For the first time Praeger spoke, and the thick, heavy voice seemed to dispel the lightness that somehow Connor had managed to convey. ‘Maura does not think last night was an accident, Connor.’
His black eyebrows shot up. ‘She doesn’t? ‒ what was it then?’
Brendan answered, ‘She thinks ‒’
I cut him short. ‘I’ll say this for myself, Brendan. If it’s going to be said, I’ll say it. I think, Connor, that you broke the joint in the pipe yourself. That you closed the door to my room and stuffed the bath mat along the bottom of it so that I wouldn’t smell the gas. It was meant for Lady Maude, wasn’t it? ‒ in the hope that if she just got enough of it it might bring on another attack. Mrs. O’Shea didn’t notice the bath mat in her hurry, but you were picking it up when I came in ‒ the one thing I’m sure about is that I put it across the bath.’
‘Of course you’re sure about it, because that’s where I found it.’
‘Then what were you ‒?’
He cut in, ‘How do you suppose I got the window open? I don’t think anyone raised that sash in ten years. I had to pound at it with my fists to get it to budge. I simply used the mat as a pad for my hands. If I happened to drop it just where it suited your suspicions to see it …’
I felt the questioning gaze of both Praeger and Brendan on me, and the doubt was established more strongly than before. Connor had had time, of course, to find an explanation for the mat. At the same time it sounded like the truth. But I didn’t believe him.
He took my silence for uncertainty. ‘Do you seriously think,’ he said, ‘I would be capable of anything ‒?’
‘Yes, I do,’ I burst out. ‘I do think you’d be capable of it. I think you meant her to die!’
‘You haven’t let me finish,’ he said, and his calmness was an unnerving contrast to my growing agitation. ‘I was going to say that it would be an incredibly clumsy effort, wouldn’t it? ‒ and I should be credited with a better try. And why should I do it? Lady Maude is old ‒ in her own time she will die. I’ve endured this situation quite some time now ‒ I can last a little longer.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You forget ‒ you forget that you told me you knew the solicitor was coming on Monday. You think you could lose it, after all ‒ all the work, all the waiting. You may lose it because I have come and Lady Maude may make a new will.’
He shrugged. ‘I hadn’t forgotten. But let me stir your memory a little more. I also said that anyone who says that he’s never wished another soul dead in his whole life is a liar. And then I said the wish is not the deed. There’s a very long step between one and the other. I haven’t taken that step yet.’
‘But you didn’t need to the last time, did you?’ It was Brendan who spoke. ‘The other time the deed was done for you. You had the wish and all you had to do was to wait and let the deed happen. No one else had to do the deed ‒ Lotti did it herself.’
Finally, something had reached to Connor. I thought that his face had altered and taken on that ‘black look’ of my own fancy. It was startling to discover how well I had come to know him, to anticipate the change of expression, the passage from cold to hot ‒ in the way I had come to know the whole strange world of Meremount and to accept it. The danger lay in the acceptance.
‘For God’s sake why bring Lotti into this? Lotti is dead ‒ and it’s all done with.’
‘That’s what we thought then.’ Brendan’s words now were not a challenge to Connor, but a recollection; they were thoughtful and slow. ‘We thought, the three of us, that when we had made our compact all to do with Lotti was finished. There was no point in raking over the coals. We agreed to preserve of her what there was left, which was the way people felt about her. We agreed, you and I, Connor, to preserve some tranquillity for Mr. Praeger and Lady Maude, even if there could be none for ourselves. It made no sense to tell what no one needed to know.’ He lifted his hands, including the other two men. ‘So we said then.’
‘And so I say now,’ Connor’s face had resumed its familiar look of rigid control; his voice was tighter. ‘Nothing has changed.’
‘Something has changed. Maura is here ‒ she has changed it. Her whole involvement in this house, with all of us, has changed it.’
‘What the hell has this to do with last night?’ Connor demanded. ‘You’re talking wildly ‒ you’re saying things you’ve no business to say.’
‘Things that have to be said now. Maura might walk out of here tomorrow. Then again, she might stay ‒’
‘No!’
