AS GOOD AS his word, Molloy was over at my cottage by ten, just in time for Phyllis’s suggested hot whiskey. Luke leaving Glendara hadn’t changed his plans to spend the night with me, and I didn’t object.
The following morning my sore throat and headache had turned into a ticklish cough. Less painful and debilitating but still annoying, especially for a day in the office. But we’d been closed for ten days and I needed to reopen. Molloy left at the same time I did, waving as he drove off. It felt oddly domesticated.
Leah was in the office before me, working her way through the post, sorting out which correspondence I needed to deal with and which bits were her responsibility. The fact that her pile was considerably larger than mine did give me pause for thought, although it didn’t seem to bother her very much. There was an air of suppressed excitement about her that I couldn’t avoid noticing. When I returned from hanging up my coat, I asked her what was up.
She beamed. “We’ve decided to set a date for the wedding. It’s going to be this summer. August probably.”
Leah had been engaged for a while, but until now, neither she nor her fiancé had seemed in any rush to take the next step.
“That’s lovely news,” I said. “We could do with something good to look forward to.”
“Well that’s just it, to be honest. All this awful stuff happening over Christmas made us wonder why we were waiting.” She handed me a stack of opened post and screwed up the discarded envelopes to stuff into the recycling basket.
“That’s great.” I flicked through what she’d given me to see if there was anything that I needed to panic about. There wasn’t. “Stoop the newsagent is coming in this morning at ten,” I said. “Would you stick it in the book?”
But she hadn’t heard me. Her mind was somewhere else; she was gazing at the wall at something I couldn’t see. So I asked her again, she did as I asked, and in return I gave in to the inevitable.
“So, you have a wedding to plan, then?” I said, resting my elbows on the counter.
Leah rubbed her hands together. “We do. And I was thinking about Greysbridge, Ian and Abby Grey’s place. The setting really does look gorgeous. Do you think it would be ready by August?”
“I don’t know. You could ring and ask him. I’m sure he’d be delighted to have his first booking before they’ve even moved in.”
She looked through the client list eagerly and picked up the phone while I took my stack of post and went upstairs. As soon as I was up there, I started to cough, so I came back down to get a glass of water.
“Did you reach him?” I asked.
“He says he’s coming in anyway. Has something he wants you to sign. Is that okay?”
“Sure. I’ve only the one appointment yet, haven’t I?”
She nodded. “He said he’ll talk to me about it then.”
At that moment, the door opened and I looked up to see Pat the Stoop bending to get through the narrow hall, finally living up to his name. As he reached reception, he glanced warily about him, and when he seemed satisfied there was no one else here, he wished us a good morning.
“Morning, Pat. Would you like to come up?” I asked.
“I will,” he said, as if granting me a royal favor.
He had a bag with him, concealed under his coat like contraband, and when he had settled himself, he pushed it across the desk towards me. “That’s all I have.”
It was a battered leather satchel with a strap and brass buckle and it was stuffed with papers of varying size and vintage. I leafed through the contents quickly: letters, maps, death certificates, copies of land certificates, old conveyances.
“It’s going to take me a while to go through these,” I said. “Can you leave them with me?”
He regarded me doubtfully.
“It should just be for a few hours,” I added. “I’ll try and get a look at them today.”
When he nodded, I took an attendance sheet from a drawer. “I’ll just take a few notes. Firstly, you’re sure there was no will? Neither Dominic nor either of his parents left one?”
“No.”
“And you are sure that Dominic was legally married to Carole?”
“Yes. I think there’s a marriage cert in there. He gave it to me, didn’t want anyone else to come across it, especially the prison.”
He shook his head. “They told no one about their marriage. I think they just chose to pretend it had never happened. Carole walked away and left Dominic to serve his sentence.” He looked down. “She made the right decision. He spent the next two decades in and out of prison.”
“Did Dominic have any children?” I asked. Stoop shook his head again.
“Because if he had, those children would be entitled to a share of his estate,” I added.
When Stoop left, Leah buzzed to say that Ian Grey had arrived, so I was surprised that he didn’t appear for about ten minutes. When he did come into the room, his face was like chalk and he sank into the chair as if he’d just had a shock.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine.” He nodded.
“Leah said you had something for me to sign?” I asked.
“Oh yes. It’s to do with a restoration grant,” he said distractedly. “Look, do you mind if I ask your advice about something else entirely? I had no intention of discussing this with you, or with anyone to tell you the truth, despite what Abby might think. But now I think I should.”
