Death on the Holy Mountain (39 page)

‘Pronsias Mulcahy!’ said Inspector Harkness in his best Ulster accent. ‘I have a licence to search these premises. You are to wait outside in the square. One of my men will
accompany you. If you attempt to flee you will be transported immediately to Athlone Jail.’

‘You can’t do this to me, you northern bastard,’ Mulcahy spat, ‘this is my shop! You’ve no rights here!’

‘Oh, but we do, Mr Mulcahy,’ Harkness replied, waving the search warrant in his face. ‘Now I suggest you go outside and wait quietly. I should let you know,’ he added
cheerfully, ‘that we have a warrant to search your house as well. Any misbehaviour and we’ll be in there too, tearing up the floorboards and poking about in your attics. Now get
out!’

A burly constable escorted Mulcahy out of his premises. A chair was provided for him to sit down by his own front door. Harkness’s men began working their way methodically through the main
shop, peering behind the backs of cupboards, tapping regularly on the walls. Powerscourt headed straight for the back office where Mulcahy did his accounts among the hams hanging from the ceiling
and the barrels of stout awaiting final delivery to the bar. He picked up the three books where Mulcahy kept note of his business. He discarded the two concerning the grocery and the bar and took
the third, the blue one concerning the loans, out into the open air where he could get a better view.

‘That’s private!’ yelled Mulcahy. ‘That’s mine! You can’t steal that, you fecking traitor!’

‘You just shut up, you!’ said the burly constable, giving the grocer a hefty clip round the ear. ‘Any more disturbances and you’re off to jail.’

It was not yet ten past nine. Powerscourt was to tell Lady Lucy afterwards that he had no idea how it was summoned, but a crowd was already gathering outside Mulcahy’s. It could not have
been the old lady’s doing for she lived next door and spoke to nobody on her brief return journey. Two Delaney solicitors were there, muttering to the constable about habeas corpus and due
process and whatever else they could think of at that hour in the morning. Father O’Donovan Brady had arrived, the buttons on his soutane not all fastened, escorted by a group of young men
with hurling sticks. Two bleary-eyed drovers had tottered out of MacSwiggin’s Hotel and were sitting in the sunshine, watching the proceedings with great interest. Father O’Donovan
Brady began a prayer for the afflicted one in his hour of need until told to shut up by the constable, this wasn’t his church and it wasn’t bloody Sunday morning either, so it
wasn’t. The stray dog too had heard the summons, calling two more of its kind to patrol the periphery of the crowd. Every few minutes another figure would amble into the square to look at
Pronsias Mulcahy, who had so much influence in the little community, sitting on a chair, virtually under house arrest, while the constabulary searched his premises. Then a group of women appeared
and began shouting insults at the constable until Inspector Harkness poked his head round the door and told them they would all be charged with a breach of the King’s peace if they did not
keep quiet.

Inside the searching party had almost finished with the main body of the shop. Powerscourt had told the Inspector that he thought it very unlikely that anything would be hidden there. But he
also said that he doubted if any great attempt at concealment would be made. Mulcahy, he felt, would have thought there was about as much chance of his premises being turned over as there was of
his being chosen as Tsar of all the Russias. Powerscourt retired behind the gates of Butler’s Court and checked the dates and the entries on Mulcahy’s loan ledger with the details in
Harkness’s letter. A slow smile spread across his face. In one respect, at any rate, he was not wrong.

A couple of hundred yards away, further up the hill, Lady Lucy had left the book of poetry in her lap. The sun was quite warm already. She was daydreaming now, wondering if Francis was going to
take her away for a holiday when this investigation was over. He usually did. She checked through various places in her mind, Rome, probably too hot, Nice, probably too crowded, Naples, too dirty.
She was wondering if she could persuade him to take her to New England when she fell asleep.

Harkness’s men were in the outhouses now. There was a slight air of frustration among the constables. Various piles of stores, carefully laid in by the grocer in case they should prove to
be in short supply in the near future, were kicked over. Outside in the square Mrs Mulcahy had made an appearance, wearing, not the blue suit she wore to church, but a well-worn apron over a cream
blouse and a dark skirt. She advanced towards her husband, still sitting defiantly on his chair, a lawyer Delaney on either side of him in case his enemies should assail him from the left or the
right. Far from offering comfort, Mrs Fionnula Mulcahy brought wrath. She came not with peace but with the sword. ‘Just look on the disgrace you’ve brought on us all! Stuck there like a
common criminal in the stocks! I always told you you’d go too far. Me own father Seamus Dempsey warned me you’d bring shame down on us all and you have! Just don’t expect me to
come visiting you in the jail in Athlone with little packets of barm brack and fruit cake, Pronsias Mulcahy! Don’t even expect to find me waiting for you when you come out, if you ever
do!’

