Chapter 58
Officer Muldoon sat at a wooden desk in the one-room Tarrymore police substation. The laptop on his desk was open, and his thick, black-framed glasses were perched on the end of his nose as he silently read from the computer screen.
Maeve squirmed in her chair, impatient to be free of his scrutiny.
She’d already told him, in excruciating detail, how she and her sister had contacted Esme to research their family connection, and about the last time they’d seen her alive on Wednesday morning, as well as the purpose for Maeve’s surprise visit to the gardener’s cottage today.
She’d conveniently left out any discussion of the portrait of Lady Geraldine, or of Esme’s role in the IRA heist five decades earlier.
Those details were on a need-to-know basis.
He typed notes as she spoke, two-fingered. “Now, you and your sister, would it be fair to say you’re now the last of the Rossington line?”
“I doubt that she considered us members of her family, and anyway, her brother Geoffrey is still alive. She told us he showed up this week, even though they’d been estranged for over thirty-five years.”
Muldoon stopped typing. “Lord Geoffrey? I’d forgotten all about him. Always assumed he was dead.”
“Esme said the same thing. No love lost there,” Maeve commented. “Speaking of dead—how’s Reggie?”
“That eejet? Got a skull as thick as Connemara marble. He’s awake and blathering about his innocence to any who’ll listen.”
“You don’t believe that, do you? Who else could have killed Esme? I literally walked in on him while he was burglarizing the cottage.”
“He claims you’re the killer. Has some shite story about how you and your sister have been plotting to get in Esme’s good graces so you could inherit once she’s gone.”
Muldoon’s phone rang. He picked it up, swiveled his chair around so that his back was to Maeve, and listened intently, with only an occasional grunt. He disconnected, then turned the chair back around to finish the interview.
“Where were we?” he asked.
“You were just telling me that Reggie is blaming me for Esme’s murder. Which is ludicrous,” Maeve said heatedly. “Inherit what? The only thing we wanted from Esme was information about our family. Which she finally, very reluctantly, parted with.”
“I didn’t say we believed Reggie. The man is no stranger around this substation. We’ve locked him up more times than I can count for petty thievery, public drunkenness, and indecent exposure.”
He fiddled with the badge pinned to his uniform shirt.
“That was my partner Flynn just now, calling from the morgue. The doctor hasn’t started the autopsy yet, but she did say from the signs of bruising and such, the cause of Lady Esme’s death will most likely be strangulation.
Now, that does come as a surprise. The violence, you see.
And where’s the motive? Hard to see Reggie killing his meal ticket. ”
“Esme kicked him out after his last drunken escapade at the Willow Tree. I was there and witnessed it. She evicted him.”
Muldoon waved that aside. “She’s put him out lots of times in the past. And every time, she let Reggie come crawling back, tail tucked.”
Maeve felt her anger at this cop, who refused to listen, begin to boil over.
“You say Reggie isn’t violent? You didn’t see the look in his eyes today, when he tried to attack me with that knife.
He’d have killed me without a second thought, and he would have succeeded, if I’d been a couple seconds slower to react. ”
She held out her arm and pointed to the bloody slash in the sleeve of her sweater. “You think I did this to myself?”
“All right,” Muldoon said finally. “I’ve collected your statement.
And your thoughts on Reggie’s guilt.” He pushed away from his desk and heaved himself to his feet.
“I’ve got to go relieve Flynn at the coroner’s office.
The fella has no stomach for that kind of thing.
Passes out at the first sign of a bone saw. ”
“Then I can go?” she asked.
“You can. But not too far. In other words, don’t be leaving the country.”
“No risk of that,” Maeve replied. “My passport is still missing.”