Death on the Holy Mountain (25 page)

‘I don’t think we’ll do that just now,’ said Powerscourt, his brain reeling from the news. The pictures were only a start. Then it’s the people. Your own wife,
even. He took Lady Lucy’s hand absentmindedly into his own.

‘Do we know when they disappeared? Do we know where they were when they were taken? If they were taken, that is.’

Hanrahan coughed. ‘I’m afraid it’s not altogether clear about when they were last seen, sir. Some people thought they went out on to the lawn. Others think they saw them after
that in the house.’

‘They didn’t say if they were going out for a walk with a picnic perhaps, something like that? They didn’t go off in one of the carriages, did they?’

‘We’ve checked all that, sir. There was no picnic ordered and the carriages are all there still now.’

They heard the clatter of boots coming from the library. The Chief Constable was introduced, a former military man, Powerscourt decided. ‘Colonel Fitzwilliam, Lord Powerscourt.’ A
grim-faced Ormonde made the introductions.

‘Delighted to meet you, Powerscourt,’ said the Colonel. ‘Heard you were roaming in these pastures. Aren’t you the chap who did all that intelligence work in South
Africa?’

‘I am,’ said Powerscourt ruefully. ‘I feel I was more successful out there against the Boers than I am here with these thieves.’

‘Nonsense, man.’ The Colonel at least was in cheerful mood. ‘You’ll get the hang of it soon enough.’

Powerscourt did not like to admit that he had been working on the case for many weeks now and did not feel any more advanced than on the day he started.

‘Ormonde will fill you in on the plans. I’ve got to get some sort of system organized for finding the women. Won’t do it without a system. I’ve always believed in
systems, getting things properly organized. Nothing happens otherwise, civilians even worse than military.’

With that Colonel Fitzwilliam clattered off out of the front door and was driven away at great speed toward his systems. Ormonde drew them into the drawing room. Powerscourt remembered the flood
of uncontrollable anger that had swept through this man when he realized his paintings had gone from his walls. He wondered if the reaction would be the same this time, or worse. But he seemed calm
at first. Powerscourt thought he could see the terrible wrath lurking just beneath the surface, waiting to explode.

‘Let me ask you one thing straight away, Powerscourt,’ he began. ‘Do you think they’re alive, my wife and her sister, I mean?’

‘I do,’ said Powerscourt firmly. ‘Let me tell you why I believe it. This whole affair is about blackmail. The thieves took one lot of chips, if you’ll pardon the
expression, when they stole the pictures. They thought that would be enough to persuade you to do what they want. It wasn’t. So they’ve helped themselves to some more chips. But they
have to keep the two hostages alive, it seems to me. They’re no use to them dead. You might get years in prison for stealing paintings and hijacking people. You hang for murder.’

‘Thank you,’ said Ormonde gravely. Lady Lucy didn’t feel she would like to be referred to as a chip as if she was part of a poker game but she let it go. ‘Now then,
I’ll tell you the plan. The Chief Constable is planning a great sweep through a fifteen-mile arc around this house. Every house, great and small, is to be visited, the inhabitants questioned,
notes taken about every single dwelling. Just as well Mayo is one of the least populated parts of the country. He’s bringing in extra policemen from all of Connaught and further afield if he
needs them. Each force will have its own particular area to work on. The working day for policemen is to be extended until eight o’clock in the evening. The Orangemen are to abandon their
defensive duties and search as much of the mountain and wasteland as they can in the time. Fitzwilliam wasn’t at all keen on their knocking on doors. I’ve got to go and talk to these
Orangemen now, if you’ll forgive me. I shall return soon.’

‘Just one thing before you go,’ said Powerscourt quickly. ‘The deadline, the deadline in the blackmail letter. Has it come yet?’

‘No,’ said Ormonde.

‘How soon?’ said Powerscourt.

‘Middle of next week, actually.’ Ormonde looked as though he would much rather not have had to part with this piece of information. ‘We’ve got five or six days to find
the women. And,’ he glowered balefully at this point, ‘the bastards who took them.’