She shook her fist at him and returned to her home. A small cheer of support from the hurling stick youths followed her back.

At the back of Mulcahy’s they were now halfway through the outbuildings. A faint tremor of anxiety passed across Powerscourt’s face as he contemplated the fact that their prey might
not be there. Inspector Harkness was sweating slightly. A party of children had arrived in the square and were playing hopscotch by the Butler’s Court gates. Three Christian Brothers joined
Father O’Donovan Brady in silent prayer for their troubled comrade. MacSwiggin’s Hotel and Bar opened its doors early to cater for the demand. A potboy carried a glass of stout to
Pronsias Mulcahy who seemed to be in need of refreshment. The policeman scowled but could not think of any laws or regulations that were being infringed. This was Ireland, after all.

It was Inspector Harkness who solved the problem. In the last outhouse but one he thought that the internal dimensions were less than the external ones. The area inside was smaller than it
should have been. He stalked round the outside knocking on the walls with a crowbar he had apprehended in an earlier building. He looked suspiciously at what might have been a new internal wall,
recently assembled in wood and draped with black tarpaulins. He pointed out his suspicions to Powerscourt.

‘Knock the bloody thing down,’ Powerscourt said, ‘and let’s see what’s on the other side.’

One of the constables had worked as a blacksmith before he joined up. He borrowed the crowbar and struck a number of fearsome blows. Quite soon he had opened up an entry, large enough for one
man to pass inside. Inspector Harkness gave a shout of triumph and handed a large parcel out of the opening to Powerscourt. Five more, of different sizes, followed, then more still. Another
constable returned with a torch, for the outhouse was rather dark and had no electricity of its own. Powerscourt took out his penknife and worked his way very carefully through the wrapping. After
a couple of minutes he found himself looking at an eighteenth-century gentleman, almost certainly a Butler from the set of his cheekbones. He checked all the others to make sure they had not been
defaced in the manner of
The Master of the Hunt
. Then another set of paintings appeared. These were the ones from Moore Castle whose theft had caused such upset to their owner. Inspector
Harkness whistled.

‘I’ll get one of my men to saddle up the Mulcahy cart, my lord. We can take these back home.’

The Inspector arranged the transfer so that every painting was carried out right in front of Pronsias Mulcahy, still sitting by the front entrance to his shop. When the parade had finished and
the paintings were safely stowed away, a constable on guard on either side of them, Inspector Harkness raised his voice till it carried to the far corners of the square. ‘Pronsias Padraig
Mulcahy, I arrest you on the charge of being wilfully in receipt of stolen goods. I have to warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you. Take him away!’
More policemen ushered Mulcahy into a police vehicle and drove him off. One of the Delaneys started to run after it, saying there was an absence of due process, but the constables took no notice.
Father O’Donovan Brady turned on his heel and took the Christian Brothers back to his house. The good Lord Himself, Father O’Donovan Brady told them, would not object if they took drink
at a time like this.

A small triumphal procession made its way up to Butler’s Court. In the van was Mulcahy’s cart with the paintings and the two constables on guard. Behind that marched Inspector
Harkness and his remaining forces. Behind them, a rather grubby Powerscourt, a dirty hand holding on to one of Lady Lucy’s with great pride and affection. They must have been spotted from one
of the windows at the front for Richard Butler came out and eyed the cart suspiciously. He remembered the earlier painting that had returned with the faces changed.

‘They’re all right, Richard,’ said Powerscourt, ‘these are the real things. They’ve come back. After all this time they’ve come back. I think you should
rehang them straight away. And you’d better tell Moore to come over as fast as he can. We’ve found his too.’

An hour and a half later Richard Butler carried two bottles of champagne into his dining room. His ancestors and his Old Masters were back on the walls. Next door
The Master of the Hunt
in the correct version was also back in its place. The entire family was present. Inspector Harkness had borrowed a red smoking jacket for the occasion and was puffing happily on a large cigar.
Powerscourt was sitting at one end of the table.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Butler, raising his glass, ‘I ask you to drink the health of Lord Francis Powerscourt who has secured the miraculous return of these paintings.
Lord Powerscourt!’ The toasts rang out into the great hallway. ‘And now, Powerscourt, perhaps you can tell us all what has been going on!’

Powerscourt remained seated. ‘Let me begin,’ he said, ‘by saying how steadfastly everyone has behaved throughout this business. Except for Connolly. I have no brief for
Connolly. I expect his pictures were guests of Mulcahy’s as yours were, but were released when he paid up. But without the courage of all of you, even when the Ormonde women were seized, this
strange battle would have been lost long ago.’ He paused and looked at the Butlers and the Moores, who had only just arrived to be reunited with their ancestors.

