Murder At Yew Haven

By Nancy Noonan

Murder at Yew Haven is a cosy murder mystery set in the rural Ireland of the nineteen-fifties. It is full of characters that belong to a simpler time. Detective Inspector Lynch has arrived in the little fishing village of Yew Haven in County Cork to solve the murder of Mrs. O'Grady, beloved grandmother of the O'Grady family. As a Dublin native, Lynch is ill equipped to deal with a rural crime, but he has to learn about country ways fast, because there's a killer on the loose and the local people are looking to him for answers. He is helped and hindered by Claire Adaire, a reporter with a Dublin based newspaper, eager for a story. Lynch is also assisted by the local police sergeant and his misfit squad, the hyperactive parish priest, the local doctor and the busy-body district nurse. There are a host of larger than life characters, all keeping secrets in Yew Haven. Which of the villagers could have murdered the elderly Mrs. O'Grady and why did an elderly woman have to be killed? In a village where murder has never been heard of before, Declan Lynch is up against local suspicion and his overbearing superiors, can he solve his first case as an Inspector?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy Noonan
• Release date: Sep 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463972106

Nancy Noonan

I’m Nancy Noonan and I love to write!I think a good book needs to be an escape for the reader and my stories offer the reader a world to hide in for a while. I love to write about relationships and always add a little humour to my tales.I live in one of the most beautiful places on Earth, the east coast of Ireland and I am inspired by the landscape and the people around me.I love to hear from readers, so please feel free to contact me – [e-mail]

Book preview

This is a work of fiction set in 1950’s rural Ireland. It is a murder mystery tale and for the purposes of the story, I have taken liberties with the Irish Police procedures at that time. I would like to apologise for this. The Irish Police force is called the Gardai na Siochaina, which translates as ‘Guardians of the Peace’. They were an unarmed police force in the 1950’s and still are today. The Gardai were founded shortly after the Irish Republic gained independence from the UK in the 1920’s, so they were still a relatively young organisation in the 1950’s. The Gardai have always had a strong emphasis on community policing and have been an important and positive part of Irish life since their inception.

This little novel is dedicated to rural police forces everywhere.

Chapter One

This strange business with Granny O'Grady was the last thing Sergeant Thom O'Brien needed now, less than a year from retirement. He scrubbed his big hands over his face and realised he needed a shave. Any minute now, the Dublin murder squad would descend on Yew Haven and at the tail end of a career marked only by its routine of predictable petty crimes, O'Brien felt hard done by.

Why couldn't the maniac have done his deed in the next parish? There was a new sergeant there, a recent transplant from Cork city who was only itching for something like this. Thom O'Brien had spent a blameless career dealing with crimes no more serious than a bit of poaching, a few minor thefts, bicycles with no lights at night and a bit of afterhours drinking in Shea's pub.

Closing his eyes, O'Brien let his mind wander to the twenty acres he'd recently bought in county Galway and dearly wished he'd taken up the offer of early retirement last year. If he’d headed off to the green pastures of retirement last year, he wouldn’t be standing here now, waiting for the Dublin boys, and he wouldn’t have seen that horror up at the O’Grady farm.

He sent Garda Keane to put some manners on their files. He knew they were amateurish, but what did the Dublin boys expect? Dick Keane wasn't the brightest button in the box at the best of times and this thing with poor Mrs. O'Grady had them all rattled. The only other member of their little force, Ger Foley, was still up at the farm. O’Brien had been expecting the lads from the Cork headquarters, most of whom he knew, but they’d been unavailable due to a double murder over in Mallow. He’d been told to expect the Dublin boys to come down because they were the only ones with time on their hands – due to an unexpected dearth of murder in the Capital. It wasn’t ideal. The Dublin boys wouldn’t know how to handle a rural crime, they’d be out of their depth and they’d take it out on him. When it all went wrong, the Dublin flying squad would run off back to the safety of the capital and it would be him, Thom O’Brien, who would get the blame.

'Wha' name will I throw on this lot?' called Dick from the other side of the room.

'Wha'?' said the sergeant, turning from the village outside the window to the dullard sitting at the battered desk.

'Well, you have to give 'em some kind of a name.'

'Just give it its file number. Number one - because it's the only murder we've had here this month.'

