by Bill Granger
He covered her with his body.
She reached for him, took her hands between his legs, felt him ease into her.
Soft and groping, no longer afraid of the darkness.
He warmed her at last.
His Lordship was not prepared at that moment to speak with the Chief Inspector but asked pardon for his delay. It was a matter of a call to Quebec City and the oil ministers who had excused him from their meeting. Could he, Jeffries, be of service in the meantime?
And so Cashel found himself in the immense library of Clare House, talking with a still-shaken but supremely confident Jeffries. They discussed the murders, and Cashel thought he understood exactly what had happened.
But he could not understand why.
Cashel had been served claret; it was just before noon. Jeffries sipped at tea. Cashel stood at the window and looked down the long lawn from Clare House which ran to the barren edge of the hills descending in gradual slopes to the Galway road five hundred feet below. Beyond lay the bay.
“Fer what purpose?” Cashel asked quietly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Oh.” He turned. “I was talkin’ to meself. Fer what purpose would Toolin go t’a strange country and wait t’kill his Lairdship?”
“I’m sure I cannot comprehend his motives,” said Jeffries.
“Nor I,” said Cashel.
The phantom of a thought flashed across his mind. “Mr. Jeffries, would ye be kind enough to give me some idea of what public gatherin’s his Lairdship is going to be undertaking in the next few weeks?”
“Why? If I may ask, Chief Inspector?” The tone was precise, a studied London non-accent like that favored by television people.
Cashel smiled. “I don’t know, Mr. Jeffries. I can’t make sense yet out of what has happened, so perhaps I can make sense out of what will come to be.”
Jeffries smiled. “I don’t understand?”
“Neither do I, my lad,” said Cashel. “Perhaps there was a reason for Toolin to go after Lord Slough in Canada, rather than here. Was he trying to prevent something? I don’t know and I’ll tell ya, I’m at sea. I’ve gone round with Toolin’s old woman in Dublin till I’m blue in me face and I haven’t a clue.”
Cashel’s smile and confession seemed to warm the cold demeanor of the private secretary. Getting up, Jeffries went to a Queen Anne table and picked up an appointment book.
“Tomorrow is Saturday and the funeral for poor Deirdre Monahan, of course. With her people down in Innisbally. His Lordship will not attend the wake but will be at the funeral Mass tomorrow morning. And at the grave. Incidentally, the graveyard is along the Galway road, north of the village.”
Cashel nodded and wrote it down.
“As for poor Harmon. Well, he was English and had no family. His Lordship has made arrangements for him—”
Jeffries glanced again at the appointment book.
“Very little Sunday. No public meetings, if that’s what you’re interested in. He’ll be here at Clare House all day. On Monday, he flies to London for a meeting with directors of Great Western Oil. That’s a private conference, at Devon House, Lord Slough’s headquarters there—”
Cashel noted it.
“Tuesday is quite full.” Jeffries glanced at Cashel. “And quite public. A meeting with his editors at the Scottish Daily News in the morning in Edinburgh. And then the Royal Cancer Society benefit—”
“A concert, is it then?” asked Cashel.
Jeffries grinned. “Hardly. A benefit match arranged by Slough Newspapers Limited at Ibrox Park in Glasgow.”
“Match?”
“Between the Celtics and Rangers.”
“Oh, Lord help us,” said Cashel. He knew—everyone in the English-speaking soccer world knew—that a football match between the two Glasgow teams in Glasgow was an occasion for riot, drunkenness, and general anarchy.
Jeffries went on: “Wednesday, December first, is most important—launch of the Brianna at Liverpool with the Taoiseach and British Prime Minister in attendance.”
“The Taoiseach?” Cashel was impressed; it was a rare occasion when the Prime Minister of Eire—the Taoiseach—went to England for any man.
“This is a launch is it?”
“More like an inaugural flight,” smiled Jeffries.
