Strafford arrived in the hall just as Doctor Hafner was getting ready to leave. His black bag was at his feet, and he was knotting a tartan scarf at his throat.
‘What’s it like out there?’ he asked. ‘Bad as it looks?’ Strafford said it was. The doctor was eyeing the big black coat that he wore. ‘I thought you were the Colonel, when you came in the door.’
‘Oh, yes, the coat,’ Strafford said. ‘He lent it to me.’
Hafner was adjusting the brim of his hat. He had already put on his galoshes. ‘No luck with the search, I take it?’
‘No.’
‘Sorry to hear it.’ He moved towards the door, then turned back. ‘By the way, why didn’t you tell me yesterday what happened to Father Tom?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me he was stabbed, and thrown down the stairs?’
‘He wasn’t.’
‘What?’
‘He wasn’t thrown down the stairs.’
‘What I meant,’ Hafner said coldly, ‘was that you didn’t say he was murdered.’ He stepped closer, and lowered his voice. ‘Is it true they cut his balls off?’
‘I assume it was burglars. That’s what the Colonel says. Is he wrong?’
‘Yes, he is wrong. It wasn’t burglars.’
‘Then—?’
‘How is Mrs Osborne? How is she feeling?’
‘This business hasn’t done her nerves any good.’
‘When you say “her nerves”, what do you mean, exactly?’
Hafner chuckled. ‘Now you expect me to give you information? Aside from the fact that it’s none of your business, there is such a thing as the Hippocratic Oath.’
Strafford nodded. ‘I just wondered what kind of treatment you were giving her. Which kind of drugs, for instance.’
Hafner’s already florid brow had turned to a shade of brick red. ‘I don’t like your tone, Inspector. What’s it to you, anyway, what I’m prescribing?’
‘I noticed the pupils of Mrs Osborne’s eyes.’
‘Did you, now? You got close enough to have a good look?’
‘They were contracted.’
Somewhere in the house someone was playing music on a gramophone.
‘Do a bit of doctoring on the side, do you?’ Hafner enquired nastily.
Strafford was imagining him as a student, flushed and sweating in crowded bars, always with a different girl on his arm, shouting at Saturday afternoon rugby matches, cheating in his exams.
The distant music stopped abruptly, as the needle was lifted from the groove.
Hafner said, ‘Listen, Inspector – what’s your name again?’
‘Strafford, right – I’ll remember it next time. A word of advice: stick to finding out whoever it was that murdered the priest, and keep your nose out of other people’s affairs.’
He put on his hat and went to the door. Opening it, he stopped and turned, with a hand on the knob, gave Strafford a last bold stare, and was gone.
There was stillness all around. Strafford could hear Mrs Duffy and Kathleen the maid talking together far off in the kitchen. He stood motionless, listening. The music started up again, upstairs. He went into the drawing room. It was deserted, and the fire was out. Snow billowed against the tall windows. He thought of Jenkins. They weren’t close. Hadn’t been.
Ambrose Jenkins. He saw the name in his mind, the letters of it carved as if on a tombstone.
He tapped on the door of Sylvia Osborne’s little parlour, and got no response. He put his head into the room. The only sign of her was the blanket, left in a heap on the sofa. Since Hafner had been here he supposed she would be upstairs, in her room, sleeping. He wondered what kind of drug it was that Hafner was giving her. Whatever it was, everyone would turn a blind eye, the family, the servants, the chemist, Sergeant Radford. Nowhere as discreetly forbearing as a small town.
He should phone Hackett and tell him about Jenkins, that he hadn’t turned up, that most likely he was dead.
The music stopped again.
He went up by the back stairs, and into the corridor along which the priest had walked to his death. He knew by now, more or less, which bedroom was which. Dominic’s was next to the window, and Lettie’s was on the other side, two doors along. The little room where the priest had slept was on that side too.
That left three vacant bedrooms. He tried the doors. Two of them were locked, the third one, opposite Lettie’s room, was not. He stepped inside.
The shutters were fastened, and in the gloom he made out the shapes of a bed, a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a chair. The air was dank. He searched his pockets and found the box of Swan Vestas he had forgotten to put back on the mantelpiece in Mrs Osborne’s parlour. He struck one, and crouched down and scanned the threshold. On the inner side of it there was a deposit of dust, smooth and undisturbed. No one had been in this room for a long time.
