And no, he would not be staying. Colonel Osborne had invited him to dine, but he had excused himself, saying he must get over to the Sheaf of Barley, since it was late already, and the roads would be increasingly treacherous as the night went on.
Coming down the front steps, he stopped to look out over the gleaming fields. The sky had cleared, and stars sparkled in the depthless velvet dark. Far off, in the woods, a fox barked. The icy air made his face sting. He was tired, so tired. The day already seemed to have lasted longer than was natural, and it probably wasn’t done with him yet.
His car, an elderly black Morris Minor, was encased in a glittering shell of hoar frost. He scraped the ice from the windscreen as best he could. The engine wouldn’t start by the ignition key, and he had to get it going with the crank handle. Half a dozen shoulder-jarring turns were required before the thing would catch. He worried the handle would spin backwards and smash his wrist.
As he manoeuvred his way down the drive, he could hear the ice on the road crackling under the tyres. He turned to the left, slotting the front wheels into the two parallel black ruts in the snow. Frost-laden trees, ghost-white and stark, reared up at him in the headlights, their boughs thrown upwards as if in fright.
A jigsaw puzzle, Dominic had said, and he was right. The pieces were scattered, and there was no illustration on the lid of the box to guide him. There wasn’t even a box.
By the time he reached the Sheaf of Barley his eyes ached from the glare of the snow-lined road. He had been negotiating a particularly sharp and treacherous bend when into the light of his headlamps a white-faced form had come gliding down at him out of the darkness on wide-spread wings. It was a barn owl. He had flinched from it instinctively, this great savage creature, and almost ran the car into the ditch.
The Sheaf of Barley was no more than a long, low, whitewashed cottage with a thatched roof and tiny windows, all of them brightly lit tonight. He parked the car well in off the road and heaved his overnight bag from the back seat. He had brought only a toothbrush and razor, pyjamas, a couple of shirts and some changes of underwear. He approached the door of the pub – or an inn, was it? – with deep misgivings. He had put up at places like it in the past. His sole wish was for a hot meal and a warm bed. Gloom settled on his heart.
The door was on the latch, and when he opened it and stepped inside he was met by the reek of porter and an eye-watering fug of turf smoke. The bar was cramped and low-ceilinged, with a high counter and high wooden stools. Newspaper cuttings, unframed, were pasted on the walls. They were yellowed from age and curling at the edges. The stories in them told mostly of sporting victories of the far past. On the sill of one of the little windows there was a pair of miniature hurleys mounted on a varnished wooden plaque, the sticks proudly wound round with a ribbon dyed in the county colours.
The bar was empty. The turf-burning stove was crooning softly to itself in a corner.
Strafford’s spirits rallied somewhat, despite the watchful aspect of the place. The stove was giving out a good heat, and maybe his bed would be soft. There might even be something decent to eat. He had been to boarding school. His needs were modest.
He picked up a little handbell from the counter and shook it tentatively, and presently a woman appeared from under a wooden archway at the end of the bar. She must be Reck the well-read butcher-cum-barkeeper’s wife, for she was a female version of him, large, dark-haired, and soft-spoken and smiling.
He introduced himself, and she wiped a hand on her apron and offered it to him across the counter. He shook it. Her skin was surprisingly smooth. Despite the smile of welcome, he could see her taking the measure of him. Strangers were scarce, in these parts.
‘That’s a bad old night,’ she said, ‘and cold enough to kill a cat. I’ve your dinner on the go,’ she added. ‘Now, what will you drink?’
This question always put Strafford in a quandary. Though he had tried, over the years, he had not managed to accustom himself to the taste either of fermented grain or rotted grapes. This inadequacy, for it was nothing less, set him at odds with his fellow countrymen. Indeed, it made him an object of some suspicion, and in some quarters even of outright distrust. After years of anxious experimentation, always unpleasant and often emetic, he had fixed on whiskey and white lemonade as a mixture he could just about stomach. It was something like the soft drinks of his childhood, despite the bitter under-taste, which he had taught himself to ignore. Having made his request now – it required a portentous raising of the voice and a manly clearing of the throat – he braced himself for the usual startled stare and low chuckle of contempt. However, Mrs Reck was an accommodating soul, and she poured his drink and set it before him with no sign of disdain.
