Anglo-Irish Murders

by Ruth Dudley Edwards

  ‘All the reassurance that I need is that neither of you tells anyone that I might be on to something.’

  ‘How could we? We’d have to blow your cover.’

  ‘I must go now,’ said Pooley. ‘I have tapes to view.’

  ‘He loves being mysterious, doesn’t he,’ remarked the baroness, as he closed the door behind him.

  ‘He certainly does. I can never decide if he is a living justification of, or a stern warning against, spending your youth reading detective fiction.’

  ‘It beats that creep Maloney and indeed these governments he’s serving so well, who obviously spent theirs reading Mills & Boon.’

  ‘Any idea who Pooley’s thinking of?’

  ‘I could construct an argument for all sorts of people, but nothing sticks.’

  ‘Me neither. But what difference does it make since we’re off tomorrow?’

  ‘Straight back to London? Should I book a flight?’

  ‘We’ll decide at breakfast. I might want to go to Dublin.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘That’d be telling.’

  Amiss glowered. ‘All right. Play it like that if you want to. We’ll talk at breakfast. Now, I suppose we’d better go and do our social duty in the bar.’

  ***

  The baroness flung her arms around Steeples. ‘Bye, bye, Gardiner. Well, you mightn’t have learned much this weekend, but at least you survived it.’

  ‘Oh, I learned a lot, surely. And it wasn’t all bad, so it wasn’t.’ He gave her an enthusiastic kiss. ‘You’re a grand old doll, so you are. If you ever want some fresh air, come and stay on my farm.’ He shook hands with Amiss, extended the invitation to him also and disappeared.

  The baroness sat down again. ‘I feel full of beans. I’m really looking forward to the drive to Dublin. But we must take care to avoid pothole country. I want to get there fast.’

  ‘They may not be able to meet us.’

  ‘Don’t be so negative. God, this drisheen is delicious.’

  Amiss looked suspiciously at her plate. ‘What’s drisheen?’

  ‘A delicacy made of blood and oatmeal, encased in the narrow intestine of a sheep.’ She forked up a piece. ‘Here, try it.’

  Amiss waved it away. ‘No, thank you. I don’t even want to look at it. I’m sticking to my boiled eggs.’ He picked up his spoon. ‘As for the Dublin arrangements…’

  Pooley slipped into the dining room and joined them. ‘Just saw Gardiner on his way out. Anyone else left?’

  ‘Wyn and Hamish are sharing his taxi,’ said Amiss.

  ‘The drisheen, Ellis. The drisheen. You mustn’t miss it. It’s one of the most…’

  She was interrupted by the arrival of McNulty, who was followed by Steeples and his two travelling companions. McNulty looked around the room. ‘Good morning, everyone.’

  ‘Good morning,’ they responded.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you this, but those you of who have packed your bags had better unpack them now. Nobody’s going anywhere. There’s been another murder.’ He stopped. ‘I should correct myself on that. There’s been another death, which may of course be a complete and utter accident.’ The baroness dropped her fork.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to seem fussy,’ continued McNulty, ‘but I intend to find out the cause of it before letting anyone leave this place.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Amiss.

  ‘Miss O’Hara is dead.’

  MacPhrait jumped up. ‘Oh my God. Not Kelly-Mae. What happened? How? When?’

  ‘I was notified when she failed to respond to her wake-up call. And after repeated attempts to raise her, the manager opened the door and found her dead.’

  ‘Any sign of violence, Inspector?’ asked Amiss.

  ‘No.’

  ‘So it could just have been a heart-attack or something,’ suggested Pascal O’Shea.

  ‘Anything is conceivable, Mr O’Shea, but we shall have to wait for the autopsy.’

  ‘She wasn’t well last night,’ said MacPhrait. ‘She left the bar early complaining of being very tired.’

  ‘There you are,’ said O’Shea. ‘It’ll be a heart-attack. You’ll see. Inspector, surely there’s no reason to keep us here.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said McNulty, ‘but until the autopsy results come through I have to insist you all remain. And no, I can’t tell you how long that will be, though I hope to have news by the afternoon.’