'It's the only murder we've ever had here, Thom.'

'Ah now, you're forgetting about that Doherty case in the twenties.'

'That was well before my time.'

O’Brien hadn’t been long in his post at Yew Haven when the Doherty case happened, so far it had remained the most exciting thing to ever happen in the village and surrounding townlands, crime wise at least. 'Well I suppose you couldn't really call it a murder at all, and there was no mystery to it. T'was more like a domestic - Mrs. Doherty just got a bit sick of the beatings and hit her husband over the head with a...'

'Frying pan?'

'What? No, ya gobshite, a...

‘Saucepan?'

'Shut up will ya, t'was a...' began Thom, but he didn't get a chance to finish.

'Christ! The Dublin lads are here.'

With pencil in hand and only a second to think, Garda Keane, who had spent far too many wasted hours reading the works of Mrs. Agatha Christie, took the buff file and wrote, 11th of March 1954; Case No: 1 - The Case of The Yew Haven Killer.

Sergeant O'Brien buttoned up his tunic, brushed the crumbs from his serge trousers and sucked in his generous gut.

There were two of them, a detective inspector and a Garda in plain clothes, probably one of those technical lads. The Garda wore a rumpled grey suit, while the inspector wore a pair of loose trousers and a knitted vest over a badly ironed shirt. He had the look of a man who'd been called from his bed. After five minutes their Dublin accents were grating on O'Brien's nerves. The Inspector was young, in his early thirties and he looked as keen as mustard. O’Brien had no time for these career-minded ambitious men, all they cared about was following procedure and looking good to the higher ups.

Declan Lynch had been an inspector for all of three days. He had sat in the passenger seat of Ed Greene’s black Ford Pilot while Greene drove down to Yew Haven from Dublin, the roads becoming gradually more winding and badly repaired the further they got from the capital. There were a couple of motor cars at headquarters, but he hadn’t managed to secure one. Greene offered to drive in his own car, which saved them wasting the whole day on trains and buses. Lynch pondered the case, or what he knew of it. He was anxious to put his stamp on his new position. He was nervous, this was his first case as an inspector, and it had to go well. He knew they’d only sent him because no one else wanted to go to some God forsaken fishing village at the other end of the country. His chief, Donal Brady had said, ‘It’s probably something of nothing, Lynch, a good case for you to cut your teeth on. Should only take a day or two to get to the bottom of it.’ The Cork city squad were busy with a double murder at the other side of the county and the superintendent of the county had requested someone from Dublin. It was nearly unheard of to have three murders in the same county at the same time, but the Yew Haven thing sounded like it could have been an accident.

Lynch was a Dublin boy, born and raised in Rathgar and viewed the rest of Ireland as a sort of vague idea, politicians came from there, so did milk and eggs, brought up daily on the train. They did things differently in the countryside, the people thought differently. He felt out of his depth. He didn’t have any knowledge of the area and local knowledge went a long way towards solving any crime. At thirty years of age, Lynch was young for an inspector, but he was ambitious, and he knew there was room for advancement in the Gardai, still a young organisation, still trying to make a name for itself as a professional police force without the guiding hand of the Brits. Lynch was an avid reader and he was full of acquired knowledge about the new procedures they were coming up with in America. He’d even gone on a training course to England two years previously, at his own expense, and had been itching to put his learning into practice. Brady warned him that the ‘culchies’ wouldn’t be co-operative and probably the local sergeant wouldn’t be either. They would probably resent the Dublin boys and Lynch would be hard pressed to get any information out of any of them.

‘Chalk it down, Lynch, there’ll be a simple explanation, but they’ll go so far out of their way to make things difficult for you that you’ll be in danger of getting tangled up in it. Just stick to the facts as you know them and don’t get side-tracked.’

Murder in Ireland was rare and generally depressingly easy to solve. It usually fell into one of two categories, the domestic and the political. There was no scope for chasing around with magnifying glasses looking for clues when the drunken husband was standing over his dead wife with the bloodied leg of a kitchen chair in his hand, swaying on his feet and shouting, ‘She shouldn’t have looked at our Davey that way.’ Or when a known Republican was found dead in a ditch with two broken legs and an ‘I’ for ‘informer’ carved into his forehead.

