Dark Souls, page 27
“That’s right.” The whole business felt surreal, as if he’d temporarily stepped into someone else’s life—or their nightmare. He very much wanted Danny in the room, but McConnell’s superiors wouldn’t allow it. “I do not have a gun. I didn’t then, and I don’t now. I’ve never owned a gun.” He wisely didn’t mention the .38 he’d acquired upon his arrival in Ireland, the same gun that McNamara had confiscated.
“You claim you were with Phelan when a third man entered the building where the two of you were meeting, tied Phelan up, and shot him in the head.” McConnell opened a file folder and laid a series of photographs out on the table. They showed—up close and in nauseating detail—the damage done to Donny Phelan’s skull.
“There is no ‘claim’ involved in it,” Isaac Shapter said. “My client is telling the truth.”
“I don’t need to look at pictures,” Tadhg spat. “I was in the fucking room.”
“SOCO collected trace evidence from the room in which Donny Phelan was killed. Your DNA was detected, as was Phelan’s, but no other DNA was found.”
Shapter laughed. “I find that very hard to believe,” he said, “especially since that room was a known meeting place and safe house for members of a criminal organisation, of which Donald Phelan was a part.”
“Sorry,” McConnell said, “I should have said no other significant DNA. Now, tell me again, Mr. Heaney, how this supposed third man entered the room where you were meeting with Phelan and managed to tie him up and shoot him in the head without leaving anything of himself behind.”
He’s asking the same questions over and over, Tadhg thought, trying to trip me up. He remembered a conversation he’d had with Danny, about the ethics of police interrogation techniques.
We hardly go at suspects with the thumbscrews, Danny had scoffed. The objective is to get them to tell the truth.
Is it? Tadhg had countered. Or is it to get a conviction, no matter what?
“My client has already advised Garda McConnell that Phelan’s killer was dressed in coveralls and a balaclava and was wearing gloves. Clearly, he’d taken measures to protect against leaving trace evidence at the scene,” Shapter said. “If there are no more questions, my client would like to go home.”
“Your client’s not going anywhere,” McConnell said. Every time he spoke, Tadhg liked him less. He was an arrogant young bugger with high notions. Probably trying for a promotion. “We are not done here. Tell me again, Mr. Heaney. Where were you when the alleged killer entered the building?”
“I’d gone to the toilet, down the hall. I was washing my hands when I heard someone coming up the stairs. Then I heard the gunshot.”
McConnell took out a piece of paper, on which was a rough sketch Tadhg had made earlier, showing the location of everyone in the room. “So you entered by the same door.”
“There’s only the one door.”
“And what did this man in the coveralls do when you appeared?” McConnell asked.
“He fucked off.”
A muscle twitched in McConnell’s cheek. “And you allege he then left the building.”
“He did leave the building.”
“CCTV footage obtained from across the street clearly shows a male figure, dressed as my client has described, leaving the building by the side entrance and escaping down an alley,” Shapter put in.
“I know that,” McConnell said.
“Just refreshing your memory.”
“Mr. Heaney, why were you in Ireland in the first place?” McConnell collected the crime scene photos, returning them to the file folder.
“I was looking for Phelan.” Mother of God, how many more times was he going to ask? Tadhg had already told him in detail how he came to be in Ireland and what he was doing there. “He embezzled money from my company and drove my business into bankruptcy.”
“So you came over here for a little… payback? Isn’t that what they call it in America?”
“I’m not an American,” Tadhg reminded him. “Newfoundland is an island off the coast of Canada. Until 1949 it was a sovereign nation.”
“Sorry.” McConnell smirked.
“And no,” Tadhg continued, “I did not come here looking for payback. I came here to get my money.”
“So you had no intention of exacting revenge on Phelan for driving you into bankruptcy?”
“No.”
“That’s very magnanimous of you.”
“Garda McConnell, the sarcasm does you no justice,” Shapter interjected, “and it is out of place here.”
