14

Strafford regretted not having gone to bed when he had the chance. Harbison asked Reck to open the snug behind the bar, and invited the detective to join him there. The snug was a tiny brown room furnished with a couple of shabby armchairs and a small low table. There were framed prints on the walls, showing riders in hunting pink galloping full tilt over stylised greensward. The sole source of heat was a single-bar electric fire. Here Harbison, nursing his glass of grog and pulling his greatcoat close around him, settled down in happy anticipation of a night’s talk. Strafford could think of no reasonable excuse to get away. Good manners were a part of his inheritance, like left-handedness or haemophilia.

He knew Harbison’s kind, the minor blackguards in overly good suits tailored in London, speaking in the cut-glass accent of their caste and upbringing, masquerading as hard-riding gentlemen, scions of the few decent families that had stayed on in this benighted country after independence. Clubbable chaps who would do you a favour when they could, and then make sure you spent the rest of your life paying for it. Frequenters of the racecourse and the annual Royal Dublin Society Horse Show, fixed ornaments of the city’s better hotel bars and Jammet’s restaurant on Nassau Street. The gay blades who ran up bills with Mitchells the wine merchants and Smyths on the Green, grocers to the gentry, that gentry of which they considered themselves the last fine flowering.

‘Sorry, haven’t introduced myself,’ the fellow said now. ‘Freddie Harbison. I’m Sylvia Osborne’s brother – I suppose you’ve met her. My place is up in Wicklow, in the mountains. The family seat, don’t you know, ha ha. Bloody awful location, worse than here. And you’re—?’

‘Roslea. Bunclody way.’

‘Ah. Right. Roslea.’ He shut one eye. ‘Don’t think I’ve been there, have I?’

‘I doubt it,’ Strafford said. ‘There’s only my father, and he’s not particularly sociable. I’m not sure we ever were, even when there were more of us.’

‘Right, right,’ Harbison said again, fingering his military moustache. He hadn’t been listening. ‘I didn’t want to discuss it in front of the yokels out there in the bar, but what the hell is going on over at Ballyglass? – or Mount Glassyball, as I like to call it. What happened to the priest? The story is he fell down the stairs – you know that’s how the first Mrs O. broke her neck, years ago? Dreadful business – and now it’s happened again. Someone pushed him, yes? Don’t say it was my mad sister.’

‘Why would you think that?’ Strafford enquired. ‘And why do you think it wasn’t an accident?’

‘Well, it wasn’t, was it?’

‘There’s to be an autopsy in the morning.’

‘Oh, come now. You wouldn’t be here if it was anything except murder. Someone gave him a shove, I’d take a bet on it.’ He shook his head in gratified wonderment. ‘Poor old Colonel! The Osbornes will shut him out for good, this time. Maybe it was him who pushed the padre? There would be a thing – I’ve always suspected he did in the first wife, you know.’

He brought out a cigarette case and proffered it to Strafford.

‘No, thanks.’

‘Don’t smoke, won’t let a chap stand you a drink? You’re not the usual run of detective, or have I been reading the wrong kind of mystery stories?’

The electric fire was drying out the air, and Strafford’s eyes were stinging worse than ever. He was dizzy from the whiskey – he shouldn’t have had one, never mind two – and his brain ached. This day seemed set never to end.

‘Do you see your sister often?’ he asked.

‘Hardly ever,’ Harbison answered. ‘I’m sort of persona non grata out there, as you’ve no doubt heard by now. Not sure what I ever did to earn the displeasure of the master of the house, but he’s made it clear on more than one sticky occasion that I’m not welcome under his roof.’ He paused. ‘You do know Sylvia is batty, don’t you? I mean, really off her chump. She has periods when she’s convinced she’s other people. I don’t know what Geoffrey was thinking of when he married her. She was young, of course – fellows like Geoffrey always go after the young ones. And then, she was on the spot and available, having been the first wife’s best pal, or so she pretended, anyway. I always thought the first one was a bit’ – he held a hand out flat before him and waggled it from side to side – ‘you know. I suppose I shouldn’t say it of my sister, but there was something distinctly iffy between those two, our crazy Sylvia and the first Mrs O. But here I am, talking too much, as per usual.’ 

