The Private Wound

  “No. I only hope they won’t take so long as your investigations into the attempt to murder me.”

  The sergeant’s bovine face was brick-red. His Irish puritanism had been outraged by all this talk about sex and naked women.

  “Will I clout him one, sir?” he suggested to Concannon.

  “You will not.”

  When the two plain-clothes men from Galway arrived, they were certainly thorough. Under Concannon’s eye they went through every article of clothing in the cottage, poked into every hole and corner: later, I noticed they were quartering the little patch of garden, turning over the rubbish dump, examining my car.

  “Well?” I asked Concannon when at last they were finished.

  “The results are negative, Mr. Eyre. I hope they’ll continue so, as far as you’re concerned. Can you tell me anything more now?”

  “I’ve nothing more to tell you.”

  He gave me a strange look. “You know, if Mrs. Leeson had been expecting you last night, it’d account for a lot that puzzles me. Was she apt to walk out in her night-dress in the dark hours?”

  “Only to meet me. So far as I know.”

  “Would you call her a promiscuous woman?”

  “An experienced woman, certainly. But promiscuous? — Oh, for God’s sake, leave me alone,” I burst out.

  At the door, he turned. “Flurry Leeson is in a terrible bad way, Mr. Eyre.”

  He gazed at me austerely, like a Judgment angel, and went out to his car.…

  It was not till the evening of the next day that Flurry sent for me. I found him sitting in the kitchen with Seamus. He looked a wreck, a charred derelict, his face more than ever the colour of dead ash.

  “This is a dreadful thing, Flurry. I don’t know how to—”

  His lack-lustre eyes regarded me.

  “All right, Seamus.”

  Seamus sent me an indecipherable look, then left the room.

  “Give yourself a glass. You’d best pour another for me: my hand is shaky.”

  I did so.

  “I can’t believe it,” he muttered. “I can’t yet believe it.” His eyes swivelled upward. “They’re burying her on Friday. You’ll company me?”

  “Of course.”

  “You were a friend of hers. She set great store by you.” He lifted a quavering hand. “Mind you, I’m not asking more. I don’t want to know anything more. Y’understand me?”

  I nodded dumbly.

  “Maybe she was a bitch. That’s my affair. I’ll not have any damned priest coming here telling me I must control her. I loved that woman, Dominic. I loved her, y’understand. She could have gone to bed with my own brother, if it’d make her happy. So long as it brought the light into her eyes. We understood each other. Sure I know this place hadn’t much to offer her. But I gave her everything I could. She was all I had.”

  Those were his words. I’ll never forget them. On paper they look maudlin. But they filled me with an agonising contrition. That I should have thought Flurry had beaten up that man in the pub for losing him the bet! I should have realised, when I saw him rush on to the race-course and cradle her in his arms. Now he was teaching me the meaning of love. This shambling, provincial alcoholic had loved Harriet in a selfless way which put me to shame.

  So I thought, abashed by the dignity behind his words, utterly convinced by them. I wanted to blurt out a confession there and then. But how could I burden his sorrow, piling my own remorse on top of it?

  “I’m just after hearing from Concannon. Harry was pregnant.”

  I stared at him, appalled.

  “She’d told me—a month or two back—hinted she was that way. And I didn’t believe her. I—it’d been so long, y’see. I never thought I was able for it,” he mumbled, gazing into his whiskey, almost inaudible. “I laughed at her. Laughed at her!”

  My mind was in utter confusion. So Harriet had already taken out her insurance policy; she’d deceived me when she said she could always put it on Flurry, if the worst came to the worst. Or was the child really Flurry’s, and she using her pregnancy to blackmail me into marriage? I stared round the shabby kitchen. Already it had the makeshift look, like a transit camp’s, of a place where men are living alone.

  “It might have changed our life—a baby,” Flurry resumed. “I’d always wanted one.” His watery grey eyes suddenly turned to granite. “So now I’ve two lives to take revenge for.”

  “Revenge?”

  “I’m telling you, Dominic. Whoever did this, whoever did it, I’ll find him and I’ll kill him. After that, I don’t mind what happens to me.”

