The Irish Manor House Murder

by Dicey Deere

  “I liked the concept of the movie,” Sheila Flaxton said, delicately forking up a marble-sized bit of mashed, “but I didn’t actually like the plot.”

  “Good evening.” Dr. Collins, passing their table, paused, smiling. Brown corduroy jacket over his woolen vest, and as usual wearing his old tweed cap. “Having a good dinner?”

  “Dr. Collins!” Winifred said. “Hello! Join us? We’ve barely started.”

  Dr. Collins shook his head. “Just came by to check on Sean O’Malley’s youngest. Hives.” He smiled at Torrey. “Take care in Ballynagh’s variable weather, Ms. Tunet. Don’t want another touch of the flu.” He nodded good-bye and went off.

  “Really, a bitch of a night,” Winifred said. And to Torrey, “We’ll drive you home,”

  “Right,” Jasper said. “And at the cottage I’ll give you and Sheila a nightcap, a cognac that brings tears of joy to a connoisseur’s eye.”

  * * *

  Winifred parked the Jeep by the side of the road. The wet hedges glistened in the headlights. Jasper led the way with the torch that Winifred kept in the car. They single-filed through the break in the hedge and past the pond.

  The flashlight picked out the bulk of Jasper’s bike covered with its black plastic, leaning against the cottage wall. A wind tore at the plastic, making it billow. “Lead me to that cognac!” Winifred said.

  Inside, Torrey turned on lamps in the kitchen and Jasper lit the fire. Torrey took down the globular cognac glasses. She loved the cottage like this, cozy, with friends, her lover, firelight. Jasper would warm the cognac with a candle flame; and they all would have a companionable nightcap. First she’d change her shoes. They weren’t exactly damp, but Dr. Collins was right about being careful, the flu.

  In the bedroom, she turned on the bedside light. She glanced at the bed, and stood stunned. A chill of horror crawled down her back and along her arms. She put a hand to her throat, staring down, trying not to believe what she was seeing.

  The gypsy, in Torrey’s nightgown with the yellow daisies, lay in her bed. The woman’s mass of dark hair was tumbled on the pillow. And her hands with the many rings lay still. The gypsy’s eyes did not flash. They stared, open, sightless. Her tongue protruded through clenched teeth.

  36

  Torrey sat beside the kitchen table, gazing down at the floor, police shoes going past, the police photographer’s flash reflecting repeatedly through the open door of the bedroom. She lifted her head when the Gardai wheeled the gurney with the sheeted body past her on the way out and she saw the van’s blue light beyond the hedge turning the hedge blue each time it revolved. She became aware that Jasper was leaning against the kitchen sink and that Winifred Moore was pacing the room from stove to fireplace.

  “Whoever smothered that poor woman,” Winifred said, “meant to kill Torrey.”

  At that, Torrey lifted her head. “I’m not sure. Was it in the dark? How much could the killer see?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Simply,” Torrey said, “that the gypsy told me she’d seen ‘something evil’ happen on the bridle path: She wanted a reward for telling. It had to be that she saw who shot the knitting needle into the horse as Dr. Ashenden rode by. She was going to come back and tell me. She was —”

  “A witness?” Winifred, hands on hips, leaned toward Torrey. “Did you mention it to anybody?”

  “Only to Caroline Temple.”

  “Hellfire!” Winifred said. “Caroline would’ve likely told Mark. And Scott. Encouraging them, getting their hopes up for Rowena.” She smacked a fist into her palm. “God knows who else Mark or Scott might’ve told.”

  “Well, now!” Inspector O’Hare came from the bedroom, notebook in hand, flipping a page. His police cap was set firmly on his graying head; his color was high. He glanced around the kitchen, taking it all in at a glance; he was good at that and knew it. Had, in fact, in his early years, come out first in a voluntary police observation test. He turned to Torrey. “So, now. The gypsy woman. Smothered with a pillow. Dead approximately three hours. Smelling of drink. Succinctly” — Inspector O’Hare lingered over the word, it was one of his favorite words —“succinctly, must’ve been drunk. How drunk? The crime lab’s report will tell us. So: Her clothes lying on the floor. Wearing only a nightgown with yellow daisies. A nightgown of yours, Ms. Tunet?” The inspector’s ballpoint pen hovered over the notebook. And at Torrey’s nod, “Any idea, Ms. Tunet, how the gypsy came to be here in your house, in your bed, wearing your nightgown?”

