The Irish Cairn Murder

by Dicey Deere

  “Mr. McIntyre.”

  “Ah, the American lass! Sit down! Sit down! A glass or a pint? Have no fear of the bill, ‘tis my birthday.” Michael McIntyre swiped a hand through his thicket of white hair. He was in his seventies, with a weathered face and brown eyes. He was Wicklow born and at twenty-two had departed Ballynagh for the life of a sailor. But every October, an aging Peter Pan, he returned to Ballynagh. “The village is a drug to me,” he’d once told Torrey, “more than a pinch of any powder you’d snuff up your nose in a brothel in Thailand. Thick as a bog with secrets, and I most privy to them all. Many’s a quiet little laugh I have up my sleeve.” McIntyre knew the ancestry of every cottager, farmer, shop owner, and estate owner in Ballynagh and the foibles and secrets, shameful, laughable, or plain horrendous, of even the most secretive.

  “Soup,” Torrey said. She sat down. “The Thursday special, lamb and barley.” She contemplated McIntyre, who was lifting his pint to take a draft. Whatever she might want to know, she could learn from Michael McIntyre. She knew he liked her, as she liked him; he’d dance about a bit, but he wasn’t likely to hold back.

  So after she’d taken a few spoonfuls of the lamb and barley, she had only to mention the family at Sylvester Hall. At that, Michael McIntyre studied the ceiling and then the depths of his pint:

  “The spinster, Sybil Sylvester, was the last to bear the Sylvester name, but for her great-niece, Natalie. The child, Natalie, had the misfortune to be brought up and guided into pure womanhood by Ms. Sybil.” McIntyre drained his pint and held up the glass, signaling to young Sean behind the bar. Sean nodded and said a word to his sister Emily, the barmaid.

  “Misfortune?”

  “Indeed, indeed! A barrelful of that.” McIntyre raised a hand and gave another stir to his mass of unruly hair. “The spinster, Sybil Sylvester, looked a jolly little person, a buttercup, a daisy, twinkly blue eyes, rosebud mouth. Porcelain figurine seen in a souvenir shop window. Had a fiance and marriage all arranged for her, but he was killed in the war. They say she was relieved because his estate had shrunk. Bad management and a fire. Hah! Then, as the finger of destiny decreed, her nephew, Natalie’s father, along with her mother, disposed of by an earthquake—on terra firma of course. And they say the sea’s a devil!” McIntyre gave a snort of a laugh. “So Ms. Sybil was left in command. And with the child to bring up. According to her lights.”

  Torrey stirred her soup. “And what lights were those, Mr. McIntyre?”

  “Disciplinary lights! In the extreme. As for the rest, all well ordered: Sybil Sylvester spent her days running Sylvester Hall and its farmlands with a gimlet eye. Evenings, stiff dinners, black tie, or playing bridge with ladies and gentlemen of equally exalted family backgrounds. No Catholics allowed. Thank you, Emily.” McIntyre picked up the pint that Emily set down before him.

  Torrey said, cautiously, “But you mean, about discipline ‘in the extreme,’ about handling her responsibility to the child, Natalie—”

  “Hah!” McIntyre set his pint down so hard that the beer splashed on the table: “A child, desperate, trying to swim in a tight corset! Underwater, drowning, tearing at the laces. Frantic! I saw it, and I thought, God knows what it can lead to!” McIntyre’s voice was hoarse with emotion. Then the lids of his dark eyes flicked in a way that Torrey recognized: the curtain coming down.

  McIntyre said, “In the Aleutian Islands—I was thirty-two then. That November the Octavia ran into a storm. The sea became wild, waves high as mountains, the Octavia began wallowing … .”

  So that was all, for now. Bewildering. A very slender thread to that threatening phone call.

  6

  Dakin couldn’t help it. Like now, looking down at Kate Burnside lying there in the tumble of bedclothes on the divan in O’Sullivan’s barn. She was still asleep though it was already noon, and she was surely drunk, her full-lipped mouth a little open. Whenever he saw Kate, he got all heavy breathing and would think of silk or satin, some sliding, slippery material. Kate was his mother’s age, maybe a year younger.

  Divan. That’s what Kate called the bed. It was like a wide couch, “Persian,” she’d told him, “sultans slept on divans. Potentates with their concubines.” She kept her paints and a jumble of her expensive clothes in O’Sullivan’s barn, it was her studio. Her paintings, splashy abstracts that didn’t sell, leaned against the walls. In Dublin she had an elegant town house.