  “But—”

  “What have I to live for now?”

  A silence.

  “It must be someone living nearby. Seamus says there wasn’t a tinker within ten miles that night. There was no strangers in Charlottestown at all.”

  I remembered Flurry and the Tans, and shivered inwardly.

  “I wish I could do something,” I said vaguely; then took a plunge. “Concannon suspects me.”

  “You? Dear God, what’ll the man be saying next?” Flurry gave a ghost of his wheezing laugh. “D’ye mean it? I believe you do.”

  “I suppose it’s natural for him to—”

  “But you were fond of Harry.”

  “I loved her.”

  It was out at last. I felt an overwhelming relief.

  “Of course you did,” said Flurry—but a little uneasily. I had to make it crystal clear.

  “I mean, she’d—she’d been my mistress. I’m sorry.”

  His eyes swerved from mine. He seemed sunk again in stupor. I could hear the kitchen clock ticking through the long silence. At last he spoke.

  “Now I don’t want to talk about that. Didn’t I tell you so?”

  But I had a compulsion to go through with it now. I told Flurry the whole story of the night Harriet was killed—how Father Bresnihan had persuaded me I must put an end to the affair, how I had met Harriet by the river, and found her dead there the next morning. Flurry listened to me in silence.

  “Was it you killed her?” he said at last. “Tell me the truth.”

  “It was not.”

  “You swear to it?”

  “Yes. But ever since I’ve felt responsible. If I hadn’t left her—”

  “Never mind about that.”

  “I didn’t dare tell Concannon I’d been out by the river that night.”

  “Well, I won’t inform on you,” said Flurry with the shadow of a smile.

  The disagreeable thought flashed across my mind—if Flurry had killed Harriet himself, I’d now put myself in his power: he had only to tell Concannon what I’d just confessed. Or, more likely, take the law into his own hands.

  It was the moment of truth between Flurry and myself. He shook his great grey head like a tormented bull. I could not see him as the murderer of his wife. But he had an animal cunning and a history of violence.

  “Father Bresnihan will tell you about the talk I had with him.”

  “No doubt he would. But he’s just after going into retreat, Seamus tells me.” Flurry looked at me unseeingly. “If he’d not gone blathering on that night, I’d maybe have walked out to find Harry before it—— But what with the drink and his homily, he had me finished. He’d hardly set out walking home before I was snoring in bed. I was still asleep at half six next morning when Seamus beat on my door. He’d just found her.”

  “He was out early.”

  “Seamus doesn’t sleep well since the Trouble. He was very young then. Sometimes he gets up and wanders about the demesne, in the night or the dawn. Concannon chased him about it. He’s searched through Seamus’s clothes and things. But sure, he’d no more do such a thing than I would. Not Seamus.”

  In the fading light, the fuchsia and the bank of montbretia outside the window were turning monochrome.

  “I’m glad you don’t think I could have—you’d have every right to suspect me, Flurry.”

  “But you were fond of her.”


  The simplicity of it took my breath away. “Yet an Irish writer said that every man kills the thing he loves.”

  “Ah, that’s all cod. Y’ haven’t the steel in you, Dominic. If you’d seen the wounds—but of course you did. No one strikes a woman like that, but in a rage of jealousy or a great passion of—— Ah no, I’m not an intellectual, but I can see a fist when it’s raised up before my nose. Sure you’d no reason to be jealous at all. And you’re a man wouldn’t lose control of his passions—they’d never be strong enough for you to have trouble mastering them.”

  Coming from Flurry, who had never before shown any tendency to character-analysis, these home truths were unpalatable. His next remark was even more disconcerting.

  “Tell me now, when did you and Harry first take a fancy to each other?”

  I stared at Flurry. This was beyond everything. With the intuitive tact I could never get used to in him, he showed me the way out of my embarrassment.

  “I’ve a need to talk about her, Dominic, and there’s nobody else I can talk to. She’s dead, and we both were fond of her, so why shouldn’t we talk about her? You’d be doing me a favour.”

