Death on the Holy Mountain

5

There was more trouble at the summit of Croagh Patrick, Ireland’s Holy Mountain. The men building the chapel at the top, a place where pilgrims could rest and celebrate Mass after climbing the twisting two thousand seven hundred feet to the summit, had lost some vital supplies which they needed that day for a key stage in the construction. Rather, they hadn’t lost the supplies, they had lost the donkey that had carried them up. In their haste to get started before the weather broke and the rains came that day, the workmen had only unloaded one side of the animal. The other side, along with the donkey, had disappeared.

‘Jameson! Jameson!’ Charlie O’Malley shouted in despair. ‘Where the divil are you, in God’s name?’ After the earlier occasion when one of his two donkeys, working in rotation according to the principles of the great agriculturalist Turnip Townsend, had been persuaded to abandon its sit-down strike and proceed to the summit by the aroma from a whiskey bottle, Charlie had christened the animal Jameson after the makers of the golden liquid in Dublin. The other beast, currently munching contentedly at what was left of the thin grass in the O’Malley back yard, was called Powers in honour of the John Powers whiskey establishment in Cork. If he was ever able to afford a third, Charlie was going to christen it Bushmills. Bushmills, Charlie thought, would be a fine name for a donkey, giving his stable a neat geographical balance with donkeys and distilleries placed at Cork and Dublin and one in Bushmills in the north.

‘You can’t lose a bloody donkey on the top of a mountain,’ said Tim Philbin. ‘It’s not possible. It’s ridiculous. There’s nothing higher than the top of my boot between here and the water down below.’

‘You shouldn’t have hit it yesterday, Charlie,’ said Austin Ruddy, staring helplessly towards the mountains behind Croagh Patrick. ‘I’m tired of telling you. You’re not kind to the beast, never have been.’

‘Eats enough, so it does,’ said Charlie O’Malley. ‘They’ll eat me out of house and home, those damned donkeys, the wife says.’

‘What’s all this?’ A great roar came from inside the tent where the contractor, Mr Walter Heneghan of Heneghan and Sons, Builders and Surveyors of Louisburg, had his headquarters. A small wiry man with grey hair emerged, clutching in his hand a little book which contained, as all his workmen knew, what Mr Heneghan referred to as The Skedule. He had never been a master in the reading and writing department, Walter Heneghan, in spite of all the best efforts of the straps and the canes of the Christian Brothers, and the maintenance of this document, its daily updating with the latest developments, kept him occupied at a rickety card table in the tent and seemed to fill most of his days. He did not actually do much of the work himself, leaving his mind free for his more important duties and calculations. The rest of the men were convinced Walter spent most of the afternoon sleeping under his canvas roof while they laboured on in rain or sunshine but they never dared open the canvas flap to look inside.

Heneghan’s immediate employer was a very difficult man, even for a priest. The Reverend Michael Macdonald, Administrator of Westport, was a nervous churchman. He worried. Every day he worried. Eight years after the event he still remembered as if it were yesterday the disaster that had struck him in his previous incarnation as parish priest in Ballinrobe. He had been responsible there for the erection and consecration of a new convent for the Order of the Immaculate Conception a mile or so outside the town. One of the nuns, a Sister Mary Magdalene, had been his particular friend in those times. Six months before the completion date he had organized the grand opening. The bishop was to come. A couple of local MPs had promised to attend. Nuns of every sort to be found in the west of Ireland were coming in their finest wimples to bless their sisters in their good fortune. In the months that followed he believed the assurances of his building foreman that all would be finished on time. All, as the Reverend Michael Macdonald remembered far too clearly, even now, was not going to be finished on time. Only three days before the ceremony did he discover that the dignitaries would be opening a building where the cells had no walls, the kitchen had no cooking facilities and the chapel had no windows. Everything had to be cancelled, the invitations withdrawn, Galway’s and Mayo’s nuns instructed to stay in their places. The bishop had shouted at him. The Mayo News ran the story for three editions in a row, coming as close as Irish journalists dared in those days to criticizing the clergy. Every night for the next two years he had included in his prayers a plea to his God that never, never again should he be called upon to supervise the construction of a building, secular or religious. He would not even contemplate the erection of a badly needed shed in the garden of the priest’s house. And now he was lumbered with it all again. God had singled him out for punishment once more. His sins were not numerous, he knew, but the penance for them was huge. A late convent was one thing. A late chapel on the summit of Ireland’s Holy Mountain would be far far worse. He might be expelled from the priesthood in disgrace, or sent on the worst punishment any Irish bishop could deliver, a life sentence to a parish in the slums of Dublin which had ruined many a better man than he.

