The Irish Manor House Murder

by Dicey Deere

  O’Hare looked from Scott Keegan’s white, impassioned face to Rowena, who sat with a fist to her mouth. Caroline Temple, on Rowena’s left, was a stone effigy.

  “So, Dr. Collins.” Torrey Tunet was standing beside O’Hare’s desk, hardly a yard away from Collins. “When you overheard Scott Keegan reveal the X rays to Rowena, what did you do then?”

  No answer. Dr. Collins simply sat, gazing down.

  Inspector O’Hare, at Torrey Tunet’s left, saw her jaw move stubbornly forward. She was standing soldier-straight but with her hands in her pockets; O’Hare could see the bunching of her fists. He felt a flicker of unwilling admiration. A bulldog, Ms. Torrey Tunet was a bulldog, for all her black-fringed gray eyes and the incongrous peacock bandanna on her satiny hair. She’d wanted to protect Rowena Keegan. She’d hated to have to reveal Rowena’s secrets. But, no other way, finally, to break open the rotten egg. Pin the tail on the donkey. Murder was murder. O’Hare pulled at his nose and regarded Dr. Collins. So now let’s have it, Dr. Collins. No mercy.

  Still no answer from Padraic Collins. Torrey leaned toward him. “Dr. Collins? What did you do then?”

  * * *

  Rumble of thunder again, then a light scattering of rain against the plate glass. Yet so quiet in the police station, a bated-breath quiet. Sergeant Jimmy Bryson silently moved a step closer to Scott Keegan because who knew, who ever knew? Furious victim, with that skinny leg under the dove-gray trousers. There was always the strength of madness, was there not?

  * * *

  “That Friday afternoon,” Dr. Collins said, and he folded his arms across his chest and stared into space, “when Rowena and Scott had gone, I left the library and waited in the hall. Gerald would be arriving home from his office in Dublin. I waited in grief and rage. Kathleen, whom I had loved! And the terrible genetic results to Caroline! And later, to Scott. Only Rowena had seemingly escaped. But I knew she carried within her that terrible legacy. My head was bursting.

  “When Gerald came in, I struck him across the face. ‘That’s for Kathleen, that X ray!’ Then I struck him again. ‘That’s for Caroline. And Scott! And Rowena!’ Then I struck him a third time. ‘And that’s for Donal Slattery!’

  “Gerald just stood. He was in shock. Then I saw that he took it in, took in that I knew.

  “He turned around and walked back out. I stood outside at the top of the steps and looked down and saw him crossing the meadow. He was going toward the woods, stalking away like some sort of automaton. And then I saw Rowena galloping toward him on Thor.”

  * * *

  Dr. Collins stopped and gave an enormous, shuddering sigh. Then he began again.

  “They brought him in from the meadow. Upstairs, I took care of his sprained shoulder. I looked only once into his eyes. What I saw there made me know that I was done for, just as Donal Slattery had been done for. Because now I had the power to ruin him. I could, if I chose, destroy the reputation of this ‘eminent’ surgeon. Did he know too that I had loved Kathleen? In any case, I was a danger. A sword of Damocles, hanging over him.”

  * * *

  Padraic paused. He looked over at Inspector O’Hare. “Ah, yes, Inspector O’Hare, Donal Slattery, I should explain. Donal Slattery, an X-ray technician. Unfortunately a drunk. Died of a heart attack twenty-something years ago. Fell facedown in that bog near the west woods and suffocated. I’d attested to the heart attack.

  “But that wasn’t the truth. Slattery had been a dinner guest at Ashenden Manor. I’d left early. Gerald showed up later that night at Collins Court, upset. He told me that Slattery had been drinking and had gone out and must have got lost. He’d been so drunk that he fell facedown in a bog and was too drunk to get up. He’d suffocated. Gerald had found him. It was a wild, windy night in March, I remember. It was known in Dublin that Slattery’s drinking was getting out of hand, he was spending all his money on drink, a pity for his wife and children.

  “There in the woods, at the bog, Gerald suggested that we cover for Slattery, so as not to shame his family. Why not report that Slattery had died of a heart attack? ‘But Slattery and I had a bit of a quarrel,’ Gerald told me. ‘So best to say that you found him, rather than I.’ Of course I agreed.”

  Another pause. Then the sigh, and Dr. Collins shook his head. “All those years!

  “But in the library, when I heard Scott tell Rowena about the X ray to Kathleen, I knew that Slattery hadn’t died falling drunk with his face in the bog. Gerald Ashenden had held Slattery’s face down in the bog until he suffocated. Because Slattery knew. Donal Slattery was an X-ray technician. He’d found out something and wanted money to keep quiet about it. I’d thought it odd that he’d turned up at Ashenden Manor, a bit down at the heels; they’d never been friends.”

