Naylor nodded. “So that’s what people said in Glenskehy, when this girl came up pregnant. They said she lay down with one of the fairy men from up at the House, and she got up with a fairy child. And serve her right.”
“They thought the baby would be a changeling?”
“Yowza,” Frank said. “It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.” He was shaking with half-suppressed laughter. I wanted to kick him.
“They did, yeah,” Naylor said coldly. “And don’t be giving me that look, Detective. These are my great-grandparents we’re talking about, mine and yours. Can you swear to me you wouldn’t have believed the same, if you’d been born back then?”
“Different times,” Sam said, nodding.
“Not everyone said it, now. Only a few—the older folk, mostly. But enough that, one way or another, it got back to your man, the child’s father. Either he wanted rid of the child all along and he was only waiting for an excuse, or something wasn’t right in his mind to start with. A lot of them were always what you might call a bit odd, up at the House; maybe that’s one reason they got the name for having dealings with the fairies. He believed it, anyway. He thought there was something wrong with him, in his blood, that would wreck the child.”
His broken mouth twisted sideways. “So he arranged to meet the girl one night, before the baby was born. She went along, not a worry on her: he was her lover, wasn’t he? She thought he wanted to arrange to provide for her and the child. And instead he took a rope and he hanged her from a tree. That’s the true story. Everyone in Glenskehy knows. She didn’t kill herself, and no one from the village killed her. The baby’s father killed her, because he was afraid of his own child.”
“Bloody boggers,” Frank said. “I swear to God, you get outside Dublin and it’s a whole different universe. Jerry Springer, eat your heart out.”
“God rest,” Sam said quietly.
“Yeah,” Naylor said. “God rest. Your lot called it a suicide, sooner than arrest one of the gentry from the Big House. She went into unconsecrated ground, her and the child.”
It could have been true. Any of the versions we’d heard could have been the true one, any or none; there was no way to tell, across a hundred years. What mattered was that Naylor believed what he was saying, every word. He wasn’t acting like a guilty man, but this means less than you might think. He was consumed enough—that bitter intensity in his voice—that he might well believe he had nothing to feel guilty about. My heart was going fast and heavy. I thought of the others, heads bent in the library, expecting me to come back.
“Why would no one in the village tell me this?” Sam asked.
“Because it’s none of your business. We don’t want to be known for that: the mad village where the lunatic killed his bastard for being a fairy. We’re decent people, in Glenskehy. We’re plain people, but we’re not savages and we’re not eejits, and we’re no one’s freak show, d’you get me? We just want to be left alone.”
“Someone’s not leaving this alone, though,” Sam pointed out. “Someone painted BABY KILLERS on Whitethorn House, twice. Someone put a rock through their window, two nights ago, and fought them like hell when they went after him. Someone doesn’t want to leave that child to rest in peace.”
A long silence. Naylor shifted in his chair, touched his split lip with a finger and checked for blood. Sam waited.
“It was never just the baby,” he said, in the end. “That was bad enough, sure; but it only showed the way they are, that family. The cut of them. I didn’t know what other way to say it.”
He was halfway to putting his hand up for the graffiti, but Sam let that slide: he was after bigger game. “What way are they?” he asked. He was leaning back with his mug balanced on his knee, easy and interested, like a man settled in for a good long night at his local.
Naylor dabbed at his lip again, absently. He was thinking hard, searching for words. “All your detective work about Glenskehy. Did you find out where it came from?”
Sam grinned. “My Irish is after getting awful rusty. Glen of the hawthorn, is it?”
Naylor gave a fast, impatient head-shake. “Ah, no, no, not the name. The place. The village. Glenskehy. Where d’you think it came from?”
Sam shook his head.
“The Marches. They made it, to suit themselves. When they were given the land and they built that house, they brought people in to work for them— maids, gardeners, stable hands, gamekeepers . . . They wanted their servants on their land, under their thumb, so they could keep them in line, but not too nearby; they didn’t want to be smelling the stink of the peasants.” There was a vicious, disgusted twist to the corner of his mouth. “So they built a village for the servants to live in. Like someone having a swimming pool put in, or a conservatory, or a stable full of ponies: just a little luxury, to make life more comfortable.”
“That’s no way to look at human beings,” Sam agreed. “It’s a long time ago, though.”
“A long time ago, yeah. Back when the Marches had a use for Glenskehy. And now that it’s not serving their pleasure any more, they’re standing by and watching it die.” There was something building in Naylor’s voice, something volatile and dangerous, and for the first time they came together in my mind, this man talking local history with Sam and the wild creature that had tried to gouge my eyes out in a dark lane. “It’s falling to bits, that village. Another few years and there’ll be nothing left of it. The only ones who stay are the ones trapped there, like myself, while the place dies and takes them along with it. Do you know why I never went to college?”
