I Hear the Sirens in the Street

Catholic. It was hard to say how I could tell but I could. Accent, body language, who knew? Sir Harry wasn’t a raging bigot then.
    “No, no. From his da or his grand da more than likely,” she said.
    “What does he do for fun?”
    “When he’s not in his office in Belfast he just likes the quiet time. Potters around the garden, reads in his library.”
    “Terrible about his brother, the captain in the army.”
    “Shocking, so it was. Shocking.”
    “I suppose you didn’t hear the killing from here?”
    “Oh, no. It’s too far away. We didn’t hear anything.”
    “And there were no witnesses?”
    “From up here? No.”
    “Was Sir Harry at home that day?”
    “He was out in the garden, I think. He went over straight away. Of course there was nothing he could do.”
    “No. Martin was his younger brother?”
    “Yes. Eight or nine years between them, I think.”
    I shook my head. “Must have been awful that morning.”
    “Oh yes, I’ll never forget that day. Shocking, so it was. Such a cowardly act. They’re vermin. Vermin shooting a man in the back.”
    “He was shot in chest,”
    Her eyes scolded me. “What does it matter! What does that matter? What are you here for, anyway? I told you Sir Harry was out. Wait here.”
    Before I could call her back she vanished through a door and a rather different woman appeared in blue suit, white pearls and a black bouffant. She was about forty, thin, thin-lipped, and there was a touch of old Hollywood in her heavy lidded eyes and defiant unfeminine chin.
    She walked towards me, all systems bristling. “May I see your identification?” she asked.
    I showed her the warrant card.
    “I take it that you’re Mrs Patton?” I asked.
    She nodded. She was from Derry, by the sound of it. Briskand business-like. I dug the whole Rebecca scene, but if she was Mrs Danvers and Sir Harry was Max de Winter, what did that make me – Joan fucking Fontaine?
    I took out my fags.
    “Oh, there’s no smoking in here,” Mrs Patton said.
    I put the cigarettes back in my pocket with a mumbled “Excuse me”.
    A little victory for the home team, there.
    “And how can we be of service today?” she asked.
    “I need to see Sir Harry. I was wondering if I could, uh, if I could wait for him in your lovely garden,” I said, putting on a bit of my Glens accent.
    “The garden? Why?” she said, both disarmed and suspicious.
    “I’m a bit of flower nut and I thought I could spend some time there until Sir Harry comes back. I’ve heard wonders about his garden.”
    “You wish to wait for Sir Harry in his garden?”
    “If it doesn’t put anyone out.”
    “No … I, uh, I don’t expect that it would.”
    She looked at me and nodded curtly. “Follow me,” she said.
    We went through a spotless kitchen, all gleaming surfaces and pots on hooks. The appliances had all been brand new in about 1975. Sir Harry didn’t seem like the sort of man who would let his cars rot but get expensive kitchen gear. It must be a feminine influence. His wife had bought that kit, a wife who was, now, where exactly?
    I walked through the back door and out into the kitchen garden.
    “Here you go,” she said.
    I pretended to be fascinated by an ugly yellow smudge of daffodils – the only thing at all growing back here.
    Of course I had already seen the greenhouse through the kitchen window.
    Mrs Patton said “I’ll leave you to it,” and disappeared backinside. I lit a cigarette. I knew that she’d be spying on me but there was a hedge blocking the rear entrance to the greenhouse from the back windows of the residence. I finished my smoke, inspected more of the flowers and walked behind the hedge. I waited a moment for a cry or footsteps hurrying towards me but I heard nothing. I turned a rusted iron handle and went inside the greenhouse. I didn’t know what I was expecting to find but I was not counting on a completely empty space. No plants, no pots, nothing. I wrote “a clean concrete floor, a few gardening tools”, in my notebook. The gardening tools were one rake and one hoe.
    I had got what I came for on this trip.
    I wrote “Down at heel scion. Hiding something or just an arse? No rosary pea or anything else in the greenhouse” in my notebook and walked into the house again.
    Mrs Patton intercepted me in the gloomy hall.
    “Inspector Duffy, is anything amiss?” she asked.
    “No, nothing’s amiss, Mrs Patton. However, I’ve just remembered that I have to be somewhere else. I