The Irish Manor House Murder

by Dicey Deere

  “But why?” he had asked, stunned, yesterday afternoon looking back at Torrey Tunet, the peacock bandanna straggling down the back of her neck, her face blazing with what she had just told him. “Why, do you suppose?”

  He’d been startled to see the blazing excitement in Ms. Tunet’s face change to an expression of … horror? Her face had gone pale. But she’d said only, “Tomorrow, then?” And he’d nodded. “Yes. Ten o’clock.”

  * * *

  Now, creeping up to eleven o’clock. Everyone intent, as though watching a police show on television. Only that cough again, a nervous-sounding little cough-and-whistle from Sheila Flaxton. Nerves? She sat in the folding chair beside Winifred Moore. Such a timid woman, Ms. Flaxton. No wonder Winifred Moore ran the show.

  From the other side of the room, a clatter as something fell to the floor and rolled to O’Hare’s feet. A silver pencil. Sergeant Bryson picked it up and returned it to Dr. Mark Temple, who whispered, “Sorry,” and raised his brows half humorously at O’Hare. The much-divorced chiropractor with a long history of appearing in gossip columns.

  O’Hare thought, Now, and he cleared his throat and studied his notes, as though to see whom he would question next. Then he looked up. He smiled toward the stocky figure of Dr. Collins’s housekeeper. She was seated beside the doctor. “Helen Lavery.”

  59

  At half past ten o’clock Saturday morning, on a narrow country road twenty-two miles north of Kilkenny, Jasper O’Mara wormed his way out from under the Jaguar where he’d been tinkering and sweating for the last thirty-five minutes.

  He slapped at the dirt on his pullover and pants and got in the car. Behind the wheel, he took a breath. The sweetest sound he could think of would be that of the engine running. He turned on the ignition. The dashboard lights flickered, steadied. The engine purred.

  Jasper turned his head and smiled his relief at the passenger beside him. She smiled back and said, “Lord love us, Mr. O’Mara! You’re a genius.” Her Dublin accent was from around the Glasnevin area of small lanes, with row houses, mostly working-class people.

  “Or more likely a mechanic,” he said. Time lost, now he drove fast, north toward Ballynagh. Early this morning, trying again unsuccessfully to reach Torrey at the cottage, he’d called Ashenden Manor. Jennie O’Shea had answered the phone. “Ms. Tunet? No, Mr. O’Mara, she’s not here, But later this morning she’ll likely be at the Ballynagh police station. Ten o’clock. A sort of inquiry?”

  An inquiry, damn it! Too soon, too soon! Driving, he was seeing the house on Butler Street with the front casement windows. He was hearing Sara Hobbs’s sherry-slurred voice yesterday afternoon telling him her favorite old tale. Sentimental Sara Hobbs, blue eyes misty with sherry. “Another cup of tea, Mr. O’Mara?” Chinese tray tipping in her hands.

  He pressed down on the gas. He had to get to Torrey. An inquiry! She might already be in the midst of the horror of it, not guessing what he now suspected. But first —

  “You go too fast!” his passenger chided.

  “Yes,” he answered, but he did not slow down. Because there was more to it. More.

  60

  “Helen Lavery.”

  It startled her, Inspector O’Hare calling her name. She turned to Dr. Collins, frightened. He looked a little surprised, but he gave her a reassuring smile. It steadied her down. If Inspector O’Hare asked her if she’d seen anyone acting suspicious around the bridle path, she’d remind him that it had been a Friday. That was her church evening, as everyone in Ballynagh knew. So how could she have witnessed anything, the bridle path being in the opposite direction from St. Andrews?

  Helen crossed her legs at the ankle, thankful that she was wearing her good brown shoes, what with sitting in the front, over on the side, and Inspector O’Hare only a few feet away, sort of sitting on his desk and swinging one leg, so casual like, and smiling at her. They were even about the same age, she being fifty-four next June, and him being a year younger, which she knew from school. She felt better now. She smiled back at Inspector O’Hare.