He must have left the door unlatched, for it was pushed open now without resistance, and there entered a fat black dog, short of leg and grey about the muzzle. It paid no heed to its surroundings, but made off at a measured pace for the rear parts of the bar. Mrs Reck addressed the animal in a loud voice. ‘Hey, you, have you nothing to say for yourself, Mr Barney?’ The dog fixed her with a baleful stare – with its grey whiskers and disenchanted eye, it had the look of an ill-tempered, stooped and squat old man – and then trotted on, showing them both its broad behind.
Mrs Reck looked at Strafford and shook her head. ‘Thinks he owns the place,’ she said. ‘No one ever told him he’s a dog. Besides which, he’s as deaf as a post.’
Strafford sat on one of the high stools and drank. He was warm, the whiskey was bearable, the atmosphere was homely. He thought that, despite initial misgivings, he might after all have come to the right place.
Mrs Reck wiped the counter with a wet cloth, leaving grey whorls of moisture on the wood. She talked of this and that. Yes, the Sheaf was not only a pub, but also a butcher’s shop, a grocery store and a modestly sized hostelry. ‘We used to do a funeral service too, but Joe got too old for it and gave it up.’
Joe, Strafford understood, was Mrs Reck’s name for her husband. This wasn’t surprising. ‘Jeremiah’ had an altogether too resoundingly biblical ring to it.
He told her about the barn owl that had flown into the headlights on the road and how it had startled him, yet how marvellous a sight it was. She said they were ‘fierce savage things, them owls’.
She gave the counter another swipe with her cloth.
‘Terrible business, up at the House,’ she remarked, studiedly casual, and not meeting his eye.
The ‘House’, as Strafford guessed, was how local people in general referred to the Osborne residence.
‘Yes, terrible,’ he said, looking into his glass.
‘Poor Father Tom – I hear he fell down the stairs and broke his neck?’
It was clear from the manner in which she said it that what she had heard was not what she believed to have been the case.
‘Yes,’ Strafford said without emphasis, ‘the poor man did indeed suffer injuries to the neck.’
She gave him a level look. ‘So they’re saying.’
And there they let the matter rest.
He took his dinner at a small table in a corner of a room adjoining the bar. This room was, by day, a combined grocery and butcher’s shop. The meat counter was hidden delicately from view under a sheet of grey canvas, with rusty smears of tell-tale blood on the edges of it. Ranged on shelves along the opposite wall were jars of sweets and glass-lidded tin boxes of biscuits and cream crackers and lumps of broken fruit cake.
He was served by a girl with red hair and a broad face sprinkled all over with freckles. When she smiled she displayed an overlap in her front teeth.
‘Are you the detective?’ she asked. No beating about the bush here, he noted. When he said yes, she laid a hand on her hip and scrutinised him with friendly scepticism. ‘You don’t look like one.’
‘So people tell me.’
She set before him a plate of sliced corned beef, which, as he found when he tested a forkful of it, was juicy and soft but with a satisfyingly crunchy texture. On the side there were four large boiled potatoes bursting out of their jackets, and cabbage that was green and actually looked like cabbage, unlike the stewed grey mush that places such as this usually served up. He found he was hungrier than he had thought.
How pleasant it was, he reflected, and how easy, to let oneself subside into the old simplicities. It was like leaning one’s back against the sun-warmed side of a haystack.
Customers had begun to straggle into the bar next door. He could hear their voices, and the scrape of the legs of wooden stools on the tiled floor. Opening hours were flexible in the countryside, and tonight was no exception, even with an officer of the law on the premises. By now there would be no one in the townland, and beyond, who wouldn’t know who and what he was. A peeler was a peeler, even in a three-piece suit.
Mrs Reck, having shown him to his table, had returned to the bar to serve the newcomers. Now she ducked back in and asked if he was ready for another drink. He shook his head – he had taken no more than a few sips of the first one. Mrs Reck cocked an eyebrow.
