‘Here we are,’ said Ormonde cheerfully, returning with a map which had a number of lodges marked on it, stretching as far north as Ballina and south into Connemara.
‘Is there a lodge belonging to the Butlers anywhere in that list?’ Powerscourt asked.
‘Not on here,’ said Ormonde, ‘but I believe there is one on the borders of Galway and Mayo, miles from anywhere. Bloody huge, the place is. Why do you ask, Powerscourt?’
‘With your permission, Ormonde, Johnny and I would like to take a look at that one.’
‘Is there something,’ asked Ormonde, staring closely at Powerscourt, ‘that you’re not telling us? Some information you have about the Butlers?’
‘Coming from you, my friend,’ said Powerscourt, ‘I don’t think any charges of holding back information carry much weight, seeing you have not yet shown me the blackmail letter.’
‘Of course you and Johnny can inspect the place. The Inspector here and his men will look after the rest.’
Powerscourt took a long draught of his lemonade. ‘This is, of course, premature,’ he said, pushing his plate back, ‘but I think we should consider exactly what anybody, policeman or ourselves, should do if they find the two Ormonde ladies and their captors. This is especially important for you, Ormonde. It’s your wife and her sister we are talking about here.’
‘I’m not quite sure what you mean.’ Dennis Ormonde looked puzzled.
‘It’ll be like a siege, for a start, and very few sieges end up with no casualties in my experience. Suppose you find signs of life in one of those places, smoke coming out of a chimney, a horse tied up round the back, somebody going in and out of the house. Do you go up and ring the front door bell? I think not. You might be shot or hauled inside to join the hostages. Another one in the bag.’
Dennis Ormonde looked thoughtful.
‘Suppose then’ – Lady Lucy wondered if her husband was about to start ticking off his points in the palm of his hand – ‘you decide on a frontal assault. One person rings the door bell and tries to shoot his way in, another one breaks a window and comes at the thieves the other way. There’s nothing to say they won’t shoot the two ladies the minute they hear the sound of gunfire. You could try launching some kind of attack in the night time but they’re perilous ventures, those night attacks, you can’t see who you’re shooting at and you can’t see the person shooting at you either.’
‘Dear me,’ said Ormonde.
‘Then there’s the problem of messages,’ Powerscourt went on remorselessly, ‘not just the messages we might want to send back, but the messages going into the house. There are three days left as from today until the deadline expires, as you well know, Ormonde. Somebody’s going to want to send messages to the people holding the women. If we’re doing our job properly we can spot the messenger before he arrives and intercept any message. But then how do we deliver it, assuming the real messenger is our prisoner? Or do we send a false message, saying Ormonde has paid up, the mission is accomplished, let the ladies go? And then what? If I were them and that happened, I’d leave the house with the ladies inside, lock every door in the place and take away the key. That would give my escape a head start.’
Dennis Ormonde looked confused. Lady Lucy remembered her own time as a hostage, incarcerated in a suite of rooms on the top floor of a Brighton hotel some years before at the time of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Francis had used a cunning combination of smoke and fire to effect her rescue on that occasion but she did not think he could use that device again.
The policeman had been looking at Ormonde’s map. ‘If I could make a suggestion, gentlemen,’ he began hesitantly, not accustomed to this sort of company, ‘there are two other lodges on the way to the Butler one. It would be a great help if you could look them over on your way.’
‘Of course,’ said Powerscourt.
‘And one more thing, if I may,’ the Inspector went on. ‘I’d like to send a couple of cavalrymen with you. We’ve got a detachment of them just now from the garrison in Castlebar. You may need people to send your own messages and so on.’
‘Thank you, Inspector, that would be most helpful.’
‘Were you involved in sieges in your time in the military, Powerscourt?’ Dennis Ormonde seemed to attach great importance to Powerscourt’s time in uniform.
‘We both were,’ Powerscourt replied, ‘and damned messy things they are too.’
‘Well,’ said Ormonde, refilling Johnny’s glass, ‘you’ll just have to use your discretion. I trust you to bring them back if you find them.’
Later that evening Powerscourt and Lady Lucy took a walk in the garden. Swallows were flying in formation round the terrace. A couple of sailing boats could be seen out in the bay.
‘You will be careful, Francis, promise me,’ said Lady Lucy. ‘I’ll be thinking of you all the time you’re away.’ Lady Lucy had never told her husband about the knot of anxiety that twisted its way round her stomach when he was off on a dangerous mission, a knot that sometimes seemed to her to grow into the size of a tennis ball.
‘Of course I will,’ said Powerscourt, putting his arm around her waist. ‘You mustn’t worry,’ he went on, although he suspected she did worry about him all the time.
‘Tell me, my love, why did you ask if there was a Butler lodge? Do you have suspicions about the people in the Butler house?’
‘It’s a hunch, Lucy, that’s all. Sometimes I think the key to the whole affair is in Butler’s Court, if only I could put my finger on it. But it’s nothing more definite than that. I wish to God it was.’
Early the next morning the four horsemen, not of the Apocalypse but of the rescue mission, set out from Ormonde House. Lady Lucy was there to wave them off. Powerscourt and Fitzgerald both had rifles and binoculars and an enormous supply of the Ormonde House cook’s finest chicken sandwiches along with some cheese and fruit. The two cavalrymen, Jones and Bradshaw from the County of Norfolk, looked as if they were equipped to survive out of doors for days at a time. Just ten minutes after they left Inspector Harkness rode up to the front door of Ormonde House. He left a large envelope addressed to Lord Francis Powerscourt. The rescue party made good time in the bright sunshine along the road to Louisburg, Croagh Patrick behind them looking especially friendly this morning, the sea and the islands on their right. In Louisburg, a miserable-looking place, Powerscourt thought, they turned left and took the road towards Leenane across the mountains. This was desolate country, barren hills all around them, not a single soul to be seen, the only sign of life the occasional sheep that wandered across the road and stared at the four riders as if they had no right to be there. Powerscourt reached into his breast pocket and pulled out grandfather Ormonde’s map.
‘For God’s sake, Francis, will you give the thing here,’ said Johnny Fitzgerald, holding out his hand. ‘We want to find the bloody place this year, don’t we? If you’re in charge of the map, we’ll end up going round in circles like these sheep here.’
Powerscourt handed it over. ‘According to this,’ said Johnny doubtfully, ‘there’s a wood with a little river going through it about a mile or so up the road. Inishturk House, the first of these places, is in the middle of that. Quite how we find a wood in this empty space I don’t know, but that’s what the man says.’
On their left now they could see that the ground had been cut open to reveal black sections where turf had recently been cut. Turf, Powerscourt remembered, the free fuel of the poor, used to heat their homes and cook their food, always taking a long time to dry out before it would burn properly. He remembered an aunt of his who had refused to have it in the house on the grounds that it was tainted with Catholicism, only good for the poor Papists of the west, not the respectable Protestants of Dublin who had the sense to burn proper English coal in their fires. After five minutes or so they came upon the wood, a sad affair now, the trees diseased or stunted, battalions of crows nesting in the upper branches. The little river was behind the house, gurgling its way towards the Atlantic. An overgrown path, heavy with brambles, led off to their right.