He paid no attention to my protest. ‘It’s her right to stay, if she wants to. Then again, perhaps you’ve persuaded her to stay ‒ who knows? You’re not the only one, Connor, who can see the advantages of that. If she stays ‒ if she even thinks of staying, she has to know.’
‘I don’t agree. This is nothing to do with Maura.’
‘You think, Connor, that I would permit Maura to be drawn closely into this family without telling her.’ Praeger was very sparing in his participation, but when he spoke it was decisive. ‘She may decide yes or no ‒ but she must be allowed to decide knowing all that we know. Now, I think we had better call in the woman ‒ Annie?’
‘Tell her, then,’ Connor said roughly. ‘But for pity’s sake don’t drag Annie back into it. At least we can be spared the tears and the lamentations.’
‘If she hears it from Annie she will hear it as we did. Nothing will have been added or taken away …’
‘No, nothing added except the hysteria and whatever fancies she has embroidered into the tale since last November ‒’
‘Call her,’ Praeger commanded, cutting Connor off.
Brendan went out into the hall. ‘Annie …? Will she be in the kitchen, Maura?’ But Annie had hovered near the dining-room door, apparently expecting the summons. She appeared in view, her apron twisting in her hands, her shoulders assuming a defensive hunch.
‘You called, sir?’ She was not quite sure to whom to address the question; positions in this room had undergone a change, authority was uncertain. Praeger decided to assume it.
‘Yes, Annie, come in. Close the door, please.’
She was slow in doing it, and when she turned her face had registered a frank reluctance, a kind of dread. ‘Oh, sir, it’s not going to start all over again, is it? I mean, sure I try not to think about it, the way you said, but I can’t help it. I’ve barely had a decent night’s sleep since it all happened, and that’s the truth of it …’
Connor flung out his arms, his teeth clenching in exasperation. ‘Is this going to go on …?’
‘Annie,’ Brendan said gently, ‘we know it’s hard, but if you didn’t keep quiet, Lady Maude would have been through a dreadful time, wouldn’t she? And you wouldn’t have let that happen to her, when there was no way to bring Mrs. Sheridan back?’
‘No, sir, and I stick by it. But I wisht … ah, well, I made a promise, and I’ll keep it.’
‘Well, now, Annie, we’re asking that you tell just one other person.’ He gestured towards me. ‘Miss Maura has to know what happened that night. It’s best all around if she does. It’s hard to explain …’
Momentarily the demeanour of fear and nervousness was replaced by a bite of shrewd sensibility. ‘I think I know why, sir. Ignorant I may be, but a fool I’ve never been. I see what’s before my eyes, same as anyone ‒ even if there are those who think I don’t.’ She permitted herself only the merest glance at Connor, but he turned away from it, leaning back against the mantel and staring towards the window, as if what would happen here was no concern of his.
‘Annie, the night of Mrs. Sheridan’s accident ‒’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, speaking now with far less reluctance.
‘You remember I telephoned here?’
Instead of answering Brendan, she spoke directly to me. ‘Mr. Carroll telephoned here, and I took the message, and I went upstairs to tell Mrs. Sheridan, and that’s the God’s truth.’
I wheeled to Brendan. ‘Lotti
was still here? ‒ you told me she had already left. You said you got through too late!’
He motioned me to silence. ‘Did you deliver the message, Annie?’
‘I did not, Mr. Carroll. When I went upstairs wasn’t Lady Maude herself in the passage outside Mrs. Sheridan’s bedroom. She said I wasn’t to go in. So I told her what Mr. Carroll had said, and then she sent me back downstairs.’
‘Why weren’t you allowed to go in?’ Then, as Annie’s look of doubt reappeared, he urged her. ‘Go on, Annie. Half the truth isn’t going to mean anything.’
She turned to Praeger. ‘Am I to tell it all, then, sir? All about Mrs. Sheridan and Mr. Connor?’
He nodded; he looked desperately weary, as though he had already lived again the events of a long and tormented night. The tight grip on his cane never relaxed.