  Padraic stopped. He looked fully at Torrey Tunet and gave her a nod of approbation. He turned back to Inspector O’Hare. “So I knew, Inspector, while I was bandaging up Gerald’s sprained shoulder, that now Gerald would have to kill me, too.” Dr. Collins drew a deep breath. “So I killed him.”

  69

  The stark confession in Dr. Collins’s gentle, well-modulated voice vibrated through the police station. Someone — Sheila Flaxton? — gave a hysterical laugh. As though sensing an oppressive change in the atmosphere, Nelson lifted his head and whined.

  “The gypsy saw me,” Dr. Collins said, “so then I had to, well…” He looked down.

  Inspector O’Hare felt like the tail of a kite being whipped around by capricious winds, jerked this way and that. And not understanding by half. He did not look around. He did not want to see the faces. He did not even look at Torrey Tunet, who’d landed this big fish that came floundering up, trailing like seaweed torn from the depths, these slimy, obscene secrets.

  Tap, tap, tap. Scott Keegan, tapping a gold cigarette lighter against the metal arm of his folding chair.

  O’Hare glanced down at the tape recorder on his desk. The tape had run out, God knows how long ago. He swore under his breath, pulled his nose, and regarded Dr. Collins.

  “Let me understand precisely, Dr. Collins. The original — Backing up a bit: Who’s Slattery? You struck Dr. Ashenden in the — how’d this Slattery get —”

  “I knew! I knew!” Dr. Collins sounded stubborn. He shook his head.

  O’Hare breathed out a sigh of exasperation. Hopeless. At least for now. Later would have to do.

  “Inspector?” Scott Keegan stopped tapping the lighter. “I can help a bit, on that account.” He tipped his head to the side, his transparent-looking eyes questioning. His fair hair gleamed like burnished gold.

  “Good. Good!” Inspector O’Hare looked over the silent room. “Almost half past one. If anyone would like to leave for lunch?”

  No one stirred.

  70

  “By chance,” Scott Keegan said, “some correspondence fell into my hands. Letters of some years ago. They were between my grandfather and a Danish woman in Copenhagen. Years before, they’d been fellow medical students in Dublin. They’d also been lovers, deeply in love and engaged to be married. Then one night the young woman — let us call her Ingeborg — packed her bags and, leaving no word for her lover, disappeared back to Denmark.”

  Scott’s hand toyed with the lighter. It was a fine hand with polished nails. The narrow wrist bore a thin, flat watch. “Why, I wondered, had she gone, when so in love? And with a happy future in store! Why had Ingeborg so abruptly fled? And with no explanation!

  “But reading further in the correspondence — or, I might say, the bitter, accusatory letters — that finally reached Gerald Ashenden from Ingeborg, letters in response to his that had up to then gone unanswered, I” — Scott looked at Inspector O’Hare —“I learned the reason. And I admit to being horrified. And then —”

  But there was an interruption. The door to the police station had opened; a wind swirled the papers on Sergeant Bryson’s desk before it closed. Two people had come in. Inspector O’Hare recognized Jasper O’Mara in his familiar oatmeal s
weater. But the woman with him was a stranger, a pleasant-faced woman, gray-haired, upright, in a tan coat open over a dark blue dress. Nelson rose, wagged his tail, and collapsed down again. Sergeant Bryson unfolded the one remaining chair, and the woman sat down.

  “Go on, then, Mr. Keegan,” O’Hare said impatiently. Might as well. It would all be in tomorrow’s papers anyway, maybe even on tonight’s radio and television news after he’d talked to Dublin Castle, so what difference did the presence of these two people make? “Go on, Mr. Keegan.”

  “It was this,” Scott Keegan said, “One afternoon in a pub in Dublin, Ingeborg, happily engaged to Gerald Ashenden, ran into a young fellow she knew, one of the medical crowd from Richmond Hospital. He was drunk, as usual. Name of Slattery, an X-ray technician, always half-drowned in his cups, never mind that he had a wife and two little ones to support. Did extra work for a private doctor, Doc Blair, on O’Connell Street, as did the medical student, Gerald Ashenden. Always broke, was Slattery, but that afternoon he had a pocketful of pounds. He was drunk enough to tell Ingeborg where his windfall had come from. He said —” Scott Keegan’s voice stopped.

  O’Hare looked sharply at him. Scott was looking over at his mother, sitting beside Mark Temple. Caroline’s great hazel eyes looked back at her son. Then, “Darling,” Caroline said, “go on.”

