by Dicey Deere
“See you later, then!” She pushed off. The cobbled street made her bicycle wheels wobble. Twice the wheels twisted and she fell off. She gave up and walked the bike fast until she reached the bridge where the graveled road began.
Back on the bike, she pedaled on, looking ahead, but the road curved sharply to her left, and when she rounded it she almost ran into the two women carrying the couch. “Watch out, miss!” Indignant faces. “Sorry,” Torrey said, “Sorry.” “Well, just a minute, then, miss.” The women edged the couch around to a rutted road; beyond, smoke rose from a cottage chimney. “A beauty, isn’t it?” one of the women said, friendly. “Got it for eight pounds! Worth a hundred. Used to belong to Nellie Egan’s mother that passed away. Eight pounds!” “Yes, well, good luck.” Torrey edged around and was off on the Peugeot. What next? A herd of elephants in the middle of the road? With a feeling of urgency, she rounded a curve and saw in disappointment that she was too late, even the rest of the women had disappeared, going down paths and roads to their cottages. She slowed the bike. What was the difference, anyway? The man was just another tourist, she’d gotten the wind up about nothing, she was being ridiculous. Give up. Turn back. Go home. Get the Budapest daily newspapers on the Internet, there were always words, expressions, that were used in new, slangy ways.
Still … the road ahead was the kind of narrow Irish country road she loved. There were high hedges on either side. Behind them would be farms with broad fields. So, carpe diem. At least a half hour of breathing in the crisp, green-smelling air, and from a cottage somewhere, a whiff of wood smoke. Feet again on the pedals, she pushed off.
Barely a mile beyond, the hedges on her left gave way to meadows where cattle grazed. On her right was a birch wood. Sylvan. From the Latin, meaning “wood.” She thought of Thoreau and bicycled blissfully on. Branches of roadside elms shaded the road. A weedy stream flowed alongside the road and disappeared into the woods; small animals rustled in the autumn leaves; there was the flutter of birds’ wings.
Then on her right, behind briars, and running along the side of the road, she saw a tall, wrought-iron fence, its rails topped with iron fleur-de-lis. She remembered then the magazine photographs of Sylvester Hall with its wrought-iron fence and stately gates. Were the gates on this road? Curiosity nagged. She’d push on, but only around the next curve. Then back to Ballynagh.
A jolt, as the Peugeot’s front wheel struck a pothole, and her pocket radio in the bicycle basket exploded into “Mack the Knife.” Louis Armstrong.
Damn it! That loose connection again. She fumbled the radio out from under her extra sweater in the basket and pressed the off button. The music stopped.
So, then, around that next curve. Then back to Ballynagh. She pushed off. Thirty feet ahead, she rounded the curve.
“Help! Help!” A woman in an olive green coat was stumbling along the road toward her, crying out. Torrey skidded the bike to a stop. The woman was panting, her eyes were wide with fright. “I saw! A man! He was sneaking up behind the fellow—I saw it! I was taking a walk, and—oh, God! He must have killed him! Get the police! Get the police!”
The woman reached out and clutched the bicycle’s handlebars. She was a plump, blond woman with an American accent. Her eyes were wide with shock. She turned her head from Torrey and looked back toward a clump of bushes beside tall wrought-iron gates. “There,” she managed.
Torrey slid off the bike. Going toward the bushes, she could hear the woman whimpering behind her. The bushes were prickly and tore at her hair as she knelt beside the man’s body. He lay on his side, blood oozing from his forehead and sliding down his temple into the grass. His eyes were half-open, unseeing slits in his narrow, pale face.
He was the stranger Torrey had seen in O’Malley’s, the man in the dark suit and striped tie.
The American woman was at Torrey’s shoulder. “He could be dead! The fellow who attacked him saw me! Then he must have heard someone coming! Jazz music! He ran through the gates and up the avenue!” Her voice was shrill with hysteria.
The man on the ground made a sound in his throat, a thin rasp.
“He’s not dead, that’s sure.” Torrey said. “I’ll get help.” She stood up and looked around. A boy and girl, teenagers, had come from farther up the road. They were looking curiously at Torrey and at the American woman who had her fists pressed against her cheeks.
Torrey saw with relief that the iron gates of Sylvester Hall were open. “Stay with her!” she called to the boy and girl, and ran up the avenue.
