The Irish Cottage Murder by Dicey Deere Page B

door.
    “Right.” But Jimmy Bryson, drawing out the single word like a sigh, sounded as far away as county Cork. Inspector O’Hare glanced back. The sergeant was looking at Janet Slocum, who had not left the bedroom. She had been so still, the inspector hadn’t realized she was still there, bony, thin-lipped, eyes like gimlets. “Is Rose around?” Jimmy Bryson said to Janet Slocum, “Rose Burns?”
    “Ah, no she isn’t, sergeant. Gone to London last night on the ferry from Dun Leoghaire. Went to spend a couple of days with her sister, Hannah. Hannah’s been seeing the sights in London, the Tower and such.”
    “Ahhh … vacationing, is it?” Sergeant Bryson cleared his throat. “And Hannah, how is she enjoying London? Does Rose say?”
    Janet’s long face took on an odd look, almost wary. She thrust her hands into the pockets of her bibbed white apron and rocked a little on her feet. Inspector O’Hare noticed for the first time small pockmarks on Janet’s flat cheeks; she had missed out for looks. Her hoarse voice didn’t help.
    “And why wouldn’t she be enjoying it, a big, exciting city like London?”
    “They’ll be coming back soon, will they? Rose and … and Hannah?”
    “Oh, yes, Sergeant. That they will.”
    O’Hare, always sensitive to undertones in a voice, regarded Janet for an instant while Sgt. Jimmy Bryson heaved up a sigh from somewhere around his booted toes. It seemed to O’Hare that Janet Slocum was speaking on two levels, an upper one open, a lower one veiled.

28
    At six o’clock Friday morning, Luke Willinger, numb and incredulous, drove to Dublin. Last night, around five o’clock, the gardai had arrested Torrey Tunet in connection with the murder of Desmond Moore.
    On Moleston Street, Luke sat through the hour-long AA meeting in the community house behind Saint Anne’s. He didn’t hear a word anybody said.
    The meeting over, he stopped at a coffee shop around the corner. Someone had left a copy of the morning’s Irish Independent on the counter. Luke glanced at the lead story and promptly scalded himself on his cup of coffee.
    “Jesus!” On the front page, favored position, right side, was an account of the sensational tragedy in North Hawk, Massachusetts, sixteen years earlier. It was accompanied by a photograph of the young Torrey Tunet at that long-ago court hearing. There she was, skinny, in a real dress instead of jeans, but with that peacock bandana around her dark hair.
    An enterprising journalist on The Irish Independent had somehow obtained the North Hawk information from Superintendent Inspector O’Reilly’s office at the Garda Siochana Murder Squad headquarters in Phoenix Park.
    So! Torrey Tunet’s past in North Hawk was exposed! The exposure seemed to Luke to justify his years of grievance against her for the destruction of his family and his having to drop out of school. “The wages of sin,” he thought grimly, rattling the newspaper. Not to mention pigeons coming home to roost.
    He reread the Independent piece, mentally corroborating every fact supplied by the police records in North Hawk. It even gave the calibre of the Smith & Wesson gun that had killed his stepfather. It was a weird feeling.
    Then he simply sat there on the plastic stool, feeling strange. Something was wrong. He had always thought of himself as honest with himself, cleanly honest in fact. And fair. And decent. Not a paragon, for God’s sake! But certainly a man of character; if not a Socrates, at least a worthy disciple of such a philosopher. And certainly not a person prey to emotions to the point of blind rage, to an arbitrary desire for revenge. Yet for sixteen lousy years—
    Jesus Christ, he thought, she was only fourteen!
    He sat there, stunned, as though the fact that Torrey had been a kid of fourteen was news to him. My, God! He’d never given a thought to the fact that she was a fourteen-year-old. Why not? Because he was an emotional eighteen-year-old at the time, swearing