The Lake

by Sheena Lambert

  ‘Sir,’ Garda O’Dowd began.

  Frank put up his hand to stop him. He walked over to the bar. ‘You must be Hugo,’ he said, extending his hand over the counter. ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Frank Ryan.’

  ‘Hugo Casey, Detective.’ Hugo shook his hand. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  Frank noticed both Jerome and Peggy glare at their brother. Then they all looked up as the door into the house opened suddenly behind him, and Carla came into the bar. A wide grin spread across her face as she scanned the room.

  ‘Aw, how sweet,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s here!’

  Frank decided to ignore her. He turned very deliberately towards Peggy. ‘Ms. Casey,’ he said. ‘I realize this is your place of business. But I was hoping to have a word with Mr. Quirke here.’

  Peggy looked from Frank to Coleman and back again.

  ‘Mr. Quirke,’ Frank addressed the back of the man’s head. ‘Mr. Quirke, I’d like to ask you some questions. About the discovery of the body down at the lake on Thursday last. It won’t take long if you cooperate. I can ask you them here of course.’ He took an exaggerated look around the barroom. ‘But you might prefer if we did it up at the station.’

  Coleman raised his head just an inch, and addressed Frank from between his fingers. ‘What is it you want with me?’ he cried. ‘First that fool,’ he jerked his elbow in the general direction of Garda O’Dowd, ‘now you. What is it you think I’ve done? I’ve done nothing!’ He sounded as though he might actually weep. ‘Nothing! Oh,’ he groaned again. ‘If you only knew. I’ve done nothing!’

  Frank was a little taken aback by the man’s outburst. He looked around him. He would prefer not to have to drag the old man out into the street. He knew his theories were only that … theories. The man might be telling the truth, and have nothing whatsoever to do with the girl found at the lake. But he was acting very strangely. More so, Frank suspected, than usual. He looked over at Maura.

  ‘Maura has worked with us for fifteen years,’ Peggy said, apparently reading his mind. ‘She’s like one of the family. You can say whatever you like in front of her. It will go no further. Jerome,’ she turned to her brother. ‘Lock the door. Let no one come in until Detective Ryan has got what he came for. If he wants to ask Coleman some questions, let him ask him them here. And Coleman,’ she addressed the pitiful heap bent over the counter, ‘you will answer him. Truthfully. Or you will not be welcome here at Casey’s from this day on.’

  The room stood still. Even Carla was silent. The old clock on the wall ticked four times before Jerome went over and pushed the bolt across the door.

  ‘Now, Detective,’ Peggy said, ‘what is it you have to ask of Coleman?’

  Of all the places Frank had questioned suspects in a murder investigation he had to admit that The Angler’s Rest was the most unorthodox. He pulled a high stool over and sat down at the bar next to Coleman.

  ‘Mr. Quirke,’ he said, gesturing at Garda O’Dowd to take notes. ‘Mr. Quirke. Before the dam was built, you and your brother, Desmond, you were both farmers. Is that correct?’

  Coleman tilted his head a little towards Frank, but said nothing.

  ‘You farmed the land in the valley? Before the dam was built?’

  ‘What has that got to do with anything?’ Coleman said gruffly. ‘Yes. Yes, we were farmers. Cattle farmers. Is that it? Oh, Lord, but I’m tormented.’

  ‘But after that, after the dam was built, and the valley was flooded, you found other work. Isn’t that correct, Coleman? Mr. Quirke? You worked as a postman for the Post and Telegraphs from 1951, until you retired in the late sixties. Yes?’

  ‘So what if I did? Didn’t I tell you as much the other evening, here, sitting at this very bar?’

  ‘Well, Mr. Quirke. You may be aware that the body found on the shore of the lake last Thursday evening was stuffed into a postbag: a jute Post and Telegraphs post bag from the early Fifties.’

  Frank heard Maura gasp behind him. He wished this conversation were taking place in the privacy of the Garda Station. There might be no connection at all between Coleman and the sack used to hide the body. But he might know of how such a bag could have got misplaced, or mislaid. Who else might have had access to them? Who else worked for the P&T in the area in the early Fifties? Frank was far from being convinced that this old man had committed any crime. Having said that, his English colleagues had yet to track down his old girlfriend in Stowe, which is where she had allegedly moved to. And the body had yet to be properly dated. Frank needed to keep his mind open to all possibilities and all potential leads. The postbag was only one.