This was the origin of The Skedule. Once a week Father Macdonald would pore over it with Heneghan, checking every entry and every planned completion date of every section of the work. Heneghan, whatever his other qualities, was a deeply religious man – his faith, he was sure, had won him the contract, after all – and he too feared for the late completion. The wrath of the priests would be as nothing compared with the wrath of God. And at that moment Walter knew that they were two weeks behind Skedule. With luck, they could make it up, but a spell of bad weather could prove fatal. He too joined the search for Jameson.

‘Bloody donkey gone? With all that glass still strapped to its side? You stupid buggers, why didn’t you unload it all? God in heaven, what fools am I given to carry out His wishes! Fools!’

He strode to the other side of the half-finished building and peered down at the waters of Clew Bay beneath. ‘Jameson!’ he roared. ‘In the name of St Patrick, come back here at once, you daft animal!’

Jameson did not choose to reply.

‘Jameson! In the name of St Patrick and all the saints of Ireland, come back here at once!’ Charlie O’Malley sent his message to the other side of the Holy Mountain. Still there was neither answer nor sighting of the donkey.

‘Jameson! In the name of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St Patrick and all the saints of Ireland, shift your bloody arse up here!’ Not surprisingly, Tim Philbin’s message found no answer either. Walter Heneghan thought of gathering his little band together and leading them in prayer to St Anthony of Padua, Hammer of Heretics and patron saint of all things lost, but he thought it might work better if he said it to himself when he was safely back in the tent.

The men were sullen for the rest of the day. Charlie O’Malley would go on sad little missions a couple of hundred yards at a time looking for Jameson and calling out promises of extra carrots, or a fine cauliflower for the donkey was strangely fond of cauliflower. Only at the end of the day, when they were taking a well-earned rest in Campbell’s public house at the foot of Croagh Patrick, did Walter Heneghan realize that his prayer under canvas to St Anthony, Hammer of Heretics, had been answered. The landlord took him to one side.

‘Have any of youse lost a donkey?’ asked the landlord.

‘A donkey?’ said Heneghan, as if he had just heard the word for the first time. ‘We bloody well have lost a donkey.’

‘Well, it’s here,’ said the landlord. ‘It’s out the back, so it is.’

‘Thank God for that,’ said Walter, shaking the man firmly by the hand. ‘What’ll you have? A donkey found is worth a drink any day in my book. But tell me this. Did the beast have any glass with it?’

‘Glass?’ said the landlord. ‘What sort of glass, for God’s sake? Beer glass, whiskey glass, that kind of thing? Does the animal drink like a human?’

‘No, no,’ said Heneghan. ‘Glass for building, windows, that sort of stuff.’

‘That sort of glass?’ replied the landlord innocently. ‘What would a bloody donkey want with window glass, for Christ’s sake?’

‘It’s for the chapel,’ said Heneghan sadly, ‘the chapel at the top of the mountain.’

‘Glass with the donkey, is it now?’ said the landlord. He turned to the crowd in his bar, most of whom looked as though they had spent the entire afternoon, if not the entire week, on the premises, ‘We haven’t seen any glass with that donkey, boys, have we?’

‘No no, no glass. Donkey yes, glass no,’ they chorused.

As he trudged back up to his tent, clutching half a dozen beer bottles, Walter Heneghan added a spiritual question to the long list of temporal ones he had to ask Father Macdonald. Why was it that St Anthony of Padua was so good with donkeys and so bloody useless with glass?

Powerscourt and Johnny Fitzgerald and William Moore were on their way from Butler’s Court to Moore Castle to inspect the site of the vanished paintings. Moore Castle, its owner proudly informed Powerscourt and Fitzgerald as they approached its entrance, had been in his family since the days of Cromwell. The place, Powerscourt realized as the carriage drew to a halt at the Castle’s lower section, had had many builders over the years. Somewhere there must be a bit of Georgian, but it was in Victorian times that every single generation seemed to have extended, rebuilt, knocked down or restructured. Architects must have regarded the place as a treasure trove, Kubla Khan miraculously translated to County Roscommon.

‘I’ll show you round the place later,’ Moore said, leading them up an enormous marble staircase, adorned on both sides with the inevitable antlers of elk and stag. ‘Pictures first.’ Moore brought them through an astonishing entrance hall, a vast, long, high room with a gallery running round the top and a stained-glass window off to the left halfway up the stairs, and into the dining room, a beautiful room, the walls painted in pale yellow, adorned with well-fed putti and elaborate highly decorated plasterwork.

‘This used to be the drawing room,’ Moore began, ‘but my grandfather thought it would work better as a dining room. Used to be seven portraits, four full-lengths in here,’ Moore said sadly, nodding at the series of blank spaces on his walls, ‘oldest the one above the fireplace there, Josiah Moore from the 1720s. Then on the opposite wall, his grandson, Joshua, 1770s, on the other two walls his son and grandson. I don’t know if the money ran out, but the other three, my grandfather and his brother and great grandfather on either side of the fire, were much smaller, portrait size is what I believe you call them, head and shoulders only, no greatcoats or uniforms.’

