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.”
