The garda should like the assistance of anyone who might have knowledge of the incident to help them in pursuing their further investigation.
I did think that Miss von B as she took the paper back again and slowly read aloud certain passages that she was rather making much of it all in ridiculing our simple country ways.
‘They are so funny.’
‘Well I’m glad you think so.’
‘Ah but you must forgive one. Imagine two broken ankles he gets falling into someone’s grave.’
‘They were sprained as a matter of fact. And how would you like it if someone trampled your skeleton.’
‘O dear you are so serious sometimes.’
But in any event I was quite certainly serious about the way Miss von B’s grey wool dress looked quite stunning with a very large thick leather belt and a big brass buckle tightening it snug around her. And I did not really mind her being so amused. And must confess my penis was painfully hard as I stared with great excitement at the way her girth made her waist so slender and her hips and bosoms swell so splendidly out. To use Miss von B’s unladylike word I was indeed randy. Even as I managed to change the subject of rural indiscretion to discussing my pedigree. As Miss von B had been previously leafing through the vellum volume describing it.
‘I am at least agreeably surprised by the Thormonds and the Darcys. But nowhere can I find the name Dancer.’
She of course quite cleverly ruined all the compliments by stating that so much Irish ancestry had been compromised by parlour and scullery maids, grooms, gardeners and gamekeepers. And that it could hardly be discerned by appearance as to who was mistress and master and who was servant or menial. I don’t know what on earth she thought we gentry did all the time, if indeed we had any free from our presumably constant putting it up our various female staff. I mean we really didn’t sit around all day as I only just happen to be doing with damn big erections. Or indeed, having the lady of the house get it put up her by stablemen, cowherds and shepherds. Her whole aspersion began to be quite heinous. Especially as to most of us being English, Jews or Danes and that the fine blood of those races had been horribly diluted by that of the native peasant Gael. I was quite alabaster faced with anger. I mean to say, one’s pedigree gives one confidence to keep others in their place. She did however finally smile in the firelight and say I was singularly possessed of an amazing resemblance to Uncle Willie. Whose most attractive eyes were further apart than my father’s and who also had my upper class jaw and cheekbones.
‘Ah yes, all is not completely lost. You have at least, the good bone structure.’
That late evening following supper in my room, and when Crooks had left my hot drink by my bedside, Miss von B came. She had quite marvellously and magically repaired my suit and darned so beautifully my socks worn in my cross country escape. But I of course despite my penis bulging in my trousers, could not help immediately resuming defence of my ancestry. The whole damn issue had already ruined my enjoyment of the rather tasty boiled bacon and cabbage and buttered spuds Catherine had dished up. But as I was about to let her have a socially redeeming salvo or two, she opened before me a black leather album embossed with a coat of arms and full of photographs.
‘I brought this for you to see.’
Bending close by me her soft grey breast touched my cheek. I couldn’t just grab her as I dearly wanted at that moment or I’d muck up her album. As her fingers turned the black sheets of pages of pictures of her when she was a little girl. With the castles and palaces where she grew up. And in front of which, festooned in furs in the winter snows, she sat in a horse drawn sled. Of course it was quite grandly embellished and there was a coronet obvious on the sled’s lantern lights which she did not allude to. In other pictures she was on skis, big boots on her feet. And then there she was in a hay meadow in front of a hunting lodge with balconies growing flowers. Smiling in her native costume. A bonnet on her head and holding a big scythe.
‘All the colours you cannot see were in the meadow and also in my frock.’
As each page turned she grew bigger. Then there were pictures of her with other girls, her bare arms crossed. And in one, she sat in the long grass on a hillside overlooking a castle. She said she was angry at that moment. She would not say why. Nor when I asked, was she entirely forthcoming as to whose particular castle it was. But it was suitably impressively imposing sitting there with numerous turrets and battlements. And then on the castle terrace she sat a smiling jolly looking girl. Who seemed she might enjoy a good joke and play tricks on you and not nearly be so solemn as she seems now.
‘And here we are for the boar hunting.’
A photograph in a valley on an edge of forest with great white capped mountains rising out of the steep wooded hillsides all around. Gentlemen in breeches and boots and others in short leather trousers with staves and their hats with brushes sticking out. She showed me her robust grandfather with a great moustache and big watch chain across his chest. I thought he looked quite an ordinary chap as a matter of fact. And another sadder one of her walking along a country road in a black dress and a coat tied half way closed and her long tresses over her shoulders. Which she said fell reaching all the way down to her bottom.
‘The week before this picture was taken, the handsome Count to whom I was betrothed had while skiing disappeared forever in an avalanche of snow. In my face you can see the end of the world.’
And that, by my reckoning anyway, was three poor gentlemen of whom she was clearly enamoured gone to their doom. She was clearly such a nice girl. Although in the picture she was only seventeen, she seemed quite grown up. Behind her all in black as well, was her favourite aunt called Mafalda.
‘She did my dear lovely aunt die six months later of consumption. Her husband, he was dead but a year later of grief.’
‘You have haven’t you madam, had much sorrow in your life.’
‘Ah but when you expect little else, it is then just life.’
‘I do think I live in quite as grand a house as some of those you have lived in.’
‘Ha ha.’
‘I do think so, madam. I really do. Especially when you include our ballroom.’
‘This. Just look. This is my uncle’s castle. Andromeda Park you could fit into the drawing room and sit on the chimneytop and not be able to touch my uncle’s chandeliers. And besides inside there is beauty and elegance. Not like here, where everything is ruin. There everything it was polished, spotless. Gold leaf, it was simply everywhere. Pearl, marble. Not like this, rotting boards, damp crumbling plaster, pipes that you do not know where they go or what will come out of them.’
‘I rather take that amiss you know.’
‘Ah you poor little peasant, you get so upset when I point out to you that there are far grander places out in the rest of the world. You have never for instance been in a palace. Have you. Come now. Have you.’
‘Of course I have, as you well know. I’ve been in the great castle.’
‘Nothing. Absolutely mere nothing. A palace is so much more splendid. With long long halls of mirrors. Ceilings of mirrors.’
‘Well, when our ballroom shutters are closed they are inside painted gold.
‘You do not paint gold. It is with a hammer you make it into like a leaf.’
‘Well we did have mirrors in our own dining room ceiling. My grandfather had them put there. So he might by casting his eyes upwards peer down upon the ladies’ bosoms and the only reason they were taken away was because the hot dishes from the kitchens fogged them over which angered him when he couldn’t see the ladies’ décolletage and he had them removed.’