Whistle for the Crows

by Dorothy Eden

  Then Cathleen was in the saddle, and no longer letting Macushla pick her way daintily, but urging her to a gallop. There was only one vague and irrelevant thought in her head, and that was that now Paddy Doolan could have his young healthy donkey back. The tinker wouldn’t be needing it any more.

  At the door of the castle she slid off Macushla, let Patsy, who came hurrying up, take the reins, and stumbled inside.

  “Miss O’Riordan! Liam! Rory! Oh, Rory!” For it was he who came quickest, and he into whose arms she fell. “I’ve found the tinker.”

  “Cathleen! You’ve had Macushla out. She’s all in a lather.” Liam had come striding to the door after Rory.

  “Be quiet, Liam,” said Rory. “What is it, Cathleen?” He held her away from him, searching her distraught face, “Where did you find this tinker?”

  “In the pool. I once—caught a dead frog—without knowing it was dead. That’s how—he looked!”

  “What is all this?” The overpowering voice of Miss O’Riordan cut into the infinitesimal silence. “Has Mrs. Lamb had another fall? Wasn’t she told not to go riding?”

  “Look after her, Aunt Tilly.” Without ceremony, Rory thrust Cathleen into one of the carved hall chairs. “Get her some brandy. And ring the police in Galway. Are you coming, Liam? By road’s the quickest. I’ll get my car.

  The two men were gone. There had never been a chance for Cathleen to measure the significance of their first silence. Aunt Tilly’s face, close to hers, looked thin and old and devouring.

  “Speak up, girl. What did you find?”

  “A dead man,” she said flatly.

  It was Kitty, listening at the door, who fainted.

  The postman was bicycling up the drive. Miss O’Riordan was telephoning the Galway police, Mary Kate was reviving Kitty, Patsy had taken Macushla to the stables. It was Cathleen who answered the boy’s cheery greeting, and took the letters. The one on top was addressed to Miss Matilda O’Riordan in large untidy printing.

  Cathleen had a small shock of surprise. She was almost certain it was the same printing as had been in the anonymous letter she had received.

  She put the bundle of letters down on the table and went over to Kitty. She was, nevertheless, keenly aware of Miss O’Riordan putting down the telephone and coming back into the hall. It was the mail, not Kitty’s fragile state of health, that instantly occupied her.

  She pounced on the letters, then, with a curiously furtive movement, slid the top one into her pocket.

  “Well, Kitty. That was a silly thing to do, wasn’t it? You didn’t find the body, as Mrs. Lamb did. I suppose you couldn’t—ah—identify it, Mrs. Lamb?”

  “I think so.” Cathleen was quite calm now. She was even able to watch Miss O’Riordan’s deliberately casual expression with interest. The half-closed eyes were quite still, like a lizard’s. “There was the donkey, you see. So it must have been that tinker.”

  “Lordy!” cried Mary Kate. “The one who came to my kitchen door. Him with his cheeky grin and his blarney. I told Patsy, didn’t I now, Patsy—” her husband had come to the door to listen, “—that he’d fall off his donkey drunk and break his neck. Didn’t I now?”

  “Is that how it was and all?” Patsy asked.

  “He was in—that little blue lake.”

  “Ho, and fallen in dead drunk then,” said Mary Kate triumphantly. “We won’t be wasting tears on the likes of him.”

  Miss O’Riordan’s shoulders had sagged the slightest bit. That was the only indication she showed of relief. In the deep pocket of her skirt Cathleen could see her fingers working at the letter, itching to tear it up. Rory must have told her yesterday of his suspicions about the tinker. If he had been blackmailing her, his death must be an exquisite relief.

  But how was it that, drunk or otherwise, he had died so opportunely?

  “The thunderstorm last night upset me,” Kitty was explaining weakly. “And then hearing this—”

  “One would almost think you’d tipped him in the lake,” her aunt said, with a return to her vigorous callousness. “He’s got his deserts, as Mary Kate says. Well, the police will be here shortly, and what does that do to our day’s work, Mrs. Lamb? I suppose you’ll say next you aren’t fit to work.”