He walked back down the corridor, stepped through the narrow passageway – the missing bulb hadn’t been replaced – and stopped again, looking back along the corridor. He tried to imagine the priest coming out of his room, fastening the button at the back of his clerical collar. Why had he put it on? Three paces would have brought him from the door to the entrance to the passageway. There would have been a light on in the corridor, but not in the passage – would he have noticed the missing bulb?
Maybe he hadn’t been coming from his room. Maybe he’d been returning there, from somewhere else. He might have been downstairs. He might have been meeting someone. Sylvia Osborne had been awake, wandering the house, in a drugged stupor, but sleepless. He was thinking of the semen stain Harry Hall had found on the priest’s trousers. Who could know all that goes on in an old house late at night?
The sound of the gramophone started up yet again, close by. It was coming from Lettie’s room. He knocked on the door.
Lettie was wearing a pink and blue kimono. She flung open the door and stood in the doorway, a lock of hair fallen over one eye. ‘This is my Dietrich look,’ she said, in a sultry voice. ‘What do you think?’
He tried to see past her, into the room. There was a narrow wooden bed with a crimson eiderdown, a desk by one wall, a table by another, with a cheap gramophone on it, the turntable spinning. The song was ‘Falling in Love Again’.
‘I didn’t mean to disturb you,’ he said.
‘Yes you did.’ She smiled, cocking an eyebrow. Her breath smelled of cigarette smoke. ‘But you’re not disturbing me, as a matter of fact. Or if you are, I don’t mind.’ She put her head out and glanced right and left along the corridor. ‘What are you doing? I heard you poking about, thought it must be the Ballyglass ghost.’
‘I wanted to check again – are you sure you heard nothing yesterday morning, when Father Lawless was attacked? There must have been a scuffle, a cry – something.’
She groaned, assuming a look of agonising boredom.
‘I told you, I was asleep. Someone could have fired off a shotgun out here and I wouldn’t have woken up. Do you not believe me?’
‘I do, I do believe you. But people often hear things without realising it. Concentrate, and try to remember?’
‘Concentrate how? Concentrate on what? I’ve told you. I – was – asleep.’
‘If you’re going to remain standing here, why don’t you come in? What if Ma Duffy spotted you, loitering at the bedroom door of the daughter of the house? A girl has to look out for her reputation, you know.’
The song had ended; the needle clicked and clicked in the turning groove.
‘I’m sorry,’ Strafford said, and turned aside.
She stepped out into the corridor to watch him walk away. He could see her faintly reflected in the glass of the French window at the end of the corridor. She put out her tongue at him and flung open her kimono. Underneath, she was naked.
He went downstairs. Colonel Osborne met him in the hall.
‘Any luck with your colleague?’ The Colonel was wearing his shooting jacket, and still had on his leather leggings.
‘No,’ Strafford answered. ‘We abandoned the search – the snow was coming on too heavily.’
‘Yes, it’s a fair old blizzard, all right. If it keeps up like this there’ll be a foot of it by morning.’
It seemed to Strafford the snow was falling not only on the world but in his head, too. It might go on falling for ever, steadily, silently, muffling all sound, all movement. He shut his eyes and pressed a fingertip hard against the bridge of his nose. Explorers at the poles often imagined there was an extra person walking beside them.
‘Look,’ the Colonel said, being the bluff uncle now, ‘seeing the night that’s in it, why don’t you stay and have a bite to eat with us? We’re dining early, since the children are going to some party or other – though I’m blessed if I know how they’ll get there, with the state of the roads.’
‘Thank you,’ Strafford said, caught off guard and without a ready excuse. So often a polite upbringing proved a disadvantage.
*
There was rabbit stew for dinner.
In the modestly sized dining room an enormous chandelier, converted to electricity, dangled oppressively over a mahogany table. The table was so vast it hardly allowed space enough for Mrs Duffy, going around with pot and ladle, to get past the backs of the diners’ chairs. The Algerian rotgut made its second appearance of the day, in two cut-glass decanters, one at either end of the table. The wine gave off an evil rubious glitter. Everything on the table was old, the plates, the knobbly silver cutlery, the frayed linen napkins, the dented salt cellar. Strafford sighed. The old home, again.
The Colonel presided at the head of the table. He had changed into a dinner jacket. On the left breast was pinned an array of army decorations. Sylvia Osborne languished at the other end of the table. She wore an evening gown of dark-green silk, which gave her a shimmering, sylph-like aspect, or would have, if it hadn’t been for the Colonel’s tweed hunting jacket draped over her shoulders, inside which she huddled for warmth. Dominic looked handsome in a black silk jacket and an open-necked white shirt. Lettie was in her kimono still, under a heavy black overcoat, buttoned at the throat. She also had on woollen fingerless gloves, knitted in shades of purple and orange. The room was very cold.
