The Death of an Irish Consul (3 page)

“I’ll get my hat, my mysterious friend.” Gallup pulled himself out of the seat and made for the closet.

“It happened in Dingle,” said McGarr, “at the man’s vacation home. We found him in an outbuilding where…” McGarr began telling him every detail he
had discovered in his investigation except for the inscription on the back of the wristwatch, and before they left the office McGarr put in a call to his own office in Ireland.

Hughie Ward came on the line. “As you surmised, Chief, the bullet did remain whole in Hitchcock’s skull. And you could be right as well about the gun. The impression on the cartridge casing is odd. We’ve narrowed it down to J2S-P Baretta automatics, then certain types of twenty-two Walthers, Colts, three models of Harrington and Richardson stock, and an Iver Johnson kick-shell type. There are over a thousand guns like that registered in Britain and Ireland and that’s probably only the tip of the iceberg.”

“That’s so satisfying.”

“What?”

“Being right.”

“The cord used to wrap his hands and feet can only be purchased in commercial lengths and is used mostly to strap down cargo in air transports. So much of it is sold that this line of investigation will doubtless prove unavailing, although Bernie is presently pursuing it.”

In the background McGarr could hear somebody grumbling.

“Now, then—we turned up no fingerprints but Hitchcock’s, the cleaning woman’s, some other female latents which are probably his wife’s. Whoever ate with him and drugged the wine must have worn gloves or kept in mind absolutely everything he touched and later wiped it down.

“The autopsy of the body shows nothing much new. The killer had, as we suspected, let the drug wear off so that the trace in Hitchcock’s blood would be too slight to permit a complete analysis. Using those traces, however, Al McAndrew at the lab says it’s some chemical he’s sure he’s never encountered before, and so, rather than ruin whatever amounts the cork contains, he’s sent his preliminary disclosures over to Professor Cole of the Trinity College chemistry department. If she can’t determine what the substance is, nobody can.

“How is it going over there, Chief? Have you questioned his wife yet?”

“Not yet. The Scotland Yard number is eight-seven-three-nine-two and I’ll be at Hitchcock’s Avenue Road address. I don’t know the phone number but you can find it in the registry, if you need me.”

After discussing the details of a pending court case and some routine office business, McGarr rang off.

A constable then drove Gallup and McGarr toward St. John’s Wood.

The house of at least a dozen rooms sat, like its neighbors, right on the street. Its old brick had been painted white. A brass door knocker, door handle, kick, and nameplates gleamed with fresh polish. Window sashes, shutters, and wrought-iron street guards were black.

An elderly butler answered the door and, taking Gallup’s card, directed them into a small sitting room
furnished with comfortable wing-back chairs and a sofa. Leather-bound books lined two walls and a pale blue oriental rug, into which a green-and-yellow design had been worked, covered the floor. The butler lit the gas fire in the hearth.

Ten minutes later, a woman appeared in the door. Mrs. Hitchcock’s facial features were what McGarr always imagined when upper-class English ladies were mentioned. Perhaps it was her slight smile, as though her thin lips were unable to cover fully her protrusive teeth, or her bent nose, high cheekbones, or the broad reach of her forehead, but the impression remained quite strong for McGarr. A woman past fifty who was wearing a high-necked, aquamarine dress, her hair neatly coiffured and tinted a delicate blond, she was the mistress of the mansion to McGarr, the vacationer in the Rolls speeding down to her holdings in Killarney, the lady under the parasol holding the fifty-pound ticket stubs in the grandstand at the Leopardstown race course. To admit that the face was somewhat equine would be to say she resembled a very pretty horse indeed. Her ankles were thin and she crossed them as she sat. “Would you care for some refreshment, gentlemen?”

“No, thank you, ma’am,” said Gallup. “Our visit is official and a matter of some delicacy.” He firmed his upper lip so that his moustache spread in a somber curl across his face. He was unable to look at her directly; his eyes searched the pattern of the carpet.

After a few moments, Gallup suddenly glanced up at her and said, “It is my sad duty to tell you that your husband is dead.”

She neither blinked nor in any way altered her expression. “Where is he now?”

“In Dublin. We have to ask you to go there to make a positive identification.”

“How did he die?”

“He was murdered with a gun.”