  ‘Oh Mother of God,’ Coleman moaned into the counter-top. ‘Ye have no idea. I’m tormented.’

  ‘Mr. Quirke. Do you know something about the body at the lake? Is there anything you can tell me that might help me find out who she was? How she got there? Coleman? What do you know?’

  ‘What’s tormenting you so, Coleman?’ Peggy asked him. ‘If you know something, tell Frank. Tell us. Coleman. Tell us.’

  ‘Of Mother of God,’ Coleman cried. ‘He squeezed the bridge of his nose between two fingers. ‘Mother of God.’

  Garda O’Dowd took a step towards Frank. ‘Eh, perhaps, sir, it might be more appropriate to bring him in.’

  Frank knew Garda O’Dowd was right. Coleman was acting increasingly suspicious. He clearly knew something about the body, and they weren’t going to get it out of him in Casey’s. Frank knew what had to come next. But he also knew that he didn’t want to upset Peggy; Peggy, who he had been thinking about half the night as he had lain awake beneath the haunting gaze of the Sacred Heart picture on his bedroom wall. He hadn’t really noticed it the first night at O’Shea’s, he had been so exhausted, but last night it had stared down at him with a look of such disappointment he found he couldn’t sleep. Lying there, he had tried to think about the woman whose bones were probably decomposing on some sterile gurney up in Dublin; a woman he had never met, and yet who now depended on him to find her truth, to tell her story. But his thoughts had kept returning to Peggy; Peggy, whose life was also being snuffed out by the lake in Crumm, albeit in a less obvious way. For some reason, he felt he owed her. He didn’t want to upset her any more than he had to.

  ‘Coleman,’ he said quietly. ‘I don’t want to have to arrest you.’

  ‘Ah Jaysus,’ Jerome started, looking to Hugo for support.

  Frank spoke urgently. ‘I don’t want to go down that road, Coleman,’ he said into the old man’s ear. He smelt earthy, an odour of stout and turf and old age. ‘I don’t want to do that. But if you won’t answer my questions, I’ll have no choice.’

  Coleman looked up at Frank as if he might be mad. ‘Arrest me?’ he said. ‘Why would you want to arrest me? Sure I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t put her there.’

  ‘Who did, Coleman?’ Frank knew he was taking a chance, but something told him to persist. ‘Who put her there?’

  ‘Oh Mother of God.’ Coleman held his head in his hands again. ‘Sure I don’t know. But sure it must have been himself. Oh Lord. I can see it now. He must have done it. Oh sweet Mother of God.’

  Frank put his arm out to stop Garda O’Dowd from coming any closer. ‘Who was she Coleman? What was her name?’

  None of the others spoke. Hugo and Carla stood still behind the bar. Peggy had her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide.

  ‘Murphy,’ Coleman said in a whisper. ‘Bernadette Murphy. Her father owned the mill in the village. The one … the one you saw, out in the middle of the lake. Holy Mother of God. It’s so long ago now. So long ago.’

  Frank realized he had been holding his breath, and he released it in a long sigh. Bernadette Murphy. He thought of the sunken face, frozen in death on the table in the sacristy. Bernadette Murphy.

  ‘Holy God,’ Peggy whispered. ‘But Coleman. Who was she? And … and how do you know? How can you be sure that it’s she?’

  Peggy’s eyes told Frank what he himself suspected. There wa
s only one way Coleman could know. And that was if he had put her there himself.

  ‘Coleman,’ she said. ‘You … you didn’t?’

  ‘I did nothing!’ the man cried. ‘I’ve already told you. I did nothing!’

  ‘Eh, sir, Mr. Quirke should perhaps be put under arrest?’ Michael O’Dowd leaned in closer to Frank. ‘He should, perhaps, have a solicitor present?’

  Before Frank had a chance to agree, Coleman lifted his hands in the air either side of his crusty ears.

  ‘No, no. Listen to me. It was last night. When you said about them army tags.’ He half looked at Peggy, who flushed and glanced at Frank. ‘You said she was wearing metal army tags. Maxwell, you said. And do you know, I’d forgotten.’ He shook his head. ‘I’d actually forgotten, all this time. Well, we had been told to forget, so we did, I suppose. You did what you were told back then,’ he murmured.