Conversation proved desultory. Mrs Osborne, sunk in deep distraction, picked about in her food, as if she were searching in it for something she had lost.
The Colonel turned to Strafford. ‘Why don’t you tell us something about yourself, Inspector,’ he said, showing off his dentures in a desperate imitation of a grin. ‘Married, are you? – kiddies?’
‘No,’ Strafford replied. ‘I’m single.’
He winced. He had bitten on a pellet of buckshot, embedded in a piece of rabbit meat, and thought he might have cracked a molar.
Lettie smiled at him brightly.
‘So you’re a queer, then?’
‘Lettie!’ her father fairly bellowed. ‘Apologise to Mr Strafford at once!’
The girl put a finger to her lower lip and simpered. ‘Oh, I’m tho thowwy, Inspecto’ Sthwaffod.’
Sylvia Osborne lifted her head and looked about vaguely, as if she had heard her name spoken.
Lettie winked at Strafford.
On his side of the table, Dominic Osborne was eating steadily, his face lowered over his plate. Lettie threw a crust of bread at him.
‘And why don’t you tell us about yourself, Dom-Dom,’ she said. ‘Got any matrimonial plans? A nice little wife and a few kiddies would be just the thing to smarten you up. Eh, brother dear?’
‘Shut up,’ Dominic said. He turned to his father. ‘Has she been drinking again?’
The Colonel’s eyebrows shot up. ‘She doesn’t drink, does she?’ He turned to his daughter in alarm. ‘Do you?’
‘Of co’se not, Daddy,’ she said, doing her baby voice again. She laughed. ‘Unless you count the odd gin and tonic before lunch, a spot of champers around the middle of the afternoon, and a couple of brandies last thing before bed. Strict teetotal, otherwise.’
The Colonel turned to his son again, pleadingly. ‘She’s joking, isn’t she?’
Dominic, concentrating doggedly on his food, said nothing.
Mrs Duffy came to clear away the dinner plates. There was tapioca for dessert, she announced.
‘I’m going up to change,’ Lettie said.
She tossed aside her napkin, pushed back her chair and stood up, drawing the black overcoat tightly around her like a cape. Again she winked at Strafford. Her father began to say something to her, but she ignored him and stalked out, throatily doing her Dietrich voice.
Falling in love again,
Never wanted to—
Sylvia Osborne looked up again. ‘What?’ she murmured, frowning.
The Colonel too threw down his napkin.
‘You’ll have to forgive my daughter’s rudeness,’ he said crossly to Strafford.
‘Oh, I don’t mind,’ Strafford said.
Dominic looked up suddenly and fixed him with a venomous glare.
‘You’re such a good sport, aren’t you,’ he said, with acid sarcasm. ‘What are you doing here, anyway, when you should be busy hunting down the murderer? And what about that other detective, what’s-his-name, I hear he’s gone missing – why aren’t you out searching for him?’
‘Dominic, Dominic,’ his father said quietly. ‘The Inspector is our guest.’
The young man scrambled to his feet, almost knocking his chair over backwards, and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind him. There were tears in the young man’s eyes, though he had tried to hide them. Strafford wondered what kind of tears they were.
Colonel Osborne sat silent, looking down at the table, his bow tie askew. ‘I don’t understand the young,’ he said. He looked up at Strafford. ‘Do you? Of course, you’re hardly old, yourself.’
Strafford too stood up now. ‘I must get back, while the roads are still passable.’
‘Oh, but hang on!’ the Colonel exclaimed. ‘The children will be leaving shortly, for their party. They can give you a lift, and drop you off along the way. I’ve told them they can take the Land Rover. That brute of a motor will drive through anything. And so it should,’ – he laughed grimly – ‘it costs me enough to run.’
‘Oh, but I wouldn’t want to delay them—’
‘Nonsense! They’ll be happy to drop you at the Sheaf of Barley.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll tell them to wait for you.’
He rose from his chair and strode out of the room, calling after his departed children. Strafford lingered uneasily, a hand braced on the back of his chair. Sylvia Osborne sat hunched around herself at the end of the table, gazing at the floor. He suddenly felt a rush of pity for her. She seemed so small and frail there, under the great chandelier hanging over her like a suspended shower of icicles.
