Legacy of Secrets (11 page)

She glanced apprehensively over her shoulder as she climbed the twisting wooden stairs, mindful of Mrs. Conrad’s references to ghosts, but when she threw open the shutters the big living room was filled with sparkling early morning sunlight and wasn’t in the least bit ghostly. She stared curiously around. There were some old chairs, a table with one leg broken, and a worn Oriental rug. A few old theater posters in tarnished brass frames still hung on the walls, announcing Ned Sheridan as Hamlet, as the Count of Monte Cristo, and “The Sheridans” as Romeo and Juliet. In the corner, behind the broken table, half-hidden under an old rug, was a trunk crammed with old theater costumes, and hidden among them she found a photograph album.

She dusted off the stained burgundy velvet cover, turning the empty pages until she came across a single photograph. She knew it must be Ned. He was tall and slender. His thick blond hair slid silkily over his eyes and there was a devil-may-care expression in them. She thought Ned Sheridan was a very good-looking man, the kind you would call handsome, and that he and Lily must have made a dazzling pair.

Lovers,
she thought. Isn’t that what Mrs. Conrad had said? Tucking the photograph album under her arm, she marched down the stairs again and back to her own cottage.

She had almost forgotten about the two letters in her pocket, and she took them out now to read. The first was from her bank saying she had the sum of three thousand and twenty-five dollars left in her account, and that she had a line of credit up to fifty thousand dollars, guaranteed by Mr. J. K. Brennan. And the second was from J. K. Brennan himself.

She telephoned him right away. “I don’t know how to thank you for the money,” she said simply. “I’m not going to use it though. I have a job; I’m earning enough to get by.” She wanted to prove to him that she wasn’t just a spoiled little rich girl. She wanted him to know she was her father’s daughter.

“It’s there as a backup,” he said. There was an uncomfortable pause and then: “So? What are you doing there on Nantucket?”

“I’m a waitress.” She laughed, thinking of Harriet’s. “And I’m pretty good at it.”

“Great,” he said, sounding astonished. “Let me know when you feel like company.”

“I will,” she promised. “And thanks, J.K. You are the
only one who has really talked to me. The only one really to help.”

“Not even Buffy?” he asked.

“Not even Buffy.”

“Yeah,” he said grimly. “Well, no need for thanks. I’m here when you need me, Shannon. Take care of yourself now.”

H
ARRIET’S FISH CAFE
was busy that night, but Shannon scarcely noticed, her mind was on Ned and Lily, and the puzzle of why she was the owner of Lily Molyneux’s diamond necklace. How had it come into Bob Keeffe’s possession? And why had he claimed it was “by way of being a family heirloom?”

T
HE ANSWER CAME
to her in bed that night. One of the few things her father had told her about himself was that the O’Keeffes came from Connemara. And Lily Molyneux came from Connemara too.

She sat up in bed and switched on the lamp, staring at Ned Sheridan’s photo propped against it, and the little packet of letters from Ciel, and the portrait and the diamond necklace. There was a connection between the O’Keeffes and the Molyneuxes, she just knew it.

She didn’t think twice. The next morning she closed up Sea Mist Cottage, gave in her notice to Harriet, took the ferry back to the mainland, and caught the first flight leaving for Ireland.

“A
ND THAT’S WHY
I’m here now,” Shannon finished her story breathlessly. “To find out about Lily and the O’Keeffes, and my family. I thought maybe it would help me find out the truth about my father.”

“Maybe it will and maybe it won’t,” I said, “but one thing I can tell you is Lily’s story.”

“It’s my opinion trouble always starts with a woman,” Brigid said knowledgeably.
“Cherchez la femme
is what I say.”

I stared at her, astonished. “I never knew you spoke French, Brigid.”

“Oh, I’ve picked up a smatterin’ over the years,” she retorted crisply. “So tell us more about Joanna,” she said to Shannon.

“I know my father really cared about her, and I guess Joanna really cared about him. Why else would she have kept so quiet all these years? After all, if she were just after his money, she would have been living in splendor and dripping with jewels, and making sure everybody knew about it.”

