St Ernan's Blues: An Inspector Starrett Mystery

by Paul Charles

  ‘Ever thought that might have been God’s way of wanting to increase His congregation?’ Starrett asked, before smiling.

  ‘Yes, I’ll give you that, it was certainly a consideration, Starrett, but then as I looked at the elders one by one I realised they were some of the biggest rogues in the village and I found it so much easier to follow my natural instincts. You see, my father was never a religious man, no. But he was a good man. He always lived his life and taught me to try to live my life treating others as I would like to be treated myself and I’ve never needed anything more than that.’

  ‘Even now, Newton?’ Starrett asked, as he viewed the frail vessel who seemed weary of the magic of life.

  ‘Yes indeed, Starrett. Particularly now.’

  The Major seemed to draw a definite line under that one. Starrett would have liked to have gone a bit deeper, if only for his own spiritual understanding, but felt it inappropriate to do so.

  The Major blinked his eyes furiously and then closed them. Starrett couldn’t be sure if he was tuning into another of his memories or if he’d fallen asleep. When eventually the Major’s face lit up in an enormous smile the puzzle was solved.

  ‘Oh, let me see now,’ he said, but it came out as a wheeze. He coughed something into a tissue and wiped his lips. He smiled as he caught the memory and continued, ‘I’m thinking about my time on the Lough Neagh shore one summer. My family were visiting my uncle’s farm for that summer. It was probably my fifteenth summer on Earth. Anyway, a bunch of us – boys and girls – were on the Lough shore, close to Ballyroan, and there were a couple of small canoes and people were taking turns going out in pairs in the canoes. Anyway, this beautiful girl, her name was Gillian Crawford, she would have been the older sister of a girl I’d taken a shine to. I can’t even remember the younger sister’s name now. So Gillian Crawford says to me, “Come on, Newton, you’ll go out in the canoe with me, right?”

  ‘Now, you have to remember that part of me was nervous, very nervous, because I couldn’t swim, still can’t, but the overwhelming feeling I was experiencing was excitement, of going out in a small canoe with this gorgeous older girl – a year was a lot at that age. She was such a beautiful looking girl and she’d asked for me to go with her, and you have to realise, this was even though we’d barely spoken but a few words. Mind you, the few words we had spoken were more than those I’d exchanged with her younger sister. I was always so tongue-tied around her.’

  ‘First love,’ Starrett said, but not as a question.

  ‘That’s as may be,’ the Major continued, barely acknowledging Starrett’s remark, ‘she tucked her light, loose, white summer dress up into her knickers so that it wouldn’t get wet and she climbed into the canoe, first sitting at the back and then using the paddle to steady the canoe before she invited me to join her. I had my back to her; I was going to be sitting between her shapely bare legs. I tried – unsuccessfully it has to be admitted – not to stare at her naked legs. I’d never seen so much bare leg before in real life! She helped me in, gave me the spare paddle, explained the process and, before I knew it, someone behind us had pushed us off from the shore line and we headed off in the general direction of the middle of the Lough.

  ‘Starrett, the next twenty minutes were the most exciting twenty minutes of my life, maybe even including up to now, but please don’t let the current Mrs Cunningham know I said that. Before long we were far enough away from the shore that we could no longer hear our friends’ boisterous chatter. The only sound was that of the paddles through the water. Then she told me to stop paddling and for a while we just drifted in deceleration, until eventually we stopped.

  ‘It was so quiet, oh so quiet. “This is so beautiful,” I remember saying, not even realising I was saying those words. And then she very gently put her hand on my shoulder from behind. She squeezed her fingers softly into my skin, which sent an unprecedented shiver down my spine and into my nether regions. I don’t know if she was agreeing with me or she wanted me not to talk, just to enjoy the natural beauty. But that’s what we did. I can remember every single minute of my time in the canoe with Gillian Crawford. I can still recall it as if it happened just earlier this afternoon: blue sky; fluffy white clouds; gentle breeze; her scents; her bare legs touching mine on each side; her smiling voice when she broke the silence, telling me how much she too loved being on the Lough and drinking in the amazing scenes all around the water’s edge. How she loved the peace and quiet. She said that’s why she wanted me to come with her; she thought I would also appreciate the magic. When she spied something she wanted to share with me, she would gently squeeze my arm or my shoulder and point in the direction of what had caught her eye.

