St Ernan's Blues: An Inspector Starrett Mystery

by Paul Charles

‘Yes that’s it, house,’ Father McKenzie enthused like he’d just invented the wheel. ‘He goes over to Orla O’Connor’s sometimes.’

  ‘Would she be an older woman?’

  ‘In fact, yes,’ the father replied, looking slightly surprised that Starrett would know. ‘She has prayer meetings over there as well, but Father McCafferty claims no one was saved.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The first thing, the very first thing, Starrett noticed about Orla O’Connor was her hair. His first impression – albeit uncharitable, he admitted to himself – was old woman, young hair. The detective figured her approach must be, ‘If I spend all my money on my hair, then no one will pay any attention to anything else.’ Her healthy, full, light brown locks were long and straight and parted down the middle of her crown, with a single curl running all around the bottom, which, even though it casually flowed over her shoulder, appeared, to Starrett’s eye at least, to remain static at all times, in the ‘not a single hair out of place’ cliché. Her nose had faded, though, and Starrett couldn’t figure out whether it had been the result of the spectacularly dramatic but rough weather of the locale, or the spectacularly rough booze – maybe even, most likely, a combination of both. She had smoky, hooded eyes, which made her look like she was always about to yawn and her skin had that yellow-hue of an overly sweet dessert wine. And…well, Starrett had this theory that the majority of daughters start off looking like their fathers. The lucky ones, blossomed into wonderful creatures whose looks favoured their mother. Orla O’Connor wasn’t one of the lucky ones. Yet even with all of the above afflictions, she had the confidence of one bestowed with beauty. Maybe it came from her smile, Starrett thought, because when she smiled you forgot about the rest. With her genuine smile, she made the three of them feel very, very welcome.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied, still within the sanctuary of the porch of her large neo-Georgian manse – which was straight from the pages of Hidden Ireland – on the outskirts of Rossnowlagh, ‘I do know Father Gene McCafferty. He is a dear friend of mine. How can I help you? Please, come in.’

  With one hand still on the door and the other deep in the pocket of her blue quilted Barbour, Orla O’Connor looked like she’d either just come in from attending to the chores or perhaps even just back from a brisk walk down on the beach, a quarter of a mile below her. Or, maybe around the house she liked to wear her red patterned silk scarf, fawn riding britches and a pair of black, patent-leather, slip-on shoes, after the male style favoured in the sixties by spivs, which kind of ruled out the walk on the beach or the out doing chores theories.

  Orla led them down the main hallway and through the second door on the left, into the sitting room, which afforded them a magnificent view of the beach below and the dramatic countryside beyond. Starrett was so transfixed by this that he walked straight over to the oversized window to once again drink in one of Donegal’s famous vistas. Packie also joined the inspector by the window, while Gibson hung back with Orla and made small-talk about how beautiful the house was and how expensive it must be to heat. The large windows, Orla claimed, as far as her oil bill was concerned, were nothing but major holes in the walls.

  The house looked like it had been completely furnished with items rejected by the Antiques Roadshow, with a great deal of time and money lavished on both the curtains and carpets.

  Two members of the gardaí were so engrossed by the view and the surfers on the famous beach, that they didn’t notice one of their colleagues and the owner of the house, disappear from the room. An even bigger sin was that neither did they notice those two persons return five minutes later with two trays, laden with cups and saucers, plates and a teapot, coffee pot, milk jug, Paris buns, finger-sandwiches, and individually wrapped Jacob’s orange flavoured chocolate-coated biscuits.

  Social duties over and determined not to dampen his dinner time appetite with more than one Jacob’s chocolate biscuit, Starrett got down to business as quickly as decently possible.

  ‘So,’ he began, ‘you were telling us that Father McCafferty was a dear friend of yours.’

  ‘Yes,’ Orla replied, shadowing her mouth and chin with a napkin.

  ‘How long have you known him?’ Gibson asked.

  ‘Let me see now, yes, it would be five years,’ she replied. She spoke as though she had a hard boiled sweet permanently in her mouth.

