Mystery in Moon Lane

by A. A. Glynn

  “And why wouldn’t I?” responded Lynch. “Do you think I’d be so ill-mannered as to scorn a man’s kindness and him a stranger among us? Still, ain’t I entitled to say I didn’t much care for him if that’s the case?”

  “You didn’t say that at all. You said you never liked him,” countered O’Carroll. “It didn’t stop you fawning on him with your Mister Criswell this and Mister Criswell that and all the time squinting to see would he produce his wallet again, you old hypocrite.”

  “All the same, you must admit he had an annoying way with him—all that loud heartiness,” said Larry Donovan, the young Civic Guard who was off duty and standing at the far end of the bar. “There was something not quite right—something suspicious.”

  “Hah! Isn’t that only because you’re a policeman?” scorned little Mary Crowe from her regular corner table. “You should hang up your suspicions with your tunic. His hearty way is nothing but the American style. He deserves a bit of understanding, him being without a wife or chick or child nor anyone in the world so far as I know.”

  “Well, there was something odd in the way he was always hanging around the remains of the Big House,” answered the policeman. “Almost every day, he was in the vicinity of the house and the lands around them.”

  “And, God knows, that’s a place the rest of us would keep well away from, knowing the reputation of it and those who lived in it,” muttered Mick O’Carroll with the suggestion of a shudder.

  “Just the American way again,” said old Mary. “They love bits of old castles and manor houses since they say they have no real history of their own. Hatred of the D’Albert family might linger among the likes of us, but Mr. Criswell knows nothing about them and their ways.”

  “And damned bad ways they were, too,” growled Tommy Lynch. “We Irish might be fond of dwelling on past wrongs and maybe it’s not a good thing—but there was reason enough for ill-feeling against the D’Albert family and bad landlords like them. Think of the Big Hunger when the potato crops were blighted and people hadn’t a crust to eat or a penny for rent, and the D’Alberts drove them off their lands. Even pulled the thatches off their cabins when they lay starving or sick with the cholera—”

  “Don’t be giving us the whole litany, Tommy,” put in Mary Crowe. “The Famine was a long time ago and, anyway, not all of the D’Alberts were villains. They say Lady D’Albert was a good woman who did what she could for the people, but her husband, old Lord Hugh, put a stop to her good works. And those were times when a woman was under her husband’s thumb.”

  “Well, for once, I’ll agree with you, Tommy,” said O’Carroll. “It was a good day when the last of the D’Alberts cleared off from here and into obscurity.”

  Dotie Clenahan, a buxom widow who owned the pub combined with a bed-and-breakfast service that flourished in the holiday season, listened to the exchanges with her arms folded over her bosom. All the time, with pursed lips, she maintained an expression of having some secret yet to impart. And impart it she did.

  “When the Yank, Mr. Criswell, wrote to me, he said he’s coming with a special object in view. He’s bought what’s left of the Big House and the lands, and he’s coming intending to settle there,” she said. “He’ll drop in here for meals, but he’ll be buying a big trailer so he can live up there and oversee the renovation of the place.”

  There was a collective gasp then a silence, broken at length by O’Carroll. “Bought the ruins of the Big House and the lands?” he echoed. “Does he know anything of the horrors lingering around the place?”

  “Does he know,” intoned Mary Crowe darkly, “about the field that comes down to the roadway and the humps that are in it?”

  “The field where you claim the fir gorta got you when you were a slip of a colleen?” said Tommy Lynch scornfully. “Sure, there’s no such thing. That’s all a piseog—a daft country superstition.”

  “It is not!” emphasized Mary indignantly. “I was attacked by the fir gorta and it’s lucky I was to stagger out of that field alive. I’m haunted by it yet.”

  “The fir gorta? What’s that?” queried Garda Donovan. The young policeman was a Dubliner in his first country posting. Raised in the city, he was as yet unfamiliar with much country lore.

  “Arragh, don’t pay any attention to it,” growled Tommy Lynch. “It’s just a damnfool piseog.”

