by Dicey Deere
She walked faster. Her brogues scattered dry leaves. Sun filtered through the trees. In a minute she’d come out at the ridge and reach the cairn, that pile of stones marking the division between Sylvester Hall and Castle Moore.
Cloverleaf? It meant nothing to her.
A thought widened her eyes and slowed her steps. What if … Could this extortionist know some secret about Andrew? Something she’d been ignorant of? Loving Andrew, bearing his children, was there something hidden that all along she hadn’t suspected? Another life? She thought of Andrew’s business trips to Dublin, she saw him walking up a garden path to a secret little house in Ballsbridge, saw a door opening, heard a woman’s lilting voice—
Oh, stop it! Not Andrew! Never. Besides, the extortionist’s first letter had said a revelation about you, hadn’t it?
For a moment, she faltered. She brushed a hand across her eyes. Something, a flash of light, a glimpse of a yellow party dress, shutter-clicked across her vision and was gone. She slowed, then hurried on. All around her was the peaceful countryside looking like a tourist’s brochure of the Irish landscape in Wicklow, the field with the hillocks of green, the tumbled stone fence enclosing it, the mountains beyond, and high on their slopes the scattering of grazing sheep. So innocent.
She slowed again, feeling a growing uncertainty. It was madness to come to meet this blackmailer. He was crazy indeed to expect her to deliver forty thousand pounds on a Tuesday morning. Did he think she kept money in her dresser drawer rather than in a Dublin bank? But no, he must know how in hours she could access it through her money market.
But … And now she stopped. It was not the blackmailer’s presumed madness but something else, some inner turbulence, a questioning, a fear, something frightening her because of what she had brought with her in her left-hand pocket, while the blackmail note was in her right-hand pocket.
She took a breath. She could see a figure standing under the oak tree by the cairn.
She crossed the field.
18
“Mushrooms!” Sheila said, “Winifred! We could get poisoned. You can’t just—”
“Don’t be silly. The illustrations are precise. Mushroom Gathering, by Dodson Barnaby. Cost me fourteen pounds.” Winifred turned pages. “Recipes in the back.”
It was Tuesday morning, ten o’clock. They were in the tower room at Castle Moore, it was where Winifred wrote her poetry whenever she stayed at the castle. She used a quill pen for the occasional romantic poem and her state-of-the-art laptop for the others.
“But Winifred! What about that Sacha Guitry film, The Story of a Cheat? The whole family of thirteen died after dinner from eating mushrooms they’d picked in the woods.”
“Yes, Sheila. The whole family, except the boy who’d been bad and was sent to bed without any dinner. That’s a lesson to profit by, as he decided: be bad and stay alive to have a good and naughty time.”
“Winifred, really! Sometimes you make me—”
“Sheila, do go down, it’s too cold up here for you, you’re turning blue. Besides, I want to work on a new villanelle about Irish women. I’m going to make it sound centuries old, the time of ladies weaving tapestries and the like. But I want the reader to slowly realize, with a little frisson, that it’s about Irishwomen in the year 2002.”
Sheila said, “Rosie is fixing lunch now. Ham sandwiches.” And at the door, “At least I know they won’t kill me.”
Winifred, picking up the quill pen, said, “We can go after lunch and my yoga. We’ll take the basket Rose uses for the kitchen garden. And the Barnaby.”
19
The sun was in Natalie’s eyes, it flickered through the trees, so that she saw only the man’s figure. She squinted and moved aside. Now she could see his face.
Pale eyes were looking back at her from a flat-cheeked face. It was a sensual face with a jutting mouth that right now bore a triumphant smile. His hair, faintly receding, was brown and looked dyed. He could be in his midforties. He looked fit, as though he worked out. He wore corduroys and an expensive-looking, diamond-patterned sweater. A brimmed suede hat lay on the cairn beside him; it had left a faint red mark on his forehead. “Well, now.” He surveyed her. “Finally! Wasted my time. You should’ve known better.”
Not an Irishman. American accent? Australian? A cultivated accent. She stared at him. He wasn’t quite the Cro-Magnon man, the brute she had visualized.
“Well? Come on! The money! I haven’t time to dither around.”