He drank the last of his drink, and rose and tapped on the little square serving hatch beside the empty fireplace. When the hatch was opened, he passed his glass through it and asked for another – ‘just whiskey straight this time, I’ve had enough of those cloves, my mouth tastes like a bag of Bull’s Eyes.’

‘Tell me,’ Strafford said, ‘did you come down here this evening all the way from the Wicklow mountains?’

‘God, no. The roads up there are snowed up tight as a nun’s what’s-it. I was in Wexford yesterday afternoon, seeing a man about a horse.’

‘So you were here for two nights?’

Harbison gave him a chary sideways glance.

‘I often put up here, at the Sheaf,’ he said defensively. ‘The grub is decent, and you’ll have seen Peggy the red-head, she’s easy on the eye. But speaking of horses, listen—’

Reck appeared at the serving hatch with Harbison’s glass of whiskey on a dented metal tray.

‘Put that on the slate, will you, Jeremiah my friend?’

Reck said nothing, but catching Strafford’s eye made a long-suffering face.

Harbison took a sip from his glass. ‘Damn it, this is Jameson’s – he knows bloody well Bushmills is my tipple. Do you think he’s trying to make some sort of papish point?’

Bushmills was supposedly the whiskey favoured by Protestants, while Jameson’s was the Catholics’ choice. Strafford thought it absurd, another of the multitude of minor myths the country thrived on.

Harbison put down the glass and lit a cigarette. ‘What was I saying?’ 

‘Something about a man and a horse.’

‘That’s right, yes. Thing is, the priest had one, Mr Sugar, magnificent beast. Old Geoffrey puts him up at Ballyglass House, free, gratis and for nothing. There’s a young fellow there, looks after the stables, Fonsey somebody. He’s a halfwit, but my God does he know all there is to know about horse flesh.’

‘I’ve met him.’

‘Have you?’ Harbison seemed amazed. ‘Then you’ll know what I’m talking about. I mean’ – he tapped his forehead – ‘as far as this goes, you can forget about it.’ He took another sip of whiskey and made a face. ‘Jameson! Tastes like maiden’s pee. But anyway, the point is, that horse.’

‘What about it?’

‘I was going to make an offer for it, to what’s-his-name, the padre.’

‘Father Lawless.’

‘That’s it, Lawless. But you see my difficulty now.’

‘You mean, now that he’s dead?’

‘Well, yes.’

Strafford fixed his gaze on the fire and its single glowing bar. It kept giving off little sparks, as drifting dust motes landed on the filament. To a microbe, he mused, each tiny burst of fire would seem a vast conflagration, like a storm on the face of the sun. He thought again of the snowy fields outside, smooth and glistening, and over them the sky of stars burning in icy brightness. Other worlds, impossibly distant. How strange a thing it was to be here, animate and conscious, on this ball of mud and brine as it whirled through the illimitable depths of space. A chill ran down his spine, as if the tip of something cold had touched him briefly at the very core.

In his mind he saw the priest lying dead on the floor in the library, his hands joined and his eyes open. No longer conscious, no longer animate.

‘Mr Harbison—’

‘Call me Freddie.’ He sat forward in his chair. ‘Now, about that horse—’

‘Mr Harbison, a man has died, in questionable circumstances, in the home of your sister and her husband. I hardly think this is the time to—’

‘All right, all right!’ Harbison said, giving him an injured look. ‘Life goes on, you know.’ He rose and went to the hatch again – ‘and Bushmills, this time, mind!’

He sat down, pulled off one of his shoes and held his stockinged foot close to the fire’s rust-red element.

‘It’ll be a bloody disgrace if that horse is left with my brother-in-law,’ he said with sudden violence. ‘He doesn’t know the back end of it from the front, for all that he imagines he’s a natural in the saddle. Someone should take the beast off his hands, and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be me. The question is, who owns Mr Sugar now?’ He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Did the priest leave a will, I wonder? Probate could take forever, and meanwhile that magnificent animal’s muscles will be turning to jelly for want of proper exercise.’ He put a hand on Strafford’s arm. ‘Now that would be a shame, wouldn’t it? You have to grant me that.’

