Read Online The Wolf at the Door by Jack Higgins - Free Book Online

knocker.
    “Caitlin Daly again, it would appear.”
    The door of the adjacent house was within touching distance over the hedge. It opened now, and a white-haired lady peered out. Dillon turned on the charm again, this time pulling out his own warrant card.
    “Police,” he told her. “Just checking that all is well.”
    The woman was very old, he could see that, and obviously distressed. “Such a tragedy. The police sergeant this morning told me he died in a terrible crash somewhere in central London. I can’t understand it. I’ve driven with him, and he was so careful. A professional chauffeur.”
    “Yes, it’s very sad,” Dillon told her.
    “I knew his mother, Mary, so well, a lovely Irish lady.” She was rambling now. “Widowed for years, a nurse. It was a great blow to him when she died. Eighty-one, she was. From Cork.”
    Dillon said gently, “I know it well. Wasn’t Michael Collins himself a Cork man?
    “Who?” she said.
    “I’m sorry, and me thinking you were Mrs. Caitlin Daly?” She looked bewildered. “The mourning wreath on the door.”
    “Oh, I’m not Caitlin, and I saw her leave it earlier. Her mother was a wonderful friend to me. Died last year from lung cancer. Only seventy-five. She was still living with Caitlin at the presbytery by the church. But Caitlin isn’t married, never was. She’s been housekeeper to Father Murphy for years. Used to teach at the Catholic school. Now she just looks after the presbytery and Father Murphy and two curates.” She was very fey now. “Oh, dear, I’ve got it wrong again. He’s Monsignor Murphy, now. A wonderful man.”
    Dillon gave her his best smile. “You’ve been very kind. God bless you.”
    They went back to the Cooper, and Billy said, as he settled behind the wheel, “Dillon, you’d talk the Devil into showing you the way out of hell. The information you got out of that old duck beggars belief.”
    “A gift, Billy,” Dillon told him modestly. “You’ve got to be Irish to understand.”
    “Get stuffed,” Billy told him.
    “Sticks and stones,” Dillon said. “But everything that befuddled old lady told me was useful information.”
    “I heard. Pool was wonderful, so was his mother, this Caitlin bird is beyond rubies, and, as for the good Monsignor Murphy, from the sound of it they got him from central casting.” He turned left on Dillon’s instructions. “Mind you, he must be good to get that kind of rank in a local church where he’s their priest-in-charge.”
    “Turn right now,” Dillon told him. “And what would you be knowing about it?”
    “I’ve never talked much about my childhood, Dillon. My old man was a very violent man, killed in gang warfare when I was three. My mum was married to Harry’s brother, and she was an exceptional lady who died of breast cancer when I was nineteen. I really went off the rails after that.”
    “Which is understandable.”
    “It was Harry who pulled me round, and you, you bastard, when you entered our lives. You introduced me to philosophy, remember, gave me a sense of myself.”
    “So where is this leading?” Dillon asked.
    The Cooper turned another corner and pulled up outside their destination. “Church of the Holy Name,” it said on the painted signboard beside the open gate, along with the times of Confession and Mass. The building had a Victorian-Gothic look to it, which made sense because it was only in the Victorian era that Roman Catholics by law were allowed to build churches again. Dillon saw a tower, a porch, a vast wooden door bound in iron in a failed attempt to achieve a medieval look.
    They stayed in the car for a few moments. Billy said, “The thing is, my mother was a strict Roman Catholic. Not our Harry. He doesn’t believe in anything he can’t put his hand on, but she really put me onstage. When I was a kid, I was an acolyte. I tell you, Dillon, it meant everything to her when it was my turn to serve at Mass.”
    “I know,” Dillon said. “Scarlet