Annie took up the recital again, more slowly. ‘Well ‒ it was because of the row that was going on. That’s why she wouldn’t let me go in. Sure you could hear it ‒ every bit of it ‒ as plain as daylight. Mrs. Sheridan never minded who heard anything. It had been going on ever since I brought up the first message, and I suppose it was what brought Lady Maude out of her room. She could never stand to hear Mrs. Sheridan carrying on.’ Annie shot an apologetic look at Praeger. ‘But sure it was only because Mrs. Sheridan was young, and spoiled like ‒ there seemed no harm in her. It was only high spirits, that is, until this business with Mr ‒’
‘Miss Maura knows about that, Annie ‒ but you tell her about the first message, and what happened after you went up to give it to Mrs. Sheridan.’
‘Well, it had come about half an hour before that. Miss Lotti was upstairs packing for her trip, and she’d sent me to bring up a bottle of champagne. She and Mr. Connor were having it together ‒ they often did that. When I brought it up they were having a little argument, you might call it. Oh, nothing serious, mind you ‒ he was sitting there watching her put her things together and complaining because she wouldn’t let him drive her to Dublin to get the plane, seeing it was such a bad evening, an’ all. And she was saying that she liked to have her own car waitin’ at the airport in case she took it into her head to come home early. And of course he was lettin’ her, because she loved to drive about in that little car of hers, and be her own mistress, so to speak. She always said she didn’t like people keepin’ reins on her ‒ and Mr. Connor, he was tryin’ hard not to do it. There weren’t many men in Ireland, I’m tellin’ you, that would have stood for her flyin’ about here and there ‒ but then, I suppose there weren’t many young ladies like Mrs. Sheridan, either.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ The words burst from Connor. ‘Let’s get to the point, can’t we, and have done with all this gossip!’
‘I was only sayin’ what happened, Mr. Connor.’
‘Then get on with it!’
‘Well, I knocked and came in and told Mrs. Sheridan that there had been a telephone message from the airline people. They said to tell Mrs. Sheridan that there was a two-hour delay in the time the plane would leave, on account of it being delayed in the last place by bad weather ‒ sure it was terrible weather all over at that time, I do remember. I said to them both ‒ Mrs. Sheridan and Mr. Connor ‒ that I’d told the airline people that there was no one here goin’ to Copenhagen, like they said. Mrs. Sheridan was goin’ to London. But they would have it that she was booked to Copenhagen, so there was nothing for it but to give her the message and leave her to straighten it out. But, of course, if I’d have thought for a moment … well, I never should have said it before Mr. Connor. That was the terrible mistake ‒ that’s when I was the fool, right enough. But I never thought for a moment ‒ they had their words, mind you, like any married pair, but I never thought …’
This time it was Praeger who stopped her. ‘Please, Annie, just say what happened.’
‘Well, Mr. Connor sat there listenin’ to what I said about Copenhagen, and there was a mistake, an’ all. Then he said, right out in front of me, mind you, as if I wasn’t there at all, he says “There isn’t a mistake, is there, Lotti? This is the night Brendan flies to Copenhagen?”
‘Mrs. Sheridan didn’t deny it at all. She just laughed. “A little detour, Connor” was what I think she said. He leans over and takes her ticket from her handbag ‒ it was all open there on the dressing-table where she’d been collecting her things. He takes it and opens it, and he reads it aloud. “Dublin, Copenhagen, London, Dublin ‒ a nice little round trip, Lotti,” he says. And right there in front of me eyes he picks up the bottle of champagne and pours it over her two packed suitcases ‒ over all the lovely things she had. “Well, here’s a little send-off,” he said. And that started it! They started shoutin’ at each other ‒ terrible things Mr. Connor called her. And she shoutin’ back at him that she wasn’t goin’ to be held down in a dull old place like this, shoutin’ about his glassworks and all the rest. I ran, I’m tellin’ you.
‘But all the way down the stairs you could hear it, and even down here. Oh, sure I know they didn’t mean the half of it, and they would have come to their senses, but they were like two mad people then. I put my hands over my ears and was praying for them ‒ that they’d stop sayin’ those terrible things, and it would blow over but I had my doubts since the Copenhagen business ‒ and her not even sorry about being found out. “I’m glad,” she kept screamin’ at him. “I’m glad ‒ glad. Now you know and I don’t have to pretend any more. And I don’t have to play this stupid game of being a country lady in tweeds … oh, it makes me sick,” she says, “and I’m glad I’ll be gone”.’
