Cold spring, p.2
Cold Spring, page 2
Tom got up and said goodnight. He couldn’t help wondering if Paddy in his old age was going a bit soft in the head. On the way home he kept clenching his fists to keep his fingers from freezing. He smelt fog, breathed fog and tasted fog on his tongue. It was so thick that he could see only a few yards in front of him. Even the lights in the windows of the houses were barely visible. The fog stole in under his clothes and seeped through the pores of his skin into the very marrow of his bones. At least he wasn’t going home to a cold bed. Nancy would put two hot water bottles between the sheets because they both suffered from cold feet at night. Nancy blamed it on poor circulation. He himself put it down to advancing years. He had never had cold feet as a young man.
After Tom had gone, Paddy raked the fire and went to bed. The sheets were like ice. He missed Mary, even though it was now four years since she died. They had been married forty-seven years with never a harsh word spoken. He lay on his back and pulled the bedclothes up under his chin, grateful for the fire of the whiskey in his belly. Before he fell asleep, he thought he saw the face of the young woman looking down at him from the darkness overhanging the bed.
He woke and raised his head from the pillow, wondering if he’d heard a sound. It could have been a stray gust of wind in the chimney, though it was calm as he went to bed. There it was again, a creaking sound this time, not one of those natural sounds from the shore he was so used to hearing in the night. For a moment the faraway cry of a curlew distracted him. It was a lonely cry that made him wish for the company of Tom Barron and the others. The fire of the whiskey in his stomach had died down. As he flung back the bedclothes, the cold of the small hours gripped him in the groin. It was pitch-dark in the room. No glimmer of light came from where the window should be. He cocked an ear again. This time the sound was unmistakable. It had come from the kitchen, as if someone had stumbled over the creepie stool. He got down on his hands and knees and reached in under the bed where he kept his toolbox. Careful not to make a sound, he searched desperately for a weapon of defence. Then the bedroom door creaked behind him and he knew he was no longer alone in the room.
2
Tom Barron scooped out the last of the white from the eggshell. Putting another egg in the eggcup, he immediately topped it with his spoon. He had an aggressive way with an egg. While her father used to tap and tap rather gently, Tom would make a drive with the tip of the spoon. Nancy always gave him the brown eggs. She kept the white ones for herself, not because she preferred them, but in order to please him. He couldn’t really say why he preferred brown eggs. His mother gave him the brown ones as a boy, probably because she herself preferred the white ones, and when he got married, Nancy soon learned to do the same.
‘It’s an odd vagary,’ she once remarked. Then, thinking that he might take offence, she quickly said that it was harmless enough and that she didn’t mind the white ones. Men had their ways. It was well known that Red Miller couldn’t abide marmalade. The only jam he’d thank you for was blackcurrant. Once, when his wife came back from the shop with a pot of marmalade, he took the pot from her hand and let it drop to the floor. Tom, thank heavens, was a civilised man. He never uttered a wrong word in her hearing. When there were no brown eggs, he simply went without. Once she fried him two white ones instead, thinking he wouldn’t notice. He looked at the plate and then at her.
‘White or brown?’ he asked.
‘White, I’m afraid. I thought you wouldn’t mind them fried.’
‘Well, I do,’ he said. ‘Neither make nor break a custom.’ Then he smiled at her and slid the eggs onto her plate with his knife.
This morning she watched him put a knob of butter in the second egg to soften it. The second egg was always a little harder than the first, and she knew that was not how he liked it. She had offered to boil them separately, so that the second egg would be ready only when he had eaten the first, but he said that it was far too much trouble and that anyway it was impossible to get two eggs to boil exactly the same. When she suggested that he top both eggs together, he said that the second one would get cold while he was eating the first. A second egg was like a second cup of tea, never as good as the one before. It was a fact of life, one of those little things we could do nothing about. It was best to accept them, because life was never meant to be perfect. That’s what she liked about Tom, his way of looking at things which was always the way of reason and commonsense. She waited for him to say something about the meeting the previous evening. He finished the second egg and buttered a slice of her homemade soda bread. As she poured him another mug of tea, she knew there was something fretting his mind.
