The Haunting Ballad (30 page)

“So I'm no longer under suspicion in your eyes?” Patch asked Mr. O'Nelligan.

“If I thought you suspicious in this matter, it was due chiefly to your refusal two nights ago to firmly deny your involvement.”

“Well, a man doesn't like to be trounced with accusations,” Patch said without much passion.

“I see,” my partner replied flatly. “Tell me, did Lorraine Cobble ever suggest to you that she thought you were connected to the barracks attack?”

Patch looked perplexed. “No, but why should she? Why would she even be aware of events over in Ireland?”

“Miss Cobble was aware of many things,” Mr. O'Nelligan said vaguely.

“So is this why you asked us to come here?” Tim asked. “To hear Patch be exonerated?”

“In part.” Mr. O'Nelligan pulled out his pocket watch and consulted it.

Tim pressed on. “But why here? Why Mrs. Pattinshell's place?”

My colleague replaced his watch. “I presume that in this relatively small community the local musicians are all familiar with her and her reported abilities?”

“The ghost chanting?” Tim shrugged. “Sure, everyone knows about it.”

“So I suspected.”

“Not to say, of course, that everyone believes in it,” Tim added.

“I understand. We have two more guests expected, and one will be arriving quite soon. I should summon our hostess before he arrives.”

Mr. O'Nelligan stepped to the side of the room, lifted a black drape that covered an entrance there, and called for Mrs. Pattinshell.

Presently she appeared, her gaunt face fairly radiating displeasure. “More people? How many bodies do you intend to wedge into my living space?”

“Not many more,” my partner said.

“I've had enough, do you hear me? This is my home. Get out! Get out, all of you!”

Mr. O'Nelligan positioned himself in front of her. “As I've explained to you, madam, your acquiescence is required. We must see these events through to their end.”

“Not with me you won't!” She thrust a bony finger toward the door. “Go! Go! Practice your chicanery elsewhere.”

“Chicanery?” Mr. O'Nelligan's face hardened. “Need I remind you, my good woman, that it is
you
who have actively practiced subterfuge here? I think it would be to your advantage to comply with my requests. After all, you've attempted to misdirect a murder investigation, haven't you?”

Audrey whispered into my ear, “Misdirecting the investigation? What's he mean by that?”

“You'll see.” By that I meant
I'll
see, because I really didn't know where Mr. O'Nelligan was going with all this.

My partner's reprimand seemed to have put Mrs. Pattinshell in her place. With a grunt and a grimace, she dropped herself into her upholstered chair behind the lace-covered table.

A knock sounded on the door. Being the closest to it, I took on the doorman duties and found myself staring at a short, well-dressed man with a trim, graying Vandyke beard. His fedora was worn at a jaunty angle, and the white carnation in his lapel gave him added dash. For a befuddled moment, I wondered if Mr. O'Nelligan had brought in an uptown lawyer, or perhaps some ritzy gangster.

“Hey, you must be Buster's punk.” The voice was familiar, though its owner was certainly not. “Yeah, I can see it around the eyes. It's me, kid. Smack.”

I gaped at him. The Smack I'd imagined on the phone was a burly hulk in a cheap, wrinkled sports jacket. The version before me was a dandy in a double-breasted suit.

“Uh, yeah … hi, Smack,” I sputtered.

My partner was at my shoulder. “Detective Wilton, please enter.”

“You gotta be O'Nelligan.” Smack studied him with a crooked grin. “I tell ya, Lee, this assistant of yours could talk Churchill out of his cigars. He calls the station forty minutes ago, convinces me he can prove the Cobble dame was a homicide, and gets me to drop everything to show up here. You should put that tricky brogue of his in a can and sell it. You'd make yourself a fortune.”

Smack entered and assessed the gathering. “I recognize most of this crew from my investigation last month. Okay, so what's the deal here?”

“Please have a seat, Detective,” Mr. O'Nelligan instructed. “All will be made clear. Everyone, do make yourselves comfortable.”

“Didn't you say we're expecting someone else?” I asked him.

“Our present assemblage is adequate to start things off.”

Smack whistled. “Listen to this guy! Yeah, Brogue-in-a-Can. A guaranteed fortune.”