  “Yes, Ma.” O’Hare could see the glitter of tears in Scott Keegan’s eyes.

  “Slattery told Ingeborg he’d done a job for Gerald, got fifty pounds for it. ‘Innocent as a lamb, the girl, that blue-eyed girl from Ballynagh, believing what Gerald had told her! X ray to see if their baby was going to be a boy or a girl! I’d happened into Doc Blair’s office after hours; I’d left a half-pint behind the radiator. And there they were, the pair of them, the girl all delighted, happy. Gerald saw that I’d twigged what he was up to. Made me sick, it did! He knew I knew! We’d been at Barney’s pub the Tuesday a week before, me, Ashenden, and a couple of other med students, when Hotchkiss, a fellow med student, came in. He was drunk and excited and began bragging about something he’d done. Hotchkiss bred Cavalier King Charles dogs as a sideline, and his best female cavalier, a Blenheim, had gotten out and become pregnant by a stray. Hotchkiss needed her pregnant quickly by another pedigreed cavalier to have a salable litter by April. “I tried every damned thing — purges, God knows what! — to abort that stray’s litter. No luck! Then I remembered something I’d heard from a dog breeder in Cork. He claimed he’d had success with strong doses of radiation. I tried it on my Blenheim bitch and — Glory be! — that did it!” Hotchkiss slapped a handful of pounds down on the bar. “Drinks all around!”

  “‘I don’t think any of us believed his tale, but we drank and joked about it. I remember, though, Ashenden asking Hotchkiss, “You’re sure the X ray did it?” And Hotchkiss said, “Had to be. The breeder in Cork has a brother who’s a doctor and had done it more than once before. So I thought, What the hell! When you’re desperate, you’ll try anything.”

  “‘So there they were, Ashenden and the girl, and me with my half-pint from behind the radiator. And him knowing I knew what he was going to try, to get clear of the blue-eyed girl from Ballynagh.

  “‘But I’d caught him. He knew how to close a fellow’s mouth, though: Make him a party to it. “Fifty pounds if you’ll do it,” he told me. “You do the X ray.” Fifty pounds! I could see Nora’s eyes go big at that. A pork roast, fried chickens, clothes for the kids. A dinner out, and the rent paid!

  “So, drunk, in the pub, Slattery told Ingeborg, waving a handful of pounds around, ‘All to clear the way for you, my pretty!’”

  Scott Keegan ended his tale. “Those letters! It was that night that Ingeborg fled in horror from Gerald Ashenden. Fled back to Denmark. She never saw him again.”

  71

  Scott Keegan’s voice stopped. At Inspector O’Hare’s left, Dr. Collins gave a strangled little cry. He looked from Caroline to Scott with his hidden crippled leg. He looked then at Rowena. “Pregnant!” he said. “My God!” His pudgy body shook with a sudden, violent shudder. “Rowena! You should indeed have ridden him down! Erased him! Killed him! Monstrous! Monstrous! All those years, friends, playing chess, a drop of brandy. And I, never knowing! Until —” His voice broke. He got to his feet, fumbling the tweed cap onto his balding head. Unsteady with emotion, he turned to Inspector O’Hare. “You’ll wish another statement, no doubt, Inspector. I’ll be glad to give it! The murder of Gerald Ashenden, I’m proud to say. You’ll find me at Collins Court when you’re ready. But just now, I’ve a bit of cod with mayonnaise waiting.” His voice quavered on the last words.

  On the way out, he blindly fumbled his handkerchief from his pants pocket. Sergeant Bryson hurried to open the door for him. The wind took the door and slammed it shut behind Dr. Collins with a noise like a pistol shot. On the heels of the slammed door, a woman’s voice said:

  “But that’s not true! That X ray! It never happened!”

  72

  A new voice. A clear, Dublin-accented voice, from the Liberties quarter lying behind the Guinness works. A voice now edged with distress. The woman sat back near the door, the center of the semicircle that had Inspector O’Hare’s desk at its open side. She was the woman who had come in five minutes earlier with Jasper O’Mara, Torrey Tunet’s friend. A stocky woman, rosy-cheeked, gray hair in a bun. She wore a dark blue dress, Her tan coat was on the back of her chair; her purse lay in her lap.

