Lucinda Sly (11 page)

The horse stopped in front of the stable. He tried twice to dismount but he nearly fell to the ground.

‘I’ll knock him off the horse,’ Dempsey suggested to Lucinda.

‘Do not,’ she said, shivering with fear.

Sly succeeded in dismounting at the third attempt. They heard him coming in the door not without difficulty. Dempsey had a clear sight of him as he had left the door of the back kitchen ajar. In a short while Sly staggered into the chair. In a
few short minutes he was snoring.

Lucinda and Dempsey went into the kitchen. Lucinda walked towards the axe that was standing against the wall. She gave it to Dempsey. He went up to Sly and raised it over his head but
lowered
it slowly towards the ground and moved back three steps.

‘I can’t do it,’ he said in a low voice.

Lucinda took the axe from him and walked towards Sly but she couldn’t do it either. Suddenly Dempsey found the courage and changed his mind. He took the axe from Lucinda’s hand and
landed
a fierce blow on the side of Sly’s head. He fell from his chair in a heap on the ground. Lucinda took the gun from her apron and gave it to Dempsey. Without hesitating he put a bullet in Sly’s brain. They each caught Sly by an arm and dragged his body out into the haggard. Dempsey fired another bullet at the wall of the house. They would tell the police that the murderer fired that shot so that neither of them would come out until he had escaped. They both went into the house leaving Sly’s body in the haggard. That is where it would be when the police arrived.

Neither of them slept that night but sat in front of the fire
waiting
for the eastern sky to brighten.

‘I wonder if any of the neighbours heard the noise of the bullet when I fired that shot,’ Dempsey said.

‘We will soon know,’ Lucinda answered looking at the axe with which he struck the fatal blow.

Dempsey got up out of his chair, took the axe, walked over to the fire and examined it in the light of the flames. He wanted to find out if there was any trace of blood on it. He got an old rag and
wiped the axe with it. Then he put it back in its usual place.

‘In the name of God, Lucinda,’ he cried, ‘what have we done? We will both be hanged surely.’

‘We will if you open your big mouth,’ Lucinda warned him. ‘Shake yourself, man … Wasn’t it one of Walter’s enemies who
followed
him home from the fair that shot him? I can tell you that Walter had a surplus of enemies in this parish not to mention throughout the county. About three years ago didn’t he evict a family down the road – you know, the Brennans. Yes, and what about the horse buyers? Half of them are the breed of the Sheridans and of the tinkers. Some of those would kill you at the turn of a penny.’

That eased Dempsey somewhat.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘You are right without a doubt. Did you put the gun back into its box?’

‘I didn’t yet,’ she admitted. ‘I’ll get the box. There’s a half dozen bullets at the back. Put two of them into the gun and I’ll put it back under the bed in our room.’

‘I know nothing about guns,’ Dempsey said, opening the back of the gun while Lucinda gave him two bullets.

He put them into the chamber, eased the hammer back and replaced it in the box.

They put no more turf on the fire – maybe there would be questions to be asked if a big fire was lighting when Lucinda called the neighbours. She put a couple of potatoes roasting in the embers and she asked Dempsey if he would eat a few. But he had no appetite after what he had done.

They spent the night sitting there looking across at each other and neither of them had much to say. Every minute was like an hour and every hour was like a week until at last the eastern sky began to brighten over the land.

‘We will let day dawn and then I’ll go for help. You stay with the body,’ Lucinda said.

They waited another hour and by that time it was bright enough for Lucinda to take the short-cut through the field to her nearest neighbours.

She began to cry and shout when she was within fifty yards of Ben Stacey’s front door. As soon as she got to his house she began to beat the door like a madwoman.

‘Walter is dead! Walter is dead!’ she shrieked. ‘Get up, Ben, and help us!’

The door opened and there stood Ben in his drawers.

‘In the name of God, woman, what’s up with you?’ he demanded.

‘Somebody murdered my husband last night,’ Lucinda wailed.

‘Wait a few minutes,’ Stacey replied, calming her. ‘Draw your breath and tell me the whole story.’