  ‘“We better go back in," she eventually whispered, appearing to share my regret that we had to end this magic time together. But you know what, Starrett? I think it might have been my perfect time; just pure liquid perfection.’

  ‘And did you and this girl–’

  ‘Gillian Crawford…’

  ‘Did you and Gillian Crawford–’

  ‘No, never,’ the Major replied, as though he thought that if he allowed Starrett to conclude his question it would spoil the memory. ‘Never, Starrett, but don’t you see? That just might be why it’s my perfect memory. The fact that there are no other associated memories to tarnish it, no rows or arguments, no nights of being stood up, no jealousy, nor other boyfriends or girlfriends to ruin it. Yes, Starrett, that is probably why I’ve never been as much in love as I was for those precious twenty minutes.’

  The Major closed his eyes. This time he did not smile. Perhaps Starrett had worn his old friend and superior out this time. He watched as the breathing grew uneven and imbalanced, until it fell into a rhythm, which let Starrett know that, this time, the Major had definitely fallen into a sleep.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  ‘You know, Starrett,’ Maggie Keane said as she drove the inspector back to her house after bidding goodnight to the Major’s wife, ‘I’ve been thinking about this a lot since we got back together and I want you to promise me something.’

  ‘Okay,’ Starrett replied immediately.

  ‘But you don’t know what I’m going to ask you to do?’ she said, trying to keep her eyes on the road while removing some of the loose hair out of her eyes. It was proving to be a difficult task because a few wild-cat strands were misbehaving and ended up entangled in her eyelashes, so every time she blinked she set off a chain reaction in her hair. Starrett thought it endearing.

  ‘Well, you’re not going to ask for it if it’s not important,’ he replied, after he carefully freed the hair trapped in her eyelashes, carrying out the manoeuvre as carefully as if he was a bomb disposal expert, halfway through the task.

  ‘Starrett, I don’t know what’s gotten into me but I’ve developed this great phobia about being buried when I die.’

  ‘Augh, Maggie.’

  ‘No, no, Starrett! Don’t put me off! Please, hear me out – I could never forgive myself if I died and hadn’t told you.’

  ‘You won’t need forgiveness then, Maggie.’

  ‘That’s a point,’ she said, through her lopsided grin that exposed her crooked teeth to Starrett in the rear-view mirror, ‘what I should have said was: I won’t forgive myself if I don’t tell you now when I have a chance to.’

  ‘That works,’ Starrett said, turning around to face her.

  When they arrived in Ramelton she didn’t take the left onto the bridge over the Leannon River but drove straight on up to the Bridge Bar. It was packed right out onto the street.

  ‘It’s too crowded for the way I’m feeling tonight,’ she said, ‘do you mind if we go somewhere else?’

  ‘I’m just as happy to go home,’ Starrett said.

  ‘I’d like to go somewhere,’ she replied, quietly, as she did an illegal Hughie Green – a.k.a a U-turn – on the forecourt of Whoriskey’s petrol station. They drove down past the heaving Bridge Bar again. ‘You’re a garda, Starrett. You wo
rk late and you leave our house early. If we’re not careful, we’ll end up as ships that pass in the night.’

  ‘Well, we do occasionally bump into each other during the night,’ he offered playfully.

  She brushed her hand through his hair and was distracted again by the crowds outside the Bridge Bar.

  ‘It only gets that packed when Henry McCullough is playing,’ she said, requiring both hands to turn right over the bridge.

  ‘Sadly it’s not Henry,’ Starrett said, remorse clear in his voice. ‘He’s very ill; I doubt he’ll ever grace another stage.’

  ‘Agh no,’ she sympathised as they pulled into Gamble Square and parked midway between the gardaí station and McDaid’s Wine Bar.

