‘There’s a sort of simmering resentment out there, Francis,’ he said, sitting on the lawn at the back of Ormonde House. ‘They don’t like it one little bit, the locals, but they’re not sure what to do. The priests have told them to be patient and to focus their attention on the pilgrimage up the Holy Mountain. That’s not many days off now, so we should have peace until then. I’m not sure about afterwards.’
Powerscourt had smiled when he heard that the priests had been advising caution. He was not alone. He had a mighty ally, over six feet tall and over five foot wide, in the Archbishop’s Palace in Tuam. As ever, God was on everybody’s side in Ireland. The Catholics had their God with His very own auxiliaries like the Virgin Mary and all the saints. The Orangemen had theirs, a very different deity, a harsh God from the Old Testament. Lady Lucy had caught the end of one of the minister’s sermons when he spoke liberally of hellfire and referred to the Pope in Rome as Auld Red Socks. She was remarkably well informed about Presbyterians, having come across the breed in her youth in Scotland.
‘It’s like the other religions turned upside down, Francis,’ she had assured her husband who was anxious to be better informed about these strange people. ‘In the Catholic Church or the Anglican Church authority comes down from the top through the Pope or the archbishops and the ordinary bishops to the clergy. With the Presbyterians power flows out from the congregation. They choose their minister. They don’t have bishops or anything like that, just a man called the Moderator who’s elected every year. You could say it’s not authoritarian, it’s more democratic.’
Before they had time for further discussion on comparative religions in Ireland, they heard a great shout from Dennis Ormonde, running towards them at full speed from the house.
‘Good news by Christ!’ he said, panting from his run. ‘Good news at last!’ He sank into a chair. ‘This letter is from Moore over at Moore Castle. Let me read the important passage to you. “I had meant to write before but I have been confined to bed with a severe attack of influenza. Two days ago, one of my paintings came back.”’ Johnny Fitzgerald stifled a cheer, remembering the return of the Butler picture. ‘“It was left at the bottom of my drive, as was the case with Butler’s, and again heavily wrapped up with stout twine. It is the full-length painting of my grandfather. I have examined it most closely as you can imagine and I do not believe it has been tampered with in any way. Naturally we are all delighted. I have restored it to its rightful place in the dining room. I hope you will be able to come and see it the day after tomorrow when I should have fully recovered. Maybe, by then, the other paintings will have been returned too.”’ Butler folded up the letter and put it in his pocket. ‘Is that not splendid news?’ he said.
‘Tremendous,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald. ‘Hurrah for the thieves who brought it back!’
‘I’m sure Mrs Moore must be relieved,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘Such a worry when your interior decorations get messed around like this.’
‘And you, Powerscourt?’ asked Ormonde. ‘What is your reaction?’
‘I am afraid I cannot share in the general enthusiasm,’ said Doubting Thomas Powerscourt. ‘Look at the way it was returned, a carbon copy of the Butler painting’s trip back to Butler’s Court, and we all know what happened to that.’
‘But Moore says there is nothing wrong with it.’ Dennis Ormonde sounded cross. ‘Surely you accept that?’
‘I’ll believe it when I see it,’ said Powerscourt. ‘For the moment I would advise caution. They’re not stupid, these thieves. What they did to the Butler hunt was really damned clever.’ Privately he wondered, as he told Lady Lucy later when they were alone, if Moore had paid up, if he had met the ransom demand, or part of it. The return of one picture might be calibrated with the amount of ransom handed over. Pay a quarter and we’ll give you a quarter of the paintings back.
Cathal Rafferty was not a popular boy at his school in Butler’s Cross. He was a tubby child of thirteen years with very thick spectacles. At sport he was no good at all, so terrified when he received the ball that he froze on the spot and threw it away, usually in the direction of his opponents. In the playground he tried to make himself as inconspicuous as possible in case he was surrounded by his classmates with the chants of Pig or Fat Boy that preceded another beating or another trip to the boys’ lavatories where his head would be unceremoniously dumped in the bowl. In class Brother Riordan had simply given up on Cathal. He had tried kindness for a month, praising his incorrect arithmetic and his dismal spelling, but to no avail. He had tried force, a regular series of assaults with the strap to see if fear might succeed where kindness had failed. Cathal merely reflected that the classroom had become as dangerous a place as the playground. His performance did not improve. So now Brother Riordan ignored him altogether. He addressed no questions to him as he knew the answer would be wrong. Sometimes, in the days before his confession, the Brother wondered if he should not be trying harder with young Rafferty, but the thought of those thick spectacles and the blubbering lips put him off. Cathal had two elder brothers, both of them stars of the Gaelic football team, and they treated him little better than his classmates. Other boys, he knew, had friends they played with, friends who visited each other’s houses, friends they could talk to about their life at school and their dreams for the future. Cathal had only himself. He became his own friend. He turned into a solitary boy, given to roaming alone along the banks of the river or in the outer reaches of the demesne of Butler’s Court. He grew very curious about other people, as he talked to so few of them, often making up stories about their lives. Those two young people, for instance, the ones he’d just seen going into the Head Gardener’s Cottage, there was something strange going on there, he was sure of it. Cathal had known the previous Head Gardener, one of the few people in the county who had ever been kind to him, but now he had gone. Cathal decided to creep round to the back of the cottage where the windows were bigger and have a look inside.
Johnpeter Kilross and Alice Bracken were getting dressed. This was their third or fourth visit to the place and they felt quite at home now. Soon, Johnpeter reckoned, they would be able to come here once a day.
‘Why are you in such a hurry?’ asked Alice, inspecting herself in a rather dirty mirror.
‘I’ve been asked to see Richard Butler,’ Johnpeter replied, ‘at five o’clock and I don’t want to be late.’
‘Sure, you’ve got plenty of time left,’ said the girl. ‘You don’t suppose he knows about us, do you?’
‘I don’t see how he could know anything about it at all. I expect it’s something to do with these paintings. Maybe he wants to ask my advice.’
‘The day Richard Butler asks you for your advice, Johnpeter Kilross, I shall ride naked down the drive and out into the main square in Butler’s Cross, so I shall.’
‘I expect it’s to do with those paintings,’ said Johnpeter.
‘Those wretched paintings,’ said Alice with great feeling. ‘I wish oil paint had never been invented. I did enjoy that one that came back, mind you, with Mr Mulcahy and the rest of them on horseback. I thought that was really funny.’
‘Richard didn’t think it was funny. To this day the man Powerscourt and his friend haven’t told him where they put it.’
‘Maybe it’s in here, up in the attic,’ Alice laughed. ‘Maybe the Powerscourt man comes down to look at it first thing in the morning. What do you think of the wife, by the way, Lady Lucy or whatever she’s called? She seems well set on her husband, I’ll say that for her.’
‘She’s very attractive,’ said Johnpeter, fiddling with a shirt button.
‘Oh, is she now?’ said Alice, turning to reach for her stockings. ‘Is she more attractive than me then, Johnpeter Kilross?’
‘Of course not,’ said the young man loyally. He had frequently noticed with women that any praise of another was taken almost as a personal insult.