Haunted Ground ng-1

by Erin Hart

  “It’s a good thing I’m not easily offended. But I’m afraid you’re alarming the sheep.”

  12

  Devaney rapped on the kitchen door at Bracklyn House. Through the small squares of wavy glass, he could see a figure approaching.

  “Mrs. Osborne? I hope I’m not disturbing you,” Devaney said when a slim, dark-haired woman opened the door. “There was no answer upstairs. Detective Garrett Devaney.” He presented his identification, which she studied with interest.

  “I’m afraid my cousin Hugh is away at the moment, Detective. I assume he’s the one you’ve come to see.”

  “Actually, you’re the person I had hoped to find at home today,” Devaney replied.

  Lucy Osborne returned his level gaze. “I’m at home every day, Detective.”

  “I wonder if I might ask you a few questions. Please, continue whatever you were doing. I won’t take up too much of your time.” She led him down the hall to a room where she was in the midst of doing some flower arrangements. Devaney positioned himself on a stool across the table so that he could watch her through the spray of roses as she worked.

  It was Lucy Osborne who spoke first: “What can I do for you, Detective?”

  “I just had a few questions about Mina Osborne’s disappearance.”

  “I thought Hugh mentioned that the case had been given over to some sort of national task force.” She knew about the referral. Devaney saw that he’d better tread carefully.

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean the local police have given up. Besides, the task force are all the way over in Dublin. It’s our duty to be their eyes and ears in the community.”

  “I understand that you had no control over what people would say when that”—she searched for the right word—“that person was found in the bog. But I must tell you, I don’t think it’ll do any good to stir things up all over again.”

  “It’s an ongoing investigation.”

  “Of a nonexistent crime. Hugh’s wife left him, Detective. It’s unfortunate, certainly, but what possible concern can it be to the police?”

  “That’s why I’ve come to you. In the past, most of the attention has focused on Mr. Osborne as chief suspect, but I’m wondering if we haven’t been overlooking some of the other, perhaps less sinister possibilities.”

  “And just exactly how may I be of help? I have nothing to add to any of my earlier statements. I’m sure they’re in your files.”

  “I’m trying to find out more about Mina. Her habits, her usual routine, her circle of friends and acquaintances. I’m trying to get closer to who she was, to see if that might not shed some light on the case.”

  “I’m not sure I can be of any assistance to you. We were not close.”

  “Still, you lived in the same house for several years.”

  “It’s a very large house, Detective.” The woman’s manner softened. “I don’t mean to be unhelpful, but we led almost completely separate lives.”

  “But surely you could offer a few details about how she spent her time here.”

  “Well, it was clear to me from the start that she wasn’t remotely interested in the running of the household, and it was just as well. I can’t imagine—” Lucy Osborne evidently couldn’t stop herself picturing the disaster that would have befallen if Mina had been interested, and gave a small shudder. “Neither she nor Hugh was much use at that sort of thing. She did have some ability as a painter, I believe, though her work was never really to my taste. Hugh set up a studio for her at the top of the house, but the smell of paint evidently disagreed with her. And after the child was born, she rarely ventured up there. The place is strewn with half-finished canvases.”

  “If she wasn’t painting, what did she do?”

  “I believe she was a great reader. Always leaving piles of books about the house.”

  “And who were her friends? Did she socialize much with anyone in the town?”

  “I’m not sure she had any friends here. She did have ties in England, of course, school friends and the like, but—” Lucy Osborne hesitated. “The only person I remember her seeing on a regular basis was the priest, I can’t recall his name.”

  “Father Kinsella?”

  “Yes, that’s it. She may have mentioned him from time to time.”

  Devaney’s thoughts leapt back to the letters in the confessional: He knows where they are. Maybe he’d been too hasty in assuming that the “he” in this case referred to Hugh Osborne. What if it meant the person on the other side of the confessional wall?

  “Was Mina happy here?”

  “I was not in her confidence, Detective.”