  “So, Helen,” Inspector O’Hare began, but then instead of asking who or what she might have seen regarding Dr. Ashenden killed on the bridle path, he started rambling along about tinkers and gypsies traveling through the countryside. He went on for a whole minute, shaking his head over their thievery and their other unfortunate habits, and saying about himself having bought a dented little pot for two pounds six from from the gypsy woman, that gypsy who’d been murdered right here in Ballynagh. “I believe the unfortunate woman was somewhat of a nettle to some of our Ballynagh farmers. A nettle. And to other folk as well. Been seen hanging around Collins Court, that gypsy. Been a nuisance there too, had she, Helen?” and Inspector O’Hare looked at her expectantly.

  Helen nodded. “Oh … well, yes. Hanging about. Pots and pans. Scary like, so sudden, there she’d be. And you hear such stories.” She stopped. But Inspector O’Hare was waiting for more, smiling at her, that expectant look.

  “Scary, Helen? Scary how?”

  Helen looked back at Inspector O’Hare. She had a feeling of obligation, that she was owing something, everybody sitting there waiting and looking at her, and she in her good brown shoes, being here. So it was as though she was obliged, she couldn’t keep it down.

  “Well, last Monday — or maybe it was Tuesday — I’d gone to the village for fish for Dr. Collins’s dinner. Cod, it was. When I got back to Collins Court, that gypsy, she’d gotten into the house! She was in Dr. Collins’s study. He was shouting to her to get out. ‘What’s this?’ I said. I had the bag of fish and I raised it up like I was going to bash her with it. At that, she made a jabbing motion with her fingers at me but went off past me out the door. Dr. Collins’s face had got so white it worried me.”

  Inspector O’Hare wagged his head, sympathetic. “Brazen, that gypsy. Other people complained too, you’re not the only one. And that was the last you saw of her? The gypsy?”

  “Well, not the last. Next day she was back. I’d been out where a pesky rabbit was among my vegetables, and I’d left the kitchen door open for a minute. She came right in. Brazen, like you said. The nerve! I had some dried beans in my apron pocket and I’d almost a mind to throw a fistful at her. Dangled a pair of earrings at me, she did. ‘A present for you.’” Helen shook her head. “Awful-looking things, cheap earrings, fake rubies — gypsy things! Not worth two pence.”

  Someone coughed, then coughed again. A thin, strangled sound. It was that English friend of Ms. Winifred Moore. She ought to let Dr. Collins have a look at her.

  “Earrings?” Inspector O’Hare asked.

  Helen nodded. “They do that, the gypsies, to have you on. Presents. ‘And here’s one for the master,’ and she dropped something in a twist of paper on the kitchen table. Just like that!”

  Helen looked at Dr. Collins on the folding chair beside her. He was wearing his tweed jacket that she’d given a good brushing, and his vest and all. That pancake makeup around his eyes was all wrong; he didn’t know how to put it on. It looked too white. He needed a darker shade, to blend in more.

  “So,” Inspector O’Hare was asking her in a kindly voice, “What did the gypsy do then?”

  “Do? Nothing. She only went off, dirty skirts swirling. I threw the earrings in the garbage.” Helen looked around at the listeners. She had again that triumphant feeling, that she’d justified her presence at this whatever it was — informal inquiry — of Egan O’Hare’s. And in her good brown shoes.

  But Egan O’Hare only kept on. “And the present for Dr. Collins as well?”

  Indignation made Helen’s voice rise. “I should say not! I don’t take it on myself to — the present was for Dr. Collins, and it was to Dr. Collins I gave it. It was for him to throw away if he liked.” Generations of service in correctly run households was, Helen hoped, clearly implied in the set of her shoulders.

  At that, O’Hare said, “I see.” He got off the desk, arched his back, and gave the small of his bac
k a bit of a rub with his knuckles. Helen thought he would glance at Dr. Collins as though to say, You’ve an excellent housekeeper in Helen Lavery, Dr. Collins.

  But instead, Inspector O’Hare slanted a glance over toward Torrey Tunet, who was standing by the Coke machine. Then he looked back at Helen. He smiled at her. “The present for Dr. Collins, was it by any chance in a twist of green paper?”

  Helen stared at Inspector O’Hare. She suddenly felt funny. Fooled like. Like she was taking a walk along a safe, sunlit lane that all of sudden had somehow become something different. “Green paper? In a twist of green paper?” She turned her head slowly and looked over at Ms. Tunet. She moved her lips, a kind of nervous flutter that sometimes happened when she got upset.

  “Yes, Helen? Ms. Lavery?” Inspector O’Hare’s voice was patient.

