Charlie thought it was an insoluble problem. He went to check his two donkeys had not run away. Then he heard a wheezing sound, as if from a man very short of breath from the climb. Walter Heneghan materialized out of the cloud. For the first and last time in his life Charlie was glad to see him. Walter Heneghan of Louisburg, chief contractor for the little chapel, had lived for most of the construction work in a tent at the top. His men were unaware of the reasons for his residence on the spot. His doctor had told him that if he went up and down Croagh Patrick twice a day for six months he would probably be dead before it was finished. And his wife, a woman with a fearful tongue, had told Walter with the candour that had so endeared her to him over the years that as far she was concerned, he, Walter, would be much more use to her living in a tent on top of a bloody mountain than he would be cluttering up her house in Louisburg. Walter did travel up and down the mountain occasionally for meetings with Father Macdonald about The Skedule but he had not attained the expertise or the fitness of Charlie O’Malley and the rest who could go up and down at speeds they never spoke of to Walter in case the working day grew even longer.
‘Is that you, Walter?’ cried Charlie O’Malley.
‘Who else would it be at this terrible hour?’ said Heneghan, sinking down for a rest by the side of the chapel.
‘Walter, brace yourself now. It’s God’s truth I’m going to tell you, so I am.’ Charlie peered at Walter to make sure he was ready for the news.
‘What is it, Charlie?’ Heneghan was rubbing his leg vigorously as if he had cramp.
‘As God is my witness, Walter, there’s a dead body in that chapel, so there is, God rest his soul.’
‘A dead body? In my chapel? How the divil did it get here? Did it walk?’
‘Can’t have walked when it was dead, Walter, might have walked up when it was alive, I suppose. Hard to tell.’
‘Come on.’ Walter rose to his feet with difficulty. ‘Show me.’
The two men tiptoed into the little church. The body was still there, like a ghost at a feast.
‘God in heaven!’ said Walter and he rattled off a quick volley of Hail Marys. ‘He’s very dead, isn’t he?’ he went on as he knelt beside the corpse.
‘What are we going to do, Walter? We can’t leave the dead bugger in here. Do you have the boy with you?’
‘He’s hanging round the summit somewhere, eating an apple.’ Heneghan made it sound as if his son had brought the Garden of Eden up to the top of the Holy Mountain. Maybe Eve was hidden in the clouds. Walter’s son Matthew had frequently been used as a runner to take messages up and down the mountain during the construction work and sometimes even spent the night in the tent.
‘Look here,’ said Heneghan, ‘we’ve got to get the body away from here. It’s no good trying to hide him a couple of hundred yards away, there’s nothing higher than a grasshopper’s knee for miles. I didn’t spend six months of my life building this damned chapel, some of it in the month of February in Christ’s name, to have the opening day ruined. It’s not for us, Charlie, to say whether or not the bloody pilgrims get told about it, that’s for Father Macdonald and the Archbishop man. I’ll send Matthew off at full speed this minute to the priest’s house in Westport. I think the big man is staying there too.’
‘You said we’ve got to get the body away from here, Walter. How do you propose to do that?’ Charlie had a sick feeling in his stomach. He didn’t know what was coming, but he knew he wasn’t going to like it. They heard a whistling noise coming up the final stretch.
‘Tim Philbin, is that you?’ Walter Heneghan shouted into the murk.
‘It is,’ said Tim.
‘Thank God you’ve come,’ said Heneghan. ‘You’re just in time to help Charlie here carry a corpse down the mountain the other way, the Louisburg route. You and Charlie and two bloody donkeys are to take our dead friend down to ground level and into the nearest police station. That’s your mission for the day.’
‘Fine, Walter,’ said Tim, fully visible now. ‘You did say corpse, didn’t you? Corpse as in dead man?’
‘I did,’ said Walter. ‘Doesn’t look too heavy a chap to me. Slight sort of corpse. You’ll be down the bottom in no time.’
News reached the clergy shortly before seven o’clock. Father Macdonald, the Administrator of Westport, and the Very Reverend Dr Healey the Archbishop of Tuam were finishing a hearty breakfast when the housekeeper showed in a rather dishevelled Matthew Heneghan. One look at him plunged Father Macdonald into despair. You knew, he thought, you just knew, looking at this sad face, that here was bad news. Terrible memories of his disastrous role in the construction of the new convent outside Ballinrobe in his previous post came flooding back to him, the building unfinished by the day of the opening, the ceremony postponed, the windows with no glass, the kitchen with no cooking facilities, the unfinished cells for the sisters. He remembered the rebukes of his superiors and the articles in the local newspaper which more or less accused him of being a fool. Well, it was just about to happen again. He felt his heart beating faster already, even before he had heard the news, and he felt certain that one of his nervous headaches was going to start very soon.
‘Well?’ said the Archbishop in his let’s be friendly with the young, they are the congregations of the future, voice.
Matthew Heneghan coughed slightly. ‘I am Matthew Heneghan, Your Grace, son of Walter Heneghan the contractor. Forgive me, Your Grace,’ his father had told him five times before he left the summit that you called an archbishop Your Grace, ‘there’s a dead body in the chapel, sir, the chapel on the summit.’
A piece of toast, well smeared with Father Macdonald’s housekeeper’s finest home-made marmalade, was arrested halfway towards the Archbishop’s mouth. ‘A dead body, lad? Are you sure?’
‘My father and the others were absolutely certain, Your Grace. The man had been shot twice, once in the chest and once in the back of the head.’
The Archbishop’s toast, rather like Father Macdonald’s spirits, sank back towards his plate.
‘May the Lord have mercy on his soul,’ he said.
‘Your Grace, Your Grace,’ Father Macdonald had turned red with worry, ‘we’ll have to cancel the pilgrimage, won’t we? We can’t go on after this terrible news.’
‘Cancel the pilgrimage? What nonsense!’ boomed the Archbishop in such a loud voice that the housekeeper dropped her second best teapot on to the kitchen floor where it broke into hundreds of small pieces. ‘People die every day, after all, let’s not forget that. Somebody probably dies in the Westport area every year on Reek Sunday. It’s just they don’t choose it to do it in the chapel on the top. God’s will works in mysterious ways and I am sure He would want the event to continue.’ The Archbishop crossed himself with great ceremony. ‘We couldn’t stop all those special trains bringing people here anyway even if we wanted to. Tell me, young man, what’s happened to the body? Is it still there? In the chapel, I mean.’
‘Oh no, Your Grace, it’s being brought down the mountain the Louisburg route, that’s the opposite route to the one the pilgrims take. Then they’re going to hand it over to the police. I have to go to the police station here in Westport, sir, after I’ve finished with your reverences. To tell them about it, Your Grace.’
‘I presume,’ said the Archbishop, resuming work on his toast, ‘that nobody as yet knows the name of the dead man?’