Mrs Duffy appeared with five white bowls on a large wooden tray. She looked around in annoyed surprise. ‘Where have they all gone?’ she demanded, looking accusingly at Strafford. She set the tray down in the centre of the table with such a bang that the bowls on it rattled. She glared at Strafford again. ‘And I don’t suppose you want any? Well, it won’t be my fault if it gets cold,’ she said, and swept out of the room, muttering under her breath. She had not so much as glanced in Sylvia Osborne’s direction.
Strafford crouched down beside Sylvia’s chair. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I did see him, you know,’ she said, looking up at him suddenly. The pupils of her eyes were two dark dots.
‘Who – who did you see?’
She turned her face away from him now, remembering.
‘There was someone, coming out of the library—’
‘Yes?’ He held his breath. ‘Who was it?’
‘I don’t know. It was dark in the hall, I just saw a shadow. I thought it might be—’
Her voice trailed off. Strafford caught her smell, at once sweet and bitter. She drew the tweed jacket more closely about her. The skin in the crook of her elbow was silver-grey, the colour of a polished knife blade.
‘Did you think it was your brother?’ he asked urgently. ‘Did you think it was Freddie?’
She looked up at him again, frowning, as if in a daze. How thin and pale her lips were, like two faint pencil lines.
‘Freddie?’ she said, sounding baffled. ‘No, of course not. He never comes here – Geoffrey won’t let him.’
‘Then where do you see him?’
‘Your brother.’
‘Oh’ – she shrugged – ‘he comes round to the gate at the end of the Long Meadow, or if the weather is bad I meet him in town, in Grogan’s tea shop.’
‘Do you give him money?’
She bit her lip. ‘Sometimes. He’s always broke. He’s a dreadful person, really.’ She smiled fondly. ‘Poor Freddie.’
Strafford drew up a chair.
‘So you saw someone coming out of the library, but you don’t know who it was?’
‘No. I told you. It was dark. There was only the bulb on the landing.’ She was frowning again, trying to concentrate. Morphine, he thought. It must be morphine, or one of the barbiturates, anyway. He was no expert on drugs, but he knew their effects when he saw them.
‘And then you went into the library,’ he said, ‘didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I went in. I didn’t turn on the light. Or did I?’ She put a hand to her forehead. ‘I saw what they had done to him. I saw the blood—’
‘And then? – what did you do then?’
‘I screamed, I think, and ran out into the hall. Geoffrey came down. He looked so silly, in his nightshirt – he always wears a nightshirt, never pyjamas.’ She giggled, and covered her mouth with the tips of her fingers. ‘All that was missing was a nightcap and a candlestick.’
‘You recognised who it was in the library – you knew it was Father Lawless?’
‘I suppose so. He was lying on his back. So much blood. I’d never seen so much blood before. I knew it was him, of course I did – the black suit, the collar—’ She sighed, and sat up a little straighter. When she spoke, she was suddenly matter-of-fact, almost brisk. ‘I never much cared for him, you know. And I didn’t want him in the house. Geoffrey, however—’ She gave a shivery little laugh. ‘Poor Geoffrey, he thinks he’s so much better than Freddie, but they’re just the same, really, except that Geoffrey doesn’t gamble and keep losing all his money all the time, the way Freddie does.’ She paused again. ‘Anyway, the priest is dead now, and I can’t say I’m very sorry. Is that awful? I suppose it is. You won’t be too hard on them, will you?’
‘“Them”? Who is “them”?’
She waved a hand limply before her, as if shooing away something annoying. ‘Oh, all of them. Dominic. Poor Lettie. And the other one. They’re just children, really.’
‘The other one?’ he said sharply. ‘Who is the other one?’
‘What?’ She looked at him, bleary-eyed, blinking like a tortoise.
He drew forward, until their knees were almost touching. ‘Dominic, Lettie, and who else?’ he urged. ‘Who, Mrs Osborne?’
‘What?’ she said again. She was still gazing at him, still slowly blinking. ‘I don’t know what you mean. I don’t understand.’
Colonel Osborne appeared in the doorway.
‘Step lively!’ he said to Strafford. ‘Those two are waiting for you in the Rover. The snow has stopped, but it looks like it’s going to freeze.’ He looked at his wife. ‘You all right, my dear? Time for bed, I think.’ He rubbed his hands. ‘Christmas Eve!’ he said, and added with a roguish twinkle, ‘I wonder what Santa Claus will bring us?’