Lynch was hoping this case would be different. When he’d read the wire from Cork, it certainly sounded different and he’d been mulling over it all the way down from Dublin.

Yew Haven village came into view once they’d rounded a large hill and started descending a steep winding road. It was a small place, bound by the sea to the south, the broad river ‘Dubh’ to the west and hemmed in by the Dilisk mountains to the North. Lynch caught brief glimpses of it as the road wound left and right, revealing the village below between the gaps in the high hedgerows. The land was rolling and green and the fields held dairy cows or sheep and early crops that Lynch, the city boy, didn’t even begin to try to identify.

The village had one main street and a few laneways leading down to the sea. There was a long, curved beach of yellow sand to the east of the village, with dunes and bog land backing up to it. To the west there were a few quays and an L shaped sea wall, behind which bobbed a few small fishing boats, sheltering from the wild Atlantic. A big gothic church towered over the other buildings in the village, its spire reaching upwards and dominating the skyline. Lynch took it all in and wondered how a murder could have happened in a quiet, sleepy little place like this.

Greene parked the Ford outside the small Garda Station. It occupied a corner on the main street, the door was painted regulation blue with a blue lamp over it and there was a notice board nailed to the wall beside it. Faded notices with curled edges mouldered behind the cracked glass informing the public about the danger of buying black market butter and cycling at night with no light on your bike. Down the laneway, which led to the quays and a narrow back road, sat a school, and the local primary school children, on a break from their lessons, stared at the Ford and the two strangers with open mouthed curiosity.

Lynch pulled his leather satchel from the boot of the car and wished he’d had time to iron his shirt before leaving Dublin in the early hours of the morning. He pushed open the door and went inside.

‘Ah, there ye are now, welcome to Yew Haven, lads.’

Lynch nodded to the fat local sergeant and shook his hand. He wasn’t impressed with the big, balding man, guessing he must be close to retirement age. You got lazy policing in places like this, it was where they put the older or less able Guards, at least, that was Lynch’s perception of his rural colleagues. He certainly couldn’t imagine Sergeant O’Brien or Garda Keane patrolling the Monto, Dublin’s notorious red-light district.

‘Will ye have tea? I’ll get the missus to bring in a pot; we live over the shop, so to speak.’

‘I could murder a cup of tea’, said Ed Greene, who was the kind of man who makes himself at home anywhere.

Lynch would have preferred to get stuck in straight away, but he bowed in the face of social nicety and endured a long half an hour of getting tea and biscuits, talking about the journey down, the weather, the state of the nation and the results of the hurling match at the weekend before any kind of work could even start.

Eventually, Lynch, rolled up his sleeves, sat down at the desk and went through the file - which took all of twelve seconds. He looked up and folded his arms, 'So, Sergeant O’Brien, you were the first man on the scene, what did you see?'

Thom swallowed, if he lived a hundred more years, he'd be glad to never see anything like that again. He felt his bile rise up in his throat as he played out the night in his head, ready to spin out the tale for the Inspector.

'Well, it was Thursday night, last night, like, and I'd had a couple of pints up at Shea's and got home for about nine o'clock.'

'Were you on duty, Sergeant?'

'Of course! This is a three-man station, young fella; we’re always on duty down here in the sticks. We don’t stick to shifts like you Dublin boys. You come on duty the day you get your posting and you don’t sign off again until the day you retire. Anyway, I got home by nine and I was just sitting down to a cup of tea and a slice of bread and jam when there came a banging on the door. So, the missus says, Who's that at the door at this hour? and I said, I don't know, pet, I'll go and see. So I did - and it was the young fella of the O'Grady's, Liam.

'So I said, Jaze, Liam, what brings you out at this hour? And he was all out of breath and could hardly speak. So, the missus shouts to bring him in and we gave him a sup of tea. Then, when he got his breath back, like, he says his father sent him down to the village, because there was a spot of bother up at his granny's place.'

'That would be… Mrs. Eileen Theresa O’Grady, 83, of Grady's Farm, Old parish, Yew Haven?'

'Yes, Sir, that's the one. Mrs. O’Grady lives on her own now, since Sean did a flit to England, but, Big Bill lives in the new house across the yard with his wife and family.

