Buried in a Bog (29 page)

The old man shook his head. “No fault on you—it’s not your doing. My father did wrong, and you shouldn’t have to pay the price. And now we can give my uncle a proper burial.”

Maura was relieved when Patrick Hurley stood and said, “Mr. McCarthy, I need to get back to Skibbereen and see to Danny Mullan. Jerry?” He turned to Jerry, who looked at him with feeble defiance. “Your grandfather needs your help here. If I don’t charge you, can you keep yourself out of trouble? And I’ll need you to testify about what Danny did.”

“Yes…sir. And, uh…” He seemed confused about what to say to Maura. “I’m sorry about Danny—I shoulda stopped him, only I didn’t know how.”

“Thank you.” She looked to Hurley for guidance. “And thank you, Detective Hurley. Jerry deserves a chance. Mr. McCarthy? Maybe I can come back and talk to you again, when things aren’t so crazy.”

Hurley said gently, “Maura, we need to be going now. I’ll drop you back at Leap.”

“Sure. Fine.” Maura followed him wordlessly out the door and sat in the car while the detective went around to the other side and started the engine, then pulled out of the farmyard. Then she asked, “How much do you know about fraud and inheritance and property rights and all that stuff?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because to me it sounds like Denis’s father killed his brother so he could get control of the farm and sell it, or at least swap it. That document he came up with was probably a fake, which means he stiffed the poor widow and her children—isn’t that fraud or something? So who does the farm really belong to? Jeremiah sold the old place in Carrigeeny based on a murder and a forgery, but is there a statute of limitations for this sort of stuff?”

“Maura, I can’t answer most of that.” He glanced at her briefly. “I’m good on criminal law, but for the rest, you need to speak to a solicitor.” After a pause he went on. “You’ll press charges against Danny?”

“Damn straight I will—he deserves it. But I don’t want that poor old man to lose his home because of me. Is that all right? Legally, I mean?”

“I think it can be done. I’ll talk to the Clogagh gardaí,
make sure they keep an eye on Jerry. But from what I’ve seen, he’s not bad—he’s just too easily led by someone like Danny. But as for Danny, I have no problem sending him to prison.” He drove for a few miles before speaking again. “Are you all right, Maura?”

Maura turned over that question. “I…don’t know. I’m not sure why I came here at all, except that Gran wanted me to, and she’d never asked for much, so I promised her.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve been here a week, and in that time I somehow seem to have ended up discovering relatives I didn’t even know I had, and that includes one who was murdered by another one. And now I’m supposed to decide if my whatever-cousin should go to jail for being dumb and picking the wrong friends, which might mean that his grandfather will end up out on the street. Detective, what the heck am I supposed to think?”

“Maura, I can’t even begin to tell you.”

M
aura fell silent, trying to wrestle her feelings under control, and Patrick Hurley didn’t interrupt her, no doubt preoccupied by his own responsibilities in the case. But after a while the silence began to weigh on Maura. “What was that land business Denis McCarthy mentioned all about?”

“You mean the exchange? How much do you know about land ownership in Ireland?”

“Not a heck of a lot. Didn’t the English control everything, so the Irish couldn’t actually own land?”

Hurley nodded, watching the road. “That was true for a time. The tenants were Irish Catholics, and the landlords were English Protestants, who most often lived somewhere else. And the English didn’t want to put much into improving the land—they just wanted to collect their rents. The Irish
population kept growing, and that meant that the Irish landholdings kept getting smaller as they were split up within families.”

“So the Irish really did have something to complain about?” Maura said, almost to herself.

“They did. Did you think they complained for no reason?”

“I don’t know,” Maura said. “All I know is that a lot of the Irish guys I met around Boston thought that somebody owed them something. I guess I never believed that there were any facts behind it.”

“We Irish have been oppressed for centuries, and it colors our view of things. I can see that it would grate on you, taken out of this setting here. But things began to change in the nineteenth century, when the landlords first made it possible for the Irish tenants to buy the lands they’d rented and lived on for generations. That was the start.”

“You mean the guys I met in Boston were whining about something that had stopped over a hundred years ago?” Maura demanded.

Hurley glanced at her. “Do you want to learn something or not?”

“Sorry. I guess that sounded rude. It’s just that I can’t believe that Irish people hang on to a grudge for so long. But I guess it shouldn’t surprise me, considering Northern Ireland is still separate, right?”

“It’s changing—slowly. But let’s not get into politics, right? The attachment to the land runs deep in Ireland, so we’re still living with the results. As you yourself have seen. In the case of the McCarthys, it led to a murder, whether intended or not. It began in the late 1800s, when the English
government started letting the Irish buy certain areas of land, though the English were still in control up through the 1920s. After independence, the 1923 Land Act bought out the remaining landlords and sold the land to the tenants. It sounds like that was when the McCarthy brothers started arguing. The Land Commission financed the farmers, made it possible for them to buy land at favorable rates. And over time, that became a financial, political, and social issue. Some in government wanted to keep the farmers on the land, to maintain the traditional rural culture of the small family farm, but at the same time, to guarantee some economic stability for those farmers and their families. Others thought that was a bad thing for the agricultural economy—that system was inefficient and discouraged modern improvements.”

Maura held up one hand. “Enough! The landlords caved, then the government came along and made it easier for the farmers—which was about everybody—to buy land. Some people liked the idea, but others wanted to stay where they were. Does that cover it?”