  Jerome looked as though he was about to speak, but Frank raised his hand to quiet him. He knew from experience that, once someone started telling their story, once they started remembering, it was best not to interrupt them. It was best to let them speak.

  ‘What had you been told to forget, Coleman?’ he said.

  ‘Her father owned the mill. Back before it was flooded.’ Coleman spoke quietly, his eyes tightly shut, almost as if he was telling himself a story. ‘Her mother was long dead. ’Twas just herself and the brother and the father. They ran the mill on the river.’ He looked up at Hugo who was standing over him on the far side of the bar. ‘You could bring a fleece to them back then, and they’d make it into a blanket. Or the makings of a shirt.’ He seemed a little calmer now as he spoke, his hands out before him on the bar, remembering back generations to a time when the landscape of the area was very different. ‘He was a good man, Murphy. He worked hard, himself and the son. She, the Lord have mercy on her, she was wild. What with having no mother, and the father worked every hour God sent. Oh Mother of God,’ he broke down again, covering his face with his hands.

  ‘What happened to her, Coleman?’ Frank spoke with authority. He didn’t want to spook the old man, but he needed him to keep talking. ‘Do you want a drink, Coleman?’ He nodded at Hugo. ‘Maybe a cup of tea?’

  ‘No, no,’ Coleman cried, shaking his head hysterically. ‘It was the year before the dam was finished. There were army boys here, checking the buildings, the bridges. I told you,’ he turned suddenly on Frank. Then his eyes met Peggy’s and he groaned again and looked away.

  ‘They were setting out the explosives,’ Frank prompted. Hugo left a glass of water down next to Coleman. ‘They were getting the place ready for the flooding.’

  ‘Aye, aye.’ Coleman ignored the water. ‘And they had other army boys here. Americans. Explosive experts.’ He spat the word out. ‘They were … they were stationed up north after the war.’

  Frank raised his brow at Garda O’Dowd, and the young guard started scribbling frantically in his notebook.

  ‘That fellah,’ Coleman said. ‘Maxwell. He was one of them.’

  ‘One of who?’ Frank asked.

  ‘One of the American lads. He was here in 1951, he was involved in blowing up the farm, the mill, all of that. He was one of them.’ His face contorted as if the memory was causing him actual physical pain. He looked up at Frank. ‘We wouldn’t have known who he was, only that young lassie kept going on and on about him. He that left her his tags.’ He jabbed his elbow in Peggy’s direction, but he wouldn’t look at her. ‘Those tags young Peggy was talking about. Oh she wore them like they was diamonds. She’d be in Grogan’s, or off down the bleachers, and she’d have them on, and be going on about her American soldier, and how she would be going to live in New York with him. Oh, she never stopped. They used to say she was touched,’ he tapped his finger to the side of his head. ‘Oh, but I don’t know. I don’t know. I think she really believed she would.’

  ‘So what happened to her?’ Peggy blurted out, before biting her lip.

  ‘Oh, what happened, sure what always happens, the oldest story in time, he went back off up north and back home to America no doubt, and left her here, and the next spring she had his child for him.’

  The three women in the room gasped. Frank had forgotten that Maura was still sitting behind them at the table.

  ‘And I don’t remember,’ Coleman went on, agitated. ‘Sure weren’t we all being turfed out that year, moved on. Her father and brother moved on up to Dublin. Everyone had to get out that year. But she stayed. She lived up the bog road past Ballyknock. I remember, because herself and the little babby were living out there, all on their own. I don’t know how she survived. I used to see her the odd day with the post. She must have been less than a year there.’ He rubbed his forehead gruffly.

  ‘But I know they came back. Them army boys. They came back in the summer of 1952 to see the dam being closed and the start of the flooding. I remember that well, because old Mr. Grogan wouldn’t serve them, and there was trouble about that. And then, she left.’

  ‘Who left?’ Carla said.

  ‘The Murphy child. Bernadette. She disappeared off with her army fellah. Well, sure, wasn’t that what we thought at the time? She had been so excited to see him back, and then when the army left, she was gone. The whole village just assumed she was gone with him.’ He stopped again and looked up at Frank and Peggy. ‘Oh sweet Mother of God,’ he said, and started keening over the counter.

  ‘Coleman,’ Peggy put her hand on his back. ‘Coleman?’

