'It makes sense. What doesn't make sense is the rest of it.'
'That's why I'm here,' I said.
'To ask me questions? To poke your nose into our family affairs? What makes you think we should welcome you with open arms?'
'I'm not used to that kind of welcome. But what Miranda said was true: there seems to be a pattern to the killings, and any of you could be the next victim.'
'And what about the Guards? Why aren't they here?'
'They're conducting their own investigation. A lot of it would depend on forensics, on what they can deduce from the crime scene. And since they've got three to examine, that is probably where the bulk of their focus lies at the moment. They'll get here presently.'
'And how do you know Vincent?'
Every time she spoke his name, it sounded like the twist of a knife in her guts. I explained about growing up in Bayview with Tyrrell as the parish priest, and about Tommy's unlikely job as sacristan providing the connection between us. At this, she visibly relaxed, as if reassured that I wasn't acting in some sinister manner on Vincent Tyrrell's behalf. She got up from her desk and walked to the window.
'It never looks the same, does it, twilight?' she said. 'Or maybe it's that your eyes never quite get used to it. You look, and everything seems unfamiliar, and by the time you've adjusted, the light has changed, and what you saw is past, or the moon is down, and everything is equally visible in its glare, and none of it makes sense.'
As I joined her, I could see a half-moon popping out like a cymbal crash and shedding its silver everywhere. There was another golf course out there, with dramatic bunkers and water features; below it ran the river; in the distance I could see high walls and bare trees ranged around a neo-Gothic mansion; beyond lay the gallops of Tyrrellscourt stables.
'Maybe that's what trying to really look at your life is like, look at your own family,' she said. 'That moment between twilight, when everything is strange and mysterious, and moonlight, when you see everything plain, and nothing stands out: everything is clear and nothing has any meaning.'
Maybe I was so struck by her image that I forgot what we were doing, or maybe I had spotted something by the walled house that distracted me; when she next spoke, it was as if to a man who had made his own way to the dining table without waiting for her to lead.
'What I'm saying is, maybe an outsider's eye is just what we need, Mr. Loy.'
She went back to her desk and sat down and turned the light off. Her face in the shadows immediately looked older, gray and tired, her great dark eyes pools, inviting strangers at their own risk.
'Tell me about the family, then. Tell me about the Tyrrells,' I said.
'I don't know about the Tyrrells. But I can tell you about myself,' she said. 'My mother died giving birth to me. I think that was hard on the boys. I never knew any different, but boys need a mother if they're to avoid…a certain kind of coldness. Anyway, I grew up here, went to the local school, boarding school in Dublin.'
'Is that where you got the accent?'
She grinned.
'I got the accent in Dublin, but not at boarding school. Everyone told me to get rid of it. Maybe that's why I hung on to it. Too late now.'
'I like it a lot.'
'Listen to you. Say anything so you would. Say mass if you were let.'
She laughed, an uneasy laugh, and it struck me that, beneath the brittle sheen, she was an uneasy woman. Maybe when you sat opposite a detective, only fools and knaves weren't. Or maybe she had a lot to be uneasy about.
'So this would have been sixties, seventies?'
'Left school in '74.'
'F.X. would have been running the show here by then?'
'For ten years. Francis trained his first winner at nineteen. Won the Gold Cup the following year, '65. And on and on.'
'And what about you? University? London?'
'Nah. I came back here. I missed it like mad. And the horses. I was one of those pony girls. In boarding school up in the Dublin mountains…Jasus, Mother Borgia, that was the mother superior's name, Mother Borgia, you wouldn't believe it now, but back then…anyway, I hated the place, all these snobby southside bitches, but there was a riding school nearby, and a couple of local lads who'd sneak me in and sneak horses out…oh, we had such a time of it. I think that's where I got the accent. And of course, it gave the nuns conniptions, it went against everything they stood for, which wasn't education at all, it was how to arrange flowers and give a dinner party and get into a sports car without showing your knickers so you could nab some young businessman and make him a fragrant wife. And certainly not be letting him down in front of his boss talking like some common-as-muck Dublin Chrissie. We've got over that now, at least. Anyone in this country with a few bob in his pocket's as good as anyone else.'
'And anyone without a few bob?'
'Let them go out and work for it. That's what the Poles and Latvians and all are doing, and fair play to them. If there's a generation of Irish too lazy to work, that's a shame for them, but what are we supposed to do about it? Sponsor them to drink all day and go to the shops in their pajamas?'
'So you came back to Tyrrellscourt, and trained?'
'Not really. You have to be…touched by God to be able for that.'
'Touched by God?'
'Laugh if you like,' she said. 'But it is a kind of vocation. I've often watched Francis during the day, inspecting the horses and the lads in the morning before work begins, checking the earth and watching the sky, supervising the feeds, right the way to patrolling the yard at night, listening for a restless horse, the wrong kind of cough, and all in silence: there's a kind of devotion to it, it's…I used to think he was like a monk. Only the horses had called him, not God.'
'Your brother Vincent said much the same: the horses knew F.X., they didn't like Vincent at all.'
'Good sense they had,' she said, the wistful look she had had in talking about F.X. curdling when it came to her other brother.
'What caused the falling-out between you and Vincent?' I said.
Regina simply shook her head. Whatever it was, I wasn't going to hear it from her. She looked quickly at her watch, and I pressed ahead before I was cut off.
'So you didn't have a similar vocation?'
'No. The only thing I can compare it to is a musician. The kind who, they make the records, they give the concerts, they have the career, but the only time they're truly alive is when they're playing, is in the music. And F.X. was like that, at race meetings, he'd be hiding behind the horses, and when they won, there were no fists in the air, no big shite talk to the crowd like some of the knackers you see masquerading as trainers these days, it was just a quiet nod, the sense that this was as it should be. And I loved to play piano, classical, my favorite thing now, but if you think you can play the piano, and then you hear a Barenboim, a Rubinstein, well if you're not a total idiot, you understand immediately what you don't have. And to try would be futile, really. But you want to do something, you believe in what's being done. So I did what I could. I ran the house for him. I took night courses in bookkeeping so I could keep an eye on the money. I took cookery courses so when owners came to visit, they could bring their wives and children. I made sure the gardens were kept up. And I dressed up and went with him to Cheltenham and Ain-tree and Leopardstown and all, chatting to the Queen Mother and so forth.'
'Like a wife.'
'It wasn't unusual where we came from. Eldest son inherits the farm-'
'Youngest becomes a priest, unmarried sister comes home and keeps house for the brother-'
'Not unusual at all.'
'She never married.'
'Nothing like that,' Regina said sharply. 'There was more than one fella, over the years. But none of them…I don't know, unless you're going to settle for less. And I had all this, I didn't need any man's money.'
She gestured toward the window, and then around the room.
'This house was in ruins, some 'oul dacency sisters were hanging on for dear life, until they gave up the ghost.