  He quelled with a firm gesture the squawk of protest that arose from several of the audience. ‘Superintendent Maloney went back to Dublin last night. I’m in charge again. This is the way it has to be.’ He turned on his heel abruptly and walked out.

  ‘Well, Ellis,’ said Amiss in a low voice. ‘Does this affect your theory?’

  ‘Just don’t know. Can’t know until we hear some details.’

  ‘And all we can do is hang about.’

  ‘I’ll go on with Okinawa’s films.’

  ‘Nothing useful?’

  ‘No. I stayed up half the night watching. Some of it is riveting, mind you, but for the wrong reasons.’

  ‘Oh, good morning, Philomena,’ said Amiss.

  ‘God between us and all harm, but did ye ever hear the like of that? I don’t think I’ll be seeing any of ye again.’

  ‘You think we’re all going to be rubbed out?’ asked the baroness, as she polished off the last piece of drisheen.

  ‘No, but I’ve just rung my husband and he’s lost his patience entirely. I’ve told him I’ll be all right because I’ve put meself under the protection of Our Lady of Lourdes, but he says what with the botched job St Jude’s made of it, he wouldn’t be impressed if I got a guarantee of a safe passage from God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.’

  She took the baroness’ hand and squeezed it. ‘He’s coming in the car for me now, so I’ll say goodbye. And it’s sorry I am to leave ye.’

  The baroness got up and enveloped Philomena in an enthusiastic embrace. ‘My dear Philomena, if it had not been for you, this place would have been unendurable.’

  Amiss kissed Philomena on the cheek and Pooley shook her hand. She looked at them and a tear came into her eye. ‘Now ye stay safe, won’t ye. I’ll say a whole rosary for ye when I get home.’

  As she disappeared through the kitchen door, the baroness rushed after her.

  ‘What were you doing?’ asked Amiss when she returned a minute later. ‘Kissing her again?’

  ‘Just giving her something,’ said the baroness gruffly.

  ‘Oh, gosh,’ said Pooley. ‘We should all have tipped her.’

  ‘It’s OK. Gave her enough.’

  ‘How much?’ asked Amiss. ‘And can I contribute?’

  ‘Hundred quid. And no. I want it to be my present.’

  ‘She’ll probably spend it on rosary beads.’

  ‘She said she’d spend it on having masses said for us, but I made her promise to buy herself a nice frock instead.’

  ‘So what will we do now?’ asked Amiss.

  ‘I’m returning to my Victorian novels.’

  ‘And after breakfast—if I get any now—I’m going back to the home movies.’

  ‘Can I watch too?’

  ‘Be my guest.’

  ***

  Amiss spent his morning alternating between watching Okinawa’s films and monitoring radio and television broadcasts. ‘An extraordinary mixture of the fascinating and the unendurably tedious,’ he commented, after watching the footage of the traveller row. ‘Mind you, I can see how you could get to depend on it. You know that moment the day after a party when someone says “What did you think of the bit when…?” and you’re kicking yourself for having missed it. Hey presto, and up it pops on your television screen.’

  ‘There is a downside to this cinema vérité, Robert. Would you, for instance, want anyone—even yourself—to see your attempt in the pub the other night to rock-and-roll with the owner’s wife?’

  ‘You’re having me on.’

  ‘I�
�ll show it to you if you like.’

  Amiss whimpered. ‘I’d have to be feeling much stronger. Perhaps we’ll have an evening of selected clips when we get back to London. For now I’ll go back to the radio.’

  Superintendent Maloney’s statement had been spun to the press in such a way that the consensus was that while the guilty loyalist murderer was still being vigorously sought, he had obviously gone back across the border and therefore the investigation was over as far as the gardaí were concerned. The news of Kelly-Mae’s death was leaked early, and from the speed with which a republican source was called on to speak with deep suspicion of the circumstances of her death and talk about her contribution to peace in Ireland, it was clear, as McNulty put it when he rang Pooley to tell him about the autopsy, ‘that that little shit Liam’ had got in first.

  ‘I’d cut off the phones and confiscate all mobiles only that Dublin would overrule me,’ he grumbled.

  ‘So what’s the verdict?’ asked Pooley, urgently.

