The Seeing

Chapter Eighteen

Angus Ryan’s offices were on the second floor of a Georgian building, whose narrow windows faced the Liffey and the central streets of Dublin.

The reception rooms were done in brown leather and honest oak, pictures of race meets and the Dublin dog show brightening the panelled walls. The offices of the senior partners, Angus Ryan and the late Dermod Maloney, had been done less somberly and more functionally — refectory tables in place of desks, built-in filing cabinets, and silver tea sets. This had been the original scheme, but since his death some years before, the quarters of Dermod Maloney had been converted into book-lined rooms to house the firm’s legal library.

On a week to the day after Andrew Dalworth’s funeral, Eric Griffith, in tweeds and a tattersall vest, sat in Mr. Ryan’s office facing the gray-haired solicitor across the clean expanse of the shining refectory table.

“—and as I mentioned at our first meeting at Easter Hill, Mr. Ryan, Maud and I both feel we have some degree of responsibility to our niece.”

Angus Ryan said gently, “Would you enlighten me, sir, as to the nature of those responsibilities?”

Eric shrugged and, with a practiced and seemingly helpless smile, said, “Well, that’s where I was hoping you might help, Mr. Ryan. You see, Maud and I are comfortably off but we’re hardly what you’d call rich.”

“Ah, is that so, Mr. Griffith?”

“Yes, but we still feel an obligation to Jessica. If there’s any way we can help, we’d be pleased to. I know that in the long run Jessica will be provided for, but sometimes in emergencies like this, there’s a problem of cash flow and if that’s the case, we’d be happy to send our niece a reasonable monthly allowance...”

“Now that’s quite generous of you,” Mr. Ryan said, wondering if he had possibly misjudged these American relatives. “However, that won’t be necessary, Mr. Griffith.”

Briefly, Mr. Ryan explained the purpose and functions of the Dalworth trusts administered by a board of directors in New York. After which he explained his position as the executor of Andrew Dalworth’s provisions in relation to Easter Hill and to Jessica, and his fiscal responsibility for Jessica’s allowance, schooling, travel, and so forth.

“I’m pleased to know everything is so tidy,” Eric said, smiling steadily at the old lawyer. He was also pleased (and suddenly grateful) that he had made solid plans of his own and was therefore not dependent on a nuisance settlement from this tight-fisted old coot, or on a bone thrown to him with whimsical generosity by his niece.

Yet Eric couldn’t help but feel diminished by the role he was required to play, cast as the scoundrel in a bogus necktie, forced to cheat and lie because no other avenue was open to him. He didn’t want to spend his life waiting for a hand on his shoulder, a hard, official voice saying, “A question or two, if you don’t mind.”

Cantering one morning across a meadow above Easter Hill on one of Dalworth’s hunters, a pair of Irish lads on a dusty road had greeted him with smiles, and when he had saluted them with his crop they had pulled off their caps in a gesture of deference that had touched him... That was the life he wanted, not hiding his face from privileged Scots lairds and the likes of Mrs. Cadwalader.

Angus Ryan made a steeple of his fingers and looked across them at Eric, trying to take a reading on the man. Since he was basically tolerant and charitable, Ryan was thinking his first appraisal might have been hasty.

“Perhaps you could satisfy my curiosity on one point, Mr. Griffith. Handling the business of the estate as I do, forwarding mail and such, how is it I’ve never come across a postcard or letter from you or your wife in all these long years?”

Eric had rehearsed an answer to this question, and as he met the old man’s narrowing eyes, he was glad that he had practiced his responses with Maud and in front of his bedroom mirror — rueful smiles, the sigh of futility at the pain of the past, shrugs of dismissal and helplessness.

“The child had started a fresh new life and didn’t need us. But quite frankly, my sister Monica and my wife never hit it off. Whose fault was it?” One of the rueful smiles. “Who can say? My sister didn’t like the fact that Maud had been married before. But perhaps she wouldn’t have been happy with whomever I married.” A shrug of fond helplessness. “I was quite a bit older than Monica, and she may have thought my function in life was to be the eternal big brother, available forever for riding lessons, a partner to practice the latest dance craze with.” A sigh at the pain of the past. “Yet, as I’m sure you understand, my loyalty had to be with my wife...”

“Of course,” Angus Ryan said.

“But now, at a time when our niece is truly alone, naturally we’re standing by.”

“I think... I understand your position, Mr. Griffith.”

“Now there’s something I’d like to ask you, if I may, Mr. Ryan. About a picture along the second floor corridor of Easter Hill — an oil painting. A Hereford steer on a winter day with an old barn and some outbuildings at the edge of a field.”

There was no such painting, but this was a gamble Eric Griffith had decided he must take. This was the crux of the matter, the reason for this meeting.

“It looks like the countryside where I have my home in the States, Chester County in Pennsylvania. We have a museum there on the Brandywine with dozens of such oils, in the style of the Wyeths and Howard Pyle — a whole school of painters...”

“A Hereford against outbuildings?” Ryan frowned and shook his head, and Eric breathed more easily. “I’m afraid I don’t know the picture, Mr. Griffith.”

