The Irish Manor House Murder by Dicey Deere

saw Rowena crying, her face pressed against the horse’s flank. Goes back to what? And what did Rowena mean by “it?” Murder snaking back and back to the “it”?
    On Butler Street, Torrey waited while Willy, the grocer’s older son, put the groceries in the basket of her bicycle. Capers, heavy cream, butter, oranges. The “it.” A quarrel? A fight? A death? Back to Rowena’s mother? Or back even before Caroline? Related somehow, at least in Rowena’s mind, to the murder of Gerald Ashenden, a murder that was only now ten days old? Rowena crying, dust motes in the horse’s stall.
    “Sorry about the black grapes. Next week, though.”
    “Thanks, Willy.” She put Jasper’s grocery list in the pocket of her corduroys. Butler Street was all cobblestones, so she walked her bicycle back along the narrow sidewalk. She passed Grogan’s Needlework Shop. Above the shop, the swanshaped sign, Nolan’s Bed-and-Breakfast, swayed in the wind. Tonight, Jasper, skilled chef and lover, was making a turban de filets de sole followed by bavarois a l’orange, whatever that was. He hadn’t yet decided on the wine.
    Back and back, such despair in Rowena’s voice. “How’s it going with Rowena?” Jasper had asked her last night. It was close to midnight, and she was in bed, drowsily watching him put on his clothes. His bike was outside; he’d be back at Nolan’s before they locked up. She still smelled him on her skin and in her bed. At his question, she felt her skin tighten with a kind of secrecy, because there wasn’t a way to tell Jasper any of it without revealing Rowena’s pregnancy. So she answered, “She’s keeping so quiet, I hardly know.”
    Back and back. Crying.
    Wheeling her bicycle past the glass-fronted Ballynagh police station, she glanced in. Sergeant Bryson was there alone, sitting at a corner desk bent over paperwork. Jimmy Bryson, who half the time blushed over God knows what. Nelson, the black Lab, was lying inside the glass-fronted door. He lifted his head and wagged his tail as Torrey went past.
    A cold wind swept a swirl of leaves up the street and sent an icy chill down Torrey’s back. She shivered. She should have worn her windbreaker, or at least a heavier sweater. It was getting on to four o’clock. The mountains above the village were sharp-edged autumnal cutouts against a graying sky.
    “Ho, there! Ms. Tunet!”
    Winifred Moore crossed over from the other side of the road. She looked like a sturdy mountaineer in breeches, laced boots, a dark-green parka, and brimmed leather hat. “Need a lift? I can stick your bicycle in the back of my Jeep.”
    “Thanks. But right now I need a cup of hot tea.” Ahead was Amelia’s Tea Shop. “Join me?”
    “Tea? Not likely! I could do with a Guinness, though. O’Malley’s can give you a pot of tea while I have a beer.”
    O’Malleys pub was uncrowded. Torrey had never been here before. So this was the place where, gossip in Ballynagh said, Rowena had come in that afternoon, face enraged and green eyes wild, and (“You can ask Sean O’Malley!”) had gotten crazy drunk. “That bastard! That inhuman bastard! He belongs in hell!” Sean had eyes and ears and never missed. “And whom else could the girl have meant, seeing what she did in the meadow an hour after?” But why “inhuman bastard”? Torrey could not even begin to conjecture.
    Warmth, blessed warmth. Smell of hops. Smell of hickory smoke from the fire. Wall sconces shed a yellow light on dark, polished wood walls that had framed posters. One showed a turn-of-the-century railroad train traveling through mountainous countryside. In another, a Spanish couple danced, the man in a sombrero, the woman’s flamenco skirt twirling.
    A handful of men in workmen’s clothes and three or four others in country tweeds were talking at the bar, served by a curly-haired young bartender in shirtsleeves and a green vest. There was occasional laughter. Only two tables were occupied. At one, a