  But Coleman kept rocking forward and back, muttering something Frank couldn’t make out.

  The he turned to look at him again, startling them both.

  ‘But sure how were we to have known? Didn’t it make total sense that she had gone? And when she didn’t take the child with her, it was just assumed that they were starting a new life in America.’

  ‘But all the while, she was lying dead in a postbag under the water of the lake.’ Jerome turned to Frank. ‘And if he killed her, and buried her in the fields around the mill, he would have known that the water wouldn’t be long covering her up.’

  ‘He probably had a wife and kids back in America,’ Carla added. ‘The fucker. He probably just wanted rid of her. No hard work for a big soldier.’

  Hugo suddenly turned away from them, and stood, staring into the mirror behind the till.

  ‘It was just assumed she was gone with him,’ Coleman repeated. ‘No one had any reason to think otherwise.’

  ‘The poor girleen.’ Maura’s voice was broken with emotion.

  ‘So what happened to the baby?’ Peggy said.

  Suddenly the room seemed very still. Coleman stopped rocking and sat with his eyes fixed to the counter before him. Jerome stood, eyebrows knitted, like someone trying to work out a very difficult puzzle. Frank could see Peggy’s reflection. Her face was pale, her gaze on the back of Coleman’s head. He caught Hugo’s eye in the mirror, and they stared at each other for a moment.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Carla. ‘What happened to the baby? If they didn’t go to America?’

  ‘You said she didn’t take the baby, Coleman.’ Peggy’s voice was steady. ‘You said that everyone had assumed that they’d left to start a new life without the baby.’

  Coleman started muttering under his breath again.

  ‘Coleman?’

  ‘Your mother, Mrs. Casey. She took the baby in.’

  Coleman looked up at them all. ‘Carla was only a year, and she said that she would take the child in. She didn’t want to see her being taken up to any orphanage in Dublin or wherever. She said she and your father would take her in as their own. A Casey. The curate here at the time, he had worked in those orphanages. He knew what they were like. He said it was the right thing to do. He made us all agree not to speak of it again.’

  Jerome turned away from the bar, but then swung around again. ‘You’re a fecking liar, Coleman Quirke,’ he said, his eyes blazing. ‘You’re making all of this up. You,’ he pointed at Michael. ‘Arrest him, for
fuck’s sake. He obviously had something to do with that girl’s death.’

  Frank saw that silent tears were coursing down Carla’s cheeks. Maura got up and stood behind Peggy, her hands on her shoulders, glaring at Coleman.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she started, her voice raised. ‘What are you saying, Coleman Quirke? Sure, you’re only an auld drunk. How could you remember all of that? Sure, you wouldn’t remember to get up in the morning, only Desmond is there to wake you.’

  ‘It’s all true!’ Coleman swung around in his stool. ‘Every word of it! You must remember that half the place left that summer. It wasn’t so difficult to hide a secret like that. Most of the village would have thought that she left with the child, gone up to Dublin. Her father had disowned her when she got in the family way, and he was long gone by then. I myself only knew the whole truth because of my work delivering the post. I was around every other day. I could see for myself what was going on. And when Father Welsh told us that it was not to be spoke of, well, back then we used to heed the priests. Not like nowadays.’

  ‘You’re a liar,’ Jerome shouted.

  Frank noticed that he didn’t look at Peggy, or attempt to touch her, but stayed on the other side of Coleman all the while.

  ‘Hugo,’ Jerome said. ‘Throw him out. If the guards won’t do it, well you and I surely can.’

  ‘He’s right.’

  For the second time that morning, time seemed to stand still in The Angler’s Rest. Hugo turned and Peggy locked eyes with her older brother.

  ‘He’s right,’ Hugo said again. ‘I remember.’

  ‘What?’ Jerome dropped his clenched fists.

  ‘I remember, Peggy,’ Hugo said to his sister. ‘I was four years old. I remember Mammy taking you in. I remember the priest. They thought I was too young to remember, and they were right. I … I didn’t.’ He looked earnestly at Peggy. ‘But now … now I do. Mammy had you on her lap in my old blue blanket. I remember, I remember not wanting you to have it. But Mammy said you were a gift from God. A special new Casey, given to us to love. She said you were my sister and … and you were. From that day on. My sister. Our sister.’