The Haunting Ballad Read Online Free Page A

moved to Thelmont from New York shortly after his wife’s death and had settled himself into a cozy pine-hemmed little house three doors down from Audrey’s family. Audrey and he had become fast friends, and in time I, too, had been won over by the man’s quirky charms. On Audrey’s urging, Mr. O’Nelligan had begun to aid me on my more complicated cases, and as a result my business (floundering since Dad’s death) had been much revitalized. Mr. O’Nelligan was content to label himself my assistant, though that designation fooled neither of us—it was clear who had the true deductive chops in our partnership. Still, despite his invaluable help, the man wouldn’t accept a penny from me. Whenever I’d argue the unfairness of that arrangement, he’d wave me off and declare, “Ah, it’s fine, it’s fine. Assisting you helps fill the hours and keeps my brain well oiled. What more compensation could an old reprobate desire?”
    I never did come up with a good answer to that.

 
    CHAPTER THREE
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    I considered letting Audrey know about my appointment with Sally Joan Cobble but decided against it. After all, I hadn’t officially agreed to take on the case, and, considering whatever was going on with my fiancée, I figured it best to just see how things shook out. I did place a call to her house, though, and left a message with her mother that I’d be on a job out of town, so Audrey should make her own evening plans. That Friday afternoon—the day after Sally Joan’s call—I picked up Mr. O’Nelligan and headed down Route 7 toward the Merritt Parkway.
    â€œA fine spring day, isn’t it?” my companion noted. He was dressed nattily in his standard vest and necktie. “A splendid beginning to a quest.”
    â€œListen, this is no quest,” I grumbled. “We’re just going to meet a potential client. Accent on ‘potential.’ Why is everything always a quest with you?”
    â€œAll life is a quest, lad. One merely needs to recognize it as such.”
    Somehow in Mr. O’Nelligan’s eyes I had maintained my status as lad, even though I’d passed the thirty mark.
    â€œThe thing is,” I said, “I’m not at all sure that there’s even a case here. We may be talking simple suicide.”
    The Irishman clicked his tongue. “Ah, but suicide is never simple. Back home in County Kerry, there was a miller by the name of Blowick who drowned himself in the River Fertha. It was near the end of March, and he had to hurl into the freezing waters to meet his end. No one could figure the why of it till much later when someone put together that March 29, the day he perished, was the Feast of St. Eithne, and that in his youth poor Blowick had loved and lost a girl named Eithne O’Mara. So, you see, there is oft a hidden complexity to these things. If I might quote Yeats…”
    â€œCouldn’t stop you if I tried.”
    My friend always seemed to have handy a quote from his favorite poet and fellow countryman, William Butler Yeats. He now let one fly:
    â€œA pity beyond all telling
    is hid in the heart of love.”
    â€œNo doubt,” I responded. “For all we know, maybe unrequited love was the cause of Lorraine Cobble’s leap into air. She certainly seemed to me to be chock-full of passion.”
    â€œSo you were acquainted with her?”
    I described my night at the Café Mercutio, highlighting Lorraine’s colorful behavior but excluding any reference to Audrey’s fascination with Byron Spires. In regard to Audrey and me, I didn’t want to put Mr. O’Nelligan in the middle of … well, whatever there was to be in the middle of.
    My friend hmm ed softly. “The late Miss Cobble sounds like she was quite a perfervid individual.”
    â€œDid you say ‘perverted’?” In the face of Mr. O’Nelligan’s ten-dollar word, I