McConnell reached to pause the recording. “Interview suspended.” He gathered his materials and got up. “Someone will come to take you back to your cell.”
“Wait!” Shapter stood up. “You can’t stick him in a cell and leave him there to rot. You have to charge him or let him go, and given the overwhelming lack of evidence—”
“I can keep him for twelve hours,” McConnell said. He pulled the door open.
“He’s been here for four hours,” Shapter replied, checking his watch, “without food or drink.”
The Garda rolled his eyes, exasperated. “I’ll see that he gets a cup of tea and a biscuit.” The door swung shut behind him.
Two officers came to fetch Tadhg, unhooking his cuffs from the desk and refastening them behind his back. Shapter promised to expedite his release, but Tadhg wasn’t sure how much the young solicitor could actually do. “Tell Danny….” Christ, this was hard. “Tell him I’m sorry. Tell him I want to see him.” His throat closed together. “Tell him I love him.”
“I will see to it that you are freed as soon as possible,” Shapter said. He squeezed Tadhg’s shoulder. “I promise.”
KEVIN AND June went to the Fitzpatricks’ homestead together, but the house and outbuildings were all empty, with no sign of Roy Fitzpatrick anywhere.
“Where the hell is he?” Kevin asked, exasperated. “Did you check anywhere else?”
“Of course I did,” June snapped. “Nobody’s seen him. The only place he goes is over to the Legion, drinking, and it’s closed.”
“We’ll have to put an alert out for him,” Kevin said. “I don’t like the idea of him out roaming all over God’s creation.”
They walked back to where they’d left the patrol car parked beside the road. June got in on the driver’s side. “Do you really think he did that to his own sister?” she asked as Kevin slid in and buckled his seat belt. “I mean, the assault on Doris Coombs was years ago, and even if she thinks he’s a bit weird—”
“He’s more than a bit weird.”
“That doesn’t prove he killed his sister.” She turned the key and started up the car, put it into gear, and pulled out onto the main road. At this hour, there was no one around, most other inhabitants of the Cove having long since gone to bed. The night was clear and very cold, with a full moon overhead. “Remember when we used to go sliding on nights like this,” June remarked. “When we were youngsters, me and you. I used to love being out after dark.”
“We went out after dark to get away from Dad,” Kevin said sourly.
“Kevin….” June turned to gaze at him. “About Dad.”
“What about him?” He pried his notebook out of his inside pocket and flipped it open, jotted a reminder to himself about the alert needed for Roy Fitzpatrick.
“You said you were going to look for him.” She paused, her eyes on the road ahead. “After Ford died. You said you were going to look for Dad.”
“Means, motive, opportunity,” Kevin replied.
“You lost me.”
“You asked me if Roy Fitzpatrick was capable of doing that to his sister.” He turned to look at her, the dash lights illuminating her face from below. “He had the means. He certainly had the motive, and he fucking well had the opportunity.”
“Means and opportunity, yes, but motive?”
“Yes, I found him,” Kevin said, after a moment or two.
“And?”
“He’s dead.”
Something about the way he said the word “dead” chilled her. Even though she and Kevin were siblings and twins, they were no longer as close as they had once been. Ford’s death by suicide had done something to Kevin. He’d never really dealt with it but had instead allowed it to make him bitter, hard inside. She was afraid he had walled off that part of himself and would never again allow anyone to get as close to him as Ford had done. He was in a relationship with Cillian Riley, but the Englishman was headed for law school eventually, and maybe Kevin wouldn’t go with him. Maybe Riley would go and Kevin would stay behind, not waiting for him but not moving ahead with life either. It made her sad to think of her brother forever alone. That their father was dead made no odds to her either way. The man had been a violent and abusive bastard who’d murdered his own daughter, June and Kevin’s disabled younger sister. How had he died? Had it been natural causes, like a heart attack or a stroke, or had Kevin found him and done what he’d vowed for years to do?