  Helen looked down at her hands in her lap. Her heart had begun to thump so hard she could almost hear it. “Well, like I told Ms. Tunet when she stopped in, but Dr. Collins was out on an emergency. We somehow got to chatting about the gypsy pestering everybody and their tricks and presents and such. And Ms. Tunet asked me the very same thing: Was the present the gypsy gave me for Dr. Collins in a twist of green paper? She said that was the gypsy’s most usual way, in green paper.”

  “And…?”

  She felt helpless. “And so it was.”

  Inspector O’Hare said softly, “Thank you so much, Ms. Lavery.” Helen could see that sweat had darkened his shirt collar.

  61

  Mystified faces. Inspector O’Hare stood a moment, then let out a whistling sigh and rolled his head around to relax tense muscles. There wasn’t even the sound of shuffling feet or coughing or nose blowing, only the tinny clock ticking and the hum of refrigeration from the Coke machine. But as Winifred Moore said later to Sheila, “Did you see that look between Torrey Tunet and Inspector O’Hare? As though an electric current zinged between them. If you can imagine such a thing between that pair.”

  But to Dr. Collins, it seemed that Helen Lavery’s words were no more significant than a dust mote. He sat gazing abstractedly before him as though his interior thoughts took precedence over whatever was happening in this police station on Butler Street.

  Inspector O’Hare said, “Dr. Collins?”

  Dr. Collins blinked and looked inquiringly back at Inspector O’Hare. “Yes, Inspector?”

  “What was the present the gypsy brought you? In the twist of green paper.”

  “The present? But how does that — in any case, I didn’t bother to look. I threw it away. Some gypsy geegaw, I imagine.” Dr. Collins closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers.

  Inspector O’Hare reached around behind him to his desk and picked up a slender object wrapped in green tissue. Carefully he removed the tissue. “Then of course, Dr. Collins, you wouldn’t recognize these?” He held out the object to Dr. Collins. Necks craned. It was a pair of wooden knitting needles, held together with a rubber band. A thick, heavy pair, the kind used for taking big, loose stitches.

  Dr. Collins’s balding head gave a sidewise jerk as though struck by a slight buffet of wind. He stared at the knitting needles. He licked dry lips. “So that’s my present from the gypsy, is it? Came across it, did you? A bit odd for a present!”

  “Odd?” O’Hare tried not to sound ironical. “Not odd, if these needles weren’t meant for you to knit with, Dr. Collins, but rather” — he ran his fingers slowly along one of the wooden needles —“to hint that she, this gypsy, knew something that might be of interest to you.”

  “But what an absurd — ! How could —”

  “To hint that she had,” O’Hare pressed on, “possibly seen something of interest to you?”

  Dr. Collins gazed back at Inspector O’Hare. Then he gave a sigh and sat up straighter and pulled down his vest so that his round belly no longer bulged. “I have a habit of slumping. But I try to remind myself that even at my age —” Another sigh. “I don’t exactly follow, Inspector.”

  But O’Hare felt a rush of blood, his stepped-up heartbeat. It always happened when he was closing in and the click occurred, the click that boded revelation.

  And now he became aware of a bated-breath stillness from the listeners, and not even the creak of anyone shifting in a folding chair. He wet his lips.

  “Let’s say that the gypsy saw something in the woods, perhaps, where she kept her pony and wagon. Near the bridle path. Saw something happen.” O’Hare pulled at his chin, gazing at Dr. Collins.

  No answer. The old tweed cap lay in Dr. Collins’s lap. He began turning it around and around, his fingers working along the worn edge. Then, as though becoming aware of what he was doing, he looked down and his fingers went still.

  O’Hare said softly. “Blackmail, Dr. Collins? The gypsy saw something happen, something so terrible that —”

  “No!”

  “— that you couldn’t let her reveal it.”

  A heartbeat of time. Then Dr. Collins looked wearily back at Inspector O’Hare. “That gypsy.” He shook his head. “That greedy gypsy! I had no choice.”

  The tinny ticking of the clock. Creak of a folding chair as someone shifted. Indrawn breaths, and from someone a whispered, “My God!”