  “Kate! Wake up! Come on!” He bent over and shook her shoulder. He needed her help. Almost from babyhood Kate and his mother had attended Alcock’s Academy and been best friends. True, his mother and Kate had drifted apart years ago. Their lives had become too different. Kate had had two notorious divorces, her children lived with their fathers. Her friends were fellow painters, men who were, it was said, often her lovers.

  “Kate! Come on! wake up!”

  Kate’s eyes opened. She squinted at Dakin, then yawned so widely that her eyes teared. She stretched. She said lazily, “Dakin! You dear thing. I’m thrilled to see you. My mouth is an absolute—I could use some orange juice. And make some coffee. Use the filter thing. It’s on the drainboard.”

  “So,” Dakin said, “she’s had these two letters.” He hunched forward on the hassock beside the divan and ran a finger around the rim of his coffee cup. He’d taken off his parka and was wearing a long-sleeved jersey. The studio was warmed by a peat fire in a cast-iron stove, yet he gave a sudden shiver. “What’s so crazy is that my mother doesn’t even know what the blackmailer’s talking about. She’s perplexed. But she refuses to go to Inspector O’Hare! Why not? She doesn’t even seem to know why not! She just acted somehow … off somewhere.” He could see his mother across from him in the coach, he saw her raise her hand and her slender fingers brush in front of a hazel eye. “Off somewhere,” he repeated. Edgy, he ran a hand through his hair.

  Kate, cross-legged on the divan in a pink satin nightgown with a bit of torn tan lace on one shoulder, was holding her coffee cup in both hands, and watching him.

  He leaned forward. “Kate, d’you remember anything that happened? That this blackmailer could’ve misconstrued?”

  “No! Nothing!” Kate sounded so irritable that Dakin was startled. “You’re assuming the blackmail’s about something that happened years ago. Maybe Natalie made some financial transaction a year or two ago that wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up. A profitable, and not-quite-legal bit of—”

  “My mother?” Dakin gave an incredulous laugh. “Not on your life! And there’s that about her father’s penknife, it must’ve been stolen. And what’s it supposed to signify to my mother? She doesn’t know. She’s in the dark. She—” He stopped. Funny, the way Kate was looking at him, not seeing him all of a sudden. Then she gave herself a little shake. She put her coffee cup down on the end table. She pulled her long black hair back in a ponytail and snapped a rubber band around it. Her white-lidded brown eyes were heavy and reddened. “Poor Natalie! What’s she going to do? Will she go to meet this blackmailer on Saturday? Or not? Don’t keep me waiting with bated breath.”

  Dakin said tightly, “I thought I said. No. She won’t. She’s not giving any phony blackmailer even one pound. She says she’s done nothing to warrant being blackmailed. Nothing.”

  Kate drained her coffee cup, then put it down and got up from the divan. Barefoot, slender, and full-breasted, the pink satin nightgown falling off one shoulder, she wandered to the bookcase against the far wall. She ran her fingers slowly over a row of books. She said, lazily, “I’m in a mood to read. Maybe The Brothers Karamazov. Or Remembrance of Things Past. Something in the French or Russian style.”

  Dakin sighed. He felt heavy, burdened. A waste of time, coming to Kate Burnside. What, after all, could she know that might help?

  And here she was, coming back, coming up behind him where he sat on the hassock, he felt her warm bare arms sliding along the sides of his neck and then her breasts pressing against his back, and he breathed in her bed warmth, and he thought, Yes, again,
like last time and the time before and before that, ever since he was fourteen. Kate. Kate.

  7

  On Saturday, by noon the sun had warmed the meadows, so that a pungent smell of earth rose from the ground. From the east meadow, past the tumbled stone fence and the stand of oaks that separated Castle Moore property from the west field of Sylvester Hall, came the mooing of cows. Crickets chirped, birds sang.

  Waiting, he smoked a cigarette. Then he leaned back against a leafy oak beside the cairn. He had no loss of confidence. She’d come. She’d wasted his time, holding off paying. Still, he’d be the richer for it.

  There, now! A flutter of white over there beyond the ridge of trees. He glimpsed her approaching figure; she wore a long white skirt with black boots and a close-fitting tan sweater.

