IT WAS NEARLY TEN O’CLOCK when I arrived at the cottage, but I knew she wouldn’t be asleep yet.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said, without enthusiasm, when she opened the door.
“Do you mind if I come in?” I asked, when she didn’t automatically show me in. “I want to talk with you.”
“I don’t much want to talk to you,” she said sullenly. She still didn’t ask me in.
“What’s going on, Connie?” I asked.
“Not very much that I’d care to discuss with you. Why don’t you go back to Paris and do your talking there?”
So that was it. She’d somehow found out that I hadn’t spent New Year’s with my parents. I certainly didn’t want to discuss that with her. “Donal O’Donnell is dead,” I said. That did it; she let me in. Oddly, she didn’t look terribly surprised.
“How?” she asked. She didn’t offer me a drink.
“I found his body washed up at Drake’s Pool this afternoon. It had been in the water several days.”
“How?” she asked again.
“He was shot in the back of the head.” I stopped, uncertain whether to go on. Her face would not let me stop. “And kneecapped.”
“Oh, God,” she said softly, sinking down onto the couch. “I can’t believe he did that.”
“Denny?”
She nodded. “And I certainly don’t believe Maeve could have been a party to it.”
I sat down beside her. “Maeve? Why Maeve? Why would she be mixed up in Donal’s death?”
“I hope she’s not,” Connie sighed, “but she left the convent on New Year’s Eve; just walked out in the middle of the night. I think she’s with Denny. But I don’t think she could have had anything to do with killing Donal, I won’t believe that.”
I was baffled by all of this. “I don’t understand; why would Maeve be with Denny O’Donnell?”
“She’s been seeing him for a long time; she finally told me about it after your fight with Denny at the boatyard.”
“Well, I had sort of a fight with her, too.” Now I was beginning to understand why Denny had attacked me.
She nodded. “I know. That was my fault, I guess, I’d been telling her about my troubles with you.”
“Jesus, what troubles?”
“You son of a bitch,” she shot back, “you were supposed to be with me on New Year’s Eve; and then, supposed to be with your parents. All along it was that aristocratic bitch in heat from London, wasn’t it? Lady Jane.” She spat out the name.
“All right,” I said, backed into a corner, “All right, I lied about that. It was just ….”
“Just a better offer.”
I squirmed under her gaze. I couldn’t think of any way to reply to that. “What about Maeve?” I asked, grateful for a new subject to hide behind. “Where is she? What will she do now?”
Connie turned and looked into the dying turf fire. “I don’t know where she is,” she said sadly, “but I think I may know what she’s doing; I have a feeling she’s doing banks.”
“Banks?” I was baffled again for just a moment. “You mean that thing in Cork? Jesus, what makes you think that?”
“Oh, in some circles it’s the time-honored method of raising money.”
This was all coming too thick and fast for me. “Now, wait a minute, let me get this straight: You think that Maeve and Denny O’Donnell killed his brother—his identical twin, for Christ’s sake—then stuck up a bank and went off to join the IRA?”
“I do not believe Maeve had anything to do with killing Donal.”
“But the rest? Is that what you think?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, I’ll tell you what I think.” I was annoyed at all this outrageous fantasizing and happy to have something to be annoyed about to keep from discussing how I had spent New Year’s. “I think that’s the craziest thing I ever heard. I think you’re crazy. I think that none of this makes any sense at all … except …” I faltered as I began to think about it.
“Except,” she ticked off her points on her fingers, “that Donal is dead, ritually murdered; Maeve is gone from the convent without a trace; the bank has been robbed—”
I broke in. “I haven’t heard anything about one of the robbers being a woman.”
“Maeve is a big girl, five nine or ten—taller than Denny—and in a stocking mask, if she didn’t speak, she could pass for a man. The shorter of the two robbers did all the talking.”
“Where are you getting all this information? I haven’t heard any of this.”
“You forget that my father was manager of that bank before he retired. He’s had all the gossip.”
“But why would Maeve do all this?” I felt I was beginning to lose this argument on points.
“Well, you’ve heard a bit of her politics, haven’t you? Maeve is a very angry person; she’s very political; and she’s always been very activist in everything she’s done. Lately, she’s been spouting a real load of rubbish about what brave people the Baeder-Meinhof gang are, and how nothing’s ever going to change without—”
“Baeder-Meinhof? Those crazy people in Germany?”
She nodded. “Them, and the Red Brigade in Italy, those are sort of her heroes, those and the Irish Freedom Brigade … ”
“Jesus, isn’t that the outfit that claimed credit for bombing Derek Thrasher’s office in London?”
“Now you’re getting the picture,” she said.
I was very much afraid that I was. “Well, shouldn’t you tell the police about all this?”
“Oh, no,” she said firmly, “this is just all my crazy notion, remember? I don’t have any real evidence of all this.”
“But Donal is dead. Surely … ”
“And I can’t bring him back. Maeve is still my friend, and I know she couldn’t have had anything to do with that. If you’re so hot about this, why don’t you go to the police?”
That shut me up. I just wanted to be as far from all this as possible.
“I thought not,” she said, after my silence. “Anyway, you’re out of it, now. Maeve and Denny are gone, and they won’t be back here. Now you can build your boat in peace.”
I hoped to God she was right.