Robert saw the tray and said, “Are we out-of-doors again? This weather, Vincent, it's like home, isn't it?”
As he picked up the tray, Vincent took it from him, and Robert led the way into the garden while Ellie continued to cook.
“Wonderful garden,” said Vincent. “How big?”
“Look around,” said Robert. “Or— wait a moment. Let me set the table and I'll show you around.”
Vincent stood watching as Robert laid the table for three. Then the two men went down the path and turned left into the garden. This opened up a view to the rear gate of the property, where the car sat outside the garage.
“Great car!” said Vincent, and strolled over to look. “Have you driven it yet?”
Robert laughed. “Ellie does all the driving. I sit back and enjoy.”
They walked down through the long garden.
“Here's my favorite spot,” said Robert, and they entered the arbor, where the ten-foot-high beech hedge formed a wide, deep letter U.
“Ellie's grandfather planted this,” said Robert, with some pride. “It's over a hundred years old.”
“Where does the garden meet the river?” asked Vincent.
Robert strode ahead of him. “You're going to love this.”
He opened the tall wooden gate and walked down the rickety steps. Vincent stood at the top, assessing the way in, the way out, the other means of access, the strange little diving board.
“Is it deep?” he called.
“Very. About twenty feet.”
“Do you swim here?”
“I did yesterday,” said Robert. “Look.” He pointed to the little swimming course with its START and FINISH posts. “It's completely private.”
“Is it safe?” Vincent began to descend the wooden staircase to where Robert stood on the bottom step. Can it be this simple? Just do it now, go back for her, and it'll look like a drowning?
“Ellie says it's mostly safe. But I wouldn't be surprised at anything I heard about the Shannon.” He turned to Vincent. “She's very much my river, you know. When I was a boy I learned everything I possibly could about her. But I never thought she'd be so wonderful to discover. Do you know she can make waves up to thirty feet high?”
Three feet apart now on the wooden staircase, Vincent stood behind and above Robert's head. To his right, on the steeply dipping grassy bank, a halfhearted attempt had been made years ago to build a rockery. All that had remained were one or two ragged Solomon's seal plants— and the rocks. Vincent picked up a stone bigger than his fist. He surveyed the back and sides of Robert's head.
In the house, Ellie stacked eggs into a chafing dish with ham and sausage. She took the napkin-covered basket of freshly baked bread and put it with the chafing dish on a tray. As she walked into the passageway, she saw the dog standing in the doorway looking out on the garden.
Ellie Kennedy quickened, like a mother whose child is missing. Quickly she went back, put the tray on the table, hurried from the kitchen, and closed the door behind her. The dog didn't move out of her way. No sign of Vincent and Robert.
Ellie bustled down the path, into the garden, looked around the corner, and saw the car: no sign of them there. She headed to the tall wooden gate.
No birds sang at that moment. The garden's quiet mood caught her attention even though she walked fast. Dew sparkled on the grass; in the underhanging branches of the flowering shrubs she saw the night's jeweled cobwebs. The plums look almost ready to pick— they broke the branches last year. Where are they? Dear Christ, where are they?
Ellie reached the gate and called, “Robert!”
On the steps Robert turned his head back to the call. He saw the rock in the killer's hand.
“Ha!” he said.
The killer stared at him; Ellie called again.
“Look,” said Robert. “That's sandstone.” He took the rock from Vincent's hand and turned it over like a schoolboy with a find. “Most of the riverbed stone is limestone, but there's some sandstone too. See the red? Like little patches of blood.”
By the time Ellie reached the top of the steps and looked down, the murderous tableau had broken up.
“Breakfast!”
“Terrific!” answered Robert and, seeing Vincent tremble, said, “Do you need a sweater? There's a cold breeze off the river along here.”
He pushed past Vincent and ran up the steps toward Ellie.
“Is everything all right?”
Robert said, “He's feeling the lake breeze.”
“What's that in your hand?”
“A Shannon stone Vincent found.”