‘How did the meeting go?’ She finally realised that he wasn’t going to mention it without a little prompt from her.
‘A lot of talk about next to nothing.’
‘It must have been about something.’
‘That was the trouble. We couldn’t be absolutely sure. Some said it was about Red Miller, others that it was about Nick Ambrose. The only thing we could agree on was that it was about whoever is stealing turf and eggs and potatoes. It was Paddy Canty’s idea, having the meeting. He’s getting old, poor man. Every little thing gets on his nerves.’
‘And what decision did you come to?’
‘None. Muiris said we should all go away and think about it. We’re having another meeting on Monday.’
‘Muiris loves meetings. He likes to hear himself talk.’
He said no more. She could tell he was holding back whatever was on his mind.
‘Whoever is doing it is a nuisance,’ she said. ‘I keep losing eggs, and it’s always the brown ones that go. Daniel’s wife lost a chicken last week, and it wasn’t the fox that took her. She was taken from the henhouse with the door hasped.’
They both looked up as the yard gate squealed on its hinges. A burly man came through with his head lowered like a butting ram. In his right hand he carried a blackthorn, which he slashed against his right boot at every second step.
‘Red Miller,’ she said. ‘Will you look at the cut of him!’
‘He was always an early riser.’
‘What can he want at this hour of the morning?’
The porch door opened. A shadow fell across the kitchen floor as Red Miller paused on the threshold.
‘Anyone up?’ he called.
‘One or two,’ Tom replied.
‘Bad news, I’m afraid. Paddy Canty passed away in the night. I called in to see him about the broken fence. He was sitting in his armchair in his drawers with his head like this on his chest. It must be ages since I stood inside his house. The place looked like it was hit by a hurricane.’
‘What do you mean?’ Tom got up and reached for his hat.
‘Nothing where it should be. Everything strewn on the floor.’
‘I left Paddy at bedtime last night. The kitchen was spick and span, and he was his usual hearty self.’
‘It’s no lie I’m telling. Come and see for yourself.’
‘This is terrible news,’ Nancy said. ‘Paddy will be missed. He was as hardy as a snipe. I thought he’d live to see the hundred.’
‘It shocked me,’ Red Miller said. ‘We all know we must die but we like to live as if it will never happen.’
‘Dying was the last thing on Paddy’s mind. His thoughts were on living last time I saw him.’
She watched from the window as they both crossed the yard. Red Miller was broad and thickset, shapeless in his bulky clothes. Tom was tall and well built, and he bore himself erect. Even now in his late sixties you’d know he was once a fine figure of a man.
The two men didn’t say much on the way to Paddy Canty’s. Though they’d never had occasion to cross each other, they weren’t friends. Whenever they met, they talked only about things that mattered to neither of them. Tom wouldn’t dream of asking Red Miller’s opinion of a ram, for example, and Red Miller was equally distant with him. Now they confined their conversation to occasional remarks about work and the freezing weather.
‘It’s still like the dead of winter,’ Red Miller said. ‘It would freeze the drop at the end of your nose.’
Tom Barron gave this observation some thought because at first he was uncertain how to respond to it.
‘If this cold spell lasts, everything will be very late this year,’ he said with a little sigh.
As soon as he entered Paddy Canty’s kitchen, he knew that something terrible had happened. Clothes and newspapers were strewn on the floor. Paddy was seated in his armchair in the corner with his head on his chest, his hair tousled and his cheeks grey. His hand was cold to the touch; the thought that he must have died shortly after he’d left him was both puzzling and disturbing. As he raised his chin on his palm, he noticed the dark-blue line on his neck.
‘He didn’t die a natural death, poor man.’ Tom spoke quietly, as if to himself.
