He rose early, before the dawn, observing Mrs Reck’s warning about the inadvisability of an encounter with Harbison and his hangover. He went downstairs, and took his breakfast at the corner table where he had sat the night before. The dog lay in front of the stove with its muzzle on its paws, watching Strafford with deep suspicion. He broke off a crust of bread, dipped it in the yolk of one of his fried eggs and offered it to the beast, but was rebuffed with a disdainful stare.
He was finishing his food when Sergeant Jenkins arrived. There was still only the faintest glimmer of daylight in the window. Jenkins had come down from Dublin. Like Harbison, he was not a morning person, it seemed. He had the look of one who had been held forcibly under a cold tap and scrubbed until his skin glowed red and raw.
‘What time did you set out at?’ Strafford asked. ‘Did you sleep at all? What are the roads like?’
‘Terrible. Black ice at every turn.’
‘But it’s not snowing?’
‘Not yet. It snowed in the night, and will again, soon.’
‘Sit down, sit down. Have some tea. There’s toast left but I’m sure it’s cold by now. What did the Chief have to say?’
Sergeant Jenkins eyed the table doubtfully. It was plain he was hungry, but wasn’t sure of the propriety of sitting down to his breakfast with his superior officer, especially in an establishment such as the Sheaf of Barley. In the end, hunger overcame doubt. He took off his overcoat and hat, hung them up and pulled up a chair.
Jeremiah Reck appeared. He wore baggy corduroy trousers and a pair of carpet slippers – they looked like identical dead cats – and a jumper with moth holes in it.
‘There’s rashers and eggs,’ he said gravely to Jenkins, ‘or rashers and sausage and eggs, or rashers and sausage and black or white pudding and eggs. Or there’s eggs.’
Jenkins regarded him warily, wondering if he were being made fun of. He had a keen ear for the faintest hint of mockery. He put a hand to his buffed-up hair, and said he would have an egg, just an egg, soft-boiled.
‘You’re a great disappointment to my missus, the two of you,’ Reck said. ‘She’s out there in the kitchen, like Ruth amid the alien corn, with the rashers in one hand and the sausages in the other, only waiting for the word to set them sizzling. Anyway, an egg it is. The chickens will be happy, at any rate.’
He went off to the kitchen, murmuring to himself.
‘A great joker, that fellow,’ Jenkins said sourly.
Strafford nodded, saying nothing. He had long ago learned not to let his gaze stray higher than Jenkins’s hairline. It really was a remarkable head.
‘The Chief said to keep on as you’re going,’ Jenkins said.
‘Did he, now. That’s very helpful of him, very helpful. Any possibility of his coming down to have a look around for himself, do you think? It would be good to have someone to share the blame, when the newspapers get hold of the story and start baying at us and demanding why we haven’t found the killer yet.’
Jenkins shrugged. He had no time for sarcasm.
‘You know there’s a story already in the paper?’ he said. He fetched a rolled-up copy of the Irish Press from the pocket of his coat on the rack. ‘Page four,’ he said.
‘Page four? Hardly hot news, then. I suppose we should be thankful.’
Strafford opened the paper.
WEXFORD
PRIEST DIES
IN MISHAP
By Peter McGonagle
A Wexford priest, Father Thomas J. Lawless, PP, died at an address in the village of Ballyglass, Co. Wexford, in the early hours of yesterday morning. The circumstances of his death have not yet been disclosed by the Gardaí, but it is understood he fell down a flight of stairs and sustained fatal injuries.
Father Lawless, known to all as ‘Father Tom’, was popular throughout the county. He was a keen horseman, and rode regularly with the Keelmore Hunt, the Master of which is Colonel Geoffrey Osborne, DSO, of Ballyglass House, Ballyglass.
Father Lawless was also involved in many youth organisations, especially the Boy Scouts, and was a strong supporter of the Wexford Junior Hurling Team. He was chaplain of the Ballyglass branch of the Legion of Mary. When he was still a seminarian he travelled to Rome, where he was honoured by an audience with the Holy Father.
Tributes were paid to the late Father Lawless by the Bishop of Ferns, Most Rev Tony Battley, by his colleagues in the Church, by the business community, by sporting organisations and by parishioners.
Father Lawless is survived by his sister, Rosemary, and by numerous cousins in America, Canada and Australia. Funeral arrangements will be announced later.
‘That’s good,’ Strafford said. ‘Either they don’t know the actual circumstances of his death, or they have orders from on high to hold off. Either way, it means they won’t be crawling all over us, for a while at least. I hear it was on the wireless last night – probably from the same press release. The Archbishop’s people don’t waste time, do they.’
‘We should have put out a statement ourselves,’ Jenkins muttered. Jenkins disapproved of Chief Inspector Hackett and what he considered his lackadaisical methods. ‘Will you go and see the sister?’ he asked.
Reck came with Jenkins’s boiled egg, and slices of toast wrapped in a checked napkin. Strafford asked him to bring a fresh pot of tea.
‘By the way,’ he said, looking up from the newspaper, ‘where’s Peggy this morning?’
‘She only does nights,’ Reck said, reaching over and taking up the toast rack with its three shrivelled slices of cold toast. ‘By day she runs the local Ballyglass branch of the Bank of Ireland.’ Jenkins stared at him. ‘That was a joke. She does the odd shift in the Boolavogue Arms, our esteemed rival down the road. She’s there now.’
He went off, doing that buzzing whistle through his teeth.
‘This country has more than its fair share of comedians,’ Jenkins said darkly.
Strafford only smiled. He had a high tolerance for eccentrics, having grown up among so many of them.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I’ll talk to the sister. Though I won’t be expecting much enlightenment.’
‘How did you get on yesterday?’
