Anne Perry's Silent Nights: Two Victorian Christmas Mysteries (30 page)

“But she became Catholic,” Emily pointed out.

“Oh, yes, but not because he ever asked her to. She did it for his sake, and in time she came to believe.”

She changed the subject. “What did Hugo think of Connor Riordan?” She had to ask, but she realized she was afraid of the answer. Surely the man Father Tyndale had known would have seen the damage
Connor was doing, the secrets he seemed to understand too easily, the fears and hungers he awoke?

They were walking along the shore, around the wreckage. Father Tyndale did not answer her.

“Where has Brendan Flaherty gone, Father?” she asked. “And why? Was his father alive when Connor was killed?”

“Seamus? No, he was dead by then. But even the dead have secrets. Some of his were uglier than Colleen guessed at.”

“But Brendan knows?”

“Yes. And Hugo knew. I think that was why he tried to take Connor back to Galway, but that winter the weather was bad. We had hard and heavy rain, with an edge of sleet on it. And Connor was too frail to go all that way. Five hours in an open cart would have all but killed him. He wasn’t as strong as Daniel. Swallowed more of the sea, I think, and half drowned in it for longer too. It’s a hard thing to come close to death. I’m not sure that his lungs ever got over it.”

“Did he come from Galway?”

“Connor? I don’t know if it was where he was
born, or simply where his ship put out from. He spoke like a Galway man.”

“And Hugo wanted to take him back there?”

“Yes. But he knew he couldn’t, not until he was stronger, and the weather turned.”

“Then it was too late?”

“Yes.” His face crumpled in grief. “God forgive us.”

They were the first ones to walk along the sand since the ebb. There were no footsteps ahead of them, just the bare, hard stretch between the waves and the tide line.

“Was Hugo afraid even then that something would happen, Father?”

He did not answer.

“Were you?” she insisted.

“God knows, I should have been,” he said heavily. “These are my people. I’ve known many of them all their lives. I hear their confessions, I speak to them every day, I see their loves and their quarrels, their illnesses, their hopes, and their disappointments. How could all this have happened, and I did not see it? God forgive me, I still don’t.” He continued a few paces in silence, then went on as if he had forgotten
she was there. “I can’t even help them now. They are frightened, one of them is carrying a burden of guilt that is eating his soul, and yet none of them comes to me for intercession with God, for a chance to lay down the weight that is crushing the life out of them, and find absolution. Why not? How have I failed so completely?”

Emily had no answer. Everyone had shame for something, at some time in their lives. What could it have been that Connor Riordan had seen, or guessed? Did it threaten one of the people here whose frailty he knew, and could protect? Even Susannah?

She did not want to hear. She wished she had never embarked on detecting. She was not equipped to succeed, or to deal with the inevitable tragedies that it would bring. She should have had the courage, and the humility, to tell Susannah that in the beginning. What arrogance of hers to imagine she could come in here, a stranger, and solve the grief of seven years!

She looked at Father Tyndale’s bent shoulders and his sad face, and wished she could give him some comfort, some hand to grasp in the faith that
should have buoyed him up. He believed he had failed his people; his lack of trust in God, or understanding His ways, had caused their failure too. She had nothing to say that would help.

I
t was late afternoon, close to dusk, when Emily made her decision. She would need help not only from Father Tyndale, but from Maggie O’Bannion, and possibly from Fergal as well. There was no point in telling Susannah until she was sure the plan would work. She would much rather have waited until her aunt was a little better, but that might not happen. The weather could close in and make it impossible.

Or worse than any of that, whoever had killed Connor might see in Daniel the past occurring again, and kill him too.

She walked through the darkening evening, bright only in the west over the sea, which heaved gray like metal, scarlet from the sun pouring over it as if it were spilled blood. She knocked on Maggie’s door.

Maggie answered, and when she saw Emily, the blood drained from her face.

“No,” Emily said quickly. “She’s not worse. In fact, I think she’s quite a bit better. I want to take the chance to go to Galway. I’ll have to be there two nights, at the least. Will you stay in the house with Susannah, please? I can’t leave her alone. At night she’s too ill. And I can’t expect Daniel to care for her. Anyway, she should have a woman, someone she knows, and trusts. Please?”

Fergal had come to the door behind her. His face was dark with memory, and guilt. “No,” he said before Maggie could speak. “Whatever you want to go to Galway for, Mrs. Radley, it’ll have to wait. Poor Mrs. Ross could pass any day. Isn’t that what you came for? To be with her?” There was challenge in the line of his jaw and the hard brilliance of his eyes.

“I’m not going for myself, Mr. O’Bannion,” Emily said, trying to keep the anger out of her voice. “It is for Susannah—”

“She has all she needs here,” he cut her off.

“No, she doesn’t. She—”

“Maggie’s not staying in that house with Daniel, and that’s an end of it,” he told her. “Good night, Mrs. Radley.”

Maggie was still standing in the doorway and although he reached for the door to close it, she did not move. “Why are you going to Galway?” she asked Emily. “Is it to find out something about Connor Riordan?”

“Yes. Hugo Ross went, and I need to know why.” Emily had not wanted to say that, but now it was forced out of her. “And maybe someone there will know Daniel.” She turned to Fergal. “If Daniel stays with Father Tyndale until I come back, and you go to Susannah’s as well, will you allow Maggie to stay there then?”

“Yes, he will,” Maggie said before Fergal could answer.

“Maggie—” he protested.

