The Irish Manor House Murder

by Dicey Deere

  Padraic said, “What about Kildare? Your father once mentioned some Ashenden property in Kildare. Three hundred acres, a Georgian house, stables, good grazing land, a — what’s the matter, Caroline?” She had gone quite pale. Padraic felt a rush of concern.

  “I haven’t had breakfast.” Caroline drew her coat closer. “I wanted some air, first. Yes, Kildare. Supposed to go to Rowena. It was promised…” Her voice faltered. “But as for Scott…” She shook her head, her hazel eyes anxious. “I’ll call Wickham and Slocum and arrange for the reading of the will this week, definitely.”

  Puzzled. Padraic frowned. Caroline out here in the cold, distracted, worried, hadn’t even had breakfast. She wasn’t strong enough for such nonsense. He remembered the frail little thing she’d been. The nurse fed her with an eyedropper, like a baby squirrel. It was no wonder Gerald refused to have more children. A pity for Kathleen, Catholic and anyway hungry for babies. But Gerald was a rock. “Look at that child!” he’d grumbled angrily to Padraic when Caroline was an aching, whining two-year-old. “Does Kathleen want another one like that?”

  So, only the one child. Caroline. Thin-bodied, big-eyed, this fragile, frightened child, Caroline. But an unexpected spirit had suddenly surfaced in her. She couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve when she’d abruptly cocked a snoot at her father. And a couple of years later, when she was barely fifteen, she audaciously went her own way, an adventurous way, as it turned out: Dublin, London, Rome. A bit part in an Italian film, some cross-legged, meditating nonsense in India, then Dublin again, and finally marrying that guitar-playing Irish rock star, Tom Keegan. A Catholic! Ashenden had tried to pay the fellow off. No good. To Tom Keegan, Caroline Ashenden, with her hazel eyes and her long, straight, fair hair, was the heartbreaker of the world. Without her, Tom would have no world, only ashes. He made that plain.

  Padraic said, “I’d better get on to the O’Doyles. And you’d better have Jennie O’Shea make you a solid breakfast. Fruit, eggs, scones, tea.”

  Caroline suddenly leaned forward and kissed him. “I’ll walk you out to the drive.”

  It was cold and windy, but the sun was strong. Padraic Collins had a skin so fair that five minutes in the sun turned his face bright red. Overnight, the redness faded, only to surge up again at the next day’s sun. He was never without the protection of that old tweed cap that had belonged to his father. He drove off in his dusty Honda, turning his head and waving back. He was an abominable driver; Caroline closed her eyes so as not to see, should he go into the hedge. It had happened twice before. A few seconds later, when she opened her eyes, he was already out of sight, fair-skinned Padraic in his father’s old tweed cap.

  * * *

  Tweed cap. She stood there on the stone steps. The world quaked. Rain-wet, that old tweed cap. It was just before her supper. It was raining, and she was seven years old, standing at a window, frightened. Rain spattered on the window, a sudden, end-of-April storm, the weather turned wild. Her mother was somewhere out there. Where? Blasts of rain against the windowpane. She knew where her mother had gone. But now her mother could be coming home. She saw her on the road, soaked with rain, blinded by the rain, staggering on the access road, falling, falling down, a truck coming, headlights, blinding rain, or a car, something would come and run over her. Get the big umbrella, hurry, hurry! She ran.

  O’Malley’s pub. Someone sloshing out — “Christ Almighty! A kid, in this rain!” — and going off, hawking, spitting. A car stopping, a familiar car, “Get in the car, Caroline!” Padraic Collins, in his wet tweed cap, hurrying into the pub, coming out, pulling her mother along, ducking and splashing through the rain. The car starting up the street, she in the backseat, so safe the sound of the windshield made her feel. There was a smelly dog blanket; it comforted her, somehow. In the front seat, Padraic Collins and her mother, her mother’s black hair soaked so that Caroline could see the white tips of her ears. Padraic’s voice saying, “It must break Gerald’s heart, Kathleen, that you’re in the pub, always the pub. Don’t keep on, Kathleen! For his sake! Ah, don’t!” But her mother didn’t answer. In the backseat, nestled in the dog blanket, Caroline arrived slowly at a thought: Something wrong. There was something wrong that Padraic Collins didn’t know about her parents. She knew it. But what it was, was a mystery to her.

