Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

Her mind was still elsewhere, she looked perplexed.

‘Coming down, Kav’na?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Do we agree we should leave?’

‘Probably. I suppose so. Yes.’

He checked his watch. ‘They’ll be arriving anytime.’

‘Have you told Anna or Liam?’

‘Anna.’

‘What did she say?’

‘That she would do the same.’

‘Where will we go?’

‘I called around before I brought your tray up. Emailed Dooley, by the way. Talked with a four-star inn in Sligo, but no dining and nothing on the ground floor. Two hotels were booked solid-high season, as you know. I’ll make more calls this afternoon; we’ll rent a car, of course.’

‘Do you think you can do it, the driving on the wrong side?’

‘I will do it,’ he said.

His cousin was true to form. Knocked out and ready for a decent sleep, Walter gave him the so-called cousin’s kiss, joined him in exclaiming the Kavanagh family motto, and hied to the room until dinner. He watched him climb the stairs, feeling strangely moved, even startled, by his cousin’s evident aging in the years since Walter served as his best man. To his mind, his first cousin had always been twelve years old-the only kid he ever knew who could make straight A’s and just as handily make short work of anyone who bullied him.

Katherine was also true to form. After a bit of washing up and two cups of Conor coffee, she slid back behind the wheel of the rented Fiat and was off like a shot. His wife waved from the passenger window.

Pud followed him into the lodge. In the kitchen, he sat at the pine table where the family took their meals, and ate the lunch left for him. There was the sense of being in the wake of a storm-but for occasional birdsong through the open windows, the place was as silent as stone.

Having found the number in his notebook, he dialed his distant cousin Erin Donovan who, on his previous trip to Sligo, had hosted the tea at which most of the liquid refreshment was ninety-proof.

‘Hullo, everyone. Don’t look for me in Killybegs ’til August thirty, I’m in Ibiza-no phone, no email, no worries, have a great summer!’ That place again. He didn’t leave a message.

Using Anna’s list of recommendations, he rang a couple of innkeepers-both jovial as all get-out, but no availabilities. Then, bingo, a double room with in-house dining and a spectacular view of the ancient cairn on Knocknarea, available tomorrow night only. Walter and Katherine would have no problem with driving them to Strandhill, where he would rent a car and find the wits to make further plans. He took out his credit card and booked the room.

He looked at Pud; Pud looked at him.

He changed into shorts and a T-shirt and in ten minutes was headed down the lake path at an easy gait. The very air was a lough, a deep swim of moisture and heat that moved like silk against his bare flesh. Things were shifting forward now-a room with a view, a new outlook; he felt the release of it. He was running along the shore near the hut when he glimpsed something moving in the reeds. A white swan pushed out upon the breast of water, soundless, the elegant, curved neck repeated in the looking glass below. ‘Hey,’ he said under his breath. ‘You’re beautiful.’ As with rainbows, he counted the sight of a swan a good omen.

He hung a right past the hut, Pud at his heels. Slapping midges and pouring sweat, he pushed through the woods, hopeful that Ireland was as free of ticks as of snakes.

As he reached the stone wall, he heard the distant mourning of the fiddle. Bella had gone before him to the Mass rock.

Pud growled, then barked.

‘Reverend Kav’na?’

He turned, startled. Liam’s detective connection, who had been on the scene last night-a stocky fellow with a bulbous nose and heavy eyebrows, wearing what appeared to be a wool suit over a turtleneck.

Corrigan held a wallet open to his credentials. ‘I hardly recognized you out of your collar, Reverend. Guess you don’t need to see this.’ He closed the wallet.

‘You gave me a start.’ Pud still barking.

‘May I ask what brought you into the woods?’

‘Looking for a Mass rock on the other side of the wall. Anna Conor gave me directions.’

‘My grandfather had a Mass rock on his place, called it an altar rock. ’t is sometimes found in a pair with a hollowed-out stone for a font. Do you know the history?’

‘Not entirely, no.’ He squatted and gave Pud a rub behind the ears.

‘Our priests used them in secret to conduct Mass. When th’ English were after exterminatin’ th’ Catholic church altogether, there was a price on the head of every priest-they were hunted like fox.’

‘How may I help you, Detective Corrigan?’

‘Merely wondering what you were about, Reverend. It seems all this began the night after you and Mrs. Kav’na arrived at Broughadoon.’

‘Correct.’ The poker club had done their own arriving before things began-but he said nothing.

‘Seen anyone about the place on a bicycle?’

‘Only the bicycle on the main road which we discussed earlier.’

‘Would you call yourself an art lover?’

He stood again. ‘Most definitely. My wife is an artist.’

‘Do you collect art?’

‘Hers.’

The fiddle keening in the long distance…

Corrigan smiled, ironic. ‘Were you familiar with the work of the senior George Barret before coming to Ireland?’

‘Enough to know his importance in Irish art history.’

‘Exiled himself to England.’

‘Yes.’

‘What are your plans for the remainder of your holiday?’ Corrigan had closed his wallet, was kneading the leather between his fingers as if by long habit.

‘We’re leaving tomorrow.’

‘I believe you were booked for several days yet.’

‘We were. But the recent business of the man in the armoire followed by last night’s distressing episode is hardly fodder for a pleasant holiday.’

‘Most unfortunate. And where would you and th’ missus be headed tomorrow?’

‘To Strandhill, I can’t recall the name of the place.’

‘I’ll get the name from you before we leave. You’ll be around?’

‘I will. Anything else, then?’

‘Not at the moment.’ Corrigan wiped his face with a handkerchief. ‘Close.’

Was there no seersucker to be had in the Eire, nor open collars? ‘If you’ve done with me…’ He headed for the wall.

‘No one over the wall, I’m afraid, ’til the Garda have a chance to get in and make a sweep. Cheerio, then.’ The ironic smile, and over the wall went Corrigan himself, as if he owned the place.

He retraced his passage through the woods and up to the lodge, then showered, dressed, and went downstairs, hearing in some distant quarter an electric drill. He poked around the library until he found a volume of Synge’s plays, and soon after sitting in the wing chair fell soundly asleep.

He heard the crunch of gravel in the car park, the slamming of the Fiat’s doors, voices. Thirty minutes of shut-eye had helped.

‘Did I snore?’ he asked Pud.

Cynthia careened in on her crutches. ‘We need to talk,’ she said. Through the open front door, he saw Katherine digging around in the trunk of their rental car.

From the throne of her chair, his wife told him everything.

‘I cannot believe, not even in my wildest imagination, that you would ever, I repeat, ever have allowed me to ride in the same car with your so-called Stirling Moss. It is a grave discredit to the memory of Mr. Moss to compare him with a perfectly crazed, lawless, and out-of-control imposter.’

‘Okay, okay,’ he said, holding up a hand in surrender. ‘Your hair looks great.’

‘My hair,’ she said, ‘is standing on end. Why did you ever, I repeat, ever think I’d be willing to tool around an entire country with this person at the wheel?’