Death on the Holy Mountain

16

Lord Francis Powerscourt slept badly that night. In his dreams he watched as grave Anglo-Irish gentlemen walked out of the frames on their walls, sat down at their dining tables and demanded food. He saw another empty beach where the sandcastles were being washed away by the tide. He found himself in an enormous throng of persons walking very slowly through the streets of Dublin. He thought they might be mourners at Parnell’s funeral, but he had lost Lady Lucy and the press of people was so great he could not break out to find her. He was locked again in the red velvet of the Ormonde carriage, Johnny Fitzgerald by his side. They seemed to be hurtling down a hill with no coachman on top to halt their progress. He knew without being able to see them that there were rocks and boulders at the bottom. Just when he felt they were certain to crash into them and perish, he woke up and grabbed hold of Lady Lucy who muttered to him sleepily that they were on the first floor of Butler’s Court and the birds were already singing outside. It promised to be a beautiful day.

Shortly after half past eight Powerscourt set out to walk down to the main square. He told Richard Butler that he would like to see him about half past ten, if that was convenient, nothing important, he assured his host, just a couple of pieces of routine administration for his accounts. Lady Lucy followed him about fifteen minutes later. She did not go all the way to the bottom but seated herself on a bench halfway down the hill. She had brought a book of poetry to keep her company if the wait proved long. At precisely nine o’clock Inspector Harkness and a sergeant from Longford called Murphy marched their men into the main square of Butler’s Cross. At three minutes past they were lined up outside the front entrance to the emporium of Mulcahy and Sons, Grocery and Bar. The rest of the square was empty except for a stray dog who limped along the road by Horkan’s the agricultural supply people. MacSwiggin’s Hotel did not begin to serve breakfast to its clients until ten o’clock except in cases of emergency. There was one customer in the shop already, an old lady preparing to pay for a couple of slices of bacon and half a dozen eggs. Sergeant Murphy escorted her gently to the front door and closed it firmly behind her.

‘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.’

Outside the windows they could hear the shouts and cries of the children playing, the children who had been so well entertained until recently by Young James.

‘Now I come to the death of the young man whose body was found in the chapel at the summit of Croagh Patrick on the morning of the pilgrimage. He had been shot in the chest and in the back of the head. I will always feel responsible for that. The Inspector and I concocted a plan to lure the thieves of the Westport paintings to a house that they thought wasn’t guarded by Ormonde’s Orangemen, but was, in fact, guarded by a different lot of police. A young man with a father in jail was persuaded to tell the group that contained the thieves that Burke Hall was not guarded. I don’t know what inducement was offered, early release for his parent perhaps, but the message got through. One of the ringleaders of the thieves was shot in their attack but they got away. When they discovered who had betrayed them, they dragged the young man up Croagh Patrick, tortured him and shot him. Inspector Harkness was told the torture had been quite frightful before he died.’

‘You mustn’t punish yourself, my lord,’ said the Inspector. ‘If the plan had worked, we would have captured one half of the thieves and the investigation would have been half over.’

‘But we didn’t catch them,’ said Powerscourt sadly. ‘The young man’s dead.’ He looked down at the table for a moment or two before he continued.

‘It was late in the day when I realized that the motive was not money at all. It was land. It could only be land. The four houses where the paintings were stolen have some of the richest, the most valuable land in Ireland. Irish landlords are selling up in droves after the Wyndham Act, but not these four. Connolly talked to me about a hunger for land round here, a hunger so strong that on market days you could almost smell it. Mulcahy wanted land. I believe he has made offers for some of the Butler and Moore estates in the past and always been rebuffed. The other Mulcahy wanted land. They were desperate for it. Sell them so many hundred acres, or so many thousand, and you get your paintings or your wives back. I’m sure they’d have been happy to pay a reasonable asking price. Connolly paid up. He sold them the land they asked for. The land agent in Athlone admitted to me that he had had recent dealings with Connolly. It’s caused terrible trouble, land in Ireland, lack of it for so many in the famine years, the Land War, the boycotts. Land, the hunger for land, was at the bottom of the whole affair.

‘I have left what I am sure is the most painful part of my account of the affair to the end, painful, that is, to the people in this room. What I am about to say is going to upset many of you. It certainly upsets me. As with so many of my theories in this investigation, I doubt if I could actually prove it in a court of law. You will remember that I raised earlier the question of Mulcahy’s brains, the mind behind much of the enterprise. Young James, as we all know, has now disappeared. Young James said, in a very pointed fashion when we were all playing cards some weeks ago, that he never played cards for money, never. It was said with such feeling that I suspected there was some secret behind it.