  “But perhaps you have an impression about how she and her husband were getting on at the time of her disappearance.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not in the habit of prying into other people’s private affairs. I believe they were reasonably happy.” She paused briefly. “At least they always seemed so, in spite of the obvious…difficulties when people from such dissimilar backgrounds decide to marry.”

  “What difficulties would you say they had, in particular?”

  “Nothing of any great consequence. But a child always complicates matters, Detective. Especially when the parents come from such divergent worlds.”

  “Surely a child can learn from both,” Devaney said.

  “But the tragedy is that he can never really belong to either. Wherever he goes, such a child will always be an outcast. My view of the situation may sound harsh, Detective, but it’s based in reality. The world can be a pitiless place.”

  Devaney remembered what little he knew of this woman’s circumstances, and considered her statement for a moment. “Did they have any disagreements about how to bring up their son?”

  “I never heard them argue.” Her reply left the question open, to be asked again another way, even as it condemned indiscretion as a sin.

  “But you felt there might be some tension on the subject?”

  “I really couldn’t say.”

  “And at the time of the disappearance? Was there any particular point—even a seemingly minor one—that remained unresolved?”

  Lucy Osborne stopped her work. “Detective, I’m not about to feed any false impression you may have that my cousin was not completely devoted to his wife. It simply isn’t true.” She had finished the first arrangement and started in on the second, clipping the end of each flower before dethorning it and wrapping it in wire.

  “Of course, I’m not sure I can say the same about her.”

  “Go on,” Devaney said.

  “On the night before she went away,” Lucy said, and he sensed she was measuring the weight of each word as she twined the green wire along the stem of a rose, “I did happen to overhear her on the telephone; I assumed she was speaking with Hugh. I could tell she was upset, but then she was often emotionally overwrought. I couldn’t hear what she said, but I wouldn’t characterize the conversation as an argument.”

  “How would you characterize it?”

  “I thought there was a note of disappointment in her voice. I couldn’t say any more than that.”

  “Would you call your cousin a possessive man, Mrs. Osborne?”

  She fixed him with an ironic look that said she wasn’t that easily fooled. “So, you haven’t entirely given up on him, Detective? But to answer your question, no, I would not. If anything, Hugh was always far too willing to give up his own ways to please his wife.”

  “And what about Mina? How do you think it would have affected her to learn that her husband had other women?”

  “I’m not stupid, Detective. I know what people have been saying about Hugh and that McGann woman. But it isn’t true.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Hugh was devoted to his wife. Rather foolishly devoted, as it turned out.” It struck Devaney at that moment: throughout this entire conversation, Lucy Osborne had never once spoken Mina’s name. It was always “she” or “my cousin’s wife,” and Christopher was “the c
hild.” He wasn’t sure why this disturbed him, exactly, but he filed it away.

  “Have you any idea of Mr. Osborne’s financial situation?” Devaney asked. “For instance, who would stand to inherit the estate right now if something should happen to him? We know he’d made provisions for his wife and son, but if she’s cleared off, as you say, maybe he’s had second thoughts.”

  “He hasn’t chosen to share any information with me on that subject, Detective, and it’s really none of my business. My son and I are only guests in this house.” She rearranged a rose stem to turn the bloom outward, then reached for a spray of greenery that would serve as the final touch, snipping the long stem into shorter sprigs, adding them to the arrangement, and adjusting the balance here and there with an expert’s quick, decisive motion.

  “That reminds me, I’d also like to speak to your son, if he’s here,” Devaney said. Lucy Osborne stiffened, and Devaney at once saw the cause. In her haste, she had pricked her finger on a hidden rose thorn. A droplet of bright red blood fell onto the wooden tabletop.

  “Are you all right? Can I help?”

  “I’m quite all right, Detective,” she said, pinching her injured finger to stem the bleeding. Devaney noted the large diamond on her left hand while she fished in the drawer of the table for a bandage. Lucy Osborne was evidently prepared for such occurrences, and had the wound bound up in a few seconds.

