The Irish Manor House Murder

by Dicey Deere

  “Right — Christ!” Jasper had abruptly stopped. “My wristwatch! I looked at it two minutes ago. Must have dropped it. You go ahead. Meet you at the bridle path marker.” And he was gone, disappearing back through the woods.

  Torrey walked on. Thankfully, the wind was lessening, but she was anyway glad of her muffler.

  Five minutes later she reached the marker, a granite slab that marked the boundary between Ashenden Manor and Castle Moore. It was perhaps three feet from the bridle path. Torrey sat down on the slab and waited. The granite slab was cold as an ice cube and the sun was setting.

  Ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Where are you, Jasper? She was getting hungry for dinner. She wasn’t a Spartan. She’d walk back and meet him.

  She got up and started back along the bridle path. At the cottage, they’d make a fire and have a hot rum, plunging the red-hot andiron into the mug to make the rum sizzle. Jasper had some sort of French stew, Provençal-inspired, with white beans, keeping warm on the stove. Stove in Greek was therma’stra, she had once counted twenty-six therm prefixed words in her dictionary, all meaning heat in some way. After the stew, apple crisp, warm from the oven. And with the crisp —

  Pound, pound, like a thudding in her heart. For a moment, again she had a déjà vu of the meadow, of Rowena’s red hair and wild face. And there —

  There, on the bridle path heading toward her, she saw the galloping stallion, and astride him, Dr. Ashenden, left shoulder bandaged and arm in a sling. She stumbled back and felt the wind of the passing of the plunging horse, saw his stretched neck, heard the creak of leather, the jingle of harness. Breathless, she turned and looked after horse and rider. And then —

  A terrible, unforgettable sound as the horse screamed, then reared, and she saw the rider go flying back. Then the horse sank back on his haunches, wavered, slipped onto its side, stomach heaving, and lay still.

  13

  They stood about. It was not yet dark. Jasper was beside Torrey, hands in his pockets. A few feet away, Winifred Moore stood whistling softly between her teeth. Winifred had been taking a before-dinner racewalk on the bridle path. Like Torrey, she had witnessed the accident and made the call to Inspector O’Hare from the cell phone that was always nestled at her belt.

  Rag doll, Torrey thought. Dr. Gerald Ashenden. Like a thrown-away rag doll in riding breeches and maroon jersey, the body that had been Dr. Gerald Ashenden lay on the stones and twigs beside the bridle path.

  “Here they are,” Sergeant Jimmy Bryson said. Across the field they could see the flashing blue and red lights of the ambulance. The attendants would have to come on foot with the gurney.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, when the sound of the departing ambulance grew faint and was gone, Winifred Moore said, “Who’s to tell them at Ashenden Manor?” She wore a brimmed cap with a green emblem that read NATIONAL RACEWALKERS ASSOCIATION. No one answered. It was, anyway, a rhetorical question.

  Inspector O’Hare, in his dark blue, circled the stallion, stumbling over twigs on the edge of the bridle path. Hard to take in: Dr. Ashenden dead, terrible, such an accident. The vicissitudes of horseback riding, one lived with it. And sometimes, like now, died of it. Inspector O’Hare gnawed his lip.

  “Heart attack?” suggested Sergeant Bryson doubtfully, hands on his hips. “The horse, I mean.” He blushed.

  “Gogarty’ll tell us,” O’Hare said. The vet was coming straight from the Sheehens’ barn where he’d been seeing to a newborn calf.

  Torrey walked slowly toward the dead beast. His silvery gray coat shone. He looked immense and tragic. Torrey went closer. The stallion’s head was stretched up as though in agony, his unseeing eye glared, his lips were drawn back in final terror. Torrey thought of Picasso’s Guernica, the agonized horse, victim of men’s battles. The stallion’s silvery gray coat — something caught Torrey’s eye. On the stallion’s thigh, a tiny scar.

  She leaned closer. No, not a scar. Something like a dark flaw on the silvery gray. She squinted. The dusk made it harder to see. But, no, it wasn’t a flaw. Not a flaw. More like a tiny … puncture? And a spot of blood, red on the silvery gray. Blood.

  Torrey straightened. She stood very still. She could not move away. The cold that she felt was not from the damp. The woods around the path seemed to darken. She suddenly thought of the grammar school pageant in North Hawk when she was ten, with two boys humming and two boys singing the remembered refrain, When I was young I used to wait / On my master and give him his plate / And pass the bottle when he got dry / And brush away the blue-tail fly.

