The Body at Ballytierney

by Noreen Wainwright

  He was being so mean that it depressed him. That’s what they meant by the term, heart sore.

  Still, he was compelled to go on.

  “It’s not something I’m proud of, what father would be? She was, is, my one and only, my pride and joy, all those things that proud parents say.”

  Then, he wasn’t trying to get at Abina, any more or trying to score points. He was just talking.

  “She and Harriett argued non-stop towards the end. I was caught in the middle, so I stayed away as much as I could. They argued about everything. But, I think what was at the heart of it was that Agnes resented having a mother who was in poor health.”

  “It wasn’t easy for either of them.”

  It might be a cliché but, Abina wasn’t rushing to judge, as he would have expected.

  “I tried to understand. I tried to listen to both of them, in an effort not to take sides. If I sided with Harriett, I knew that would be it, we’d lose our daughter. She’d leave home. If I took Agnes’s side…well, how could I do that to an unwell woman? It would be as if both of us were bullying Harriett.”

  “You took sides in the end, Ben.”

  It was the first time that he could remember her calling him by his first name.

  “In the end, I had to, and I suppose it was always inevitable that it would come to it. One big row. Crying and hysterics and flouncing around the house banging doors.” That had been Agnes, obviously and that night he had been truly angry with her. Harriett had been pale and her face rigid.

  “Just because you’re stuck there, with that bloody arthritis, you expect me to have no life either. You expect me to sit in with you and your stupid friend and do what? Gossip, knit? Become an old woman before my time. You make me feel guilty for wanting a normal life.”

  Agnes’s tone was furious, edged with hysteria, and the thing was, there was not a word of truth in any of it. Unless Harriett was waiting until he was out of the house and absolutely launching an attack on Agnes each and every time, it wasn’t true. That scenario was unimaginable because his daughter and his wife didn’t have that kind of relationship. Agnes had nothing of the weak victim about her, never had and he was glad about that.

  The only possible justification for what she was saying was that Harriett might pass the odd remark, maybe, about being on her own. But he’d never heard her begrudge their daughter a trip into town to go shopping and meet her friends, or the new style she came home with, or the nights out at the Majestic Ballroom and the Capitol cinema. If you asked him, their daughter had the life of Riley, with very little to complain about.

  “She won’t be happy about the situation, you know. Agnes, not really.”

  Abina’s words broke into his thoughts. “She isn’t a bad girl. There will be an awful burden of guilt in her mind and guilt is a very hard thing to live with.”

  She was probably right. But, guilt only truly affected you as you got older and calmed down, were not so entrapped in your own story.

  “You had no choice but to stick up for your wife, Ben. Not with the way she is. You couldn’t turn your back on her. Agnes is young and fit and has the world at her feet. It was no choice.”

  She was right and wiser than he would have given her credit for in a hundred years. He had to remind himself though that she was judgmental and gossipy. This conversation didn’t change his opinion of her. But it did show a more thoughtful side, one she usually kept well-hidden.

  He dropped her off at the respectable, square-set town house that she’d inherited after her mother’s death. She’d earned it hard, that was for sure, and maybe it was her life with that mother of hers that had given her such understanding. He would bet his last half-crown that she’d never had a row with old Mrs. Moore like he and Harriet had had with Agnes, that last night – the night before she’d noisily gone off to live with Edel, her school-friend.

  “I can’t believe you’ve turned against me, too, Daddy.” His heart had lurched in his chest, at the words and a thousand remembered images of her childhood played themselves like a cinema reel before his mind’s eye. Then, Agnes turned scorching eyes in the direction of her mother’s special upright armchair. “But, it’s her, isn’t it? She’s poisoned your mind against me.”

  “Agnes, stop it now. That really is enough. Leave if you must. You’ll be all right with Edel. We are here if you ever need us. We will always be here. As long as we are both alive. But, you need to reflect on some of the things that have been said. That’s the problem with words flung out in haste. Once uttered, it isn’t easy to take them back.”