“Yes, you will,” she repeated, glancing at him only briefly. “It is the right thing to do, and we all know that.”

He sighed, and Emily saw him look at Maggie
with a tenderness that transformed his face, and a loneliness that would have torn her heart if she had seen it.

“You’d best go tomorrow,” he told Emily. “The weather’s going to get worse again in a day or two. It won’t be a storm like the big one, but it’ll be too bad for you to drive a pony across the moors, even Father Tyndale’s Jenny. We’ll come tomorrow morning. You’ll be wanting to set out by nine.”

“Thank you,” she said warmly. “I’m grateful.”

Then she went to Father Tyndale again and told him her plan, asking to borrow Jenny and the trap, and if Daniel could stay with him until she returned. He agreed with her, warned her of the weather, told her he could not leave the village when Susannah was so ill.

“I know,” she said immediately. “But what is the alternative? To say to her that I’ve given up?”

He sighed. “I’ll find one of the men from the village to go with you. Rob Molloy, perhaps, or Michael Flanagan.”

“No … thank you,” she said quickly. “Someone
from this village killed Connor. I’m safer alone, and if no one knows that I’ve gone. Please?”

Father Tyndale’s mouth pulled tight and his eyes were black and hurt, but he did not argue. He promised to have the pony and trap ready for her at nine in the morning. She said she would prefer to walk to his house than have him collect her.

She followed the road back to Susannah’s. It was now completely dark and she was glad of the lantern she had brought. The wind was hard and heavy, and colder.

S
he set out in the morning after having gone briefly to say good-bye to Susannah. She had explained everything the previous evening, both where she was going and why, and that Daniel would be staying with Father Tyndale until she returned. She needed to give no reasons for that.

“I’ll come back as soon as I can,” she said, watching Susannah’s face to see in it the hope or the fear
that she might not put into words. “Are you sure you want me to go?” she added impulsively. “I can change my mind, if you wish?”

Susannah looked pale, her face even more haggard, but there was no indecision in her. She smiled. “Please go. I’m not afraid of dying, only of leaving this unsolved. The village has been good to me, they’ve allowed me to belong as if I were really one of them. They’re Hugo’s people, and I loved him more than I can ever explain. I’m quite ready to die, and to go wherever he is. That is really the only place I want to be. But I want to leave them something for all the love they’ve given me, and even more for the way he loved them. I want to see them begin to heal. Go, Emily, and whatever you find, bring it back. See that it is known, whether I’m here or not. And never feel guilty. You’ve given me the greatest gift you had, and I’m grateful to you.”

Emily leaned forward and kissed her white cheek, then walked out of the room, tears running swift and easy down her face.

It was a long and bitterly cold journey, but Jenny seemed to know it even without Emily’s guidance, or
Father Tyndale’s instructions. The landscape had a desolate beauty, which now in a strange way comforted her. Even in the occasional drifting rain there was a depth that changed with the light, as if there were layer beneath layer in the grass. The stones shone bright where a shaft of sun caught them, and the mountains and the distance were full of shifting, ever-changing shadows.

When at last she reached Galway, with a little inquiry she found a hotel with stabling for the pony, and after a good meal and a change into dry clothes and boots, she set out to retrace Hugo’s steps of seven years ago.

During the long drive she had given much thought to where Hugo would have begun looking for Connor’s family. Father Tyndale had said Hugo possessed a quiet but deep faith, and that he went to church most Sundays. Surely he would begin by asking the churches in Galway if they knew of Connor Riordan’s family? Whether they attended or not, the local priest would at least know of them?

It was easy to find a church; any passerby could direct her. It took a little longer to reach the one
where the Riordan family was known, and it was after dark when she finally sat in the parlor of the rectory opposite Father Malahide and looked at his thin, gentle face in the candlelight. The room was filled with the earthy odor of peat, and the richness of tobacco smoke.

“How can I help you, Mrs. Radley?” he said curiously. He did not ask what an Englishwoman was doing in Galway, having driven alone, in the middle of winter, all the way from the coast.

Briefly Emily told him about the storm and Daniel being the only survivor from the wreck. As her story progressed she saw in his face that he knew about Connor, with both pity and grief.

“Now Mrs. Ross is very ill indeed,” she went on. “I think she will not live much longer. There are things I need to resolve before then. Daniel’s arrival has stirred old ghosts that need to be laid to rest, whatever the truth may be.”

“I cannot tell you what Hugo Ross said to me, Mrs. Radley,” Father Malahide told her gently. “He came to see if he could find Connor’s family. The young man was too weak to come himself and all his
shipmates were dead. Like your present young man, he seemed to be alone in the world, and to remember very little. I’m afraid many men are lost off the coast of Ireland, especially Connemara. The winter is very bad, and the weather sweeps in off the Atlantic with nothing to break it.”

“Did Hugo find any family for him?”

“Yes. His mother lived here in Galway. She worked in a foundling home run by the Church. She cared for the children who had no one else. She was not a nun, of course, but she had been there most of her adult life. I’m afraid there is nothing else I can tell you, Mrs. Radley. All else was in confidence. I’m sure you understand that. I’m sorry to say it, but Connor’s mother is dead now. Not that I imagine she could have helped you.”

“No,” Emily agreed gravely. “I don’t know if I will learn the truth of what happened to him, and it would be of little comfort to her to know. But someone else at the foundling home may be able to tell me what Hugo Ross was asking and perhaps what he was told.”