“Of course.” I wondered if this had anything to do with the row I had witnessed in Culdaff.
Grey took a deep breath. “It’s about our son, Ronan. I’ve just met that newsagent man downstairs.” He shook his head. “It’s all going to come out now and it’s far better coming from us than for him to hear it from someone else.”
He looked towards the window as if trying to convince himself of something. I coughed: not an “ahem” type of cough; a cough because I needed to. It was enough to get his attention again.
“Sorry.” He gave me a weak smile. “This isn’t easy.”
“Not at all,” I said. “There’s no rush. I have no other appointments today.” I smiled back. “Easing myself in.”
“Thank you. You’re kind.” He seemed to steel himself. “Look, it’s this. Ronan is adopted. Not officially, unfortunately, but now that he’s eighteen, that’s of less significance than it was. We’ve ridden out the danger, so to speak.” He paused. “We adopted him from a couple when we were in London, a married couple. A very young married couple whose relationship was breaking up.”
I knew who he was talking about before he said it. I’d finally figured out the connection.
“The couple were Carole Harkin and Dominic McLaughlin that newsagent man’s nephew. Carole was very young, a few years younger than Dominic. And Dominic was in prison, was going to be for a long time. They didn’t know who was taking their son and they didn’t want to know. Ronan was only a baby.” He looked down. “Abby was the prison psychologist at the time; it was all done very unofficially.”
“You mean illegally.”
“Yes, if you like.” He leaned back defensively. “Illegally. Abby and I couldn’t have kids, and Carole was very young and completely on her own with Dominic in prison. I don’t feel in the least bit guilty about it – we’ve given Ronan a good home – but he’s grown up now, and I thought it might be good if they met: he and Carole. I knew she had come back here. And we were trying to buy back Greysbridge, so I thought, why don’t we move up here to Glendara for a bit and see if we can live in Donegal, us city folk?”
“So that bit was true?” I said.
He gave me another weak smile. “That bit was true. But I was killing two birds with the one stone.”
“And you didn’t tell Abby.”
“Not at first, no. She didn’t know that Carole lived here. And when she found out, she was livid, wanted to move back to Dublin straightaway. But by that time, we had sold our house and were in negotiations to buy Greysbridge and there was no point in us moving again. I promised Abby that I’d say nothing to Carole. Anyway, Ronan was in school in Dublin; it wasn’t as if he was around. He’s only been up here twice since we came.”
“But you offered Carole a job at Greysbridge. Where Ronan was going to be working, too.”
He looked uneasy. “Yes, that I did. I still hoped they would meet. Although I fully intended to keep my promise not to say anything to Carole.”
“But you hoped she would guess when she met him?”
“Yes, I did. We’d changed his name, but I hoped they would see something in each other. It seemed so unfair for Ronan not to know. We’ve told him he’s adopted, and he’s starting to ask questions. But it’s getting harder and harder not to answer them. Especially when, unlike kids who are adopted through official channels, he has no route to follow if he wants to find his natural parents. But then when Carole was killed, I thought that was the end of it. It was awful, horrific, of course, but maybe for the best as far as Ronan was concerned. I know Abby thought that.”
“So why do you think it’s going to come out now?” I asked.
“Because Stoop knows – that newsagent man.” He waved his hand towards the door. “He’s just made it pretty damn clear to me downstairs. I don’t think he was expecting to see me here; we’ve succeeded in avoiding each other since we moved up. He knew about the adoption, didn’t approve, but he knew. He remembered Abby’s face from the prison and he’s seen Ronan since he’s been up. He put two and two together.”
Grey looked at me across the desk. “Ronan is the image of his father and getting more and more like him. You couldn’t deny his parentage.” I thought of the blurred pictures I’d seen on the website and realized that yes, there was a likeness. I had been so distracted by his resemblance to Carole’s little boys that the other possibility hadn’t occurred to me.
“Stoop asked me straight out down there and I couldn’t lie.” He shook his head. “Abby is going to be very unhappy with me.”
“But why would you think he’s going to say something, if he hasn’t up until now?”
“Because he says he’s going to administer Dominic’s estate, and Ronan is his only heir.”
So that was the real reason why Stoop wanted to administer his nephew’s estate, I thought. It wasn’t to expose Carole; it was so that Dominic’s rightful heir would get it – the land would stay in the family. I assumed he would tell me about Ronan eventually, now that he had confirmed his identity. But Ian Grey was right. If Stoop went ahead, it would all come out in the wash: the illegal adoption, the bigamous marriage – the lot. How would George Harkin feel about that? I wondered.
