Chapter 32
By the time Liam returned to the Jeep, Maeve was once again seated in the front passenger seat.
“Did you hear what she said to me just now?”
Liam was carefully backing the car out of the tight parking spot. “No. What did she say? Something like ‘Turn back, Dorothy’?”
“Pretty close to it.” She repeated Esme’s warning. “What do you think she meant? ‘Let the dead rest,’ that’s kind of alarming, right?”
Liam chuckled. “I think that’s Esme Rossington’s version of ‘mind your own business.’”
“She knows more than she’s letting on about that IRA robbery, and I think she definitely knows something about that supposedly stolen portrait of Lady Geraldine.”
“What’s your theory then?”
“Esme told Therese that painting was the only one not recovered. But I think maybe, somehow, the painting did turn up somewhere. And whoever had it, that’s the painting that was sold at auction.”
“And whom do you suspect might have found that painting, and decided later to sell it?”
“My best guess? One of the IRA members stashed it away, and came back for it years later, after they were released from prison.”
“Not possible,” Liam said. “They’re all dead. Even the girl, Starr McGahee, who was the youngest, but actually the leader of the gang. She died nearly ten years ago. Breast cancer.”
Maeve did a double take. “How do you happen to know that particular bit of trivia?”
“They made a film about it. Radical Blues. Emma Thompson played Starr McGahee, which was quite comical, because she looked nothing like the real Starr. I think you can probably still watch it on one of the streaming services.”
“Maybe we will. But I feel there’s something more you’re not telling me. You weren’t even born in the ’70s, but you seem to know a lot about this topic.”
“My family has lived in this village a long, long time. Longer than the Rossingtons, who didn’t buy Tarrymore until around 1850-something. That IRA raid was the stuff of local legend.”
“And?” She waited for the other shoe to drop.
They’d reached the end of the long driveway that led away from the gardener’s cottage. A lone car passed on the two-lane road.
“And also my cousin Maddie, who you met at the home farm? Starr McGahee was her husband’s mum.”
“Really? Your cousin’s mother-in-law pulled off that heist?”
Liam nodded. “Of course, Starr wasn’t her real name. Her given name was Margaret. From a fancy English family. Peggy, they called her. Everyone said she was a bright thing. Won a scholarship to study chemistry at the university in Dublin.”
“Tell me more,” Maeve prompted.
“I don’t know too many other details. It’s not something Jamie goes round talking about.” He reached for her hand and she curled her fingers around his.
“This painting thing. Why is it so all-consuming? Can’t you just be a tourist and do tourist things—the Ring of Kerry, Dingle Peninsula, maybe even, God forbid, the Blarney Stone?”
She flashed a rueful smile. “In the beginning, when I agreed to take this trip, I told myself I was only doing it to honor our mother’s dying wish—and to humor Therese.
But now, the truth is, the more we find out about Kathleen, and how she came to possess that portrait, the more I read her letters and learn about her life here, and in the States, the more questions I have. ”
He raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”
“You saw how Esme reacted when I mentioned Kathleen’s name. And ever since that day you showed me around the home farm and introduced me to your cousin Maddie? When I mentioned Kathleen’s name, it seemed like the two of you exchanged a look. Like you knew the name. Or am I imagining things?”
He looked over at her. “You’re very observant, and no, you’re not imagining things. Hearing that name, from a stranger, it came as a shock. Especially coming from someone who is related to her.”
“Because?”
“Look. Aside from the Rossingtons, this village, this part of Ireland, has never been a place of great wealth. We’re an out-of-the-way sort of place. Folks like my family have lived here for generations.”
“Savannah used to be like that. We’re not really a small town anymore.
We’ve got a couple of universities, including the one where I taught, and SCAD, that’s the art and design college.
The port is one of the busiest on the East Coast, and tourism is huge.
But certain people think being a ‘native Savannahian’ means you’re something special.
Savannah can be really snobby and insular and incredibly inbred. ”
“Sounds familiar,” Liam said. “But, as I was saying, just like that legendary IRA robbery, the name Kathleen Connor, well, there’s a certain notoriety attached to it.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. The Rossingtons, for better or worse, were sort of our version of the Kennedys—rich, attractive, powerful, although not always beloved—but Lady Delia, she was revered. She founded the local infirmary. The nursery school is named for her. She even donated the money for the building that houses the library where my mum worked. When Delia Rossington was murdered, and supposedly by a young girl she’d taken in as an act of charity? Well, it was big news.”