‘I asked Inspector Harkness here to find out if Young James had incurred any gambling debts in his time at Trinity. He would not be the first. He will not be the last. The Inspector discovered that Young James had run up fifteen hundred pounds of debt, playing at cards for money, in his last year at university. However,’ he could read disbelief in the faces all around him, ‘all those debts were cleared, paid off, in May, before the paintings began to disappear. In Mulcahy’s loan book, which I have in my possession, there is a record of a loan of fifteen hundred pounds to a James of Butler’s Court, also in May. One loan paid off the others. But there is more. I think Young James sold the idea of the robberies of the paintings to Pronsias Mulcahy in return for an alleviation of his debt. James was the brains. Mulcahy supplied the rest. Two days after the Butler paintings were taken, seven hundred and fifty pounds was deducted from Young James’s loan. The day after the Connolly pictures were returned, a further quarter was deducted. It was a bargain, pure and simple.’ The reason I asked, after the abduction of Mrs Moore and her sister, if there was a Butler Lodge in the west, was that I already suspected Young James, and he would have known about Butler’s Lodge. He lived with the Butlers after all.

‘Why did he disappear?’ asked Sylvia Butler, who had been particularly fond of the young man.

‘He disappeared shortly after the body of the young man was found on Croagh Patrick. I don’t know if you are aware of it, but bullets in the back of the head can be the mark of the execution of a traitor in the world of the Fenians or the Irish Republican Brotherhood. I think Young James panicked. He hadn’t intended to have anything to do with these violent characters. He thought it would be better if he cleared off, disappeared in case he was next for the shooting.’

More champagne was circulated. Throughout Powerscourt’s account Richard Butler had been looking at his ancestors on the walls rather than his investigator at the end of his table.

‘I’m nearly through,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I’ve gone on far too long already. I’m sorry it took me so long to find the answers. I was looking at things the wrong way, you see. In most investigations there is one thief, or one murderer, or one blackmailer. Here there was a much larger cast, Young James, the Mulcahy brothers, the young men of the GAA and so on. I’m sure that ghastly priest Father O’Donovan Brady had something to do with it all but I’m damned if I can pin anything on him. Maybe he was the link with the young men with the hurling sticks, I don’t know. Anyway,’ he opened his hands in a gesture that might have been of completion or might have been resignation, ‘it’s finished, it’s all over now.’

‘What about the attempt on your life, Francis?’ said Lucy. ‘When the bicycle was tampered with.’

‘I didn’t think you knew about that, Lucy,’ said Powerscourt, wondering if he had a rival in detection in the person of his wife. ‘I think it was a warning shot from some local hothead. I don’t think they meant to kill me, they just wanted to frighten me.’

That afternoon Powerscourt and Lady Lucy sat under an enormous awning on the Butler lawn and Powerscourt fell asleep. He was roused by a vigorous clap on the back from Dennis Ormonde.

‘Well done, man, I cannot thank you enough! Wife back! Paintings back! Happiness back! Bloody Orangemen can be kitted out with thousands of rounds of potato bread and sent home to bloody Ulster!’

Late that afternoon Ormonde, Butler and Moore all disappeared into Butler’s study for half an hour and then emerged, grinning hugely. As the company were taking drinks before dinner, Richard Butler rose to his feet and appealed for silence.

‘Lord Powerscourt, Lady Powerscourt, I, or rather we,’ he nodded at Ormonde and Moore, ‘wish to make a suggestion. In the normal course of things we would even now be preparing to hand over a most generous cheque in recognition of your services. But this evening we have a different proposal to put before you.’

Powerscourt had no idea what was coming. Were they going to offer him a painting? Please God, not some bloody horse.

‘The name of Powerscourt has been absent for too long from the land registers of this country,’ Butler went on, ‘a name that stretched back to the Normans, a family rich in history and devoted to the service of the state. We want to set that right. We want the name of Powerscourt back where it belongs in the bosom of the Anglo-Irish gentry. Will you accept, for your family and all your descendants, in recognition of your service in this matter, the gift of Butler Lodge and all the land and waters that go with it?’

Powerscourt was astonished. Those wide open skies. The desolate beauty of the lakes and the mountains. Fishing with Thomas. The Atlantic Ocean pounding at the coast. Yachting with the children. The light, so bright in summer that things were impossibly clear.

‘You’re pulling my leg,’ he said at first. ‘You must be pulling my leg.’

All three assured him they were deadly serious. ‘Then I accept,’ said Powerscourt, rising to his feet. ‘I accept with great pleasure on behalf of Lucy and myself and all Powerscourts yet to come. What a very great honour! What a very great privilege! What joy!’ He was almost in tears as he sat down, Lady Lucy moving to his side.

After this investigation Powerscourt and his wife did not go abroad for a holiday as they usually did at the end of a case. They went west to Butler Lodge, shortly to be renamed Powerscourt Lodge by the Archbishop of Tuam with Butlers, Moores and Ormondes as guests of honour. The new proprietor spent his days quietly, pottering about his estate to establish how much land and mountain he actually owned. The new proprietor’s wife began moving the furniture about on the second day, just making the place more comfortable, as she put it, and commencing a detailed inventory of china, bed linen and other necessities of life. They were both supremely happy.