Scandal in Skibbereen (A County Cork Mystery)

by Connolly, Sheila

  “And Seamus?”

  “Our families came from the same townland,” Tom said. “We knew Seamus was slow, but he was a good worker, so when his mother died, we took him on. Eveline didn’t mind, and we’ve loads of space here that no one’s using.”

  “Was he happy here?”

  “Oh, yes. He loved the place. He loved being useful too.”

  “So if he saw an intruder, would he have tried to stop him?”

  Florence and Tom exchanged a look. “I’d say so, yes,” Tom said, answering for the both of them.

  Detective Hurley said, “How would you describe him?”

  “Short of six foot, maybe. Strong, stoutly built. What’re you getting at?”

  “I wondered how physically strong he was. I would assume he was in good shape, if he did the heavy work in the gardens.” Detective Hurley gave Nate a long look. “I’m guessing that Nate’s companion found his way into the house, but Seamus saw him sneaking in and followed him. Perhaps you can tell me what Seamus was doing, wandering around the grounds in the small hours of the night?”

  Tom shrugged. “He was a restless sleeper. Might be that he heard your man Reynolds here or his mate bumbling about.”

  “Thank you,” the detective said. “In any event, the man was startled—he probably thought no one was about, and then suddenly he was confronted by a strong young man in the dark. No doubt this Ray lashed out at him with whatever came to hand. Something that was already in the room. Where did you find Seamus, Tom?”

  Tom’s mouth opened and closed, like a beached fish. Then he looked at his wife, who put a hand over her mouth. “In the dining room,” Tom said reluctantly.

  “Good God, man!” Harry exclaimed.

  The detective ignored Harry’s interruption. “You’ll have to show my men where, when we’re finished here. When did this occur?”

  “I come down early, the Thursday—it’s hard to sleep in summer, with the sun up so early and there’s so much to be done around the place. The dining room door to the hall was open, which it never is, so I looked in and there Seamus was, laying on the floor, a great pool of blood around his head. I touched him, but he was gone. There was nothing to be done for him.”

  “Was there a weapon?”

  “A small bronze statue, Indian or Chinese, I think it was. It’s always been on the mantel in that room, along with a lot of other bits and bobs. It was lying on the floor next to Seamus.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I said a few words over Seamus, then I went and got Florence.”

  “So it was you who moved the body?”

  “Yes. I thought . . .” He looked up at Eveline. “I’m sorry, but I know you’ve been wandering about the place nights. I thought you’d come upon a figure in the dark, not knowing it was Seamus, and hit him.”

  “Good gracious, Tom!” Eveline exclaimed. “I’m horrified you’d think me capable of such a thing.” She turned to Detective Hurley. “It’s true that I don’t sleep well at my age, and I’ve been known to roam about at night, but I’m always fully awake. Sometimes I’ll sit in one room or another and remember them as they were, when the house was so much livelier.”

  “Including the dining room?”

  “Not as much; it’s rather dreary, I find, and there are no comfortable chairs in there. If you’re asking, Detective, no, I did not fatally assault Seamus Daly with the bronze Buddha. I hope you believe me.” Suddenly tearing up, Eveline fished into the pocket of her dress and retrieved a spotless linen handkerchief and dried her eyes. “Poor Seamus. He didn’t deserve what happened to him—he was only trying to help, I’m sure.”

  “I do believe you, Miss Townsend. I think the final analysis will show that you’re not tall enough to have struck him at the angle at which he was hit. So, O’Brien, you incorrectly believed your employer had just killed the gardener and then wandered back to her bed, without realizing what she’d done, improbable as it sounds. I assume you moved Seamus’s body in order to divert attention from this house?”

  “I did that. I hoped that if the poor boy was found outside, your lot might think it was someone from outside who killed him.”

  And, Maura thought to herself, maybe you didn’t want to lose the cushy niche you and your wife had found here. Murder could mess things up, she knew.

