“YOUR FRIEND, Ned,” my wife complained, “has forgotten about our mystery.”
“Our mystery?”
“Who threw the bomb!”
“He’s had other things on his mind.”
“Obviously Captain Schaack killed poor Louis Lingg.”
“Why?
“Out of pure spite and to prevent a more general commutation.”
“An evil man.”
“Our friend Ned will get him, never fear … so how do you like lying on the floor in your diaper, little one? This is Grand Beach and it’s summer and it’s hot so we’re all being comfortable. And your ma’s going down the beach for her first swim in a long time, isn’t she now? And your da and your big sister are going to watch you real carefully, aren’t they?”
“Yes, Ma,” Nellie said with the air of someone whose patience is routinely trampled upon.
“And the Mick is going to play with his trucks, isn’t he now?”
“Yes, Ma. I hope when the baby grows up she will want to play with the trucks too.”
The Mick rushed over and kissed his little sister with a show of sincerity that was admirable.
“Be careful, Nuala Anne,” I warned her. “The Lake is still cold.”
“Sure, ’tis a lot warmer than Galway Bay.”
My wife was alive again, the hoyden she was when I first met her and especially when she went to Galway, where her exploits at Camogli were legendary.
One of the neighbors had asked her this morning how she was feeling.
“Well, not too bad,” Nuala had responded, using the proper Irish response.
The Irish are, I should explain very cautious in such matters, perhaps because they fear that God will punish them for claiming too much and perhaps because they love indirection and understatement. Sometimes.
“She’s grand altogether,” I said to the neighbor.
“Didn’t I say that?” my puzzled wife had asked.
“Da, the little brat just shit in her pants,” Nellie informed me.
“I can smell it, dear. And don’t say shit. It’s a vulgar word.”
“Ma says it all the time.”
“When people born in Ireland say it, then it’s not a vulgar word.”
Nellie didn’t argue with that truth.
So we wiped and cleaned and powdered the small one and wrapped her up in a clean diaper.
Then we hummed Brahms’s “Lullaby” together.
Socra Marie looked up at me and smiled.
“She smiled at you, Da,” Nellie whispered as though we had witnessed a sacred event.
“No she didn’t, Nellie. It just looked that way. She’s too young to know what a smile is.”
“It was a smile… She did it again! Isn’t she pretty when she smiles!”
“It certainly looks like a smile,” I admitted.
“We won’t tell Ma,” Nellie warned me.
“No way.”
Ma reappeared from the beach, shivering inside a thick terry cloth robe.
“Wasn’t it grand altogether! Not cold, at all, at all!… How’s my little sweetheart!”
She swept Socra Marie into the air and kissed her. The kid grinned happily.
“Dermot Michael! Did you see what she did?”
“Shit in her pants again?”
“She smiled at me, didn’t you, love.”
“She’s not old enough to smile.”
“Still she smiled at me, didn’t she, Nellie?”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“The two of youse are blind! Look! Both of youse saw that! A real smile!”
“Accidental contraction of the facial muscles which if we positively reinforce she’ll do all the time.”
“Isn’t she pretty, Nellie, when she smiles!”
“Yes, Ma.”
“Isn’t she pretty, Mick, when she smiles!”
The son actually looked at his little sister smiling and smiled back.
“See, Dermot Michael! You’re outvoted!”
“So what else is new.”
She placed the child back on the blanket. Socra Marie promptly closed her eyes and shut down for her morning nap.
“Why don’t ya go out on the dune and play?” she asked the small fry.
They shouted enthusiastically and rushed for the door.
“Don’t ya even think of opening the gates, ya hear?”
“Yes, Ma!”
We had left the hounds at the kennel for the weekend because there wasn’t room in the Mercedes for them and the three kids and all the toys, without which one dares not even think of going to the beach. They looked woebegone when we left. I knew from past experience that they would forget about us and play with the vet’s kids and intimidate all the other dogs boarding there. We would have to buy a bigger vehicle before the Fourth of July. And a house. We couldn’t impose our huge family on my parents any longer.
I was much too young to have such a large family.
“I’m going to go upstairs and get out of me cold swimsuit,” Nuala Anne informed me.
“I’ll help you,” I offered gallantly.
“I won’t be needing any help. We have serious talking to do about your man, don’t we? ’Tis time for more stewing, isn’t it?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. My man in this case was obviously Seamus Costelloe.
She bounded down the stairs almost immediately in denim shorts and a checkered blouse. I devoured her with my eyes as she charged into the parlor.
“You been watching the kids outside, Dermot Michael Coyne?”
“Woman, I have.”
“And me smiling little girl?” She leaned over Socra Marie to make sure she was still breathing.
“Woman, I have.”
“And, Dermot Michael, stop staring at me that way. It melts me altogether.”
“I reserve my right as a husband to consider my spouse with lustful intent.”
She sighed as if in abject resignation.
“Well, I suppose we’ll all need a nap this afternoon, won’t we now?”
She sat next to me on the couch, close enough so I could touch her superb thigh. I postponed that delight for a couple of minutes.
“That will be as may be,” I said, firing one of her pet phrases back at her.
“Now,” she said, businesslike and serious, “tell me what you found out about our suspects.”
“They all own weapons, registered weapons that is, even our pathetic little ambulance chasers. They own twenty-five caliber pistols they claim to use for target practice. As does Helen Cross O’Leary Shepherd.”
“The same weapon that nicked your man?”
“The same kind of weapon, yes. They actually let the police look at their guns, which hadn’t been fired for some time. Of course, they could have another twenty-five that they tossed into the Chicago River after they had winged Seamus.”
