Johnny Fitzgerald found him at about a quarter to eight. He took one look at his friend and sprinted over to MacSwiggin’s to find a doctor. The local doctor, Padraig MacBride, was, as it happened, having a quiet drink with his friend the vet in the saloon bar. As MacBride knelt down to look at Powerscourt Johnny wandered off to find the bicycle, or the remains of the bicycle. He looked very solemn when he returned.
‘Well,’ said the doctor, ‘I think it’s not quite as bad as it looks, so it’s not. It’s lucky he didn’t hit that tree the moment he came off the bicycle. That might have killed him. As it is, being pulled along the undergrowth by the momentum isn’t pleasant but at least you won’t hit your head so hard.’ The doctor was checking Powerscourt’s pulse and peering at his head.
‘Is it staying at Butler’s Court you are, the pair of you?’ he said. ‘You look like the sort of people who stay at Butler’s Court.’
‘We are,’ Johnny Fitzgerald, not sure if he was saying yes to the first or the second proposition on offer.
‘Right then. If you could stop here with your friend a moment, I’ll go and borrow some kind of horse-drawn transport to get him up the road to the house. I want to get that forehead cleaned up and I doubt we could carry him, with that hill and all.’
As Dr MacBride sped off towards MacSwiggin’s there was a low moan from the prostrate figure on the ground. Powerscourt managed to sit up, swearing violently.
‘Christ, my head hurts! Christ! Johnny, thank God it’s you. What happened? Did somebody hit me over the head?’
‘Francis, this is very important,’ said Johnny, leaning down and whispering. ‘Do you understand what I’m saying? Your wits haven’t gone wandering, have they?’
Powerscourt wriggled slightly to make himself more comfortable. ‘Wits present on parade,’ he said, wincing from the pain in his head.
‘Right, Francis, you must remember this, whatever else you remember. You fell off your bike and hit your head on a tree. It was an accident. Have you got that? You fell off the bike and hit your head on a tree.’
‘I fell off the bike,’ said Powerscourt. ‘I hit my head on a tree.’
From the direction of the hotel they could hear voices raised in argument, then the sound of a horse’s hooves.
‘Quick, Johnny, tell me before they come. What really happened?’
‘You mustn’t tell a soul, least of all Lucy,’ said Fitzgerald urgently. ‘Somebody round here doesn’t like you very much, Francis. You’re running out of friends. Some bastard cut the brake cable on that bicycle. It could no more stop than it could take off.’
‘Here we are,’ said the doctor, sitting on top of a pony and trap driven by a youth who looked about twelve years old. ‘This is Seamus, driving here,’ said the doctor as they helped Powerscourt into the trap. ‘Cheeky young bugger wanted sixpence to take us up the hill. I said it was an act of Christian charity, helping a fellow Christian in his hour of need. He said you were Protestants so that didn’t count. I shall tell the Christian Brothers about him.’
Seamus spat expertly into the side of the road and they set off up the hill.
One hour later Powerscourt was sitting up in bed, sipping soup, his wife by his side. His head had been expertly bandaged by one of the parlour maids called Sinead who had won her nursing spurs bandaging the cut legs and bruised arms of the small boys of Butler’s Court. Powerscourt was the first grown-up she had ever dealt with and she was proud of her work. The doctor had departed, prodding his patient in various places and peering into his eyes before he left. He was to return the following morning.
When she saw her husband being helped into the hall, the congealed blood on his forehead, the extreme pallor of his complexion, for one heart-stopping moment Lady Lucy thought he was going to die. Not again, she said to herself, please God, not again. She remembered the long vigils through the night, the weeping children sitting on her bed, when Powerscourt had been shot in one of his cases several years before, the certainty that he was going to pass away in front of her. He would drift from coma into death and she wouldn’t even know the moment to hold him in her arms.
Johnny Fitzgerald had been quick to reassure her as they arrived. ‘Don’t worry, Lady Lucy,’ he had said, putting an arm round her, ‘it’s not like last time. He fell off his bike, the silly old sod, and hit his head on a tree.’
‘Dr MacBride,’ the medical man had introduced himself and offered further reassurance: ‘There is no cause for serious alarm, I believe. He’ll be right as rain in a couple of days.’
‘Francis,’ Lady Lucy said, holding his hand, ‘I’m so glad you’re going to be all right. I was so worried when they brought you in, I can’t tell you.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said her husband, ‘Maybe I just need some lessons in bicycle riding.’
‘I always said,’ Lady Lucy was firm on the point, ‘that Thomas was safer on a bicycle than you are. He concentrates, you see. Your mind is always wandering off, looking for murderers or playing imaginary cricket matches or whatever your mind does while the rest of you is in the saddle.’
Powerscourt laughed and grimaced at the same time as a salvo of pain flowed through his head. ‘True, Lucy, very true. Maybe I shall get one of those motor cars, a great big one with a mighty horn.’
‘You could kill yourself more easily in one of those than you could on a bicycle,’ said Lady Lucy.
The mood was subdued in Butler’s Court for the next couple of days. The news of the thefts from Ormonde House and Powerscourt’s injuries seemed to take their toll. Sylvia Butler looked particularly subdued. Her husband tried to raise spirits with games of whist in the drawing room after dinner. Where the air had been filled before with the melodies of Thomas Moore, it was now filled with the shouts of the card players which grew louder with the passing of the port. ‘You had the ace of spades, you bastard!’ ‘I didn’t think you had any more trumps, damn your eyes!’ ‘Who would have thought you had all three of the buggers, ace, king and queen! You’ve won again!’ Great Uncle Peter came down to play in his green dressing gown, raking in his tricks like a croupier in a casino. Powerscourt noticed that Young James refused all offers to play, saying quietly, ‘I never play cards, never.’ Powerscourt and Lady Lucy, playing together, took three shillings and sixpence off Richard Butler and his wife.
‘We’re going to have an entertainment soon,’ Butler announced as the cards were folded away one evening, ‘a sort of concert party. Young James is organizing the children to recite poems, sing songs, all that sort of thing. He was going to do it with those aged eight and upwards, but the six- and seven-year-olds ganged up on him and beat him up in a pillow fight. Now Young James says the little ones can’t remember their lines. He’s going to fire the starting pistol when they can.’
Three days after his accident Powerscourt got what he wanted. There was a letter for him in a rather distinguished-looking envelope. He took Lady Lucy and Johnny Fitzgerald up to his room to read it.
‘Dear Lord Powerscourt,’ it began, ‘His Grace the Most Reverend Dr Healey acknowledges receipt of your letter. As you stress the urgency, His Grace has spared time for you at five o’clock on Tuesday afternoon. If that is not possible another appointment can be arranged the following day. We shall expect you on Tuesday unless we hear to the contrary. Yours, Fintan O’Shaughnessy, SJ, Secretary and Chaplain to the Archbishop.’ Johnny Fitzgerald disappeared for a moment or two and then returned.
‘By God, Lucy, I’d better get my skates on,’ said Powerscourt. ‘It’s Tuesday today. Where is Tuam, for Christ’s sake? I’ve no idea. I’ve got a feeling it’s up towards Sligo some place.’