“Alas, our present business has nothing to do with fortune,” Mr. O'Nelligan said somberly, “but everything to do with
mis
fortune. Grave, woeful misfortune…”

 

CHAPTER THIRTY

 

Smack, Tim, and Neil settled into wooden chairs, while Patch leaned against the wall under the creepy painting of figures writhing in the mist. The dispossessed queen, Mrs. Pattinshell, remained in her plush high-backed throne. Audrey and I wound up standing to the right of Mr. O'Nelligan, who'd placed himself in the center of the room—the lead actor commanding the stage.

He began. “With my superior's permission, I will now put forth the findings of our investigation.”

My friend glanced over at me to indicate that I was the referenced superior.

“Sure, proceed.” I felt foolish uttering the words, well aware that my superiority was a charitable illusion he'd conjured for my benefit.

Mr. O'Nelligan straightened his necktie and cleared his throat, indicating the presentation was under way. “We accepted this case on behalf of Miss Sally Joan Cobble, the deceased's cousin. Since that young lady is presently in Pittsburgh, several hours away, she will not be joining us this afternoon. Our findings will, of course, be passed on to her in due course. Detective Wilton, we thank you for coming here as a representative of the law. Your patience is matched only by your panache.”

Smack's Vandyke twitched in either amusement or annoyance; I couldn't tell which.

My partner continued. “We entered into this with precious few facts. All we had was two brief pieces of correspondence, a history of Lorraine's strained relationships, and Sally Joan's strong doubts that her cousin died by suicide. At the start, our agency was not fully convinced that this was a case of murder.”

By that, I knew he meant that
I
wasn't fully convinced. From the get-go, Mr. O'Nelligan had been the one who smelled foul play.

He pushed on. “Several days ago, Minnie Bornstein, Lorraine's fellow song collector, shared with us an interesting analogy: the idea that although many versions of a ballad may exist, the main narrative remains intact—what she called the spine of the tale. It occurs to me that our investigation might be seen in such a light. Our task was to sift through the variations, the numerous plotlines that arose for us, and identify the spine of this tale. That is, the core truth of Lorraine Cobble's death.”

“So you're stating that she was indeed killed?” Neil asked.

“I am. Lorraine did not die of her own volition.”

Patch was wide-eyed. “No lie? You know that for a fact?”

“I believe I do,” said Mr. O'Nelligan. “Now, over this past weekend, the variations I speak of came fast and furiously. I'll enumerate them here. First off, we had the two notes—one of unknown origin indicating that Lorraine had a rendezvous on the day she died, the other from a man named Cardinal Meriam, whose acrimony Lorraine had earned this past winter. Then we had the account of the long-lived Cornelius Boyle. Cornelius swore that he'd encountered a grocery boy, Hector Escobar, in the hallway near the time of Lorraine's death, a claim which the boy has denied. Also complicating things was a rumor circulating in regard to Patch Doonan.”

“A discredited bloody rumor!” Patch chimed in.

“Correct. Although it was only today that it was fully dispelled. Another variation to our tale concerned the alleged abilities of our hostess here.”

“They are
not
alleged,” Mrs. Pattinshell asserted, her nose in the air. “They are
actual.
”

Mr. O'Nelligan ignored her. “Specifically, we were faced with her claim that the spirit of Lorraine Cobble had offered a song from beyond the grave. A song that seemed to implicate Cardinal Meriam in her death.”

I noticed that Mrs. Pattinshell glanced away at the mention of Lorraine's ghost ballad.

“A song from Lorraine?” Tim straightened in his chair. “Can that be true?”

“I'll address that matter momentarily,” my partner promised. “Yet another thread, a most distressing one, presented itself last evening when an unidentified gunman attacked Byron Spires and Lee here.”

Smack started to say something, but Mr. O'Nelligan cut him off. “Detective, I know via our phone conversation that you have information to impart. In a minute, I'll ask you to provide it.” He turned to me now. “Is there anything I've left out, Lee Plunkett?”

I appreciated being consulted, though I guessed it was mostly a gesture of benevolence. “Well, we also had multiple accounts of Lorraine's quarrels and run-ins. They turned up pretty frequently.”

