The Body at Ballytierney

By Noreen Wainwright

When Simon Crowe’s body is discovered at Ballytierney, old secrets threaten to destroy the lives of the townspeople. Inspector Ben Cronin is coasting towards retirement, so the last thing he needs is a case that threatens to expose the town's dark underbelly.

Maggie Cahill, a priest’s housekeeper, is at a crossroads in her personal life when she received a letter out of the blue from someone in her distant past. Her peace of mind and her livelihood are at risk as she seeks the truth of what happened to Simon Crowe, and why someone knows secrets she thought she'd buried long ago.

By the end of the investigation, will both Maggie’s and Cronin’s lives will be changed forever? And will Ballytierney ever be the same?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tirgearr Publishing
• Release date: Jul 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370813674

Noreen Wainwright

Noreen is Irish and now lives in the Staffordshire Moorlands with her husband, a dairy farmer. She works part-time as a mentor at Staffordshire University and the rest of her time is spent writing. Many of her articles and short stories have been published and she has co-written a non-fiction book. She loves crime fiction, particularly that of the “golden age” and that is what she wants to recreate with Edith Horton’s world.

Book preview

When Simon Crowe’s body is discovered at Ballytierney, old secrets threaten to destroy the lives of the townspeople. Inspector Ben Cronin is coasting towards retirement, so the last thing he needs is a case that threatens to expose the town's dark underbelly.

Maggie Cahill, a priest’s housekeeper, is at a crossroads in her personal life when she receives a letter out of the blue from someone in her distant past. Her peace of mind and her livelihood are at risk as she seeks the truth of what happened to Simon Crowe, and why someone knows secrets she thought she'd buried long ago.

By the end of the investigation, will both Maggie’s and Cronin’s lives will be changed forever? And will Ballytierney ever be the same?

THE BODY AT BALLYTIERNEY

Ballytierney Mysteries, #1

Noreen Wainwright

Tirgearr Publishing

Author Copyright 2017: Noreen Wainwright

Cover Art: EJR Digital Art (ejrdigitalart.com)

Editor: Sharon Pickrel

Proofreader: Barbara Whary

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away. If you would like to share this book, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not given to you for the purpose of review, then please log into the publisher’s website and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting our author’s hard work.

This story is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, incidents are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

DEDICATION

Thanks very much to my parents for their help.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Noirin Deady, who very kindly allowed me to see her thesis on priests’ housekeepers, an almost forgotten group, who had a central role in Ireland’s church life.

THE BODY AT BALLYTIERNEY

Ballytierney Mysteries, #1

Noreen Wainwright

Prologue

My Dear Niece or Nephew,

You will think this letter must come from a crazy person. Crazy, indeed not to know whether I’m writing to a young man or a young woman. I was only given a couple of initials and a surname, C.E. Stockland. I looked through the directories and public records, and my best guess is that you might be the person I’m looking for.

I’m hoping against hope your parents have told you of your adoption. I believe that after a few unfortunate incidents, this is the course now advised by the Catholic Church in the United States. I am deeply sorry if your parents have not told you and if this letter is a shock. Believe me, the last thing I want to do is to add any more to the distress of this whole business. I suppose it is not all bad, though. I trust you have had a happy childhood and good parents who cared for you. I’m told that was generally the case.

However, I’m also filled with a great sense of sadness and injustice at how your adoption came about. I would love to meet you and for you to get to know your Irish family. My father, your grandfather, died recently, and that’s what pushed me into this. I suppose you could nearly call it an investigation!

I don’t want to say anymore in this first letter, after all, I may be barking up the wrong tree, though I don’t feel that this is the case.

As I say, I don’t know how much you have been told—maybe just that you were adopted, but the fact that you are Irish may never have come out. There was a lot of secrecy in those days. Indeed, that is still the case when it comes to the subject of adoption and where the Church sent the children who came into its care. I can only believe that everything they did, they did with care and for the best of reasons.

I want to tell you a lot more…about your mother, my sister and about the rest of the family. My sister’s baby was born in November 1927—so will now be 25 years of age.

I hope this letter has not come as too much of a shock though that is probably a stupid thing to say. I would love to hear from you and maybe, if you want, to meet some day. I would be happy to come to the USA if this was easier.