Connor had turned his back and rested his arms along the mantelshelf. I was thankful I couldn’t see his face. Annie’s tone had grown louder and fuller as she had warmed to the recital; the love of drama that lies in all the Irish had come out in the telling, as the memory grew more vivid, and her tongue found again the hot words. I could hear the echoes of that battle even in Annie’s broad brogue, Lotti’s faint accent, the lightness of her laugh, the dark rumble of Connor’s fury and hurt. Annie’s body swayed as she related the scene, seeming to swing from one role to the other, her own interjections a rough Greek chorus.
‘Then,’ she said, and the pitch of her voice fell, ‘the telephone rang again, and it was Mr. Carroll tellin’ me about the bridge being down. So I went right back up to tell Miss Lotti and that’s when I met Lady Maude, and she said she would give the message. Well … I had to leave it that way, since that was what Lady Maude said I was to do, but then I thought for sure Miss Lotti would never go, now that Mr. Connor knew all about it … I thought he’d make her stay behind, the way any other husband would have. So I went back to the kitchen, sayin’ a few Hail Marys for those two poor young creatures that they’d end their quarrel peacefully. Upstairs I heard a door bang a couple of times, as if they were going in and out of their rooms. Then a few minutes later I heard the racket on the stairs, a lot of the wee things failin’ the way they do if you’re not mindin’ yourself when you go down. The next thing I heard the front door slam; I ran out into the hall and to the door, prayin’ it would be Mr. Connor, but it was Miss Lotti’s little car that started up. I ran out into the rain callin’ to her, and wavin’, but she didn’t stop. She must have seen me, for sure, because I remembered the headlights swept right across me. But she didn’t stop. It was then I began to worry that she had the message.
‘I wasn’t sure what to do ‒ I didn’t dare go back to Mr. Connor ‒ him in that black rage an’ all. So I took it on myself to ring through to Mr. Carroll. Sure it wasn’t any use pretendin’ I didn’t know that that was where Miss Lotti had meant to go ‒ that the pair of them were goin’ together to Copenhagen. It would have been all right so long as Miss Lotti knew about the bridge ‒ she could have gone the long way round. But I was worried, you know. I meant to tell him to watch out for her, just in case. But the line was engaged. I waited and I tried again. But you know it’s only a few minutes from here to the North Lodge. This time the phone rang and ran
g, and no one answered. Every few minutes I’d try again, and no one answered. I began to think that maybe, after all, they had made the arrangement to meet in Dublin, but I kept tryin’, all the same.
‘Finally, someone answered. It wasn’t Mr. Carroll. I said I was callin’ from Meremount, careful like, not knowin’ how much to let out about Miss Lotti. “Meremount, is it?” the man said. “Then you’d better tell Mr. Sheridan to get on over here. Mrs. Sheridan’s car’s in the river, and we can’t find her.”
‘I ran upstairs to Miss Lotti’s bedroom, but no one was there ‒ the lights were on, and her bags just as they’d been when Mr. Connor poured the champagne over them. Only the little dressin’-case was gone. There was no sign of Lady Maude. I went along and looked in Mr. Connor’s room, not really expectin’ to see him, because somehow I was beginnin’ to feel that maybe he’d gone after her, and I’d missed him in all the fuss. But he was there, right enough. Just sittin’ in a chair, starin’ at the wall, like a man who was never going to get up out of it again. I told him about Mrs. Sheridan’s car. He didn’t seem to take it in for a while. God help me, I was so upset I went and shook him. “Surely to God,” I said, “you or Lady Maude told her about the bridge being washed away? You couldn’t have let her go knowin’ that …?” He just looked at me, very calm-like, and said, “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” Then he got up and started downstairs, not in a hurry, as if he already knew that she was dead.
‘And dead she was. She left here not knowin’ about the bridge, and ever since that night haven’t I blamed myself that I didn’t make sure that she knew. If I had just been able to stop her ‒ or to get through to Mr. Carroll in those few minutes … Well, it wasn’t meant to be, and I’ve had a death on my conscience ever since.’
Edge of Glass Page 23