'Sean is another son?'

'Yes, Sir, he got caught stealing lead from the roof of the church above in Ardmakill, about four or five years ago. He escaped custody and the last we heard he was working on the buildings in England, Sir.'

Lynch licked the end of his pencil and added a few lines to his notebook before saying, 'The O’Grady’s, known for crime in this area, are they, Sergeant?'

‘Ah no, no, not at all. The others are good decent, hard-working people, but Sean was always a bit wild, didn’t really fit in around the village. Always up to no good as a young fella, small stuff, you know.’

‘Right, well, get on with the report, Sergeant.’

'Yes, Sir. So anyway, I gets the Triumph out and motored up to the O'Grady's place with the young fella, Liam, on the pillion. All the O'Grady's were there, gathered outside the door and quiet as the grave. Big Bill O’Grady led the way to the kitchen, but I couldn't see anything at first, not at first.'

'And then?' asked Lynch, leaning forward slightly.

Sergeant O'Brien gave him a stricken look, 'I'll tell you this for nothing, Sir, I don't ever want to see a sight like that again, as long as I live. I'd rather have the eyes burned out of my head than see a sight like that again. It was a terrible thing, a terrible, awful thing, God almighty, it was…'

'Could you just get to the point, Sergeant?'

The Sergeant felt a bit cheated; he was a man given to narrative, but he reined himself in and told the story in as plain a way as he could. 'Well, Sir, she'd been shoved into her own oven, hadn't she? There she was, all folded up like a Christmas turkey and just as crispy. Her daughter-in-law, Big Bill's wife, found her, said she smelled meat cooking and wondered what Granny O'Grady had in the oven at that hour. They live just across the yard in the new house, Big Bill and his family. I don't think the woman will ever be right in the head again - well, you wouldn't be, would you? Not after seeing something like that anyway. She started screaming and Big Bill came running and he took the fire out of the box of the range cooker and then sent the young fella down to get me.'

'What did you do then?'

'Well, Sir, I took one look at what was inside that big old oven, and then I went outside and threw up all over the Hydrangeas.'

'I mean procedurally, Sergeant.'

'Oh, oh right, well, I sent the young fella, Liam, back down to the village to waken the doctor and then to go up to the Parochial house to get the Priest, Fr. FitzGerald. Then I got someone to go down and get Garda Keane out of his bed so he could come up to the farm and help me take statements, they're all in the file there, Sir. Of course, I knew straight away it was no accident, I mean old ladies don't just curl up and get inside their own range cookers, do they, Sir?'

'Not in my experience, Sergeant, no.'

The door of the Garda barracks opened just then, making Sergeant O'Brien jump. He heard the Detective Inspector swear under his breath, before saying, 'Well, well, well, Miss Claire Adaire. It didn't take you long to get wind of this one.'

Sergeant O'Brien stared; she was like something from the movies. Tall, slim and with bottle blonde hair perfectly set into a style that curled around her face. She was heavily made up with red sweetheart lips and kohl-lined eyes. She wore a neat little skirt suit in a delicate coral shade with high stiletto heels to match.

O'Brien noticed Lynch slick back his hair and straighten his shirtsleeves and filed this observation away in his head for later perusal.

‘What have we here, The Yew Haven Killer eh?' she said.

D.I. Lynch snatched the buff file from the desk and turned it away from her gaze. 'What do you want, Claire?'

'Same thing as always, to inform the Irish public and serve the public interest, Declan.'

'Serve them up another gory story more like. And it’s detective Inspector Lynch to you, Miss Adaire.'

‘Oh, Inspector now is it? When I met you last week in Glassnevin you were only a sergeant. Congratulations on your promotion, Declan.’

Lynch flushed, the witch was deliberately undermining him in front of this local yocal sergeant and his dim-witted constable. The last thing he wanted in Yew Haven, was Claire Adaire poking her powdered nose into things, making everything more complicated.

‘If you’ve quite finished, Miss Adaire, we have work to do here.’

'Oh, don't be so mean, Detective Inspector Lynch. You know my readers want to be informed -- need to be informed about terrible occurrences like this -- it's in the public interest.'

‘How exactly did a Dublin reporter find out about an incident like this way down here in the arse end of County Cork?'