Did she really want to know?
“What motive?” she asked now. “I don’t understand.”
“Doesn’t it strike you as odd that neither of them ever married?”
“Uh, no, not really.”
“The day you and Danny went to see the Fitzpatricks, that morning after Gail Russell was murdered, you met up with Roy first, right?”
“Yes.” She remembered it quite clearly. Roy had been shovelling snow outside the house when she and Danny arrived.
“Danny doesn’t know them, so he’d have no idea Roy was Sheila’s brother.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” June asked. She slowed down to allow a tabby cat to cross the road in front of them. It moved slowly and deliberately, as if it had nowhere in particular it needed to go.
“Did Danny refer to Sheila as Roy’s wife?”
The cat had safely reached the other side of the road. “Yes.” She frowned. “Yes, he did. He said he wanted to talk to Roy and his wife.”
“And I bet Roy didn’t correct him.”
The car dipped and swayed a little as June navigated a frozen pothole. “He didn’t.”
“He let Danny think that Sheila was his wife.” Kevin shook his head. “How many other brother and sister pairs do you know of who are still living together as adults in the same household?”
“Oh, go ’way, Kevin! You’re making something out of nothing,” June said.
“Am I? Think about it. They practically live in the woods.” He ticked each item off on his fingers. “They only ever socialise at their own house, never go out anywhere else. She keeps house for them both, does the cooking and cleaning. He does the rest of it, chopping wood and such. They have their own little self-contained world of two, and then suddenly out of the blue, Sheila is pregnant. Who’s the father?”
The idea turned her stomach. “Kevin, now you’re going too far.”
“No, I’m not.”
“So Roy is the father of Sheila’s baby.” Her gorge rose at the thought of it, Sheila and Roy living in the same house, having sex with each other, making a baby, for Christ’s sake. “Let’s say for a moment your ridiculous theory is correct. Why on earth would he kill his own baby?”
Kevin shrugged. “I’m just telling you what everybody else in the Cove has been saying for years.”
June turned off the main highway and onto Secretary Road. “I think you’re reaching for something that isn’t there.” She pulled into the station parking lot and turned off the car. “I’m going to walk home,” she said, reminding him he’d pulled her out of bed for this. “It’s a nice night.”
“Are you sure that’s safe?” Kevin asked. He caught the keys as she tossed them to him.
“I’ll be careful to watch out for Roy Fitzpatrick,” she quipped.
THERE WAS nowhere else to go now. Not now, when she was lying on a cold mortuary slab, drained entirely of life. He shouldn’t have done that, but she shouldn’t have tried to leave him. People were always leaving him, and it was wrong. It made him angry when they left, and he didn’t want to take their lives away, but once they’d transgressed beyond the point of redemption, there was no other choice. Dying flowers couldn’t be allowed to languish, pining, on their stems. Once their precious scent was gone, they had to be laid ever so gently to rest. It’s what he had done for Adeline.
The old fella came for Adeline at night and took her into his room, where he smothered her screams while he used her body. It was wrong, what the old fella did, and even their mother raged at him, her own father, but he wouldn’t stop. Adeline was a beautiful blossom, he said, and it was his right to pluck her as he pleased. It was his duty to make her sing, and sing she did, night after night, while he lay in his bed, his pillow wrapped about his ears to block it out, that awful sound. It wouldn’t do for the missus to hear, but her and the mister slept upstairs, way over on the other side of the old Toulinguet mansion, away from such degradation. What her servants did in their own time was no affair of hers, as long as they performed the duties they were being paid for. It was their mother’s job to clean and Adeline’s to help her, and he went about the place shining shoes and laying the fires in each of the guest rooms during the high season, when people came from all around to stay.
“This is your heritage as well,” their mother said. “She was your ancestor, Marie Toulinguet, and don’t you ever forget it.”