‘Let me begin, if I may,’ said Powerscourt, ‘with the theft of the paintings. One obvious reason would have been to sell them. The market for Anglo-Irish ancestors might be
limited, but they do have a certain value. Yet all the inquiries Johnny and I set in motion in Dublin and in London and in New York revealed that not a single one had been put on the market. So,
unless we were dealing with an obsessive collector who wanted a basement full of dead gentry, there had to be another reason. And here, I think, we come to a question of psychology. It seemed to me
that the only people who would understand what these ancestral portraits meant to families like the Butlers and the Moores would be Protestant. Only they would hear the tribal beat that echoes back
down the centuries. Catholics tend to have different kinds of paintings on their walls. So my first theory was that a Protestant dreamt up this particular plot. But for what purpose? And in whose
interest? Protestant or Catholic? Then we had the return of two pictures, the Moore one that faded away, and
The Master of the Hunt
that was returned here with a completely different cast of
characters on horseback. Whoever thought of that was clever, extremely clever. I don’t think Mulcahy or anybody like him would have thought of either of those ploys in a hundred years. So
there had to be somebody behind the Mulcahy figure, Mulcahy’s brains, as it were. But why should anybody volunteer for such a position?’

Powerscourt paused and took a sip of champagne. His little audience was transfixed. Lady Lucy smiled at him from halfway down the table, Thomas Butler, 1726–1788, behind her head.
‘Now we come to the blackmail letters, or the absence of them. I must say that the denial of their existence for a long time caused me considerable problems. For I was sure there were
blackmail letters. There had to be. The thieves didn’t want to sell the paintings. They obviously wanted to wound their victims, but surely there was more to it than that. I remember Richard
Butler telling me once that he had sworn to his father to preserve all his inheritance and to pass it on to the next generation. The others may have made similar vows, I don’t know, it may be
the custom in these families. Only Dennis Ormonde, in his fury, confirmed that there had been such a missive. His anger, incidentally, confirmed to me that the thieves had indeed chosen a powerful
weapon in the paintings, guaranteed to destabilize their victims. Even then you all refused to tell me precisely what was in the blackmail letters. I presumed, wrongly, that it had to do with
money, and that was a subject any Irish gentleman would be reluctant to discuss with his peers.’

Uncle Peter shuffled slowly into the back of the dining room. He was wearing a tattered blue coat and clutching a bottle of white wine. He nodded amiably to Powerscourt and sat down.

‘Now I would like to address one of the thorniest aspects of the matter,’ Powerscourt went on, ‘put simply, how many lots of thieves were there? One? Two? Three? Four?
Eventually I came to the conclusion that there were two. The thefts from here and from Moore and Connolly were all the work of one lot. The proof is in the fact that Moore’s paintings were
found in the Mulcahy outhouse. But who were the others? Mulcahy has a brother, one Declan Mulcahy, a solicitor in Swinford with branch offices in Castlebar and Ballinrobe. He specializes in land,
you’ll be surprised to hear, and is a rising power in County Mayo. I think our Mulcahy mentioned his plan to his brother and they decided to try it on at Ormonde House, both with the theft
and with the kidnap. It was Uncle Peter, oddly enough, who put me on to how the manpower was recruited. In his account of Parnell’s funeral he mentioned the honour guard of young men with
hurling sticks from the Gaelic Athletic Association who guarded the coffin all the way through the streets of Dublin to the cemetery. Even then it was thought that they were linked to extreme
elements of Irish Republicanism. There were a couple of hurling sticks in the front hall of Butler Lodge. The Archbishop of Tuam told me he was very worried about some of the younger priests and
Christian Brothers because their politics are so extreme and they preach their message of violent opposition to English or Anglo-Irish rule to the young. Johnny Fitzgerald had a conversation in
Westport with a defrocked Christian Brother who said you could use the young men of the Gaelic Athletic Association, the GAA, to take over Ireland. I believe the Swinford Mulcahy got in touch with
these people, maybe through a priest or a Brother who coaches one of the football or hurling teams, and asked for volunteers to strike a blow in Ireland’s cause. Steal a few pictures, make
off with a couple of women, that sort of thing. Those kidnappers who took and held the Ormonde ladies were fanatical nationalists to a man. They said we were traitors. I believe the kidnap,
incidentally, was in part to do with the blackmail and in part a sort of revenge for the arrival of the Orangemen. The blackmail letters may have said that the women were next after the paintings,
I don’t know.’