“Ah, an aeroplane—”
“No,” said Jeffries. “The Brianna—named after his Lordship’s daughter, of course—is a hovercraft, the first to go in service on the Irish Sea. Certainly you’ve read about it.”
Cashel shook his head.
“His Lordship’s new ferry service on the Devon Line—hovercraft between Liverpool and Dublin in forty-five minutes. It’s called a flight because the ship literally flies on jets of air above the water. The jets push it out of the water and along the surface, reducing friction and allowing for great speed. They have hovercraft in service on the English Channel.”
“I see.” Cashel nodded. “And when is this inaugural flight then?”
“On December first. It was pushed back.”
“I see.”
Jeffries looked up. He liked the slow, rather stupid detective for some reason.
He smiled. “Would you like to be a passenger? I could arrange it?”
“Ah, no, sir, I wouldn’t. I don’t care fer flyin’ if you must know. Never have. I like me feet on the ground.”
“Well, it’s not flying exactly—”
“Ah, thank you kindly in any case, Mr. Jeffries. But I don’t think I will.”
Jeffries nodded.
“But would you be so kind—you stopped at a meeting with the Prime Minister. Would you be kind enough to go along?”
Jeffries continued.
Cashel listened and made notes, thinking about the hovercraft. He had never seen one; he had no curiosity to see one. But if Toolin wanted to kill Lord Slough, why did he go to America to do it? Why not take a pop at him at Liverpool with all the mucks about, launching his great new ship?
Absently, Cashel felt in his pocket for his pipe and just as absently filled it. He lit it as Jeffries finished.
“Ah, it’s a puzzle isn’t it, Mr. Jefferies?”
“What, Chief Inspector?”
“How poor old Toolin found his way t’America with him being on the dole fer a year and got himself a shiny new gun in Quebec City t’knock off his Lordship—beggin’ yer pardon. Why, Mr. Jeffries? Why would he go all that way? T’kill a man who is here and will be here?”
Jeffries watched him smoke his pipe. He did not comment.
“It don’t make sense.”
Jeffries nodded.
They sat then in silence, sipping tea and claret, and waited for Lord Slough’s leisure.
The thing shuddered into life, whining and then howling until the cold dawn stillness was shattered into a million irretrievable pieces of echo. Shaking and screaming like a beast in rage.
The man they called Captain Donovan, though he was not a captain, stood on the apron which led gently down into the Mersey. Forty feet away from him, the beast shook and roared. Donovan wore special ear protectors because of the sound.
The immense hovercraft finally lifted itself off its dry pod and struggled into the water. But she was no more at home there; the waves beat back from her giant fans as though terrified; the giant propellers on her stacks created a gale across the enclosed deck which splashed into the water behind, leaving a trough of depression. Then it began to move more quickly, bellowing with rage, plunging into the white-capped foam of the gray, sickly Irish Sea.
Donovan smiled. His heart almost felt light. He loved the beast, loved the ungainly beauty of it that was no ship’s beauty or no airplane’s beauty but the beauty of monumental rage. It was Donovan’s rage, too; he bellowed with the craft as it tore into the sea and turned back the waves from its bow.
She turned sharply beyond the harbor wall and headed back toward the apron. Thump, thump, thump over the breasts of the waves, shaking and screaming in the wind—l
ouder than the wind, and that made Donovan cheer her. Oh beauty, he thought. Oh beauty.
It was the second week of trials.
There had been problems with the steering mechanism at first, but Donovan—as engineer—had finally found the trouble in a pair of loose bolts along the shaft.
They had taken her out every day and every night, into every sea there was. She had even bucked the force-ten winds two days before. The waves had crashed into the breakwater of the harbor at heights of ten feet, but the Brianna, with its newer design, had cut into them and ridden above them, smoothing them down to manageable size so that the forward speed could be maintained.
And what speed.
He watched her now, cutting into the empty harbor faster than a motorboat, her great fan propellers chopping at the air.
