"What about…Miranda said you had no children…were there any issues there? That might have led to an extortion opportunity?"
"Was Frank gay? Was I his beard? God, no. No, he…oh dear, I really would rather not talk about this. I don't think Frank was gay. I never saw any evidence of it. I suppose he just wasn't the most…demanding man. I mean, he simply didn't have much of an appetite for…'that sort of thing'…and what we did have wasn't particularly…anything…for me, at any rate…and then that dwindled to nothing much. I suppose it sounds odd…but when you work as hard as we did, dawn till dusk…no, it still sounds odd. But I wasn't terribly experienced, and I mustn't have had much of a sex drive back then…we just…did without, by and large. It wasn't a good thing, it certainly didn't help when we began to drift apart. But Frank was very good about that, he set me up here, he paid all the bills. Very amicable, isn't that what they call it? Well, it was. How could it not be, really? There was no blood, no sex, no passion. That's what causes all the trouble. Isn't that right, Ed Loy?"
"I imagine you're right," I said. "I understand that to be the case. I wouldn't know, myself. So you weren't aware of any extortion attempts? Any way in which he could have been blackmailed by a gangster keen to beat the bookies? Not to mention launder vast sums of drug money through the Tyrrellscourt coffers?"
"No."
"What about Miranda? She told me she dropped out of sight after Patrick Hutton disappeared, went through what she called a few…'situations'. You've been something of a mentor to her, haven't you, you persuaded her father to let her work at Tyrrellscourt in the early days, you offered her work up here when she resurfaced. What happened to her in between?"
Jackie shook her head.
"I don't know. I think she might have been in London. She didn't stay in touch. Her parents were dead, she had no living relatives…and I had left Tyrrellscourt, I was keeping my head down, working hard to make a go of this place…for a time, it seemed as if her disappearance and Patrick's might have been connected. And then she just reappeared, out there on that doorstep. She never really told me what had happened. I thought drugs, maybe a miscarriage, but that was all guesswork on my part. I was just happy to have her back, and if no questions asked was the deal, that's how it had to be. I've always…I love Miranda, like a daughter, you know? Like the daughter Frank and I never had. And with grown-up daughters…well, you've got to be careful. You've got to keep your distance."
"Leo Halligan…I didn't really get a lot out of him…but he said if I wanted to know what happened to Patrick Hutton, I wasn't going to find the answers up here, I'd have to go down to Tyrrellscourt," I said.
What happened then took me aback. Maybe because I had gotten to like Jackie Tyrrell, I had somehow forgotten she was involved in the case, and was therefore likely to have something to hide. Maybe it was because my judgment was skewed on account of the booze. Whatever it was, you're always waiting for the shutters to come down, but when they came down for Jackie, I couldn't quite believe it. She nodded, and inclined herself away, and did something tight with her lips that I hadn't seen before.
"I guess he meant, I'd have to talk to F. X. Tyrrell directly."
"You'll be lucky," she snapped. "Why would he talk to you? More likely to have you arrested for trespassing. Of course, there's someone there who'll be only too happy to fill your head full of whatever fairy stories pass for reality in her mind."
"Who would that be?"
" Regina Tyrrell."
"F.X.'s sister."
"That's right. She runs the hotel, and spa, and golf-course complex down there. And she runs Frank, if you're to believe her."
"Does anyone believe her? Did you?"
Jackie Tyrrell looked at me and there was smarting pain in her eyes, a vulnerability I hadn't seen before.
"Let's just say, the person who felt most amicable of all about my divorce from Frank was Regina."
Jackie stood up and brushed imaginary lint from her black clothes, all business.
"Wait here. I'll get you a photograph of Frank. And then I'll tell you a thing or two about Regina Tyrrell. You can listen to your little girlfriend's music again, if you like," she said, handing me a Bose remote control. "Point it anywhere."
I clicked the search button back until I located The Isle of the Dead, pressed Repeat to keep it coming, turned up the volume and sat back. That was how I awoke, having spilt tea-colored sidecar all over the white French couch. It took me a while to get my bearings, in fact to get my eyes open and myself upright and in focus. It was about half four, and there was no sign of Jackie Tyrrell, and no photographs. The Isle of the Dead was still playing; something I hadn't noticed before was that this recording had tolling bells on it; they added to the atmosphere. Was there a Rachmaninov piece called The Bells? I couldn't remember. I switched the music off and went out onto the landing, thinking I should check the bedrooms. Maybe Jackie'd just crashed out somewhere. She'd had more to drink than I had, which was saying something. On second thoughts, better not to creep around a strange house late at night; I didn't want to frighten anyone.
As I walked downstairs, I realized the bells I had heard on The Isle of the Dead were still tolling, even though the music had stopped. In the hall, by the left-hand corner behind the Christmas tree, I spied an open door and behind it what looked like a servants' passageway; the sound of the bells seemed to be coming from that direction. I went in and followed down a corridor of blue tiles and ocher walls to the stairwell of what was evidently the bell tower. Right on time, I saw a rope fly up like a slithering beast, and the bell toll again, and down on a rope to meet me came the body of Jackie Tyrrell, hanging by the neck, her legs frozen in a grotesque dance, her eyes bugging, her tongue cut out of her gaping mouth, blood staining her face and her chest. I tried to do something, and may have done it; what, I can't remember: cut her down, or hold her, or breathe life back into her, something that would help deny or assuage the horror of what I had just seen. I recall the impulse, but not the act, for between the two, I felt a blow, and I tumbled into shadow, and then came darkness.
PART II . CHRISTMAS
Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief of priests and elders, saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood.
And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.
And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple,
and departed, and went and hanged himself.
And the chief priests took the silver pieces,
and said, It is not lawful for them to put into
the treasury, because it is the price of blood.
– Matthew 27: 3-6
ELEVEN
Itossed and turned on a bed of straw, and the rustle roared in my ears like the sound of the sea from a conch; I was awake but felt asleep, or asleep and dreamed of waking; a door creaked, and the bolt shot back and forth, and then a sound of doors swinging back and forth, crashing like gunfire, and then the bolt run back, the door held fast, creaking, and the rustle of straw again, rustle rustle, and then human voices soft, like straw, no, like paper, whispering, entreating, yielding, the slightest breaths rustling like paper, and the color of paper, white, a blinding white, the sound so crisp in my ears…