The Kilternan Legacy (32 page)

“Good old Yankee know-how,” I said with a self deprecating grin, and heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Well, my sense of proportion is operating again, and I fervently hope that the twins are putting their paternal parent straight.”

“The twins? Their father?” Ann was astonished.

On cue, the “infants” appeared among us. Their father had not been in his office and was not expected in, and they were mightily disappointed.

I also felt let-down and cheated. And yet, funnily enough, I was relieved. Some inner scruple in me wanted a good relationship (if not the image) preserved between the twins and their father: Children should love and be able to respect both parents, if possible.

“I know three gals who stand in the need of a jar or two,” said Gerry.

“Oh, I couldn’t…” Ann physically stepped away from the invitation.

“Nonsense,” said Snow, who had started to unsaddle Horseface. “You
never
go anywhere—except to funerals! And the kids are all asleep, so don’t weasel out because they’d cry if you weren’t there.”

“There’s safety in numbers,” Gerry said, teasing. Maureen added her urgings.

“He can’t have spies in every pub in Dublin, now, can he?” I argued. “And when was the last time you went anywhere? Without kids … without…”

Ann muttered something dark about Kieron, stopped, and glanced apprehensively at his cottage.

“He’s free to come too, you know, though it cuts the odds for me a bit.” Gerry’s grin was calculated to egg her on.

Ann found one last, feeble evasion—her clothes—but Maureen asked since when had one had to dress formally to drink a jar with friends?

“I’ve a pair of huge dark glasses you could wear,” said Snow, all enthusiasm, “and that floppy hat. You’d look just like any other Yankee tourist.”

“Oh, what will Sally—”

“Sally’s got a date tonight, and you know it,” said Snow, with disgust at her protestations. “What’re you aiming for? Sainthood?”

For some reason, that taunt decided Ann, and we all linked arms to march over to Kieron’s cottage. He gave Ann one long searching look after his initial astonishment.

“I’ll just wash my hands,” he said, and did so.

Then we all clambered into Gerry’s blue Humber and jackrabbited away in a cloud of dust.

“You know, we should have got Mary and made it a residents’ association meeting,” I said, suddenly in the best of good spirits.

“She and Molly’ve gone out with George,” Ann said, nervously peering out the car window before scrunching down in the back seat.

Did she really think that that husband of hers would pop out of the hedges to waylay her? Speaking of popping out of hedges, I noticed when Nosy’s car edged into sight behind us. I opened my mouth to comment on that, then decided against it. Ann might see Paddy Purdee’s hand in that too.

I don’t remember what we talked about that evening, since so much happened later of more importance, but I remember what a fine time we all had—even Ann, once she got used to the notion of enjoying herself out in public. Not that she was public in the back of the dark booth with her hat and glasses on.

As usual, time was called all too soon. The jars we had poured into Ann Purdee gave her sufficient Dutch courage to sit straight up by the window in the back seat—well, as straight as she could with Kieron’s arm about her. Maureen adroitly joined Gerry and me in the front seat. I was feeling good too, and for some reason or other which I can’t now remember, we kept singing the unexpurgated version of the Colonel Bogey song. Kieron knew the most scandalous variations! A very merry carload pulled up the lane, right to Ann’s doorsteps. My two were deep in books, and there hadn’t been a sound upstairs, they told Ann.

I felt very good about the world and the future of mankind as I undressed for bed. Surely Ann would emerge a little from her man-hater’s view of the world. As I drifted off to sleep, it occurred to me that my Great-Aunt Irene
hadn’t
really been all that liberal in her views.

I WASN’T DEEPLY ASLEEP—I’d had a shade too much, or too little, to drink—when a sudden sharp noise woke me. I lay there in a sort of rosy doze with my mind idly bouncing from one topic to another, like those word-cuers in a sing-along film. But I couldn’t identify the noise in my dozy state. I suppose that’s why I roused further. And thought I heard a man swearing softly. It was that sort of a still night, clear, breezeless, on which sound can carry.

My first thought was,
good Lord, doesn’t Nosy ever sleep?
And then,
is he making sure where
I’m
sleeping
? It amused me to think that he’d have to break and enter this house to be certain. And then I wasn’t amused. After what Teddie-boy had already done, he was capable of doing anything.