She would be ready December first.
In a Liverpool warehouse, there were two cases of gelignite, waiting to be cargoed aboard the Brianna.
Everything was perfect, including the craft.
No, beauty, no, we won’t hurt ye. We’ll collect our ransom and we’ll take ye t’Dublin and we’ll be gone. I’ll miss ye, beauty, but we won’t hurt ye.
He crooned to the craft bearing down on him and on the apron. He had never felt such love before, for any ship he had sailed or for any man or any woman; the others laughed at her, hated her, hated her cowlike clumsiness. Captain George. He said it wasn’t a proper ship. Bloody English bastard. Not a proper ship. She was more.
Almost anticlimactically, the craft lifted itself on the apron and settled down on its bottom like a lady adjusting her skirt. The whining of the engines cooled down; the wind suddenly shrieked louder.
She would be ready. In time. That was nearly certain. Donovan pulled off his ear protectors and listened to the wind and the whisper of the craft’s dying howl. She stopped shaking. Donovan started across the apron to her.
They would all be ready. In time.
Green stood at the window and watched the first snow fall on the narrow street beyond the window of Blake House. He had no idea that the snow was coming too early for London’s climate. He only knew it sparked a remembrance within him.
He had loved the snow when he was a boy in Ohio. But that snow had been very different from the polite English snow now falling slowly and picturesquely on the slanted roofs of the London houses: This snow was like the snow in paperweights, which seemed to fall almost with majesty. The Ohio snows were life-killing, blinding, gouging snows, shivering down the streets, coming in the blackness of night, blowing across two thousand miles of flatland before they struck. And yet, the savagery of it had thrilled him when he was a child.
Green turned from the window as the housekeeper entered the library.
“It’s the Section,” she announced. She was an unpleasant woman with an unpleasant face and a bad odor; Green nodded and went past her, out of the book-lined room, into the soundproof room where the double scrambler sat in a black box.
He picked up the telephone. The voice from Washington came through the double scrambler, faintly at first.
“I can’t hear you,” Green said.
“Is this better?”
“Yes, thanks.”
“Damned thing.” Hanley’s annoyed voice came over clearly.
Green nodded and was quiet. Idly, he wondered if it was time yet to have a drink. He had become very careful about that recently. He wouldn’t drink before noon. Then he would go out of the house, to the club. Quietly. Away from that old woman who undoubtedly spied on him as he spied on her. It was all routine, all for the reports that were sent back to the Section every month.
“We haven’t heard from our man in Ulster.”
Green said, “Nothing at this end.”
“Damn him.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want a call as soon as he makes contact.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not a word?”
“Is he supposed to contact me? The house?”
“I don’t know. We didn’t make that clear. He hasn’t contacted anyone. He had requested information, we sent it by open cable. We know he received it. Or someone received it. I don’t want to call that hotel. On an open line. Why doesn’t he make contact?”
Green stared at the black box before him. “Perhaps there’s been difficulty.”
“Yes,” said Hanley. “Perhaps. But everything’s botched now with—” Pause. “Well, Green. Dammit. I want immediate contact from you when he makes—” Another pause. Green smiled. He knew that Hanley did not want to say “contact” a second time. Finally: “When he makes contact.” Green continued to grin. What a fool Hanley was.
Replacing the receiver finally, Green sat for a while, staring at the telephone and the black box. He conjured up the image of Devereaux in his mind, and wondered what Hanley meant by “botched.”
When he left the room, he closed the door and then automatically gave it a tug, to make certain it locked. The old grandfather clock in the hall began its song for noon: First the sixteen notes of the Westminster chimes and then a pause and the faintest of clicks and then the first bell struck and the second and the third…
Green stood in the middle of the hall, transfixed by the sound. At last, the notes were all struck and the clock resumed its slow, even tick-tock.
Noon.