  ‘Smothered. Drugged first. Then smothered.’

  ‘With what? And how? And when?’

  ‘Looks like she was smothered with her own pillow, sometime before eleven, at which time she had already swallowed a potentially lethal dose of sleeping pills. Commonly-available sleeping pills. But it was suffocation that killed her before the drugs had a chance to. The pathologist can’t be certain they would have killed her, but thinks it highly likely.’

  ‘But why would the murderer take the risk of going to her room and smothering her if he had already administered a lethal dose?’

  ‘To be sure of killing her. Though it was very risky.’

  ‘So when do you think the drugs were administered? Assuming she didn’t take them herself.’

  ‘Obviously before she went to bed pleading tiredness.’

  ‘How long before they would have taken effect?’

  ‘With that size of dose? Less than an hour, apparently.’

  ‘So we want someone who was in a position to administer them to her in her drink and then to gain access to her bedroom before eleven to finish her off.’

  ‘That’s what we’re working on now,’ said McNulty. ‘Just the alibi-checking. Not worth your while attending for the moment. I’ll let you know.’

  Pooley put the phone down. ‘That’s it, Robert. Drugged in the bar and smothered in her bedroom before eleven. My theory’s gone west.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘My candidate was Simon.’

  ‘Simon! Blimey, Ellis, I know you go in for far-fetched ideas, but this one is completely preposterous. Did you think he was an agent for Laochraí’s husband or something?’

  ‘No, no. And I didn’t really think he had anything to do with Billy Pratt’s death. It was just that I knew he loathed Father O’Flynn…’

  ‘Didn’t we all?’

  ‘Yes, but Simon’s so fastidious, I thought it was really getting to him. I thought it wouldn’t have been beyond him to put a few bottles on the stairs in the hope of giving the fellow a fall.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that might be within the realms of possibility. But Laochraí?’

  ‘He hated her.’

  ‘Explosives, though?’

  ‘Unlikely. Yet he was strong on motives for all of them, including Kelly-Mae, as it happens. He could have drugged her. But, as it happens, the whole edifice collapses over the smothering. He was with me in the bar until well after midnight railing against half the population of Northern Ireland and the whole of the Dublin and London governments. I couldn’t get away, he was so angry.’ He went back to his armchair. ‘Back to the drawing-board.’

  ***

  ‘Great, Robert,’ said the baroness. ‘So we can add pillows to the weapons to be decommissioned.’

  ‘And sleeping pills, of course.’

  She looked disapproving. ‘Messy things, sleeping pills. Have different effects on different people. I prefer a Mickey Finn myself. More reliable.’

  ‘You speak with the voice of experience?’

  ‘I have in my time had occasion to use them. However, I didn’t think to bring any to this conference. Any more than I thought to bring a suit of armour. Now what do we have to do next?’

  ‘Wait to be interviewed about your alibi.’

  ‘I’ve already been interviewed.’

  There was a knock on the door and McNulty entered.

  ‘Ah, Inspector. The very man. Is there any chance of getting out of this place for an hour or two? I’m going stir-crazy.’

  ‘I’m sorry, mam, but there can be no question of any one leaving today—and possibly not for some days to come. It entirely depends how our investigations go.’

  ‘So we’re left here with nothing to do except knock each other off. As opposed to up,’ she added, laughing uproariously.

  ‘Mam, our priority has to be to find the murderer.’

  ‘Will we be allowed to leave the premises at all?’

  ‘Only in the company of a couple of security guards, I’m afraid. But that’s for your protection…’

  ‘As well as our detention.’

  ‘Precisely, mam. You’ve got it in one.’

  ‘At least all this alibi-checking must get quicker the fewer of us there are,’ she observed. ‘Remind me of Ten Little Niggers, Rollo. Who did it?’

  ‘Someone who was thought to have been murdered early on but had faked his own death.’

  ‘Right. So if that precedent is followed, Billy—or possibly Call-me-Cormac—has crept nightly out of the morgue to do the business. I don’t suppose Laochraí’s been able sufficiently to put herself back together unless she was a practitioner in the dark arts.’

  ‘Give over, Jack,’ said Amiss.