11
The sun had clouded over. The ambulance from Glasshill thirty miles away came to a stop beside the Ballynagh police car.
“Over there,” Inspector Egan O’Hare said to the two white-clad attendants who jumped from the ambulance. He jerked his head toward the body that lay in the brambles beside the iron gates of Sylvester Hall.
O’Hare, a heavy-set, keen-eyed man in his early fifties, stood with hands clasped behind his back and feet apart, a habitual pose. He looked from under his brows at the four people who stood watching: the pair of teenagers who were wide-eyed and silent; the woman in an olive green coat who was whimpering; and—God help him!—Ms. Torrey Tunet. Inspector O’Hare couldn’t quite suppress a groan. Beside him, Sergeant Jimmy Bryson, aware, managed not to grin.
“Gently, gently!” O’Hare said to the younger ambulance attendant, who stumbled on the briars and let the stretcher tip, so that the unconscious man’s body strained against the buckled straps. A dried trickle of blood ran from the man’s temple down one side of his cheek; his temple was already swelling, the blow must have been near lethal. A stranger. A tourist? Alive, thank God! Even so, a murderous attack. Hardly an advert for Ballynagh. Not that the village was anyway a mecca for tourists.
The attendants slid the stretcher into the ambulance. Sergeant Jimmy Bryson, whistling under his breath, was bending over and scanning the brambled area where the man’s body had lain.
“The attacker! He saw me!” the American woman in the green coat wailed. Her face was pale with fright, possibly even shock.
“Yes, well,” O’Hare said. He’d want statements, the sooner the better, the attack still fresh in their minds. There’d be room enough in the police car for the two teenagers and this agitated witness. As for Ms. Tunet, she had her bicycle and she knew too damned well where the Ballynagh police station was; even if she were on Mars and blindfolded, she would find her way there, and Nelson, tail wagging, would slobber all over her, for God’s sake.
Inspector O’Hare shook his head.
Standing beside her bicycle, Torrey watched the police car disappear up the road. Then she turned the bicycle and pedaled fast through the iron gates and up the avenue to Sylvester Hall.
Jessie, the second maid, opened the door. “Ms. Cameron’s waiting in the library.” She led the way through the great cream-and-blue hall with its rotunda ceiling.
The library was in the west wing. Natalie Cameron in tan wool pants and a brown crew-necked sweater was sitting on a window seat, gazing out and biting a fingernail. She looked around, smiled at Torrey, and got up. “Hello, again. I saw them leave—the ambulance, and the rest. Thanks for coming back.” She had a low, husky voice, oddly appealing. “What I wanted to ask you—Dakin told me that he did some carpentry for you at your cottage last Wednesday. Late afternoon? I …” She faltered, stopped.
“Yes?” Torrey gazed at Dakin’s mother. As Winifred Moore had said, Natalie Cameron was a beauy. Hair the color of dark honey grew low on her brow, which was wide, with a clear look. She had hazel eyes framed by straight, almost black eyebrows, a startling effect. Her nose was bluntly rounded and her mouth was full-lipped. She was probably thirty-five or thirty-six. Right now, she looked anxious.
“It seems,” Natalie Cameron said, “that while Dakin was doing the carpentry, he got a rather odd phone call. An unknown person, threatening—Dakin said that you tried to help? Spoke to the caller?” Her husky voice quavered.
�
��Yes. I just, on impulse—”
“So strange! Upsetting.” Nervously, Natalie Cameron pushed up her sweater sleeves. “Or someone’s idea of a lark?” She cast a sideways look at Torrey.
“I don’t think so,” Torrey said. “It was a cold voice, a man’s. In command. Something familiar, though, an accent—I couldn’t quite place it.” But she would; it would come to her, she’d recognize it, it only took time. She watched Natalie Cameron push her sweater sleeves up and down. “I wish I could help.”
“Oh, it’s nothing!” Natalie Cameron said quickly, “Likely just some dreadful, nasty joke. Maybe to upset Dakin, one of his school friends managing to fake an adult voice.”
Why wasn’t Natalie Cameron admitting it? She was troubled far more than a nasty joke warranted. Torrey said, “Well, they succeeded. He was upset.” But she was staring at Natalie Cameron’s left inner arm where the soft white flesh was marred by a puckered scar that ran halfway down to her wrist.