Ian was staring out of the window. “Of course,” he said, as if reading my mind, “the other thing is that Ronan has two half-siblings who are his only biological family now. Maybe he has a right to get to know them.”
“What was going on between those two?” Leah asked when I went downstairs.
“Why?” I asked.
“Well, when Stoop saw Ian Grey coming in, he marched him straight into the waiting room and closed the door. He must have spent five minutes talking to him, arms going everywhere.”
“Oh?”
“I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but you wouldn’t usually get that much chat out of Stoop. When he’d finished, he left without a word, and Ian Grey came out looking as if he was about to keel over.” She rested her chin on her hands, looking completely fed up. “I didn’t even get a chance to speak to him about the wedding.”
While I’d been seeing Ian Grey, an idea had occurred that would kill two birds with the one stone. So when I went back up to my office, I opened his file, checked the number and dialed. I was put through immediately.
The south Dublin voice sounded apprehensive. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you again. Everything okay with the Grey purchase?”
“All fine. You’ll get deeds in a few weeks. That wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about. You used to work in probate, didn’t you?”
An uneasy pause. “You know I did.”
“I wanted to ask your advice about something. I have rather a knotty one.”
“Fire ahead.” His tone was relieved. “I’ve been out of it for a while, though.”
“Husband dies. No will. Leaves a wife and son. But – the child has been adopted and the wife has bigamously remarried in the meantime. Who inherits?”
“Christ. Child legally adopted?” A phone rang in the background.
“No.”
A sigh. “Of course not. Okay. If the subsequent bigamous marriage didn’t preclude the wife from inheriting and the child had not been legally adopted, then his estate would be divided between his wife and his son two-thirds, one-third.” He stopped to think. “Although if the second marriage was seen as desertion, the wife would be ‘unworthy to succeed’ under section 120 of the Succession Act. So the son would inherit.”
“I see. There’s another bit. The wife then dies, leaving new husband and two new children.”
“Bloody hell. Right, let me think … Unless the wife made a will, her estate, including anything she inherited from her first husband, would be divided between all three children. I would assume her second husband wouldn’t be entitled to anything since their marriage wasn’t valid, but I’d have to check that further. To be honest, I’m not sure what effect a bigamous marriage would have on the whole thing. Jesus, my head is beginning to hurt.”
“So’s mine.”
“I’d get counsel’s opinion on it, just to be safe.”
“I will.”
There was an uneasy pause. “I meant to call you.”
“I didn’t expect you to. You were always more Luke’s friend than mine.”
“I visited him a few times in prison.”
I felt a chill. “Oh.”
“Until he hit me.” There was a trace of humor. “I suppose I should have seen it coming.”
“Hit you? In the prison?”
“Lost his temper with me in the visiting area when I said something he didn’t like. Took a swing at me. I never visited him again.”
“I’m not surprised.”
“But, Sarah, I told him where you’d moved to. I know I shouldn’t have, but he asked. Said he was feeling bad about things and wanted to write to you. And stupidly, I believed him. I didn’t give him an address or anything, but I suppose he could have figured it out easily enough once he had the area.” He paused. “I’ve been feeling shit about it for years.”
Lunch seemed a long time in coming. It always did on the first day back, but today I was distracted. I finally knew how Kirby had found out where I was. I was strangely relieved. I’d had my suspicions since the Greys’ closing in Dublin. The solicitor had avoided my eye that day, though I’d thought it was simply because of his old friendship with Luke. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that he might have visited him in prison.
I was distracted too by what Ian Grey had told me. In the end, he hadn’t asked me for advice, had just needed to share, as if he had kept the secret for too long. So, Phyllis had been right about Carole’s secretiveness. She had been hiding a marriage to a man in prison, a son handed over in an illegal adoption, and a subsequent bigamous marriage. Who would have thought it – religious Carole? The last thing she’d have wanted would be her past coming out, especially if she thought her hold on George was tenuous. Was someone blackmailing her? The only people who knew her secrets were Stoop and the Greys. It was in the Greys’ interests to keep it to themselves, and Stoop had seemed content to abide by Dominic’s wishes until now. It was only his pride and a wish to silence the gossips that was driving him to reveal all.
