‘Alex,’ he began, ‘I want to ask your advice. If I want to make inquiries in England or Ireland I can do it easily. I have come across a lot of people in my previous work, you understand, and I have a special friend who helps me in all my investigations who is helping me there now. But I don’t have anybody in America. I could ask Mr Delaney to call in Pinkerton’s to assist us, but I think they would be answerable to him rather than to me, if you see what I mean. Do you know of anybody who would be able to make intelligent and discreet inquiries on our behalf?’
The sun had gone down behind the hills. The water in the river was growing darker now, almost black. There was occasional rustling as the breeze ruffled the branches at the top of the trees.
‘Do they have to be private detectives, Lord Powerscourt?’
‘I don’t know why, but I’ve never really trusted most private detectives, even though I am one myself in a way. I feel they look for what their employer wants to hear all the time.’
‘As a matter of fact I think I do know such a person, now I come to think of it. But he’s a lawyer rather than a private detective. They too are trained to report what their clients want to hear a lot of the time.’
‘But is he reliable, the person you’re thinking of?’
‘Oh yes, he’s reliable all right. You see, he’s my brother, my elder brother. He works for a big law firm with offices in New York and Washington, Adams, Adams and Cutler they’re called.’
‘Does he come laden down with degrees like yourself?’ asked Powerscourt with a smile.
‘I’m afraid he does. He didn’t go to Princeton, though, he did all his degrees at Harvard.’
Powerscourt thought Bentley made Harvard sound like a rather disagreeable prep school where they didn’t give you enough food and the teaching was poor. ‘My father wants me to join the firm too. That’s why I went to law school.’
‘Would he be able to make inquiries for us? Does he know about the pilgrimage and your work on it?’
‘He certainly does,’ said Alex Bentley. ‘I told him all about it in New York. Franklin, my brother, was very entertained at the thought of his little brother travelling all over Europe with a lot of mad pilgrims and a New York millionaire. He always felt they must be a bit touched to take on such a journey. I’m sure he’d be only too happy to help. And I’m sure a lot of the senior people in the firm would know about all kinds of things that might come in useful to you.’
‘Well,’ said Powerscourt, sitting on a fallen branch and trying to skim some stones across the river, ‘this is what I think you should ask him about. First, and this is very vague, does he know or could he find out anything suspicious in Michael Delaney’s past, anything that might have given rise to a feud between different branches of the family? I’ve got a couple of clues, though they might be hard to follow up. Many years ago Delaney persuaded an older and a richer man to help him set up a railway company. Delaney fixed it so the other man was cheated out of his money. You could say Delaney swindled him though I’m not sure I would say that to Delaney’s face. Where is this man? What became of him? Does he have any surviving relatives? I believe his name is Wharton. And my other query is equally tenuous, I’m afraid, and it too goes back a long way to 1894. Some newspaperman got interested in Delaney years ago, so interested that he wrote a book which chronicled what the reporter thought were all Delaney’s crimes. A lifetime of sin in one volume if you like. Delaney bought the lot and had them pulped. The author has not been heard of since though he may still be alive. I would be most interested to know if any copies of that book survived. I would be even more interested in getting my hands on a copy if that were possible. It was called Michael Delaney, Robber Baron.’
‘I’ll send a wire to Franklin first thing in the morning, Lord Powerscourt,’ said Alex Bentley cheerfully. ‘Things are going to look up now. Two Bentleys are much better than one.’
Powerscourt too was sending messages early the next morning. He wrote to Johnny Fitzgerald, asking him to go to Ireland as soon as possible, to the area around Macroom in County Cork which Bentley believed was the epicentre of the Delaney clan. Johnny was to search for any feud, fight or other wickedness which might have led one of the Delaney descendants to kill. Powerscourt said he thought Johnny should start in the days of the famine. They had already heard, he told his friend, some terrible stories about one lot of Delaneys refusing to help their relations who later died in the workhouse. There might be other, different crimes from the past that had returned to stain the present sixty years later. Time, he concluded his message, is very short. There could be another murder even before Johnny crossed the Irish Sea.
The dead of Entraygues-sur-Truyere wait for the Second Coming on a hillside above the little town. Beneath them the Lot and the Truyere join forces and head off towards the distant sea. On the other side of the river wooded hills rise to several hundred feet. To their right, at the top of a very steep gorge, the vineyards of Le Fel produce sustenance and consolation for the living. It was here, after the service in the little church, that Patrick MacLoughlin was laid to rest. All the pilgrim party were present on parade that afternoon having walked along the river from Estaing. The doctor was there and the butcher who had carried him from the river bank on his cart. Madame Roche attended as a mark of respect to the man her son had found dead in a rowing boat. Inspector Leger was present, spending most of his time, as Lady Lucy observed, looking intently at the faces of the pilgrims. Powerscourt had bought a new black tie, observing mordantly to Lady Lucy that he expected it would see a lot of wear in the days ahead. Father Kennedy was thinking how very young the dead man was. He prayed that earth’s loss would be heaven’s gain. Michael Delaney realized that the dead man they were lowering into the earth was only a couple of years older than his James, who had himself come so close to this sad ceremony only months before. Stephen Lewis, the solicitor from Frome in Somerset, found himself wondering if the dead man had left a will. He couldn’t help it. He had been dealing with wills all his life. He wondered if he should offer his services to all the pilgrims in case they were next for the last rites and the funeral service. Business, Lewis thought grimly, might be brisk. Charlie Flanagan, the carving carpenter from Baltimore, had finished his crucifix the evening before. Charlie was not a superstitious young man but he kept his latest work in his trouser pocket where he hoped it would keep him safe. Looking at the earth being thrown over the remains of the dead man he wondered grimly if his next work should be a coffin. Then, with a shudder, he realized it might be his own.
The little town of Entraygues lay slightly off the official pilgrim route which crossed the river some miles from Estaing and went up into the hills to Golinhac and then across to Espeyrac. The road to Espeyrac, where the pilgrims planned to rejoin the trail, led over one of Entraygues’ medieval bridges and up into the woods. Lady Lucy was walking this afternoon with Father Kennedy who hoped that periods of violent exercise like the present ascent would erode some of the extra weight he had been acquiring from the local cuisine. He shuddered with a mixture of guilt and delight as he remembered his second helping of creme brulee the night before.
‘Tell me, Father,’ Lady Lucy began, ‘did you get to know Patrick MacLoughlin well? You must have spent a lot of time in his company on the Atlantic crossing and on the journey so far.’