  Of course, it made no difference, anything he said.

  He pulled into his space back at the barrack. Glad of work. At the moment, he could stay at work forever. His problems with the super and the intractability of this business with Simon Crowe were as nothing, compared to the quagmire of his private life.

  * * *

  “Good work on finding the background of our man.”

  “Well, maybe not all that much background, but we have a bit more information.”

  “Thanks to you.” Ben Cronin believed in giving praise where it was due.

  “It was easy. The woman came in here, and I happened to be knocking about.”

  “She had heard the account on the radio and no doubt, everywhere else as well.”

  “He checked in almost a week ago, you say?”

  “Yes, do you know it, the Hibernian? It’s a small hotel, it seems—a couple of miles outside Ballytierney. You’d think they’d find it difficult to make it pay.”

  “I do, It’s a very scenic spot, by the river and within sight of the Mushra mountains. They get a lot of fishermen too, from across the water.”

  “Will we be going out there, now, sir?”

  “Yes, while the iron is still fairly hot.”

  He waited for the shot of energy that usually came when you got a bit of news, like that. What the police in the films called, “a breakthrough”. It did feel like a breakthrough, but the shot of adrenaline was taking its time in coming.

  The day seemed endless, and when he thought back over the acres of time that stretched between now and when he’d had his porridge at seven this morning, he recognised he was hungry. He’d keep going until they checked this hotel and pick up a parcel of fish and chips from Brown’s chippy on his way home.

  It was a stretch to call The Hibernian a hotel. It was set back from the road, looking down on the banks of the Tierney. Ben had the vague impression that it had once been owned by an Anglo-Irish family who had broken with the norm and gone to live back in England.

  “It isn’t the kind of place, at all, that you’d expect a young man like that to stay.”

  Dick voiced Ben’s own thoughts. Then again, the local area wasn’t awash with guest houses; it wasn’t Killarney or the ring of Kerry, though, for Ben’s money it was equally charming.

  Mrs. O’Riordan was middle-aged with permed, sandy hair and a pleasant face. A small touch of pink lipstick and powder added to the impression that she was capable, cut out for the job of hotelier.

  “He hadn’t telephoned ahead and booked, anything like that?”

  “No, he turned up. But he was American, and you’d be amazed at how many of them turn up looking for their forefathers.”

  “And was he, looking for his ancestors?”

  She had taken both of them through to a small, presumably private sitting-room, leading off the main reception area. The room was done out in a plaid wallpaper and deep red curtains, not at all what you’d expect, but in a strange way, restful for all that.

  She’d also discreetly spoken to the fair-haired girl at the desk, who must have arranged for the tray of tea and rich fruitcake that was brought to them within ten minutes.

  He was too hungry to be polite and wait for someone else to go first.

  “Thanks very much. Just what the doctor ordered,” Ben said, putting his hand out for a slice. He felt his face redden at the crassness of his comment. Good Lord ab
ove, he hadn’t blushed for that last thirty years.

  “When did you miss him?” He’d taken the first bite of cake, its treacly, spicy solidness, like solace and had followed it with a mouthful of hot tea,

  “He was very quiet while he was here in the hotel, no trouble. He booked in…a week ago on Tuesday. I just checked it in the book before you rang the doorbell. For the next three mornings, he was in the dining room for his breakfast, but a different time each morning. Also, I’m not always here at breakfast, myself, Inspector Cronin. You see we are a licensed premises and when these youngsters who help us, finish for the day, it’s myself and my husband serving drinks and as you know, yourself, you have to serve them whatever time they fancy having a drink.”

  She smiled. “I’ve found that after the age of fifty, I can’t burn the candle at both ends, anymore.”

  “So, someone noticed him missing at breakfast?”

  She shook her head. “Come to think of it, it wasn’t so much that as the chambermaid noticing his bed. He hadn’t been back. She noticed that nothing had changed in his room. Shirts thrown on the chair and a book on the same place by the bedside, on the locker. A few other things as well. But, I still didn’t think an awful lot of it. There was nothing to stop him going away for the night after all.”

