Slaughter's hound

8

The first Hamiltons came over with Cromwell and slaughtered enough Papists to earn themselves a plot in hell. Or Connaught, as the locals called it. The townland is still there, the pretty little village of Manorhamilton in the county of Leitrim, although these days the rack-rents are called austerity measures and we scarf McBurgers rather than scabby black spuds.

The point being, the Hamiltons and their carpet-bagging Anglo-Irish ilk had only been in Ireland for five hundred years.

Around here, that just about qualifies you as a blow-in.

I’d been out to The Grange once before, for a wedding reception, but even so it took some finding in the high-ditched labyrinth on the peninsula southwest of the village of Grange itself. A faux-Georgian pile, of course, although to be fair to the Hamiltons, it was only faux because the original Georgian structure had been torched back in 1921 during the IRA campaign to ethnically cleanse Ireland of Protestants, and specifically those of the land-owning class. But the Hamiltons were a hardy breed, perennials. The kind to thrive on slash-and-burn. It helped that one of Donald Hamilton’s brothers, one of the minor artists of the Celtic Twilight now long eclipsed by Jack Yeats, had been bounced into the Senate in 1924 as one of the Free State’s token representative Protestants.

The Audi purred up out of the small wood of oak and sycamore into a sunken dell, smooth lawns running from the forest fringe to either side of the house and curving up and behind to form a steep-sided bowl. A round loop of gravel had fallen short of lassoing the house and had had to content itself with an oblong fountain instead, a trio of arrow-pinging cherubs perched on its rim, a Mexican stand-off in marble. The obligatory Merc was parked out front, a shiny black Lexus tucked in behind, and one of those ridiculous urban jeeps, a Rav4. Spotlights popped on as I cleared the trees, bathing the house with a bluey glow. Squared-off and stolid, exuding a hunched defiance despite its three storeys. Red ivy put a blush on the functional grey stone but had the perverse effect of emphasising the austere lines and harsh angles. Wide steps narrowed to a front porch under a portico that had been swiped along with the Elgin marbles. The flowerbeds were neater than a double gin.

I hauled up the wide steps. Shivering now, a salty Atlantic breeze gusting around the corner of the house. Apart from the ivy, the door’s fire-engine red was the building’s only splash of colour. A brass door knocker in the shape of an elephant’s head was inviting but a lusty swing on its trunk revealed it as ornamental. I pushed the button set into a steel plate to the right of the door. Almost immediately the speaker above the button crackled.

‘Yes?’

‘Harry Rigby. I’m a friend of Finn’s.’

‘Yes?’

‘There’s been an accident.’

An intake of breath suggested he was about to try another affirmative query, but then a bolt slid back. The hallway, when the door had finally swung open far enough to allow me slip inside, looked like it had been designed with fat giraffes in mind. He made to speak but then stood back and let me through. ‘I’m Simon,’ he said, ushering me across the tiled hallway into a study with French windows set into the opposite wall. The other walls were taken up with shelves of leather-bound volumes, although here and there the grotesque exaggerations of modern portraiture leered from the gloom.

He gestured towards an armchair of dimpled green leather, waiting until I’d sat down before perching on the edge of its facing twin. On a squat table beside his chair sat a cut-crystal decanter, a green-shaded lamp and an empty balloon glass. A leather-bound book lay open and facedown on the chair’s arm but I couldn’t make out the title. I couldn’t work him out, either. Forty-something, quietly spoken, with a receding hairline and grey at his temples. His eyes, keenly alert, were also grey. Which made him old and smart enough to know better than to be seen in public wearing black trousers with a charcoal satin stripe running down the seam.

‘It’s bad,’ he said. ‘You’d have phoned if it wasn’t bad.’

‘It’s the worst. I’m sorry.’

The eyes seemed to blossom, then narrow. ‘He’s dead?’

I nodded. He swallowed dry. His eyes glazed over. ‘How did it happen?’

Even as I told him he was frowning, shaking his head. ‘Suicide?’ he said when I’d finished. ‘Finn?’

‘That’s why I thought Mrs Hamilton should know. Before the cops get here.’

‘Of course. She’ll appreciate that. Thank you.’ He didn’t seem to be aware that he was shaking his head all the while. ‘You’re sure?’ he said then. I nodded. ‘But why would he …?’

‘No idea. I’m sorry.’

He licked at dry lips. ‘She’s asleep, of course. I should wake her, but …’

He didn’t move.

‘The news won’t be any worse in the morning,’ I said.

‘No, I don’t suppose it will.’ He was humouring me, buying time. Right then he was miles away, or maybe just upstairs telling a woman the worst news she would ever hear. ‘Do you have children, Mr Rigby?’

‘A son.’

‘If it was you,’ he said, stalling, ‘would you rather find out straight away?’

‘I would, yeah.’

‘I think I would too.’ He thought it over, then noticed my fidgeting fingers and prescribed a brandy for the shock, poured us both a couple of inches. He sluiced his down without waiting for a toast. I wanted that brandy so bad I almost inhaled it having a sniff, but I was a taxi-driver on my way back in to meet with the cops, so I let it run up against my lips and slip away again. Just enough for a taste, to observe the ceremony.

‘I’ll wake her,’ he said. Dutch courage. ‘She should know.’

I stood and fished a card out of the back pocket of my jeans. ‘If you need me for anything, you can get me at that number.’

He glanced at it, distracted, then showed me to the door, thanked me again. He was still standing at the top of the wide steps when I pulled away down the drive, his stance loose, the shoulders slack, and I’d have bet everything I owned he’d have stood there through winter if it meant he didn’t have to climb those stairs and wake the woman who slept so blissfully unaware.