“Oh!” Natalie Cameron caught her glance and quickly pulled down her sweater sleeve. “Awful, isn’t it? So ugly. I was in an auto accident. Ages ago, in Dublin. That was my only scar. But the accident shook me up badly.” She laughed suddenly. “The lucky part was that my great-aunt took me abroad to recover. In Italy, in Florence, we stayed at a pensione where I met Andrew Cameron. I was nineteen, he was twenty-six. We fell instantly in love. Isn’t it amazing how an unfortunate little accident can result in something marvelous?”
12
At the glass-fronted police station on Butler Street, Sergeant Jimmy Bryson, feeling alive and keen, “in action” as he thought of it, fixed a cup of tea for the American woman. She sat rigidly in the “good” chair—the one with arms—beside Inspector O’Hare’s desk. She was trying to comb her short, rather frizzy blond hair with her fingers. It was already four o’clock.
The two teenagers sat over beside the soda machine, sipping cans of Coke. Nelson, Inspector O’Hare’s black Lab, rested his head on the boy’s knee and slowly wagged his tail. “Forget it,” the boy said, “it’ll rot your teeth.”
O’Hare, at his desk, waited until the woman had a chance to take a few sips of the hot tea. Meanwhile, he took a new cassette from the bottom drawer of his desk, put it into the recording machine, and made sure the machine was working, because sometimes it wasn’t. “Now, Ms.—?”
“Plant. Brenda Plant.” The woman’s voice was shaky, but a little color had come back to her face. Pale blue eyes beneath sandy brows, a nondescript nose that was now faintly red with cold. A wide, thin-lipped mouth. Her frizzy blond hair was cut below her ears and stood out in what O’Hare thought of as a Dutch bob, though he wasn’t sure precisely what that was. He made circles on a pad, while she talked.
Brenda Plant, a widow, aged forty, an interior decorator from Buffalo, New York. On her way to an all-Irish antiques convention in Cork. She’d arrived in Ballynagh at eleven o’clock this morning in a Honda rented at the Dublin airport and had booked into Nolan’s Bed and Breakfast for a stay of five days to visit antique shops in the area before continuing on to Cork. She’d lunched at Miss Amelia’s Tea Shoppe. Then she’d thought, a nice walk up that “marvelously rustic road.” There’d been a few other women on the road, going home from some sort of church jumble sale, but they’d dropped off, one after another, going up this or that dirt path or road. Alone, she’d strolled on, enjoying the countryside, when, having rounded a curve—
“I saw a man … the victim. He was sitting on a rock by the side of the road. He was just sitting there, looking toward big iron gates that opened onto an avenue.” Then up behind him had come another man. “He raised a stick—it was thick as a club!—and brought it down on the man’s head. I cried out! I was so horrified. He heard me. He looked over. He saw me! Then he ran up through the gates.” Ms. Plant dragged her fingers distractedly through her permed hair and looked back at Inspector O’Hare. Her light blue eyes, with mascara that had run a bit, were anxious. She shivered and pulled the collar of her coat more closely around her neck.
“The man,” O’Hare said, “what did he look like?”
“I couldn’t exactly—He had on one of those fishing hats with the brim down all around. So I couldn’t exactly—But I know he saw me! And of course heard me!”
“Nothing to worry about now, Ms. Plant,” O’Hare said. “The man who was attacked will likely regain consciousness soon. You might be of further help. Needless to say, we’ll appreciate your cooperation.”
Ms. Plant looked doubtful. “Oh, well, yes. If there’s anything …”
When the door closed behind Ms. Plant, O’Hare looked over at the two teenagers beside the soda machine. Willie Hern was the boy, and that was his girlfriend, Marcy, Henry McGann’s oldest. Now let’s see what they’d witnessed.
As for that final witness, the annoying, meddlesome Ms. Torrey Tunet, that pebble in his shoe—where was she? Exasperating young woman. Looked a straight-backed proper young cadet, never mind the ruffled, short dark hair and that “mouth like a flower” as old Michael McIntyre described it. Probably snooping around the Sylvester Hall gates, and she’d drift in when ready, indolent, hands in the pockets of her jeans. Knowing more than she should, as usual, and keeping it buttoned up.
O’Hare hissed out a breath. Meantime, who was the stranger who now lay unconscious in the twelve-bed Glasshill Hospital?
