Death of a Pilgrim

20

They reached the Spanish border in the middle of the afternoon. Lady Lucy spent much of the time asleep, hands folded neatly on her lap. Johnny Fitzgerald was reading a small book called The Birds of Europe, checking out what he might find in Spain. Powerscourt continued with Michael Delaney, Robber Baron. As they moved out of France the landscape was dominated by the jagged peaks of the Pyrenees, blessed with many waterfalls and home, as Johnny informed his companions, to large numbers of vultures and brown bears. Inspector Leger came to say his farewells. He wished Powerscourt all the luck in the world with the rest of his investigation. He was to telegraph immediately once the mystery was solved. He was gallant with Lady Lucy, saying what a pleasure it had been to meet her. As he led his men out of the border station, he took them first into the nearest bar.

‘I’m going to buy you boys a drink, maybe two,’ he announced. ‘We’ve got rid of those bloody pilgrims at last. Thank God I didn’t listen to those fools in the Town Hall in Moissac or we’d still be there. France is well shot of them.’

‘Do you know who the murderer is, sir?’ asked one of his men.

‘I haven’t a clue. I don’t think our English friend has either. Let’s hope the pilgrims kill each other before they get to Santiago.’

The Spanish Inspector spoke perfect English. His name was Felipe Mendieta, son of an English mother who had fallen in love with a Spanish waiter and married him in Spain. The father Mendieta had now graduated to owning his own restaurant. The tapas, his son assured them, were the finest in Navarre. He brought a priest with him, Father Olivares, who opened religious negotiations with Father Kennedy in Latin. The Spanish authorities, Inspector Mendieta assured them, took the same position as the French as far as the pilgrims were concerned. This train would take them all the way to Santiago. Nobody else would be allowed on board. Overnight accommodation would once again be in the town jail or the police cells, whichever could accommodate them. Maggie Delaney would be accommodated in hospital or nunnery as before. It was for their own safety. The Spanish authorities were most anxious that the pilgrims, having endured so much on their journey, should find spiritual satisfaction at the end. Inspector Mendieta trusted that the presence of Father Olivares would lend spiritual comfort. Powerscourt and his party were, of course, free to come and go as they pleased.

The Inspector made his way down the train to make himself known to the pilgrims. There was a sudden cry from Powerscourt. ‘Listen to this,’ he said, ‘here’s another Delaney crime! This author doesn’t treat the subject chronologically, he treats it by industry. We’re in oil now. This must have happened twenty or thirty years ago. Delaney and two other people, Richard Jackson and Ralph Singer, buy up an oil concession in Ohio. Delaney runs it. He tells the other two after a year or so that it’s no good, the prospector teams haven’t found anything, they’re not going to get rich this time. So they all agree to sell out to a company called Michigan Oil. So far so good. Three months later Jackson and Singer discover that the owner of Michigan Oil is none other than Michael Delaney. And, surprise, surprise, the land in the concession is dripping with oil, it’s worth fortunes. Delaney has cheated them; God, he’s a bad man. I’ll have to ask Father Kennedy if he can be forgiven this many sins.’

‘What did the other two characters do, Francis?’ asked Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘Did they drink themselves to death like the other fellow in New York with the socially ambitious wife?’

Powerscourt held up his hand while he finished the chapter. ‘Jackson and Singer never recovered from this betrayal, the man says. Their business careers failed. One ended up working for the US Mail and the other one earns his daily bread as a clerk in a hardware shop. This is what the man says: ‘“Think of how their careers might have been different if they had not been defrauded by this wicked man. Think of the turn their lives and the lives of their families might have taken had they not been swindled out of what was rightfully theirs. Think of the sad end to their days, when the American Dream, for them, turned into the American Nightmare, the promise of a better future that is the birthright of all Americans turned to dust in the earth of Ohio. Think of yet another crime entered in Delaney’s ledger of wickedness, think of the misery his greed has brought on those who cross his path. Think of what his fate may be.”’

‘Children, Francis?’ asked Lady Lucy. ‘Any sons who could have lived on to take revenge?’