  Torrey shook her head. “The door was unlocked. I knew she was coming here to see me, but I didn’t know it might be tonight. I was at the movies. She must have come in. That’s all I know. Except that she liked that nightgown.”

  “Coming here to see you? Why?”

  Torrey hesitated, then shrugged. Tell him. Nothing to lose. She’d already told Winifred. “Well…”

  Inspector O’Hare listened, studying the ceiling, nodding, whistling under his breath. “And you believed that nonsense? My dear Ms. Tunet! You didn’t suspect what that gypsy was up to? Telling you a dozen lies to sell you a kitchenful of pots and pans? Dented, at that. And to drink your whiskey and be off on her way!”

  “Yes, I believed her.”

  Inspector O’Hare shook his head in pity. “The Gardai is familiar with gypsy habits. Likely she returned here, found your door open, and instead of stealing, which would have been more usual, fell drunkenly into bed in one of your nightgowns. Didn’t you say that when you went into the bedroom, you turned on the light?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you considered, Ms. Tunet, that in the dark, someone entered your bedroom and smothered the gypsy thinking it was you?” O’Hare looked hard at Torrey. “Your life, Ms. Tunet, is in danger.” Inspector O’Hare paused. “Why would that be, Ms. Tunet?”

  “I don’t know.” But suddenly a thought washed over her: The killer could have entered a lighted bedroom, and leaving it, could have turned out the light. In that case, the killer knew very well who his victim was — which would mean that indeed the gypsy had witnessed something on the bridle path. And someone had killed her because of it.

  “No idea at all, Ms. Tunet? No idea who might’ve…?”

  “None.” Torrey shook her head. “No idea.” But who? Knitting needle. Knitting needle. Her heart beat faster. Get on with it. Tunet, fulger, furtuna. Thunder. Lightning. Storm.

  * * *

  When Inspector O’Hare and the last of the technical crew from Dublin were gone, Winifred said, “If ever we needed a life-enhancing elixir, Jasper O’Mara, the time is now.” Jasper opened the precious bottle and poured the dark gold cognac into the balloon glasses.

  They sipped. Winifred blew out an appreciative breath, Jasper rolled his tongue around in his mouth, Sheila delicately licked her lips, and Torrey let the cognac rest on her tongue, her mouth a little open.

  “Whoosh!” Winifred said.

  When Winifred and Sheila left, Torrey stood beside Jasper, watching from the doorway. The wet leaves of the surrounding trees glistened in the moonlight.

  “Stay out of it,” Jasper said, one arm around her shoulders, “I smell danger.” He gave her earlobe a little tug. “I’m not in the mood to lose you. The idea makes me fretful.”

  But Torrey hardly heard him. She was seeing Butler Street: across from O’Malley’s, those two adjacent doorways. She had entered one doorway and climbed the staircase with the rose-patterned wallpaper. She had come that far. It was related, she knew it. It goes back and back! Rowena crying.

  As for that other doorway, the one with the jangling bell: Tomorrow.

  37

  Torrey stood beside Coyle’s vegetable stand eating an apple. She couldn’t remember when she’d gotten into the habit of eating something before attacking a problem. As to why she felt that need, she wondered if it gave her a hiatus, a special bit of thinking time, as a diver poised on the edge of a diving board might pause, gathering a final impetus.

  B
utler Street. Ten-thirty, sunny, women shopping, cobbles fresh washed by last night’s driving rain. At the corner, beyond O’Malley’s, a couple of men in overalls tinkered with a motorcycle. An empty school bus rattled past.

  Torrey nibbled around the apple core and tossed it into Coyle’s trash bin. Across the street, the bell above Grogan’s Needlework Shop jangled each time a customer went in or out. Grogan’s was one of the busiest shops in the village, what with needlework and knitting supplies, notions, dress patterns, and even a small selection of yard goods.

  Torrey crossed the street. Two steps up. The bell jangled as she opened the door. A gray-haired woman clerk in rimless glasses was measuring out grosgrain ribbon for a customer, a young girl clerk was ringing up a sale, and another woman customer waiting. The narrow shop smelled of fresh dry goods and of cloves from a basketful of potpourri on the glass countertop. On shelves behind the counter were hanks of embroidery floss and knitting yarn and balls of mercerized cotton. A rack on the counter held tatting shuttles, crochet needles, and knitting needles in various gauges. The police report had said ten-gauge, so —

  “Ma’am? May I help you, ma’am?” The young girl clerk, freckled, had a light, childish voice.