But the house no longer belonged to them. Once the fishery failed, there was no money to pay for the necessary repairs to maintain the huge old Queen Anne revival mansion in the style to which it was accustomed, so they put it on the market. It sold for a decent price, considering. “The Nightingale of the North lived here,” Mam would say to visitors as they arrived. “If you listen carefully, you may hear her singing in an upstairs room.”
But it wasn’t her, not really, but only him, with his clear boy’s soprano, singing sentimental old songs down in the laundry room, where there was a ventilation pipe that led up, up, up through the house and into certain rooms.
“Sing ‘The Last Rose of Summer,’” Mam would say, or, “Sing ‘The Fields of Athenry.’ Sure sing the ‘Ave Maria’ for ’em,” and he would. It never seemed to matter to anyone staying at the elegant bed and breakfast that the ghost of the famous Marie Toulinguet, who had so perfectly mastered singing bel canto, never sang any opera. No one ever complained.
Then one day his voice broke, in the middle of “Down by the Salley Gardens,” came out as a godawful croak, like something monstrous being born. His mother, working in the kitchen, heard it and came thundering down the stairs.
“What in the name of Almighty God was that? What?” She beat him about the head with her fist until he saw stars. “If ever I hears you make that noise again, so help me God I’ll kill ye. I will.”
But there was nothing much she or anybody else could do about it. He was growing up, and nature always made a way for itself. After that, he was never able to sing a note without his beautiful boy’s soprano cracking straight down the middle and that awful croak resounding through the house. Visitors to the house asked why the Nightingale didn’t sing anymore, and his mother made some vague reference to a visiting priest who had blessed the house, thus driving her away, but no one really believed this. The tourist trade began to drop off as travellers went to spend their money in the larger centres like Corner Brook or St. John’s, and then word came from the missus herself that the house would now be closed up for part of the year. Him and Mam and the old fella and Adeline would have to shift for themselves, and Roy, who took care of the grounds, and Sheila, who helped Mam in the kitchen, they’d all have to go on somewhere else. It wasn’t bloody good enough, Mam said, us working here like slaves, and now you’re turfing us out with nowhere else to go.
Couldn’t be helped, the missus countered, and anyway, there’s loads of work in St. John’s. Why couldn’t they go there and work? Except Adeline had been feeling poorly for months now, and eventually it dawned on him and everybody else that Adeline wasn’t just sick, she was going to have a baby.
The old fella’s baby.
She came creeping into the room one night while he was reading a comic book before going to sleep. “I don’t feel well.”
“Go away and leave me bide. I’m reading.”
“Peter, I’m sick.” And her with blood and water all down the front of her nightdress, the hem of it soaked and dripping. “I’m sick. You got to help me.”
He had stared at her, knowing at once what was wrong but not understanding what she was asking him for. This was women’s business, nothing that he, as a male, would ever be a part of under normal circumstances. It had to do with blood and bodies, the arcane mysteries into which he would never be initiated. “Go away from me. I wants nothing to do with that. Ask the missus or Mam.”
But their mother had gone to bed, and it was more than either of their lives was worth to disturb her. She hovered in the door of his bedroom, sobbing and clutching her swollen belly until he shouted at her, “Do something about it yourself, will ye?”
It was morning when he found her down in the back porch, lying on the floor next to what had come out of her. She’d staggered into the kitchen and taken a long knife out of the butcher block and stabbed the infant again and again, then dragged the blade across her wrists until her blood flowed out like water.
It was over. The whole long nightmare had finally come to an end. Now was the time to purge the evil, and that could only be done with fire. He found a can of gasoline in the potting shed, intended for the lawnmower, brought it back to the house and spread it over the floor, splashed it on the walls and over Adeline’s dead body. Then he dropped a match.