‘The book doesn’t say,’ said Powerscourt. ‘This is like all the other possible shades from Delaney’s past. Why wait so long? And why, if you want to do away with Delaney, do you kill all these others first? I don’t think it adds up,’ he said sadly, putting the book down on the table. ‘There is one thing about Michael Delaney, Robber Baron. It makes you look at the man in a totally different light.’

They were pulling away from the mountains now. The train stopped at a tiny station in the middle of nowhere and a message was handed over to Inspector Mendieta. He laughed as he rejoined the Powerscourt party at the back of the train.

‘The pilgrims are going to be happy on their night in Pamplona!’ he said with a smile. ‘The town jail is full, the police cells are full, so my boss has kicked a load of people out of one of the town’s finest hotels to put the pilgrims on the upper floors.’

‘Is there a crime wave in the town?’ asked Johnny Fitzgerald.

The Inspector laughed. ‘You could call it a crime wave, I suppose. Today is Tuesday, the tenth of July and Pamplona is in the middle of Fiesta, or Festival. People come from all over for the bullfights and the religious services and the parties and the bands and the excitement. And, I nearly forgot, for the running of the bulls. Fiesta is held at the same time every year, from the sixth to the fourteenth of July. Because all the thieves and pickpockets in southern France and northern Spain know these dates, they come too for their own festival of crime. Every year the jails are full at this time. The hotel will probably have its own share of bands and jugglers and other entertainers passing through this evening. Even though the pilgrims will not be allowed out, the fiesta will come to them. The patron saint of Fiesta is San Fermin. Among other things he is the patron saint of wineskins. They sell in the thousand at this time for people to refill at the little wine shops in the side streets. They say some people don’t go to bed at all for the entire duration of the festival.’

Their dinner later that day in Pamplona seemed to consist of tens of courses, served at irregular intervals. Johnny Fitzgerald maintained that the waiters popped out into the street for half an hour or so between courses. A brass band came through, some of the musicians swaying slightly as they blew. A team of jugglers danced their way through the tables, the lemons flying over the diners’ heads. A pair of troubadours serenaded them, the boy playing the guitar and the girl singing the sad song of her only true love, a matador who perished in the ring through thinking of her rather than concentrating on the bull which gored him to death. Throughout the proceedings, as dish followed dish and the rough local red flowed on, the Inspector’s men never left their posts, eyes fixed on the exits to the dining room, hands never far from the pistols in their belts. The Inspector himself was by the main door, sometimes conversing with the kitchen staff or the waiters, sometimes checking on a list of names in the dark blue notebook he brought out from time to time. The pilgrims were all named in his book and a series of little ticks by the side of each one showed that Inspector Mendieta had recorded their presence.

Shortly after five o’clock in the morning Powerscourt woke to an urgent tapping on his door. He grabbed his pistol from the drawer beside his bed and opened the door a fraction.

‘You must come at once!’ the Inspector whispered. ‘Some of the pilgrims have escaped! They are not in their rooms! My man has been bound and gagged and cannot remember for the present exactly what happened. Join me by the front desk in a moment.’

Powerscourt wondered if he should wake Lady Lucy. He left her a short note instead. ‘Some pilgrims escaped. Gone to look for them. Love, Francis.’

He collected Johnny Fitzgerald on the way, Johnny protesting about the early hour and wondering if any of those wine shops would be open yet. The Inspector told them the bad news. It seemed as if the younger ones had managed to escape. ‘Wee Jimmy Delaney’s gone, so has Charlie Flanagan and Waldo Mulligan and Christy Delaney and Jack O’Driscoll, five of them altogether, all the younger ones.’

‘Have they taken their things with them?’ asked Powerscourt. ‘Has all their stuff gone from their rooms?’

‘That’s a very good question, my lord, I didn’t think about it.’

‘Let me go and look,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I know what most of their packs look like.’ With that he sprinted up the stairs to the top floor. There were still revellers in the streets outside, maudlin songs floating through the open windows of the hotel. All the pilgrim packs were still there. That was a relief, he said to himself as he raced back down the stairs. Or was it?