“Near enough. It made sense in practical terms, since in the old days the land was broken up into many tiny lots, so the farmers spent a lot of time just going from one to another. We tend to see the old system as just another way the English tried to keep the poor Irish peasants down. It made it difficult for them to do more than hang on, so Jeremiah McCarthy had the right idea, only he ran head on into his brother’s emotional connection to the land. Once his brother was dead, he did take the deal and made a go of it.”

Maura mulled over what Hurley had said. Apparently she hadn’t inherited the Irish need to have a piece of earth to
cling to. But then, it had never been an option—for Gran or for her.

Detective Hurley dropped her in front of Ellen’s. Before shutting the car door, Maura leaned in and asked, “Do you think you’ll need me for anything else?”

“Most likely. I’ll give you a call once I’ve got Danny squared away. But you can stop looking over your shoulder now. You’ll be around for a bit longer?”

“Yeah, I’ll be here.” Maura watched as he pulled away, headed back toward Skibbereen. She checked her watch and was surprised to see that it was barely one. So much had happened, in so little time!

Maura realized that the first thing she needed to do was apologize to Ellen for bringing so much trouble to her household, even if it wasn’t her fault. At least she could tell her that both murders had been solved and that nobody was likely to come after her again. Instead of using her key, she knocked at the front door.

Ellen answered promptly. “There you are, Maura! Oh, come in, come in. How’d you fare?”

“Very well, actually. We figured out who the man from the bog was
and
who the guy who broke in was, all at once.”

“You’re having me on! The two of them together? Come sit and tell me all about it.”

Repeating the story to Ellen over another cup of tea in the kitchen made it clearer in Maura’s mind. Danny the Dublin thug had wanted to keep his thug skills polished by using them on unsuspecting locals and clueless tourists, and he’d decided that Maura posed a threat to his cushy little hideaway in Clogagh. Jerry was a jellyfish who couldn’t stand up to Danny. Old Denis was…old and couldn’t
control his grandson, much less a Dublin delinquent. But his memory was intact, and he had given them the whole story behind the old murder.
Does every family around here have this kind of story lurking in their past?
Maura wondered.

Ellen was satisfyingly sympathetic. “Oh, you poor girl. So they arrested the Dubliner? I’m not surprised someone from away was behind it all. Poor Denis McCarthy—the Clogagh one, not the one from the bog, although he’s had no luck either.”

“I’m going to go see Bridget Nolan next—I’m sure she’d want to hear how this all came out.” And about Maura’s own connection, going back to the dead man in the bog.

“Ah, she’s a grand lady, isn’t she? And Mick’s so good to her,” Ellen said. When Maura didn’t respond, she added, “Maura? Are you listening?”

Maura shook her head to clear it. “Sorry, Ellen. I was just trying to figure out all the connections. On the one hand, it’s not a big country, right? But on the other hand, a move from one place to another twenty miles away made a big difference for the McCarthys. It’s all new to me, although I suppose everybody around here knows who’s related to who. It makes me sad now to realize how much Gran never told me, that I’m just finding out. I don’t know why she never talked about any of this, and now I can’t even ask her anything.” She paused before adding, “Though I know I shouldn’t be mad that Gran didn’t tell me, when I guess I never asked either and didn’t want to know a lot about it. I wish I could talk to her now, but it’s too late.”

“Ah, love, I’m sure she knows. Maybe she’s even watching out for you.” Ellen glanced at her watch. “Heavens, is
that the time! I’ve got to retrieve Gráinne from the creche. You’ll be back later?”

“Much later—I’ll be at Sullivan’s tonight, after I’ve seen Mrs. Nolan. Let’s hope we can all sleep better tonight.”

“God willing,” Ellen said, bustling out the door.

O
ne week.
She’d been in Ireland all of one week, Maura realized as she drove toward Bridget Nolan’s house in Knockskagh. She couldn’t remember ever having spent a more bizarre week in her whole life. It wasn’t all bad, and it could have been so much worse, but she really didn’t know what to think. People had all been kind to her—well, with the exception of Dublin Danny—but she felt like such an outsider. She didn’t know even the most basic things about her own family that other people expected her to know. And that was her own fault. Worse, it was not something that could be made up in a week, or even in a year.

She pulled into her usual space across from Mrs. Nolan’s enclosed yard and parked. What looked like Mick’s car was already parked in front of the house. Thick clouds were
moving quickly through the sky, and Maura wondered if it was going to rain again. With a sigh she climbed out of the car, but before she could reach the door, Mick opened it, then closed it quietly behind him.

“She’s napping,” he said.

“Oh,” Maura replied. “Should I wait?”

He didn’t meet her eyes, looking down at his feet rather than at her. “There’s something we need to talk about. Will you walk with me?”

“Sure, okay,” Maura said. “Where did you want to go?”

“No matter. Down the lane will do.” He turned abruptly and started walking up to the lane that bordered Mrs. Nolan’s land, and Maura followed, bewildered.

She caught up with him at the turn. “You’re being kind of weird. Have I done something?”

“I’m guessing you found out who the man in the bog was, you and the detective,” he said flatly, stopping to lean against the stone wall at the side of the road, staring out at the landscape. “I’d hoped that it wouldn’t come out, when they found him,” he said, more to himself than her.