Mr. Flood's Last Resort(80)
“Come on now, Maud,” he says. “What in the world have you got to cry about? Is it the painting? Do you not like the look of yourself? Is it your jawline?”
I shake my head.
“I didn’t think so,” he says.
But the tears are abating, and knowing this, Cathal lets me go and takes the ancient musty handkerchief from his pocket and wipes my nose and eyes with it, roughly, brusquely, as you would a child late for school.
“There.” He smiles down at me. “You’re grand now.”
*
CATHAL FLOOD walks me to the back door; Bluebeard willingly lets me leave his castle. He no longer wishes to kill me, if he ever did, for we are friends now. He opens the door and we watch the moths race each other, breakneck, to the strip light.
“I’ll visit you, at the home,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Ah no, Maud. I’d like you to remember me how I am now: fine, fierce, and fighting.”
Suddenly I realize that this is the last time I will see him.
“I need to find out what happened,” I say quickly.
A raised eyebrow, a hint of a smile; he doesn’t quite catch my meaning.
I keep going. “To Mary and Maggie.”
I watch for his reaction: the beginnings of a frown perhaps, a drawing down of the mouth. Nothing dramatic.
“Mary kept cuttings on the case of a missing schoolgirl called Maggie Dunne. I found them hidden in the red room upstairs.”
The old man stares at me with an expression of disbelief. “You’ve been searching the house? Going through her things, my wife’s things?”
I try to keep my voice slow, composed. “I didn’t go looking, not as such; they came to me. As if they were being shown to me.”
“You’re touched.”
“The missing girl lived at Cedar House at the same time as your daughter. Mary must have known Maggie; either way, she wanted to find out what happened to her.”
“You’re cracked.”
“Just tell me, please, before they take you, before you go. Is she alive? Is Maggie here?”
He stands in front of me with his head bowed, strangely expressionless. Shut down and blank, like a seaside shop front in winter. “You’ve said your piece and now I’d like you to leave.”
“You knew her, Cathal. Don’t deny it.”
“Good night and good luck so.”
I can hear my voice rising and feel a surge of indignation. “Look, I’ve respected you, considered your feelings, tried to help you.”
He shifts in his carpet slippers. His old hand goes up to his chest, bumps along where his heart might be. “Is it a medal you want? For not asking me things that are none of your business?”
“It is my business if a crime was committed, if a young girl has been taken, to be held against her will or even killed.”
“Jesus, would you ever cop yourself on? There’s no crime, there’s no one taken, there’s no one killed.” He stabs at his head. “It’s all up there.”
“You can talk to me, Cathal.” I speak gently, calmly, as if I’m coaxing him back from a ledge. “You trust me, don’t you?”
His face falls, crumples. “You little bitch. Ingratiating yourself, is that what you’ve been doing? To get the senile old bastard talking, get him to admit to some shit you’ve dreamt up?”
“It wasn’t like that.” I shake my head. “Please, Cathal. I need to know.”
“So that’s the reason you came here tonight. Last-chance saloon. Before the old fucker is carted off and anesthetized, propped up in a chair drooling.”
“Please.”
He looks me dead in the eyes. “You think that I could hurt Maggie Dunne? You think I could kill her or keep her here? You think I’m a monster?”
Maybe my eyes tell him I do, for his expression is one of slow-dawning disgust.
“You sat and drank with me, you shared a meal with me, thinking I was capable of that?”
“If you’re scared, I can help you. We can go to the police together.”
He holds up his hands, palms out, as if he’s stopping a horse, as if he’s holding off a siege. He is beyond rigid. But behind the savage blue glare of his eyes he is breaking up. I see it in his mouth; it shapes the start of a sob.
“Please let me help you, Cathal.”
The gates are stormed and the castle falls. Cathal Flood withers. His eyes brim with sudden tears. There is no anger. Here is only pain, his old face says, and betrayal, and love extinguished.
He closes the door. I hear him slide the chain across, then the bolt: sound effects with the right kind of finality. I bang on the door for a while and shout. Then I knock on the door and plead. Then I give up and stand silent in the garden and watch as the lights are put out one by one and Bridlemere sinks into blackness.
I imagine him tottering back through the house—wasted limbs and scarecrow suit. His old head wobbling and his eyes in it bewildered, the backs of his big gnarly hands brushing over the surfaces of his hoard.
Hot waves of remorse run through me. My stomach is a pit of shame. What have I done?
I fight the urge to get down on my knees.
CHAPTER 38
If you really want to repent, make self-mortification your friend, along with piety and hardship. Familiarize yourself with all three by having a good hard kneel. This is supplemental to the prayers you will already be doing for the absolution you know will never come.