‘Their belongings are all still there,’ he said. ‘In one sense that is good for they obviously intend to come back here at some stage. Perhaps they’ve just gone to join the party. But in another sense, Inspector, nothing could be worse. In every single murder on this journey the victim has been lured away by the killer, up a hill of volcanic rock, over to the side of a river, out to the back of a church, up to an upper room in a set of cloisters, and every time the killer strikes. All of those pilgrims bar one are in deadly peril, and that one is the murderer. Where easier to kill than in the streets of Pamplona in the hour before dawn when another body lying in the street will not arouse any interest? Even if there is blood flowing it will be taken for wine. We must search the whole town until we find them, Inspector. Pray God that the missing five come back alive!’

‘Lord Powerscourt, forgive me.’ A hotel porter had materialized from behind the front desk. ‘This came for you yesterday morning. We forgot to pass it on. Our apologies.’

Powerscourt was about to stuff it in his pocket but something told him to open it. He skimmed rapidly through the contents. It came from Franklin Bentley in Washington. ‘I have news from Pittsburgh,’ the message began. ‘Thirty years ago Michael Delaney lived there. He was married with a son aged two. When the wife was three months pregnant Delaney walked out and went to live in New York. Wife died in childbirth. Baby stillborn. Priests and nun contacted many relations in hope of finding somebody who would take on the boy and bring him up.’

Outside a drunk was singing in the street. Powerscourt had no idea what was coming next. ‘Nuns even offered to pay for him to be taken back to England or Ireland or wherever a willing Delaney might be found. One nun volunteered to escort him across the Atlantic to a new home. But there were no willing Delaneys. There was no new home. They all refused to bring up a child who was a member of their family. The boy was eventually adopted by a devout Catholic couple with no children of their own, and here is a strange coincidence. The priest who gave me this information said I was not the only person to ask him for news about the boy Delaney. Six months ago a very angry man had been to see him who had discovered adoption details in his father’s papers after his father died unexpectedly. He went to the priest for confirmation of what he had discovered. Reluctantly the priest backed up the details. I myself had to make a generous contribution to the Church Missionary Society before he divulged all. This man was indeed the little son Michael Delaney abandoned. He had been given the surname of his new parents. He left the priest an address in Washington to send any further information that might emerge. His name is Waldo Mulligan. Hope this information is useful,’ Bentley concluded. ‘Something tells me you will not be looking for any more research on this side of the Atlantic. Warm regards, Bentley.’

‘Sorry for the delay,’ Powerscourt said to his colleagues. ‘Inspector, Johnny, we have a name at last. If your men find Waldo Mulligan, Inspector, arrest him immediately. We haven’t time now for me to tell you why, but I am virtually certain he is the killer. Now, we must find the pilgrims before he kills again.’

‘I will fetch more men,’ said the Inspector. ‘I suggest you try in that direction over there, my lord. That is the area where the running of the bulls takes place. And quite soon too. If I were a young man, tired of being cooped up by policemen, that is where I would go.’

Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald set off in the dark. Five prisoners had escaped. In an hour or two the bulls would be loosed to charge down the streets of Pamplona. The streets were wet from the night rain. Watching them from the darkest point behind the hotel Waldo Mulligan set off in pursuit of them, careful not to be spotted, his right hand holding very firmly on to something in his inside pocket.

Powerscourt lost Johnny Fitzgerald five minutes after leaving the hotel. He shouted his name but there was no answer. He was now in a great press of people, almost all of them young, heading for the start of the running of the bulls in Santo Domingo Street. The dawn was coming and he saw that nearly all of the young men were wearing white shirts and bright red scarves round their necks. Some of the older ones wore red sashes round their waists. They had the forced gaiety, Powerscourt thought, of young men about to go into battle. He had seen it so often before, a mixture of bravado, excitement and a fear that you would never admit to except to very close friends. Young men had to keep up a show in these circumstances, they couldn’t let people see they were frightened. Many of them held rolled-up newspapers in their hands to deflect the bulls’ attention. They told jokes or made plans to meet their girls after the run.