With that notion rankling in my no longer sleep-soothed breast, I went to the window. And
thought
I saw a shadow pass in the lane.

Well, if Nosy or anyone was now prowling my purlieu, I was going to give him a rude surprise. I’d had it with this nonsense. And who but Nosy had told Teddie about Mrs. Slaney? I slipped on my loafers, grabbed up my top coat, since navy blue is the color for skulking after skulkers (Preserve the Image), and padded downstairs. I removed my trusty fouling piece and proceeded in search of a target. I giggled a bit at the notion of actually firing the shotgun, although the thought of creating some mayhem of my own did have a certain shining appeal. I even checked to make sure the damned thing was loaded. Because if it wasn’t Nosy, and was Tom Slaney, or even that Fahey creep …

If I was to skulk properly, I’d have a less impeded vision if I came up the lane from Ann’s. I’d meet him head on, since he was proceeding down it. So I scooted along the back path to Ann’s and came around her house by the kitchen door.

He was there! Trying to get in. Trying to force the door. And it wasn’t Nosy. It was, I realized, in a blaze of outraged perception, Paddy Purdee! Next to Teddie-boy, he was the man I most wanted to meet on a dark night with a loaded shotgun in my hands.

“What are
you
doing here?” I cried in a stage whisper. If Ann found out he knew where she was …

“Huh?”

He whirled at the sound of my voice, and in the clearness of the night his white eyes stared at me in fright. His jaw dropped and his hands—they were nasty big porkfingered paws—went up in an automatic defensive gesture.

“Who-who’s that?”

I was surprised but very pleased at the real fear in his voice.

“How did you find Ann? Who told you where she was?” I demanded, still in my hoarse whisper. If I could just scare him away…

His hands were raised now to his eyes, and he started to step backward, away from me.

“No! No! Go away! Go away! You’re dead! She said you were dead. She
told
me you were dead.”

Wow! Hey, I’d better preserve that image! He thought I was Aunt Irene.

“Didn’t I tell you once that you were never to bother Ann again? Didn’t you promise me? Did you think I wouldn’t remember that promise?”

I advanced, keeping in the shadows of the house, backing him up the lane as I spoke, trying to sound as sepulchral as possible. I hoped he wouldn’t realize that, though I sounded like my great-aunt, I was five inches taller. Or that ghosts don’t generally carry shotguns.

I shrugged off the topcoat, because my nightgown was long and filmy and shroudlike.

“Paddy Purdee, you have sinned. You have sinned against Ann. You have broken your sworn oath. Your soul is in grave mortal danger. And I, Irene Teasey, will not rest until you have paid for your faithlessness.”

He’d stopped stepping backward, and was running, trying to put distance between us. Although wife-beaters are usually bullies, I wouldn’t have thought him such an arrant coward.

“No, she
is
dead. The old woman wouldn’t lie.”

“Irene Teasey is not dead …”

“It’s a trick. That’s what it is. It’s a trick!” He turned back, started for me, his voice getting firmer as his confidence returned.

There’s nothing like having your bluff called when you’re playing ghost. How the hell could I disappear convincingly?

“A trick is it? You fool! This is Irene Teasey. But Irene Teasey is dead. Whose voice is speaking to you if not Irene Teasey’s?” Ghosts use cryptic language, don’t they? To confuse the people they’re haunting?

“Rene? Irene, is that you?” cried a woman’s voice in the night. It came from Mary Cuniff s cottage. “Oh, Rene, what are
you
doing here?”

The real panic in Mary’s voice was sufficient to loosen Mr. Purdee’s tenuous grip on common sense. He turned on his heels and sped down the lane as fast as his legs could pump, yelling at the top of his lungs.

“But she’s dead! The old woman told me she was dead! She’s got to be dead!”

The light went on in Mary’s cottage, and her front door sprang wide.

I ran toward her, trying to keep her from rousing everyone, particularly Ann, when I tripped over the nightgown.

I went down, and the last thing I heard was a huge
bang
! right by my head.

Suddenly, there seemed to be an awful lot of light in my face. And someone was weeping bitterly in the background. I heard several male mutters and Snow’s chirp. When I opened my eyes, only Mary was in my room, busily wringing out a cloth in a basin of water. My head hurt.

