.” She zipped the parka up to her chin and followed him into a long, low-ceilinged room. After the darkness of the corridor, the gray morning light coming through the tall narrow windows was almost blinding. When her eyes adjusted, she saw that the room was empty, except for a small desk, some tripods and lighting equipment and several rows of black-and-white photographs tacked along the length of one wall.
“I’m a commercial photographer,” Niall said. “These days, I use this room as a studio.” He walked over to a small desk by the window. “Moruadh used to write up here. If you ignore my stuff, the place looks pretty much as it did then.”
“Why here?” Kate glanced around the ordinary-looking room. “Out of all the rooms in the castle, I mean. Why this one?”
“Actually, she had another one, but when a storm made it almost inaccessible, she moved her things to this room. It intrigued her.” He stood by the window, in profile to her. “It has a bit of a notorious reputation. She wrote a song about one of its former occupants. The White Lady. Have you heard it?”
“I’m not sure.” Frowning, she sifted through the titles of Moruadh songs. “Something about a ghost?”
“That’s it. This was the bedchamber of a young bride who met an unfortunate end on her wedding night. Her ghost is supposed to walk the halls. Crying and wailing.”
Kate tried to imagine Moruadh writing at her desk. In daylight, with Maguire’s photography equipment scattered around, the room didn’t seem particularly intimidating, but she was starting to feel sensitized by the castle. Maybe Kate didn’t believe in ghosts, but she wouldn’t choose this as a place to work. Then she thought of Rory McBride’s bizarre story. Flowers for her coffin. A study haunted by a murdered bride. Was a theme emerging? Had Moruadh been fixated by death?
“I had a strange experience in this room a few months after Moruadh died,” Maguire said. “I was painting it and I wanted to finish because I was leaving the next day to ski in Switzerland. Anyway, I was up the ladder and I felt…” He paused as though searching for the words. “Well, someone breathed on the back of my neck.”
Kate stood in front of a framed photo of two old women, creaky and stooped. Their heavy clothes fell in blurred lines. In the glass, she could see Maguire’s reflection. Her body felt light, almost weightless. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear any more of what he had to say.
“It was the strangest feeling, so intense that I stopped working for a while. The thing is, I knew, or sensed, who it was. A fellow I’d known in university. Big mountain-climbing enthusiast, killed in an avalanche. By the time I went skiing, I’d sort of put it out of my head.” He paused again for a moment. “Well, anyway. The first day I went up, the cable on the chair snapped. Two people were killed. I broke my arm.�
��
“And you connected the two experiences?”
“I did. I think Moruadh was trying to warn me,” he said.
“I’m curious.” She looked at him. “Why did you just tell me that story?”
He smiled slightly, as though he’d expected the question. “I used to scoff at her for seeing signs in everything, but sometimes I wonder. Who knows? Maybe the world we can’t see is just as substantial as the one we can.”
She stared at him, not sure if he was serious.
“Think of the way some poetry, or music, makes you feel,” he said. “As though you’ve fallen under a spell.”
She smiled.
“You’ve never felt that way?”
“Never.” She shoved her hands deep in the pockets of her parka. In California, she would have scoffed outright at such talk. Here in Ireland, she couldn’t dismiss it so easily, and the thought disconcerted her. Suddenly she yearned to be back in her modern Santa Monica apartment. A place where no ancient ghosts haunted the rooms and the bright sunshine burned away shadowy fears of the unknown. And then her cynical side took over.
“I suppose if you buy that sort of thing,” she said. “Fairy rings wouldn’t be that far-fetched, either.”
“No, they wouldn’t. A very short step from one to the other.” He looked at her. “Ready to resume the tour?”
Kate followed him out of the room, back into the dark corridor, rattled and a little frightened. Not of Maguire, really, but of some huge, amorphous thing that she couldn’t give a name to. As she walked along with him, it took every bit of effort she could muster not to start running.
“I’M SORRY YOU NEED TO LEAVE.” Niall looked at Kate, green anorak zipped up to her chin as she backed away from him across the great hall. One minute he’d been telling her something—he couldn’t even remember now what it was—and the next she was practically tripping over herself to be gone. “There’s still quite a bit to see.”
The Man on the Cliff Page 9