By the time— many minutes after Ellie and Robert— that Vincent reached the breakfast table on the gravel in front of the house, Robert had brought him a sweater from upstairs. When Ellie went back inside to fetch the chafing dish, the dog followed her and went back to his sleeping place.
Breakfast dawdled. Robert tired again, and Ellie, recognizing the excitement factor, sent him to bed. When he had gone, she began to explain shell shock to the stranger and told him the story of Robert and his departure from Belleau Wood.
“I saw a lot of men like that,” said Vincent, whose shivering had eased with food.
The stone sat on the table between them. Ellie looked at it, picked it up, weighed it in her hand, and said, “Do you want this? As a souvenir?”
He shook his head. She rose from her chair and with vehemence hurled the stone into the bushes. The crash startled a blackbird, who screeched indignation.
For the next hour and more they sat there, and she asked question after question. She wanted to raise the subject of the war. She hadn't quite figured a way to get into it. She hoped she could judge what effects he might have suffered from it— if he had suffered any.
As she sat with him, her unease grew. What is wrong with me? Why am I so on edge? Is he just some man who makes people uncomfortable? But he doesn't make Robert uncomfortable. Here they are, both in their thirties, with similar experiences. One makes me feel as though I'm made of silk, and the other makes my skin crawl.
“How much of the war do you remember?” she asked suddenly.
He looked at her, thrown off guard by the question, and before he could stop himself he said, “I miss it every day.” Realizing what he had just divulged, he amended. “I mean— I miss the marines. The friendships, the routine.”
Ellie looked at him. He has no difficulty looking me in the eye. Might as well ask him.
“Did it worry you— killing people?”
He leaned back and clasped his hands behind his head, a machine of bone and muscle.
“I gotta think about that,” he said, so softly that she had to lean forward to hear his words. She waited. “You know, ma'am, I don't know that I ever killed anybody. I mean— I don't know. And when I say I don't know, that is the word I want to use, because we were firing from a distance. We were returning fire, and we never could see where our bullets were hitting. Their part of that terrain— it was awful dark in there. So I'm not troubled by it. Anyway”—his accent seemed to get more Irish— “I could never kill a fly. My mother brought us up to respect all of life as God's creation.”
Ellie's body took over. She folded her hands across her breasts in case the sudden chill should show. Her neck grew cold as though a slab of marble had been clamped to it; she felt a sweat in her hairline. Enough. I saw this man come in many times. I saw him clean the blood off his bayonet. Jesus God, his own officers were afraid of him!
She began to clear the table, fighting for a space in her mind where she could build a plan. He rose to help her.
“No. I'll do it. Honestly,” she said.
“Ma'am, I was well raised.”
He loaded the tray better than she could, every movement economic, with superb use of little spaces. Ellie liked to see how people did things, and this man wasted no effort; his simplest movements had intelligence in them. He had the same view of life as she had: Get the small things done well and everything else will
follow. She walked ahead of him into the house. Is he looking at my legs? My neck? My behind? His feet make no sound. How can he walk so lightly?
Together they began to tidy the kitchen and get the breakfast things washed up. He had such competence and speed. His mood changed; he softened into intimacy, almost a flirtation, a closing of the distance.
He smiled. He teased, “What rank did you have? Were you a colonel?” as she told him where to stow things. And he strutted a little, he postured his hips in a stance in front of her, showing his body. Ellie found herself reacting. Don't be disgusting, Ellie. Get out of the kitchen now. Go upstairs and call Robert.
She had her plan, an outing to friends downriver, down below Athlone: Lena and Larry Mullen. Larry has friends and contacts; he'll listen and tell me if I'm some kind of fool. Not a long drive.
Robert came bounding down the stairs.
“I thought we'd take Vincent to Clonmacnoise,” she said.
Robert clapped his hands. “There's this swell place. We'll go in the car. It's an ancient monastery. Ellie has friends there; I actually stayed in their house without knowing they knew her— the Mullens. They have several children. I helped with haymaking.”