“I’m here again,” I said, with what I felt was some originality. I did know where I was. “And I shot off that damned gun, didn’t I? I hope no one was hurt.”

Laughter and concern warred in Mary’s face.

“Yes and no.”

“Oh? You mean that I hit the right person but not fatally?”

Her laughter bubbled up. “That was buckshot, you know, and it has a wide range.”

“Right persons?”

She nodded encouragingly.

“I must’ve got Paddy Purdee.” She nodded again, egging me on. “
And
Nosy?”

She agreed with considerable enthusiasm and then, rising, went to the door.

“She’s conscious. I told you she’d only knocked herself out.”

Ann Purdee, her face streaked with tears, rushed into the room. Kieron was right behind her, with Simon and Snow a poor third and fourth but looking righteously smug. Sally Hanahoe hovered tentatively by the door. And I could see a blue hulk and the shadow of a hat that suggested a Garda in abeyance.

“Oh God, not the police again!” I groaned, before I caught his smiling face.

“Well, sure now and you can’t go around shooting everyone in sight without the Gardai taking some sort of notice,” said Kieron. He too looked immensely pleased.

“Oh, Rene, you
are
all right, aren’t you?” cried Ann.

I grabbed her hands, which were ice cold and shaking. “Of course I am.”

“But he might have hurt you. He might have—”

“Him? That lousy coward? Running from a ghoulie-ghostie …”

“Who went bang in the night!” finished Simon with a loud crow.

“Well, if you’ve been afraid of that poor excuse of a man all this time, Ann Purdee, you ought to be ashamed.”

The Garda tactfully cleared his throat and rocked on his feet in and out of the doorway.

“Please come in. I am decent and well chaperoned,” I told him. “Besides, if I tell you the story in their presence, then everyone will know and I can get some sleep. My head is splitting.” It wasn’t, not badly, but my ear hurt. And my left arm and knee!

“Well, now, missus,” the Garda began, taking out his notepad.

So I told him that I had spotted an intruder, that we’d had other intruders, that I knew I was under surveillance by a private investigator sicced on me by my former husband, and about the ISPCC, and Paddy Purdee deserting his wife for the last few years (I could see the Garda knew all about that), and my voice being like my aunt’s (he recognized it too), and so I thought I’d put the fear of God in Paddy Purdee, and I’d about chased him away with Mary’s inadvertent assist when I tripped on my nightgown and the silly gun had gone off. And had I killed anyone?

His eyes were twinkling as he gravely assured me both men had taken only minor injuries. “Not where a
man
would wish them, missus,” which figured if the men were hightailing it.

My intervention had been timely, because Purdee had jimmied open the lock on Ann’s door and had been about to enter.

At that point there was a wheeze from my front doorbell and Simon went clattering down, muttering something about the doctor.

“Good Lord, I don’t need a doctor for a lump on the head.”

“And a few lacerations,” said Snow.

“If it’s the doctor,” said Kieron, beginning to steer Ann out, “we’d best be off.” Sally, grinning mischievously at me for my evening’s work, started to follow them.

Ann got no farther than the door and stopped dead, all color draining from her face. She shot such an apprehensive glance behind her that I thought for a moment that some idiot was making her confront her husband. But Shamus Kerrigan walked through the door.

“Are you really all right, Rene?” he asked, brushing past Kieron, Ann, and Sally. He reached my bedside in a swift stride and took my good hand in his warm, firm, and very comforting grip.

I was so terribly, terribly glad to see him that I nearly burst into tears. I was trying to reassure him and not disgrace myself, or count too much on the unnervingly anxious expression on his face, so that I didn’t really see the byplay until Kieron spoke.

“Sally, have you ever seen that man before?”

Kieron was pointing at Shay even while Ann was trying to lug Sally out of the room.

Sally peered obediently at Shay, who looked around, mystified. I recovered my wits.

“This is Shay Kerrigan, Sally. Shamus Kerrigan.”

Sally’s hand flew to her mouth, but there was no recognition in her eyes as she and Shay looked at each other.

“Well,” said Sally after a very taut pause, “he’s not the Shamus Kerrigan
I’d
like to meet in a dark lane with a shotgun.”

There was a little moan from Ann.

“Thanks, Sally,” I told her, but I felt no triumph now. In fact I felt sick because of the terribly sad look in Shay’s eyes as he turned back to me.