  Her eyes were snapping with vitality. There was no doubt that she was enormously relieved. The man with the life gone from his bold dark face was no concern of hers as a man. Let his donkey, or whoever there was, grieve for him.

  She was a selfish and insensitive woman, a bulldozer of a woman. And yet, last night in the dark, in her old-fashioned ball dress, she had been pathetic, a lost memory and nothing more.

  But was this to be the end of it all? Cathleen wondered. Nothing had been solved about the child—if there were a child. Aunt Tilly’s heirlooms were mysteriously saved, but that, so far, was all.

  She kept thinking of Liam coming in so exhausted and dishevelled last night. And of Rory arriving unseen much later.

  It was Rory who had been interested in finding the tinker.

  But Liam hadn’t been spending hours with a sick horse…

  And anyway the man was a drunkard. She had seen that herself in Dublin. She had smelt liquor on his breath when he had thrust his head in the car. He must have stooped yesterday to scoop up water from the pool and fallen head first in, and then been too drunk to scramble out. He had probably been floating there at the time that she and Rory were asking for him in Loughneath.

  He had been something to do with Moira…

  Liam and Rory arrived back in a remarkably short time. While Liam, whose colour was better now although his eyes still had that look of deep shock, talked to Aunt Tilly, Rory asked Cathleen to come outside.

  She went with him to the door. The bright morning had gone already, the woolly grey clouds had rolled up and there was a faint drizzle.

  “I’m no doctor,” he said, “but my guess is the fellow fell into the pool drunk.”

  “That’s what Mary Kate said.”

  “He was poaching, anyway. We found snares. But listen. It’d be wise not to tell the police we were looking for him yesterday.”

  “They’ll tell that in Loughneath, anyway.”

  “Oh, that’s harmless enough. I’ll say I suspected him of poaching. But the other. It’s too fantastic a story and it’s family business. I’d like you to say nothing.”

  Cathleen searched his face. He wasn’t distrait and shocked like Liam, he was basilisk like Aunt Tilly. He would pay a great deal for the family pride. It might suit his personal interests to pay.

  She had thought she had begun to trust him. She wanted to weep.

  He grasped her arm, hurting.

  “My God, by the look on your face, you think I pushed him in that pool.”

  “Where were you last night?” Cathleen heard the question asked before she could stop herself.

  He threw up his head.

  “Is it any business of yours?”

  “Yes, it is, if you expect me to say nothing about the other. Why shouldn’t the police start looking for a lost child?”

  “The Galway police.” He gave a short bark of laughter. “And a merry mess they’d make of it. A myth, a dream, a fairy tale. Police deal with facts. They don’t even deal with circumstantial evidence such as torn letters and vague resemblances.”

  There was the sound of a car coming down the drive. His grip on her arm was hurting her badly.

  “Cathleen! This matters.”

  “Oh, keep your secrets,” she said roughly. “I’m tired of the lot of you. Melodramas, witchhunts.”

  With that disconcerting change of demeanour, he gave her his irresistible smile, his eyes lighting, full of tenderness.

  “Thank you, Cathleen. And in return, I was with Magdalene last night. We—talked, very late.”

  He was a devil. He roused that flaming anger in her, and brought her back to the painful life she had wanted to avoid. Rory O’Riordan. Charmer, twister, bully, liar…

  She was o
nly someone to be kissed as a subterfuge…

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE TINKER WAS KNOWN in Loughneath as Danny King. He had been drunk there the previous evening and had got into a fight. Finally he had stumbled off, shouting that one day he would drive up in a fine car and then they’d all pay him some respect. He had delusions that he was going to win the Irish Sweepstake, or some such easy money. It wasn’t to be wondered at that he had met his death. He couldn’t even sit astride his donkey, and the miracle was that he had got as far as the pool. He must have meant to camp there that night

  There was no doubt that it was death by misadventure, and no one too much the worse for it except Cathleen who had had the shock of finding the body.

  She had obeyed Rory and said nothing to the heavy and solemn constable who questioned her, other than details of her shocking early morning discovery.