‘You think he died a violent death?’
‘I’m sure of it. Look at that mark on his neck.’
‘He gave me the shock of my life,’ Red Miller said. ‘I never even noticed it.’
Tom tried to visualise the kitchen as it was the previous evening. An empty bottle of Paddy whiskey now stood on the form by the door. The fire on the hearth was covered in ash, and little wisps of smoke rose from the turf sods that surrounded it. The bedroom door was open, and Paddy’s trousers with the braces attached were draped over the back of a chair while his white cable-stitch sweater lay across the seat. He looked into the bedroom where more chaos met his eye. The bedclothes lay in a twisted heap on the floor and a club hammer lay where the pillow should have been.
‘Do you think it was a robber that did it?’ Red Miller asked.
‘We’d better not disturb anything till the guards come,’ Tom said.
They closed the door behind them and walked back down the lane in the direction of the schoolmaster’s house. The schoolmaster had a car, the only car in Leaca. He would drive to the village and alert the police. Red Miller was gabbling excitedly. He kept going over the scene that confronted him when he first entered Canty’s kitchen, as if seeking to find a reason why he had failed to spot the mark on his neck. Tom listened, for the most part in silence. He felt perplexed and rather shaken. Paddy was his oldest friend. They’d farmed together and fished together, and on fair days, when the business of buying and selling was done, they ended up drinking together. Paddy was a lovely old man. He couldn’t believe that anyone in his right mind would wish him harm.
After leaving the schoolmaster’s, Red Miller said he’d tell the other neighbours the sad news. Tom went home to Nancy, who was ironing his Sunday shirt. When he told her what he’d seen, she put down the iron and she raised both her hands to her cheeks.
‘What will happen to us now?’ she asked.
‘Nothing that hasn’t happened somewhere else already,’ he said.
‘But nothing like this ever happened in Leaca. It’s always so quiet here. Daniel’s wife said to me the other day that she could swoon at times for want of something different.’
‘This isn’t the kind of difference she meant, I think.’
An hour later the guards came and then the priest and doctor. In the afternoon the body was taken to Sligo for a post mortem. Soon afterwards Sergeant McNally paid Tom Barron a visit. McNally was a big, awkward man, slow in thought and even slower in movement. He removed his cap gingerly so as not to disturb his smoothly combed hair. Placing the cap on the table, he drew a notebook and pencil from his tunic pocket. While Nancy made tea, he got Tom to describe the scene in Canty’s kitchen as he recalled it. He said that, as far as he knew, Tom was the last person to talk to the deceased the previous evening. Given the state of the body, the murder must have taken place shortly afterwards. All this was perfectly obvious to Tom. He smothered his impatience and answered the policeman’s questions as fully as he could. He had left Paddy in the best of form about half-past eleven. He walked home alone. It was a foggy night. He could barely see past his nose. He did not meet anyone, nor did he notice anything unusual on the way.
‘You say you walked home alone. Were you the only person visiting Paddy?’
Tom thought for a moment. It was a question he had not expected to be asked.
‘No. A group of us were there earlier.’
‘Did Paddy know you were coming?’
‘Yes, we had a night’s raking, as we say.’
‘Did it happen by accident or did someone arrange it?’
‘Paddy invited us. He gave us all a drink and we spent the evening chatting like good neighbours.’
‘A little party! It must have been something of an occasion. What did you talk about?’
‘The lambing and the cold weather, mainly.’
‘How many were there?’
‘Apart from myself, there was Daniel Burke, Muiris O’Donnell, Marcus Quinn, Cormac Gildea and Neil Durkin.’
‘Quite a gathering. Nearly everyone in the townland.’
‘I suppose you could say that.’
‘Who was missing?’
‘Red Miller, he wasn’t there.’
‘What about the Englishman, what’s his name?’
‘Nick Ambrose? No, he wasn’t there either.’
‘It seems to me to have been more of a meeting than a night’s raking. Was it to discuss a particular problem?’