“Well, it’s not important. But it reminded me of home.”

“I’d been after Andrew Dalworth for a good while to have a curator in to catalogue the collections. He and Jessica were great shoppers, you know.”

He smiled at a memory. “It was hard to tell who was the younger when they were out on their expeditions. Still, Andrew felt strongly that a man’s home had no business with librarians and accountants and sightseers and the like.”

Concealing his relief at this information, Eric glanced at his wristwatch and managed a neatly executed start of surprise.

“I really shouldn’t take up any more of your time, Mr. Ryan, but I’m pleased that we had this talk.”

They stood and shook hands. Then Eric pretended to remember something. “By the way, Mr. Ryan, at dinner the other night, Jessica suggested that she and her Aunt Maud take a little vacation in London. Naturally, that’s a decision we wouldn’t make without your approval.”

Ryan looked at him keenly. “It was her idea, you say?”

“Yes, she thought it might be a nice change of scene. It will be my treat, of course...”

Angus Ryan rubbed his jaw and then said, “Well, I can’t see the harm in a little holiday just now.”

“In that case, I’ll tell her ‘bon voyage’ for you.”

Mr. Ryan showed him to the doors of the reception area. Eric smiled boyishly at the pair of middle-aged secretaries and took the lift down to the street.

After staring out at the River Liffey for a moment or so, Mr. Ryan turned and picked up his phone and placed a call to Easter Hill.

In the lounge of the Russell Hotel off St. Stephen’s Green, Eric ordered a whiskey and made two telephone calls, one to Tony Saxe at the Hannibal Arms, the second to Easter Hill where he found (as he expected) that the phone was busy.

To pass the time, he bought a copy of the Irish Register from the concierge and studied the racing columns and turf reports. The attention of the writers and betting commissioners (limey for bookie, Eric knew) was centered on the upcoming Grand National. Heavy favorites at this stage were Daedalus; the French entry, Etoile Rouge; and Kerry Dancer, a great bay from the Muirheads outside Belfast.

Eric’s eyes were drawn as usual to the long shots, the predicted also-rans. When they came in, it was so much more gratifying (and profitable) than when the beautifully bred favorites flashed past the finish line.

He tried Easter Hill again. When the connection was established, he said to Maud, “Who was on the line?”

“Just now? Mr. Ryan for Jessica.”

“How did it go?”

“Couldn’t have been better if we wrote the script.” Then, quickly and in a lowered voice, “Call me later, Eric.” And in a brighter voice, “Is that you, Jessica?”

From Dublin, Eric drove in a rented Ford to Monaghan, where he spent the night at the Nuremore Hotel. The following morning, he crossed the border into Northern Ireland and drove to the airport at Belfast, where Tony Saxe was waiting for him at the main cab ranks.

With Saxe tracing their route on an Automobile Club map, they circled the gray stone mass of the city with its armored cars and sandbagged intersections and drove south and east for thirty miles to the town of Ardglass and the port of St. John’s Point.

Simon Ethelroyd’s warehouse, a long, single story building with boarded up windows, was squeezed between two open produce markets several blocks from High Street, facing a railroad marshalling yard, power cranes, and truck scales.

The proprietor of Ethelroyd Enterprises (thus read the paint-flecked sign on the single front door of the warehouse) greeted them in an office acrid with smoke from a coal-burning stove. The room was small, crowded with packing cases, a rolltop desk and several files.

“Sit down, sit down, we don’t stand on ceremony here,” Ethelroyd said, waving them to a pair of chairs.

A tall, obese figure in a blue porter’s smock, Ethelroyd’s eyes were like the tips of daggers deep within the rolls of flesh that bunched up from his ruddy cheeks. His hair was thick and black, and his sideburns came down like jagged scimitars to meet beneath his chin. Ethelroyd sat in an armchair beside the desk and lit a thin, black cigar. When it was drawing well, he looked through the film of smoke and said, “I’ll have the photographs now, if you please.”

Tony Saxe gave him a thick envelope, and Ethelroyd dumped the color prints onto his desk, arranging them in tidy patterns with surprisingly deft movements of his puffy hands.

Opening a drawer, he removed a magnifying glass, leaning forward to peer through it at the colorful photographs of furniture and art objects from the salons, halls and gardens of Dalworth’s estate. Ethelroyd’s breathing was heavy and labored. With each inhalation his stomach swelled forcefully against his loose smock and collapsed when the wind wheezed from his lungs like a hiss of air from a punctured inner tube.

Eric glanced at his watch. “I’d like to get this business settled promptly, Mr. Ethelroyd.”

“Of course, of course. But begging your pardon, I’d like to satisy myself that the articles are genuine.”

“You’ll find everything just as we’ve represented it,” Eric said.

“I’ll be the judge of that, if you gentlemen don’t mind.”

Tony Saxe said, “You come well recommended, Ethelroyd. Buffy Cappella told us you were one of the best.”

“Very kind of him, I’m sure.”

“Yeah. What was the last job you did for him? It was hash, wasn’t it? Morocco, then bills of lading laundered here at St. John’s and shipped off to Copenhagen?”