Powerscourt found himself thinking about an angry Waldo Mulligan conferring with the priest in Pittsburgh. He told himself to concentrate on the events ahead or he could end up killed or injured while his mind had wandered off to Washington. He could see now that parts of the route were lined with double rows of barriers with a small gap between them to allow runners to escape or medical staff into the route to remove the wounded. There was a clattering up above as people in houses with balconies crowded on to them drinking great cups of chocolate to keep warm.

Waldo Mulligan had manoeuvred himself into a position three or four people behind Powerscourt and almost invisible to him. It was ten to seven in the morning. Powerscourt and the others were held in by police barriers keeping the runners in their place. There was no escape now.

The running of the bulls in Pamplona has an ancient history going back to the days when the bulls were brought into the town to fight in the public square, which was also used as a bullring. In modern time the bulls are brought in at eleven o’clock the night before and kept in a corral. Six bulls make the run accompanied by one group of eight oxen with bells round their necks and followed by a further three oxen to sweep up any stray bulls on the route. Each bull weighs about twelve hundred pounds and can run at fifteen miles an hour, faster than most humans. For the bulls this is their first exposure to masses of people and to loud noise so they can become disoriented. If that happens they can turn dangerous. The route starts at Santo Domingo on a slope that favours the bulls as their front legs are shorter than the hind ones. After about three hundred yards the bulls enter the Plaza Consistorial Mercaderes for a stretch of a hundred yards or so. Then there is a sharp right-hand turn of ninety degrees called the Estafeta Bend which leads into the longest stretch of the route, the Calle Estefeta, a narrow street three hundred yards long where the only protection is in the doorways. Then there is a short stretch called the Telefonica where the double barriers come into play, acting as a funnel. The bulls are slower now, approaching the callejon or lane which leads into the bullring. There the runners are told to fan out along the side of the bullring while the bulls are corralled again, ready for the bullfight later in the day and death in the afternoon.

Powerscourt was trying to remember what he had been told years before about the encierro, the running of the bulls. It didn’t last very long, he seemed to recall. Only the brave or the foolhardy tried to run with the bulls for as long as they could before they slipped off to one side. Some reckless souls, he thought, started their run near the end and tried to time it so they just beat the weary bulls into the ring. Above all, he remembered, it may be many things, an ancient ritual, a trial of manhood, a test of nerve, but it’s not a race. There was no medal for the first runner or bull into the ring. Above all it showed the same Spanish obsession with death that marked the bullfight itself. There it was usually the bulls who died. Here on these narrow streets with the crowds behind the barriers and up on their balconies it was the humans who were more likely to perish. The prospect of sudden and violent death brought that extra frisson to the spectacle.

Waldo Mulligan was just two paces behind Powerscourt now. He could trip him up, or shove him into the path of a bull. It was five to seven. The young men began to sing to San Fermin to ask for his protection. ‘We ask of San Fermin, for he is our patron, to guide us in the bull run and give us his blessing.’ They waved their rolled-up newspapers and shouted ‘Viva San Fermin!’ in Spanish and in Basque. At three minutes to seven they sang it again.

Suddenly Powerscourt turned round. His eyes locked on to those of Waldo Mulligan as surely as a matador might lock eyes with a bull in the ring. Powerscourt knew. He knew that Waldo Mulligan was the killer. Worse, looking at Mulligan, Powerscourt was certain that Mulligan knew that Powerscourt knew that he, Mulligan, was the killer. The prayer rang out for a third and final time. Powerscourt joined in where it talked about guiding us in the bull run. Mulligan was going to try to kill him in the next few minutes. Death would come for him in the morning.

Lady Lucy felt helpless when she realized Francis had gone in pursuit of the missing pilgrims. She wondered what she should do. If she went out on to the streets she could be another potential victim. She remembered the two bolsters hacked to shreds in the hotel in Aire-sur-l’Adour. She opened the doors and went out on to the balcony. The sun was high in the sky now. It was going to be a beautiful day. She could hear the noise of the running of the bulls but she could not see it. Lady Lucy didn’t know that her husband was in deadly peril, and not just from the twelve-hundred-pound bulls.

