Erin Hart - Haunted Ground

“I’m coming with you this time.”

He pressed his lips together and nodded briefly. Nora could see the clash of conflicting emotions in his face, doubt and curiosity battling his sense of loyalty and fair play. He had obviously thought about everything she said the night before. She felt somewhat guilty for tarnishing his opinion of Hugh Osborne, but as she studied the warring impulses that passed over Cormac’s dark features, a sense of elation washed away any regret.

Delia Hernan’s house was on a small lane off the main road about a mile past Drumcleggan Bog. As Devaney approached he observed the general air of neglect about the place. The whitewashed stones that lined the path were out of place; the choppy hedge in front was overgrown, and thick moss grew on the tile roof. He knew Mrs. Hernan had been widowed over the winter, but it looked as if the place had been suffering for at least several years. Devaney had heard there were a couple of sons off in England who didn’t often get home.

Mrs. Hernan didn’t seem at all surprised to find him at her front door. While he took a seat at the kitchen table, she began to fuss about making tea, and Devaney used the opportunity to look around. The house had a look of hire-purchase shabbiness about it: the loud wallpaper, the wobbly chairs, the cracked oilcloth on the table where he sat, the cheap, faded souvenirs from Ireland’s holiday spots, even the new strip of flypaper that hung from the smoke-stained ceiling next to a bare lightbulb. The patterned linoleum on the floor was worn away in places, and the lace curtains that hung in the windows had not been white for many years. A yellow enamel cooker in the corner had been scrubbed clean in spots, but remained blackened with sooty grease around the edges. Three pots of busy lizzies on the windowsill pressed their faces to the light outside and shed their shriveled blossoms onto a growing pile on the floor. The room felt closed in, its warm, damp air permanently flavored by decades of cigarette smoke and the sour smell of cabbage. He spoke over the sound of running water as she rinsed the teapot in the tiny makeshift scullery off the kitchen.

“I’m here to ask about your work at Bracklyn House. How did you first come to be working there?” Mrs. Hernan emerged from the scullery with the teapot, into which she spooned a great quantity of loose tea from a tin, and then filled with water from a huge steaming kettle that rested on the corner of the cooker. She was a plump, full-bosomed woman of about sixty, with a frizz of mouse-brown dyed hair about her face. The fingers of herright hand were stained and leathery from nicotine, and she was apparently unaware of the cigarette ash that clung to the front of her shapeless woolen skirt. As she spoke, Mrs. Hernan went about slicing several cuts of brown bread and thickly slathering them with butter.

“My Johnny, God rest him, always did the firewood for the house. Shortly after Missus Osborne—the elder Missus Osborne, that is—and her young lad arrived over from England, Mr. Hugh asked my Johnny did he ever know anyone who’d be interested in helping out with the cleaning once or twice a week. I went there the very next day. Of course yer wan thought she was in charge, acting the grand lady, but I told her, seeing it was Mr. Hugh that paid me, it would be him that gave the orders. Oh, she didn’t like that. Not one bit.”

“And when Mina Osborne came to Bracklyn?”

“Ah, now, she was a dote. Always very lighthearted. And a real lady she was, too, but not above pitchin’ in now and again, not her. The little lad, Christopher, was a pure angel, used to love going around with me while I was cleaning. I’d give him a bit of a rag—” Mrs. Hernan’s voice quavered, and tears sprang to her eyes. “I know it’s dreadful to think the worst. I can’t help meself.” She shook her head and sighed. “And Mr. Hugh has taken it terrible bad, poor man.”

“How would you say they got on, Hugh Osborne and his wife?”

“Ah, a pair of lovebirds, those two. Couldn’t get enough of each other, if you know what I mean. Are you married, Detective?” Devaney nodded. “You know yourself, then. Of course they hadn’t been married terribly long when the baby came along. I suppose they were still getting used to each other, like. I’m sure everyone has their ups and downs. They might have had a few small disagreements now and again, but they never went so far as throwing the delft or any such thing like that—not like meself and Johnny. Oh, Janey, we used to go at it sometimes. And I’d surely know if they had. You learn an awful lot about people from what’s in their bins, I always say. I’m trying to think now if I ever heard them arguing at all. There was one time I heard her giving out to him about how much work he was doing, leaving her alone there in the house. And he said he understood how she felt, but they needed the money.” Mrs. Hernan swirled the pot around a few times and poured the tea. Devaney opted for two spoons of sugar and plenty of milk.

“So you were working at Bracklyn at the time Mina Osborne and her son went missing?”

“Not on the very day. We had to get the bus, you see, Johnny and me, up to the doctor in Portumna that day.”

“That reminds me. How’s your flu?”

“What flu?”

“Lucy Osborne mentioned to someone that you weren’t able to come and clean at Bracklyn House last week because you were down with a flu.”

Mrs. Hernan was stunned. “Well, of all the—I never had any bit of a flu in me life. And as for the reason I wasn’t there last week, she should know bloody well enough—it’s nearly three months since I was sent packing.”

“By whom?”

“By herself, Mrs. High-and-Mighty Lucy Osborne, who do you think? She’s a right bitch, that one, accusing me of stealing. I never was so insulted in all me life.”

“What did she accuse you of stealing?”

“A scarf belonging to Mr. Hugh’s wife. I never took anything. Now, I’m not saying I never opened a drawer or two while I was cleaning, but I never took anything, and I’ll swear it on me own mother’s grave.”

“Why did she think you’d stolen it?”

“That’s what I’d love to know. When I showed it to her, she starts givin’ out stink, accusing me, running me out of the house like a common thief before I can even tell her where I found the feckin’ thing.”

“Was there something strange about that?”

“Well, didn’t I find it in young Mr. Jeremy’s room while I was hoovering under the bed? Stuffed under the mattress, it was, as if he was trying to hide it, like.”

“But you never mentioned that to his mother?” Devaney asked. Something about this didn’t sit right, but he couldn’t say what, not just yet.

“How could I? I was out the door with her foot up me backside before I could get a word in.”

“And you didn’t find any other items of clothing?”

“No, nothing else. And you may be sure I got down on me two knees and looked everywhere under the bed. What was her young fella gettin’ up to with a lady’s scarf? That’s what I’d like to know.”

“You’ve not mentioned your dismissal to anyone?”

“And have her spreadin’ lies about me? No, thank you. Better to say nothin’ at all, turn the other cheek, as Our Lord said to do. Ah, ye couldn’t pay me to set foot there ever again.”

Devaney changed his tack: “Mrs. Hernan, how would you say the Osbornes get on with their neighbors?”

“Ah, sure, not great. But Brendan McGann’s always been a bit mad, if you ask me. And you could see his sister playing the innocent, trying to sink her hooks into Mr. Hugh the minute his poor wife was gone. She’s got some awful neck, that Una McGann. No shame at all. Oh, it’d sicken ye.”