Dying for Compassion (The Lady Doc Murders Book 2)

by Dr. Barbara Golder

  The woman at the desk was pleasant and helpful, dressed in the requisite black dress, her hair in an asymmetrical geometric cut. Her accent and her name tag indicated she hailed from London, and my ears were thankful.

  “Your room is ready, if you’d like to go on up,” she said as she returned my credit card to me. “I suspected you might be tired from your long trip; Americans always arrive early in the morning, and they are always tired.” She handed me a plastic key card and motioned for a young man standing nearby. “Paul will take you up to your room and Charles, the Head Concierge, can help you with any arrangements you need to make during your visit.” I glanced in the direction she gestured. A dignified man with russet hair sat behind an oak table. The lavender square peeking out of his gray suit matched the color of one of the carpet squares. He nodded almost imperceptibly in my direction, all the while keeping one eye on his computer screen. Beside him, a young man in black slacks and white shirt, open at the collar, stood. He winked. I suspected that the man at the desk would have disapproved. I winked back.

  Paul picked up my suitcase and led me to the elevator: a tiny, dark, mirrored thing that rattled its way to the third floor. I stepped out into the hallway, incongruously decorated with religious art, and followed him through a French door to my room at the end of the hall.

  It was modern to the extreme, with two bottles of wine and two glasses on the counter and a flat-screen television on the wall. There was a tiny fridge, and the bed was queen-sized, with a bright, white duvet and five overstuffed pillows. Paul left my bag on the luggage rack. I tipped him and saw him out.

  A minute later, the lights went out in the room.

  Great. I called down to the desk.

  “Front desk. Elizabeth. How may I help you, Mrs. Wallace?”

  I drew in a sharp breath. I was Dr. Wallace these days. No one called me Mrs. Wallace since John’s death. I recovered and explained my predicament.

  Elizabeth laughed, a pleasant sound, not at all derisive. “It’s the key. You have to put it in the slot by the door for the lights to work. Paul should have shown you. I’ll have a word with him. It saves on electricity. It’s actually quite common here.”

  I was glad I hadn’t gone downstairs. My face was flushed with embarrassment. “Please don’t say anything. I wasn’t really paying attention; I’m sure he did, and I missed it. Thanks. Sorry to bother you.” That wink of Paul’s paid off, I suppose.

  I flopped on the bed, which was softer than I would have liked but would serve at least for a few days, and dropped into a restless sleep for a couple of hours. At length, I sat up again and got the number Ben had found me for Eoin’s brother, Terry. It was time I started my investigation.

  ***

  “You’re here?” Terry Connor’s voice held a note of incredulity. “You want to meet with me about Fiona?” His sister, sitting across from him at the breakfast table of the family farm, a half-eaten plate of sausages and eggs in front of her, cocked her head in query. Terry shrugged his shoulders and held up a cautionary finger as he continued to listen. “Right. Very well, then. I’ll meet you at The Hammersley. It’s a small pub about a block from your hotel. Meet me in the snug at five. It’s quiet there, and we can talk.” He paused again, nodding his head. “Yes, yes, of, course, nothing to it. I’ll see you then.”

  Terry touched the screen of his smartphone and replaced it in his breast pocket, then picked up his knife and fork, going after his over-easy eggs with vengeance. Not for the first time did he think the Americans had cutlery right as he struggled to get the runny yolk to adhere to the slick egg white, rounded by the tines. Across the table, his sister, who could have been his twin with the same straight graying brown hair and blue eyes, waited impatiently for him to finish chewing.

  “Well?” she asked as he washed down his bit of egg with a sip of hot, strong, dark, sweet tea.

  “That was Jane. Eoin’s Jane. She’s in Belfast.”

  “What?” Molly Connor set her own mug down with a start. “Belfast? Why?”

  “Seems she thinks that she can find something here to clear Eoin.”

  Two fine lines, a perfect little eleven not treated to Botox (like those of so many of her friends), appeared between Molly’s light brown brows. “Eoin’s prints are on the bottle of Black Leaf. It had to come from the farm. He was just here, before Fiona was killed. As much as I love our brother, it seems pretty grim for him.”

