knew would acquit her.
“I suppose we had grief in common. We were both trying to put our lives back together…and he helped me to reassemble mine. He was very strong, very brave…”
“Did he not have reservations at becoming close to someone who had been the lover of his wife’s murderer?”
“He didn’t know that. He…who told you that anyway? Because it was far from common knowledge, it…maybe some people suspected, but no one could have known for sure.”
“The Garda detective who investigated, Dan McArdle, had very strong suspicions.”
“I remember him. In his three-piece suit that looked like it had been carved out of wood and an anorak over it. Couldn’t take his eyes off my tits the whole time he questioned me.”
“All right then, let’s assume Dr.-Dr. Rock, is that what I should call him?”
“That’s what everyone else called him.”
“Let’s assume Dr. Rock didn’t know about your affair with the dead boy. What was it, do you think, that drew you to an older man, when you said before older men weren’t your type?”
“What are you, a private dick or a shrink? Why should I answer that?”
Dead boy, private dick. This was more of a lovers’ quarrel than a case.
I drained my brandy and got out of bed and started to put some clothes on.
“You don’t have to answer any of my questions. But it would help if you did. I’m convinced what happened yesterday is linked to what happened twenty years ago, that to keep your brother out of jail, we need to solve Audrey O’Connor’s murder. You say you were in a mist back then, you couldn’t see what was going on. Well you’re still in that mist tonight, and so is Shane, only now Emily is caught in it too, and Jonathan, and Martha O’Connor. I’m trying to clear it. I’m not trying to bully you, or pry into your private affairs. You can help me here. Or you can hold fast to a past you don’t pretend to understand and leave yourself and everyone else you know stumbling, blind, lost.”
I went to her, reached a hand to her face. She stopped it before it touched her cheek, held it to her lips and looked up at me.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, and sat on the bed.
“I guess a shrink might say…I didn’t use one, but it seems fairly obvious…that having lost my father, I was drawn to another…father figure. But I didn’t see Rock like that, or not only like that, not at first…I wasn’t attracted to him initially, we became friends first, then the attraction grew, although it turned out he’d been nursing a bit of a pash for me…but he was very fit, physically, we had a good sex life, he was…volatile and energetic and unpredictable, he wasn’t this…I don’t know, safe harbor, that’s what I always think of when I hear the words ‘father figure,’ safe harbor, like a fucking retirement home-”
“But your own father wasn’t like that either, was he?”
“No, I guess he wasn’t. He
“You told me this, that you had no confidence, that Rock made you believe in yourself. Was that not something you had from your father?”
“Father was very…it was the old style, never praise, if you got a B in your exams, you should have got an A, get an A and it’s no more than was expected. After a while, that wears you down, you feel you’ll never do anything worthy of his attention and respect. And so you don’t.”
“That’s why you didn’t do medicine?”
“And why Shane did dentistry. That was a real fuck-you to the old man. I was angry at the time. But now…”
She dropped her head into her hand, pressed her eyes between thumb and forefinger.
“I’m sorry. Keep going,” she said.
“Your parents’ sex life. You said they had separate bedrooms, was that just through your father’s illness, or-”
“Oh God no, they hadn’t slept together since Ma…since…I think Father had an affair, or something…at least I assume that’s what it was, Mother never spoke about it…from when we were, I don’t know, teenagers. It was…I don’t know.”
She shrugged, blushing, not wanting, like any of us I suppose, to go within ten miles of her parents’ sex life.
“What was that you said, ‘Since Ma’…?”
“Since Ma…found out, I suppose I was going to say. About the affair.”
“You didn’t call your mother ‘Ma,’ did you? Posh girl like you?”
“Hark at the little urchin lad. No, I didn’t, but Stephen did. So I did sometimes. Affectation.”
“Social sliding. Below stairs slumming.”
“Fuck off.”
“Stephen Casey. Is there any way on earth you would have expected him to do what he did?”
“I still can’t believe it. Apart from anything else…I mean, I know he might have thought of himself as a charity case-or rather, some of his charming fellow pupils might have accused him of being one-but he wasn’t chippy in the slightest. He was a brilliant rugby player-that’s where I began to take a real interest in the game.”
She grinned in a hungry way.
“You said you weren’t attracted to the boys who played rugby.”
“Yes. Well, that was a lie. That was before I’d decided to tell you about the affair with Stephen.”
“Now would be a good time to clear up any more lies.”
“No more lies, your honor.”
“So there’s no way in which you can explain why he would do such a thing.”
She shook her head.
“I mean, say if he had harbored grudges, people have more money than me, I’m going to get me some no matter what I have to do-and then he ends up with a bag of old ornaments. What is that about?”
“He wanted to steal big money, but the presence of the child, of Martha O’Connor, threw him off, brought him to his senses, he panicked and ran. And then, realizing what a mess he’d made of it all, how he’d murdered a woman in front of her husband and child, he took the only rational course open to him, and killed himself.”
“I can’t believe it. I still can’t believe it,” Sandra said.
“Was there ever a time when you wondered if Rock had been the one to groom Stephen Casey? I know he wasn’t happy in his marriage to Audrey-”
“How do you know that?”
“Martha told me.”
“Did she now? Well, then it must be true. Did she suggest her father had wanted his wife murdered? Nothing that woman said would surprise me.”
“She speaks very highly of you too.”
“She never gave me a chance. I went down on my hands and knees for that child, and she never gave me a chance-”
“She was just a child, a traumatized child who’d seen her mother murdered-”
Sandra was shaking, suddenly full of emotion, her burning eyes brimming with tears.
“We all had our troubles, you know. We all had our troubles.”
The emotion boiled over, sobs erupting from wherever they were stored. I went to hold her, but she shook her head and ran from the room. Down the corridor I heard her weeping, then a door slamming. The teenage symphony, Sandra had called it yesterday. It seemed, for the Howards, the melody lingered on long past the teenage years.
I checked my watch: I was going to be late for David Manuel. I went down the great circular stairs. I wondered whether there was anything in Emily’s room worth my attention. I went back through the arch, crossed the rear hall and tried the double doors, which were open. There were no servants around, which surprised me, but in this instance, made life easier. Darkness lay ahead. I went along the white passageway that led to the bungalow, trying for lights at each corner until I found a panel and threw them all on. I knocked on Emily’s door a couple of times, then tried it. The room was empty, and all her stuff was gone: no clothes in the wardrobe, no