Vincent reciprocated the delight. How much of the smile derived from his own private joke? The previous evening, before he had knocked on the door, he had looked all around. He'd figured they had one means of escape— the car— and he'd made a small adjustment to the engine.
And so, with sweaters collected and doors locked, both men turned the handle over and over and over. Not a sound came from the engine other than a growl that died on the air.
Ellie sat at the wheel and frowned. “This car starts even in the frost,” she said. “Do you fellows know anything about cars?” She opened the side flaps of the hood and threw them back. Robert and Vincent stood beside her and peered helplessly in.
“We could go for a long walk,” said Robert.
“I have an idea,” said Vincent. “I contribute to a charitable magazine, I write for them. I thought this morning when I woke up that I'd like to write about this journey and about this house. How's about I ask you folks a bunch of questions and make notes. We can turn it into a lazy day.” Ellie could not overrule Robert's excitement; he was like a boy whose cousin had come to stay.
She said, “But you don't need me for this?”
The stranger said, “Actually ma'am, you're the person I do need. No offense, but the captain here, I mean— sorry, Robert— they don't want two Americans.”
Ellie had no way out so she smiled and said, “Well, if you think so.”
For three hours they sat, all through the afternoon. It became one of those immensely still days that Robert had already seen many times on the Shannon. Nothing moved. Now and then a bird whirruped by. From time to time, Robert stretched his legs. He walked the lawn, picked up a blade of grass, chewed on it.
Ellie answered questions— the house, her family, the river. She continued to watch Robert as keenly as she did every day. The afternoon strolled on, hot and still. In that quiet house, standing at the exact center of Ireland— three young people in their thirties, who had all been through a horrendous war, sat at a table in a garden while one of them contemplated how to kill the other two.
Vincent Patrick Ryan belonged in the clinical and precise category of hired killer. He liked neat work, no fuss; he liked to leave no traces. Control: That's the signature he liked, a corpse that could easily pass into a coroner's verdict as accidental death or misadventure. Only twice had he left traces that could result in verdicts of murder by person or persons unknown. Nothing could connect him to either crime.
At three o'clock, Ellie jumped up. “We missed lunch. Somebody around here must be hungry.”
Vincent thanked her and put his notebook away. “What time does it get dark around here? Ireland stays bright so much later than Boston.”
Robert agreed. “We'll have daylight until ten o'clock.”
Vincent said, “I think I'll take a nap.”
Robert said, “Good idea, me too.” Ellie, now on the alert all the time, hurtled from the kitchen and saw him halfway up the stairs behind the stranger.
“Robert, I need your strong hand.”
He laughed and called after Vincent, “Sleep well.”
“Thank you,” said Vincent. “See you guys later.”
He looked down through the balusters at Ellie, hustling Robert into the kitchen and closing the door. She's on to me. She may not know it, but she's on to me. She's uneasy. I'd better hurry. Not rush, but hurry.
He had kept his bayonet from the marines— a souvenir in theory, a weapon in practice. He never traveled without it. It lived in a flap compartment at the bottom of his bag. After the war he took it to a saddle maker. The man made him a sheath of soft leather so that he could wear the bayonet on the inside of his leg. He took the blade out, polished it hard, sheathed it again, strapped it to his leg just above the ankle— and practiced taking it out.
When Vincent came downstairs from his nap, clean and fresh for dinner, everything had gone prematurely dark. The sky had changed. Too risky, Ellie said, to eat out of doors.
“I haven't used the dining room for a long time.”
“Does this mean the weather has broken?”
“No,” she said. “The sun is going down very red. Look outside. Tomorrow'll be hot. But we could have a downpour before then.”
Vincent, the man who planned everything, went to the door, saw the bloodshot sky in the west, and smiled. A swim in the rain at night would be fun.
“I forgot to look last night,” he said, when he came back into the house. “Is there a moon?”
“It's not full,” she said. “But it's bright late. I saw it last night; it's a waning moon. I think it was full about five days ago.”