“Yes, the woman seemed to flourish on conflict,” Mr. O'Nelligan said. “We can certainly add those accounts to the mix. So, my friends, as you see, we were presented with several different versions of the tale. In one, the person requesting the rendezvous had a hand in Lorraine's death. In another, Cardinal, the mysterious magician, became an ominous figure. In yet another, young Hector Escobar came under suspicion. And so forth. At different steps in our investigation, one or another of these variations would catch our attention, drawing us toward it as a possible explanation of why Lorraine was killed. Regarding the rendezvous note, for example, Ruby Dovavska's name emerged at one point as the possible author, then Cardinal's, and finally—”

“It was Mazzo!” Audrey blurted out. At once, her face reddened. “Sorry. Didn't mean to interrupt.”

Mr. O'Nelligan smiled back at her. “No apologies required, dear girl. Credit where credit's due. Yes, Miss Valish here deduced that it was the Grand Mazzo who requested the rendezvous that day. Mazzo wanted to meet Lorraine for his own private reasons. Reasons which, I believe, had nothing to do with her death. As for the rumor concerning Patch Doonan, we've already noted that it proved false. Ultimately, few if any of these threads had a direct connection to Lorraine's death, and yet—and here's the intriguing part—all of them in some way factor into our solution.”

“Okay, so what
is
that solution, O'Nelligan?” Smack demanded. “I'm here against my better judgment 'cause you said you could deliver the goods.”

“And delivered they shall be,” my partner insisted. “If I may continue, perhaps the most prevalent version of the tale was the one concerning the shadowy Cardinal Meriam. Over the last few days, his name has recurred with great frequency, continually demanding our consideration. I am brought to mind of an incident from my boyhood in Ireland…”

Now I was the one whispering into Audrey's ear. “I was nuts to think we'd get through this without one of his Old Country Chronicles.”

Audrey shushed me. “I happen to like his stories.”

“When I was a lad, it came to pass that one of the exhibits escaped from the Dublin zoo.” My partner smiled at the memory. “A scarlet ibis, a rather exotic bird of South American origin.”

“You're right!” Patch called out. “I remember our da telling us about that.”

“Yes, it was quite the event,” Mr. O'Nelligan said. “For a week after the bird fled its confinement, sightings of it were reported throughout Ireland. From east to west, north to south, people swore on scripture that they'd beheld it in flight or perched on some high branch off in the distance. Even in my own County Kerry—as far from Dublin as geography permits—a schoolmaster, several farmhands, and a convent of nuns reported seeing it. Several prominent ornithologists tried to debunk these claims, yet still the reports continued.”

“The ibis was eventually discovered, wasn't it?” Neil asked. “In a shed not a mile from the zoo, if I remember Da's story right.”

“That is so,” Mr. O'Nelligan said. “Apparently, the bird had developed a fondness for Dublin. The thing is, for that unaccounted week, the allure of seeing an exotic, red-plumed, almost mythological creature winging across the heavens was so strong that many succumbed to the fantasy. Thus, Erin's Scarlet Ibis became, in its way, legendary.”

“Which brings us back to Cardinal Meriam,” I jumped in, actually getting the point of the story. “He was our own little red-plumed legend. Cardinal seemed to pop up for us at every bend in the road.”

“Exactly!” My colleague shot me a fond look, no doubt delighted that I'd managed to follow along. “Although Mr. Meriam's whereabouts remained a mystery, he persistently drew our focus. And the focus of someone else, as we'll presently see.”

“Presently see?” Patch threw up his hands. “When the hell do we reach the end of all this?”

“Very soon.” Mr. O'Nelligan paused to regard us all, the practiced actor evaluating his audience. “More on Cardinal in a moment. In recently sharing an anecdote with my comrade Lee, I suggested that the number three has a certain power to it, as seen in literature and history.”

“Oh, for Pete's sake!” Smack wiggled impatiently in his chair. “If I wanted long endless lectures, I'd have run for Congress.”

Mr. O'Nelligan didn't stop to argue. “The number three, sacred and significant in many traditions, has here again shown itself. In our investigation, three unknown individuals have needed to be identified—the one who wrote the rendezvous note, the one who shot Plunkett and Spires, and the one who killed Lorraine Cobble.”