Still, she hadn’t blinked. She turned her head to McGarr. “Who is this man?”

“Peter McGarr, ma’am. Chief Inspector of Detectives, Special Branch, Dublin Castle Garda. I’d like to ask you a few questions, if I may.”

She stood. “I must make a phone call first, if you’ll excuse me please.” On her first step, she faltered slightly, steadied herself on the doorjamb, and walked resolutely out into the foyer.

“She’s a cool one, what?” Gallup said. “I wonder who she’s calling, her barrister? Could she have done it herself?”

McGarr shook his head. The possibility that a woman might have killed Hitchcock had never really occurred to him, since the crime was most remarkable for its utter lack of passion, attention to detail, and swift execution once the incriminating evidence had been eliminated. McGarr did feel, however, very uncomfortable indeed, since he knew very well whom she was phoning—whoever was presently C. of SIS.

When she returned, she said from the doorway,
“Chief Constable Gallup is wanted on the phone.” She still held Gallup’s card in her hand, and she didn’t move when he squeezed by her. As the butler directed Gallup down the foyer to the telephone, she merely stared at McGarr. Her features were expressionless, completely devoid of feeling, as though she had long prepared herself for this eventuality, that this was a final working out of a scene she had played over and over in her mind.

“Peter!” Gallup said even before he got to the sitting room. “Pardon me, ma’am.” He squeezed past her, taking one long stride onto the carpet and plunging his fists into his suitcoat pocket. “Why didn’t you tell me who Mr. Hitchcock is, er—” he glanced at Mrs. Hitchcock.

“Was,” she supplied.

McGarr decided then that he would have to feign innocence, if only to preserve his friendship with Gallup. “Well, who was he?”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“A retired civil servant with the Coal Board, I believe, although I must admit that this house and the one in Dingle seem rather pretentious for even the most enviable Civil Service appointment.”

“Edward had an inheritance,” she supplied somewhat too readily. “My family has money.”

“Is that why you didn’t want me involved in this case?” Gallup demanded once more. “Because you knew you’d have to lie to me?”

McGarr sighed and looked at the gas fire in the grate. “I didn’t lie to you. I told you the facts I discov
ered in my investigation. I’m sure Mrs. Hitchcock isn’t interested in hearing us squabble.”

She said, “Indeed I am not.”

“Then perhaps I might ask you a very few questions concerning your husband, his reason for being at the house in Ireland, and the nature of his present involvements.”

“No, you may not. Frankly, I don’t know why he would have been in Ireland. For all I knew he was still in Great Britain. I had good reason never to question my husband about his activities. Constable Gallup will explain the situation to you in the police car. Good day.” She turned and walked up the foyer.

“Ned—this is a murder investigation, not a house-breaking.” McGarr thought it wise to act like the hurt party now. “I didn’t come all the way over here to be brushed off by some”—he waved his hand—“self-important widow. I want the facts and, damn it, I’m going to get them. If not, then your department will see how quickly cooperation on the IRA and the troubles in the North will cease.” This was a bluff. McGarr was a policeman, not a politician. He could only recommend noncooperation and would never consider doing so just because of one murder investigation that London chose to quash.

The butler cleared his throat. He was standing in the foyer, holding both of their hats.

In the police car, Ned Gallup told McGarr who Hitchcock had been and then directed the driver to take them to the Proscenium, the men’s club at which, ru
mor had it, most of the important SIS business was worked out over pink gins. Present C. wanted to meet them.

Gallup was now in a foul mood. “Two days on the job,” he kept saying. “Two days and what? A world-darkening blunder. How did I not recognize the name?”

“We’ve worked with these people before on the Continent, Ned, remember? They change procedures, contacts, controls, drops, et cetera, monthly. All this is smoke and shadow, secrecy for the sake of secrecy. You’re hungry. If they feed us, you’ll feel better.” But McGarr had begun to wonder why the old boys of SIS wanted to see them. Present C. had only to call the commissioner of Scotland Yard to get the whole thing kicked under the rug. And Dublin was sure to honor a request for secrecy as well.