‘I was sitting by the fire late last night,’ Lucinda sobbed, ‘and waiting for Walter to come home from the fair. Dempsey had gone to sleep. I heard the horse trotting down the road. He stopped
outside
the stable door. I was just about to get up off my chair to put some food on the table for him. Then I heard another horse
running
at speed down the road and into the haggard. I heard a sound like the sound of a gun. I had reached the door by this time. I saw Walter falling from his horse. The rider of the other horse fired
another bullet in the direction of the house and told me to go indoors and not to move until morning or he would put a bullet through my head as well. I ran into the kitchen. Dempsey had just gotten up and was standing beside me. I told him there was a
madman
on horseback outside in the haggard and that he had
murdered
Walter. He threatened that he would shoot anybody who put their head outside the door until morning. Go to the house – John Dempsey is there and I will go to the other neighbours for help.’

‘Do not,’ Stacey replied in panic. ‘Go home and we will be with you without delay.’

Ben Stacey woke up the rest of the neighbours and, when he had done that, he went straight across the field to Walter Sly’s house. When he reached the fateful place he saw Lucinda standing at the stable door staring at Walter’s body. Dempsey was taking the saddle from Sly’s horse and he released the animal out into the field near the house.

‘Would you go to his body, Ben,’ she begged him, ‘and see if there is any spark of life in him. There should be a fistful of notes in one of his pockets and a pocket watch and chain in his waistcoat pocket.’

‘I won’t for a few minutes,’ he replied with caution. ‘The
neighbours
are coming. I’ll wait for somebody to be beside me when I go through his pockets.’

John Griffin was the next neighbour to arrive. Stacey asked him to go to the body with him so that they could go through Sly’s pockets. They searched his waistcoat pocket first looking for the
watch, but not even the chain was there. They went through the rest of his pockets but they found nothing. No doubt it would have been difficult for them as Lucinda had ordered Dempsey to go through his pockets and she gave him the watch, as if it were a present, before she went to look for her neighbours’ help. Lucinda told them it appeared that someone had followed him from the fair.

‘Maybe,’ she suggested, ‘it was somebody who saw him getting money from a buyer as payment for the two horses he sold.’

It was a good, believable story to put before the police and the judge.

Lucinda asked Ben Stacey to go to the barracks in Bilboa to report the tragedy to the police and request that they come
without
delay. She said it would not be right to move the body from the place where the murder happened.

Lucinda expected that maybe it would be her son, Thomas Singleton, who would come as it was his mother’s husband who had been murdered but he went to higher authority. Captain Battersby told him not to go near the house or the body until he himself was with him, and, even then, not to have anything to do with the case because of his relationship with the family. Because it was Sunday, it was some time after lunch when the police arrived at the scene. Captain Battersby and Thomas Singleton were the first to arrive along with a constable named Ernest Hudson. Thomas ran to his mother and hugged her. She told him the story that she and Dempsey had made up.

‘Ah, Mam,’ he advised her, ‘you will have to tell your story to
one of the other constables. I can’t have hand, act or part in the case.’

Captain Battersby and Ernest Hudson examined the place where Sly’s body lay and they examined the body as well even though the doctor was due later to perform a post-mortem.

Minister John Doyne arrived and he sympathised with Lucinda and the neighbours, most of whom were at the scene by now and each one had their own opinion about what had
happened
. Captain Battersby and Constable Ernest Hudson spent more than an hour examining the scene of the crime.

When the doctor arrived and had examined the body he spoke to the captain.

‘It would appear,’ he informed him, ‘that the person who
murdered
this man was no more than a yard from him. His moustache is singed by the gunpowder.’

The captain approached Constable Hudson. ‘What did his wife tell you,’ he questioned him, ‘that a horseman murdered him?’

‘Yes, sir,’ the policeman answered.

The captain looked at Lucinda and walked towards her. As soon as he drew near her, she took a few steps back and stood near Dempsey.

‘You reported,’ he began, ‘that a horseman came into the
haggard
and fired a shot from a gun. How far from your husband was he when he fired that shot?’