  Torrey said, “I’d like a pair of knitting needles. Ten-gauge is the one I want.”

  The clerk ran a finger along the cards of knitting needles and detached a card with a set of the narrowest needles. “This one. Ten-gauge. It’s that newer material, so light. Everybody’s using it.”

  Torrey held the card. The pair of knitting needles was not the wooden kind she remembered, and it wasn’t plastic either. It was a fine-pointed, lightweight, pink-tinged aluminum. Ah, yes, The Devil take the blue-tailed fly. The gypsy had seen too much.

  “People do like these knitting needles the best,” the clerk said, “the way the stitches slide off so smoothly.”

  “Yes. I’ll take it.”

  It was one pound fifty pence. The girl clerk wrapped the card of needles in green tissue, then twisted each end, so that it made a pretty little package. Torrey, paying, thought of Caroline’s knitting bag hanging on the arm of a chair in the sitting room at Ashenden Manor and how easy it would be for someone to slide a pair of knitting needles from the bag: People were in and out, Scott, Padraic Collins, Mark Temple, other visitors. Now she herself would drop in at Ashenden Manor and somehow find a chance to slide a hand into that knitting bag and see if by chance one of a pair of ten-gauge knitting needles was missing. It would be a beginning, a small step, but a step.

  “Mrs. Tunet, isn’t it?” The gray-haired clerk in the rimless glasses was leaning over the counter toward her, “Oh, my dear! I’m Mary Grogan. I heard! In your cottage last night, that poor gypsy woman!”

  “Oh, yes. I —”

  “So terrible! The poor woman.” Mary Grogan put a hand to her black dress in the vicinity of her heart. “Oh, I can see it! That gypsy wandering drunk — she was often so — into your cottage in the storm, someone likely following her. There are other gypsies about; it could have been one of them, sneaky, dangerous. Oh, my dear! Mrs. Bryson — that’s Jimmy Bryson’s mother, he’s Sergeant Jimmy Bryson, with the police — Mrs. Bryson was in this morning talking about it. So upsetting!”

  “Yes.” Torrey, feeling something was wanted, added, “I was at the movies. It was certainly —”

  “Just two days ago, she came into the shop! Not Mrs. Bryson. The gypsy. The gypsy woman! I can tell you, I was a bit surprised. Though of course why shouldn’t a gypsy knit?”

  Torrey wet her lips. “What did she buy?”

  “Well, it was a funny thing.” Mary Grogan shook her head. “She wanted a pair of knitting needles. Not any particular size. ‘The cheapest,’ she told me, and she laughed; she had very white teeth. Well, everybody in the village buys these newer knitting needles now. So I was getting rid of the old wooden ones. I was selling off the big ten-millimeter for a pittance; nobody was going to buy them. I told her fifty pence. Good enough to knit with, they are. But it made no sense, her buying any size, as long as it’s cheap. No sense at all! I told her so, but she just flashed her teeth at me and said, ‘They’ll make me rich!’ And she gave me the fifty pence and I wrapped them in the twist of green and off she went.”

  38

  Torrey came into the cool hall at Ashenden Manor. All the way since she’d left Grogan’s Needlework Shop and bicycled along the road, she kept seeing Caroline Temple’s knitting bag that hung on the arm of the Italian easy chair in the sitting room. The image nagged her. No reason except that, well, the knitting bag was so accessible. To anyone. Torrey felt it then: that little tingle between her shoulder blades, that signal of excitement, of daring. No longer a thief, but in this case some necessary … exploration? Like entering a different country, foreign, unknown —

  “Ms. Tunet? Oh, Ms. Tunet! Good morning!” Jennie O’Shea, pulling a vacuum cleaner across the hall floor, stopped short. “Terrible! That gypsy! Smothered with a pillow! Ooooh! Only hours ago! Right in your cottage!” Jennie’s eyes were wide. “A pillow! Oh, dear! Every day of my life, from this day forth, making up the beds, shaking out the pillows, I’ll … Ooooh!”

  “Yes, Jennie. Who’s about?”