  “Well, I experienced it and I know what I’m talking about,” persisted Mary Crowe. “I walked over one of those humps without meaning to—then it had me!”

  At which point, Dotie Clenahan imparted yet more choice information. “Here’s something more to drop you in your tracks,” said she. “He said in his letter that he’s taken the name of D’Albert and tacked it on to his own name. It seems he’s found that part of his family is descended from the D’Alberts who blew into America after leaving here. Criswell-D’Albert he’s after calling himself now.”

  There was a collective clunk of drinking vessels being thumped down on tables in astonishment.

  “So that was it,” said the young policeman. “He was investigating the old family seat.”

  “A D’Albert back here in Ballygrill?” gasped Tommy Lynch. “Wasn’t the whole townland rejoicing to be rid of them generations ago?”

  “It was,” agreed Mary Crowe. “God knows, I wish him no harm—but does he know about the curse?”

  “Another piseog?” asked Larry Donovan with a wry smile.

  “You may smirk all you like,” declared old Mary, “but there was a time when everyone in this townland knew the curse and could recite it. It was put on the last of the D’Alberts as they departed. The whole breed of them were named as thieves who stole their lands in the first place, and rogues in the way they governed them ever since. The curse of the famished masses who died in the Big Hunger was pronounced on any D’Albert who settled in the region of Ballygrill ever again.” She paused, shook her head and breathed: “Begod, it’s sorry I am for the Yank if he’s come here bearing that name. Remember the old Irish saying that a curse settles not on sticks nor stones, but on flesh and bones!”

  * * * *

  Warren Criswell, now hyphenated into Criswell-D’Albert, felt pleased with himself as he settled into the mobile home established beside the tumbledown and ivied walls of the old Big House, which he now owned. In a few days, the architect and representatives of the building company would arrive to consider renovating the property. As yet, he had only vague plans as to the development of the lands, but he intended to make something profitable out of them, thereby earning prestige in the community. Profit, after all, was always the motivation of his life.

  He was a large, middle-aged man whose girth and well-fed jowls spoke of an existence well-cushioned by profit. As plain Warren Criswell, he had considered himself to be above the usual run of men; but deed poll had transformed him into Warren Criswell-D’Albert, so he now felt himself to be an aristocrat. He had discovered that his mother had distant connections with the D’Alberts who had once owned lands in the far west of Ireland, hard by the mighty Atlantic, but he knew almost nothing of the now died-out D’Alberts. A book on old Irish families showed that, like all Norman-Irish, the D’Alberts had a coat-of-arms and could there ever be a more impressive mark of aristocracy? On slight authority, he adopted both surname and coat-of-arms.

  It had long been his plan to cease his active world business interests and settle in some obscure place, and when he found that, for decades, the remains of the old D’Albert mansion and a portion of their lands had been available for purchase, his path was clear. He knew little of Irish affairs and left all the practicalities to a firm of Dublin lawyers, but it seemed that, when the Irish Free State came into being, the D’Albert lands went into the hands of something called the Land Commission. Portions of land were sold off to become farmsteads, but the shell of the old family mansion and some surrounding land remained on the books.

  Criswell paid a summer visit to the region, found the village of Ballygrill to be a pleas
ant little place, and the people relaxed and colorful in a specifically Irish way. They seemed to take to him as he lodged comfortably at the pub, where Mrs. Clenaham provided cosy accommodation far different from that of Dublin’s sanitized tourist-trap hotels. In a friendly way, the locals called him “the Yank”, for it seemed that in Ireland anyone from over the Atlantic, even from reaches deep below the Mason-Dixon Line, was a “Yank”.

  Canniness had always been an ingredient of his make-up, so he never told anyone why he spent so much time with his camera tramping the old D’Albert holdings and photographing the ruined ‘Big House’. At the end of his stay, his mind was made up: he would have the old house and the land and quit Los Angeles for this quiet retreat—which some might call his bolt-hole.