  “You asked about my son. I believe Jeremy is over at the priory today, helping with the excavation. Now, if you would excuse me, Detective, I must get these flowers to the church.”

  From where he stood in the sacristy at St. Columba’s, Garrett Devaney could see seven or eight people sitting at some distance from one another in the pews just beside the confessional. Father Kinsella had gone into the central compartment a few minutes earlier, and was just hearing the first confession. The faces in the pews were familiar to Devaney. They were mostly older women. He could see Mrs. Phelan, one of the regulars Kinsella had mentioned, Mary Hickey, and Helen Rourke, all charter members of the Father Kinsella fan club, who might gladly make up sins for the opportunity to confess them to the handsome young cleric.

  He thought of Kinsella, sitting there in the darkness of the confessional. It must be strange listening to the petty jealousies, the slights and counter-slights that made up the multitude of sins, dispensing novenas and Hail Marys like a village doctor treating numberless cases of flu. Though he never felt it himself, Devaney imagined that the urge to confess must be strong. When he first joined the Guards, every time there was a particularly horrible crime reported in the papers—the sort of act that made people cringe even as they soaked up every available and repellent detail—a smattering of false confessions would turn up. Most were from people desperate for attention or delusional, who once might have harbored thoughts of committing such a crime, and felt they ought to be punished for even imagining such a thing.

  The words from the confessional swam once more to the forefront of Devaney’s consciousness: He knows where they are. What if Kinsella had succumbed to the desires of the flesh? If he and Mina Osborne had so much in common, perhaps he had helped her to disappear. And if indeed he had, that might explain why she hadn’t contacted her mother. But Kinsella hadn’t appeared the least bit ruffled when he discovered the carved letters; on the contrary, he’d seemed intrigued. Still, it was worth looking into.

  Mrs. Rourke was just shuffling into the confessional when he noticed another figure in the side chapel, head bent over clasped hands. When the man raised his head, Devaney could see that it was Brendan McGann. Brendan had never been a cheerful-looking man, but he looked particularly troubled at the moment. What was he waiting to confess? The McGanns were Osborne’s nearest neighbors. Devaney vaguely remembered talk of Brendan objecting to the development at Drumcleggan Priory. Squabbles over land, no matter what the cause, had a history of escalating into the bitterest of disputes. He considered McGann’s darkened countenance once more, and decided that this, too, might be worth checking out.

  13

  There was no one in the foyer at Bracklyn when Nora and Cormac returned from their outing, and she was still feeling a bit light-headed from what had taken place out on the Tullymore road.

  “Hey, don’t you think we’d better take off our shoes, at least?” she asked, as Cormac seemed ready to head straight up the stairs. “I’ve already had a complaint about extra traffic muddying up the floors,” she whispered.

  “Oh, right.”

  “My bloody laces are too tight now. I can’t get them undone.”

  “Here, let me try,” he said. Jeremy came through the door at the top of the kitchen stairs just as Cormac was kneeling to have a look at her muddy shoelaces; her hand rested lightly on his shoulder.

  “Hello, Jeremy,” Nora said, then watched as the boy’s expression changed from pleasure at their return, to surprise and bewilderment at their disheveled appearance. “I’m sure looking at the state of us, you’re probably glad you didn’t come along after all.” He didn’t reply.

  “Near miss with a sheep,” she continued. “The car went right off the road.” Something in Jeremy’s face made her acutely aware of the mud on her back and elbows, and the dark patches on the knees of Cormac’s trousers, and how they might easily be misconstrued. From the sudden heat in her face, Nora knew that she was blushing deeply, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. Jeremy’s looks, and his silence, only made matters worse. She nattered on about how they were finally rescued by a trio of farmers. “Three brothers by the name of Farrell. Hauled us out of the muck with a chain. Michael was good enough to give me an old potato sack from the back of their car, to keep from getting my upholstery muddy.”