  He put his empty cup back in the saucer. He’d leave the plate of cake alone. The fish and chips would be a better option, and he didn’t want to spoil his appetite.

  “What did alert, you, Mrs. O’Riordan?” She frowned and shook her head. “A farmer came in yesterday and told me about the body found in Donie Ford’s building. It put the heart crossways in me, and I had no doubt at all that it was young Carl.”

  “Had you much in the way of conversation with him, ma’am?”

  “I did. He was friendly enough. I find the Americans are, on the whole.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Ben saw Dick Sheehan fidget. He was itching to go upstairs and give the lad’s room the once over. They needed to talk to Mrs. O’Riordan first, though, while her memory was fresh and before the business of running a hotel or guest house, took her mind and attention away.

  “Was there anything, in particular, he wanted to talk about I mean?”

  “He was interested in the town, in the priests and nuns, in particular, and in a family called O’Hehir. Got the impression that they might be related to him, but that he wasn’t in any hurry to call on them for some reason.”

  Ben’s mind fought a fog of tiredness. O’Hehir wasn’t a common surname in these parts and the name O’Hehir was associated first in every Irish person’s mind, with the famous sports commentator.

  “I know of them, but my husband knew them quite well. He used to deliver lime to their farm, way back, twenty years ago. He takes it a bit easier now and helps me out here, but that’s what he used to do, and he was able to fill Carl in on the family.”

  “I asked if he thought they might be his relatives, but he became evasive at that point. He wasn’t rude, or anything, but I had the feeling that I shouldn’t pursue it.”

  Ben had the vaguest impression of a tall family, a couple of brothers and at least one sister—all well into middle-age. He’d no doubt someone would fill him in, and he knew they lived somewhere in the townland of Moynard. Whether or not Carl Stockland got to see them, he would—he’d be out there at the first opportunity.

  “He asked me about other people by name, Inspector Cronin, one man who’s dead now, and the canon and…” Ben had the strongest feeling that he knew what she was going to say next.

  “He asked about Simon Crowe. By name and I thought there was a dislike in his voice. I suppose I might be mistaken. My husband tells me I have a vivid imagination, but I remember thinking at the time that it was strange he should appear to have some sort of ill-feeling towards someone he claimed never to have met.”

  The letter was in the dressing table drawer alongside some fancy underwear—boxer shorts, Dick informed him, and some sporty looking socks.

  Ben, sat on the narrow bed with the black bedstead and the brass knobs that reminded him of his childhood and read. Dick opened the wardrobe and set about the room methodically. It wouldn’t take him long. This had been a short stay and the young travelled light. In more ways than one.

  Ben felt that from a position of knowing nothing, and then having the merest crumbs to offer the Super, things were now moving fast.

  “Very little, sir. Apart from…oh, my God. I think it’s some sort of drugs, sir. Was he one of those addicts?”

  Ben’s shoulders jerked and the surge of adrenaline, this time, brought a blood rush to his head. He got up, steadily.

  Dick Sheehan was holding out a plastic packet with phials of a clear liquid and a syringe in another smaller plastic bag. That wasn’t something they came across very often here in Ballytierney. It could explain the young man’s death too, though not why he’d ended up in the middle of a field in a cold stone shed.

  “Cast your eyes over that.” He held the letter out to his sergeant. Somehow, he knew that fingerprints were the least of his problems here.

  “I think poor Mrs. O’Riordan will be in for a shock when we tell her that the young man she welcomed to The Hibernian was a drug addict.

  “It’ll be a first for Ballytierney, I’d say, sir, though I hear they have plenty addicts in the bigger cities.”

  Ben gave a sideways look at the excitement in Dick Sheehan’s voice and opened his mouth with a putdown. He closed it again, though. Sure, he was only young, and this was by far and away the biggest thing that had happened in his time in the force.