She added quietly, “You know, I thought about Joanna a lot when I was in Nantucket. I thought of her, left all alone, just the way I was, and I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. She hadn’t even been able to come to the funeral, and she had been the soul of discretion; her name never even surfaced in the press. She had no one she could talk to about him, no one to comfort her, and I knew just how she felt. Anyhow, I wrote her a little note, sort of from one wounded heart to another.” She shrugged. “I thought it was the least I could do. For my father.”

“So what about the cruel stepmother?” Brigid asked quickly.

Shannon smiled. “Buffy wasn’t cruel. She was just selfish and … unkind.”

“Mmmnn,” I said thoughtfully. “I seem to remember hearing those very same words said about Lily.”

“Anyhow, murder is just not Buffy’s style. If she had wanted out, she would have gone for the glossy society divorce with its medals for valor under the strain of heavy social duties. She would have gotten her rewards for long service and a huge ‘golden alimony parachute’ at the end.”

“Tell us about the partners,” I said, while Brigid poured more tea.

Shannon thought for a moment. “I know Jack Wexler was jealous because Dad had a famous architect design his dream building instead of him. Dad once told me that he
thought Jack fancied being in his shoes. But that doesn’t make a man a criminal, does it?

“And I’ve known Brad Jeffries since I was a kid. It’s impossible for me to think of him as a murderer. But maybe he secretly envied my father’s high-profile image. Maybe he was tired of being the
invisible man
in Keeffe Holdings? Or maybe it was greed?”

“And J.K.?” I asked curiously.

She heaved a great sigh. “Who knows what lurks beneath his ‘boss’s right-hand man’ image. But Dad knew J.K. was ambitious and he liked him for it. And I believed J.K. when he told me if there was anything he could have done to prevent the tragedy, he would surely have done it. Besides,” she added, a touch defensively I thought, “he’s been a good friend to me. J.K. was the only one who did anything to help me. Buffy had simply walked away, and I knew Brad’s and Jack’s offers of help were just lip-service.” She shrugged, excusing them. “After all, the business had gone under and they had lost their jobs and probably their own fortunes too.

“And anyhow,” she concluded in a small voice, looking wistfully at us with those large gray eyes, “here I am.”

Mammie had always said it was impossible to shut me up, but Shannon’s story had silenced me, and for once I had listened almost without a word. It was a wild story all right, of murder and millions and ghostly dreams. Then I thought of my other guest, away at the moment in Galway, and I smiled. Maybe there was more to dreams than I thought. And out of compassion as well as interest, I invited her to stay.

“A
RDNAVARNA IS ALWAYS GOOD
for people who are troubled,” I told her, “and I can see you are that. There’s nothing here to disturb your peace. Except maybe …” She stared expectantly at me, but I only smiled. I was keeping my coincidence, my secret, my
surprise,
for later. “Well now, we shall have to see what room you might like,” I said
briskly. “My goodness, is it six-thirty already? Supper’s at eight, m’dear. And of course, we always dress.”

I showed Shannon her room, the one that used to be Mammie’s over the front porch and she seemed delighted with it, especially the big bathroom with the immense claw-footed bathtub set dead center and the Victorian brass shower fittings. I know the towels are thin with age and maybe there’s a couple of holes, but no matter, they smell deliciously of the fresh salt wind and the lavender kept in the linen press. I warned her the bathwater may be brownish, but it’s always that way after the rain, and it’s only from the peat, and then I left her to soak in the tub.

I walked back along the first floor hallway to my own room on the southeast corner of the house. It’s always been my room since I was twelve, and when Mammie went I somehow never had the heart to change it for her bigger one.

Now,
my
room is certainly not poky, though it is a bit too squarish in shape. There’s an ornate Victorian brass four-poster with a mattress handmade by Heals forty years ago and still as firm as the day it was bought. The sheets are Irish linen; worn, of course, as everything is in this house, but there’s nothing like linen next to the skin in bed. The rug is the same one that has always been there, Chinese, with faded bluish and greenish scrolls and a lotus blossom border. There’s a wonderful big square dressing table with my usual clutter of silver and crystal whatnots: ring holders and pin trays and bud-vases and candlesticks, photos and old letters, brushes and mirrors. And on the carved pine chimneypiece there is a collection of spotted china dogs given to me over the years by family and friends who know of my devotion to the dalmatian breed.