  “True enough. It seems all the evidence points to Eoin. And God knows, he had motive.”

  It was Molly’s turn to postpone her response with a bit of food, and a bit of sausage and toast wiped through the remains of the yolk on her plate. “He’s reason enough, that is certain. Does Jane know about everything Fiona’s done to him?”

  “I doubt it. You know how Eoin is. Rather a stoic. I’d have drowned the woman long ago.” Terry thought back to their time in Dublin when Eoin worked in the shipyards to keep the rest of them on bread and cheese. When he’d married Fiona, he’d had to take on extra shifts, so free was she with his money. “I’ve never believed that Fiona miscarried. I think she was afraid that if she told Eoin she lied about being pregnant to get him to marry her, he’d have petitioned for that decree of nullity right then and there.”

  “She didn’t know him very well, did she? Once he made a promise, he kept it.” She glanced up at the Infant of Prague over the doorway, a pound note just peeking out from under its base. “He always took the Church so seriously. I always wondered why our big brother never took the cloth.”

  “I’m guessing in large part because he was married.”

  “Point taken.”

  Terry reached across for the jar of marmalade, nearly empty, and spooned out the last of it, golden and just bitter enough to be interesting. He’d never developed a taste for sweet jams. A few toast particles clung to the spoon as he returned it, clattering, to the jar. “She told me she’s sure he couldn’t have done it. But she didn’t sound as though she believed it herself.”

  “Eoin could have. I could have,” Molly stated firmly.

  Terry looked at his sister and she gave him a sympathetic glance before she continued. “You could have, and you know it. Eoin is not the only Connor with a motive for murder. Given half a chance of getting away with it, sure, and I could. She’s been a curse to the Connors since the day Eoin met her. And a blessing,” Molly reminded him. “Had she not set Seamus Devlin after me, Eoin would not have been forced to take a runner to England. Never would have been a famous writer, none of that. We’d still be poor and living in a council house in Belfast, or worse.” She reached around to the Aga for the teapot, freshened the leaves, and filled the waiting pot again.

  “It didn’t seem so good at the time.” Terry remembered the incident with a familiar stab of anguish in his gut —part fear, part shame. Seamus Devlin, an all-around rounder and darling of the local I.R.A., had taken a shining to Molly. Eoin had been the only one with enough worry and courage to do anything about it. He’d tipped the R.U.C. to a meeting going on in one of the council flats, a meeting at which would be one Seamus Devlin, considered a prime catch. It was Eoin’s personal tragedy that the R.U.C. got the wrong flat and killed an innocent boy, Tam Murphy, in the bargain.

  As if reading his mind, Molly broke in. “Bad enough Tam died, but that wasn’t the end of it.”

  Terry nodded. “I remember that day like it was yesterday.” Tam’s father had stirred up a mob from the pub to go after a young Protestant dockworker, new to Belfast from England, unfamiliar with the Troubles and all they brought, who’d trailed Eoin to the Catholic part of Dublin and had struck up an acquaintance with a Catholic girl. “Poor love-struck sod,” he said aloud with no need to clarify who he meant, for Molly’s face told him she was standing beside him in that long-ago time, looking on the scene, though at the time she’d been home and heard only second-hand about the fight and Eoin’s flight. “He had no idea that it might be a death sentence for him and the girl in those days. We�
�re just lucky that it wasn’t Eoin who got killed.”

  He saw Molly’s face cloud slightly. “Will you tell Jane?” He knew she had a sister’s tender heart for the men in her life, especially quiet, passionate Eoin, the one who a sister’s love had glossed over many sins, large and small. Eoin was not perfect in her eyes, but by the same token, there was nothing she’d change. “I’m not sure she loves him enough.”

  “Who knows? If I need to tell her everything about him, I will.” Terry felt the familiar stab of admiration tempered by jealousy at Molly’s words. She was a second mother to all her brothers, even the older ones. Too bad she’d never had a family of her own. He wondered if she’d have had a favorite among them like she did among her brothers? It still galled him that he wasn’t the one.