  “They’re in the sitting room, Ms. Caroline and Dr. Temple and Scott. All like on tiptoe, like with ‘bated breath’ as they say in books. ‘Bated breath’ about something. But what, I don’t know — Except for Ms. Rowena who’s up in her bedroom studying, what with her vet exams coming up next week. Doesn’t even take time to put on lipstick. Not that she really needs —”

  “Yes, Jennie. Thanks.”

  * * *

  Torrey came into the sitting room.

  “Torrey!” Caroline gave a little cry and let her knitting drop into her lap. “Torrey! What an awful thing. Dreadful for you, coming home to the cottage last night. And that poor gypsy! What happened?” Compassion and bewilderment in her low, husky voice.

  Scott, lying on the sofa, lazily turned his handsome head and smiled at Torrey. “Better to’ve found a grandmother wolf in your bed.”

  Mark Temple, in new-looking country tweeds, stopped pacing the room. “A shock to Inspector O’Hare, no doubt.”

  Yes, Torrey agreed, of course a shock … yes, the police were … yes, yes, she was all right, except she was buying a new bed, she couldn’t quite —

  “Of course,” Caroline said. But her white-lidded hazel eyes were wide, riveted on Torrey; her face was questioning, asking something more. She seemed almost to hold her breath, waiting.

  Torrey became aware of that same waiting in Scott, his transparent-looking eyes expectant, and in the alert gaze of Dr. Mark Temple. For a moment after she stopped speaking, it was quiet in the sitting room, only the ticking of a wall clock.

  Then Caroline said, “What about, you know, what you told me when I picked you up on the access road? About Rowena. That maybe you knew of … of someone who’d been near the bridle path when my father was killed, someone who may have seen —”

  “A witness,” Scott broke in. “You told my mother that, possibly…” He waited, eyebrows raised questioningly, one hand sporadically clenching and unclenching.

  Mark Temple said, “You told Caroline you might have a witness to my father-in-law’s murder.”

  Torrey looked blankly from Mark Temple to Scott, then to Caroline, Caroline’s eyes blazing with hope. Caroline said, “You said you might know more today.”

  The slow realization came as Torrey looked from one face to the other. They didn’t know. She bit her lip. But she had no choice. “The gypsy. The gypsy was my witness,” she said, and heard a stricken moan from Caroline.

  39

  Torrey, in pity, looked away from the devastation in Caroline’s face. Mark Temple said abruptly to Caroline, “I’m taking you for a walk. Good for your circulation. Better than sitting there and knitting — it only exercises your fingers.” It was his afternoon half day.

  Scott sat up, then hoisted himself from th
e sofa, using his cane. “I’m off, too. On my nefarious pursuits.”

  Torrey dragged her gaze from Caroline’s knitting bag hanging on the arm of the Italian chair. It was a maroon linen bag with two big circles of bamboo as handles, so the bag could be opened wide.

  “I’ll just run up and see Rowena,” she said. Caroline nodded, pale, wordless. Torrey watched them leave. Then she stood at the sitting room window until she saw Scott get into his Miata and zoom off down the drive.

  She turned to the knitting bag. Heavier than she expected. Balls of wool, crochet needles, pain pills, a curved, tortoiseshell comb. Five pairs of knitting needles, all different gauges. A fruitless search. She felt chagrined; she’d been so hopeful of finding a lead.

  She sat thinking. Rowena crying. Back and back! It goes back and back! Back to something in the Ashenden family? Something back to when? To what? — this murder of Dr. Ashenden.

  From the kitchen, she heard the sound of a television show, a comedy, canned laughter. Everyone gone; only Rowena deep in her vet studies in the west wing. Only the eyes in the Ashenden portraits on the hall staircase to look down and see her.

  40

  In the library, dead quiet. The smell of old books, of leather, of wood smoke from last night’s fire in the grate. Scattering of chairs, leather sofa. At the far end, the fireplace with a high-backed upholstered chair and fat footstool drawn cozily close. Under the tall windows was an English kneehole desk. Morning sunlight struck one corner of it.

  The desk. She drew closer, hands clasped behind her, and looked down at the desk. On the left was a silver-framed photograph of a teenage Rowena on horseback. Velvet riding cap, red hair hidden. Stock and jodhpurs. The desktop also held a crystal tray of pens and pencils and a plastic ruby-colored magnetic shaker of paper clips. Weighed down by an egg-shaped piece of polished marble were a half dozen copies of the British medical publication The Lancet.