  “Too late for your upholstery, I’m afraid, but it did save the car.” Cormac must be completely unaware of what was happening here. Perhaps he hadn’t seen Jeremy’s accusing look as he dealt with the laces. But why did he have to pick this moment to demonstrate his sense of humor? Cormac went on: “We’ll be down for supper as soon as we’ve changed, Jeremy, if you’d like to join us.”

  Nora watched the boy’s eyes flicker from her face to Cormac’s, and watched with a sinking heart as the hurt began to harden in them, and his jaw muscles began to tense in the slight concavity of his cheeks. He was just a boy, and everything mattered so much when you were young. Cormac looked evenly at Jeremy. Could he really have missed all this? Retreat seemed like the best strategy at the moment; they could talk later.

  “Well, lads, I’d love to stand here chatting, but I’ve got to get rid of this mud,” Nora said. “See you in a bit.” She walked between them, holding her mucky shoes aloft.

  “Will you come down and have supper with us?” Cormac asked again. This time the boy offered a barely audible response, which seemed to satisfy, because Cormac began to follow a few steps behind her. As she turned on the landing, Nora could see Jeremy standing in the foyer with his hands in his pockets, following their movement up the stairs with a new coldness in his eyes.

  Jeremy did not come down to the kitchen for supper. As she and Cormac lingered over their evening meal, Nora alternately suffered twinges of guilt for perhaps having alienated Jeremy, and small surges of gratitude for time alone with Cormac. He had not even so much as brushed against her while they were preparing the meal, and neither of them had mentioned the momentary madness that overtook them on the road from Tullymore. They both seemed to be engaged in an elaborate game of avoidance, but the question that loomed—at least in her own mind—was not whether such a thing might ever happen again, but when. And yet she wasn’t even quite sure how she felt about it. She wasn’t ready for things to progress any further than they already had. There was so much Cormac didn’t know.

  “You’ve never told me how you came to be so interested in bog bodies,” he said, taking a dripping plate from her as they washed and dried the supper dishes.

  “I guess it started with the summers I spent with my grandparents in Clare. My grandfa
ther used to cut a bit of turf, and I was always fascinated by the things he turned up in the bog. Nothing spectacular, mostly small chunks of waterlogged wood that looked as if they’d been cut only the day before. He showed me once where he’d come across the outline of a fallen tree. The wood was completely gone, but it had left a kind of ghost image in the turf.

  “Then when I was about fourteen, I decided to do a school paper about bogs. I stumbled across a book in the library that had these incredible black-and-white pictures of Tollund Man.” She paused. “You know Tollund Man, the famous bog body from Denmark?”

  Cormac nodded. “I certainly know of him, although we’ve never actually met.”

  “Isn’t he incredible? To see his face, down to the worry lines and the eyelashes and the chin stubble, so perfectly preserved after two thousand years. That was it for me. And the more I found out, the more interesting it was. Why was he naked? Why was his throat cut? And why was that noose around his neck? I started digging for everything I could find about bogs—archaeology, biology, chemistry. Even when you understand the science of bog preservation, it’s still pretty mysterious, the way unsaturated fatty acids are gradually replaced by saturated fatty acids with two carbon atoms less. So the body’s organic compounds aren’t broken down in the usual way, but chemically transformed.” She pulled the stopper in the sink and watched the last of the soapy dishwater as it slipped down the drain.

  “Are you all right, Nora?”

  She nodded. “Just thinking.”

  Nora climbed the stairs from the kitchen with Cormac following behind her. When they reached the main foyer, the only sound was the loud, steady ticking of the grandfather clock.

  “Dead quiet, isn’t it?” Cormac said.

  “A bit too quiet. I think I’m just going to head upstairs to bed.”

  He made no reply, but followed as she turned to go up the main stairs. They had just come to the landing when Cormac spoke: “Hugh gave me a very nice bottle of single-malt that I was thinking of cracking open for a nightcap. I don’t suppose you’d care to join me?”