  ‘Why can’t things just remain as they were?’ Starrett said, his mind shifting from the soulful Henry McCullough to the Major.

  ‘That’s the problem with bachelors,’ Maggie Keane said, as she turned off the ignition and turned to face the inspector, implying that she was happy just to sit there. ‘They get too set in their ways. They grow very selfish, thinking too much about themselves and their lives and not having to bother to consider any others.’

  ‘Whoops!’

  ‘The bottom line, Starrett, is that nothing, absolutely nothing, remains the same. That is a physical impossibility and so we just have to accept that change is inevitable and move on. If you’re going to be any good to me, in my role as a mother, Starrett, you’re going to have to learn that little lesson and adapt your life to help me get on with things.’

  Starrett accepted that Maggie Keane, like a few other mothers he knew, would always put her children above everything else, including herself. But the most incredible thing of all was that none of them ever considered it a sacrifice.

  ‘You were going to ask me a favour?’

  ‘Yes, I was. I don’t want to be buried, Starrett, I really don’t,’ she pleaded. ‘I know it’s stupid but I just don’t want to be eaten by worms. Will you please promise me that you won’t bury me?

  He started to laugh.

  ‘Starrett, I’m serious.’

  ‘No, sorry, I was just laughing at something else; there was this Donegal criminal and he once said “I really want to be buried beside my wife, and I’ll pay ten thousand punts to the first man who buries my wife – just tell her I’ll be joining her later".’

  ‘He wanted her dead?’ she gushed, ‘or is that just another of the Starrett bejeepers stories?’

  ‘No, it’s 100 per cent true!’

  ‘Well, it’s just that our Moya has been telling me some of the tales you tell her.’

  ‘Bejeepers, sorry about that,’ he said, hamming it up.

  ‘Well, actually this one was a good one and it really worked. So I have to thank you.’

  ‘All sexual favours gratefully accepted,’ he offered, knowing he was chancing his arm.

  She leaned over towards him and seductively nuzzled her lips in very close to his ear and whispered breathlessly, ‘Ah, shame about that, you were doing really great up until then.’ She leaned back into her side of the car and continued, ‘As I was saying, Moya asked me permission to put on make-up. I said most definitely not.’

  ‘So that’s why she came to me?’ Starrett said, and smiled largely.

  ‘So she went to you and you said…’ Maggie, clearly moved by the story, ruffled his hair again with her fingers, ‘you told Moya there once was this wee girl in Milford and from an early age her mother trained her how to apply make-up. But the mother actually taught her to apply the make-up on to her image on the surface of the mirror and she grew up to be one of the most beautiful girls in Donegal and that was just because she hadn’t contaminated her skin.’

  Starrett smiled at the memory.

  ‘Where do you get these stories from, Starrett?’

  ‘There’re all out there, they’re all true,’ he claimed.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You just couldn’t make them up, Maggie.’

  ‘Well, Moya loves you for them,’ she said, ‘Katie loves you, too, of course but it’s always the youngest girl who befriends the cuckoo.’

  ‘Cuckoo?’

  ‘You know, the stranger in the nest?’

  ‘So that’s what I am, is it, a cuckoo?!’

  ‘Only to Katie and me,’ she joked, ‘Moya’s totally on your team and she’s still at an age when she thinks your stories and lines are a hoot.’

  ‘She’ll grow out of them, that’s why I’m betting on you, Maggie,’ Starrett said. He’d something else on his mind he’d been wanting to discuss with her for ages and he accepted this was most likely his best chance. ‘Maggie, I’ve something I need to talk to you about.’

  ‘That sounds ominous,’ she replied, grimacing slightly.

  ‘I’m not getting on with Joe as well as I imagined I would,’ he admitted. ‘You know, with us all being reconciled and all.’