She was too enraged to speak. Her heart was beating hard. When her voice came out, it was hoarse and almost strangled in her throat. “Who are you? I don’t know what your letters mean! And those trinkets! I—”
The man’s eyes went narrow. He took a step toward her. There under the trees, she hated his closeness. “You—Where’s the money?”
“I don’t understand any of it! You’ve made some kind of mistake. I haven’t any past! I haven’t any secrets for you to blackmail me about! I came to tell you—”
“The money,” the man said. His voice was incredulous. “The forty thousand pounds! You didn’t bring the money?”
“No, it’s all wrong!” She was shaking. In the right-hand pocket of her jacket, her fist closed spasmodically on his third note. “I don’t know, for instance, what you mean by Cloverleaf.”
“Liar,” the man said softly. “If you know anything you know Cloverleaf. The last thing you’d have wanted to know.”
She was in a nightmare. Was she really under the trees by the cairn at this corner of the Sylvester Hall lands? A nightmare, but here she was, sun filtering through the trees. The worst of the nightmare was that it bore some dreadful kind of reality just outside her reach.
“You …” The man’s face was furious. He reached out and gripped her arm. “You—”
“No!” She wrenched her arm free. “No! You! Invading Sylvester Hall! Sneaking in and creeping up the stairs and stealing my father’s, my—” For now she was the furious one, frightened but furious, and she dug her hand into her left-hand pocket and pulled out her father’s ivory penknife. Her hand shook as she held it out for him to see. “You stole it! My father’s, my—”
The man stared at her holding the penknife. He said roughly, “Are you crazy?” He reached out and snatched the penknife from her hand. He was looking at her so strangely that her confusing, bewildering fear made her tremble. Then the man shook his head as though to clear it. He stepped away.
A breeze had sprung up, leaves scattered down from the trees, turning in the sunlight. What now, Natalie thought, what now? But she was immediately to know, for the extortionist stepped close to her, his flat-cheeked face fierce in its anger. “You lying bitch! Enough of your games! I want forty thousand pounds now! Or—” He raised the penknife in a menacing gesture. “Or I will cut your life to pieces! They will know about Dakin. And what you are.” His narrow, pale eyes glared at her. “You have an hour.” He stepped away. “I haven’t much time. A bank check will have to do. After I cash it, I will send you the Cloverleaf.” He gave a short laugh. “You’ll have to trust me.”
From the cluster of trees, he watched her flee, blundering and tripping across the field. Liar that she was! He hadn’t even had a chance to lay out the brutal facts, to spit out what he knew. He frowned, thinking of what she’d said about him stealing the penknife from Sylvester Hall. Because of course he hadn’t stolen it. She knew that very well! Was she deviously clever? Apparently. For all the good it would do her!
Damn her! The money. He looked at his watch. An hour. After that, if she didn’t come, he would show no mercy.
He picked up his suede hat, slapped it against his leg, and leaned back against the oak.
20
At Glasshill Hospital, Inspector O’Hare looked bitterly down at the unconscious man in the high, white bed. A bulky bandage slanted across his temple and was wound around his head; his face bore blue bruises; his eyes were closed, the lids a faint lavender. His lips were so pale they looked b
loodless. Unconscious, blast it! Informative as a piece of wood. What a cock-up!
“I’m sorry, Inspector,” Head Nurse Huddleson, a buxom woman in her fifties, said apologetically at his elbow. “Mr. Brannigan became conscious. And the way he was talking, agitated, garbled, and so frightening, what with every other word being ‘kill.’ So when I called and spoke to your Sergeant Bryson on the phone—”
“Yes, I see.” O’Hare wanted to lean down and shake the unconscious man awake. The trip from Ballynagh to Glasshill, thirty miles away, had been a time waster. The Tuesday traffic, ordinarily light, had been stalled because of an accident. If he’d used the police car instead of his Honda, he could’ve sirened his way through, blast it! Sergeant Bryson was still too much a novice to be sent to interview the injured man. So he’d had no choice.
“I only thought,” Nurse Huddleson began, but stopped short at a moan from the bandaged man. Brannigan’s eyes were closed, but the lids were twitching. Two deep lines formed between his brows. He jerked his head from side to side, his lips moved and he began to mutter.