But then – my stomach dropped at the thought – there was someone else who could have known about Carole’s secrets. Luke Kirby had shared a cell with Dominic, so it was possible he also knew about Dominic’s marriage and son; and since Dominic knew about Carole’s second marriage, he might have told Luke about that too. Luke would have been playing the lawyer card in prison; he may have been giving Dominic advice. Even if he hadn’t, he was a man people trusted, usually to their cost.
At one o’clock, Leah and I headed over to the shop to buy a couple of sandwiches to bring back to the office, some kind of self-imposed January discipline stopping us from visiting the café for chips. On the way back, we ran into Maeve. I’d finally managed to speak to her on the phone the night before to tell her about Luke. She’d been shocked and then quickly relieved to hear that he’d left town. Today she looked as if she was bursting with news.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Stan’s signed himself out of hospital.”
“Really? Is he well enough?”
“He obviously thinks so. But,” she leaned forward confidentially, “he’s blaming Tony for the assault on the beach.”
“Apparently. Says they had a row and Tony hit him over the head with a bar. Phyllis has just told me. Tony’s in a right state apparently. Says your sergeant wants him to come in to the station.”
I let her away with the “your sergeant” this time. Before I could ask her any more, my phone rang. I recognized the number – it was Tony. I moved away to take the call.
He sounded breathless, panicked. “Ben, I need to speak to you.”
“I’ve just heard what happened. Where are you now?”
“At home. Can you come up? If you’re not too busy?”
The front door was unlocked; I pushed it open and walked straight in. I called Tony’s name and a voice answered from the living room, where the party had taken place. It sounded slurred. “In here.”
Again, the door was ajar. The atmosphere was one of gloom, the curtains closed, blocking all daylight out, the air musty. Tony was sitting in a recess to one side of the fireplace, his hair tousled as if he had been repeatedly running his hands through it, a glass in his hand that I quickly realized contained whiskey. I’d never known Tony to drink during the day; it was the kiss of death for a publican. A reading lamp beside him provided the only light.
“Stan’s signed himself out of the hospital,” he said. “Told the sergeant it was me who hit him.”
“So I hear.” I paused. “You know I have to ask?”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t me. I’ve done enough to him in this lifetime. I’m not about to cosh him over the head and nearly kill him.”
“Have you told the sergeant that it wasn’t you?”
He took a sip from his glass and winced. “Maybe I deserve to take the blame for it. Maybe I deserve to be punished.”
“For something you did three decades ago? When you were a teenager?”
He stared into his glass. The man looked broken. I wondered if there was something else, something he hadn’t told me. “You’re going to have to give a statement if he’s made an allegation against you. You know that, don’t you?”
He nodded.
I sat on the chair nearest him and leaned towards him, clasping my hands in front of me. “Why would Stan say it was you, do you think?”
He shrugged, “Maybe he wants to punish me.”
Which prompted me to ask the question I’d been meaning to for a while. “Do you think it was Stan who burned down the Oak? Seems pretty excessive for something that happened thirty years ago, but he had the opportunity, living above it.”
Tony avoided my eye. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening anymore.”
For a brief second I wondered if the rumors were true, if Tony had burned the place down himself for insurance, but I dismissed it immediately. Then I realized why I found his look so disquieting.
“You know who did it, don’t you? You know who burned down the pub.”
Tony stared into his glass. It was nearly empty, but he didn’t seem motivated to refill it. His voice was flat. “No. I don’t.”
I didn’t believe him. If he didn’t know for sure, he certainly had his suspicions.
He sighed deeply and stood up, placing his glass unevenly on the table and leaning on the mantelpiece. “The insurance company has agreed to pay out, the full amount of the claim. I just heard this morning. They’ve decided it was ‘arson by person or persons unknown,’ which is covered by the policy.” He gave a snort. “Once the person isn’t the owner, of course.”
“But that’s good news, isn’t it?”
He looked at me, his eyes swimming. “How can I spend all that money rebuilding the Oak with everything that’s happened? It’s like blood money.”
I walked over to him. “The town needs the Oak, Tony. It needs something good to happen, something to look forward to. Having the Oak back would help the town to heal. It may not seem like it at the moment, but the guards will find out what happened to Carole and who is responsible. I’m sure of it.”
He looked at me with unseeing eyes, his expression unreadable.
“In the meantime, would you like me to come with you to the station when you make the statement about the attack on Stan?”
He slowly focused on me, then nodded weakly.
“Okay then. Sober yourself up and I’ll give the sergeant a shout and tell him we’ll call in first thing in the morning.”