  “It was my plan, Detective,” Florence said. “Tom came to me, near to tears, and told me what he’d found. I knew there was no bringing Seamus back, and I didn’t want Eveline here to be accused of all sorts of awful things, nor Tom and me, I guess. I knew it wasn’t Tom who did it, because he was with me, and he didn’t come out of our rooms until first light. So I thought it best to . . . well, I guess you’d say, muddle things up a bit. As Tom said, we thought that if he moved Seamus outside, it might look as though he had been surprised by an outsider. So I told Tom to take him out and put him on the lawn—it was still early enough that there was no one about—and try to hide the blow that killed him.” As she said that, Tom paled and shut his eyes. “And while he was doing that, I set about cleaning up all the . . . blood.”

  “And the murder weapon?”

  “I pitched that into the harbor,” Tom said. “Will it be trouble for us?”

  Detective Hurley sat back in his chair and sighed. “I can’t say just yet. Certainly you’ve interfered with our investigation, concealed evidence, and all the rest. I agree with Miss Townsend, though—it is hard to envision her as a killer, so your conclusion may have been a bit hasty.”

  He turned back to Nate. “But you, and your colleague Ray, returned to the manor on Monday, in spite of Seamus’s death?”

  “Yeah. Ray had heard that nobody in Ireland carried guns, even the police, so he thought we’d be safe enough. Figures I’d be the one to get shot—he wasn’t even scratched.”

  “Why didn’t he go alone?”

  “Because he didn’t trust me. He thought I’d cut and run for the airport, which I might in fact have tried to do, so he dragged me along.”

  Detective Hurley studied Nate. “So, Mr. Reynolds, you claim that Seamus Daly’s death can be laid at the feet of this Ray person, who hit him over the head with a statuette after he broke in that Thursday night, or rather, very early Friday morning. You yourself were never in the house, and you had no knowledge of what Ray did while he was in there, nor did he tell you when he emerged. However, in addition, you say you accompanied him on a second trip here, after you’d learned of Seamus’s death, at which time you were wounded by Tom O’Brien. Tell me, if you will: where is Ray now?”

  “Let me guess—he’s the guy in the river,” Althea volunteered.

  Nate looked at her. “Yes. I’m sorry, Althea. I didn’t know he’d followed me.”

  Althea took a deep breath and surveyed her audience. “Detective, first let me apologize for not telling you the whole truth from the beginning. I was upset, as you can guess. And I wasn’t sure that this Ray person was really dead, or at least I hoped he wasn’t. If he is, we didn’t mean to kill him.”

  Detective Hurley gave a small, dignified sigh. “Perhaps you’d better fill in the details now.” He glanced at Sean, who was still scribbling fast.

  Althea sat up straighter in her chair and faced the detective. “It was an accident, I swear. Last night, after I got back to the hotel and ate dinner, Nate called me on my cell. Believe me, I really didn’t know he was anywhere around here. He said he was in Ireland, not far away, and we had to meet, but he was afraid to come to the hotel in Skibbereen, said somebody might see us. So Nate suggested we meet by the river outside the hotel. I was pretty upset with him, but I agreed to meet him because I really wanted to hear his story and he refused to come to the hotel. I think it was about eleven, maybe later. There’s a dark stretch of road between that rotary thing and the hotel, and there was nobody around. I went out the back of the hotel and followed the river until I saw Nate. I was surprised at how light it was, even that late, so I felt safe enough. When I saw Nate, we sat down on
the wall there and Nate explained to me about what had been going on. He was really freaked out by the gardener’s death and all the attention it was getting, and how he was pretty sure this Ray guy was involved, even though the details about the body didn’t match up. Nate said he was afraid Ray would just kill him and go home, because Nate was the only person who could connect him to the murder at the manor.”

  Althea sighed and shut her eyes for a moment. “Nate told me everything he’d done and wanted to know if we could work together somehow to get away from Ray and get the painting, under whatever terms I wanted. He was desperate.”

  “Mr. Reynolds, you told Althea about your financial difficulties?” the detective asked.