It ignited with a deafening noise like the roaring of the sea, redoubled a thousand times. Flames licked along the floor and up the walls as the fire mounted the ceiling. He turned to leave and found his exit blocked by flames, and then a sudden burst of intense heat as a violent flashover ignited the smoke. The fire was everywhere—in his eyes and mouth, burning inside his clothes and melting his skin like wax. The last thing he heard was the sound of his own voice, screaming.
“You claim you were with Phelan when a third man entered the building where the two of you were meeting, tied Phelan up, and shot him in the head.” McConnell opened a file folder and laid a series of photographs out on the table. They showed—up close and in nauseating detail—the damage done to Donny Phelan’s skull.
“There is no ‘claim’ involved in it,” Isaac Shapter said. “My client is telling the truth.”
“I don’t need to look at pictures,” Tadhg spat. “I was in the fucking room.”
“SOCO collected trace evidence from the room in which Donny Phelan was killed. Your DNA was detected, as was Phelan’s, but no other DNA was found.”
Shapter laughed. “I find that very hard to believe,” he said, “especially since that room was a known meeting place and safe house for members of a criminal organisation, of which Donald Phelan was a part.”
“Sorry,” McConnell said, “I should have said no other significant DNA. Now, tell me again, Mr. Heaney, how this supposed third man entered the room where you were meeting with Phelan and managed to tie him up and shoot him in the head without leaving anything of himself behind.”
He’s asking the same questions over and over, Tadhg thought, trying to trip me up. He remembered a conversation he’d had with Danny, about the ethics of police interrogation techniques.
We hardly go at suspects with the thumbscrews, Danny had scoffed. The objective is to get them to tell the truth.
Is it? Tadhg had countered. Or is it to get a conviction, no matter what?
“My client has already advised Garda McConnell that Phelan’s killer was dressed in coveralls and a balaclava and was wearing gloves. Clearly, he’d taken measures to protect against leaving trace evidence at the scene,” Shapter said. “If there are no more questions, my client would like to go home.”
“Your client’s not going anywhere,” McConnell said. Every time he spoke, Tadhg liked him less. He was an arrogant young bugger with high notions. Probably trying for a promotion. “We are not done here. Tell me again, Mr. Heaney. Where were you when the alleged killer entered the building?”
“I’d gone to the toilet, down the hall. I was washing my hands when I heard someone coming up the stairs. Then I heard the gunshot.”
McConnell took out a piece of paper, on which was a rough sketch Tadhg had made earlier, showing the location of everyone in the room. “So you entered by the same door.”
“There’s only the one door.”
“And what did this man in the coveralls do when you appeared?” McConnell asked.
“He fucked off.”
A muscle twitched in McConnell’s cheek. “And you allege he then left the building.”
“He did leave the building.”
“CCTV footage obtained from across the street clearly shows a male figure, dressed as my client has described, leaving the building by the side entrance and escaping down an alley,” Shapter put in.
“I know that,” McConnell said.
“Just refreshing your memory.”
“Mr. Heaney, why were you in Ireland in the first place?” McConnell collected the crime scene photos, returning them to the file folder.
“I was looking for Phelan.” Mother of God, how many more times was he going to ask? Tadhg had already told him in detail how he came to be in Ireland and what he was doing there. “He embezzled money from my company and drove my business into bankruptcy.”
“So you came over here for a little… payback? Isn’t that what they call it in America?”
“I’m not an American,” Tadhg reminded him. “Newfoundland is an island off the coast of Canada. Until 1949 it was a sovereign nation.”
“Sorry.” McConnell smirked.
“And no,” Tadhg continued, “I did not come here looking for payback. I came here to get my money.”
“So you had no intention of exacting revenge on Phelan for driving you into bankruptcy?”
“No.”
“That’s very magnanimous of you.”
“Garda McConnell, the sarcasm does you no justice,” Shapter interjected, “and it is out of place here.”
McConnell reached to pause the recording. “Interview suspended.” He gathered his materials and got up. “Someone will come to take you back to your cell.”