‘I didn’t get on, and I didn’t get anywhere. At least, I don’t think I did.’ He folded the newspaper and laid it on the table beside his teacup. ‘It’s the way it always is, at this stage. I’m convinced the answer is staring me in the face, plain as day, but I can’t see it. What do you think?’
Jenkins considered the tablecloth, biting abstractedly into a slice of toast. After a moment he shook his head. ‘I don’t know what to think.’
Strafford nodded, sighing.
‘Who would have wanted the priest dead?’ he mused. ‘That’s the question.’
‘That’s always the question,’ Jenkins observed drily.
‘Yes.’ Strafford pushed a limp lock of hair up from his forehead. ‘He seems to have been about a lot at Ballyglass House. The daughter described him as “oogey” – have you come across that word?’ Jenkins shook his head. ‘Well, that’s what she said, that he was oogey, and that he was always hanging about the place. In fact, the son, Dominic, said the same thing, that he was around a great deal. Hardly a motive for murder, though, would you say? Hanging about the place and being oogey couldn’t be considered a capital offence.’
Reck returned with the pot of fresh tea and set it with ceremonial care on its cork mat.
‘Your pot of plenty, gentlemen, straight from the Golden Orient.’
He went away again, whistling as before. Strafford, tolerant or not, was becoming a little tired of the fat man’s ponderous wit.
He poured the tea. The fragrance of it, on this wintry morning, wafted straight up out of childhood.
‘Eh?’
‘What do you want me to do?’ He could see Strafford wasn’t listening. ‘Will I drive you up to see the sister?’
Strafford sipped his tea. As usual, he took it black, without sugar. He had noticed Jenkins noticing, and not being pleased. Jenkins had a keen sense of the class divide, the signs of which were of the tiniest moment, tea with or without milk, the buttoning of a waistcoat, the pronunciation of a name.
‘You know, it’s funny,’ Strafford said, ‘but either no one at Ballyglass House had a motive for killing the priest, or everyone had.’
Jenkins looked askance at the room where they sat. He was impatient of Strafford’s dreamy metaphysics. The art of detection was a matter of fact.
‘Maybe it was somebody from outside,’ Jenkins said, defiantly spooning sugar into his milky tea. ‘Somebody could have had a key to the front door, or maybe there’s another way into the house. Those old places have all sorts of coal-holes and trapdoors and God knows what, that get overgrown and people forget about.’
Strafford, his gaze fixed on the floor beside the table now, was lost in his own thoughts.
‘And no one had an alibi,’ he said, ‘not one of them, even the housekeeper. All asleep in their beds, even the insomniac Mrs Osborne. It doesn’t make sense, or it makes too much.’
‘Maybe they all did it,’ Jenkins said, with a snicker. ‘Like in the book by what’s-her-name.’
No, Strafford thought, there was no sense to it. The thing was entirely implausible, and yet there it was, the deed was done, the man was dead. He felt as if he were stumbling through a snowstorm, the snow dense and blindingly white. There were others around him, also moving, dim grey ghosts, and when he reached out to touch them he grasped only an icy emptiness.
Abruptly he stood up.
‘Yes, I’ll go and talk to the sister,’ he said. ‘She lives in Scallanstown, in the presbytery – any idea where Scallanstown is?’
‘It’s up the road, about ten miles – I passed through it on the way here. You must have, too. There’s not much to it, but you can’t miss the church – ugly big barn of a thing.’
Strafford stood thinking.
‘I wonder if I should telephone her,’ Strafford murmured. ‘I should let her know I’m coming. Somebody told me her name – Rose, is it?’
‘Rosemary,’ Jenkins said. He took up the newspaper, showed it. ‘There, look. “Survived by his sister, Rosemary”.’
‘Right,’ Strafford said, nodding. ‘Rosemary.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘Oh, God.’
‘I’ll go with you. I’ll drive you up and we can both talk to her.’
‘What? No, no. You go over to the house, have a look round again. Talk to anyone who’s there.’
‘Talk to them about what, in particular?’
‘Just – talk. Be polite, be friendly, even. Don’t press, just listen. The more you let them talk, the more likely they’ll give something away. They can’t all be innocent.’ He turned to go, then turned back. ‘By the way, was the whiskey glass found, the one the priest had in his room?’
‘No. Nor the light bulb. Someone knows where they are.’
He sat down again at the table and rolled a crumb of bread into a ball. ‘I thought this was going to be an easy one,’ he said. He sat for some moments, frowning, then stood up a second time, and a second time stopped. ‘I knew there was something I meant to say. Mrs Osborne’s brother is staying here. Harbison, Freddie Harbison. He was here last night, and also the night before, though for some reason he didn’t tell me that. Have a word with him, before you go over to the house.’
‘Did he know the priest?’
‘He knows his horse,’ Strafford said.
He went into the bar. It was empty, the stove was cold. He put on his trench coat, his hat, his scarf. Everything felt unreal. Priests didn’t get murdered, it simply didn’t happen. And yet it had.
There was a pair of galoshes under the hat stand, probably Harbison’s, Strafford guessed. He considered borrowing them, but thought better of it. He would not put his feet where that man’s feet had been. He stood in the glare of snow-light coming in at the low windows, each one with its four small square panes. He looked about. He had the sense of something important left undone, though he couldn’t think what. Later, he would think it had been a premonition. He should have taken up Jenkins’s offer to come with him to Scallanstown.
He went out into the cold, moist morning. He thought of the Christmas hymn, ‘Good King Wenceslas’. When he was young, he always misheard it as
Good King Wences last looked out
On the fist of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about
Deep on Crispin’s even and didn’t care that it made no sense. Most things made no sense, when he was young. Yes, he would think later, yes, he should have kept Jenkins with him. He should have kept him safe.
‘Sire, the night is darker now
And the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer.’