The gardai – in particular Superintendent O’Kelly – saw only what was convenient to see. Of the three bodies that lay that morning in the May sunshine they chose that of Lancy Butler to become the victim of their sluggish imagination. Mrs Butler, answering her notoriously uncontrollable jealousy, shot her son’s sweetheart rather than have him marry her. Her son, so Superintendent O’Kelly infers from no circumstantial evidence whatsoever, wrenched the shotgun out of her hands and fired on her in furious confusion. He then, within seconds, took his own life. The shotgun bore the fingerprints of all three victims: what O’Kelly has signally failed to explain is why this should be so. Why should the Butlers’ shotgun bear the fingerprints of Maureen McDowd? O’Kelly declares that ‘in the natural course of events’ Maureen McDowd would have handled the shotgun, being a frequent visitor to the farm. Frequent visitors, in our experience, do not, ‘in the natural course of events’ or otherwise, meddle with a household’s firearms. The Superintendent hedges the issue because he is himself bewildered. The shotgun was used for keeping down rabbits, he states, knowing that the shotgun’s previous deployment by the Butlers is neither here nor there. He mentions rabbits because he still can offer no reasonable explanation why Maureen McDowd should ever have handled the death weapon. The fingerprints of all three victims were blurred and ‘difficult’, and had been found on several different areas of the weapon. Take it or leave it is what the Superintendent is saying. And wearily he is saying: does it matter?
We maintain it does matter. We maintain that this extraordinary crime – following, as it does, hard on the heels of the renowned Kerry Babies mystery, and the Flynn case – has not been investigated, but callously shelved. The people of Drimaghleen will tell you everything that O’Kelly laboured over in his reports: the two accounts are identical. Everyone knows that Lancy Butler’s mother was a sharp-tongued, possessive woman. Everyone knows that Lancy was a ne’er-do-well. Everyone knows that Maureen McDowd was a deeply religious girl. Naturally it was the mother who sought to end an intrusion she could not bear. Naturally it was slow, stupid Lancy who didn’t pause to think what the consequences would be after he’d turned the gun on his mother. Naturally it was he who could think of no more imaginative way out of his dilemma than to join the two women who had dominated his life.
The scenario that neither O’Kelly nor the Butlers’ neighbours paused to consider is a vastly different one. A letter, apparently – and astonishingly – overlooked by the police, was discovered behind the drawer of a table which was once part of the furniture of Lancy Butler’s bedroom and which was sold in the general auction after the tragedy – land, farmhouse and contents having by this time become the property of Allied Irish Banks, who held the mortgage on the Butlers’ possessions. This letter, written by Maureen McDowd a week before the tragedy, reads:
Dear Lancy, Unless she stops I can’t see any chance of marrying you. I want to, Lancy, but she never can let us alone. What would it be like for me in your place, and if I didn’t come to you where would we be able to go because you know my father wouldn’t accept you here. She has ruined the chance we had, Lancy, she’ll never let go of you. I am always cycling over to face her insults and the way she has of looking at me. I think we have reached the end of it.
This being a direct admission by Maureen McDowd that the conclusion of the romance had been arrived at, why would the perceptive Mrs Butler – a woman who was said to ‘know your thoughts before you knew them yourself’ – decide to kill Lancy’s girl? And the more the mental make-up of that old woman is dwelt upon the more absurd it seems that she would have destroyed everything she had by committing a wholly unnecessary murder. Mrs Butler was not the kind to act blindly, in the fury of the moment. Her jealousy and the anger that protected it smouldered cruelly within her, always present, never varying.
But Maureen McDowd – young, impetuous, bitterly deprived of the man she loved – a saint by nature and possessing a saint’s fervour, on that fatal evening made up for all the sins she had ever resisted. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned – except perhaps a woman unfairly defeated. The old woman turned the screw, aware that victory was in sight. The insults and ‘the way of looking’ became more open and more arrogant; Mrs Butler wanted Maureen McDowd out, she wanted her gone for ever, never to dare to return.
It is known that Lancy Butler found two rabbits in his snares that night. It is known that he and Maureen often made the rounds of the snares when she visited him in the evenings. He would ride her bicycle to the field where they were, Maureen sitting side-saddle on the carrier at the back. Lancy had no bicycle of his own. It is our deduction that the reason the shotgun bore Maureen’s fingerprints is because they had gone on a shooting expedition as well and when they returned to the yard she was carrying both the shotgun and the snared rabbits. It is known that Maureen McDowd wept shortly before her death. In the fields, as they stalked their prey, Lancy comforted her but Maureen knew that never again would they walk here together, that never again would she come over to see him in the evening. The hatred his mother bore her, and Lancy’s weakness, had combined to destroy what most of all she wanted. Mrs Butler was standing in the yard shouting her usual abuse and Maureen shot her. The rabbits fell to the ground as she jumped off the bicycle, and her unexpectedly sudden movement caused the bicycle itself, and Lancy on it, to turn over. He called out to her when it was too late, and she realized she could never have him now. She blamed him for never once standing up to his mother, for never making it easier. If she couldn’t have this weak man whom she so passionately loved no one else would either. She shot her lover, knowing that within seconds she must take her own life too. And that, of course, she did.
There was more about Maureen. In the pages of the colour supplement Mrs McDowd said her daughter had been a helpful child. Her father said she’d been his special child. When she was small she used to go out with him to the fields, watching how he planted the seed-potatoes. Later on, she would carry out his tea to him, and later still she would assist with whatever task he was engaged in. Father Sallins gave it as his opinion that she had been specially chosen. A nun at the convent in Mountcroe remembered her with lasting affection.
O’Kelly fell prey to this local feeling. Whether they knew what they were doing or not, the people of Drimaghleen were protecting the memory of Maureen McDowd, and the Superintendent went along with the tide. She was a local girl of unblemished virtue, who had been ‘specially chosen’. Had he publicly arrived at any other conclusion Superintendent O’Kelly might never safely have set foot in the neighbourhood of Drimaghleen again, nor the village of Kilmona, nor the town of Mountcroe. The Irish do not easily forgive the purloining of their latter-day saints.
‘I wanted to tell you this stuff had been written,’ Father Sallins said. ‘I wanted it to be myself that informed you before you’d get a shock from hearing it elsewhere.’
He’d driven over specially. As soon as the story in the paper had been brought to his own notice he’d felt it his duty to sit down with the McDowds. In his own opinion, what had been printed was nearly as bad as the tragedy itself, his whole parish maligned, a police superintendent made out to be no better than the criminals he daily pursued. He’d read the thing through twice; he’d looked at the photographs in astonishment. Hetty Fortune and Jeremiah Tyler had come to see him, but he’d advised them against poking about in what was over and done with. He’d explained that people wanted to try to forget the explosion of violence that had so suddenly occurred in their midst, that he himself still prayed for the souls of the Butlers and Maureen McDowd. The woman had nodded her head, as though persuaded by what he said. ‘I have the camera here, Father,’ the man had remarked as they were leaving. ‘Will I take a snap of you?’ Father Sallins had stood by the fuchsias, seeing no harm in having his photograph taken. ‘I’ll send it down to you when it’s developed,’ the man said, but the photograph had never arrived. The first he saw of it was in the Sunday magazine, a poor likeness of himself, eyelids drooped as though he had drink taken, dark stubble on his chin.