“There, you see!” Nurse Huddleson was triumphant.
O’Hare slipped his notebook from his pocket and found his pen. The mutter was turning into words, at first indistinguishable, then clearly, “The old woman lied to me! Trapped, penniless … There were keys in a green marble ashtray on the dashboard. ‘You push the button to make it open.’”
Brannigan moved his head more violently from side to side. Suddenly he cried out, arched his back, and raised up, throwing his head back. “It was a thunderclap!” A heave, and he was half out of the bed, arms flailing, eyes open and staring.
“Aldrich!” Nurse Huddleson grasped at the flailing arms, “Nurse Aldrich! Dr. Conners!” O’Hare lunged forward and heaved Brannigan’s body back onto the bed, and heard behind him a “Christ!” and swift footsteps; a white-coated arm reached past, held up a hypodermic, and plunged it into Tom Brannigan’s upper arm. Brannigan’s arched body collapsed, his staring eyes closed. He breathed evenly.
“Well, now.” O’Hare straightened his police jacket and picked up his notebook from the floor.
Dr Conners, a young man with tired eyes, accompanied him out through the main hall. “It’ll be at least a week, maybe longer,” Conners said, “before we’ll see the light of day. Mr. Brannigan sustained a blow of considerable force. A heavy stick, was it, Inspector?”
“So we believe. But nothing found. As yet.”
21
In the coach house, gasping for breath, Natalie pulled the door to the carriage closed and sank back against the faded upholstery. She’d fled so crazily from the blackmailer that her heart was pounding. Quiet down, quiet down!
She drew a deep breath. He had to be a madman. She gave a shaky laugh. Belatedly, she’d get help. A fog had somehow slid across her vision bringing hallucinations, a residue probably of the dreadful loss of Andrew. The only reality was the man waiting at the cairn. A man who had stolen a penknife.
Her heart was no longer pounding but beginning to beat regularly. She breathed in the musty, comforting smell of the old carriage. She’d rest here for a few minutes. Then she’d call Inspector O’Hare. She’d make some excuse for not having come to him earlier when she’d received that first threatening letter. No matter. There had been three letters. There’d be a fourth. He wouldn’t give up. The Gardai would stake out the cairn.
Later, Marshall, back from the States, would lovingly reproach her with, “But why didn’t you call me at once?” and he’d hug her close. By next month she’d be dining out on her blackmail tale.
In the carriage, she glanced at her watch. Right now, she’d find Dakin and tell him that she was going to Inspector O’Hare for help after all. Dakin was so angry at the threat to her, so ready to do battle on her account, that it had worried her.
She’d rest a minute here in the carriage before looking for Dakin. She ran a finger along the armrest; the figured mulberry velvet was now so worn, so old and faded. You could barely distinguish the entwined flowers, the shapes of reclining hounds. When had the carriage started to become her refuge? So many years ago, yes, even before Andrew was killed. She’d settle snugly into this old carriage in the corner of the coach house with a feeling of being loved. Sometimes she’d drowse and wake to find herself smiling, warm, hearing whispers, rubbing a cheek against the mulberry velvet … no, not the mulberry. The fabric was something else, it was twill, she could feel the tiny ridges of the twill, she smelled the masculine smell that came from it, she could even see the color of the twill, it was dark blue … .
On the worn mulberry velvet her hand went still. Her eyes opened wide. Minutes passed. Then, mouth dry, she whispered: “Cloverleaf.”
She was running now, running fast back toward the cairn. An hour! Hurry! She must get to him in time, tell him she’d have the money for him right away! She’d get it from her brokerage account. But she’d left him almost an hour ago! If he wasn’t still at the cairn, she’d run to Ballynach, search everywhere, he could be in Finney’s Restaurant or in O’Malley’s, he could be staying at Nolan’s Bed and Breakfast, or … where? Where? Suppose, vindictive, he was already calling RTV and the press. A sob caught in her throat.
