Erin Hart - The Book of Killowen

“Did he have any enemies?”

“Well, since you tell me that he’s been murdered, obviously at least one. There’s a long list of people who disliked him, Detective. It’s no secret that my husband was good at stirring things up. One of the things I admired about him, actually. He never shied away from controversy. On the contrary; he refused to let people hide behind comfortable hypocrisies, and if he made enemies, well, he looked upon that as their problem, really, not his.”

“I understand he had some rather lively debates with colleagues on his television program.”

“Just because he could run rings around those phony, full-of-themselves so-called intellectuals doesn’t mean they wanted to see him dead. It was a game to them—all that mock quarrelling and backstabbing. You can’t think any of them took it seriously. It’s their stock-in-trade, lobbing firebombs, insulting one another’s intelligence. They thrive on it.”

As she spoke these last words, her voice faded, and it seemed as if the floor had begun to fall away beneath her. Stella realized, almost too late, that Mairéad Broome’s legs were about to give way. Healy moved quickly to scoop a chair under her. He knelt on the floor beside her. “Let me bring you a glass of water, Mairéad—”

She snapped at him weakly, “I’m all right, Graham. For God’s sake, stop fussing.”

Stella waited as the young man ignored the instruction and fetched a glass of water anyway. She was glad she’d made the trip herself and not let Serious Crimes handle the interview. Was this genuine grief she was witnessing, or some version of relief, now that the wait for the missing husband was finally over? Impossible to tell. She said, “I’ll need to speak with you at greater length, to go over all the details of your husband’s disappearance. But there was another reason for my visit here today. I wonder if you’d be willing to come to the hospital in Birr to identify your husband’s body.”

Mairéad Broome looked up, as if startled to find Stella still there.

“I can drive you down to Birr, if you like,” Stella said.

This consideration of practical details seemed to bring Mairéad Broome back to herself. “No, I’ll come on my own. Graham will drive me.”

The young man leaned in. “We’ll need a few minutes to gather up some things. I’m assuming we’ll stay on for a day or two.”

“I think that would be wise,” Stella said. She turned to Mairéad Broome. “I wonder if I might have a look through your husband’s papers. I understand he kept an office here in the house.”

“Yes, Graham can show you.” Mairéad Broome stood and turned away.

Graham Healy led Stella downstairs to the study on the first floor. He pushed open the door to the book-lined room. “That wasn’t like Mairéad, what you saw up there. Must’ve been the shock.”

It was unclear what he meant. Was it the matter-of-fact way the wife discussed her husband’s death, or was it her collapse at the end that was so uncharacteristic? Stella studied the young man. Definitely an art student, she decided, unconvinced of his own talent but finding his true calling as the assistant, disciple, and younger lover of a famous artist. The whole situation had a slight whiff of scandal, but of course no one would have blinked if the genders had been reversed.

“What does a painter’s assistant do, exactly?” Stella asked.

“A bit of everything, really. I clean brushes, stretch canvases, order supplies, work on the inventory, and keep up all the gallery and collector contacts, the publicity and mailing list, maintain the website.”

“And how did you come to be working here?”

“Mairéad came to an exhibition at my school last year,” he said. “Favor for a friend, I think. Not that she isn’t interested in encouraging young artists—she is, of course—but she was under tremendous pressure, getting ready for her first big solo exhibition. I offered to help out, do whatever I could.”

“Because?”

“Because it was a great opportunity, and because Mairéad Broome is a great artist, the sort of artist I’ll never be.”

“So you left art school and came to work here full-time? Do you also live here?”

The young man’s eyes locked on hers, showing a hint of defiance, then flicked away. “That’s my room upstairs, next to the studio.”

“How well did you know Benedict Kavanagh?”

“Not well. I mostly stayed out of his way, but that wasn’t difficult. Like Mairéad told you, they had different schedules.”

“Would you say they led separate lives?”

“Listen, when Mairéad realized Benedict was missing, she was beyond distraught.”

“Pardon me if this sounds cold, but she does seem to have recovered somewhat. Perhaps with your help?”

“Think what you like, Detective. I’ve not done anything I’m ashamed of. I doubt whether Benedict Kavanagh could have said the same.”

Stella turned back to him. “Enlighten me, please. What do you mean?”

Healy was clearly uncomfortable, but he pressed on. “Well, you hear things—about how the rumors used to fly whenever a new intern turned up to work on his program—it was always the same. After a few months, he’d tire of them, and in would come someone new. Mairéad’s not stupid. She knew—everyone knew. The way that bastard treated her.” He glanced up at Stella. “As if she didn’t exist.”

“Do you mind telling me where you were yourself, the last two weeks of April?”

“I was wondering when you’d get around to that,” Healy said. “This is all in the file.”

“Indulge me,” Stella said.

“It was Mairéad’s first solo show in Cork. We went down to supervise the installation on the fourteenth. The show opened on the twentieth, and we were back in Dublin on the twenty-eighth.”

Stella feigned ignorance. “So you stayed on in Cork for a few days after the opening?”

Healy’s eyes flicked away, uneasy. “No, we took a sort of miniholiday after the frenzy of mounting the show.”

“Where, exactly?”

“Sorry?”

“Where did you go on this miniholiday?”

“Mairéad’s agent has a cottage in the Slieve Bloom Mountains, near Mountrath. We stopped there to decompress.”

“And you have someone who can vouch for you, I suppose?”

“We were alone. The owners were away, in Australia. That’s why we went.”

At least what Graham Healy was saying matched the statements he’d given in April, Stella thought. Still, not exactly what you’d call an airtight alibi. And all far from the motorways with camera systems.

Graham Healy looked at her intently. “I know what you imagine, Detective, but it’s not like that.”

“What is it like?”

“The marriage was over when I arrived on the scene. There’s nothing sordid—”

Stella cut him off. “Thank you, Mr. Healy. I’ll be fine here.”

He stood at the door for a moment, about to speak, then turned and left her alone in Kavanagh’s study.

The crime scene technicians would go over this room again, of course, but Stella always found it revealing to visit the place where the victim had lived or worked. She switched on the desk lamp. Stacks of paper formed lopsided battlements around the edge of the large desk, notes for some dry academic treatise, from the look of it. A pile of dog-eared novels and a nest of scribbled notes and drawings filled the center of the fortress. No sign of a laptop, no phone. A large tea stain showed where a spill had been rather ineffectively mopped up, and biscuit crumbs with attendant blots of grease dotted the papers. Were these Kavanagh’s leavings, or had someone else been using his desk in the meantime? The room didn’t strike her as a shrine, kept exactly as it had been left by its last occupant. Did the person who had sat here recently have firsthand knowledge that Benedict Kavanagh would never return? Stella studied the crumpled-up sketches on the desk. Perhaps Graham Healy had usurped Kavanagh’s place in his study as well as his bed.