Ethelroyd placed the magnifying glass with a decisive gesture on his desk, straightened, and looked from Tony Saxe to Eric, a malicious hostility glittering in his small eyes. “It seems Buffy has developed a bloody big mouth, doesn’t it? I trust you gentlemen haven’t succumbed to that affliction...”

“Now listen to me,” Eric said. “I’ve got two things to say, Mr. Ethelroyd. The first is that this is a cash transaction. Not an article leaves Easter Hill until we have the agreed-upon sums of money in hand. That is the number one condition and it’s not negotiable. The second point I want to make is—”

“Hold on with your points and conditions,” Ethelroyd said, standing so abruptly that his chair rocked and teetered on its castings. His cheeks were flushed and his breath whistled in and out of his mouth. “I’m not going to tell you fine Yankee gentlemen some of the problems we’re up against, certain obstacles which in your innocence I daresay you haven’t even considered. Come with me, please.”

Opening a door at the rear of his office, he stepped aside and gestured them to proceed, the sweep of his arm eloquent with sardonic servility.

They entered the main area of Ethelroyd’s warehouse, a vast structure stocked with tiers of dismantled furniture — chairs, tables, chests; bins of finials, brass hardware, hasps and hinges; shelves of carved arms and legs and fretwork filigrees; rolls of damask and brocades; and a brightly lighted counter, where three brawny men in turtleneck sweaters and leather aprons were working at what looked to Eric like an antique furniture assembly line.

With heavy sarcasm, Ethelroyd said, “Please have the goodness to attend to me, gentlemen. If you think we’re a gang of smash-and-grab artists, think again. The nannies and maids and old butlers will have paid loving attention to those objects of art at Easter Hill for many years. They will miss them, as surely as if a baby were snatched from a cradle. So understand me well.” Ethelroyd slapped two fingers resoundingly into the palm of his hand. “Each object we take has to be replaced by a reasonable substitute.” Gesturing at the shelves and bins of his warehouse, Ethelroyd said, “We’ll prepare the facsimiles here and they’ll pass muster long enough to give us any lead time we will need.”

“So what’s the big deal?” Tony Saxe said. “It’s what we’re paying you for.”

“Then let me explain something else to you bloody Yanks. You’ve come here to a country at war and expect an operation like this to go off like a piece of cake. Well, let me disabuse you of your naive expectations. First of all—” Again, Ethelroyd slapped his plump fingers into his palm. “First, I’ve got to take my lorries twenty miles west of Dungannon to cross the border. A little exercise which means paying off the following: the Ulster Constabulary, Irish Provos, the bloody Brits, customs agents on both sides, and probably the goddamn Irish Republican Army when we get into Eire — any or all of which will shoot us squarely in the ass if there’s the slightest slip, if anything goes sour. In addition to which there’s an expert forger to pay off for lading bills, a cargo master here on the dock, and a mate and captain on the ship that takes our goods to Liverpool.”

He turned and looked at them directly, his chest heaving, a film of perspiration beading his forehead. “So don’t try telling me my business, Yanks. Just don’t try it!”

Eric said smoothly, “I’d suggest you get yourself in hand, Ethelroyd.” Pointing at the man’s stomach, he said, “All that blubber pressing against your heart isn’t doing you any good. I imagine you’re already having the odd dizzy spell. And a second tip for your own benefit — don’t ever interrupt me again!”

The laborers had stopped their work to watch the mounting tension between their employer and the Americans.

“I told you I had two things to say,” Eric said. “You heard the first. Now you better pay damned close attention to the second. Buffy Cappella gave us three names to check out and yours wasn’t on the top of the list. So if you have any more reservations or complaints, we’ll consider this meeting over and done with. Clear enough?”

After a moment of silence, Ethelroyd’s eyes slid away from Eric’s and focused on the backs of his thick hands. “My doctor talked to me about the weight,” he said, in a voice shaded with conciliation. “He doesn’t take into consideration that I’m heavy-boned and need a lot of nutriments.”

“That’s the trouble with doctors. They seldom see the whole picture.”

“You’re right there, Mr. Griffith. I’ll tell you what. You gentlemen will come back around tea time, I’ll give you estimates on the whole project then, all details worked out, type of currencies preferred and denominations.”

“Very well, until tea time then, Ethelroyd.”

Outside, in the smokey fogs from the railroad yards and the sea, Tony Saxe looked at Eric with worried, appraising eyes. Taking a silk handkerchief from his pocket, he dabbed at the sweat on his forehead.

“You scared hell out of me,” he said.

Eric smiled as they settled themselves in the convertible. “Why were you worried?”

“That was one hell of a bluff you were running about them back-up dealers. Supposing the fat man called you on it...?”

“It wasn’t likely,” Eric turned on the ignition key and listened to the smooth hum of the motor. “People who let themselves go to seed like that rarely have much strength of character.”

Eric glanced at his watch. “Well, you character analyst, we’ve got some time to kill. I suggest we have a large lunch — to get our nutriments — and some decent wine and count our blessings.”