“How did the Rossingtons frame that narrative?”
“The story was that Lady Fiona and her two sons had been out of town, but they came back early unexpectedly and found Lady Delia in the house, stabbed to death. Money and jewelry were missing, as was Delia’s ward—a young girl from the village whom she’d taken under her wing.”
“I can’t believe it. That happened, what, over a hundred years ago, and people still remember?”
“Americans remember the name John Wilkes Booth. And Al Capone, and Bonnie and Clyde, right? You’ve got to understand, this is a village where stealing another man’s sheep is considered newsworthy. Murders, especially of beloved aristocrats, just don’t happen here in Tarrymore.”
“But she didn’t steal the painting,” Maeve protested. “We have her letters to her brother. Delia gave it to her. Along with some money and jewelry. Kathleen didn’t run off to America. Delia had paid for her passage and made arrangements for her to go.”
“So your interest isn’t just the matter of a potentially valuable painting, then?”
“I won’t deny we could use the money if we authenticate our portrait.
Therese is dead broke, which is nothing new, but now I’m newly unemployed too, and our mom just passed away.
The house we grew up in was her only tangible asset, and now we find out that during the last year of her life she’d been swindled out of her life’s savings by a greedy televangelist.”
“Terrible,” Liam said.
“Instead of an estate, she left us a big fat mortgage—and a rusty coffee can full of twenty-dollar bills she thought would pay for a trip to the old country and patch things up between Therese and me.”
She couldn’t quite bring herself to tell him that her own plight was nearly as desperate as her sister’s.
“It’s my fault,” she whispered, not daring to look into Liam’s kind eyes.
“I should have noticed how bad she’d gotten.
I was supposed to be checking in on her, making sure she didn’t burn the house down, or drive her car into a drainage ditch.
When she got really ill, I moved into the house, to take care of her. ”
Maeve took a deep breath. Now she’d started talking, it was as though a dam had burst, and the pent-up emotions she’d spent months trying to repress were impossible to contain.
“The whole time, I was so damn angry at Therese, I could have throttled her. Where was she? Why didn’t she come home?
I’d told her how sick our mom was, but she always had some excuse.
It all fell on me, the doctors’ appointments, making sure she ate, took her meds.
I put my life on hold, took leave from my teaching job at the college.
As far as I knew, Therese was out there, playing at being an actress. ”
“Did you ever call her, and tell her you needed help with your mum?”
“Of course not. I told myself even if I did call, she wouldn’t come. The sad truth is, I was playing the martyr. Look at me! I’m sacrificing everything! Aren’t I noble?”
“Ah yes, your Catholic school training did you proud,” he said. He leaned over until his forehead touched hers. “Can I tell you something?”
“Is this where you tell me not to be so hard on myself?”
“Certainly not. I have a policy against offering unsolicited advice. No, I was just going to remark that I’m glad your mum saved that money, because it brought you here, to this small corner of Ireland, and to me.”
She’d been so intent on telling Liam her sad life story she hadn’t realized he was pulling the Jeep up to the entrance of the inn. She didn’t want to go in, didn’t want the night to end.
He seemed to sense what she was thinking.
“Right, then,” Liam said. “How would you like to visit an authentic cottage inhabited by an authentic Irishman for one last nightcap? I promise I’ll bring you back to the inn, but first, I’ve got to go home and let Lucy out. Poor thing will be desperate to take a piss.”
Maeve rolled her eyes. “That’s a handy excuse to lure an innocent girl back to your place late at night. Does it work?”
“Not always,” he said, looking unabashed. “But Lucy appreciates when it does.”
Liam’s cottage was located just down the hill from Tarrymore Distillery.
It was tiny, made of whitewashed limestone, with dark green shutters on the pair of windows that looked out on the postage-stamp-sized front garden.
Pots of blooming red geraniums stood on either side of the arched front door.
In all, it reminded Maeve of something out of a Disney movie.
As they approached the front door they heard frantic barking coming from inside.
“See there?” Liam opened the unlocked door and a furry gray-and-white bundle rocketed past them, making her way straight to a patch of grass.