  “Never!” the woman repeated. “He didn’t!” And to Inspector O’Hare, “’Tis my late husband you’re speaking of. But he didn’t! I’m Mrs. McLaughlin — Nora Slattery that was. Widow of Donal Slattery.” A look of distress; two lines appeared between her brows. “I knew t’would come to bad. And then, him going to Ballynagh, to Gerald Ashenden. Donal played everything light, that was his trouble. It was his nature. A lovely man but for the drink and taking nothing serious, always a bit of a laugh hidden in his cheek, Donal toying with what it was all about, more a game like. And then, the drink throwing everything off.”

  Scott Keegan gave a half-hysterical laugh and struck his trousered leg with his fist. “Whoever you are, you’re not making sense!” At the same time, Inspector O’Hare said, “The Donal Slattery who … who suffocated in the bog?” At the woman’s nod, he leaned forward in his chair and put his elbows on the desk. He had a feeling he would not be surprised if it suddenly started to rain doughnuts. Or frogs. “Well, then, Mrs. McLaughlin?”

  “Like I said, Donal didn’t do it. ‘Made me sick to my stomach, it did,’ Donal told me, ‘I knew Gerald was in love with Ingeborg. What Gerald was up to was to free himself by killing the fetus so’s he could marry Ingeborg.’

  “So in the X-ray room my Donal stood the girl in front of the X-ray machine so’s she’d think she was being X-rayed. Then he told her the X rays had come out too fuzzy to tell if it was a boy or girl, that the problem was that it was too early to tell. He knew that anyway Gerald didn’t care to see any X rays. Gerald didn’t want X rays. He wanted a destroyed fetus.”

  “‘Why didn’t I do it, Nora?’ Donal asked me, ‘Why didn’t I X-ray the girl? How could I do such a thing? Sanctity of the church. And a dangerous business. Could’ve damaged the girl. Or left the fetus alive and damaged. Gerald would’ve risked it, he was that desperate. But I wouldn’t. So I lied to him. I told him I’d done it. But I didn’t. And look, here’s the fifty pounds.’”

  * * *

  Inspector O’Hare regarded Mrs. McLaughlin. But he was seeing a table laden with a feast of ham and roast of beef, and seated at the table, two small wide-eyed children. He blinked away the image.

  “So,” Nora McLaughlin heaved a sigh, “Kathleen Brady remained pregnant. Donal told Gerald Ashenden he couldn’t understand it, that possibly the X ray hadn’t been strong enough.”

  Someone under his breath whispered, “My God in heaven!” O’Hare pretended not to hear. His gaze was fastened on Mrs. McLaughlin.

  She continued, “Then, right
after, Ingeborg disappeared.”

  “Disappeared? Went off, you mean?”

  “Off to Denmark, I imagine. Heartbroken, I imagine. In horror at what Donal told her, I guess. Donal in his cups! Loses his head and maybe blabs something to Ingeborg. I asked him, had he said anything. He couldn’t remember; he couldn’t remember anything he said or did when he was on the drink. Once, a family came to move into our house. They said Donal had sold it to them; they’d given him a down payment. They had it on paper, Donal’s signature. Donal couldn’t even remember.”

  * * *

  A waiting. In her lap, Mrs. McLaughlin began abentmindedly snapping her purse open and closed. Open, closed … snap, snap … open, closed. There was no other sound in the police station, open, closed. She sat looking off into space. Inspector O’Hare coughed. Mrs. McLaughlin blinked. Her fingers on the purse went still.

  She said, “So Gerald Ashenden married Kathleen Brady. Six months later the Ashenden baby was born. Caroline they named her. Poor little thing! Pitiful. Damaged. Bones so weak! I heard of it from Donal.

  “But Donal swore to me again that he’d done no X ray on Kathleen Brady.” Mrs. McLaughlin was silent. Then, pensively, “Once in a while I’d see a write-up in the papers about Gerald Ashenden getting some medical award at a dinner or banquet. But never any mention of Kathleen and the little girl. Never in all those years.”

  The little girl. O’Hare tried not to look at Caroline Temple, sitting there beside Mark Temple, but he looked anyway. So did everyone else. Caroline’s hazel eyes were gazing dreamily at Mrs. McLaughlin. As if she is hearing a fairy story, thought Inspector O’Hare, Hansel and Gretel in the woods.

  “Never a mention,” Mrs. McLaughlin repeated, “never in all those years.”

  In all those years. Inspector O’Hare drew in a breath. Years. So many years later: death from a strong hand holding down a drunken face in a bog. O’Hare had been a young man, Jimmy Bryson’s age, when it had happened. Inspector O’Hare remembered it. In the woods north of Ashenden Manor. The nighttime call, in the dark woods the flashlights crisscrossing the bog, the muck on the man’s body. The bulk of Dr. Collins standing nearby. Now, arms folded, Inspector O’Hare waited.