  21

  Torrey watched from the edge of the woods. It was ten in the morning. She could see, on the hill, the group of strangers and the Ashenden family and Dr. Collins within the iron-railed Ashenden cemetery. The ceremony was short: Caroline Temple turned over the first shovelful of earth; then Scott; lastly, Rowena. The square black box with the ashes of Dr. Gerald Ashenden was lowered into the earth. Now the —

  A rustle in the woods to Torrey’s left. She glanced around. Nobody. Beyond was the stretch of woods and fields to the bridle path, nothing there but more woods and a gypsy wagon she’d glimpsed earlier. Or maybe it was a tinkers’ wagon; they moved about, “travelers” they were sometime called. Unattached to land, they roved about, footloose as her Romanian father who’d departed North Hawk when she was barely eleven.

  Rustle. Only the breeze. She looked at her watch. It was getting on to ten-thirty. Rowena had phoned this morning, sounding worried. “Torrey? Can you meet me at the Castle stables around half past eleven?”

  * * *

  Torrey got off her bicycle in the stable yard at Castle Moore. Eleven-thirty. Smell of horse, smell of fresh hay. She could hear a stamp of hooves in a stall. Rowena would have watered and exercised the two horses. Cutting it close. Where was she? Maybe showering in the room above the stable.

  Torrey sat down on a bale of hay beside the stable door. She looked up at the window of the room above the stable. Was Rowena up there? And what did she want? She’d sounded so anxious. Unnerved.

  Five minutes. Ten minutes. Cool breeze, pungent smell of sun-warmed hay. Waiting, Torrey pulled a straw from the bale and nibbled it. She thought of Rowena standing in the groundsman’s cottage barely a week ago, face pale, green eyes desperate. So short a time ago. It was now only two and a half weeks before an abortion would be dangerous.

  “Hello, there!”

  Winifred Moore, denim-clad, looking like a robust farmer ready to do morning chores. “Looking for Rowena?”

  “Hello. Yes, we’re supposed to meet here about now.”

  “Ah,” Winifred said, “she’s gone. Been a change of plans, I guess. Gone off with her brother, Scott. He picked her up in that little red car of his — a Miata? — silly little bug, holds only two people. Romantic, I suppose, if one’s life is open to romance. Which is why I have a Jeep.”

  “Oh? I’ll get on then to Ashenden Manor. Find her there.” She got up from the bale of hay.

  “’Fraid not. They were off to Dublin.”

  * * *

  Torrey bicycled slowly back to the access road. Rowena not even leaving a message for her! And going off with Scott on a day’s jaunt to Dublin.

  No. Rowena wouldn’t do that. Scott must have phoned her at the stables, then had come and picked her up. Or at that ceremony on the hill, had he, then — No use to suppose. Anyway, Scott was taking Rowena to Dublin.

  Why? What purpose?

  The bike wobbled. Did Scott know that Rowena was pregnant? His transparent looking, gray-blue eyes were sharp as was his mind; she’d met him enough to know that. He was in Dublin a lot, parties, clubs, he got about, knew people both savory and unsavory. If ever Scott needed to know something, whatever, it needed only a whisper here, a few pounds there —

  No. Torrey stopped the bike. She stood on the road, a foot planted on each side of the bike. An appointment. For when? And it would be done in a room down some wretched side street. An illegal abortion. Risky. Occasionally a girl’s or woman’s body washed up in the Liffey. But it wasn’t possible for Rowena to get to Europe for a legal abortion. Not while the eye of the Gardai was on her.

  22

  “Well, well!” Scott Keegan, alone in the library a
t Ashenden Manor, raised his eyebrows. He was standing over his grandfather’s desk looking down at a blue document that lay on the desk, folded in thirds: Last Will and Testament of Gerald Ashenden. He picked it up.

  “Here you are!” His mother, in the doorway. She came in. She was carrying a measuring tape and some sort of brochure. “Scott! I’ve been wanting to measure you for a vest, this new pattern. A bargello, not that easy to knit. But stunning.” She unwound the tape. “Where’ve you been all morning? It’s two o’clock!”

  “Dublin. Doing this and that. At which I’m expert.” With Rowena, down narrow, squalid streets.

  “Stand still.” His mother came close, holding the tape, surveying his waist. Her cardigan did not conceal how slight she was, her bony shoulders. Yet fair of face, and with an odd quirky humor to spare. Lucky Tom Keegan, lucky Mark Temple. She looked at the blue document. “What’s that you’ve got?”