  ‘I shall return to my room.’ She turned towards McNulty. ‘You know, Inspector, I’m tempted to barricade the door, having of course first checked that the fearful fiend isn’t hiding in the wardrobe.’ She frowned. ‘I wonder why Kelly-Mae didn’t lock it from the inside. She was frightened enough.’

  ‘It’s something I wonder about too,’ he said. ‘Maybe the murderer was in there when she went to bed. Or perhaps someone got her to open the door.’

  ‘Who would she open the door to?’

  ‘Most of us probably,’ said Amiss. ‘Maybe not Willie. Maybe not you. But I don’t think she was actually frightened by any of us.’

  She rose. ‘Right then. I’ll leave you to it. Inspector and retire to my bedroom with my improving book and a submachine gun.’

  ‘Quite a character, Lady Troutbeck,’ observed McNulty, as she left. ‘Bit fiery at times. Would she have Irish blood in her at all?’

  ‘Yes, if you count it as Irish. She has family in Galway.’

  ‘What! A Galway woman. God, now you’ve really surprised me. I thought she was really intelligent.’

  ‘And Galway people aren’t?’

  McNulty seemed very perturbed. ‘It’s not so much Galway, it’s the West. Sure you know yourself, they’re clannish, sly and pig-ignorant. You could’t trust anyone from the West.’

  He walked over to the window, looked out and then turned round. ‘What family is she from?’

  ‘The Fitzhughs of Knocknasheen.’

  McNulty slapped his thigh. ‘Ah for God’s sake, why didn’t you say she was a horse Protestant? I should have known. Right. I’m off. See you later.’

  Amiss and Pooley looked at each other. ‘What did all that mean?’ asked Pooley. ‘What’s a horse Protestant?’

  ‘A Protestant on a horse, one assumes. A member of the old Ascendancy. I suppose he was explaining that normal prejudices don’t apply when talking about the Anglo-Irish gentry. Probably a whole separate set of prejudices apply to them.’

  ‘The Irish are very strange people,’ said Pooley. ‘And you haven’t even been exposed to Sergeant Bradley. I didn’t tell you, but I ran into him after Maloney’s speech the other night and he said, “He’s a Dub, of course. Thinks we’re all bogtrotters. And sure what can you expect from a p
ig but a grunt?”’

  ‘All goes to show that Dr Johnson wasn’t kidding when he said the Irish proved they were a fair people by never speaking well of each other.’

  ‘Right. Once again, back to the movies.’

  Chapter Twenty-one

  It was six o’clock, and Amiss had been dozing for more than an hour.

  ‘My God,’ shouted Pooley.

  Amiss woke with a start. ‘What?’

  ‘Got him. Got him.’

  Pooley rewound the tape a few feet and then pressed the play button. The scene was the bar. There was a buzz of unintelligible conversation. The camera seemed immobile and to be placed several yards away from what it was photographing—a table at which were seated Gibson, Hughes, O’Shea and Liam MacPhrait. What seemed like a desultory conversation ended when Hughes stood and appeared to bid them goodnight. As he moved towards the door, he turned back and seemed to ask a question. As Kelly-Mae, MacPhrait and O’Shea turned towards him, Gibson’s hand snaked out and opened over Kelly-Mae’s glass.

  ‘I knew it, I knew it, I knew it,’ said Pooley. ‘I was right all along.’

  ‘It doesn’t prove anything. Doesn’t show he’d anything in his hand.’

  ‘I bet it will if we get the film magnified. There’s no other rational explanation for his action.’

  ‘Only you, Ellis, could still be looking for rational explanations after a long weekend in this environment.’

  Pooley walked to the phone. ‘Inspector, can you come and look at a film?’

  ***

  ‘You’re not seriously going to tell me you think that milk-and-water fella’s committed four murders? Especially since you’ve proved yourself he couldn’t have smothered her anyway.’

  Pooley spread his hands out wide. ‘Look at the evidence.’

  ‘Fair enough, fair enough. I’m looking. And I’ll grant you what I’m looking at looks like attempted murder. Yet he couldn’t have done the smothering.’

  ‘Assuming the pathologist’s times are right.’