  “Perhaps she needs a dose of reality about Eoin, the saint,” he said.

  Molly smiled as she checked the tea for steeping. “Terrance Michael Thomas Connor, you should be ashamed,” she said. “If she’s known our brother very long at all, she’ll know he’s no saint. Unlike you.”

  He smiled at her genuine affection and teasing and he let her refill his cup, the dark tea making leather out of the milky residue. “It’s time you quit being envious. Eoin’s not worth your own poor soul, you know. He’s had great successes and great tragedies, and this is just another. Who knows how this will end, but Jane’s the one to ride it out, not us.” She set the teapot down and passed the sugar bowl, full of small brown cubes. “I prefer the quiet life to the heroic one, don’t you?”

  Terry took a deep breath and then let it out, long and loud. Molly always had the knack of bringing him about. “I do, indeed,” he answered. He took three small cubes and dropped them into his tea with the worn and tarnished tongs that had been the pride of his mother’s table.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  January 19

  The Hammersly was a block-and-a-half down from the hotel, its bright red façade announcing the name in gilt letters over the door, gas lights with frosted gloves in the shape of flames glowing in the windows. I pulled my overcoat snug against the dreary weather, turning the collar up against the damp wind. The sun had already set, and with the gathering dark, the wind had picked up and the soft rain was becoming icy. I found myself missing the more congenial cold of Colorado as I quickened my steps, dodging a yellow taxi as I crossed the street and opened the door.

  The pub was crowded with an end-of-the-day custom: workmen three deep at the bar. I watched the man behind the bar pull pints for a moment or two, partly filling glasses, setting them down to rest, and coming back to top them off as soon as the stout settled out into two layers. I marveled at how he could keep track of the dozen or so glasses he had set out in front of him.

  “Meet me in the snug,” Terry Connor had said. I cast eyes around the room, looking for a likely candidate, but there were no solitary men, no one looking as though he were waiting for someone. I must have looked as perplexed as I was, for a waitress, four empty glasses in her hands, stopped and gave me a look that was half-amused, half-annoyed. I was, after all, standing right in her path to the bar.

  “Lost, are you?” She raised one painted eyebrow so high it almost met her henna-red hair.

  “I’m meeting someone. Terry Connor. He said to meet him in the snug.” I shrugged and added, “I don’t see him.”

  “Snug’s outside.”

  Now I was really confused. “But he said to meet him at the Hammersly.”

  “Snug’s outside,” she said again, then pushed past me, leaving me more confused and increasingly uneasy. She muttered something that I took to be unflattering, even though I could not hear it, to a short, barrel-chested man in a dark blue sweater standing at the corner of the bar. He responded with a grin, pinched her through her tight green pants, and ducked away as she turned back with a scowl on her face.

  The man made his way through the crowd. His round face was sunburned and stubbled. His brown eyes were rimmed and moist, but bright enough. “You poor wee thing,” he said when he reached my side, even though I stood a head taller. “You’re lost, are you? Looking for the snug?” Without waiting for an answer, he took my arm and dragged me back out the door I had just entered, around the corner from the big glass window, to a small, dark, oak entrance on the side alley. Above it was a carved sign, almost too dark with age to make out in the dim light of the street light: Hammersly.

  “Years ago, ladies were not allowed in the public bar,” he explained. “The snug was a place they could meet and get a pint and still maintain their dignity. If Terry said he’d meet you there, there you’ll find him.” He paused and regarded me with a suddenly sharp look. “Must be important for him to meet you there. And not for everyone’s hearing.” He opened the door for me. I slid past him, anticipating that I’d receive the same pinch the barmaid did, but it’s hard to get a purchase on a greatcoat.

  Apparently he figured the same, for as I passed through into the small room, I felt a pat on my rear and heard a chuckle both behind me and ahead. “Thanks, Liam,” said a man sitting on an armchair upholstered with tired red leather.

  “You must be Terry.” I stepped forward and extended my hand. There could be no doubt. He had the same green eyes and the same open face, though he was a few inches shorter, and his hair, more brown than gray, was straight and thin.