Johnny Fitzgerald too had been sucked into the event, but further down the course from Powerscourt. He had made friends with a man with a couple of wineskins tied round his waist. Johnny thought the day was beginning to look up already.

At seven o’clock precisely the clock of San Cernin struck the hour. A rocket shot up into the sky, announcing that the mighty gates of the corral holding the bulls and the oxen had been opened. The police removed the barriers that had held the runners in. The encierro was under way. Powerscourt’s group began to run, not very fast, down Santa Domingo towards the Plaza. Other braver or more foolish souls waited to run as long as they could with the bulls in this opening stage. You could hear them before you saw them, Powerscourt thought, a rumbling noise like thunder getting closer or the pounding noise the closest spectators heard as the horses came round the last bend in the Derby.

As he looked round he saw that Waldo Mulligan was right behind him and trying to trip him up. Very suddenly Powerscourt turned and smashed his elbow into the centre of Mulligan’s mouth as hard as he could. Mulligan stumbled and held his hand to his face. The crowd was so tightly packed that he only slipped back a little, but he was no longer directly behind Powerscourt. Looking back again Powerscourt saw the bulls for the first time, dark brown brutes running as fast as they could, threatening to trample anybody who stood in their way. They were about twenty yards behind them now. Mulligan, swearing to himself, had returned to a position behind Powerscourt. Again he tried to trip him up. Then the crowd behind carried him to the right-hand side of the course. Powerscourt had been edging to his left, to the side of the street, away from the centre where the bulls were running. They had reached the Estafeta Bend now and the bulls were ahead of them now, two young men running just in front of them at top speed waving their rolled-up newspapers in the air.

Then disaster struck. The cobblestones were slippery. The largest and fiercest-looking bull slipped on the wet surface right at the edge of the ninety-degree bend. He fell slowly to the ground, less than ten feet from the crowd. The bull didn’t seem to know how to get up again for it took him the best part of a minute. He looked around sadly. All his companions had disappeared. He staggered towards the centre of the street. Runners swerved left and right to avoid him. He straightened himself up at last and seemed to Powerscourt to have an expression that said, Somebody is going to pay for this. Powerscourt pressed himself up against a wall. Some of his companions flung themselves to the ground and curled up into human balls. Powerscourt had often been in positions of extreme danger in his military service, under attack from mounted Pathan tribesmen on the North-West Frontier, strafed with shell fire in the Boer War, climbing up dangerous mountains for a night attack in India. Never had he been as frightened as this. The bulls were so big and so stupid. Anything could happen. This one, stumbling about in the wet street, might soon be close enough to shake hands or shake horns.

There was a scream from one of the balconies. The surrounding crowd had fallen silent, holding on to each other in their fear. Was the bull strong enough to break through the barrier? Would he soon be amongst them, goring as he went? The bull turned, still disoriented, and went back towards the other side. Powerscourt saw Waldo Mulligan shaking his head and trying to make himself invisible pressed against the barrier. Younger, fitter or more frightened people were climbing over the top of the fences, helping hands waiting to lift them to safety. Maybe it was the movement that tipped the bull over the edge. He stared at Waldo Mulligan. Mulligan looked at the bull and raised his fists to cover his face. The bull may have taken that as a hostile act. A couple of steps and the bull bent down. He gored Mulligan just above the groin, the horn ripping deep into his body, and flung him backwards to land on the cobblestones of the Calle Estafeta.

Blood was pouring onto the street. The crowd was screaming. Mulligan’s blood, almost the same shade of red as the scarves and the sashes, dripped across the cobblestones. The bull glowered at Mulligan as if thinking of a second goring to reinforce the first. Powerscourt remained pressed against his wall. The bull lumbered down the edge of the barrier where the crowd were now running away as fast as they could; he was looking for another victim. A group of cowherds with long sticks who were policing the event forced the bull back into the middle of the road and down the street to rejoin his companions in the bullring. Four medical orderlies raced through the gap in the barriers and put Mulligan on a stretcher. They carried him down to the hospital in the bullring. The staff there were used to gored people. They saw them virtually every afternoon on the days of the bullfights. Another rocket shot up into the morning sky. The bulls were all in the bullring. It was four minutes past seven.

