Anglo-Irish Murders (19 page)

‘What’s next?’

‘You’re to get everyone to the seminar room for seven to listen to McNulty.’

***

There was a full turn-out. ‘I had hoped I might have some news for you about when you could go home,’ said McNulty. ‘But I’m sorry to tell you I haven’t. However, there will be more news after dinner. Superintendent Maloney of Special Branch has arrived, he is reviewing the evidence as we speak and will bring you up to date as best he can.’

***

Maloney was tall, silver-haired, pleasant-looking and in his early fifties. He shook hands with everyone first. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry to meet you all in such tragic circumstances. Inspector McNulty has told me how forbearing you’ve all been and how helpful and courageous at this terrible time when I know you’re grieving for your companions. And I know too that quite understandably some of you are feeling afraid that harm might come to you too.

‘Now, I can reassure you that there is absolutely no reason for any of you to feel there is any danger. Only the guilty need feel any fear and I do not believe that any of you are guilty.

‘I have spent several hours with Inspector McNulty sifting through all your statements and all the other evidence and I’m very clear in my own mind that what we’re dealing with here is dreadful coincidence. We have had two accidents and one murder.

‘Billy Pratt did a foolish thing and paid a very heavy price for it. Whatever way you look at it, accident is the only sensible interpretation of what happened to him. Let’s go through it step by step.

‘Mr Pratt wanted to put up a flag because he thought it would help him in his election campaign. There was no one at this conference whom he would have told about this. The whole idea was the surprise element. He had his press statement in his pocket ready to release as soon as the flag was up.’

He smiled knowingly. ‘For Mr Pratt to have been murdered, we would have to believe that he confided his plans to someone, and that he chose the very person who would take advantage of that confidence to sabotage the flagpole. We would also have to believe that this confidante knew enough about flagpoles to know they had bolts and guessed that Billy knew so little about them that he didn’t.’

‘I don’t find either of those propositions difficult to believe,’ said the baroness.

‘If I may continue,’ said Maloney, glaring at her and going back to his notes. ‘Suicide, I think we can rule out. So we’re left with accident.

‘I know we’re suggesting a failure on the part of the maintenance staff, but I don’t think we need take that too seriously. If there was a failure, it’s an oversight by whoever paints those flagpoles, but who cannot be thought to be culpable in any way, since normally anyone who was putting up a flag on the pole would check the bolts anyway.

‘Now to Father O’Flynn and the bottles. In the name of God, how can this be murder? First of all, someone had to know that he’d get up in the middle of the night. Second this would-be murderer had to be equipped with a dodgy lightbulb.

‘You may say “But how did the bottles get there innocently?” I’ll tell you how they got there innocently. The poor priest himself. I don’t believe in speaking ill of the dead and I’m not speaking ill of the dead when I say that the good Father liked a drink—and which of us doesn’t?—and because rightly he didn’t want to give scandal he brought the supplies with him in his own luggage.’

‘Were his fingerprints on them?’ asked the baroness.

‘No, and nor were anyone else’s. He’d obviously washed and dried them. But what with the police being around because of Billy’s sad death and the possibility that his room might be searched, he didn’t want to put the empties in his luggage. He didn’t want to be the cause of talk. So he decided to get rid of them in the night and put them in some wastepaper basket away from his room. So, before he leaves his room to visit Miss de Búrca, he put them outside where he wouldn’t forget them when he returned.’

The baroness exploded. ‘What do you mean so he wouldn’t forget them? Why didn’t he leave them on his bed?’

‘Now, your ladyship, it’s easy from where you stand to make sweeping statements like that. And maybe in his position that’s what you’d do.’

Amiss savoured the expression produced as the baroness tried to imagine herself hiding empty bottles from puritans. ‘But we all have our little ways of going about things. And what was more sensible for the Father than to put them outside his bedroom where he’d be sure to see them when he got back early in the morning and would be able to deal with them?’

‘Why didn’t he get rid of them on his way to her bedroom?’ she asked.

Maloney winced. ‘In case he ran into people. ’Twasn’t that late. ’Twas only around two and there might have been people still up. This is Ireland. And indeed there
were
people still up, from all I hear. Including yourself, my lady. So, wasn’t he right?

‘Now, the Father leaves them there to make sure he doesn’t forget them, but then he has the bad luck with the bulb. It’s dark, he’s tired and he’s forgotten about the bottles and we know the rest of the sad story.’

‘Surely if he fell over them, it meant he had left them lying on their sides,’ said Amiss. ‘Which would be strange.’

Maloney shot him an angry look. ‘If you’re going to be picky, you can find fault with everything. All this is the most natural thing in the world. Poor Father O’Flynn is blundering up there in the dark, he’s half-asleep, he puts his foot over the step where the bottles are, kicks the top of one, they fall over like skittles, he steps on one, loses his footing entirely, and that’s it. What can be plainer than that?

‘And I’m sure Inspector McNulty would have seen that instantly if it hadn’t been for the confusion over the unfortunate flagpole occurrence.’

The baroness opened her mouth. ‘Not now, Jack,’ hissed Amiss. ‘It’ll do no good. Wait till later.’

‘So that should take away any fear ye might have of each other,’ added Maloney.

‘The business of poor Miss de Búrca is, of course, completely different. I have no hesitation whatsoever in pronouncing this to be murder.’

‘You’re sure it wasn’t suicide?’ blurted out the baroness. ‘Maybe she decided on suttee, and thought blowing herself up was next best thing to climbing on the priest’s funeral pyre.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lady Troutbeck, and I don’t think this is an appropriate occasion for making jokes. In Ireland, we take death seriously.

