‘Responsibilities as landlords?’ Ormonde was in full cry again, his face as red now as his beef, ‘What horseshit! And what about the responsibilities of those bastards out there to keep the law? You keep talking as though I was about to commit some sort of crime. I am not. My Orangemen will be sworn in as militiamen or special constables or some other damned thing the lawyers can invent. Those bastards out there broke the law when they broke into my house. They started it, not me. You’re being most unhelpful, Butler, you really are.’
‘I’ve got another idea,’ said Butler, ‘I thought of it in the train on the way over. Why don’t we just collect all the paintings from the Big Houses and lock them away in a vault in Galway or even in Dublin? That way there won’t be any paintings for the thieves to steal.’
‘That,’ Ormonde snarled, ‘is just about the feeblest and most defeatist talk I’ve heard in months. Lock the paintings away? For one thing we’d never catch the thieves that way. For another they’d just take to stealing something else. Why don’t we take ourselves away too while we’re at it and lock ourselves up in some vault in Tunbridge Wells or Wells-next-the-sea? The Orangemen, one hundred Orangemen, that’s what we need.’
‘You seem to forget, Ormonde,’ said Richard Butler in the tone he might have adopted if he was talking to a small and rather stupid child, ‘the laws of action and counter action that have always applied in this island. You mutilate my cattle or damage my land and I’ll have a Coercion Bill through Parliament inside three months and a whole lot of those bastards, as you call them, are going to be locked up, many of them perfectly innocent people. At the end of it everything will blow over but the amount of hatred each side has for the other in the deposit boxes of their collective memory will have increased yet again. So the next round will be even worse.’
‘So what do you suggest I do?’ Ormonde was shouting now. The butler and the footmen, Powerscourt thought, wouldn’t need to be listening at the door, they could probably hear him if they were halfway up Croagh Patrick. ‘Ride into Westport with a fistful of Treasury notes in my pocket and hand them out to the local gombeens, asking them to be nice to us in future? Have an Open Day in Ormonde House? Come on in, boys, take all you want, everything must go?’
‘That’s absurd, and you know it.’
‘And you,’ Ormonde turned to glower at Powerscourt, munching loudly on a roast potato, ‘the great investigator, what do you have to say for yourself? What do you think we should do?’
Powerscourt paused for three or four seconds to add weight to his question.
‘Did you get a letter?’ he asked, in what he hoped was his mildest voice.
‘A letter? Of course I got a bloody letter!’ Ormonde pointed a finger at Butler. ‘He got a letter, Moore got a letter, Connolly got a letter, all God’s children with the stolen paintings got letters. It’s in the rebel rule book, sending letters on occasions like this.’
Out of the corner of his eye Powerscourt noticed Richard Butler turning a bright shade of pink. Ormonde noticed it too. He stared at Butler, and suddenly he knew.
‘You bloody fool,’ he said, speaking very quietly now. ‘You had a letter too but you didn’t tell our investigating friend here anything about it, did you? And the same goes, I’d bet a hundred pound, for Connolly and Moore. You were all in it together, fools all of you. How do you expect the man to find out anything when you don’t give him the facts? God in heaven!’ In a gesture of the more worldly sort he leant forward and helped himself to two more slices of his beef. He took more of his horseradish too.
‘It seemed for the best,’ said Butler. ‘It was done for the best of motives, I promise you.’
‘And what, Ormonde,’ said Powerscourt, ‘did the letter say?’
‘Damned if I’m going to tell you that,’ said Ormonde indistinctly, his mouth full. ‘Blackmail, that’s all you need to know, bloody blackmail.’
‘Let me ask you just one more question about the letter, if I may. Did it contain any bloodcurdling threats about what would happen if you did tell anybody about it?’
‘Didn’t curdle me,’ said Ormonde, still chomping at his beef, ‘didn’t curdle my blood at all. Obviously curdled Butler and all the rest of them. Well curdled, they are, all three of them. Ask yourself, Powerscourt, you’re obviously an intelligent man, the kind of thing a blackmailer would say if he wanted his bloody letter to stay a secret.’