  ‘Starrett,’ she said gently, ‘you have to realise that you’re content to sit around all night in the Bridge Bar with the James Gang. There’s another thing, the James Gang, how old are youse? And it’s not even as if any of you have James as a last name,’ she laughed out loud. ‘But youse are content to sit around all night in the Bridge Bar, drinking your Guinness and chewing the fat, imagining you’re all going to leave the bar, get on your trusty steeds and ride off to your hole in the wall up in Loughsalt Mountain.’

  ‘Maggie, whist, won’t you? Our hiding place is meant to be top secret.’

  ‘Yes, exactly!’ she said through a large stage sigh. ‘Whereas on the other hand, Joe and his friends, they’re not like that, thank God – he and his friends are out there, they’re on the road just to be on the run. Your gang…well, you’ve all reached the stage in your life where you’ve started to be scared of dying; Joe and his friends are just as scared of not living.’

  ‘Aye, they don’t know it yet, but soon they’ll realise that all they’re really out there for is to look for someone just to stay in with,’ he offered and before she could reply, he thought of something else he wanted to admit to her. ‘You know, when we got back together again, that was the first time in my life that I started to consider…you know, how much time I’d left? Maybe as well, how much time I’d wasted, how much time we’d wasted?’

  ‘You big oaf, Starrett,’ she said, glaring at him. ‘You’re considering how much time we wasted because we didn’t stay together from the first time right through?’

  Starrett nodded to her that she’d been correct in her assumption.

  ‘Listen to me carefully, Starrett; I’m here to tell you that, quite simply it just would never have happened. Furthermore, we are together today purely and simply due to the fact that we did split up.’

  Starrett could sense the thought-bubble rise above her head so he kept quiet until she was comfortable enough to speak what was on her mind.

  ‘I’m not the girl you thought I was,’ she eventually said. ‘I don’t want you to be in love with the girl you thought I was.’

  ‘I’m not, Maggie, please believe me, I’m not.’

  ‘The girl you knew, Starrett,’ Maggie Keane continued, as if she hadn’t heard him, ‘was a wee country girl, who thought the way to keep her boy was to sleep with him, only to discover that he’d left the very next morning to join the priesthood. And then…and then discover she was pregnant and young and alone. Then I met Niall and I was too mixed up to even think of love. But he was patient with me, he saved me, helped me grow, Starrett.’

  ‘I know, Maggie.’ He was now regretting he’d ever opened up this avenue of conversation. Occasionally life was just like driving along a motorway, and you’re coming up to your turnoff but the flow of heavy traffic just sucks you along with it, way beyond your turnoff point, and although you can see it happening there’s nothing you can do about it without potentially causing an accident. So, the only thing you can do is to go along with the flow of traffic, hoping for the best in your new circumstances and your new destination.r />
  ‘Don’t read it wrong, Starrett; I need you to know that I really loved Niall. I mean, he’s the father to my daughters. He took on Joe. If it hadn’t been for his cancer,’ she said, quietly and without regret, ‘you and I would mostly likely never ever have passed the time of day again.’

  Was she trying to hurt him with her words for some reason or other? More likely she was just tipping him off that he better wake up and shape up.

  ‘But then Niall did die of cancer and you and I did meet again,’ Maggie Keane continued, on a more hopeful note, ‘and even though you’d changed as much as I had, there was still a part of me, if only because of all the baggage and complications, there was still a part of me that would have preferred that we didn’t get together again.

  But, you see, my reality was that I didn’t really have any say in the matter. Initially I was intrigued by you, and most certainly I was amused by you. I liked being with you. Then, in spite of myself, I fell in love with you. So we met again, we fell in love and either we deal with that or we fall out of love. And if that happened, then that’s when we’d have to learn to deal with not being with the person we love and, believe you me, that’s a lot harder to deal with.’

  Starrett knew Maggie was referring to her dead husband.

  ‘Starrett, maybe being out at the Major’s tonight has reminded me once again about our lives and how precious they are, you know? You and the other members of the James Gang better stop worrying about how bad things are today compared to yesterday. You need to forget about the past as if it never existed. You really have to enjoy today because you know what, Inspector, no matter how bad you look and feel today, always remember that by tomorrow you’ll look and feel just that wee bit worse than you did today.’