Powerscourt wandered about the house talking to some of the servants who had been on duty that morning. He learnt that there had been an elderly gardener employed raking the
gravel on the front drive and he had seen nothing. A couple of foresters had been working in the woods on either side of the road that led to the back exit and they had seen nothing. It was as if
Mary Ormonde, wife of Dennis, and her sister Winifred, had vanished into thin air. Powerscourt resumed his deliberations in the garden to the rear of the house. A great terrace with a balustrade
ran the full length of the back of Ormonde House. In front was a small statue spouting water and a long expanse of grass. To the right and at the far end of the lawn there was a lake which ran
right down to the edge of the demesne. Powerscourt looked at the layout for some time and rushed in to find Lady Lucy who was deep in conversation with the housekeeper. ‘Forgive me Mrs
O’Malley, I must borrow Lucy for a little while. I’ll bring her back presently, don’t worry.’ And with that he hurried her out into the garden. Powerscourt picked up a chair
and placed it on the lawn at right angles to the terrace, so both house and lake could be seen. He motioned to Lady Lucy to sit in it.

‘Lucy,’ said her husband, ‘I want you to pretend to be Mary Ormonde. I didn’t think Mrs O’Malley would be quite right for your sister Winifred so you’re just
going to have to pretend you have an imaginary friend sitting next to you.’

‘Like Olivia used to do when she was little?’ asked Lady Lucy. Powerscourt remembered his daughter having long and involved conversations with her phantom friend, often involving
food and not going to bed for some reason.

‘Indeed,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Now I am going to disappear for a moment or two but I shall come back. You two have a nice little chat, you know how much you ladies enjoy
conversation.’

Powerscourt could have been seen from the terrace dragging something along the side of the lake. Suddenly Lady Lucy felt something hard and round poking into the middle of her back.
‘Don’t make a noise,’ said Powerscourt in his nastiest voice, ‘or I’ll kill the pair of you. Just leave your things there and come to the water with me. If you value
your lives you’ll climb into that rowing boat as fast as your feet will carry you.’

Powerscourt led the way to the water’s edge and climbed into the boat. ‘Stern for you,’ said Powerscourt, settling himself in the middle of the little craft and rowing as hard
as he could. ‘Don’t we look innocent, Lucy,’ he said in his normal voice. ‘Nobody would think anything untoward was going on at all. Two ladies being taken for a row by some
young man, probably a servant.’

‘I think it’s quite nice being abducted by you in a rowing boat, Francis,’ said Lady Lucy, trailing a hand in the water. ‘Do you think we should do it more
often?’

‘Now then,’ said the villainous Powerscourt, taking his little stick out of his pocket and pointing it at his wife once more, ‘when we get to the far side, do exactly as I say
or you’re for it.’

He beached the boat and pointed to a little door that led out into the world beyond the Big House. One hundred yards away was a jetty with two of Dennis Ormonde’s yachts moored close
by.

‘Just pretend, Mrs Ormonde,’ he snarled ‘that one of those boats is ours.’ Powerscourt stared out at the blue water and the islands. ‘You could be clean
away,’ he said in his normal voice, ‘in five minutes from the first encounter in the garden.’

‘Do you think that’s how they were taken, Francis?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘It’s quite risky, isn’t it?’

‘Once you’ve got them out of the garden,’ said Powerscourt, ‘it’s plain sailing, if you’ll forgive the expression. With all those Orangemen wandering about
nobody’s going to look twice at any strange young man or men roaming about. It’s all quite normal.’

‘So what happened then?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘Do they sail away for a year and a day to the land where the bong tree grows?’

Powerscourt laughed. ‘I very much doubt it. I don’t think they met any pigs selling rings either. I suspect they met something rather nastier than the pig. We’d better go back,
I suppose. I’d better tell my theory to Ormonde though I can’t see for the life of me how it’s going to help finding them.’

Father O’Donovan Brady was on his second sherry of the evening when Cathal Rafferty knocked on his front door. The Father always limited the sherry before his tea on the
days when Pronsias Mulcahy came to call with his fresh bottle of John Powers.

‘Good evening, young man, what can I do for you?’ Father O’Donovan Brady did not sound overjoyed at the prospect of his visitor.

‘Good evening, Father,’ said Cathal, wringing his cap in his hands, and falling silent. Somehow it had been easier to rehearse this conversation when there was only one of you. It
seemed much more difficult when there were two.

‘Well,’ said the priest, ‘I cannot offer you any guidance if you don’t speak, you know.’

‘You remember, Father, you told me that if I saw or heard of any wickedness going on round here, I was to come and tell you.’