Sam shook his head.
“I’m no fool. I had the points for it. But I had to stay in Glenskehy, to look after my parents, and there’s no work there that needs an education. There’s nothing but farming. What did I need a degree for, to dig muck on another man’s farm? I started doing that the day after I left school. I’d no other choice. And there’s dozens more like me.”
“That’s not the Marches’ fault, sure,” Sam said reasonably. “What could they do about it?”
That hard bark of a laugh again. “There’s plenty they could do. Plenty. Four or five years back there was a fella came looking around the village, a Galway man, same as yourself. A property developer. He wanted to buy Whitethorn House, turn it into a fancy hotel. He was going to build it up— add new wings, new buildings round the grounds, a golf course, all the rest; he’d big plans, this fella. Do you know what that would have done for Glenskehy?”
Sam nodded. “A load of new jobs.”
“More than that. Tourists coming through, new businesses coming in to look after them, people moving in to work for the new businesses. Young people staying on, instead of clearing out to Dublin as soon as they’re able. New houses being built, and decent roads. A school of our own again, instead of sending the children up to Rathowen. Work for teachers, for a doctor, for estate agents maybe—educated people. Not all at once, like, it would’ve taken years, but once the ball starts rolling . . . That was all we needed: just that one push. That one chance. We’d have had Glenskehy coming back to life.”
Four or five years back: just before the attacks on Whitethorn House began. He was matching my profile immaculately, piece by piece. The thought of Whitethorn House turned into a hotel made me feel a lot better about the state of Naylor’s face, but still: you couldn’t help being pulled in by the passion in his voice, seeing the vibrant vision he was in love with, the village turned bustling and hopeful again, alive.
“But Simon March wouldn’t sell?” Sam asked.
Naylor shook his head, a slow angry roll; winced, touched his swollen jaw. “One man, on his own in a house that could fit dozens. What good was it to him? But he wouldn’t sell. It’s been nothing but bad news since the day it was built, that house, and he held onto it for dear life sooner than let it do anyone a scrap of good. And the same when he died: the young fella hadn’t been near Glenskehy since he was a child, he has no family, he had no need for the place, but he held on. That’s what they are, the Marches. That’s what they’ve been all along. What they want, they keep, and the rest of the world be damned.”
“It’s the family home,” Sam pointed out. “Maybe they love it.”
Naylor’s head came up and he stared at Sam, pale blazing eyes amid the swelling and the dark bruises. “If a man makes something,” he said, “he has a duty to look after it. That’s what a decent man does. If you make a child, it’s yours to care for, as long as it lives; you’ve no right to kill it to suit yourself. If you make a village, it’s yours to look after; you do what it takes to keep that place going. You don’t have the right to stand by and watch it die, just so you can keep hold of a house.”
“I’m actually with him on this one,” Frank said, beside me. “Maybe we’ve got more in common than we thought.”
I barely heard him. I had got one thing wrong in my profile, after all: this man would never have stabbed Lexie for being pregnant with his baby, or even for living in Whitethorn House. I had thought he was an avenger, obsessed with the past, but he was a lot more complicated and more ferocious than that. It was the future he was obsessed with, his home’s future, seeping away like water. The past was the dark conjoined twin wrapped round that future, steering it, shaping it.
“Is that all you wanted from the Marches?” Sam asked quietly. “For them to do the decent thing—sell up, give Glenskehy a chance?”
After a long moment Naylor nodded, a stiff, reluctant jerk.
“And you thought the only way to make them do it was to put the frighteners on them.”
Another nod. Frank whistled, softly, through his teeth. I was holding my breath.
“No better way to frighten them off,” Sam said, thoughtful and matter-of-fact, “than to give one of them a little cut, one night. Nothing serious, not even meant to hurt her. Just to let them know: you’re not welcome here.”
Naylor’s mug went down hard on the table and he shoved his chair back, arms folding tight across his chest. “I never hurt anyone. Never.”
Sam raised his eyebrows. “Someone handed out a fair old beating to three of the Whitethorn House people, the same night you got those bruises.”
“That was a fight. An honest fight—and they were three to one against me. Do you not see the difference? I could have killed Simon March a dozen times over, if I’d wanted to. I never touched him.”
“Simon March was old, sure. You knew he was bound to die within a few years, and you knew there was a decent chance his heirs would sell up, sooner than move out to Glenskehy. You could afford to wait.”
Naylor started to say something, but Sam kept talking, level and heavy, cutting across him. “But once young Daniel and his mates arrived, it was a whole different story. They’re going nowhere, and a bit of spray paint wasn’t scaring them. So you had to up the stakes, didn’t you?”
“No. I never—”