  “This? Your pa’s will.” He waved the document at her. “I was just — hey! You all right, Ma?”

  “Yes, nothing’s the —” But she had gone quite pale. “That will, it’s dated when?”

  He looked at the document. “Two years ago.”

  “Oh.” She was gazing at the blue document as though it were a cobra or possibly a tarantula. “I called Wickham and Slocum. I thought it was time we had a reading. They said any time this week would be fine.”

  “Sure, Ma. But we don’t have to wait for lawyers’ offices, all the heirs sitting around, smug smiles from the lucky inheritors, cries of indignation and outrage from the deprived. We can read it now.” He began to unfold the blue document.

  “Is that legal, Scott? I thought wills were read in lawyers’ offices.”

  “Who says so? I’ll read this now, Ma. Then let’s see if we can rustle up all the mentioned lucky and unlucky.” His leg was aching; the brace felt like an iron weight. Dublin with Rowena had been exhausting.

  “Well, then, I guess it’s all right.”

  23

  Upstairs in her bedroom, Rowena slung the black nylon carrying case onto the bed. No need now to live above the stable at Castle Moore. From the doorway, a footfall. Torrey came in. “They said you were back.”

  “Yes.” Rowena zipped open the bag. “The reason I phoned you this morning, I was getting frantic, and you lead such a cosmopolitan life, you know things, maybe even, uh, places. Anyway, it’s all right now. Sorry not to’ve left a note for you at Castle Moore. Scott turned up at the stable in his Miata and he had the motor running, and he’d thought —”

  “An abortionist, right, Rowena?” She sat down on the window seat and stuck her jean-clad legs out in front of her and crossed her ankles. Smell of pine cleaner in the room; Jennie O’Shea must have had a go at the furniture. She looked soberly at Rowena, who stopped taking clothes from the black bag and turned to face her.

  Rowena’s gaze met hers. “Yes. But then, Scott knew somebody who had a friend who … Anyway, Scott got an address and we went there, a place off the Finglas Road, back of the Glasnevin Cemetery. I made an appointment. He’s supposed to be good. Safe. Anyway, Scott’s friend said that —”

  “Safe?” Torrey, imagining globs of blood on a not-too-clean floor, made a skeptical face. “When?”

  “He’s … busy. But he can do it the twenty-second.”

  This was what? The fourteenth? Eight days from now. Any later — frightening.

  Rowena abruptly raised her hands and pressed them hard against her cheeks. After a moment she dropped her hands, leaving white welts on her cheek. She drew a deep, determined breath. “Two o’clock. In Glasnevin. Scott will take me. Then he’ll wait.”

  24

  At seven o’clock, a blue dusk, striated orange fading over the mountains, smell of wood fires in Ballynagh fireplaces. At the cottage, Jasper said, “Ruination!” and at the stove wiped a drop of gravy from the cover of his new Cooking with Herbs cookbook.

  Just coming in, Torrey said, “Hmmm?” It was cozy inside, and she pulled off her sweater and walked about. “What’s this?” She lifted a cover from the iron pot on the stove. Awful-looking stuff, smelling heavenly. She stood absentmindedly holding the cover, thinking: Scott.

  Scott. How long ago had Scott found out that Rowena was pregnant? Had Rowena told him? And was Scott helping Rowena with this illegal abortion only because he was her brother? Scott was a dark card.

  Torrey frowned, then shivered involuntarily. Whisper. That scandal sheet in Dublin. There had been innuendos in yesterday’s Whisper, salacious hints about Rowena, since a little girl the darling of her grandfather. The sexually used darling? And now, finally, an explosion of rage culminating in the murder of Dr. Ashenden. Hints in the gossip column. Nothing outright, but —

  “That ladle on your right, hand it to me, will you. Torrey? Torrey! Wake up!”

  “Oh, here.”

  Salacious Whisper. Speculation. The sort of rumor that, burgeoning, had led to the conviction of many an innocent in a case of murder.

  “If I snap my fingers, will you come out of it and be with me?” Jasper said loudly. “And rule one: Never lift a cover from another cook’s pot without asking.”

  No, of course not. It was Rowena’s pot. Her secrets were her secrets. Pregnant Rowena. Pregnant by whom?

  And worse —

  “Move over, my pretty. I want to warm the plates in the oven.”