She opened the dining room windows and the curtains didn't billow; they hung limp. For the next hour or so, she and the stranger chitchatted in the kitchen while she cooked and they waited for Robert. The Marine Corps came into their conversation again and again. They exchanged names: Hamilton, “Old Jule Turrill,” Colonel Catlin, hit by a German sniper in the lung. Vincent had never known how short of supplies the medics had been; she had never known how poor the troop communications had been.
An eavesdropper would have assumed that these two people in their mid-thirties, evidently secure and competent, were two old friends who had been in the same action during the war and were only now beginning to debrief themselves and unload a lot of the war's baggage. Not for a second would anybody have guessed that the man in the conversation intended to kill the woman that night or, at the latest, next day— and that the woman deeply suspected the man and could do nothing about it.
Robert came downstairs and slouched into the passageway toward the kitchen door. Ellie saw him coming and knew there had been a mood change.
“Excuse me,” she said to Vincent, and barreled out of the kitchen, closing the door behind her.
She stood in front of Robert and made him halt. He had not washed or changed; he looked disheveled and stale. I'm right. There's something bad in this house now, and he's picked it up.
“Robert, my love, we're going back upstairs now, just for a minute or two.”
She turned him around and, holding his hand, walked up the stairs so briskly that she forced him to abandon his slouching walk and follow her.
In their room, she sat him down in the chair on her side of the bed, poured cold water from the pitcher into the basin, dipped a face towel in the pitcher of cold water, and began to wash his face. She helped him take off his shirt, and she washed his shoulders, neck, and chest as only a nurse can do. Then she tipped back his face and kissed him on the mouth, a slow soft kiss, the kind he most liked. She made him stand up and finished the undressing until he stood naked, and she continued to wash him.
From the closet she took a complete outfit of fresh clothes for him and, from the skin out, began to help him dress. Bit by bit, his m
ood changed. By the time she had sponged his face again with the cold face towel, he had picked up considerably.
Inside two hours, though, his mood would alter again— and extraordinarily.
Ellie went down first; Robert followed close behind.
“Look!” she said, and flung open the dining room door.
To the beauty of the room and the table, Robert came a little further alight. Since he had come to her house, Ellie had observed his eventual good reaction to anything of beauty— glass, linen, paintings, flowers. Now she sat him down at the head of the table, in her father's carving chair, and went back to the kitchen. Robert looked all around: the table set for three, the silver, the glass, the napkins edged with old lace. He couldn't tell that the windows were open, the candles barely flickered.
With Vincent helping, Ellie served dinner. They sat to a meal of boiled bacon and cabbage with potatoes.
“How can I ever again call it ham?” said Robert.
“I thought,” Ellie said to Vincent, “that you should eat our national dish.”
“I seem to have eaten little else in Ireland,” he said. By now he had figured out the method, the timing, and the time: midnight, about two hours away.
Vincent talked food with Ellie again. Never, he said, had “the national dish” tasted so good. Ellie had put some raisins and some honey from her own beehives in the cabbage.
“When it's almost boiled, I transfer it over to the pot where the ham is just about cooked. The cabbage finishes boiling in the same water.”
And she had cut the finest flakes of sautéed onion through the tiny white potatoes.
It all looked wonderful in that heavy Victorian room. The brooding furniture sparkled as the candles lit its polish. The glasses shone, reflecting the flat blades of the silver knives. Vincent reached down and touched the flatness of his bayonet in its sheath on his leg.
In the half-light the three people looked ever more beautiful. Their conversation sparkled too. Ellie made a concerted effort to draw Robert out further and further. She had been much encouraged by her recent successes in that direction, and now she began to tell Vincent of their journeys together— to the source of the Shannon and to the harper's grave. As she spoke, she invited Robert to take over. Where he faltered in mid-sentence, she jumped in so seamlessly that it seemed like a normal couple's assistance of each other in their sociable dinner-table conversation.