There is a comfortable flowered cretonne easy chair in front of the fireplace with a little tapestry footstool worked by my grandmother, Lady Nora, who obviously spent endless hours on such things, filling our rooms with cushions and chair seats and bellpulls. My goodness, her hands were certainly never idle. The big window looks out over the
back of the house toward the hills and that delicious glimpse of the sea, which is the first thing I gaze at each morning when I open my eyes. And the curtains are a bluish-pink flowery chintz to match the chair, and they are as old as the mattress, but not as old as me.

A pair of the famous wardrobes stand against one wall and there are more in the adjoining dressing room, all stuffed to overflowing with my lifetime of treasures. Oh, I do love clothes, even now that I’m in my dotage.

And I love this room. I remember when I was a child, I would look forward to being ill—not seriously ill, just a tiny malaise, but enough so I could stay in bed to be waited on with dainty trays of all the things I liked most, “to tempt my appetite.” I would lie back against a mound of pillows staring out the window at the sea, feeling deliciously pampered and lazy, until someone, Mammie or Pa or friends, would pop their heads around the door and say, “Hello, young lady, and what have you been up to then?” And then my quiet little lair would be alive with laughter and gossip and huggings and kissings because nobody seemed in the least bit worried about catching my germs.

You know, it’s my misfortune—and don’t imagine I haven’t regretted it all these years—that I never had children. God gave me a raw deal on that one because I surely wanted them: I wanted my first love Archie’s child, but I never had the chance; I wanted my husband’s child, but I never seemed lucky; and later I wanted the children of the man I loved and almost married, but it was not to be. I have thought many a time about how different my life would have been with Ardnavarna full of children and then grandchildren, the way most Irish houses are. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not lonely. Oh, no, I never was that. It’s just that sometimes I get wistful about it, especially on long dark winter evenings. And that’s why I was so pleased that night.

Because, you see, I had another houseguest. My “coincidence.” He was away in Galway, but he would be back in time for dinner, and tonight it would be almost like having
grandchildren around my table. I knew I had better bathe quickly and then check on Brigid in the kitchen. Two girls from the village had come to help, but still, she is an old woman, though she won’t admit it, and I wanted to make sure she was all right.

I decided to wear the pink chiffon with the little shoulder-cape. “Shocking” pink they used to call it, and it’s one of my favorites. I put the diamond arrows Archie once gave me in my hair and clipped diamonds in my ears; the setting is old-fashioned and maybe they are a bit dusty, but they’re “good.” Since my chest is now so scrawny there is no point in being décolleté, so I pinned my little shoulder-cape closed with my favorite enamel fox brooch, bought at a fair years ago. Silk stockings, of course—my biggest extravagance—then my silver high-heeled sandals, and a splash of Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue. I thought that should do it.

Downstairs again, I checked Brigid in the kitchen, then I dashed around lighting candles and lamps and plumping up cushions like a nervous hostess at her first party, because I was on tenterhooks about my little surprise. If it went the way I thought it would we were in for an amusing time. Or shall we say, “the mystery deepens.”

The tall windows were flung open to the night air and I heard the sound of a car arriving, and then hurrying footsteps bolting up the stairs two at a time. I smiled reminiscently as I heard that fateful creak on the second step from the top. I busied myself with the bottles on the sideboard, pouring a little of this and a little of that into a 1920 cocktail shaker, just as the clock in the hall struck eight followed by a tinkling little tune. A few minutes later I heard Shannon on the stairs and then she entered in a cloud of Chanel No. 5.

I inspected her critically, the way I would a granddaughter, head to one side, eyes narrowed. She was wearing a column of black jersey with a deep V-neck and long tight sleeves with a tasseled belt clasped around her slender waist. With the light behind her, her red hair looked like a
halo, and she wore almost no makeup and not a scrap of jewelry.