  “What will happen about identification?” she asked the constable.

  “That will be our headache, miss. These itinerant fellows are hard to track down. But if he has a family, we’ll locate them eventually.”

  So that was all. Except that Miss O’Riordan was in a sparkling and productive mood when they finally got down to work. She began to relate with great verve her brother Patrick’s and one Captain Michael O’Neill’s exploits in the rebellion.

  “And there they were, taking their boots off and creeping in to sleep on the kitchen floor of the cottage while a Black and Tan, unsuspecting that the enemy was underneath, slept upstairs with his girl. And the owner of the cottage chuckling at the way she was getting her own back on the unwelcome lodger upstairs. The Irish love a good fight. I’m not past enjoying one myself. Anyone would be wise to think twice before threatening me.”

  Her eyes glinted fiercely. She strode up and down, her step buoyant with relief. There was no doubt she did enjoy a fight with a visible enemy, but one whose weapons were telephone calls and threatening letters was another thing.

  Cathleen suddenly had the feeling that it was not a child, but some other shameful secret Aunt Tilly was hiding. Liam, too, with his subterfuge of Red’s illness, and Rory, solemnly taking her on that wild-goose chase after orphaned children. Even Kitty fainting from shock, or revulsion, or simply relief.

  Had the tinker known the secret they were hiding?

  Liam came to her just before lunch. He looked himself again, well-groomed and smiling.

  “Cathleen, darling, have you forgiven me again?”

  “For what this time?”

  “Jimmy tells me you were asking about Red. He was off colour, that’s true, but not so bad that I couldn’t leave him. Actually it was an important family reason—”

  “Which isn’t my business.”

  He smiled, gently and beguilingly. These O’Riordan men know how to flash on charm like a rainbow.

  “It would only bore you. Forget it, will you, please? What do you think, Aunt Tilly, the old sport, has promised to put up Red’s fees for the Grand National. I’m going to start training him right away.”

  “Yourself?”

  “I could take that horse over a haystack. He jumps like a bird flying. He’ll make me my fortune, you’ll see.”

  “Well, good luck,” said Cathleen uneasily. Liam’s eyes were the deep burning blue of water beneath bright sunshine, the blue of the Connemara lakes. It was a mistake to think him quiet and philosophic. He had more than his share of the O’Riordan’s fighting fanatical spirit. And presumably the money which Aunt Tilly wouldn’t now be requiring for an irritating blackmailer was to be devoted to the furthering of the grand sport of horse racing.

  “Do you forgive me, Cathleen?”

  She shrugged. “It seems, if I stay here, I’ll spend my time forgiving you unpredictable Irish.”

  “Bless you, Cathleen. But let’s keep it in the singular. More deserving, do you follow me?”

  She understood well enough. She wasn’t either to trust or forgive Rory if he asked her to. Not that he was likely to ask. He would never feel in the need of forgiveness. What he did, he did, and that was that.

  She also knew better than to press Liam for an explanation as to why Rory had asked him to stay home while he himself went to Dublin. The O’Riordans stood together.

  But there was one thing she was determined to ask.

  “You didn’t catch a cold from your wetting last night?”

  “Good lord, no. How soft do you think I am?”

  “Not as subject to chills as your horse?”

  “Oh, all right, clever puss. I was in Loughneath at a poker school. We have a room at the hotel. I don’t broadcast this. Aunt Tilly thinks she’s the only one in this family entitled to gamble.”

  “Then you must have seen the fight the tinker got into.”

  “No, I didn’t. That happened before I arrived. I heard about it.”

  “You did get wet,” Cathleen murmured. “Why didn’t you take your car?”

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” he exclaimed admiringly. “You’d make a prosecuting counsel. Why didn’t I take my car, she says. I did. But as you know, it’s an old car. It doesn’t much care for heavy rain. It stopped just inside the gates. I had to walk all the way up the drive. It’s still there. I’ve got a man coming out from Loughneath to look at it. And now, flattering as it is to be asked questions by you, will you stop it, and come and have a drink.”