In the meantime, I wish you all the best from Ballytierney in County Cork, a long way from your Baltimore!

I look forward to hearing from you if you would like to write back. My address is at the top…

He nearly knew the words backward by now. Sometimes, he re-read the letter, in an effort to recapture the feeling he’d had the first time of reading, a strange mixture of excitement and dread. He wanted to know more, to throw himself into this story on the other side of the Atlantic. But, he dreaded losing control then, other people would take over, and anything could happen. If he let himself, he could hate the writer of this letter for interfering in his life, unsettling everything and stirring up a hundred questions. But, the secret door was open now, and there was no going back to the state of ignorance. Maybe it would be a distraction too from habits that were starting to become too important in his life. It wasn’t easy to change the way he was living, maybe this would help him, take him away from the place and the people that created his demons.

Breda’s mouth was dry, and her heart boomed in her chest as she walked away from the post office. She’d done it, and there could be no going back. For this time, it was her secret. The letter would wend its way across the Atlantic. As for her two brothers back on the farm, the least she told them about anything, especially anything as important as this, the better.

Chapter One

The walk home from Evening Devotions was an essential part of the whole ritual. It had to be conducted in a particular way. Mrs. Helen Brosnan would wait outside the door to the woman’s aisle. Not loitering in any vulgar sort of way, not like the men outside their men’s aisle door, with a fag cupped in their hands and a look of guilt in their crinkled eyes.

It was a good place to wait and have a chat with those leaving, as the departing woman were often only too happy to be distracted from rushing back home to more housework and children demanding clean uniforms and all sorts of ingredients for cookery classes. It was easy for the nuns to be telling them to bring in vanilla essence and Carageen moss and equally outlandish elements of a dish no-one would fancy anyway. They should try finding these things in a small town like Ballytierney. Everyone knew the nuns had their groceries delivered by a van from O’Leary’s. No doubt their wholesalers had no problem finding ingredients of all descriptions. Also, it was well-known that most nuns came out of farms and that the convent was awash with cream and eggs and fine salty bacon.

Miss Abina Moore joined Mrs. Brosnan. Now, they only had to wait for Maggie, and they could meander through the park and take the air. The evenings were still light and as everyone said, nodding wisely as if they alone knew a secret, you had to make the best of it. Winter nights were long in Ballytierney with a big welcome for any diversion, such as the missions or a play put on by ADB, -Amateur Dramatics, Ballytierney. The canon had objected to BAD, the first abbreviation, which, of course, the young ones in the drama group thought had the perfect ring.

Canon Murphy was a great one for objecting to this and that.

What could you do, though? There were times when Maggie, in the secret corner of her soul, thought that the canon had much too much power and that it wasn’t doing him any good at all. But, she’d bless herself when thoughts like that came into her head and pray all the harder to God and Our Lady to make her a better person and prevent these thoughts coming into her mind, unbidden and unwelcome. Praying could be a real comfort.

Look at those roses. They’re a picture, said Mrs. Brosnan, stooping down to smell the Gertrude Jekyll rose. You have to give all credit to Mikey.

Miss Abina Moore spoke in her most tight, judgemental tone. The one that made Maggie want to give her a slap.

There has to be some good in the man, I suppose. Sure, his poor mother went to her grave worrying about his drinking and to cap it all, he goes and takes the pledge after she’s dead. When she can’t even get any pleasure out of it.

That can only be a good thing surely? said Maggie. Though, why did she bother? You had to be in the mood for listening to Abina, and she really wasn’t this evening.

No need to take that tone, Maggie, I was only saying. Abina hunched her shoulders up in the age-old gesture of one taking the huff.

Well, she’d have to get over her mood. Maggie wasn’t going to coax her.

There was enough going on in the parochial house for Maggie to be worrying about.

Have you a recipe for a Dundee cake? asked Mrs. Brosnan. She could have been a diplomat in a different life.

I have. I’ll call round for a cuppa tea in the morning if that’s all right?

It is, of course, as if you have to ask. Have you time, though, Maggie, with this supper you’re organising?

Oh, I’m well organised, sure the place is all ready.

The place might be tidy, and the cupboards and larder fully stacked, but was she ready? That was a far more difficult question. Life at the parochial house had become more turbulent, and Maggie felt like one in the eye of a storm. Much as it might be a relief to talk about some of this with her friends, she couldn’t. So, best to put it to the back of her mind for now.