“And them respectable Shepherd folks?”
“They have a veritable arsenal of weapons, revolvers, rifles, shotguns, an automatic weapon or two. Len Shepherd is a collector. They claim never to use them except for target practice.”
“Which doesn’t mean that the woman couldn’t have taken one of them small things and used it that night, does it now?”
“It does not… You don’t think it was a contract shooting?”
She made a skeptical face.
“Like you say, Dermot, ’tis amateur night.”
“And why would it be the woman?”
“I don’t like her.”
“You haven’t met her.”
“I don’t need to… And your Greek friends?”
“Nicholas has an old rifle, Enfield .303, that he says his father used in the war. He doesn’t say which war.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all he admits. I wouldn’t be surprised if he or his brother had enough guns stashed away to start a minor uprising.”
“And Jimmy the Giant?”
“He has registered one massive .45 revolver, enough to kill a charging tiger. If he had used that against Seamus it would have blown him out of the building.”
“So they all have guns or at least access to guns?”
“Not clear that any one of them has much experience if any in using them.”
“The Costelloes?”
“Chauvinist vulgarian that he is, your man is a firm supporter of gun control. So is all the family.”
“That’s not much help, is it now?… Dermot Michael Coyne! Whatever in the world are you doing?”
“Exercising me spousal right to caress me wife’s lovely leg!”
“Despite what it might do to her hormones?”
“No, because of what it might be doing to her hormones.”
“The children might come rushing in.”
“I’ll stop.”
“It’s no great crack riding a nursing mother.” She sighed.
The Irish when they want to be obscene refer to intercourse as “ride.” When they wish to avoid obscenity they call it “fock.”
“You got it wrong, Nuala Anne McGrail. It’s the greatest crack riding a nursing mother.”
“Why?” she demanded, her interest in this apparent perversity stirred up.
I had better come up with a good explanation.
“Everything’s so elemental—milk, semen, life, woman as a vessel of pleasure and a vessel of nourishment.”
I thought that was a pretty good off-the-cuff answer.
“Oh.”
“You satisfy my daughter’s need for food and my need for sexual release,” I continued, pushing my luck.
“I’m just a thing to be used by you and by that little brat on the blanket?”
“You are a person to be reveled in by the two of us.”
“Well, we can’t do it now anyway.”
“I can wait for the nap,” I said, squeezing her thigh. “I’m just preparing you.”
“I don’t need much preparation at all, at all, Dermot love … Now let’s talk about alibis.”
“They all have them as you might expect. The Shepherds were attending a play at the new Goodman Theater with another couple. They went over to Shaw’s Crab House for dinner afterwards. The other couple swear they were with them till midnight.”
“Uhm…” Her fingers rested on my thigh, turnabout as always being fair play.
“The Greeks were at a confirmation party for one of their relatives, scores of witnesses.”
“Uhm…”
“McGourty and McGinty were playing poker with several other ambulance chaser lawyers.”
“Uhm…”
“And Jimmy the Giant was in bed with his wife.”
“Lucky woman,” she said cynically.
“Who knows?”
“And the Costelloe family?
“All allege to have been in similar domestic situations … I’m afraid that none of this is much help.”
“Ah, well, now, doesn’t it raise some interesting possibilities.” She sighed. “There’s still too many loose ends. Doesn’t it get more and more complicated, Dermot Michael? Won’t I have to amend my prediction, just a little bit? … What does Seamus have on your man?”
Me man this time was probably Leonard Shepherd.
“Enough to destroy his reputation. Not enough probably to put him in jail, because all the briberies of judges about which Seamus has gathered evidence are beyond the statute of limitations. He might be liable for a ton of civil actions.”
“Remind me why Seamus gathered evidence against your man?” She rested her head against my shoulder, her hair, still wet from the lake, fell on my face.
“To forestall any attempt to take him down that Len Shepherd, egged on by his wife, might have tried to engineer.”
“Seamus is smarter than your man?’
“Much, much smarter.”
“Dermot,” she whispered, “I love you more than I’ve ever loved you before. It breaks me heart, how much I love you.”
I held her tight. All I could manage was the very unpoetic, “I love you too, Nuala.”
“ ’Tis strange, isn’t it now, Dermot Michael?”
“ ’Tis,” I said, not having any idea what was strange.
“Two young people meet one night, filled with hormones and loneliness. They decide that they’re meant for one another, though it takes the lad a while to realize it. They kiss and play with each other a lot. Then they decide that it’s time to marry. They want to have children of course. So they do. Before they know it there are three little rugrats around the house, each one totally different from the other, a housekeeper and a nanny about whom they have to stew…”
“And two huge dogs …”
“ ’Tis true”—she giggled—“don’t stop caressing me, Dermot, don’t I love it altogether… And all kinds of other worries to stew about too … Would they not have run out of the pub that foggy night if they knew what marriage would be like?”
Good question. And I had better answer it right.
“Marriage is great crack, Nuala Anne,” I insisted, as I unbuttoned her blouse. “Especially to you!”
Then Socra Marie, perhaps wakened by a cry from outside, erupted in a roar of protest.
“Och, me dear little one,” Nuala said as she sprang from the couch, pulling her disarrayed clothes back together, “wasn’t your da getting ready to ride me when them terrible children woke you up. Now settle down and relax and we’ll give everyone a bit of lunch and then think about our afternoon naps. Hush, now, your ma is with you. Everything is all right.”
She faded into a lullaby in Irish and I, hoping for the promise of a late spring nap on the side of a lake, turned to Ned Fitzpatrick’s agonized story.