  “Torrey? What is it? You all right?” Jasper, beside her.

  It was humming through her head, One day he rode about the farm / The flies so numerous they did swarm / One chanced to bite him on the thigh —

  “Torrey?”

  The devil take the blue-tail fly.

  Yes, and the rest of it, the fourth graders in the pageant, the two boys singing, two humming. The pony run, he jump, he pitch / He throw’d my master in the ditch / He died and the jury wondered why / The verdict was the blue-tail fly.

  “Torrey, you look so —”

  But she was turning her head, looking around. The dry woods, crystal air, a wind moving the leaves of the bushes beside the bridle path; there could be no flies.

  14

  “Ah, no!” Torrey whispered involuntarily, kneeling there by the dead stallion in the crisp, dry air. Somehow hoping that the blood spot might nevertheless be from an insect bite. Because otherwise … otherwise …

  Low as her whisper was, Inspector O’Hare was instantly standing over her. “What’s that you —?” And then he was looking down past her shoulder at the spot of blood on the stallion’s thigh. “Well!” he said softly, after a moment. “Well!”

  * * *

  Torrey stood up. Jasper came over and cupped his big hand on the back of her head. “You all right?” he asked again. She nodded, and he gave her a grin and for an instant pulled her head close to his chest.

  Winifred Moore gave a yank to the brim of her race-walking cap and stepped nearer to the dead stallion. “Got something on the hob?” she said to Inspector O’Hare, looking curiously from him to Torrey. “You and Ms. Tunet?”

  “Possibly, Ms. Moore.” Inspector O’Hare glance glanced at Torrey and smiled at her in a way she hated, a shark’s smile. “Very possibly, Ms. Moore.”

  They waited in the darkening woods for Liam Gogarty, the veterinarian, Torrey shivering with cold but stubbornly hanging on. Winifred Moore, alive with curiosity, Jasper whistling between his teeth. But by the time Sergeant Bryson on his cell phone learned from Liam Gogarty that the lamb’s birthing at the Sheehens’ had developed complications, it was full dark with a sliver of a moon. On Gogarty’s instructions, the dead horse was to be covered with a tarp overnight. Gogarty would be there at seven in the morning.

  On the way back to the cottage with Jasper, Torrey said determinedly, “So will I be.” She hated what she knew O’Hare was thinking. Rowena. This time Rowena had succeeded.

  15

  It was the biggest pair of tweezers Torrey had ever seen. She stood watching Liam Gogarty probe the thigh of the dead horse. Gogarty was skinny, bespectacled, sure-handed. Last night it had rained; water dripped from the leaves of the trees along the bridle path. It was by now seven-thirty, and the sky was clearing. Torrey was conscious of Inspector O’Hare breathing heavily. He stood beside her, bulking large in his police uniform.

  “This is an official investigation, Ms. Tunet,” O’Hare had said irritably fifteen minutes ago when he’d arrived and seen her already there and chatting with Liam Gogarty who was pulling his nose and contemplating the dead horse.

  “I know, Inspector,” she’d answered, trying to keep a chip-on-her-shoulder tone out of her voice. “I’m taking an interest. My presence isn’t illegal, I believe.”

  At that, a muscle in the inspector’s jaw had jumped, a sign of his exasperation. Torrey in the past had seen that muscle jump more
than once. Well, too bad, Inspector Egan O’Hare. Here I am again. A fly in your soup.

  “Hello, hello, hello!” Winifred Moore came striding up. Amusement made her lips twitch at Inspector O’Hare half-suppressed moan at sight of her. “Had to know what strange thing did Dr. Ashenden’s horse in. Might be a poem in it. That a tweezers, Liam Gogarty?”

  “Got it! Got it!” Gogarty drew something from the horse’s thigh and held it up in the tweezers. A small, narrow object.

  Blood on it, but a dull shine. “Aluminum,” Liam Gogarty said, turning the object slowly this way and that, looking at it curiously. “Huhh! Must’ve been cut off of one of a longer pair. This piece is maybe an inch and a half. About.”

  Mystified, Torrey gazed at the narrow object.

  “Longer pair of what?” Inspector O’Hare, impatient, squinted at the object.