‘How about a glass of sarsaparilla?’ she asked, with a straight face.
He wished he had some prop behind which to hide, even if it was only a book. He felt exposed, and was sure he must cut a doleful figure, sitting there dully chewing his food and staring vacantly before him. Why was it so hard to eat one’s dinner alone? Presently he sensed, not for the first time today, that he was being observed. He glanced behind him covertly, under the pretence of studying a faded copy of the 1916 Proclamation of Independence framed high on the wall behind the counter. An elderly fellow in a stained and threadbare suit had put his head around the bar-room door and was having a squint at him. When he saw that Strafford had spotted him he stepped back, withdrawing his head on its tortoise neck from the doorway.
The girl came and offered him seconds. ‘You can have anything you like,’ she said, and gave him a calculated look from under a fringe of her red-gold hair, biting her lip.
He thanked her, and said he could not eat any more than he already had. She lingered, standing over him and very slightly swaying her hips.
‘Don’t mind Matty,’ she said, nodding towards the door. ‘He’s as nosy as an old woman.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘So that’s Matty.’
‘Don’t say you’ve heard of him?’
‘I have.’
‘Well, that’s impressive. And what’s your name, do you mind me asking?’
‘Not at all. Strafford – with an r.’
‘Is that your Christian name?’
‘No.’ He smiled up at her.
‘I’m Peggy,’ she said.
He nodded. His own first name could wait for a later time.
‘I wonder, Peggy,’ he said, ‘if I might ask you for a glass of water?’
She took the tumbler and filled it and brought it back to the table. ‘There you are,’ she said, ‘and mind you don’t let it go to your head.’
And she winked.
It was late, but he was not ready to go up to his room just yet. The whiskey had set up a buzzing in his temples. He rose, pushed open the door and went back into the bar.
The old fellow who had spied on him was sitting on a high stool, with a bottle of Guinness’s porter poured out into a glass that stood at his elbow. He was long and skinny, all sharp elbows and bony knees. All of the lower half of his face was collapsed around a mouth devoid of teeth. He nodded to Strafford as if he had never seen him before. Strafford pointed to the emptied Guinness bottle, the sides of which were streaked with yellow foam.
‘Will you have another one of those?’
‘I won’t,’ Matty said. ‘But I’ll have a small one.’
Strafford signalled to Mrs Reck and ordered the half glass of whiskey. She poured the measure and set it on the bar. ‘There you are, Matty Moran. Aren’t you in luck tonight?’ She turned to Strafford. ‘Mind out for this fellow. He’d drink all night if someone else is paying.’
‘Sláinte,’ Matty said, tipping his glass towards Strafford. ‘Are you not having anything yourself?’
‘Perhaps, in a while,’ Strafford said.
At a table under one of the small square windows two more customers sat, big, red-faced men with colourless eyelashes and hands like hams. They too had nodded a guarded greeting to the newcomer, then gone back to their drinks.
Jeremiah Reck appeared, and took his wife’s place behind the bar.
‘Ah, so you managed to find us,’ he said to Strafford. ‘Can I offer you a welcoming glass? I’m told you’re a whiskey and lemonade man.’
‘No, thanks,’ Strafford said. ‘I’ve just had dinner.’ He looked about. ‘Did someone bring my bag up to the room?’
‘Someone did, indeed. You’ve seen it, the room, I hope?’
‘Not yet,’ Strafford said. ‘I’m sure it will be fine.’ Again he glanced around the bar, feeling at a loss – how much less awkward it would be if only he were a drinker.
Matty was watching him from the corner of his eye. He took a drink of his whiskey and munched on it appreciatively, his collapsed mouth slackly working. Strafford was reminded of Colonel Osborne, and that way he had of jerking his jaw sideways, seeming to chew on something elastically resistant.
Reck, behind the bar, was drying a pint glass and reciting to himself, in the tone of the psalmist, ‘O Lord, thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul, thou hast redeemed my life!’
‘I hear they brought poor Father Tom off up to Dublin,’ Matty said, addressing no one in particular.