The hatch in the wall opened, and a hand pushed through it the metal tray bearing the glass of whiskey. Reck’s big face appeared in the opening. ‘On the slate again, Mr Harbison?’ 

‘Good man,’ Harbison said, taking the glass. ‘And listen, Reck – heard anything about the priest’s horse? You know, the big gelding, Mr Sugar?’

Reck leaned down at the hatch, closer this time, and caught Strafford’s eye again, then swivelled his attention back to Harbison. ‘Are you after him, yourself?’

‘Well, I’d be interested, if he was up for sale.’

‘Father Tom had a sister,’ Reck said, withdrawing from the hatch. ‘Talk to her, why don’t you.’

When the hatch was closed they heard Reck, from beyond it, intoning in his prophet’s voice, ‘She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks.’

Harbison sat down. This was his fourth or fifth drink – Strafford had lost count – and his eyes had taken on an excited glassiness.

‘So the padre has a sister, eh?’ he mused. ‘I wonder how I’d go about getting in touch with her.’ He was talking to himself, lost in eager speculation. Strafford rose from his chair. Harbison stared up at him. ‘You’re not going, are you?’

‘Yes. I’m tired. I’ll say goodnight.’

He went to the door.

‘Listen,’ Harbison said behind him, ‘if you hear anything, you know, about the horse, you might—’

‘Why don’t you speak to your sister?’

‘Sylvia?’ He snorted. ‘I told you, she lives in cloud cuckoo land.’

Strafford smiled vaguely, and opened the door. ‘Anyway, goodnight.’

Mrs Reck came through the archway, yawning.

‘Can you tell me how to get to my room?’ Strafford said. 

‘Come on, I’ll show you,’ the woman said, and yawned again.

She led the way up a narrow, ill-lit staircase. Strafford wondered what had become of Peggy, she of the flame-red locks. She would probably be in bed by now. He recalled her overlapping tooth, and the saddle of freckles on the bridge of her nose.

‘Will Mr Harbison be lodging here tonight?’ he asked, of necessity addressing Mrs Reck’s broad rump as it preceded him up the steps.

‘He will,’ she answered over her shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t send even him out in that black weather. He stops over when he’s visiting the sister, above at the House.’

‘He sees her, then, Mrs Osborne, does he? I had the impression—’

They came to the landing.

‘Wait up a minute, till I catch my breath,’ Mrs Reck said, putting a hand on his arm and pressing the other to her collarbone. She was panting. ‘That stairs will be the death of me, one of these days.’ She moved on. ‘He’s a caution, isn’t he,’ she said, ‘the bold Freddie? You’d want to watch out for him, mind – he’s a fierce rogue.’

‘How often does he put up here?’

‘Oh, not often. Now and then. It’s handy for him. And of course’ – she chuckled – ‘he’s after our Peggy.’

‘Your daughter, is she?’ Strafford asked.

She stopped and stared at him. ‘God, no.’ She laughed again, shaking her head. ‘I wouldn’t be wanting Peggy Devine for a daughter, grand girl though she is.’

There were three rooms on either side of the corridor. Mrs Reck stopped outside the middle one on the right. From the pocket of her apron she took a set of keys on a big metal ring and sorted through them.

‘What was he talking to you about, anyway?’

‘Mr Harbison? A horse. Mr Sugar. It belongs – belonged – to Father Lawless.’

‘Oh, aye, he was a great one for the horses, and the hunting, all that. Hard to believe he’s gone. Not, mind you, that I was all that fond of him, God forgive me.’

‘Oh, yes? Why not?’

He could see she regretted what she had said. She turned away, busying herself with the jumble of keys. She selected one, and crunched it into the lock.

‘Bingo!’ She pushed the door open. ‘This is our deluxe suite.’ She gave him a broad grin.