And with that Ormonde gave his attention to his previously neglected peas. Richard Butler was looking at Powerscourt, his eyes pleading for support.
‘I really do feel, Ormonde,’ said Richard Butler, preparing, Powerscourt thought, to place his head in the lion’s jaws once more, ‘that this plan with the Orangemen is unwise. Understandable, of course, but unwise. I would like to consult with my relation Brandon over in England, to see what his view is. He owns some of the land I farm, after all. They say he has great influence in the House of Lords, you know.’
‘Your man Brandon,’ Ormonde had completed the rout of his peas now and was staring at Butler with thinly disguised contempt, as if he too was about to join the ranks of the bastards, ‘your man Brandon is scarcely able to get out of his seat. The gout’s got him. The chances of Brandon’s managing to get out of his house and park his arse alongside all the other well-upholstered arses on the red benches in the House of Lords over there in Westminster are pretty remote, if you ask me. Nobody’s walked into his house in the middle of the night and made off with his bloody Van Dycks, have they? Brandon wouldn’t be able to stop the thieves even if they walked up and shook his hand as they left with the canvases under their arm. Wouldn’t be able to get out of his bloody chair. Ask him his opinion if you want, I can’t stop you. Any more than you can stop me bringing in my Orangemen.’
The butler and the footmen glided in and removed the plates. A great dish of meringue and cream and fruit replaced the beef at the place of demolition. Ormonde began hacking large portions out of the pudding and handed them round.
‘And you, Powerscourt,’ he said, ‘what is your view of my Orangemen? Are you in favour?’
‘I must ask you a question first,’ Powerscourt replied, trying to look as grave as he knew how. ‘Will they be wearing those dark suits with the Orange sashes? Will they have those hard black hats on their heads? Will they bring a marching band with those terrible Lambeg drums? Will they sing “The Sash My Father Wore” as they march along the Mall in Westport?’
For the first time that day Dennis Ormonde laughed. He laughed with the same energy with which he carved his beef or cursed his enemies.
‘Lambeg drums! “Sash My Father Wore”! That’s good, Powerscourt. Very good. I say,’ he went on, crunching his way through a mouthful of meringue and cream, ‘this pudding’s good, damned good.’
There was a brief moment of silence as he enjoyed his sweet course. Powerscourt was trying to find a way to buy time. The hands of the clock were ticking fast towards those two hundred Ulster boots stamping their way down the Louisburg road towards Ormonde House. Even a couple of days would help. He had a sudden vision of Father O’Donovan Brady mounting the steps of his pulpit to harangue the faithful after Mass. He shuddered when he thought of what the priest might say about an invasion of Protestant heretics from the north. Ormonde returned to the assault, siege engines refuelled by the cream and fruit.
‘Seriously though, Powerscourt, what do you think? Out with it, man!’
‘In one sense it is an admirable plan, Ormonde,’ said Powerscourt. ‘You should congratulate yourself for having thought of it. I say admirable because for one purpose, that of catching these thieves, it is the best plan possible. Mind you, I do have certain reservations about the possible side effects. However, I have a suggestion to make.’ Ormonde was helping himself to a third helping of the pudding. Powerscourt hoped it would ease his anger. ‘Please continue with the arrangements with the Grand Master of the Orange Lodge and the people from the Royal Black Preceptory, but with one slight change of plan. They are not to set forth immediately. Rather they are to be on standby, ready to go at a moment’s notice, boots polished, sashes cleaned, all that sort of thing. Because, gentlemen, we have forgotten a couple of very important people who should be with us in a day or so. I refer to the inspector and his colleague from the Intelligence Department in Dublin. They will have access to sources of intelligence and information in the local community which we do not possess. They will need time to conduct their investigations in as low a key as possible. I am certain that they will find it easier to carry out their work in what you might call a low temperature. Once the Lambeg drums begin to beat, as it were, the temperature will rise dramatically, it may go right off the scale, and it will be much harder for them, people will be less likely to talk. If they fail, so be it. The Ulstermen set off the very next day.’