Through the meadow grass, panting, past the fir with her childhood buried treasure she ran, a pain in her chest. Cloverleaf, an ugly tale for your son to hear. Legs trembling, she was stumbling now, hurry, hurry! She was crossing the field toward the big oak by the cairn, praying he was still there, praying to see the hateful pale eyes and the jutting mouth, and not daring even to take an instant to glance at her watch. The pain sharp in her chest, she reached the oak that shadowed the cairn.
22
“Mushrooms like damp places,” Winifred said to Sheila, who lagged unhappily behind with the basket from the kitchen garden. They had left Castle Moore a half hour earlier.”After a rain, mushrooms just spring up. Particularly at the base of oaks.”
Winifred strode cheerfully ahead, the Barnaby book under her arm. Crushed down on her head was an old Girl Guide hat with the brim pinned up on one side. She wore her favorite flannel shirt, knickers, and hiking boots. Sheila, in a heavy woolen skirt and sweater, longed for an after-lunch nap. Nettles clung to her skirt and she was cold. The basket she carried was padded with a soft dishtowel to hold the gathered mushrooms. So far it was empty. To Sheila’s relief, Winifred’s careful scrutiny of the sides of rotting logs and bases of trees had turned up not a single mushroom.
“I still think,” Sheila said, “that we’re taking our life in—”
“I’m not a mycologist, Sheila, but”—and Winifred held up the book—“Barnaby says there are three thousand and three hundred species of mushrooms in the world and—”
“I know, you told me! More than two thousand are harmless. But which are which? It only takes maybe one tiny little poisonous mushroom, one single innocent-looking—”
“And we’ll keel over with our claws in the air? I’m going by the illustrations, Sheila. Barnaby has red dots on poisonous mushrooms like destroying angel, Amanita virosa, and death cap, Amanita phalloides. We’ll pick only Barnaby’s blue dot mushrooms. The edible ones. Like the wood mushroom. Agaricus silvicola. Silvicola means ‘living in woods,’ Sheila.”
“But—”
“And the horse mushroom. Edible. Agaricus arvensis. Arvensis means ‘growing in fields.’ But we’ll be careful there because Barnaby warns that it can be confused with destroying angel. But destroying angel has pure white gills and a saclike volva at the base of the stem. So, no problem.”
Sheila made a whimpering sound.
In ten minutes they reached the bridle path belonging to Castle Moore. “There are ancient oaks, beyond,” Winifred said, “and plenty of forest, we’ll have good luck.” They crossed the bridle path and pushed on through thick gorse. A fallen log looked promising. Winifred knelt and studied the whitish growth minutely, referring to the Barnaby. “Lichen,” she decided. Sheila gave a shudder of relief
. They went on. A hundred yards farther was a meadow, beyond which was forest. Winifred squinted across the meadow to a ridge of oaks. “Beautiful and ancient. Probably were here at the time of the Druids. If you believe in that sort of thing. Personally, I do. That big one marks the dividing line between Castle Moore and Sylvester Hall. Shady under those oaks, and certainly damp after last night’s rain. Stop lagging, Sheila.”
They crossed the meadow and came under the shade of the big oak beside the cairn. There were only flecks of sunlight coming through the leaves, flecks that were like a scattering of gold coins, the scattering of gold flickering down on the figure of Natalie Cameron, who stood holding what looked like a small knife.
A man’s blood-soaked body lay at her feet.
23
It brought to O’Hare’s mind a sacrifice he’d once seen as a kid in a frightening biblical illustration, the goat’s throat slit, blood soaking into the desert sand, a line of camels in the distance, though of course this was Gaelic country, autumn leaves, birds chirping, a fresh breeze.
O’Hare made a repudiating, whistling sound between his teeth. The man’s body lay faceup beside the cairn. Blood from his gaping, slit throat had soaked his diamond-patterned sweater and clotted the leaves around him. Bloodless, dead white face. He was no one O’Hare had ever seen before.
O’Hare swallowed with difficulty and looked about. Natalie Cameron stood a few feet away, head hanging, eyes dazed, hair in a tangle. Sergeant Bryson was relieving her of the penknife gently, adroitly, with his hand in a plastic sandwich bag so as not to smudge the prints. Dreadful, unbelievable. Yet incontrovertible.