‘The Devil never sleeps, not even in Ireland, that’s what I said,’ said Father O’Donovan Brady, curious now to know what sins this strange young man had witnessed. Sin
excited the Father. He found discussion of it stimulating, possibly because the hearing of the sins was as near as he would ever get to committing them. ‘What have you seen, young
Cathal?’

This was going to be the difficult bit. ‘Do you know the Head Gardener’s Cottage out there at the back of the demesne?’

‘I do,’ said the priest. ‘I knew the last Head Gardener well. He was a parishioner of mine. But I think the place is empty now.’

‘It wasn’t empty this afternoon, Father. There were two people in there.’

‘And what were they doing? What a strange place to go in the afternoon. Did you see them go in?’

‘That I did not, Father, I saw them through the window.’ Cathal blushed red now, staring at the carpet.

Father Brady sensed that there might be gold, pure gold, if you could use those words for what he suspected was such a terrible sin, in the boy’s account.

‘You saw them through the window, did you now? And what were they doing, Cathal?’

The boy was whispering now. ‘They were putting their clothes on, Father.’

‘Putting their clothes on? God bless my soul. Tell me exactly what you saw. Don’t leave anything out now.’

‘Well,’ said Cathal, feeling relieved that he’d passed the worst, ‘the woman didn’t have anything on at all. She was pulling her stockings up. The man had a shirt
and his underpants on but no trousers. He had very hairy legs.’ Cathal seemed to attach great importance to the amount of hair on Johnpeter’s legs.

‘This was in the bedroom, I presume,’ said Father Brady. The hunter had spotted a fox now and was in full pursuit. Cathal nodded.

‘I don’t suppose,’ the priest went on, ‘that you managed to catch sight of what had been going on before they put their clothes on?’

‘No,’ said the boy.

‘Pity, that.’ Father Brady finished his sherry. ‘What sort of people were they? Butler’s Court people? Young? Middle-aged?’

‘Oh, they were young, Father. I should say they were in their early twenties. And I’m sure they came from the Big House.’

‘And I don’t suppose you know their names? Protestants, I presume, seeing where they were.’

‘They looked like Protestants all right,’ said Cathal, ‘but I don’t know their names, I’m afraid.’

Father Brady dug into his pocket and handed over five shillings. ‘That is your reward, young man. I fear great sin is taking place in our midst. I want you to do two things, young Cathal.
I want you to find out their names and if they are married or not. And I want you to see if you can watch them before they put their clothes back on. Before we name the Devil’s work, we have
to know precisely what it is. You did well to come to me today.’ He showed the young man to the front door. ‘I’m very pleased with you. Remember, Cathal, if doubts should come,
that you are doing the Lord’s work.’

Johnny Fitzgerald returned late that evening to a depressed Ormonde House. The host had retired to bed early with a bottle of Armagnac. Powerscourt and Lady Lucy were having a
disconsolate conversation about where you might hide two women of the Protestant Ascendancy.

‘Word of the kidnap reached Westport about five o’clock in the afternoon, Francis,’ said Johnny. ‘Must have travelled round the town in about half an hour flat, I should
think. Probably reached Galway by now. Limerick tomorrow morning, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘What of your defrocked Christian Brother, Johnny?’ asked Lady Lucy.

‘He was rather disappointing, really,’ said Johnny with a laugh. ‘I’d imagined all sorts of terrible crimes he might have committed but all he’d done was to fall in
love with a young widow whose son was in his class. He was going to resign but the authorities got in first. They said he must have broken his vow of celibacy with this woman before he handed in
his resignation. He said it would be difficult to maintain your vows in the company of this girl. She was very beautiful. He did have one interesting theory, though, about how to start a revolution
in Ireland.’

‘And what was that?’ asked Powerscourt.

‘All you needed, the former Brother Mooney maintained, was the Christian Brothers and all the young men from the Gaelic Athletic Association on your side. You take over the towns of
Ireland one by one. Then you march on Dublin. It’s revolution by hurling sticks, if you follow me. The only snag, as your man pointed out, was that the whole bloody country would end up being
run by the Christian Brothers. He didn’t fancy that too much.’

‘What do you think about this pilgrimage?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘It’s two days away now and I’m not sure we should do it with all this fuss about the missing women.
It wouldn’t look right, would it?’