  “I told her the whole story. But then Ray showed up, out of nowhere! I thought I’d been careful, but he must have guessed where I was headed and followed—I don’t know how, since I’d taken the rental car. Anyway, there he was. He’d gotten close enough to hear that we were going to double-cross him if we could, so he came at me. He didn’t count on Althea, though, and we were all struggling and somehow he went over the wall, into the river. I know I heard a splash, but by then it was too dark to see anything down by the water. We didn’t hear anything after that—he didn’t call out or anything.”

  “So you just left? Did it not occur to you to get help?” Detective Hurley asked, clearly exasperated.

  “He’d just tried to kill us!” Nate protested.

  Detective Hurley sighed again, this time more loudly. He also raised one hand to keep Althea from speaking, which she clearly wanted to do. “What did you do next?”

  “I went back to the car and drove to the hotel at Rosscarbery,” Nate said. “I was exhausted. And, as you know, I was bleeding again.”

  Detective Hurley asked, “About that hotel—isn’t it rather expensive for you?”

  “Damn right it is. But if I went anyplace else around here—hotel, bed-and-breakfast, or whatever—I’d stick out like a sore thumb, and Ray more than me. The Rosscarbery place was the biggest I could find, and it looked like they had plenty of people passing through, so I figured I wouldn’t be noticed. Besides, I didn’t plan to stay long—find the painting and go home, in and out. That was the plan originally. Ray kind of sneaked in—he wasn’t registered, but he was staying in the room. So this morning, practically at dawn, I stumbled in, and the snarky night clerk at the hotel got all hot and bothered about the blood on my jeans and insisted on tracking down a doctor and wouldn’t take no for an answer. And I just couldn’t fight anymore. I guess I had a fever too, some kind of infection. The doctor they found patched me up and gave me some sort of prescription for antibiotics.”

  “He didn’t ask any questions about how you acquired a number of buckshot pellets?”

  “No, he did not. Or if he did, I ignored him.”

  Detective Hurley glanced at Sean Murphy, and Sean said quickly, “He called the guards, though, which is how we found you.”

  Detective Hurley turned his attention to a nervous-looking Althea. “And you, Althea? Where did you go?”

  Althea had lost all her cockiness and looked pale and small. “After all that had happened, and a couple of nights without enough sleep, and seeing that man, Ray . . . fall in, I had no idea what to do. I pulled myself together and went back to my room at the hotel, but I couldn’t sleep. After a couple of hours I went out and just walked around for a while. There was a café that was open early, so I went in and got some coffee and tried to figure out what to do next. I mean, I knew I hadn’t had anything to do with Seamus Daly’s death, but I was kind of unclear what had happened to Ray and who was responsible for it, so in the end I finally just walked up the street to the police station and said I needed to talk with someone. And you all took it from there.”

  “Thank you, Althea. You did the right thing,” the detective said gravely.

  “I sure hope so. What happens now?”

  Detective Hurley looked at her, not unkindly. “That is not an easy question to answer. This case has been rather unusual. I need to review some things before I know whether to charge you with any crimes, or which ones. You’ll both be coming back to the station with me, and I’ll determine whether we will file any charges.”

  He suddenly sat up straighter, then pulled a cell phone from his pocket. When he read the screen, he stood up and said, “Excuse me for a moment,” then walked into the hall and shut the door behind him.

  Harry said suddenly, “Good God, who would have thought that dusty old painting would have caused so much trouble? Aunt Evie, how’re you doing?”

  Eveline shook her head slowly. “I’m all right, dear. What a terrible thing. One man dead, another missing, all for some dry old canvas and paint. Nobody’s even looked at that painting for years.”

  Detective Hurley appeared in the room again, and Maura thought he looked something like excited. “Your missing man has been found—alive.”

  Chapter 29

  He had the attention of the room. “Ray’s not dead?” Nate said incredulously.

  “Oh, thank God,” Althea said. “Where was he? And where is he now?”

  “And what has he said?” Nate demanded.

  The detective held up a hand. “Apparently after he fell into the river following your confrontation, he did indeed hit his head, but he didn’t lose consciousness immediately. He drifted downstream a ways and fetched up on a sandbar near Abbeystrowry and passed out, and a motorist saw him and called the station. He was taken to the clinic, where they found his identification in his pocket.”

