“So who will win?”
She shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. I suppose it will come down to who is his heir. And Brian may well have left instructions for his final resting place. He was the sort of man who liked to organize everything. For all I know he may have a funeral plot all picked out, and even the hymns they’re to sing in St. Patrick’s.”
“You can still have a memorial service for him at St. Patrick’s even if he’s buried here, can’t you?” I suggested.
“I don’t see why not. The boys at Tammany Hall put on a grand funeral for their members. They’d go to town for Brian.”
“I’m sure they would.”
She bustled around my kitchen, knowing with the instinct of one who has cooked and cleaned all her life where to find things. “I told them all this bickering over the funeral is premature, seeing that the police won’t release the body to us yet.”
“No, I suppose you’ll have to wait until after the autopsy results are known.”
She took a knife and started slicing bread, holding it to her breast and cutting it toward her as my mother had always done. Frankly I had always been scared that she’d slice into herself but she never had. And Mrs. Flannery looked as if she knew what she was doing as well.
“A terrible business, isn’t it? I can’t stop thinking about him. If ever there was a man full of life, it was Brian. Full of energy, always had one grand scheme or another.”
“A great tragedy,” I said.
“A great tragedy or a great crime,” she said. “I can scarcely believe that someone deliberately tried to kill him, but that’s what that policeman seems to think, doesn’t he? I mean, who would do such a thing?”
“Someone with a grudge against your brother.”
“But who would come all the way out here, to this remote spot to do it?”
“Maybe it was easier to find him alone out here,” I said. “Or someone didn’t originally mean to kill him but seized the opportunity.”
“If it wasn’t an outsider, then it had to be one of us,” she said quietly. “That’s the thought I can’t get out of my mind. One of our family. But it couldn’t be. Just couldn’t.”
“I’m sure the police will find the person who did it,” I said, although I was not at all sure.
“My poor little Sam is so cut up about it,’ she said. “Hardly said a word since it happened and not eaten a thing either, which is shocking in itself if you knew Sam. Eats like a horse that boy. Always has. Skinny as a rake too. I don’t know where he puts it sometimes but he sure loves to eat.” She smiled for a moment then her face became solemn again. “I don’t know what will happen to him now. He was starting to run wild until Brian took him under his wing. With a no-good father like that and my poor daughter burdened with a new baby every year it’s no wonder that no one had time for the boy. He started running with the wrong crowd—going with a gang, you know. Junior Eastman, he called himself.”
“I know the Eastmans. In fact I’ve met Monk Eastman more than once.”
“Holy Mother—have you indeed?”
“I used to have my own detective agency. Sometimes it took me to the less savory parts of the city. And Monk recruits them young. Your Sam is well out of it.”
“Brian stepped in as soon as he found out,” she said. “He brought the boy to live with him and started him working for the company as messenger boy. Made sure he worked him hard too so that he had no time for bad companions. But now what? I’d take him in, of course, but he doesn’t listen to an old woman. And Joseph—well, Joseph only cares about himself and money. And a fine sort of example he’d be for the boy. Look how Terrence has turned out.”
“He seems a pleasant enough young man to me,” I said.
She sniffed. “My dear. I can’t tell you the number of times his father has had to pay his bills—gambling debts, unpaid wine bills, girls he’s got in the family way. His mother has washed her hands of him, I can tell you. And even Brian could do nothing for once, because Jo wouldn’t let him take over the boy. They almost came to blows over it.”
She lifted the egg from the boiling water and found an eggcup. “You’ll no doubt want to take this up to him yourself,” she said.
I agreed and carried the tray upstairs. Daniel roused as I came into the room and I helped him into a sitting position. He was as weak as a kitten and lay back gasping as I propped pillows behind him.
“Try and get some of that egg down you,” I said. “You need building up now.”
“I can’t think how I let something like a little cold get the better of me,” he said. “And look at you—the picture of health.”
“Just you remember who the strong one is,” I said, smiling.
I paused, hearing a knock at the front door, then Mrs. Flannery’s voice.