Again, Tom hesitated. He wanted to help the sergeant find the killer, but he didn’t wish to tell him things that had no bearing on the case. Neither did he wish to be secretive and evasive, in case the sergeant got the wrong impression.
‘We’ve all been losing things around the house, the odd creel of turf, eggs, potatoes, chickens, turnips.’
‘I call that larceny. Someone should have told me. It’s what I’m here for.’
‘It didn’t seem that important. Anyway it has nothing to do with what happened to poor Paddy.’
‘It may have. You can’t be absolutely sure.’
Tom felt impatient and irritated. Quite obviously, the sergeant was determined to get the wrong end of the stick.
‘Was there any reason why Red Miller and Ambrose weren’t invited?’
‘Red Miller and Paddy didn’t get on. Something to do with trespassing sheep.’
‘And Ambrose?’
‘I wouldn’t know. Maybe Paddy just forgot to invite him.’
‘Has Ambrose ever mentioned losing things?’
‘Not as far as I know.’
‘Maybe he has less to lose than the rest of you.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Does that mean you all suspected him?’
‘No, it doesn’t. We have no idea who’s doing it. We decided to be more watchful and try to catch the culprit in the act. But all that’s water under the bridge now. It won’t help catch poor Paddy’s killer.’
‘Paddy didn’t have enemies. He was murdered for his money. Who do you think could have done it?’
‘I thought you’d be telling me, Sergeant.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll catch him. The law is slow but sure. He won’t get away with it, I can assure you. A senior detective will be coming all the way from Sligo tomorrow.’
The Sergeant spent the rest of the day in Leaca. He went from house to house on his three-speed bicycle and questioned everyone he met. Everyone, of course, wanted to know who was under suspicion, but if he had any idea, he wasn’t telling. He was a man who liked to invest both himself and the law with the all mystery of majesty. As the schoolmaster put it, what he lacked in genius, he made up for in self-importance.
3
Paddy Canty didn’t have a family. There was no one left to look after his animals, and there was no one in the parish to mourn his death except his neighbours. His nearest relation was a nephew who had emigrated to New Zealand eighteen years ago and never returned. Tom Barron was concerned about Paddy’s cow and ewes. He spoke to Muiris who promised to call a meeting to discuss what should be done.
‘I had a visit from the sergeant,’ Muiris said. ‘That man couldn’t catch his breath let alone a murderer.’
‘He came to see me, too.’
‘I asked him straight out, “Who’s the murderer?” “That’s what I aim to find out,” he said, brazen as brass. “If you want to know, I’ll tell you.” That’s what I said, not a word of a lie, and, would you believe it, he looked me up and down like I was a simpleton. “All in good time,” he said. The way he got up on his bike, you’d think it was a horse.’
‘I hope he knows what he’s doing,’ Tom said.
‘You and I know who did it. We all know. The thief is the murderer and the murderer is the thief.’
The meeting was held at Muiris’s house. The small kitchen was bright and cosy. Though Muiris was a bachelor who lived alone, he kept the place as spick and span as any housewife. The flagged floor was swept clean and there was a lively turf fire on the hearth, the flames rising to lick the bottom of the black kettle that hung from a sooty pothook. They found Muiris sitting in the armchair by the kitchen bed, which was screened off by a red curtain that reached to the floor. During the winter months he slept in the kitchen to be near the heat of the fire. In the summer he slept in the lower bedroom, where the bed was longer and wider and more comfortable.
‘We’ll have a drink first,’ he said when the kettle had boiled.
He placed five small glasses in a row on the table and filled them to the lip with clear liquor from a bottle without a label. Then he got a bottle of Jameson and a larger glass, which he half-filled with whiskey and topped up with hot water from the kettle. He dropped two cloves from a paper bag into the glass and stirred in a spoonful of sugar. Finally, he gave one of the small glasses to each of them and kept the hot toddy in the large glass for himself.