  ‘So just when he arrived at St Ernan’s?’ Starrett added.

  ‘Yes, that would be it.’

  ‘Just how did you meet him?’ Starrett continued.

  ‘I could not say for sure but I imagine he attended one of the interdenominational prayer meetings I hold here.’

  ‘How often do these take place?’ Gibson asked, as Garvey scribbled away in his notebook.

  ‘At least once a month,’ she replied. Starrett couldn’t quite pick where her accent was from; it sounded slightly affected, but only very slightly, and it maybe had its roots in the North. He also accepted her accent could be the product of being away from her family home for a long time, perhaps starting at boarding school.

  ‘So you hold one every month?’ he asked.

  ‘Mostly,’ she replied, putting down her cup of tea and sandwich and looking like she couldn’t possibly conduct a conversation and eat and drink at the same time, ‘but in the summer, when we have some of our American friends visiting, we will throw in a few extras.’

  ‘Are these prayer meetings always held here?’ Gibson asked.

  ‘Why yes, of course!’

  ‘How long have they been going on?’ Gibson asked again, Starrett looking like he was starting to flag a bit on this particular topic.

  ‘Since my husband died, seven years ago.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Gibson offered.

  ‘Do not fret, it was a long time ago and to be honest he was a womaniser for the majority of our marriage. We were not really suited. He was marrying my money – well, my family money, to be honest. I was blinded by this fast-talking, smooth, and handsome Donegal man with the gift of the gab.’

  ‘I see,’ Starrett said. ‘I won–’

  ‘I hasten to add neither of us got what we were after,’ she said, cutting across Starrett and addressing Gibson directly. ‘You were asking about how the prayer meetings started?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Gibson agreed.

  ‘So at the funeral, we had members of every religion, pretty much, in here. My husband was a Roman Catholic, but I did not want to offend any of our non-Roman Catholic friends. Neither did I want to insult the memory of my husband, so I asked a poet friend of mine to recite some of his more spiritual poems, just to mark what we were all feeling and thinking at the time.’

  ‘Excellent idea,’ Gibson offered. Even Starrett had to (silently) agree.

  ‘Yes, indeed,’ Orla O’Connor replied, straightening up her back even more. ‘So it seemed natural to continue and it developed into what has now become a very popular prayer meeting.’

  ‘How often do you have them?’ Starrett asked, trying to get back into the conversation again.

  ‘I have already said,’ she said, slipping into annoyed school teacher mode, ‘once a month and more–’

  ‘…in the summer,’ Starrett added, just to let her know he had been listening.

  ‘I have a theory,’ she continued, while smiling sweetly at Starrett, ‘that modern-day religions do not work because each and every one excludes the other. For a true religion to work, it must include each and every person, no exclusion of colour, creed or religion, from anywhere in the world.’

  ‘But do you think that would be possible?’ Gibson asked, appearing to see the logic.

  ‘There would be no other way,’ Starrett suggested, ‘if only because the current system just doesn’t work. Never did.’

  ‘Yes, you are right,’ Orla said, cheeks flushing as she grew visibly excited about the positive reaction. ‘Each religion is bigoted towards its own, but you see, that is their biggest flaw, their biggest fault. For a religion to
work it has to be pure. It has to be true to being something more than a preservation society. It needs to be universal; it would really need to speak to each faith, to speak for every man, woman, and child. It needs to be self-critical to better itself. For a religion to be true it cannot, it just cannot be about Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Members of the Second Federation Church, or whatever might be flavour of a particular generation or community.’

  Starrett knew he should turn the conversation back to Father McCafferty, but, at the same time, there was nothing quite so inescapable as a zealot – male or female – on a mission to convert others to their vision.

  ‘But won’t all religions fall down when they adopt a leader?’ Starrett offered because a) that’s what he felt, and b) he felt he needed to engage Orla O’Connor on her own terms.

  ‘Why yes, of course!’ she agreed enthusiastically. ‘Do you not think that in this day and age if there was a true Messiah, his or her name would be on all of our lips and in all of our homes, quite literally, overnight, thanks to the speed of the internet and the accessibility of the television networks?’