  So the most bizarre part of that evening began. A cuckold and an adulterer exchanging reminiscences of the woman they had loved. I suppose the censorious would see it as morbidity in Flurry—a kind of mental voyeurism, but it never struck me like that. We had both consumed a lot by now, though Flurry said at one point that drink no longer had the power to make him drunk. I felt he wanted to possess himself of my share of Harriet. Between us, we recreated her, so that she almost seemed to be back in the room, reading one of her trashy magazines, a presence preternaturally vivid. I learnt much about the early days, when Flurry had just brought her over to Ireland. I told much about my feelings for her—even that I’d realised recently how incompatible we were.

  Only later did it seem odd to me that her baby was never mentioned during these confidences. Surely Flurry must have had some suspicion that I might be its father? It was to worry me a great deal the next few days.

  When at last I rose to go, Flurry took me by the arm.

  “Why don’t you come and stay here a while? Better than the two of us brooding in separate houses.”

  “Thank you, Flurry. But I couldn’t do that.”

  “And why the hell couldn’t you? I need you—you’re a clever man—we could find the fella who did this, between the two of us.”

  I still refused him. Which turned out a mistake …

  The next morning, Brigid failed to turn up. I drove into Charlottestown, to meet a strange reception. My good-mornings in the street were pointedly ignored. A group of children spat at me. In two of the shops and the post office I was received in silence: the post-mistress did bring herself to sell me a few stamps, but the shop-keepers paid no attention to my orders. At the garage, Sean said he had run out of petrol. I remonstrated with him, for I had just seen him fill up another car: he only walked into his garage, sullenly keeping his eyes from mine. In the Colooney bar, the deferential Haggerty gave me a look, between fright and defiance. “You’re not drinking in this bar, Mr. Eyre. From now on.”

  “What the hell d’you mean? The law compels you—”

  “Them’s my orders. G’wan out with you now.”

  It was a boycott. I began to feel panicky. I walked along to Leeson’s store, where I had always purchased the bulk of my provisions. I gave my order. The assistant said he had instructions to give me no more credit.

  “But this is ridiculous. I’ve always paid my bill at the end of each month.” I took out a few notes. “If you must have cash, here it is.”

  A pause. “I’ll speak to the manager.” No more.

  “Well, speak to him.”

  “He’s not in. What will you be wanting, Mrs. Rooney?”

  “Then I shall speak to Mr. Leeson.”

  I went out in a rage. Two corner-boys spat at my feet. “That’s the fella’s after murdering Mrs. Flurry,” said one. “Yerrah, go drown yourself, mister.” “Bloody Englishman,” screeched the other. They rushed into the road, scooped up horse-dung and started flinging it at me. The street seemed to fill with people, staring at me, shaking their fists.

  I pushed through them and rang the Kevin Leesons’ bell. Then, throwing the door open, I went in. Maire appeared, looking harassed. “I’ll be with you in a minute. Sit down now and rest yourself.”

  She was away five minutes. I had leisure to think of my predicament. If I left Charlottestown, the police would see it as the move of a guilty man, and pull me in: if I stayed, I should be starved out.

  And who could have organised this boycott but Kevin Leeson himself?

  Chapter 10

  Maire came in, brushing aside a strand of auburn hair with the back of her hand. The children were out on a picnic, she said, in her most social manner: they’d be sorry to have missed me. I cut through her small talk.

  “I’ve been boycotted in this town, Maire.”

  Her eyes started out at me. “Boycotted? What d’you mean?”

  I told her the happenings of the last half-hour. She seemed genuinely startled. “But that’s a terrible thing. Kevin must have a stop put to it. I’m afraid he’s away to-night, but—”

  “Kevin must have started it.”

  “Dear God, sure he’d never do a thing like that!”

  “He owns the Colooney: they refused me a drink. He owns the store: they refused to sell me provisions. No one’s going to do that here without Kevin’s say-so.”

  “But—it’s not possible. There must be some mistake. Dominic, why should he want you boycotted?”