“Wait!” Shapter stood up. “You can’t stick him in a cell and leave him there to rot. You have to charge him or let him go, and given the overwhelming lack of evidence—”
“I can keep him for twelve hours,” McConnell said. He pulled the door open.
“He’s been here for four hours,” Shapter replied, checking his watch, “without food or drink.”
The Garda rolled his eyes, exasperated. “I’ll see that he gets a cup of tea and a biscuit.” The door swung shut behind him.
Two officers came to fetch Tadhg, unhooking his cuffs from the desk and refastening them behind his back. Shapter promised to expedite his release, but Tadhg wasn’t sure how much the young solicitor could actually do. “Tell Danny….” Christ, this was hard. “Tell him I’m sorry. Tell him I want to see him.” His throat closed together. “Tell him I love him.”
“I will see to it that you are freed as soon as possible,” Shapter said. He squeezed Tadhg’s shoulder. “I promise.”
KEVIN AND June went to the Fitzpatricks’ homestead together, but the house and outbuildings were all empty, with no sign of Roy Fitzpatrick anywhere.
“Where the hell is he?” Kevin asked, exasperated. “Did you check anywhere else?”
“Of course I did,” June snapped. “Nobody’s seen him. The only place he goes is over to the Legion, drinking, and it’s closed.”
“We’ll have to put an alert out for him,” Kevin said. “I don’t like the idea of him out roaming all over God’s creation.”
They walked back to where they’d left the patrol car parked beside the road. June got in on the driver’s side. “Do you really think he did that to his own sister?” she asked as Kevin slid in and buckled his seat belt. “I mean, the assault on Doris Coombs was years ago, and even if she thinks he’s a bit weird—”
“He’s more than a bit weird.”
“That doesn’t prove he killed his sister.” She turned the key and started up the car, put it into gear, and pulled out onto the main road. At this hour, there was no one around, most other inhabitants of the Cove having long since gone to bed. The night was clear and very cold, with a full moon overhead. “Remember when we used to go sliding on nights like this,” June remarked. “When we were youngsters, me and you. I used to love being out after dark.”
“We went out after dark to get away from Dad,” Kevin said sourly.
“Kevin….” June turned to gaze at him. “About Dad.”
“What about him?” He pried his notebook out of his inside pocket and flipped it open, jotted a reminder to himself about the alert needed for Roy Fitzpatrick.
“You said you were going to look for him.” She paused, her eyes on the road ahead. “After Ford died. You said you were going to look for Dad.”
“Means, motive, opportunity,” Kevin replied.
“You lost me.”
“You asked me if Roy Fitzpatrick was capable of doing that to his sister.” He turned to look at her, the dash lights illuminating her face from below. “He had the means. He certainly had the motive, and he fucking well had the opportunity.”
“Means and opportunity, yes, but motive?”
“Yes, I found him,” Kevin said, after a moment or two.
“And?”
“He’s dead.”
Something about the way he said the word “dead” chilled her. Even though she and Kevin were siblings and twins, they were no longer as close as they had once been. Ford’s death by suicide had done something to Kevin. He’d never really dealt with it but had instead allowed it to make him bitter, hard inside. She was afraid he had walled off that part of himself and would never again allow anyone to get as close to him as Ford had done. He was in a relationship with Cillian Riley, but the Englishman was headed for law school eventually, and maybe Kevin wouldn’t go with him. Maybe Riley would go and Kevin would stay behind, not waiting for him but not moving ahead with life either. It made her sad to think of her brother forever alone. That their father was dead made no odds to her either way. The man had been a violent and abusive bastard who’d murdered his own daughter, June and Kevin’s disabled younger sister. How had he died? Had it been natural causes, like a heart attack or a stroke, or had Kevin found him and done what he’d vowed for years to do?
Did she really want to know?
“What motive?” she asked now. “I don’t understand.”
“Doesn’t it strike you as odd that neither of them ever married?”
“Uh, no, not really.”