The room was small, with a narrow wooden bed, a chair and an oversized tallboy. An enamel jug and basin stood on a pine table under the window. The curtains were drawn. A pink satin eiderdown covered the bed, plump and smooth and shiny as a pie crust. Strafford’s bag, which someone had set beside the bed, seemed to regard him smugly, as though, having got here first, it considered itself the rightful occupier.

‘Very nice,’ he said faintly. ‘Thank you – very nice.’

‘I hope you’ll be comfortable. There’s a hot-water bottle in the bed for you.’ She turned to go, then paused. ‘Mr Harbison’s room is the one opposite, by the way. Mind out you don’t bump into him in the morning, he’ll be like a bear with a sore head, after all that drink he took tonight, and him after driving all them miles in the snow.’ 

‘He’s not a morning person, then,’ Strafford said, laying his suitcase on the bed.

‘Well, he certainly wasn’t this morning – wouldn’t eat the rashers and eggs I went to the trouble of making for him.’

‘So Mr Harbison was here last night, yes?’ Strafford asked, turning to her.

‘Aye, he was. He left to go home but he got caught by the snow and came back and stopped over again.’ She gave him a questioning look. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, no reason. Goodnight, Mrs Reck.’

He opened his bag and began to unpack. The woman was still standing in the doorway.

‘Will you tell me, Inspector Stafford—’ she began.

‘Strafford.’ He smiled apologetically, as he always did when he had to make this correction.

‘Sorry – Mr Strafford.’ She paused. ‘Only I wondered, you see. Father Tom—’ Her voice trailed off.

‘Yes? What about him?’

‘They’re saying in the town—’ Once more she hesitated, then went on in a rush. ‘They’re saying he didn’t fall down the stairs at Ballyglass at all, or that if he did, the fall wasn’t what he died of.’

‘Oh, yes? And what else are they saying, in the town?’

‘There’s all kinds of rumours flying around – you know what it’s like, when there’s big news in a small place.’

He nodded. He knew all about small places.

‘We’re investigating the circumstances of Father Lawless’s death,’ he said. ‘We’ve a long way to go before we’ll know anything for certain.’

‘There was a thing about it on the wireless tonight.’ 

‘Was there?’

‘On the ten o’clock news. Just that a priest had died in an accident in Ballyglass – they didn’t even say it was Ballyglass House, so it might have been anywhere in the village. They didn’t give his name, either.’

He thought for a moment.

‘There will have been a press release from the Archbishop’s palace, I imagine. Press releases never give much away, especially the ones the Archbishop issues.’

‘His poor sister,’ she said. ‘What’s she going to do, with him gone?’

‘Were they very close?’

‘They were. She’ll be lost without him.’

‘Does she live here, in Ballyglass?’

‘No, over at Scallanstown, in the presbytery there.’

‘They lived together, she and Father Lawless?’

‘They did. She kept house for him for years, since she was a girl, I think.’

‘I’ll go and talk to her tomorrow,’ he said, ‘or’ – he consulted his pocket watch – ‘today, I should say.’

She didn’t take the hint, but remained standing in the doorway. There were things she might say, he could see, but she would not say them. Big news, and bigger secrets, in a small place.

‘I don’t envy you making that visit,’ she said.

‘Yes. These things are never easy. Goodnight, Mrs Reck.’

He resumed unpacking, pointedly turning his back to her, but still she lingered. He was so tired. He thought of the hot-water bottle awaiting him in the bed.

‘Yes, goodnight to you,’ the woman murmured distractedly. She stepped into the corridor, but stopped yet again, and turned back to face him. ‘Was he killed, Inspector?’ she asked. ‘Father Tom. Was he murdered?’

‘As I say, we’re investigating the circumstances in which he died.’

He laid out his pyjamas on the bed.

‘Right.’ She stood nodding to herself. ‘I’ll leave you in peace. Is there anything I can get you, before I turn in, myself?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Right, so.’ Pause. ‘The lavatory is at the end of the corridor.’

‘Thank you.’

When she had closed the door at last, he drew back the curtains and switched off the light in order to look out into the darkness. The glimmering landscape materialised slowly before him. Such stillness. He might have been the last man in the world.