  I could have said “because I cut him out with Harriet Leeson, and he’s in a rage of jealousy”; or “because he’s up to some shady political manoeuvre and thinks I’m a British spy and wants me out of the place.” But, looking at Maire’s distress, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  “The people here seem to think I killed Harriet. I hope Kevin didn’t put it into their heads.”

  A certain wariness came over her face. “Now why on earth should he do that?”

  I shrugged.

  And suddenly her control snapped. “That wicked, wicked woman,” she cried. “I know I shouldn’t be saying it, but we’re well rid of her. Everyone was happy here till she came.” Maire rose abruptly from her chair, and rearranged some ornaments on the mantelshelf.

  “‘Everyone’? What harm did she do you, for goodness’ sake?”

  “Agh, you all fell for her painted mouth and her saucy ways.” Maire flung round at me, angry tears in her eyes. “She was no better than a harlot, that one!”

  “Flurry loved her,” I protested.

  “She twisted him round her finger. Delilah and Samson. She was the ruin of him.”

  I let that pass. “It’s not just him you were worried about.”

  Her eyes avoided mine. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You were jealous of her and Kevin. Weren’t you, Maire?”

  She looked at me indignantly. Then, to my extreme embarrassment, she was on the floor beside my chair, gripping my knees, bursting out in a tempest of sobbing. I stroked her hair gently. In the dull misery I had felt since Harriet’s death, I turned to Maire just because she was a woman, a mother figure. She must have repressed this jealousy so long, for she was a proud woman, that it broke out now like an elemental fury. I could feel the heat of her body raised by the flooding tears.

  At last she pushed herself up and sat down again, mopping her eyes. She gave a little nervous laugh. “I don’t know what you must think of me, making such a fool of myself.”

  “You’ve nothing to be ashamed of, Maire.”

  “I never thought I had it in me to be such a jealous woman. And I never had reason to be—not till she came along.”

  “But,” I said awkwardly, “do you know that Kevin—”

  “She couldn’t let men alone.” Maire’s eyes, brilliantly green again after the tears, stared at me. “Why was
Kevin away so often at night? He got angry if I asked him. I never dared ask him if sometimes he was with Harriet. I expect she was shameless with him—the way I could never be.” Maire blushed. “I can tell you things I wouldn’t tell anyone else: because you’re a stranger—well, not a close friend—a sophisticated man.”

  “Oh, I’m not that.”

  “I’m not—not a passionate person,” she went on, blushing again. “I suppose she gave Kevin something I couldn’t.”

  “Well, it’s not the end of the world for you, is it?” I said gently.

  “No,” she replied in a small voice. “At least I gave Kevin children. Now, I’m forgetting my manners. Won’t you take a glass of whiskey?”

  We raised our glasses to each other. Maire took one of my cigarettes and smoked it inexpertly as a young schoolgirl. It was to prevent her bringing up my own relationship with Harriet that I said,

  “What were all those idiotic questions you told me Concannon has been asking you?”

  “Oh, it all started with him inquiring about our movements the night Harry—the night she died. Kevin got angry about it.”

  “Well, Concannon has to ask all of us about that. You were both at home, I imagine.”

  Maire looked at me strangely. She seemed to be trying to make up her mind about something. She took a deep gulp of whiskey, then came out with “He’s terrible secretive—my husband, I mean. He hates people to be inquisitive about his comings and goings. Half the time he doesn’t even tell me where he’s off to.”

  “Yes?”

  “He had a business appointment in Galway late that afternoon. He started back along the coast road, and about eight miles from here his car ran out of petrol. It’s a lonely road—d’you know it?—and there was no petrol pumps open that time of night, so he walked home. He didn’t get back here till near midnight. I was in a great taking.”

  I reflected that the road, about a mile from Charlottestown, passed quite near the Lissawn demesne.

  “Concannon was on to him—just where he’d left the car? how long had it taken him to walk? did he meet anyone on the way? Eejut questions. Kevin had Sean drive him next morning early with a tin of petrol to where the car was. He’d parked it on the grass beside the road. Sean’s given evidence about that.”