“The day you and Danny went to see the Fitzpatricks, that morning after Gail Russell was murdered, you met up with Roy first, right?”
“Yes.” She remembered it quite clearly. Roy had been shovelling snow outside the house when she and Danny arrived.
“Danny doesn’t know them, so he’d have no idea Roy was Sheila’s brother.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” June asked. She slowed down to allow a tabby cat to cross the road in front of them. It moved slowly and deliberately, as if it had nowhere in particular it needed to go.
“Did Danny refer to Sheila as Roy’s wife?”
The cat had safely reached the other side of the road. “Yes.” She frowned. “Yes, he did. He said he wanted to talk to Roy and his wife.”
“And I bet Roy didn’t correct him.”
The car dipped and swayed a little as June navigated a frozen pothole. “He didn’t.”
“He let Danny think that Sheila was his wife.” Kevin shook his head. “How many other brother and sister pairs do you know of who are still living together as adults in the same household?”
“Oh, go ’way, Kevin! You’re making something out of nothing,” June said.
“Am I? Think about it. They practically live in the woods.” He ticked each item off on his fingers. “They only ever socialise at their own house, never go out anywhere else. She keeps house for them both, does the cooking and cleaning. He does the rest of it, chopping wood and such. They have their own little self-contained world of two, and then suddenly out of the blue, Sheila is pregnant. Who’s the father?”
The idea turned her stomach. “Kevin, now you’re going too far.”
“No, I’m not.”
“So Roy is the father of Sheila’s baby.” Her gorge rose at the thought of it, Sheila and Roy living in the same house, having sex with each other, making a baby, for Christ’s sake. “Let’s say for a moment your ridiculous theory is correct. Why on earth would he kill his own baby?”
Kevin shrugged. “I’m just telling you what everybody else in the Cove has been saying for years.”
June turned off the main highway and onto Secretary Road. “I think you’re reaching for something that isn’t there.” She pulled into the station parking lot and turned off the car. “I’m going to walk home,” she said, reminding him he’d pulled her out of bed for this. “It’s a nice night.”
“Are you sure that’s safe?” Kevin asked. He caught the keys as she tossed them to him.
“I’ll be careful to watch out for Roy Fitzpatrick,” she quipped.
THERE WAS nowhere else to go now. Not now, when she was lying on a cold mortuary slab, drained entirely of life. He shouldn’t have done that, but she shouldn’t have tried to leave him. People were always leaving him, and it was wrong. It made him angry when they left, and he didn’t want to take their lives away, but once they’d transgressed beyond the point of redemption, there was no other choice. Dying flowers couldn’t be allowed to languish, pining, on their stems. Once their precious scent was gone, they had to be laid ever so gently to rest. It’s what he had done for Adeline.
The old fella came for Adeline at night and took her into his room, where he smothered her screams while he used her body. It was wrong, what the old fella did, and even their mother raged at him, her own father, but he wouldn’t stop. Adeline was a beautiful blossom, he said, and it was his right to pluck her as he pleased. It was his duty to make her sing, and sing she did, night after night, while he lay in his bed, his pillow wrapped about his ears to block it out, that awful sound. It wouldn’t do for the missus to hear, but her and the mister slept upstairs, way over on the other side of the old Toulinguet mansion, away from such degradation. What her servants did in their own time was no affair of hers, as long as they performed the duties they were being paid for. It was their mother’s job to clean and Adeline’s to help her, and he went about the place shining shoes and laying the fires in each of the guest rooms during the high season, when people came from all around to stay.
“This is your heritage as well,” their mother said. “She was your ancestor, Marie Toulinguet, and don’t you ever forget it.”
But the house no longer belonged to them. Once the fishery failed, there was no money to pay for the necessary repairs to maintain the huge old Queen Anne revival mansion in the style to which it was accustomed, so they put it on the market. It sold for a decent price, considering. “The Nightingale of the North lived here,” Mam would say to visitors as they arrived. “If you listen carefully, you may hear her singing in an upstairs room.”