  Garvey looked a bit concerned at the recent direction if the interview.

  ‘Of course, there is not one single spiritual leader out there,’ Orla said, answering her own question, ‘and the main reason for that is that there is no role for a Messiah in the modern world. There is nothing they could do; there is nothing that needs to be done that a Messiah could possibly do. For instance, even the United Nations is powerless to stop wars or to prevent human atrocities due to the complexities of world politics. So how could a mere Messiah possibly save us? And why would we need to be saved? We are nothing more than ants or bees preparing the way for the next generation of ants or bees. All we do really from the moment we are born is to form an orderly queue to meet our death. That is all there is, really, and only vanity and money-induced power suggest otherwise. The single thing that the Bible does teach us, the rare truth found in the Bible, is that the clergy (and I do mean the clergy of all religions) are the shepherds who tend the flocks who wait to die. The story of Jesus worked only because the world was as innocent as an infant back then. Mankind, perhaps, could end up a little more sophisticated, but basically it will still end up …as…well, as I have already said, as a queue for the end. And that is fine. If that is all we have to look forward to, then there is no point denying it or ignoring it. If there is a lesson we need to learn, then it is to follow the laws of the land – they do need some work, though. On top of that, all we really need is food to eat, clothes on our back, and a roof over our head because, when it really gets down to it, that is all that is really necessary. It is only our egos which dictate differently.’

  Bejeepers, Starrett thought, and very uncharitably at that, Orla is ready to take this to the nation.

  ‘Just one more very quick point and then we will get back to your questions, Inspector,’ she continued, as if reading his mind. ‘There is nothing wrong with the laws of the land – they were produced by well-meaning folk; the problem is rather with some of those who deliver them.’

  Starrett allowed himself to appear distracted with the stunning views again in order to create a little space to think about Orla. In his mental absence, he got the mistaken view that Orla seemed to favour Packie Garvey over Nuala Gibson. Was this because of Packie’s celebrity status or was she less threatened by him? Of Starrett’s two

  colleagues, Garvey was the one who kept looking over to Starrett to see when he was going to re-join the interview.

  In the end, it was the subject of the interview who pulled Starrett back in again. ‘What religion do you favour, Inspector?’ Orla asked, smiling again.

  Starrett balked at giving her an answer; he had always believed that the secret to not upsetting anyone when it came to religion in a country never far from potential pious conflict, was to try to claim the same neutrality that had worked so well keeping Switzerland’s nose clean. Still, pleading the Fifth rarely worked, and all fence-sitters enjoyed little more than sore arses, so Starrett always went with, ‘You know what, I’m still trying to work that one out.’ His answer never offended while at the same time, it gave the impression that here was a lost soul. Whether or not the other party felt Starrett was a soul worth saving was another matter altogether.

  ‘Father Gene McCafferty…’ Starrett offered, a few seconds later when it appeared that Orla O’Connor didn’t, indeed, think he was a soul worth saving, ‘did he ever have an official role at any of your prayer meetings?’

  ‘No, Inspector, he knew not to try and impose his natural background on the proceedings, on top of which he had the good grace not to wear his clerical collar while in attendance.’

  ‘Okay,’ Starrett said, happy to be focusing on Father McCafferty again.

  ‘He joined in with the spirit of our prayer meetings,’ Orla continued. ‘We tried to keep them light and joyous – a celebration, if you like.’

  ‘So there was no weeping and gnashing of teeth,’ Starrett suggested, ‘no self-flagellation?’

  ‘Ah, that would be a no to both of those,’ she said, before smiling. ‘We left all of that to the other houses of worship. I remembered how joyous the prayer meetings I used to go to as a girl were. I remember mostly the singing, where it did not really matter what we were singing, more how…how…heavenly, if you like, yes, how heavenly the singing sounded. Do you not see, that when you call it “a service”, during the course of which you are going to be preached to, lectured to, and chastised over your sins, do you not see just how unappealing that actually is? And they wonder why the churches are emptying. I find people give themselves enough grief over their own sins, do you not?’