  Triumphant, he folded his arms and waited. She came across the meadow to where he stood. She came within a few feet of him and stopped. She stared at him. Her eyes grew wide.

  “The money.” he said curtly.

  Brown eyes, heavy-lidded, just staring. Then she laughed. “But you’re not—You’re not …”

  “The money!” he repeated impatiently, looking back at her. His gaze slid down from her face. The tan sweater had a V-neck, he saw the cleft of her breasts that glistened a little with dampness; she must have hurried. Her hair was long and dark and drawn back carelessly into a ponytail, so that wisps floated free. And looking at her, he remembered a dim photograph and then he knew that this woman was not Natalie Cameron.

  The woman was looking back at him, a puzzled and half-smiling look; but now she raised a hand and touched her lower lip, and in her gaze was something else he recognized, and he began to feel a growing throb in his groin, an exciting ache. Whoever this woman was and why she had come he had to know. But he also had a familiar, greedy feeling that demanded satiety.

  8

  Luce Cameron was ten. For a week now, she’d had head lice, which was why she wore her brimmed cap all day, even in school. There was the gel-like ointment her mother had twice so far to comb in and wash out, and the cap had to be washed every day too. The gel was that new stuff that didn’t smell bad, more like herbs, but everybody knew that new-stuff smell. “It’s so embarrassing,” she said to Dakin almost every day, “as though we live in squalid circumstances. At least it’s Saturday, so I don’t have to go.”

  Instead, she’d play in the woods.

  She left Sylvester Hall close to noon. Breda had made her a cold beef sandwich. She’d brought her magnifying glass in case she decided to study ants. She’d seen a movie in Dunlavin, it had horses and a beautiful countryside and a naked man pulling his pants on in a hurry when the husband came back from fox hunting and opened the bedroom door. But the interesting part was about ants. The red ants raiding the black ants and kidnapping their children to take home as slaves. Or maybe it was the black ants raiding the red ones?

  But all that was, as Dakin would have said, academic, because by noontime she hadn’t seen a single anthill. Or ant. Autumn must be the wrong season.

  Autumn was beautiful, though. In the distance she saw Castle Moore. It looked so romantic, though it really had only the one turret left and needed all kinds of repairs that Winifred Moore said she wouldn’t spend a single pound on.

  In the sunny west meadow, Luce found a rock big enough to sit on. She took the sandwich from her backpack and unwrapped it. Nothing could be more perfect than sitting here in the sun eating a beef-and-mustard and with the little bottle of orange pop. And hearing the birds singing, and the rustle of small game, and—someone laughing. Tinkly laughter, coming from somewhere. And again.

  Luce settled her cap and tipped her head down a little to keep the sun from her eyes. The laughter, again. A woman’s laugh. From off there by the oaks.

  And then, as she told herself later, she wasn’t spying. It was just that she happened to be there near the cairn.

  9

  The Sunday lunchtime special at O’Malley’s Pub was steak, peas, and mashed potatoes. At one o’clock, Torrey was forking up the last delicious mouthful when the stranger came in.

  Torrey did not at first notice him. The barroom was crowded and she was sitting beyond the bar at one of the smaller round tables back near the fireplace. There was low chatter and the smell of beers and grilled meats and the warmth of the fire.

  Eating the Sunday lunch, she was pleased with herself. She’d read both of the short Simenon novels with surprising ease, even though an amazing number of Hungarian words were startlingly different from the same words in the other basic twenty-six languages. Nouns in the other languages were all similar, even the Russian. Night, for instance. Office. Passport. Even pharmacy. But Hungarian was another kettle of nouns, entirely. Worth exploring the why of it. Also, she’d had an E-mail from Myra Schwartz at Interpreters International in Boston. In November, a weeklong job in Lisbon lined up. International trade. “They asked specificially for you, like last year,” Myra wrote. “The Portuguese were impressed, they said you even got their in jokes.”

  Torrey had grinned at that, pleased. Interpreting was a risky business with fallow periods, you never knew. She lived on the edge, with a fluctuating bank account. It was like skiing close to a precipice, yet at the last perilous instant twisting away. Exhilarating, though. She loved it. And she had just banked her check for the European Union meeting in Prague. She had a chance to relax now, before the assignment in Budapest. Maybe she’d buy a nubby corduroy material and cover the shabby old couch in the kitchen.