  “Will he be all right?” Althea asked anxiously.

  “Apart from a knot on his head, he seems to have come through remarkably well. A few bumps and bruises, but otherwise in satisfactory condition. Shall I have him brought in?”

  “No!” Nate said vehemently at the same time that Althea said, “Yes!”

  The detective took stock of his audience. “I think it might be wise if I heard what he had to say first. He’ll be here shortly—one of my men is bringing him over.”

  “Sir?” Tom O’Brien stood up and faced Patrick Hurley. “Are we in any trouble, the missus and me?”

  The detective gave him a long and searching look. “Mr. O’Brien, you do realize that you tampered with a crime scene and disposed of the murder weapon. Those are serious offenses,” the detective replied.

  Tom dipped his head, not meeting Detective Hurley’s eyes. Florence looked scared.

  “You acted to protect Miss Townsend, even if your motives were misguided. And I don’t see the two of you turning to a life of crime.”

  Tom looked up then, puzzled for a moment, then said, “No, sir, not likely.”

  “Then you’re free to get on with your jobs. And either dispose of that shotgun properly or see to it that you register it.”

  “Thank you, sir.” He glanced briefly at Florence. “I’ll go to the front and wait for your man—the locks can be tricky.” He exited as fast as he could.

  “Detective?” Eveline said softly. “I fear all this excitement has been rather wearing. If you don’t mind, I think I might like to lie down for a bit.” When Harry looked concerned, she added quickly, “Don’t worry, I’m just tired, and perhaps a bit sad, nothing more. But I see nothing to be gained from my meeting this man who may have killed Seamus.”

  “Thank you for taking the time to speak with us, Miss Townsend,” Detective Hurley said gravely. “I apologize for any inconvenience we may have caused you.”

  “It was my pleasure, Detective. I hope you’ll call on me again, when this whole awful episode is closed. Florence, would you mind seeing me to my room now?”

  “Of course.” Florence O’Brien helped Eveline out of her chair, and they made their slow way to the door and disappeared.

  Detective Hurley watched her departure. “A charming woman.”

  “She is that,” Harry said, with something like wonder. “How long before your man arrives?”

  “A few minutes, perhaps. Why?”<
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  “You haven’t seen the painting, have you?”

  The detective turned to him. “So the painting is here, in this house, after all?”

  “It is, Detective,” Gillian answered for Harry. “Would you like to see it?”

  Althea bounded to her feet. “Hey, I haven’t seen it yet, and neither has Nate. Can we? See it now, I mean?”

  “I suppose there’s no harm in it,” the detective said.

  “I’ll take you to it,” Harry said, and he led the small procession to the library and opened the door. Althea went in first, and Detective Hurley let Nate precede him, then Gillian and Maura, before following. They all clustered in the center of the room, looking up at the massive painting.

  “Meet my great-great-whatever,” Harry said with a touch of pride. “Good-looking devil, isn’t he?”

  “Oh, my God, oh, my God,” Althea whispered. “He’s freaking gorgeous!” She took a few steps closer. “Surprisingly good condition, considering. Nate? What do you think?”

  Nate was still standing and staring, his expression a mix of excitement and wistfulness, and he didn’t answer.

  “Are yeh happy now, Althea?” Gillian said quietly.

  Althea tore her gaze away from the painting to look at Gillian. “Yes, and I have you to thank. And Maura. I know I’m a pain in the ass, but look at it—isn’t this worth it?”

  Maura looked at the painting again and wondered what it was about this piece of canvas and paint that had somehow led to Seamus Daly’s death. It didn’t seem right. But they’d finally made Althea happy, and she’d actually thanked them. That was progress.

  The detective did not hurry in his inspection of the painting, but finally he said, “Thank you,” as well, to Harry, and added, “We should get back now.”

  When they returned to the drawing room, a garda was keeping a close eye on a scruffy man of medium height whose clothes had clearly been soaked then dried. Tom O’Brien was watching both of them, but he stepped back when Detective Hurley entered the room, followed by Maura, Gillian, Nate, and Althea, with Sean Murphy bringing up the rear.