Lady Lucy could sense the excitement as she looked at the crowds streaming past her balcony, heading for the bullring to hear news of the victim. When she went downstairs to the reception a porter with a little English told her that an Englishman had been gored running with the bulls. He pointed her in the direction of the hospital. Lady Lucy found she could not hurry as she would have wished. The crowd, sombre now, the high spirits before the start ebbing away like Mulligan’s blood, was so thick that all she could do was to allow herself to be carried along. Was it Francis? Was it Johnny? Were they even now breathing their last, their insides ripped to shreds by the horns of a bull, and she wasn’t there to hold their hands and stroke their faces?

Running as fast as he could, dodging in and out of the crowd, Powerscourt forced his way into the hospital. He had to speak to Mulligan before he died. He explained his position to a doctor who spoke French, that he was investigating four murders, that he believed Mulligan to be the murderer, and that he must speak to him before he died. If he died. Wait till we have looked at him, said the doctor. Inspector Mendieta appeared, panting, to add local weight to the foreigner’s pleas. They sat on hard chairs in a little waiting room. Pictures of bullfighters and bullfights filled the walls. It was growing hot in the Pamplona hospital. A couple of flies were buzzing around the ceiling. There were no pictures of the bulls’ victims who were carried here on what proved all too often to be their last journey.

‘You can have a couple of minutes,’ the doctor said, ‘no more. He may not last that long.’

Mulligan was heavily bandaged right round his middle. His dark eyes looked up at Powerscourt, filled with pain that turned to hatred.

‘I think you should tell us the truth now,’ said Powerscourt, speaking very quietly. ‘Did you commit the four murders? You don’t have to speak if that’s too painful, you can just nod your head.’

Mulligan’s eyes travelled to and fro between Powerscourt and the Inspector, coming to rest on a painting of the Virgin on the wall. Maybe it was the Madonna that did it. He nodded his head, slowly but unmistakably.

‘Are you Michael Delaney’s son? Were you planning to kill him at the end?’

Again Waldo Mulligan’s eyes came to rest on the picture of the Mother of God. Pray for us now and in the hour of our death, Amen. Another nod.

‘Were you planning to kill all the pilgrims? Because they too were Delaneys?’

Mulligan grew agitated. His eyes searched for the doctor. His face turned even paler.

‘Gentlemen,’ said the doctor, ‘I’m afraid you must go now. The patient is becoming disturbed. If you wait outside I will tell you more in a moment.’

They passed a priest coming into the ward as they went out. The last rites had arrived for the man from Washington. They would never know how many pilgrims Mulligan intended to kill. They would never know whether he picked his victims at random as the opportunity presented itself or whether he had a predetermined list of targets in his mind. Half an hour later the doctor came back to tell them Mulligan was dead. He made the sign of the cross.

Walking back to the hotel, Powerscourt suddenly realized the full import of what he had just seen. He thought back to Franklin Bentley’s telegram. Waldo Mulligan had plotted his revenge on the relations who had abandoned him and the father who had deserted him. Mulligan must have thought the pilgrimage was his lucky break, the perfect opportunity to take his revenge with all those Delaneys collected in one place like lambs to the slaughter. Michael Delaney had launched this great venture as a thank you to God for saving the life of one son. He did not know that another son had travelled in his party halfway round the world on a deadly mission of retribution for events thirty years before. Nemesis travelled from the New World to the Old. The pilgrimage had been ruined by murder, the pilgrims travelling by day in a sealed train and sleeping most of the time on the floor of police cells or the unforgiving concrete of the local jails. Now it was clear that another of Delaney’s sons had come out of the past to kill him and nearly succeeded. James was the son who was saved in the New York hospital under the picture of St James the Great. Waldo Mulligan was the other one, abandoned all those years ago in Pittsburgh. His life had not been spared. It was ended early on a Wednesday morning by the horns of a bull from Pamplona.