I enjoy our walk in the evening, she said instead, hoping to smooth over troubled waters and to spin out the pleasure of a late summer evening in Ballytierney.

Mrs Brosnan, serene as usual, linked her arm into Maggie’s as they walked. Friendship was under-rated in Maggie’s view.

* * *

Five miles away in the townland of Moynard, Father Tom Lally bent his ear close to the sick man and listened as the words came slowly and urgently from the lips of old Simon Crowe. Tom’s heart thudded slowly and to his own ears, loudly, and he wanted to be away from the stuffy room and the house full of clutter and bitterness and out into the clean country air. He wanted to be away too from this man on the bed. It wasn’t fair or Christian of him to feel like this. It was his job to listen, to absolve the old man’s sins and to offer comfort. It was too much, though, to absolve some things, wasn’t it? He was twenty-five-years old, and some of the parishioners looked upon him as not much more than a boy. Maybe they were right. He anointed the old man and left the bedroom, closing the door on Simon Crowe. The trouble was he was taking the man’s secret with him, and it was a secret that affected other people in Ballytierney, not only in the past but now too.

Mary Crowe sat in the dingy kitchen and hardly looked up from her book when he entered the room after tapping lightly on the door.

Only a matter of time, now, Father Tom. Her tone was flat, and you could look hard for a trace of sorrow. In vain. But, the more he saw of people, the more he realised that it was foolish to jump to conclusions. One of his first funerals had been of an elderly travelling man whose wife was wailing and keening like someone in one of those Hollywood films about Ireland. He’d heard later that she and her husband had been famous in the townland for their fights—people compared them to Kilkenny cats.

Maybe Mary Crowe was affected deep inside but then, bearing in mind what he knew about Simon Crowe and what he’d told him in his confession, she probably had little reason to be sad.

He was desperate to be off, but on the other hand, it was odd and out of character for a place like Ballytierney not to be offered a cup of tea.

The doctor is due any minute, Mary Crowe said. Would he get a cup of tea? If it was Dr. Cash, he’d be more interested in a glass of something gold and fiery. Tom hesitated. It would be nice to have tea, but better to be out of the house and in his Morris Minor.

His shoulders hunched. What was there to look forward to, going back to the parochial house? The atmosphere was terrible there. The canon was becoming more rancid and nasty with every week that passed. The housekeeper, Maggie Cahill, and Jim Healy, the sacristan and handyman were the saving grace, though. Maggie was his second mother, and Jim was a great one for looking on the bright side. Some of his parishioners too made it worthwhile, even having to put up with Canon Murphy. It was just that he needed to remind himself of that, about once a day. He smiled to himself. Will you have a cup of tea, Father? Mary Crowe shimmered in front of him, and he blinked. Dear Lord. He had almost forgotten where he was, drifting away like that. He’d done it more than once lately, and if he didn’t watch his step, there would be stories going back to the canon, who would no doubt get a great deal of pleasure out of having something else to throw at him.

No thanks, Mrs. Crowe. I’m sure you have enough to do with a sick husband and with Doctor Cash coming too.

No, she touched his sleeve and looked up at him, a tic in her left cheek drawing his eye. He realised it wasn’t just that he’d been in a daze. Was she about to cry? He’d got better at dealing with people in distress, even weeping women, but Mary Crowe was not your average Ballytierney woman, that was for sure.

"Please stay for a cup of tea, Father. I could do with a little company. Her accent was different too. Hadn’t he heard that she’d originated from this area, but maybe it was the years in Africa with her husband that had altered her accent?

Well, thank you. If you’re sure that I won’t be putting you to any trouble.

She disappeared from the gloomy sitting room without a sound.

He walked across to the long, Georgian window finding pleasure in its height and the neatness of the panes of glass. He looked out to intense green and raindrops weeping on the glass. This was the sort of view that would almost always involve rain. The house was still, and he sought to calm himself by breathing in the greenness.