‘Oh, now, A girl can’t give away all her secrets, you know.’

‘Just keep out of my way, Claire. I don't want another repeat of that Finglas incident last year.'

'Declan, my dear', she said, putting a gloved hand on Lynch's arm, 'you won't even know I'm here.'

Lynch opened the door and gestured to the outside with his arm. Claire strode out and he slammed the door behind her.

O’Brien was about to open his mouth when the door opened again and the third member of the Yew Haven force sauntered in, Garda Ger Foley. He did the introductions and lost his opportunity to quiz Lynch about the extraordinary Woman.

Chapter Two

The door snapped back against the wall and the old dog by the fire barked, just once.

Shea's pub was a dark place at the best of times and the interior was a shadow strewn cave despite the strong spring sunshine. She stood in the doorway for a moment, outlined in the rectangle of light, one hand resting high on the door jamb and one on her hip.

Silhouetted as she was, all the men could see were long legs that started atop six-inch heels and ended abruptly at the outrageously high hem – which would probably be spoken about in quiet tones for months. She reached up and removed a pair of sunglasses, the first ever pair to reach Yew Haven.

Then, hips swaying in rhythm to the slow click-click of the heels on the worn flagstones, she made her way to the scratched Formica counter and said, 'Give me a gin, a large one, with ice and lemon if you have it.'

Shea picked his jaw up from the floor and began to say, 'We don't serve women here,' but the extraordinary creature held up a well-manicured hand and said, 'Look, Mr. Publican, unless you want this day to turn very nasty indeed I'd locate some gin, pour it into the cleanest glass you can find and have it up here on the counter within five seconds. I’ve been stuck on trains and buses since early this morning and I don’t have the patience to deal with the likes of you as well.'

'Bu...' began Shea.

She drummed her long red nails on the counter and said, 'Five, four, three...'

Shea's naturally red face turned a brighter shade of scarlet as he turned around and pulled an old bottle of Cork Dry Gin from the high shelf. He blew the dust from it and poured a double with shaking hands. She took the glass, brought it to her rouged lips and downed it in one.

'Again,' she said.

Shea poured another large one and the woman sat down on a high stool, crossing her legs as she did so. She drew out a packet of cigarettes from her bag, slipped one into a holder and lit it, blowing a perfect circle of smoke over the group of locals who had clustered together for safety at the other end of the bar.

'Well, Shea, is it? You'd better find some decent gin, some lemons and a lot of ice because it looks like I'll be here for a while.'

'Oh? And why's that?' inquired Shea.

The woman sighed, 'I'm Claire Adaire. I'm a journalist with the National Standard.'

'Uh,' replied Shea.

'I'm here because of the old lady, Mrs. O'Grady?'

‘Oh, oh yeah, right, I suppose the papers would want to write something about that alright.'

'You'd be amazed at how many people like to read about murdered old ladies, Mr. Shea.'

Claire lit another cigarette and held out her glass for another refill. 'And I'll need somewhere to stay for the duration.'

'Wha?'

'An hotel, a guest house, a boarding house, a holiday home, an inn, a place where I can rent a room. Do you have such a place in the village, Mr. Shea?'

Shea felt like the conversation had lost him along the way. The group of locals moved closer together, and pints in hand, they took a communal step towards the extraordinary woman.

'You're here about Mrs. O'Grady, you say, Miss?' said the bravest, Ray Murphy, who considered himself a bit of a cosmopolitan, having once spent a week in Dublin city.

'Yes, that’s right, apparently it was particularly gruesome. Shoved into an oven, I hear.'

‘Oh God, it was, Miss, very gruesome! An awful, awful thing altogether. It isn't every day you hear about someone going around pushing old women into their own ovens.'

The locals put their pints on the counter and crossed themselves in unison.

From the small patent leather handbag, Claire pulled a leather covered notebook and a slender gold pen. Like a soldier cocking his weapon, she clicked the top of the pen, locked eyes with the speaker and said, 'Name?'

'Me name's Ray Murphy, Miss.'

She looked up at the collection of locals and licked her painted lips, slowly. 'Why don't you nice fella's tell me all about poor old Mrs. O'Grady?'