But it wasn’t her, not really, but only him, with his clear boy’s soprano, singing sentimental old songs down in the laundry room, where there was a ventilation pipe that led up, up, up through the house and into certain rooms.
“Sing ‘The Last Rose of Summer,’” Mam would say, or, “Sing ‘The Fields of Athenry.’ Sure sing the ‘Ave Maria’ for ’em,” and he would. It never seemed to matter to anyone staying at the elegant bed and breakfast that the ghost of the famous Marie Toulinguet, who had so perfectly mastered singing bel canto, never sang any opera. No one ever complained.
Then one day his voice broke, in the middle of “Down by the Salley Gardens,” came out as a godawful croak, like something monstrous being born. His mother, working in the kitchen, heard it and came thundering down the stairs.
“What in the name of Almighty God was that? What?” She beat him about the head with her fist until he saw stars. “If ever I hears you make that noise again, so help me God I’ll kill ye. I will.”
But there was nothing much she or anybody else could do about it. He was growing up, and nature always made a way for itself. After that, he was never able to sing a note without his beautiful boy’s soprano cracking straight down the middle and that awful croak resounding through the house. Visitors to the house asked why the Nightingale didn’t sing anymore, and his mother made some vague reference to a visiting priest who had blessed the house, thus driving her away, but no one really believed this. The tourist trade began to drop off as travellers went to spend their money in the larger centres like Corner Brook or St. John’s, and then word came from the missus herself that the house would now be closed up for part of the year. Him and Mam and the old fella and Adeline would have to shift for themselves, and Roy, who took care of the grounds, and Sheila, who helped Mam in the kitchen, they’d all have to go on somewhere else. It wasn’t bloody good enough, Mam said, us working here like slaves, and now you’re turfing us out with nowhere else to go.
Couldn’t be helped, the missus countered, and anyway, there’s loads of work in St. John’s. Why couldn’t they go there and work? Except Adeline had been feeling poorly for months now, and eventually it dawned on him and everybody else that Adeline wasn’t just sick, she was going to have a baby.
The old fella’s baby.
She came creeping into the room one night while he was reading a comic book before going to sleep. “I don’t feel well.”
“Go away and leave me bide. I’m reading.”
“Peter, I’m sick.” And her with blood and water all down the front of her nightdress, the hem of it soaked and dripping. “I’m sick. You got to help me.”
He had stared at her, knowing at once what was wrong but not understanding what she was asking him for. This was women’s business, nothing that he, as a male, would ever be a part of under normal circumstances. It had to do with blood and bodies, the arcane mysteries into which he would never be initiated. “Go away from me. I wants nothing to do with that. Ask the missus or Mam.”
But their mother had gone to bed, and it was more than either of their lives was worth to disturb her. She hovered in the door of his bedroom, sobbing and clutching her swollen belly until he shouted at her, “Do something about it yourself, will ye?”
It was morning when he found her down in the back porch, lying on the floor next to what had come out of her. She’d staggered into the kitchen and taken a long knife out of the butcher block and stabbed the infant again and again, then dragged the blade across her wrists until her blood flowed out like water.
It was over. The whole long nightmare had finally come to an end. Now was the time to purge the evil, and that could only be done with fire. He found a can of gasoline in the potting shed, intended for the lawnmower, brought it back to the house and spread it over the floor, splashed it on the walls and over Adeline’s dead body. Then he dropped a match.
It ignited with a deafening noise like the roaring of the sea, redoubled a thousand times. Flames licked along the floor and up the walls as the fire mounted the ceiling. He turned to leave and found his exit blocked by flames, and then a sudden burst of intense heat as a violent flashover ignited the smoke. The fire was everywhere—in his eyes and mouth, burning inside his clothes and melting his skin like wax. The last thing he heard was the sound of his own voice, screaming.