  Worse, Inspector O’Hare must be hearing and reading the speculations. O’Hare was no fool. Behind the scenes he was industriously building a murder case against Rowena. Incest. O’Hare would seize on it. Revenge. Whisper had mentioned a case of a forty-year-old woman in Longford who’d axed her stepfather for using her thirty years earlier.

  But Dr. Gerald Ashenden’s killer could have had any of a number of possible motives, right? There was murder because of psychotic imaginings. And murder out of jealousy. Hate. Lust. And the most common of all: murder for money. Money.

  Torrey paused her pacing. Money. She was seeing Jennie O’Shea coming into Rowena’s room just as Torrey was leaving. “A meeting in the library before dinner, Ms. Rowena. No, Ms. Rowena, I don’t know, Mr. Scott didn’t say. But he called Dr. Collins to come over. Something about a will, Dr. Ashenden’s will. I was coming from the pantry.”

  “Chervil,” Jasper said. “Smell this.” He was holding something green and pungent under Torrey’s nose.

  “Very like … parsley? The Italian kind?” She smiled unseeingly at Jasper. Under the circumstances, Dr. Ashenden’s will would be very interesting.

  25

  It was chilly and damp in the stable at Castle Moore, making the smell of hay and horse more pungent. It was ten in the morning. In Fast Forward’s stall, Torrey watched as Rowena pulled the hackle again and again through the horse’s tail, ridding it of bits of straw and loose hairs. Rowena looked tired. Twice, she’d stopped to rest her arm and just stood, blowing out a breath. Her face was strained. The red curls that fell across her forehead were wet with sweat, and sweat glistened on her neck. Yet it was cold enough in the stall for the horse, snorting now and again, to breathe out a white vapor. And Rowena was wearing only jeans and an old blue shirt.

  “What I meant was,” Torrey said, “if your grandfather left a will, it might indicate something. Or somebody that —”

  “I know what you meant,” Rowena said tiredly. Her hand holding the hackle stopped. Her green eyes were bloodshot. “Look in my jacket on that nail. Left-hand pocket. We all met in the library for a reading. Scott had made copies of the will for each of us, like some kind of festivity, with him handing out party favors.”

  Torrey took the document from the jacket pocket and unfolded it. Only two pages. She read it carefully: To Caroline Keegan, Ashenden Manor and all the Ashenden estate with the exception of the Ashenden property in Kildare. To Rowena, the Kildare property of four hundred acres with its Georgian house and stables. To Padraic Collins, the prized, carved ivory Chinese chess set. Ten thousand pounds to a Dublin hospital foundation for r
esearch in thoracic surgery. Small keepsakes to four former medical associates, one now in Montreal, another in Galway, one in Copenhagen, one in Edinburgh. And lastly, “to my grandson, Scott Keegan, ten pence.”

  Torrey looked up. Rowena, head bent, was cleaning horsehairs from the hackle with a kitchen fork.

  “I’m rich now.” Rowena sounded exhausted.

  “Yes, I see.”

  Rowena said, “I’ve always had only an allowance. And my vet schooling at Dublin University paid for by my grandfather. Now, because of this inheritance, Inspector O’Hare’ll have more reason to think I did my grandfather in. Money, money, money! O’Hare’ll figure that I couldn’t wait. Grist for O’Hare’s mill. Planning to grind me exceeding small.”

  “Hmmm?” But Torrey was thinking of something else. “What did your grandfather have against Scott? It’s so cruel leaving him ten pence.”

  No answer. Torrey looked up. Rowena was standing with her forehead resting against Fast Forward’s flank, her hand with the hackle hanging down. She was crying.

  “What?” Torrey asked. “What, Rowena?”

  A shake of Rowena’s head, then a broken, indrawn breath. “Oh, God! It goes back and back and back!”

  “What? Back to what? What goes back? Rowena? What are you talking about?”

  No answer.

  26

  On the west lawn, in the chilly midmorning, Caroline walked around the big oval of rhododendrons, her nose buried in the collar of her motheaten chinchilla coat. The coat had been in the Ashenden Manor attic for more generations than anyone could remember. It smelled faintly of perfume and mice. It had always been Caroline’s comfort in times of stress. In childhood, in the late afternoon, when she worried about her mother who was off at the pub in Ballynagh, she would climb to the fourth floor and take the old chinchilla from the closet and wrap it around herself and huddle on the floor. Sometimes she would fall asleep in the soft fur and awaken with a stiff neck and then a growing feeling of panic that her mother might not have come back, might never come back.