  Aunt Tilly found them sipping sherry, but instead of giving her fearful scowl, she said affably, “I’ll join you. My usual, Liam. And this afternoon I want you to go into Galway to pick up the supplies I’ve ordered for the orphans. If your car’s out of action, you’ll have to take the Rolls. Now isn’t it God’s mercy that wretched man wasn’t found while the orphans were here.”

  Peggy Moloney came bicycling back from her afternoon off in a state of excitement. She met Cathleen on the stairs, and looking round quickly to see if anyone was listening, said:

  “What do you think! That Eileen Burke has disappeared.”

  “Disappeared!” It was the cool of the bannister beneath her hand that made her feel cool all over. “You mean she’s left Loughneath?”

  “She has and all, and not a word to anybody. It just looks, my Mam says, as if she’d done a midnight flit.”

  “The baby’s gone, too?” Cathleen asked, pursuing her first instinctive thought.

  “Well, of course,” said Peggy. “She wouldn’t be leaving a young child, now would she?”

  She would if—Cathleen cut the thought off in her mind. She might have nightmares about that face like a frog’s underbelly floating in the water, but she wouldn’t have them while wide awake in the daytime. Because Eileen Burke had left Loughneath, it didn’t mean that she was dead.

  “Mrs. Murphy in the hotel next door, said the baby was crying a lot in the night. Then it stopped and she dropped off to sleep, and didn’t hear anything more. It wasn’t until the milk wasn’t taken in that she thought she ought to investigate. The door wasn’t locked and the house was empty.”

  “Perhaps her husband had come for her,” Cathleen said, without conviction.

  “More likely she’s gone off with a man. That’s what everyone’s saying. She was a fast piece, and Mam says she’ll get what’s coming to her. All those beads and bangles and all. It shows the type. But it is a shame about the little boy. Did you ever see him, Mrs. Lamb? He was a bonny little fellow.”

  “People would have heard a car stopping,” Cathleen said.

  “It was raining so hard most of the night, you wouldn’t hear much else. She might have gone by the bus early this morning. Mam says it’s none of our business. The woman had no obligations to anyone except Mrs. Murphy for the house, and there wasn’t more than a day’s rent owing. Do you know, she didn’t once go to Mass. You’d have thought she’d want to say a prayer for her husband away in a foreign country, wouldn’t you now?”

  Kitty wasn’t well that evening. She came to Cathleen’s room just before dinner and asked if Cathleen would apologize to A
unt Tilly for her. She had one of her migraines, she said.

  She did look flushed and strained. Her eyes were enormous, and full of some obscure fear. Cathleen thought that her attack of hysteria during the storm combined with the shock of the drowned tinker this morning had been too much for her.

  “Of course I’ll tell your aunt,” she said sympathetically. “Have you taken some aspirin?”

  Kitty nodded.

  “Then why don’t you go to bed and I’ll see if Mary Kate can bring up a tray, or I’ll bring one myself.”

  “No, I couldn’t eat anything, thank you. Though it’s kind of you.”

  The poor little thing was feeling too tired and nervous to face her aunt. Which one could well understand, for the thought of that forbidding figure at one’s bedside would shock one into illness. Cathleen was touched that she had come to her, and responded to her appeal.

  “I’ll come in and see you later. And if you’re scared—”

  “Scared!”

  “I only meant it looks thundery again. Do call me if you want me.”

  Kitty’s eyes brimmed with sudden tears. She seemed about to say something, then changed her mind and went away.

  But later, when Cathleen went to see how she was, her room was empty. Nor was she with her mother. Cathleen meant to stay only a moment up there, but Peggy Moloney beckoned to her and whispered.

  “I really think she tried to say words this evening. She made quite a different sound. It was like ‘Lie, Lie, Lie’!”

  “Perhaps she wanted Liam.”

  “Why, yes, I never thought of that. I thought she was having some nightmare, poor little thing.”

  The small crumpled face stared up from the snowy pillow unseeing, unhearing. Cathleen patted the quiet hands, and smiled encouragingly.

  “You’re better tonight, Mrs. O’Riordan?”

  There was no flicker of expression in the milky wide-open eyes.