‘This was a very tragic murder of a fine woman who’s been in the forefront of the struggle for peace and human rights for many a long day. And I know I speak for us all or at least for all right-thinking people when I say that the Irish nation is united in grief at this ultimate abuse of the human rights of Laochraí de Búrca. We cannot be certain yet who’s done it, but there’s very little reason not to take the loyalist claim at its face value.

‘Tragically, because of mischievous elements in the media, these people had believed that Billy Pratt had been murdered—which is a lesson to us all about the dangers of ill-informed speculation—and they used this as an excuse to exact vengeance.

‘Now before anyone asks any hasty questions, there is no forensic evidence from anywhere that any one of you has been handling explosives. We know that a phone-call was made to the hotel to find out Miss de Búrca’s room number—which is good clear evidence that there was no collusion with anybody present…’

‘Or that someone was planting a red herring,’ put in Amiss.

Maloney ignored him. ‘I’m emphasizing that point in a very serious way in case anyone’s speculating that Mr Hughes here might be involved in any way at all. Mr Hughes too, like Mr Pratt and Miss de Búrca, is a selfless worker for peace. And it does no good for peace and harmony on this island to be maligning people like this or questioning their motives or making wild accusations that can do only harm.’

He turned to his right, where McNulty was sitting gazing at the ceiling. ‘It is no criticism of Inspector McNulty here to say that while the operation was as tight as anyone could make it, there were times when the cordon slackened and it had to slacken because of the demands on it made by the weather, journalists and so on.

‘Now, we know that that bomb—or rather, as it turns out, that grenade—was in Miss de Búrca’s wardrobe, so there seems no doubt that it was placed there the afternoon before she was murdered. Some fella bided his time and sadly got his chance.

‘I know you all want to go home. And I’m very sympathetic. You’ll be glad to hear you can all go in the morning.’

‘I wanna get out of here right this minute,’ shouted Kelly-Mae.

‘Where would you go, mam, at this time of night?’

‘Anywhere.’ She turned to MacPhrait. ‘Liam, couldn’t I go stay with your friends? Just for tonight?’

‘Better wait till the morning,’ he said. ‘You’ll be safe here. We all will be. I’ll take you to the airport in the morning.’

‘Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you feel reassured now.’ And before anyone had a chance to say anything more, Maloney had gone.

Chapter Twenty

‘What the hell is going on?’ said the baroness.

Gibson shrugged. ‘What do you expect? The politicians are taking charge. I’ve already been given a very clear message that no awkward questions are to be asked since it is politically helpful that this should be two accidents and a murder by persons unknown. Maloney is compliant. He wants promotion, and in the Irish Republic, that comes from politicians. It’s that simple. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to make a phone-call.’

***

‘I don’t believe a fucking word produced by Maloney’s lying tongue,’ said the baroness. ‘But you have to admit, his line is convenient. For the governments, for us, the police…’

‘And for the murderer,’ said Pooley. ‘It’s outrageous. Absolutely outrageous and corrupt.’

‘Of course it’s corrupt. Politicians have become involved. Questions of principle are inevitably going to take a back seat to issues of pragmatism.’

‘But what about truth?’

The baroness gazed at him pityingly. ‘I do like you, Ellis. You’re so endearingly naive.’

‘But they’re going to let someone get away with three murders.’

‘I don’t suppose for one minute,’ asked Amiss hesitantly, ‘that you think there’s anything at all in the Maloney thesis.’

‘No, and I don’t believe in fairies either.’

‘Who do you think did it?’

‘No idea.’

‘Ellis? Have you a candidate?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that is…’

‘Don’t want to say yet.’

‘Why not?’

‘If I told you why not, you’d know who it was.’

‘Oh, God,’ said the baroness. ‘Cue for Ellis to be found with a knife in his back gurgling “It was…aaargh.” After which no doubt Maloney would tell us he’d committed suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed.’

‘I’ll be careful,’ said Pooley. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t expect that to happen if I’m right about who did this.’

‘Or these?’ asked Amiss.

‘These.’

The baroness scratched her head. ‘Is it someone who would kill only proles?’

‘I don’t think Jesuits can be classified as proles, however much Father Cormac would have liked it.’

‘Irish people only?’

‘Billy thought he was British,’ pointed out Amiss.

‘Inhabitants of the island of Ireland only?’

‘With paramilitary links,’ added Amiss.

‘I hope Liam and Willie are watching out,’ said the baroness. ‘Or maybe I don’t. Are we warm, Ellis?’

Pooley smiled. ‘It’s much more straightforward than that. This person would never kill a red-head.’

‘Ah, so you and the tinkers are safe, are you?’

She paused and smote her brow. ‘Stap me. How come we’ve avoided having a representative of tinker culture?’

‘We didn’t,’ said Amiss. ‘It’s just that she’s dead.’

‘Lucrezia was a tinker?’

‘No, no. But she regarded herself
inter alia
as a spokesman. Of course you missed that row the other night when Pascal described some group as having as much culture as a coach-load of tinkers and Laochraí, backed up enthusiastically by Kelly-Mae, denounced him for racism. This heated up when Pascal asked if they’d ever had an encampment of tinkers move in beside them in Belfast or the Bronx, which of course they hadn’t. “It’s easy for ye to be sentimental,” he concluded, “when ye don’t have the tyres fecked off your car or the handbag off your wife.” I had to do a great deal of soothing to get everyone to simmer down.’

‘Wish I’d been there,’ said the baroness. ‘I’d have confused them all by waxing eloquent about my gipsy heritage. However, enough of this. Ellis, will you do something sensible like writing the name on a piece of paper, sending it to your bank and notifying everyone—particularly your putative murderer—that you’ve done this?’

‘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.’