The dark wood of the hall surrounded him, seemed to oppress him. The housekeeper would be in the back kitchen. There would be the stupidity of lunch again, the awkward conversation.…
He went to get his coat from the hall tree.
It was time.
13
CLARE
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
Faolin made the sign of the cross with the others who were packed into the tiny church.
An old woman began to cry, sobbing softly. She buried her face in her hands. Her hands were wrapped with the beads of a black rosary. Her head was covered with a black scarf.
Faolin looked at her. She would be Deirdre Monahan’s aunt, the last person left in that little family. He had learned who they all were.
“I will go to the altar of God.” The priest held his hands apart and lights of the candles caught the shine in the satiny material of the black chasuble. The golden cross imprinted on the back of the loose garment glittered in the low, intense light of the candles.
“To God, the joy of my youth. Give judgment to me, O God, and decide my cause against an unjust and unholy people. From unjust and deceitful men, deliver me.”
Faolin stared at Lord Slough. The Englishman sat stiffly in the pew behind the coffin. His daughter sat next to him. They sat looking straight ahead, strangers to the service and to the surroundings.
“For you, O God, are my strength.” The old priest pronounced the English words as distinctly and solemnly as he had pronounced the Latin words in the old from of the Mass. He spoke as though he were pleading the psalm for himself. “Why have You forsaken me? And why do I go about in sadness, while the enemy afflicts me?”
Deirdre had not lived in the village for ten years, and her relatives were mostly dead, buried in the rocky spit of land up the road where her own remains would be buried in a little while. But most of the village of Innisbally had come to the church anyway, to stare at the spectacle of the English lord who lived in the old mansion in the burren hills.
That was why Faolin had come. He had told no one. They would say it was foolish, a risk. Perhaps. But he had to see this man he hated enough to kill.
Faolin held his cloth cap in hand. His eyes glittered in the candlelight. A statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus looked down on him. His coat was unbuttoned and open but he did not care. He did not wear a gun. These were not the enemy; only the English lord, who would die another day on the Irish Sea.
Faolin had come to Innisbally the day before, “passing through,” he’d said at MacDermott’s public house—on his way to see his aunt down in Limerick. A walking trip
from Derry. What news of Derry, then? They had stood him a jar and then another, and even the young, toothless garda had bought him a whisky. The garda wasn’t a bad sort, just a country boy who had gone into the national police because he didn’t have the skill for the fields.
“Is it work ye’re doin’ in Derry, then?” the garda asked. The lad had never been beyond Galway City some twenty-six miles up the road.
Shaking his head, Faolin mumbled something about the dole and not findin’ work and perhaps emigratin’ to America—
They could all understand that. The village, which had had nearly five hundred families before the great famine and the subsequent waves of emigration, now had fewer than seventy-five people, most of them old. The children grew up and moved away. There was nothing in Innisbally, even by the standards of a poor country.
Faolin had gotten drunk with them; he could not remember the last time he had gotten drunk. They had warmed him with their openness and their generous hands—though they had so little—and they had made him angry, too. They had talked about Lord Slough who was coming down for the funeral Mass, a grand gesture, and then how his Lordship had taken on all the expense, even to the sandwiches and tea after, because old Mrs. Tone, Deirdre’s aunt, didn’t have a bob to her name.… Their gratitude made him angry but he had checked it, he thought, nearly to the last.
So he had fallen asleep drunk on the publican’s sofa and now, groggy with drink, he had agreed to go to the funeral Mass to see the English lord.
A sight to see, they had said. And Durkin had urged him to stay the morning and have a jar before he went on his way.
The bell rang and the priest raised the bread.
“This is My Body.”
Faolin instinctively bowed his head as he had done as a child and struck his breast lightly. Then he looked up again and surveyed the faces in the church; finally, he met a pair of eyes staring at him from across the church.
He returned the gaze.
A middle-aged man in a dark coat with a black mustache and clear blue eyes.
“This is My Blood,” the priest began. He raised the chalice. The bell rang again.