Reck glanced at Strafford and winked.
‘There’s nothing Matty doesn’t know,’ he said. ‘Isn’t that so, Matty? We should appoint you the town crier.’
‘Aye,’ he said, ‘took him up in an ambulance.’ He sniffed. ‘Down here wasn’t good enough for him, it seems.’
Mrs Reck came ducking back through the archway, wiping her hands on her apron.
‘Matty Moran,’ she said, ‘will you put your teeth in, for the love of God! I can’t bear the sight of you. Do you know what you look like without them? A hen’s hole.’
Strafford heard himself ordering another whiskey. He knew he would regret it in the morning, but he didn’t care. He even eschewed the lemonade, this time.
Matty brought out a set of pink and yellowed dentures from his pocket and fitted them into his mouth. They didn’t make much of an alteration to his appearance.
Jeremiah Reck was pouring Strafford’s drink when the door opened and a swirl of snow came in, followed by a short spry man in a sheepskin coat, shiny black gloves, and a trilby hat cocked low over one eye. All turned to stare at him, but he ignored them. He removed his gloves finger by finger, and shook the snowflakes from his hat brim.
‘There’s a night!’ he said.
He stopped at the bar and unbuttoned his coat. Beneath it he wore a double-breasted suit that was just a shade too well-cut, Strafford thought, and a regimental tie stuck with a pearl pin. He was in his early forties but clearly imagined himself to look much younger. He might have been a soldier, or a returned colonial, or both. To Strafford’s sceptical eye, yet another actor had stepped on to the stage. And not a convincing one, either.
‘Bloody weather!’ he exclaimed, and grinned, showing off a set of small white teeth the sparkle of which added to the overall impression of mild and gamesome fraudulence. ‘’Evening, Reck.’
‘Good evening, Mr Harbison. What’ll it be?’
Reck’s wife took one look at the newcomer and ducked back out through the archway.
‘Hot whiskey, I think,’ Harbison said, rubbing his hands vigorously. ‘Bushmills, with just a dash of lemon, and plenty of cloves.’ Now he noticed Strafford, off at the other end of the counter, fingering his glass of whiskey, and nodded to him in friendly fashion.
This would be, Strafford thought, Mrs Osborne’s brother, the Freddie Harbison whom Doctor Hafner had mistaken him for that morning – the same one who, if the doctor were to be believed, was barred from Ballyglass House. It was true, he looked every inch the black sheep.
He peered more keenly at Strafford now, quickly registering the tribal markings – the good but shabby suit, the gold watch chain, the narrowly knotted tie. How easily one was spotted, Strafford gloomily reflected. For all their dissimilarities, they were, the two of them, of a class apart.
Reck set the hot toddy on the counter, and Harbison drank off a good half of it in one go.
‘Ah, that’s the ticket,’ he said, giving himself a doggy shake inside his big sheepskin coat.
He drank the rest of the drink in three quick sips and set the glass down with a bang. ‘Same again, landlord!’ he said, with another rub of the hands. ‘It’s a night for the antifreeze.’
He glanced again at Strafford, and moved along the counter, passing by Matty Moran as if he were not there.
‘Mind if I join you?’ he said to Strafford. ‘I know who you must be.’ He pointed to Strafford’s glass. ‘Stand you another?’
‘No, thanks,’ Strafford said, rolling the tumbler on its base on the counter. ‘This is my nightcap.’
The two farmers over by the window were whispering together and glancing in Harbison’s direction. One of them snickered. Harbison took no more notice of them than he had of Matty Moran, or of anyone else in the bar, save Strafford.
Reck brought him his second drink, and he clinked his glass against the rim of Strafford’s tumbler.
‘You would be the detective, now, I’m guessing,’ he said. ‘I heard about the demise of the sky pilot. Great excitement, the county can talk of little else.’ He took a swig from his glass. Glances were being exchanged all over the bar. ‘Murdered, so I hear,’ Harbison said, deliberately loud. ‘Bound to happen, sooner or later. Damned fellow had it coming. Caught the killer yet, have you?’