Lucinda took a few seconds before she answered as she knew well that the captain had a reason for asking a question like that.

‘Oh,’ she replied, ‘I suppose he was nine or ten yards from him.’

The captain looked at Lucinda suspiciously.

‘Did your husband ever have a gun?’ he continued.

‘Oh, ah … I don’t know,’ she replied somewhat apprehensively.

Her son was present when she made that answer.

He looked directly at the captain.

‘He had a handgun he got a few years ago when he evicted the Brennans,’ he informed him. ‘They swore he would be found dead in a ditch.’

‘There was no gun by the body when I asked Ben Stacey and John Griffin to search his pockets,’ Lucinda offered. ‘He sold a pair of horses at the fair but, if he did, that money was missing along with his pocket watch.’

Dempsey was only a couple of yards from them and when he heard mention of the pocket watch he grew afraid. He told Lucinda that he would fill a bag of turf in the haggard for the night’s fire. The captain gave him permission to do so but ordered him to come back without delay. Constable Ernest Hudson told Catherine Landricken, a neighbour of the Sly’s, to go with Dempsey and help him with the turf. She followed Dempsey. He was ahead of her for a while. There were seven stacks of oats in the haggard. When Dempsey was going past the seventh stack, he took the watch from his pocket, lifted the bottom of a sheaf in the middle of the stack and hid the watch in it. Catherine Landricken saw him tidying the sheaf and she knew that he had hidden
something
there.

Captain Battersby ordered Lucinda and some of the neighbours into the house as he couldn’t continue with his
investigations because of the large crowd that was congregating. Many had travelled some distance out of curiosity and there were newspaper reporters there too. The captain knew that rumours would spread without foundation from such a gathering.

‘All I want in the house,’ he told them, ‘are those who were
present
here at first this morning.’

Although Thomas Singleton had no part to play in the
investigation
, he went into the house with the others as it was his
mother
who was being questioned by the captain.

‘If you don’t know that your husband had a gun,’ the captain addressed Lucinda, ‘we will have to search the house and sheds.’

On hearing this, Singleton spoke.

‘He had a gun,’ he said, ‘and I know that he wasn’t carrying it last night as I had a drink with him.’

He told the captain that Walter took off his coat while he was drinking with him and that he had mentioned that the gun was at home. Singleton had always been concerned that somebody would steal the gun from his coat.

‘Where in the house do you think he would hide it?’ the captain asked.

Singleton looked at his mother.

‘It was in a wooden box he bought with the gun,’ he offered. ‘Look under the bed.’

Lucinda turned the colour of death and she almost fell to the ground.

Captain Battersby was looking at Lucinda and he became
suspicious
when he saw Dempsey standing beside her and propping
her up. He told Constable Hudson to go to the room and look under the bed. Hudson had gone only a minute when he spoke from the room. He had found the wooden box. He gave it to the captain.

‘There is a key for this. Have you any idea, my good woman, where your husband used to keep it?’ he continued, knowing that Lucinda was under pressure.

‘I know nothing about a key,’ she answered boldly.

The captain was growing impatient by this time. He knew that Lucinda was becoming anxious and the servant boy was no better. He looked from person to person around the kitchen.

‘The neighbours can go home now,’ he said. ‘You will be called to the barracks in a few days to make your statements about this morning’s events. Go now and thank you for your help on this tragic occasion.’

Even though they would have preferred to see what was to come, the neighbours went out the door in ones and twos.

When there was nobody left in the kitchen but Lucinda Sly, John Dempsey, Singleton, Constable Hudson and himself, Captain Battersby looked straight at Lucinda.

‘Give me the key, my good woman,’ he demanded.

‘Look,’ Singleton offered, ‘I have a key to the box in the
barracks
in Bilboa. Walter Sly gave it to me when he bought the gun.’

‘I would say that Lucinda has a key,’ the captain said taking hold of Lucinda and searching her.

He took a small key out of Lucinda’s apron pocket and gave it to Hudson.

‘Try this,’ he said with a satisfied grin on his face.

Hudson put the key in the lock and opened the box.