Outside they could hear the noises of grass being cut. There was a distant view of dark mountains.

‘I’m quite lucky in one respect,’ Moore went on, sitting himself down at the head of his table and waving a hand inviting his guests to be seated too. ‘I heard about the difficulties they had over at Butler’s Court in identifying their pictures. I actually had a great uncle who was interested in Irish portraits – can you believe it? – and he made a catalogue of them all.’ Powerscourt thought he made his ancestor sound like a man who claimed he could fly to the moon or empty the Irish Sea. ‘He tried to cover all the paintings in all the great houses in Connaught, you know,’ Moore went on. ‘Mind you, he went mad before he could finish it.’ Fitting fate for the fellow, in Moore’s book at any rate, Powerscourt thought. ‘Anyway,’ Moore nodded at a neat pile of papers in front of him, ‘here are the details of all the ones that went missing. This is for you, Powerscourt, obviously.’ Powerscourt saw that the entries were full and comprehensive, easily sufficient for any art dealer to identify a picture if it passed through his hands.

‘This is most impressive, Moore,’ he said. ‘I am very much obliged to you. Tell me, is there any evidence that they broke into this room here, to effect the theft?’

‘Not in here,’ said Moore, ‘but let me show you something next door.’ He led them out through the baronial hall into a long room looking out towards the fountain, adorned with three pairs of grey marble columns. ‘This used to be the front door,’ he said, nodding at the great window in front of him, ‘and this used to be the entrance hall. My grandfather changed all this lot round. Now, if you look carefully at the sash on the window next to the one that was the front door, you can see dirty smudge marks on it. The parlour maids noticed them the morning after the robbery and I told them to leave them where they are. It’s my belief that they took the pictures out this way to some kind of conveyance round the corner. It would have been easy to do – the grass would have muffled the noise.’

‘Do you know how they got in?’ asked Johnny Fitzgerald.

‘There’s a broken window in the kitchen down below,’ Moore said. ‘I think they came and went that way. There is another room where they could have passed the pictures out of the house, mind you, but there are no telltale smudges in there. Come, I’ll show you where the other paintings were.’

He took them into a billiard room opposite the dining room, a full-size table with a couple of balls lying on the green baize, waiting for the next match. ‘This used to be the library,’ he said sadly, ‘but my grandfather threw all the books out one day. He said they were annoying him so they all had to go. He organized a great bonfire outside on the same day and they all went up in smoke.’ Life, Powerscourt thought, was never dull in Moore Castle.

‘Our three Old Masters,’ Moore pointed again to further gaps on the walls, ‘the Titian and the two Gainsboroughs, were here. They used to be in what was the entrance hall, but my father moved them in here.’

‘I believe you said when you arrived at Butler’s Court that the Gainsboroughs might not be authentic,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Did your great uncle establish that, before he went mad, I mean?’

‘He did and he wasn’t at the time, mad, if you follow me. He was said to have been in good health when he said the Gainsboroughs weren’t painted by the hand of Gainsborough, if you see what I mean. One artist’s hand looks very much like another, if you ask me.’

‘And the Titian?’ Powerscourt carried on. ‘Was that real?’

‘Nobody ever said it wasn’t,’ said Moore defiantly. ‘Not to me at any rate.’

He led them back out into the galleried hall with its great timbered roof. ‘This,’ he waved expansively at the enormous space, ‘used to be the main staircase. Then my grandfather threw that out.’

‘Before or after he burnt the books?’ asked Johnny Fitzgerald.

‘After,’ Moore laughed, ‘he must have got into the swing of it by then. This other double staircase’ – an enormous Victorian affair, made of oak, beckoned – ‘used to be where the wall on the side of the old stairs was. They extended the house backwards, if you follow me, to put the new staircase in.’

William Moore took his visitors round the rest of the house, the dark wood panelling, the strange over-decorated Victorian chapel where Powerscourt felt God would not stay for long if ever he called at all, and out into the gardens by the fountain. Moore talked continuously, giving the names of his ancestors and the dates of construction. High up on the outside of the third floor Powerscourt saw a strange contraption like a bosun’s chair, hanging from the roof by a series of ropes and pulleys. Standing rather precariously inside was a small young man with torn trousers who waved happily at them and shouted Good Morning.

‘What on earth is that?’ asked Johnny Fitzgerald, pointing upwards.