  “I am.” He pulled a second chair out from the table, helped me off with my coat, and settled me in. A half-drunk pint of Guinness was on the table. “What will you have?”

  I shrugged. I have no taste for stout, but I felt foolish asking for wine. I shivered a bit without my coat. There was a coal fire in the corner of the snug, but it had died down and the room was cold. I was finding Irish cold to be wet and miserable. “Could I just have some coffee? Black, please.”

  “Anything your heart desires.” He walked to the pass-through and shouted to the barman. “Coffee, please, Seamus. Hot and black. Make a new pot if you have to, you old robber, you.” I heard a guffaw from the other side, and in an instant, a heavy green mug was pushed through.

  I cradled it in my hands as Terry sat down. The warmth felt good. I studied the dark liquid, trying to decide how to begin. He took advantage of the delay to shovel some coal onto the fire. It flared up. I found the smell of the coal fire oddly welcoming.

  It seems Terry Connor knows how to exploit silence as well as I do. He sat down opposite me, silent as the grave, unmoving, taking the odd sip from his glass. I finally looked up.

  “Tell me about Eoin and Fiona,” I said.

  Terry sat back, arms folded across his chest. “So that’s it. What do you want to know?”

  I shook my head and regarded my coffee again. “I just need to understand. You know he’s been arrested for her murder. He didn’t do it. He couldn’t have done it.” I didn’t sound convincing even to myself. “I just thought if I understood more about him — her — them — I might be able to figure out who did kill Fiona and why.”

  Terry laughed, a short, sharp sound. “There’d be no end of candidates for that position,” he said, starting with every man she’s ever tangled with. “Fiona McLaughlin is — was — a conniving bitch who used every man she ever met to advance her own pocketbook. And not starting with Eoin.”

  It was my turn to bide my time. This time I sipped my coffee without looking at it, keeping my eyes fixed on Terry. His face was bland and unemotional, but his eyes narrowed when he spoke Fiona’s name. “Her family was as poor as they come, and the Troubles did them no good at all. Her father was a drunk and a violent man, her mother, too, abusive and alcoholic. Fiona was the youngest of a bad brood, all of them dead or in jail by the time they were twenty. Fiona was different. Prettier, smarter, determined to do well any way she could.”

  “And the way she could was by taking advantage of men.”

  “Not until they had taken advantage of her. Fiona was a slut.”

  I’ve never heard that word said so matter-of-factly. Terry drained his glass
and went to the pass-through to ask for another. Drawing a pint the fine art it is, it was several minutes before he returned. I nursed my coffee until he was back, then nodded in his direction. “And…?”

  “She was a slut,” he repeated. “Chased anything in pants and usually caught them, and she was always, always trading up, leaving the last man for one she thought could keep her better. One day she got caught — or thought she did — between men and being pregnant. She got into Eoin’s bed, announced he was the father of her child, and he married her. My brother, you may have noticed, is afflicted with a serious case of morals. And loyalty.”

  I thought again about my door. I wasn’t so sure about those morals.

  Terry took another draught from the glass and set it back on the table carefully. “Only she wasn’t pregnant. But now she had a fine, clean, warm place to live and a good man to look after her until she could find a better one.”

  It took me a moment to be able to speak. “I see.” I regarded the coffee cup again, empty now, because I was afraid to let Terry see the emotions playing on my face. “Did he love her?” I still didn’t look up, but I could hear the shrug of his shoulders in his voice.

  “Who knows? In his way, perhaps. He was young, and he has principles. He would have married her, love or not, because he thought the child that turned out not to be at all was his. And then he tried to make a go of it, if for no other reason than he had promised to.”

  I could understand that. In fact, I’d experienced it.

  “She left him soon enough. Went off with some Italian play-acting at being a reporter. Eoin had troubles of his own by then.”

  “How so?”

  Terry finished his glass in one long pull and leaned across the table toward me. “You told me Eoin didn’t kill Fiona. That I believe, lass, even though I am not sure you do.”