Death on the Holy Mountain (19 page)

William Harkness’s bench was strategically placed two-thirds of the way between the back of Ormonde House and the sea. If he looked to his right he had a clear view of any miscreants who
might be foolish enough to approach the house in broad daylight. To his left he could spot any piratical invasion sailing across Clew Bay.

‘How are ye, Lord Powerscourt, are ye well?’ he began. ‘It’s great to meet ye. They’ve got a file on you back there in Dublin, you know, all of it very
complimentary.’

‘Have they indeed, Inspector?’ said Powerscourt. ‘Tell us this, sorry to be brief but I understand your time is short, what do you think your chances are of finding the
thieves?’

Harkness looked at the two of them carefully. ‘To be honest with you, to be truthful with you now, and I wouldn’t say this in front of your man Ormonde, I don’t think
we’re going to do it. Not in a week. Might do it if it was longer. The trouble is that the word has got out about these Orangemen. The constabulary here and in Castlebar are worried sick
about them. The commanding officer of the Castlebar garrison has cancelled all leave for the foreseeable future. Everybody’s clammed up.’

‘I don’t want to pry,’ said Powerscourt, ‘but do you have any informants inside the gang of thieves who stole Ormonde’s paintings?’

‘I couldn’t swear that we do,’ admitted Harkness. ‘If we did they’d all be locked up and under interrogation.’

Powerscourt shuddered slightly. He knew what interrogation could mean in these parts.

‘Are you able to tell us,’ asked Johnny, ‘how many informants you do have? Just so we have an idea.’

‘I don’t think that would be helpful at all,’ Harkness replied.

‘You mean you haven’t got any,’ said Johnny.

‘I wouldn’t say that.’ Harkness’s attention was suddenly drawn to a figure who must have been O’Gara from Dingle, ambling slowly towards the house.
‘How’s about ye, O’Gara, you hoor!’ he shouted. ‘What are you doing going over to the house, for Christ’s sake? We’re here, you fool, not there.’
O’Gara broke into a slow run. ‘What do you have to tell us, man? What news?’

‘The policeman has done as you asked, sir,’ he said. ‘All the senior officers from Westport and round about will be meeting you when you go into Westport later this morning.
It’s all arranged.’

‘I’ve been to Castlebar and Newport and lots of places talking to the police,’ Harkness told Powerscourt and Fitzgerald. ‘Some good may come of it. I’d better be
off.’

The first stirrings of a plan were beginning to form in Powerscourt’s brain. He didn’t want to mention it to anybody yet, not even to Johnny Fitzgerald. But it might, it just might
help to catch the thieves.

‘When are you going back to Dublin?’ he asked.

‘The day after tomorrow,’ said Harkness, tidying up the papers lying around on the bottom of his bench.

‘I have an idea I may want to discuss with you,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I need to turn it over in my mind first, Inspector. Would you be able to break your journey home in Athlone?
I am staying near there.’

‘I would,’ said Harkness, ‘I’d be happy to. No bother.’

‘In which case I shall send a message to Ormonde tomorrow, if I wish to proceed. No message, no meeting.’

‘Understood,’ said the man from Dublin Castle and fastened his briefcase with the most formidable lock Powerscourt had ever seen. ‘Good day to you, gentlemen.’

Powerscourt and Fitzgerald watched them go.

‘Do you think they know anything at all, Francis?’ said Johnny.

‘You can look at it in two ways, I think, Johnny. Either they know nothing at all, or they know a lot more than Harkness is letting on. If you forced me to place a bet either way I think
I’d say they know more than they are letting on. But I could be wrong.’

They took an early lunch with the Ormondes, a clear chicken soup, roast lamb with redcurrant jelly that Powerscourt presumed was home-made, a fruit pie with cream. Johnny Fitzgerald had a long
discussion with Ormonde about the local birds. Mrs Ormonde, a petite pretty woman in her early thirties with bright red hair, kept a firm but unobtrusive eye on her husband. The raging fury of days
before, the Attila the Hun mood, had gone. You could see that he might easily be moved to anger but at this lunch table he was tamed. Just as she had done with the Picture Gallery, Powerscourt
thought, Mrs Ormonde had locked her husband up and kept possession of the keys.

The children’s concert party in Butler’s Court had begun. All the adults and a number of friends whose children were being cared for by Young James had assembled in
the audience in the Long Gallery on the first floor. This was the most spectacular room in the place, nearly ninety feet long and twenty-five feet wide with huge windows looking out over the
gardens and the river. Richard Butler was in the middle of the front row, wearing a deep red smoking jacket and a bow tie, looking, Powerscourt thought, rather like a man about to introduce acts in
the music hall. Sylvia Butler was beside him, the two smallest Butler children sitting on either side, resentful that they were not allotted a part in the performance. The vicar was there, Reverend
Cooper Walker, with that cheerful air vicars wear to fêtes and parties. Johnpeter Kilross and Alice Bracken were sitting suspiciously close to one another in the back row. The first
performers were three small girls in white dresses, aged, Powerscourt thought, about seven or eight. Maybe these were some of those who could not remember their lines. They sang a verse each on their own, all joining in for the chorus.