‘That’s John,’ said Moore. ‘Normally he works in the stables but today he cleans the windows. His elder brother Seamus used to do it but he kept falling off the ladders. They’re not very good with ladders for some reason, Roscommon people. No head for heights at all. I rigged the thing up myself – naval fellow told me how to do it. But come, I think it’s time for some coffee, or something stronger if you would prefer.’

Powerscourt and Fitzgerald assured their host that coffee would be fine. It came in the long room with the pillars that used to be the entrance hall.

‘Now then, Moore,’ Powerscourt began, ‘all these pictures gone, smudges on your window, your wife upset, I don’t suppose you have any idea at all who is responsible?’

‘No idea at all.’

‘Tell me, pray,’ said Powerscourt, resolved to try a different tactic with Moore than he had employed on the other two victims, ‘what do you say in reply to the letter they sent you?’

Moore turned red and began rubbing one side of his face as if that would make his discomfort go away. ‘Letter?’ he said in a querulous tone. ‘I had no letter.’

‘I think you did, Moore, I’m virtually certain of it.’

‘No, I did not.’

‘Consider this,’ said Powerscourt. ‘Somebody spent a lot of time planning these robberies. Maybe they are common or garden thieves but I doubt it. There is a great deal of stuff lying about these houses, silver and so on, which would be worth a lot more than your ancestors. It’s possible they were just burglars but I don’t believe it. I think they want something. I have no idea what the something is, but I think you do. Because they told you. In a letter.’

‘How many times,’ said Moore, still red in the face and sweating slightly now, ‘do I have to tell you, Powerscourt, there was no letter.’

‘Let me make a stab,’ said Powerscourt, not giving up, ‘at telling you what the last sentence said. This or something like it. If you do not comply – maybe they would have said agree rather than comply – with our requests, your wife is next. That also applies if you tell a single human soul about this letter.’

‘How on earth -’ Moore began and then stopped suddenly. ‘There was no letter,’ he hurried on as if trying to retract what he had just said, ‘no letter.’ He sat back in his chair. Johnny Fitzgerald took up the attack. He and Powerscourt had carried out interviews like this many times in their lives. They knew the moves so well they hardly needed to communicate with each other, like tennis partners who have been playing doubles together for years.

‘How about this then?’ said Johnny, in the manner of a man trying on another coat in a gentleman’s outfitters. ‘You took the paintings yourself. You crept down in the middle of the night and removed them to some hiding place or other. God knows, you could hide the Crown Jewels in a place this size and nobody would find them for years, however hard they tried. You’re broke, or you’re nearly bankrupt like so many of your fellow landlords, in hock to the banks and the insurance companies and those seedy moneylenders in Dublin. The art market’s booming, even for Irish ancestors I shouldn’t wonder. You were going to sell the pictures when all the fuss has died down and pay off some of your debts. There must have been enough debt after all this building work to float a steamer on the Shannon. Admit it, man, you did the whole thing yourself!’

‘I did not,’ said Moore. ‘There are all sorts of things I would sell before I sold those paintings. They’re part of our history, part of our family heritage going back to Cromwell’s time, let me tell you. It’d be like selling members of my own family.’

Powerscourt was suddenly visited by the bizarre image of Michael Henshaw Moore or Casterbridge Moore from Thomas Hardy’s novel, selling off his wife in the marketplace in Sligo town.

‘Anyway,’ Moore went on, ‘I’m not broke. Richard Butler certainly isn’t broke. Your man Connolly isn’t broke either. Between us we hold some of the finest land in Ireland. You may not know it, living across the water as you do, but the Government has been passing laws for years encouraging tenants to buy the land they rent off their landlords. They’ve just passed another one called the Wyndham Act which actually bribes the landlords to sell out. People can make a packet. There’s a whole lot of new houses going up down in Carlow and Kilkenny with Wyndham money, the bonus they call it. Well, let me tell you something, Powerscourt. They can do what they like down there in Carlow and Kilkenny, but we’re not selling. No, sir. We may not be the masters now but we’re damned if the bloody Government is going to decide the future of our property. Like the pictures, it’s our history and our heritage too.’

Powerscourt thought it was time to call a halt. ‘All right, Moore,’ he said, ‘we’ll leave it there for now. We didn’t mean any of it personally. I hope you understand that.’

‘I know you have to ask your questions,’ said Moore, pouring himself a generous glass of John Powers. ‘I’m just upset you thought I might have done it myself, that’s all.’

‘We’ve come across stranger things than that in our line of work,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald delphically.

‘I suppose you’ll want to get back to Butler’s Court,’ Moore said. ‘Let me arrange for a couple of fresh horses for you.’

Another Anglo-Irish house, Powerscourt thought ruefully, where the welcome was not as warm as it might have been. Two out of three of them were keen to get him off the premises as fast as they could.