  Now, with his many international business interests sold off, he had arrived in his little kingdom, feeling carefully shielded from the outside world. And he had a great desire to be shielded.

  For years he had played his own slippery game, unknown to his various partners. There were numerous deals done through sets of lawyers, different ones for different corporations, and Warren Criswell was the only one to profit from them. Money in huge amounts was salted away in countries where the accounts were untouchable by probing officialdom and the Internal Revenue Service of the United States—and to which Criswell alone had access. Now and again, there were protests from do-gooders concerning South American mining operations and Asian and African logging projects profiting Criswell’s legitimate concerns, which caused landslides floods, the destruction of villages, and the starvation and impoverishment of already poor populations. He and his associates always rode them out and, all the time, Criswell maintained his up-the-sleeve activities unknown to those same associates.

  Here on the obscure and isolated western edge of Ireland, he hoped soon to drop the very name of Criswell and sport only his newly adopted one. It would be highly satisfactory for his old name to become forgotten by the world of international business and those who probed into it, although steps would be taken to ensure that his profits continued.

  For the plump, cheerful-faced new owner of the ruined Big House who brought back the name of D’Albert to Ballygrill was several kinds of devious and heartless rogue.

  * * * *

  Even on his first morning after arriving in the luxury trailer home he had acquired in Dublin and towed across country, Criswell-D’Albert began to feel that something was wrong. He brought packed food with him which he consumed on his first night parked beside the ruin and, in the morning, went in search of one of Mrs. Clenahan’s excellent breakfasts.

  It was a bright spring day and he decided to walk to the village, following the ribbon of road that was easily accessible from the site of the old house. He walked energetically, rejoicing in the fresh air with its strong salt tang from the nearby ocean.

  Remembering the joviality of the pub from his visit the previous year, he almost expected a cheerful “Caed mille failte”—“A hundred thousand welcomes”—for he had established himself as hearty fellow. It failed to show up.

  The place was empty save for Dotie Clenahan, who was cordial enough but by no means gushing. Was there, he wondered, something cautious, guarded, even suspicious in her attitude when she greeted: “Well, is it back again you are? You’ll be needing a decent breakfast, so.”

  She served the meal but, instead of staying at the bar for one of her usual chats, she rather pointedly disappeared back into the kitchen, leaving him alone. Two farming men arrived sat at a nearby table and were served by Dotie, who then disappeared again. They responded politely but curtly to his observations on the weather and ate without further conversation, occasionally casting him glances that he felt were heavily suspicious.

  He had an uncomfortable feeling that he was not welcome at the pub, and certainly the usually amiable Mrs. Clenahan appeared to be intent on keeping out of his way. The cheerfulness he had encountered at the hostelry the previous year was certainly lacking.

  He strolled back to his trailer in an unsettled mood and, when passing a field that was part of his lands, isolated by a gray fieldstone wall traditional to this region and adjoining the road, paused to consider the curious grassy humps it contained. He had not discovered what those humps were and had never set foot in the field. Someday soon, he told himself, he would make inquiries about the meaning of those mounds.

  Back at his trailer, he made himself busy unpacking his belongings and investigating the gaunt walls and roofless skeleton of the old D’Albert mansion, making notes and sketching tentative plans for renovation to be discussed with the architect.

  Remembering the cool social atmosphere of the pub, he avoided the place and made a scratch lunch at the trailer, then busied himself around the mined rooms again. The balmy spring afternoon lengthened towards evening, by which time he began to feel the need of a substantial meal. Perhaps the crowd which generally gathered at the pub in the evenings would impart a more welcoming atmosphere, he thought, so he set off towards the village again.

  If anything, the larger number of customers intensified the sense of unwelcome. Dotie Clenehan was just as incommunicative; the faces remembered from last year offered only curt acknowledgements, and the celebrated hundred thousand welcomes of Ireland were decidedly absent. Even his offer to stand a round for a group who eagerly quaffed with turn the year before was almost rudely rebuffed. It was all too evident that no one wished to hold a conversation with him and, though he was addressed as “Mr. Criswell” a couple of times, it was noticeable that the proudly adopted name of D’Albert was not appended. Nobody offered a “Good night” as he left the premises into the warm evening.