  * * *

  Cigarette smoke lazed across the room, alerting Sergeant Bryson. Winifred Moore again. So engrossed, so fascinated, as to forget herself. Sergeant Bryson coughed loudly. Ms. Moore looked at him, swore under her breath, then leaned down and ground the cigarette under her heel. From the others, then, a slight stirring. Rowena Keegan, beside her brother, Scott, shook her head, incredulity in her green gaze. Mark Temple sought out his wife’s hand. Helen Lavery made a strange, whimpering sound, like a cat in pain. Inspector O’Hare glanced toward Torrey Tunet, whose only reaction was to slip Nelson a cookie.

  “So, Dr. Collins?” For some reason he could not understand, Inspector O’Hare spoke gently.

  Dr. Collins was again turning the old tweed cap around and around. “I had no plan. I only was looking for her near her wagon by the bridle path. To pay her to go away? To beg her? I didn’t know. It kept shifting in my mind, changing, like a tide going in and out.

  “It was dusk. I started to follow her.” At the groundsman’s cottage, the gypsy had pushed open the door. “I looked through the window. She was there alone, drinking. She pulled a nightgown off a drying rack. It was white, with yellow daisies. She took it into the bedroom.”

  Quietly he’d entered the cottage. “I still didn’t know. The bedroom door was open. She was in the nightgown in front of the long mirror, her clothes on the floor.

  “She looked at me. She was almost too drunk to stand. But she laughed when she saw me. Her earrings were gold coins. When she laughed, she threw her head back and the gold coins glittered. I pushed her down, and she fell on the bed. A strong woman, but weak from drunkenness.” The tweed cap turning and turning in his hands. “I held the pillow over her face.”

  62

  Inspector O’Hare felt compact, organized, in charge, alert, pleased with himself, and triumphant. The police station was a stage; he was the principal actor, the protagonist, as they called it. He was exquisitely aware of his audience on the folding chairs. He straightened his jacket to make sure it was perfectly horizonal across his thighs. He looked down at Dr. Collins, who again sat slumped, belly protruding below his vest like a small, water-filled balloon.

  “So,” O’Hare said, and now he swept a glance around at the mesmerized faces and spoke to the room at large, “the gypsy was smothered. Murdered. All because on the bridle path she saw Dr. Collins shoot the knitting needle that resulted in the death of Dr. Ashenden.” He wanted to add something philosophical but couldn’t bring anything to mind.

  Dr. Collins jerked his head up. “What? Oh no, Inspector! No! No!” The expression on his face was one of astonishment. “I — only because she’d threatened she’d swear to the Gardai that she saw me do such a thing! That murderous attack on Gerald! Oh no, Inspe
ctor! I did nothing of the kind!”

  63

  Stunned, Inspector O’Hare stared at Dr. Collins. What was this he was hearing? Impossible! He was still holding the pair of wooden knitting needles. Impossible.

  “My, oh my!” Sheila Flaxton’s whisper, followed by her nervous giggle. Then silence.

  Dr. Collins, clutching that tweed cap in his lap, gave Inspector O’Hare a shocked, reproving look. “As if I would harm Gerald! Never! My best friend! My dearest friend! All our lives, Gerald and I!” — Dr. Collins’s gaze sought out Caroline Temple in the third row. “His daughter can attest to that!”

  “Yes! Oh, yes!” Caroline Temple’s slender figure leaned forward. “That’s so, Inspector! Padraic and my father! Padraic — Dr. Collins — never would have —” Her voice broke. “Never!” she managed, and sank back to the comfort of Mark Temple’s encircling arm around her shoulders.

  Inspector O’Hare glared at Dr. Collins. He said, between gritted teeth, “Exactly why, Dr. Collins, did you think folks would believe the gypsy if she claimed to’ve seen you shoot the knitting needle into the stallion? How could you think anybody’d take a gypsy’s word for it against yours?” O’Hare half turned and angrily threw the pair of knitting needles down on his desk. Then, jutting his jaw at Dr. Collins, “Ridiculous! On the face of it, ridiculous!”

  A silence. A waiting. The refrigeration of the Coke machine started up again. Dr. Collins fussed with his vest, settling and resettling it. Then he said, low, “But you see, the gypsy thought —” He gazed somewhere around the chest button of O’Hare’s blue uniform. “You see, the gypsy thought that with those knitting needles she’d frightened me into giving her money. Otherwise, she’d tell that … that…” He looked down.