Thus, as the car weaved through noon-hour traffic along the esplanade of Hyde Park, McGarr devised several explanations for SIS curiosity: for some reason as yet unknown to McGarr, SIS had sponsored the assassination of Hitchcock and now wanted to know how much McGarr had uncovered; SIS had an inkling who might have killed Hitchcock and wanted the facts to confirm this suspicion; SIS had no idea of who had done this thing or why, and the murder shocked and surprised them too. In spite of all the rumors he had heard about the sullen manipulation of agents in the field, how the section chiefs sat back in the Proscenium and wrote off operatives when their usefulness had
passed, he was certain, again, that these were men of goodwill who would respond, after some prodding, to his need to know the truth. McGarr thought fleetingly of the inscription on the back of Hitchcock’s watch. Certainly intelligence-gathering operations were, in some ways, important to the maintenance of world peace.

The Proscenium was on Broadway, not far from SIS headquarters. The black and canopied marquee was a bit too grand for the squat, granite building. The porter opened the rear door of the police car and said, “Colonel Cummings’s man is awaiting you at the top of the stairs.” Up a long flight of gleaming marble, a man dressed in tails and a stiff white tie was standing. He didn’t appear even to look at Gallup and McGarr as they approached, but simply walked down the hallway which old wood and portraits of past club members made dark.

They passed reading and billiard rooms, a library, a bar, several offices, a large banquet hall, and were finally escorted into a small dining room which light gray walls and spanking linen tablecloths lit. Napkins were fanned in the water goblets, and tropical plants with wide and rubbery leaves framed French windows that offered a view of a miniature Augustan garden.

Four men had been conversing in front of one of these windows. Now they turned to Gallup and McGarr, and one of them, a middle-aged man, advanced with his hands clasped behind his back as though about
to review troops at a dress parade. “Gallup, I take it, and…ah…”

“McGarr,” said Gallup.

The man allowed his eyes, which were slightly glassy from drink, to run down McGarr’s dark raincoat, his charcoal gray suit, and black bluchers. He then looked McGarr in the face and said to Gallup, “Does he have any identification?”

“Oh.” Gallup pulled his arms out of his raincoat. “No need, no need. I worked for Peter when I was with Interpol. He’s genuine.”

Again the man considered McGarr briefly. “If you say so.” He took Gallup by the arm and directed him toward the group of men who were still standing near the window. “Meet my associates. Edward Gallup, this is…”

McGarr asked one of the attendants where a public phone might be, walked out of the dining room and down the hall to the cloakroom, where he deposited his raincoat. He wanted to be able to retrieve it in case present C., this Cummings fellow, should prove even less of a man of goodwill than he had first shown himself to be.

In the public phone booth, he phoned the Trinity College, Dublin, chemistry department collect. When, at length, Dr. Cole came on the line, he asked, “What have you found, Patricia?”

“I’m guessing it’s a ketobemidone compound, guessing because there was so very little of it on the top of that cork you sent me. Colorless, odorless, as
tasteless as distilled water. It’s very new, incredibly expensive because of a complicated cracking process, and totally unobtainable from any supply house since the price makes it commercially unfeasible as a substitute for any of the common anesthetics. If you want some, you’ve got to make it yourself and had better have a good lab and some skilled assistants. It’s volatile and unstable at high temperatures.”

“Good job, Pat. Thank you for the fast work.” McGarr was about to hang up, but said, “Hold on, Doctor—would you please call my office and tell them I’m at this number in London. That way I’ll save the citizens a few shillings.” He gave her both numbers and rang off.

He then called Hugh Madigan, who said, “Hitchcock was on a pension. I estimate that if he was receiving half-pay he got five thousand pounds per year. He had a small inheritance, as well, of about five hundred or so. Her family used to have scads of money around the turn of the century, but lost it through mismanagement and the failure to diversify. They made saddles, tack, and riding boots. Some one of her brothers ran off to Rhodesia with the last of the company funds about five years ago, and the business collapsed. She, however, hasn’t changed her habits, and still keeps a stable of show horses. One of her mares won the Derby last year. All things considered, it began to look like they had a lot of expenses and not much income, except for the Derby win which was a one-shot affair, so I did some further checking.

“I have a contact at the income tax office who discovered that Hitchcock had a full-time job as director of security for the ENI outfit’s Scotland operation, you know, their exploration for oil off the coast. That’s the Italian concern, I believe. What do the initials stand for, Peter?”