  Tramping back to the ruined mansion again, he felt heavy-hearted, certain now that all Ballygrill was cold-shouldering him. Furthermore, there was a heavy feeling of depression in the air that seemed to increase with every step. It was particularly oppressive at the point where the field with the intriguing humps met the road.

  Criswell-D’Albert found that he could not pass the evening-shrouded field without stopping and looking over the wall at the grassy mounds. As he did so, he felt an almost physical weight of depression that caused him to give gave an involuntary shudder. He hastened away, with a clammy sweat all over his body.

  That night, he lay in his bunk, uneasy and unable to sleep. Outside, the western Irish countryside was enfolded by darkness, deadly silent.

  Until the whisperings started.

  At first he was not sure they were whisperings. It sounded like the murmur of the breeze in the trees, only just audible. Then it grew slowly louder. Voices. There were definitely voices—sibilant, enticing, calling the name “D’Albert…D’Albeert…D’Albert.…”

  He shuddered and pulled the sheets over his head. It was surely the wind—only the wind, circulating around the gaunt walls of the old ruin against which his trailer was halted.

  But he knew there was no wind that tranquil, balmy spring night.

  The sound strengthened, became higher and more insistent: “D’Albert…D’Albert…D’Albert…outside…come outside…come outside…come outside.…”

  He tried to convince himself that it could only be some freak of geography caused by the position of the ruined house on the slightly elevated land, and the breeze from the nearby Atlantic circulating through the empty window-spaces in the crumbled walls of the old building. He knew, though, that the night was breezeless. But the voices persisted, still audible however deeply he tried to bury himself into his bunk with his hands clasped over his ears.

  And, with the voices, the oppressive weight of inescapable and menacing depression bored yet further into his consciousness. Had everything in this once welcoming land—the people who now offered hardly a friendly word and showed him only a surly, steely resentment, as well as the very earth and air of the place—turned enemy? Outside the flimsy shell of his trailer home, there now seemed only a cauldron of hostility into which he was being enticed by the beckoning voices. For th
e voices were there, no matter how he tried to shut them out. They, like the tangible menace of the surrounding atmosphere, were eating deeper into his brain, repeating the name he had adopted and brought back into this land: D’Albert! D’Albert! Come outside…come outside…D’Albert, D’Albert…until he could stand it no longer.

  He rose, telling himself unconvincingly that it must all be a prank. Youngsters from the village must be lurking outside, perpetrating a practical joke on “The Yank”, the sophisticated big city stranger. He staggered, barefoot and in his pyjamas to a window and looked out. There was only the dark night—and the voices, louder, insisting, increasingly enticing.…

  Then, suddenly, something appeared. Ghostly, gray, at first small and insubstantial, there was the shape of a human. It was a child, only just outside the window, looking directly at him with large, accusing eyes set in a head that seemed too big for the little body. A ragged, Asiatic child such as those shown on the posters of the impudent and annoying do-gooders who picketed and sometimes invaded the offices of his business concerns, demanding an end to their overseas mining, logging, and other enterprises. It was those damned campaigners who had somehow discovered his movements and somehow pursued him here!

  No, it was not a poster—it was a child, a tattered, starved, accusing child. Then another appeared at its side, then another, then a skeletal, ragged woman cradling a small baby in her arms, then another, and an emaciated, stooped Asiatic man…all of them seemingly conjured up out of the very night air and all staring at him with huge, accusing eyes.

  And there were voices. Always, the voices.

  It was a trick, Criswell-D’Albert thought, trying to order his jangled nerves. The campaigners, those who alleged he and his associates created starvation in the developing world, had devised some form of projection of images, probably by electronics. He barged towards the door, flung it open and charged out into the night. They were out there—the starveling ghosts, crowding the field outside the trailer, simply standing there, facing him, dumbly accusing—always accusing.