The Blood Upon the Rose by Tim Vicary Read Free Book Online Page A

of a middle-aged couple with some children, the other of a young man.
    He picked up the second, and showed it to Kirk. ‘Is this him? Sean Brennan?’
    There was a hesitation, then a sullen nod. Kee studied the photograph. It confirmed the impression of innocence. The face was more like that of a choirboy than a killer. Clean-cut, with smooth, downy cheeks - Kee glanced towards the washbasin to check that there was shaving tackle there - and short, slicked-back dark hair. A broad forehead, bright, intelligent-looking eyes, stick-out ears, and a wide, cheeky smile. Someone I wouldn't mind for my son-in-law, Kee thought, if he were a bit older.
    He handed it to Davis. ‘What do you think?’ he asked.
    ‘Nice lad.’
    ‘I mean, could he have done it? A boy like that?’
    Davis hesitated. ‘Why not? Boys like that were dying in the trenches until last year.’
    ‘Yes, but that was a war. This is murder we're talking about, Dick.’
    ‘True.’ Davis looked at his boss, thinking how foreign he was to the city. Maybe he came from the same island, but it was from a different culture, a different background altogether. It would be very difficult to enlighten him, even if he wanted to. Davis didn't want to. So he said: ‘Some people are just evil.’
    A few minutes later, as he went through the neatly folded shirts, vests, and underpants in the chest of drawers, Kee was forced to agree. Underneath the shirts, at the back of the bottom drawer, was a box of German 9-mm ammunition.
    The sort that would fit a Parabellum automatic.
     

 
     
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    THE DUBLIN HOUSE of the O'Connell-Gorts was an imposing, four-storey mansion in Merrion Square. As a child, Catherine had regarded it as an Aladdin's cave of pleasure and happiness; as an adolescent, she had hated it as a nest of evil; as a young woman, she had come to be its mistress.
    As a child, she had come to the house for Christmas and for the Dublin season, which lasted for six weeks afterwards. It had belonged to her Gort grandparents then, and she remembered it as a time of parties, treasure hunts, skating in the park, great candle-lit meals, laughter, and music. Always music, and fine, rustling, many-layered dresses, for there were balls in the square nearly every night. The carriages would come rattling into the square, full of gay young debutantes, the windows would be thrown open, and no one would sleep until one or two in the morning. Her grandparents would always throw their own ball, and that would be the grandest of all. Catherine and her brothers would stay up all night, rushing in and out of the ballroom, their eyes wide at the extravagance of gorgeous dresses and uniforms.
    She remembered her parents opening the ball, the handsomest couple there. Always her father and grandfather would dance with her, and she would go crimson with the pleasure of it. One night, when she was eleven, the Viceroy's ADC had danced with her, and everyone had clapped because she had done it so well. Afterwards, he had sat her on his knee and fed her bonbons, and she had asked him to wait for her until she was old enough to marry him.
    The next year, her grandparents had died, her father had inherited the house, and her mother began to go mad.
    Catherine had not understood why, at first. She had been only twelve years old, and thought her mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. Not only beautiful, but powerful, important too, because of her beauty. Artists painted her, poets worshipped her; even the Viceroy bowed his head and kissed her hand. But in that year, 1913, something had happened, and her mother had never gone to Merrion Square again.
    It showed itself first as eccentricity and weeping. Her mother had taken to going for long lonely walks across their estate in west Galway, coming home wet and bedraggled and then shutting herself up alone in her room for days on end. The poets and painters were banished, and replaced by doctors. Catherine's brothers went away to