  “Longer pair of knitting needles,” Liam Gogarty said.

  * * *

  For a minute they were all silent. The veterinarian, still kneeling, rummaged in his bag and found a plastic envelope. He dropped the piece of knitting needle into it. He stood up and handed the bag to Inspector O’Hare. “Your bailiwick, Inspector.” He took off his glasses and wiped raindrops from them. “Got to get to Donovan’s. A calf.” He put his glasses back on and looked at Torrey. “As I was saying before, Ms. Tunet, seen you about with Rowena Keegan. Helping her at the animal center. Her giving shots and all.” He looked down at the dead horse, than back at Torrey. “Understand you spotted it?” She nodded. “Hadn’t been for you, then, I’d’ve thought the horse had died of a heart attack. Saw that kind of death more than once. Including last year at the Kerry Gold. The winning horse, Daisy Belle, a minute after her victory, jockey still astride, dropped dead. Embolism.”

  “Thank you.” She wanted to cry. She’d been hoping desperately that by some kind of miracle a real insect had stung the stallion, all right, not a blue-tail fly, but there were other insects in these woods, weren’t there? She stiffened her jaw, aware suddenly that Inspector O’Hare was looking at her.

  “Well, now we’re getting somewhere,” Inspector O’Hare said. He was holding the plastic envelope with the knitting needle and smiling at her, a smile that chilled her.

  “I’m off,” Liam Gogarty said. “Nice to’ve met you, Ms. Tunet. Fascinating this police work, isn’t it? A knitting needle! Somewhere out there a murderer!”

  “Yes, fascinating.” Somewhere out there.

  16

  At half past eight, in the Ballynagh police station, O’Hare picked up the phone and called the Murder Squad at Dublin Castle, Phoenix Park. Five minutes later he hung up. The van with the Garda Siochana technical staff and their equipment would arrive from Dublin within the hour. The murder scene.

  O’Hare stretched. Getting somewhere. Finally. He smiled. Something to tell his wife tonight. Noreen had been complaining about such poor mysteries on television lately. Noreen liked a good mystery. Well, here’s one for you, my lass. And an odd one indeed. Ashenden dead. And the irony of it. Brought down the temple on his own head, trying to protect his granddaughter. O’Hare frowned, puzzled. Something Dr. Ashenden hadn’t wanted to come out.

  Peculiar. Something altogether odd about the Ashenden family. He’d always sensed it. But difficult to make out. One thing he could swear to, in any event: Dr. Ashenden’s death was a family affair.

  “Morning, Sir.” Sergeant Bryson. Fresh-scrubbed, shiny face, wet hair still showing signs of the comb.

  O’Hare said, “Feed Nelson, Jimmy. Then you’re coming with me.” In the woods around the bridle path, the technical squad from Dublin would inch over the ground covered with clotted, dank leaves after last night’s rain. They’d take photographs, they’d find something. A strand of red hair that had caught on a branch? Or, say, the print of a narrow boot, fitted, in the end, like Cinderella’s slipper, to Ms. Rowena Keegan’s foot?

  17

  “Inspector?” The shorter garda, Daly his name was, came up, red-faced from having climbed up to the bridle path from the gully. “Here’s something. Notebook. Wet from the dew, overnight.” The notebook was already encased in a clear plastic bag that Daly had zipped closed. “Found down in the gully. Have a look.”

  Torrey quickly stepped to O’Hare’s side. She saw through the plastic the smeared, inked words on the cover: Horse diseases. Notebook #2. and under it: Rowena Keegan. Her mouth went dry.

  “Take your time, Ms. Tunet, take a good look,” Inspector O’Hare said sarcastically. What the hell was she doing here? Always on his heels! He handed the notebook back to Daly who would take it to the crime laboratory in Dublin. The technical crew from the Garda Siochana was already packing up, getting into the van. They were done with searching the murder site and surrounding woods. They’d been here an hour. They’d found no footprints, no abandoned weapon, nothing — except, down in the gully, this notebook, an empty half-pint bottle of Bushnell’s, and some long-rotted prophylactics.

  Inspector O’Hare gave a half salute to the departing van with its crew and, with a final triumphant look at Torrey, strode off through the woods.

  18

  At two o’clock, a fax of the notebook, clearly dirty and water-stained, lay on Inspector O’Hare’s desk.