The child gave a great sigh as she finished as if it had all been a terrible ordeal. James, accompanying them on the piano, gave her a stern look. A makeshift stage, used in
grown-up amateur dramatics, had been erected at one end of the room. To one side was a table with poles around it holding black cloth that ran round three of the four sides. It was open facing the
audience. A set of steps led up to it and in front was what looked like a bath tub, also draped in black. Powerscourt wondered if there was going to be a mock execution.

the final singer, a dark-haired little girl with a very serious expression, put tremendous emphasis on the word fever,

Many of the audience were humming along to the final chorus. The three girls bowed solemnly and departed through the door at the back of the room. Great giggling and laughter
could be heard coming from the children awaiting their turn.

‘Didn’t they look sweet, Francis,’ Lady Lucy whispered to Powerscourt. ‘I hope their parents are here to see them.’

Next up was a boy of about ten years, in a dark blue sailor suit. He delivered a short extract from a speech by Daniel O’Connell at Tara, home of the legendary High Kings of Ireland, which
declared that the country was making its way towards reform with the strides of a giant. Seven hundred and fifty tousand people, the boy assured them, had listened to O’Connell that day.

There was a round of applause. ‘Well said, wee Jimmy!’ ‘You tell them, son!’ ‘Three-quarters of a million, by God!’ James was back at the piano now, two girls
of about thirteen standing demurely on either side of him, but turned to face the spectators. James, Powerscourt noticed, was dressed entirely in black, black trousers, a black jacket that was
slightly too small for him. Only the shirt was white.

they sang in unison,

‘She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.

She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;

The girls were old enough, Powerscourt thought, to dream of love, but too young as yet to have known it.

Another prolonged round of applause followed, loud cries of Bravo and Encore coming from the back of the room. How innocent it all was, Powerscourt thought, and how charming.
How far removed from the world outside where thieves broke in and stole, and blackmail letters came in through the front door. Now he saw the significance of the table and the black drapes. Two
tall boys in dark shirts were dragging a third, dressed in rags, his hands tied in front of him, to the front of the table nearest the audience. Everything about him, his posture, his gestures,
spoke of defiance. He waited until there was complete silence in the Long Gallery.

‘My lords’ – the words were spoken with extreme contempt as the prisoner stared with hatred towards the front row – ‘you are impatient for the sacrifice and my
execution. Be yet patient. I have but a few more words to say.’ The guards pulled viciously at his arms at this point. ‘I am going to my cold and silent grave. My lamp of life is nearly
extinguished; my race is run, the grave opens to receive me and I sink into its bosom. I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world – it is the charity of its silence. Let no
man write my epitaph, for as no man who knows my motives can now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance defame them. Let them and me repose in obscurity and peace and my tomb remain
uninscribed until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. I
have done.’

With that the two guards pulled him away, crying, ‘To the scaffold!’, ‘Death to the traitor!’, ‘Hurry up with the drawing and quartering, for God’s
sake!’ but the boy managed to turn and face his executioners one last time. ‘Robert Emmett, speech from the dock after his conviction, Dublin, 1803.’

A vast cheer went up. ‘Hurrah for Emmett!’ ‘Hurrah for Johnny Mason!’ ‘Didn’t he do well!’

Powerscourt suddenly remembered Uncle Peter’s description of Parnell’s funeral and his final journey through the streets of Dublin. The coffin and the vast crowds accompanying it had
stopped for a minute or two outside the house in Thomas Street to pay their respects to the martyred Robert Emmett. Lady Lucy was whispering very close to his ear as the applause and the shouts
went on.

‘Was he a bad man, Francis, this Robert Emmett?’

‘No,’ said Powerscourt, ‘yes. Depends whose side you’re on.’

Now it was the turn of the girls again. Three willowy sisters, aged from ten to fourteen, with identical blonde hair came to the front of the stage and held hands. James was playing something
very romantic on the piano with the soft key pressed down as far as it would go so the music sounded as if it came from far away.

‘I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree,’ said the smallest sister,

The audience had gone very quiet now. ‘And I shall have some peace there,’ the middle sister carried on,

The eldest sister picked up the baton. She had a beautiful speaking voice, distinct and clear.

James finished his piano solo with an elaborate twirl. The sisters bowed low and said as they rose, in unison, ‘William Butler Yeats.’

Voices could be heard, breaking through the clapping. ‘Peace comes dropping slow, that’s really good,’ said a woman from the second row. ‘Linnet’s wings?’
said a cynic at the back. ‘Did you ever hear linnet’s wings? I ask you. Bloody poets.’

Then the room was suddenly filled with activity. Most of the children seemed to have a task to perform. Some went and closed the great shutters and pulled the curtains tight to block the late
afternoon sunlight that had been pouring into the room, leaving long golden patches on the floorboards. Before the lights went out Powerscourt saw two children, dressed in very tattered clothes,
lie down on the floor formed by the black draped table. Other children were putting some bulky objects into the bath tub. Others still brought wooden planks and laid them carefully from the edge of
the table nearest the audience down into the bath tub. Four solemn children, two boys and two girls, took up their position at each of the corners of the table, each carrying a single lighted
candle.

There were two great doors in the middle of the Long Gallery. One of these now opened to reveal a tall young man of about fifteen. He too carried a lighted candle and he had a small book with
his words written in front of him. All he lacked, Powerscourt thought, was a bell.