  “I’d say we’ll have a report from the pathology people, bearing out this drug thing. There had to be another explanation for his death. A young, fit man like him would be unlikely to succumb to the cold. What do you think about the letter?”

  “Someone trying to trace him. Sad. To come all this way, full of…I don’t know, hope, curiosity, at least and to end up like that…”

  Ben shook his head. What was he doing getting all sentimental like this?

  It was Harriett being in the hospital and Agnes, probably. He hadn’t had a chance to reflect on the conversation he’d had in the car with, of all people, Abina Moore. There was something about the intimacy of a car and the fact that you weren’t looking at the person you were talking to. Well, either that or he was losing his marbles.

  * * *

  The truce lasted three days. The canon kept out of her way, and she got on with her work, launching into a major cleaning mission. Maggie needed to keep busy, but it wasn’t only that. It was calming to the mind to be engaged in something productive and pretty repetitive. She lost count of the number of times she went backwards and forwards to the sink with bowls of dirty water from scrubbing out cupboards and drawers.

  “In the name of God, Maggie,” Hannah said when she came in, the first morning. “There’s no need for you to be doing all that. Sure, isn’t that my job.”

  Her voice was on the edge of belligerence, and Maggie hurried to reassure her. Much as she could strangle the canon at the moment, with a smile on her face, she didn’t really want to be offending Hannah and for him to possibly lose a cleaner as well as a housekeeper.

  “It’s no reflection, Hannah, Honestly, it isn’t. I need to keep myself occupied and out of the canon’s way. Stick the kettle on, and we’ll have a cuppa.”

  Hannah still huffed and puffed a bit as she went to the sink with the kettle but she said no more. What Maggie didn’t say, what she could barely acknowledge yet to herself was that she was getting the place straight for her replacement. What she hadn’t started doing yet, because she wasn’t sure how to go about it, was to start putting the word out about another job for herself. The way things were done in Ireland and the way things were done, in the church, in particular, was all about word of mouth and the famous “pull”. Everyone knew what the word meant, but it was difficult to define. If your uncle was Bill Curran, for instance, then you defini
tely would have pull when it came to getting a job or any other leg up. Goodness, if your uncle knew Bill Curran, you had pull. Well, she didn’t know anyone like that, and for a start, she wasn’t obsequious enough to have made the right sort of contacts in the years she’d been here in Ballytierney. It may even be time to re-think the whole priest’s housekeeper life. Huge in her mind was the letter, though, purporting to come from someone who knew Reggie and who was claiming that he was alive and that she wasn’t as she’d believed for the past twenty-five years, a widow. She had her widow’s pension too, a small pension, far too small to live off, but it had been a great back up. Would she have to pay it all back if it turned out that Reggie hadn’t been killed after all?” She tuned out of her head and back into the conversation with Hannah, instantly. If Reggie was alive, the widow’s pension would be the least of her worries.

  “My woman. Mrs. Crowe said something about going back to Rhodesia.”

  “Really, Hannah? That surprises me. I thought she was the one who wanted to come back here, in the first place. Wouldn’t that be an awfully big decision to be making so soon after what happened her poor husband?”

  Hannah pursed her lips and shook her head.

  “Nothing in this world surprises me anymore. The longer I live, the less surprised I am.”

  * * *

  “Mammy, I want to go to the hospital with you and see Daddy. I’ve thought about it. I didn’t want to, at first. I was frightened. But, the more I think like that, the more frightened I’ll get and the more I’ll build the place up in my mind. What’s it like, really?”

  Gerry sat back in her chair, let her shoulders relax. It was amazing how tight her shoulders were and how much effort it took her to let it go. Maybe that was what happened to Frank only a lot worse in his case. The bank was a serious place of work, and as he often told her, the buck stopped with him. That was, of course, a lot of nonsense. Unless Frank had been secreting away funds for years and had suddenly been found out, his breakdown had nothing to do with his job.