  Rowena Keegan stood beside the desk. She had refused to sit down. She wore a white turtleneck jersey, a big, heavy brown cableknit sweater, and an old pair of stained jodhpurs. Her curly red hair was pushed carelessly behind her ears. She held a can of diet Coke from the Coke machine beside the door. Inspector O’Hare was irritated that Nelson was nudging Rowena’s leg, his tail wagging.

  “No, I don’t know how my notebook came to be in the gully,” Rowena said. “I can’t imagine. Unless someone —” and she hesitated and looked off into space. “It could have been taken from … from…” She shrugged and took a sip of Coke.

  It was obvious to Inspector O’Hare: Rowena Keegan was suggesting that someone had been setting her up for the murder of her grandfather. O’Hare slanted a glance toward Sergeant Bryson. Bryson was standing nearby rocking back and forth from one foot to the other. Exasperating. Would he never grow up?

  And could Ms. Keegan remember where she was at the time of her grandfather’s murder? O’Hare tried to keep sarcasm out of his voice.

  “I was walking about.” Walking about? Walking about, exactly where? “Oh … through the fields, the woods, near Castle Moore.”

  Evasive, a lie. The lie rang like a gong, the way Rowena Keegan’s green-eyed glance slid away, the flush that rose and stained her pale face, cheeks to brow. Trickles of perspiration slid down from her temples, darkening the red hair that framed her face. So familiar to him; he’d seen her grow up. Only — he blinked, as though to clear his vision — only wasn’t there something a bit different about her? More … solid? A creamy softness, a richness. Puzzling. Reminded him somehow of his wife. Not that Noreen looked at all like Rowena Keegan.

  In any case, a liar. She’d been in the gully and dropped her notebook. But not enough evidence to arrest her for murder. O’Hare’s jaw was beginning to ache. He’d been gritting his teeth again.

  Leaving the police station Rowena Keegan put the can of soda on top of the machine. “I only drank half,” she told Sergeant Bryson. “It’s diet, no sugar in it. That’s okay for Nelson’s teeth. In case he’d like the other half.”

  19

  “Gully,” Torrey said to Jasper. They were in the kitchen at the cottage. “Short for ‘gully knife’ in English dialect. As in, ‘He cut the bastard with a gully.’”

  Jasper didn’t answer. His back was to her. He was putting prunes and apricots around the pork roast that would go into the oven for tonight’s dinner.

  “Just why Rowena’s notebook was found there, what about this?” Torrey hesitated. Was she telling Jasper too much?

  “What about what?” Jasper shook out a skimpy handful of brown sugar and sprinkled it into the roasting pan.

  “Well, suppose someone put Rowena’s not
ebook there, setting her up. Or she was in the gully to meet someone and doesn’t want to say who.” The gully. That hidden pocket in the woods. The thought was irresistible: Rowena, the pregnant Rowena, meeting her … lover? Because, Where did you come from / Baby dear? A lover. Alive and somewhere out there. If only it were so.

  But she was revealing too much. She slanted a glance toward Jasper. He was sliding the pork roast into the oven.

  “That’s the last of the cloves.” Jasper’s head was turned away, his voice muffled. “What? Oh, sure. A possibility.” He closed the oven door, straightened, and set the timer for the roast.

  20

  At eight o’clock Wednesday morning, Padraic Collins, his nose red from an unexpected morning chill, parked his old Honda in the drive at Ashenden Manor. He found Caroline pacing the vegetable garden, wearing a moldy old chinchilla coat. She was frowning in apparent intense concentration.

  “I was passing,” Padraic said. “I’m on my way to O’Doyle’s. Touch of flu, the O’Doyle kids. Thought I’d stop by, see if there’s anything I could —”

  “The will, Padraic,” Caroline said. “My father’s will. I distinctly remember him saying to me — it must’ve been two years ago? — he’d just come from his lawyers, Wickham and Slocum, in Dublin. ‘I’ve made a new will,’ he told me. ‘Had to make a change.’ He looked so … is there an expression ‘quiet rage,’ Padraic?”

  “Dryden? Something about swelling the soul to quiet rage?”

  “Hmmm? So anyway, now I’ve no idea who’s inheriting what. I know I was to’ve gotten the Ashenden Manor estate. I hope so. Mark seems so … so enchanted by it. But it’s Scott. Scott has so little income of his own, just those bits of royalties of his father’s. And his crippled leg…”