Forgive me father, for I have sinned, Simon Crowe said and said it, perhaps, mockingly. Well, he had sinned. In a cruel and unusual way. The way that caused pain and suffering to others, and in Tom’s book, that was a lot worse than some of the misdemeanours that they were supposed to preach against. There were so many, and for all his life, Tom had just accepted the sinfulness of thinking of sex or cursing or missing mass or well, a host of other things. Surely with a world war not long over and famine and devastation in Europe, God had more to worry about than whether some woman at the end of her tether had used his name in vain?

Where were all these troublesome thoughts coming from? Standing at the window of Inishowen House, looking out at the intense green and the bowed branches of the great broad oak in the parkland beyond, Tom had the experience again that had troubled him on and off for weeks now. A slow thumping of his heart and a sort of breathlessness. If he stood very still and concentrated on something in the physical world around him, it usually eased off all by itself.

This time, though, sweat broke out on his top lip, and he swiped his hand across it. Hopefully, the woman would come back soon and distract him from this feeling -whatever it was.

An intense longing seared through the place in his chest where his heart had just thudded. A longing to go back to the time and the place that he would always think of as being happy.

Chapter Two

Maggie looked around the room. The dining room looked celebratory, silver polished, wood gleaming Just for a few seconds, the troubles that had been jabbing away all day, like the burrs you picked up from cocklebur, receded and softened. Even the canon couldn’t find fault with what she’d done in here; her and Hannah, of course, working together. They were as different as any two women could be, but most of the time, they worked in harmony and had plenty laughs. Funny, the way the canon had, of ignoring domestic matters, all considered way below his notice, until any real decision needed making, and then he was the boss.

Small wonder, she supposed, with everyone in the place putting him up on a plinth and as for the nuns… It stuck in her craw the way they fawned over him, especially Sister Mary Stanislaus. Whatever she may be called now -and Maggie had no doubt the children would call her Santa Claus -Maggie always thought of her as Angela Scully. She’d been in Maggie’s class at school, and she was as poisonous a little weasel now as she was back then. But she must have the canon where she wanted him. Otherwise, how had she managed to find herself back here, only a stone’s throw from her home place? That was against the rules, wasn’t it? Nuns were always allocated or assigned or whatever you called it a good few miles from their homes.

This won’t buy the baby a new bonnet.

She’d better get out of this habit of talking to herself while she was at it. She had a roast beef dinner to get ready for tonight. They’d have a quietly convivial evening as the canon put it, with a few hand-picked local dignitaries. Maggie, are you there? Will I start on the potatoes for you?

Right so, hang on, and I’ll be down.

She wasn’t always glad to see Hannah with her incessant talking, but it was a relief this morning. Not only did she need the help, but the distraction from her thoughts would be welcome.

If you start on the potatoes and the other veg, there, Hannah, I’ll just give a last dust around in the parlour and hall. Maybe a polish too, while I’m at it.

Sure, the place is spotless, Maggie. You’ll have yourself worn out with work before the guests even come.

The hidden message was that it was as bad as sacrilege, to start their day, or at least Hannah’s part of it without a cup of tea and a chat.

We’ll have our tea then, Maggie said, softening a bit. Her mood wasn’t Hannah’s fault, and she didn’t want to go offending her. Hannah had enough to put up with, the only hard-working member of her large family.

Still and all, Maggie. Sure, they’re only men at the end of the day. Men don’t notice how highly polished a piece of furniture is.

The canon does, Maggie hoped the parting shot wasn’t too disloyal as she left Hannah to the vegetables and went out into the hall. She put her hand on the outside of her apron, feeling the hard corners of the envelope through the thin material.

* * *

Priests and nuns, I’ve no time for them.

Father Tom smiled at the old woman sitting by the remains of a poor fire.

What are you grinning at, boy? Aren’t you shocked?

He stopped smiling though it was an effort.

Of course, I’m shocked, Nora. Scandalised, in fact.

She put a thin, veiny hand on his sleeve. A hand with ingrained grime.

You’re different, though. A nice lad. They’ve not had a chance yet, to ruin you. Give them time, though. Then you’ll be as bad as the rest of them.

If he didn’t know and like Nora, he’d be shocked. You never heard anyone in rural Ireland say a bad word about the church or the clergy. Even if they had any doubts or ill feelings about them, they would keep such thoughts strictly to themselves.

He looked at Nora’s lined hands, at the coal dust and garden soil that begrimed them. Those hands had done a lot of work, washing,