  Yet. Yet this last day or two, she’d become restless, gazing out of the kitchen window to where she’d seen the glint of dying sunlight shining on … what? binoculars? and the phone had rung for Dakin.

  Hungry, these last couple of days, she couldn’t seem to settle down and cook anything. She wandered about the cottage eating chocolate bars with almonds. None of the groceries she’d bought in Ballynagh tempted her. This morning, she’d stood with folded arms looking at the cans of tuna fish in the kitchen cabinet. Rice. Dried milk. A shaker of grated cheese. Out of these, Jasper could’ve made a mouthwatering masterpiece. She could not.

  But at least Dakin Cameron had appeared on Thursday afternoon at four o’clock, as he’d promised. He’d expertly framed the window and now it was snug, no drafts. Torrey hadn’t mentioned Wednesday’s threatening phone call. Something about the set of Dakin’s shoulders warned her not to. Despite the chilly afternoon, he shed his jacket after working for a half hour. Underneath he was wearing one of his mustard-colored jerseys. This one had a bushy-tailed squirrel printed on the chest. The jersey he’d worn the day before had had a turtle imprint. Maybe he was an animal lover? Or liked that mustard color? She didn’t ask.

  But one thing she did ask was why he did odd jobs around Ballynagh. “Why do you?” she’d asked him, admittedly indelicately when, after he’d been working an hour, she’d brought him out a mug of hot cider. Dakin had flushed. “I like to. And, well … My father would’ve laughed and been glad of it. We’re alike, my father and I. ‘Inherited riches is just luck,’ he once told me, ‘Let’s see your real baggage.’”

  In O‘Malley’s, a sudden blast of music from the television set above the bar. Jack, the younger O’Malley boy, quickly turned it down, apologetically lifting his shoulders. Standing at the bar almost beneath the television screen, Torrey saw the man she’d noticed come into O’Malley’s some minutes ago. What now registered with her was that he wore city clothes: a dark suit with a gray shirt and striped blue-and-gray tie. There were always a few strangers in Ballynagh at any season—tourists in country tweeds; weekenders come for the fishing in the streams that rushed down from the mountains; hikers, booted and jacketed, who stayed a weekend or overnight at Nolan’s Bed and Breakfast. But the only place that city folks, those in suits and ties, were likely to be seen in Ballynagh was on television.

  The stranger had an untouched pint before him on the bar. He was perhaps in his forties. He was dark haired and good looking, with
a narrow, pale face. His brows were drawn together and he had an impatient, angry look. Just now, he was pulling at his striped tie, pulling it this way and that, as though it were choking him. Suddenly he slammed a fist down on the bar, threw down some coins, and was gone.

  “Here you are, Ms. Tunet.” Emily put Torrey’s change on the table.

  “Thanks, Emily.” Sorting out a tip, and then fitting the pound notes into her wallet, Torrey was thinking: a stranger, neither hunter, fisherman, nor vacationing tourist. By the oak near the cottage, the cigarette butt.

  She got up so abruptly that the chair legs scraped noisely on the floor.

  10

  “It was a few minutes after one o‘clock,” as Torrey later that afternoon told Inspector O’Hare. By that time, there were bramble scratches on her forehead and bloodstains on the knees of her khaki pants.

  Coming out of O’Malley’s, she saw the stranger heading up toward the road north of the village. He had a long stride. She hesitated. Was she being ridiculous? Too imaginative? Oh, go ahead! Nothing to lose. She got on her bike.

  At that instant she felt her arm gripped. “Ms. Tunet! Hello, Hello!” A deep, hearty voice. “Lucky, running into you!” It was Winifred Moore, on her head a suede Robin Hood sort of hat and wearing leggings, over her twill pants. “Having a poetry reading at St. Andrew’s next Sunday. From my new book, Slivers of Womanhood. Four o’clock. I’m hoping you can—”

  “Yes, absolutely, I’d love to. Four o’clock, right?” She looked after the stranger. He had reached the end of the street and was crossing the stone bridge over the stream. Behind him, several village women were trudging along, chatting, laughing, their laughter floating back. Two of the women, between them, were carrying a couch. They must be heading home from the Sunday jumble sale behind Duffy’s garage. There were cottages and farms off the main road beyond the bridge.