Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

And there was the day the cow got into the garden, and he’d never seen such flapping about of arms and shouting in the unknown tongue while the cow chewed, solemn as a judge, and would not be moved. Someone had brought a halter and rope and managed to drag the creature from the garden, but the damage was done and quite a lot of moaning and groaning was lifted onto the brim of the morning along with a scent of trampled leeks. In true Irish fashion, a kitchen helper had the wits to appreciate the offering the cow left behind, forking it off to the side to cure. Paid ’er dues, he said, pragmatic. They had all got behind a spade or a rake and busied themselves until the garden looked nearly fit again. He’d pitched in as well, and later enjoyed the evening’s special: braised leek soup. ‘Bruised, more like it,’ he’d said, which raised a laugh.

The memories were a movie playing in his head, something slow and indistinct with a tone of sepia to it.

They hadn’t spent much time at the lodge, for they’d been out and about trying to see and do it all, to swallow it all down without chewing. As for the menu, he said, he didn’t remember anything like homemade verbena ice cream or the semifreddo business. Supper had been delicious enough, though compared to the comestibles of this visit, unremarkable. Breakfast was usually brown bread, coffee, jam, and fruit, at a table with a short leg propped up by a packet of matches. He vaguely remembered the young child with dark hair and large eyes whom he knew now to have been Bella-she had not mingled with the guests.

He didn’t remember any dogs, though he had recently got one, or more precisely, one had got him. Nor could he remember anything in particular about the guests-then again, come to think of it, there’d been a Mrs. McSomethingorother, who wore overwrought hats and looked like a character from a Victorian pen-and-ink drawing.

‘It’s coming back to me,’ he said. ‘She traveled with twelve place settings of sterling flatware.’

‘Surely not.’

‘She recited a child’s poem, something like, I’m tired of eating bread with crusts and going to bed too early, and something, something, something about her hair being curly.’

‘But why did she travel with twelve place settings of flatware?’

He pondered. ‘I think it was to prevent anyone at home making off with it.’

‘Why did she come to the lodge? Did she fish?’

‘Like a maniac, as I recall.’

‘Ah,’ she said, wrinkling her brow.

‘So,’ he said, ending his narrative of former days at Broughadoon.

‘Everything’s certainly different now,’ she said. ‘Anna says Bella is in a terrible state-but then, Anna doesn’t look so well herself.’

‘Let’s not dwell on it,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘Where shall we worship on Sunday? Church of Ireland or Tad’s place?’

‘Tad’s place, don’t you think?’

They gazed at Ben Bulben, feeding what would soon enough be memory.

‘I’m painting William this evening-by firelight. He said he’d have a nice wash today, and Anna will trick him out in his Sunday best. I’ve never painted anything at all by firelight-so many shadows, and most of them moving. Maybe I can’t do it.’

‘You can do it.’

She turned her head and looked at him, solemn. ‘Thanks. I adore you. Who do you think stole the painting?’

‘I’ve heard a good bit about Liam’s brother and his urgent need for money.’

They hadn’t really talked about what happened. The idea of leaving and then staying, plus the coming and going of Walter and Katherine, had largely occupied their thoughts since the Barret disappeared.

‘Jack Slade,’ she said. ‘Let’s say he did it. Then comes the awful thing at the fair and he gets himself locked away, and it stays wherever he hid it, and when he gets out of prison, he fences it and he’s a very rich stone coper-I think that’s the word Liam used.’

‘I saw Liam this morning. He says Slade is done for-for a few years, anyway.’

‘How was Liam, I haven’t seen him.’

‘Beating himself up. Not only was it something he loved, but it was important to his dad. Then there’s dropping the ball on the insurance-they’ll get something from the business coverage, but not much. Throw in the armoire business and the Tubbercurry incident, and it’s been a while since I’ve seen such a hailstorm.’

The clouds today were swift; sunlight broke over the green hide of the ben, vanished, reappeared.

‘The question is how anybody got it off the place at all,’ he said. ‘No fingerprints, no footprints, no tire marks. If someone could figure that out…’

She slapped at a midge. ‘That’s too hard for me. I’m more interested in who, not how. Maybe a former guest. Or a neighbor?’

‘I haven’t seen any neighbors,’ he said. And Seamus was not in the lineup of possible thugs, he thought, absolutely not. ‘Given the size of it, it would be awkward to carry any distance. Managing it would probably take two people. How about the wine merchant we met coming out when Aengus was driving us in? He parks his truck off-road, and he and a henchman slip down to the lodge…’

‘But if he walks down the lane, he leaves footprints-the Garda said the lane was muddy.’

‘Right. Anyway, if he managed somehow to get there without leaving a trace, he and the henchman pop into the dining room, and in a flash they lift it off the two hooks and away they go.’

‘How would he know the dining room would be empty then?’

‘He watches through the French doors.’

‘But he still wouldn’t know that everyone was in the library, that nobody was likely to come back to the dining room and catch them at it.’

‘Then it’s an inside job. The wine guy knew when people would be out of the room and for how long.’ He felt suddenly foolish in the guise of amateur sleuth.

‘Would they have done it, Anna and Liam, for the insurance money? It’s a horrible thought, I can’t believe I said it. But would they?’

‘If they’d done it for money,’ he said, ‘they would have beefed up the insurance policy. Anna says the coverage was minimal. Besides, I’m convinced Liam loved that painting.’

‘I’m sorry I said it,’ she confessed. ‘Then what if Paddy insured it?’

‘Could be. Who knows?’

‘I wish I’d read more P. D. James. By the way, I don’t think they say henchman anymore-you are so quaint.’

‘Quaint,’ he said with distaste. Being a village parson had turned him off the word entirely-it was something tourists occasionally said not only of Mitford but of him when trooping through town like they owned the place.

She was still laughing.

‘Help yourself,’ he said.

She narrowed her eyes, looked at him approvingly. ‘It’s been ages since you let me paint you.’

‘You made me look like Churchill.’

She pulled a face.

‘Or maybe it was Mussolini.’

‘I could do much better now. What I’m after is that little quirky thing about your mouth, the one your mother had in pictures I’ve seen of her. It’s so fleeting-but I feel I could catch it now.’

Save for her, he would have jumped ship on all this. But he was in and he was glad; it felt right.

‘I’m excited about painting William-all those lovely wrinkles around his blue eyes, and that wicked scar on his temple. A fine nose, too-perhaps it was Roman before it was bashed in. Did the Romans come through Ireland?’

‘The Romans came through everywhere.’

‘William blames the Vikings for red hair, which he says isn’t Irish at all. It came from th’ bloody murderin’ Vikin’s, he says-from th’ numerous rapes an’ rampages that sullied th’ black hair of th’ Gaelic nation.’