Inspector O’Hare picked up the man’s expensive-looking lizardskin wallet and opened it.
13
At eight o’clock Monday morning, Winifred Moore, smartly dressed in pants, white shirt, and tweed jacket was sopping up the last bit of yolk from her fried eggs in the breakfast room at Castle Moore when Sheila appeared, still in her dressing gown.
“Winifred!”
“Not dressed yet?” Winifred said, exasperated. “Oh, God! We’ll get a late start! The horses will have died of old age, much less finished jumping.”
“You’ve got jam on your mouth, Winifred. The left corner. Well! I was listening to the early morning news while I was brushing my teeth. And can you believe it! A man was attacked yesterday right here in Ballynagh! Bludgeoned! Almost killed! Nobody knows who did it, a woman actually saw it happening and—”
“Bludgeoned,” Winifred said. “I like that word. Bludgeoned. Sometimes, one gets so caught up in the current bland idiom that one forgets—Who was he? Where in Ballynagh? What happened?”
“That road that goes past Sylvester Hall? It was just outside the gates to Sylvester Hall. A Canadian, apparently a tourist, was attacked. Mr. Thomas Brannigan, from Montreal. Bashed, bludgeoned. Luckily, Ms. Torrey Tunet, a resident of Ballynagh happened to be—”
“Ah, yes,” Winifred said, “Ms. Torrey Tunet. Naturally. I would have guessed it.”
14
At noontime on Monday, Finney’s, across the street from the police station, celebrated its forty-fifth year in business by serving a chops-licking noontime feast. O’Hare had the roast lamb with an edging of crisp fat, green beans, and mashed potatoes. Dessert was on the house, and O’Hare had the strawberry-rhubarb pie. Two pieces. That flaky crust. Nobody could make a crust like Finney’s wife, Mary.
But now, at three o’clock when the door to the police station opened and O’Hare looked up from his desk to see Torrey Tunet, he felt a sharp stab of indigestion. The roast lamb? The two pieces of pie? Exasperation?
“Afternoon, Inspector.” Ms. Tunet had a low, clear voice. “I came because there’s something I forgot to mention to you yesterday. About that fellow who was attacked?” Ms. Tunet smiled at him. She had that peacock bandana snug around her short, wavy dark hair and the October wind had made her cheeks red. She wore a thick brown sweater and tan dun-gerees tucked into brogues. Above all, she looked exhilarated. Snooping about. Meat and drink to her. Why couldn’t she stick to her translating? No, that wasn’t the right word. Interpreting, that was it.
“Did you, now?” Forgot? Lying, of course. Sticking her nose in where it wasn’t wanted. He was fifty
-four and had been inspector in Ballynagh for twenty-two years. There were times when he sensed things as though an inner ear were receiving messages. He wished to hell that Ms. Tunet were not involved. This was his show. He couldn’t help that he bitterly resented that a year ago she’d saved his reputation with the Garda Síochána, the national police force headquartered at Phoenix Park in Dublin. Saved his neck with Chief Superintendent O’Reilley, what with her knowledge of foreign tongues, so that at the crucial moment—Blast it! He couldn’t help the resentment. “Yes?” He drew a notebook closer and picked a pen out of the mug of pens and pencils on the desk. He twiddled the pen and waited, looking at Ms. Tunet.
“That Canadian? Brannigan?” Ms. Tunet said, “He came into O’Malley’s at lunchtime yesterday, about one o’clock. He was there maybe … oh, ten, fifteen minutes. At the bar. Then he went out. In a rage.” She stopped. O’Hare waited. Not a word more. “That’s it?” He put down the pen. “That’s all?”
“Hmmm?” Ms. Tunet wasn’t listening. She was looking at the Aer Lingus flight bag on O’Hare’s desk, the bag that Sergeant Bryson had brought from Nolan’s Bed and Breakfast last night. She was looking at the Canadian passport on the desk. As for herself, she looked as immovable as a Stonehenge monolith.
O’Hare gave up. It would anyway be in the Dublin Times and the Independent tomorrow morning. Maybe down in a corner of a back page, it was not big news. He opened the folder on his desk and settled his glasses:
“Thomas P. Brannigan, Montreal, Canada. Aged thirty-eight. Birthplace: Drumcliff, County Sligo, Ireland.” He looked up. “County Sligo’s in the northwest.”