  ‘Sadly, that’s not something we find to be terribly true,’ Starrett offered, falling off the symbolic fence so quickly you could have heard the thud.

  ‘I did not say people repented their sins,’ Orla said, through another of her wonderful smiles of forgiveness, ‘I just said that they give themselves enough grief over their sins.’

  ‘Did Father McCafferty do anything at all at your meetings?’ Gibson asked.

  Starrett got caught in the views out of the window again. This time, as the light was fading, he allowed his mind to roam freely, while still trying to monitor Orla’s reply for tell-tale words. Was what she’d just said true? Did people really give themselves any grief, let alone ‘enough grief’, over their sins? He knew that out there somewhere, in the midst of this beautiful Donegal countryside, there was a person, a certain kind of person, who had stolen life away from Father Matthew McKaye. What was that person thinking at that exact moment, Starrett wondered, just as Orla was saying something about how bad Father McCafferty’s singing voice was. If you murdered someone, would you think about it each and every day? Would you ponder deeply on it and is this the distance you are often seen looking off into? Would ghosts come to haunt you? Though Starrett had always figured a bigger nightmare would be to come upon a ghost in search of another ghost. But would you constantly agonise over the possibility of someone, such as himself or another member of the gardaí, tripping you up, catching you out? Would you want to be caught? Would you need to be caught? And would you ever think of the person you murdered? Would you obsess over how you had murdered them? Would you wonder what they had felt as they lay there, dying? Would you imagine they thought they were going to get through it? Do the victims always think they are going to survive their dance with death until the last possible micro-second of consciousness? Was a person, with that much emotional torment, capable of murdering someone and simply going about their daily business? Was Father Matthew McKaye’s murderer happily going about his business right at this second? And was he happy now that Father McKaye was no longer around? Had the murder been worthwhile? Could they go on to live a good life? Or had they discovered that the little persistent voice in their head that kept repeating, ‘if only you could get rid of Father McKaye, your life would be perfect,’ hadn’t been right a
t all? Was the little voice giving them grief now? Were they ready to repent to eradicate the voice? And if so, would they give themselves up easily? That last one was unlikely; if Dr Aljoe’s findings were anything to go by, this had been quite a clever murder. It wasn’t a crime of passion, and it clearly didn’t happen on the spur of the moment. Or maybe it did, maybe it was just that the perpetrator was very lucky that–

  ‘Father McCafferty was a lost soul and we came into each other’s lives at the perfect time,’ were the tell-tale words that drew Starrett out of his musings and back into the room again, mentally speaking.

  ‘How often would you see him, Orla?’ Starrett asked.

  ‘Oh, two or three times a week,’ she replied.

  When she’d started off with ‘two or three times’, Starrett had expected her to say two or three times a month.

  ‘That’s quite a lot,’ he offered, more as a statement than a question.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘we are very close; he has been a brick for me.’

  ‘Do youse go to dinner and things?’ Starrett asked, coming across perhaps more transparent than he’d intended.

  Orla unleashed yet another of her smiles of chastisement and said, ‘I know how these things work, you are the Guards and you are here to interview me, and I do know how tongues wag, so, in the spirit of full disclosure I would like to set the record straight here and say that Father Gene McCafferty and I do not now, and have never in the past, enjoyed an intimate relationship. And just so there is no doubt about this, what I am saying is that we have never had sex.’

  ‘I wasn’t suggesting–’

  ‘Of course not,’ Orla replied, ‘but I felt it was time I just put that on the record. On top of which, I had more than enough of that auld carry-on with my husband to last me a lifetime.’

  ‘I appreciate you being so candid with us,’ Starrett replied gracefully, thinking that had been a strange thing for a lady to say, and an older lady at that. Was she perhaps trying just a little too hard to make this point? ‘Tell me,’ he said, drawing a line under her confession, ‘does Father McCafferty help you organise the prayer meetings?’