The men drew back slightly sharing half-frightened glances and then they all tried to speak together.

'She was eighty-one.'

'No, she wasn't, you feckin eejit (sorry miss) she was eighty-three, she was in the same class at school as our uncle Mossy and Mossy is eighty-four this October.'

She wrote it all down without once looking at the notebook, she locked gazes with whoever was talking, and those cool blue eyes seemed to draw out the words themselves.

When the talk turned back on itself and the locals began to contradict each other and add tails to their tales she put the notebook away, finished her fourth double and turned once again to Shea who shrank back under her gaze. 'Well, Mr. Shea, where can I get a room for a while?'

'Ah, right, well, yes well, I spoke to the missus, and I suppose you could stay here,' said Shea.

'Hmmm, you do have indoor plumbing?'

Shea stammered, 'Of course, this is 1954, you know! We've hot and cold here -- and the missus will do your meals as well.'

'Fine, that'll do. That will do nicely. First things first though, do you have such a thing as a telephone here?'

Shea puffed out his chest, 'We certainly do, we do indeed, One of only three telephones in the village, as a matter of fact, Miss. We have one, the doctor has one and they have one down at the Garda station. Tis next door in the shop, through that door there. Just pick up and wait for Maggie to answer, she'll connect you.’

‘Right, thanks.’

‘And, ah, Miss?’

‘Yes?’

‘The missus says you’ve to go in the snug if you want a drink in future, she don’t hold with women in the public bar, like.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so, Shea. I don’t think it would suit me to be shut away in your little snug, I mean where’s the fun in hiding away where people can’t see you?’

Claire ground her cigarette into the tin ashtray, got slowly down from the high stool, smoothed the terrifyingly short skirt down over her thighs and walked slowly to the door that joined the public bar to the shop and post office.

Shea breathed a sigh of relief and headed back down to the other end of the bar, to confer with the locals about the extraordinary woman, he had just leaned his elbows on the counter when the door opened again, and a young man entered. Two strangers in one day outside the tourist season was nearly unheard of in Yew Haven.

He wore a grey suit and spoke with a grating Dublin accent, ‘Are you John Shea?’ he asked.

‘I am.’

‘Sergeant O’Brien sent me up, he said you take in lodgers and holiday people sometimes, I’ll need two rooms.’

Shea scrubbed at his chin, delighted by the sudden upsurge in his accommodation business, ‘well,’ he said, ‘I can certainly find you one room, but the other one is let out already.’

‘I’m Ed Greene, with the Dublin Squad, there’s myself and the inspector, I don’t know if the inspector will like sharing a room, you’re sure you only have the one?

Shea did a few calculations in his head, figuring the Gardai’s pockets might be deep enough to make up for young Donal having to sleep in the kitchen for a few nights. ‘Grand, grand, I’ll work something out, right you are, I’ll have the two rooms ready in an hour or two. Will ye be staying long?’

Greene gave him a look, ‘well, I hope not, a few days maybe.’

‘Grand, that’s grand altogether. You’ll be here over this business up at the O’Grady place as well, I suppose?’

’That’s right.’

Greene made a quick exit in case the publican tried to wheedle information out of him. He whistled a tune and shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked back across the road to the Garda Station. Yew Haven was a nice little place and he wished he’d come down for a bit of fishing, that would have been a lot nicer than having this awful murdered old lady case.

Chapter Three

D.I. Lynch, Garda Greene and Garda Foley drove to the O'Grady farm late on Friday Afternoon. They’d left O’Brien and Keane behind in the station to set up the incident room. Although calling a corner of the one room station house an incident room was probably going a bit too far. O’Brien had sent Keane down to the school to borrow a spare blackboard, and that was probably going to be the size of it.

'I don't understand, Sir - we got all the statements last night,' said Foley from the back seat of Greene’s Ford.

'Well, Ger, sometimes they'll tell the local boys one tale, but the sight of the men from Dublin might focus their minds a bit better - and they were all a bit shocked last night.'

‘Right, Sir. I suppose you've got a point there.'

'So, who do we need to speak to, Ger?'

'Well, there's Big Bill, the late Mrs. O'Grady's son. He got the farm when the old fella passed away. Then there's his wife, Ann - she found the