Free Secrets of the Lighthouse by Santa Montefiore Page B

was a
beauty, all right. Flame-red hair and pale white skin. She was like a painting.’
    ‘And she
was
painted,’ Joe interrupts. ‘There’s a massive portrait of her hanging in the hall up at the castle. Mr Macausland told us to leave it where it is. He
was very specific about it. We took out everything of value after she died, but not that painting.’ He thrusts his hands into his trouser pockets and his breath mists on the damp air.
‘Mr Macausland then moved down by the river and the castle was boarded up. It’s like he’s locked
her
up in there as well.’
    ‘You mean, he couldn’t bear to live there without her?’
    ‘Not after what happened at the lighthouse.’
    Johnny’s face hardens. He doesn’t look wistful any more, just angry. ‘Jaysus, it was a terrible waste of a life!’ he says hotly.
    ‘Was she really murdered?’ Ellen asks and the air stills around her.
    ‘No, she wasn’t murdered and Mr Macausland didn’t kill her. Who told you that?’ Johnny growls.
    Ellen flinches at his tone. ‘Aunt Peg said that people whisper it.’
    ‘People whisper a lot, the fecking eejits! Doesn’t mean it’s true.’
    Joe takes up the story. I have heard it all before, loads of times, but I’m interested in the girl and what she makes of it. She is bristling with curiosity. ‘The night she died she
was at the lighthouse with Mr Macausland. Apparently, they had a row and she ran up to the top of the lighthouse. Somehow it caught fire and she had to jump to save herself. But her body was found
at the foot, broken on the rocks. That was about midnight, right? Well, Dylan Murphy was on the beach walking his dog about half an hour before that and he swears he saw a man rowing
away.’
    ‘Who was the man?’ Ellen asks, intrigued.
    ‘No one knows.’ Johnny shrugs again.
    ‘Or no one’s telling,’ Joe adds darkly. ‘Mr Macausland insisted that he and Caitlin were the only people there that night.’
    ‘Do you have a theory as to who that mystery person might have been?’
    Johnny scratches his soft salt-and-pepper beard. ‘Murphy’s imagination, if you ask me. He’d been down the boozer and was probably well langered.’
    ‘So, how did the lighthouse catch fire? I thought it wasn’t in use.’
    ‘The guarda found loads of candles all the way up the stairs,’ says Joe.
    ‘Caitlin Macausland was a woman who liked a bit of drama,’ Johnny adds. ‘She would often row out to the lighthouse, but only when Mr Macausland was away. He knew it was
dangerous and forbade her to row out even in the daytime. Of course, she rebelled. That was her nature. She was a wild one, all right. Many a time I’d be leaving Peg’s late at night and
see candlelight twinkling in the lighthouse windows. You wouldn’t know what she was up to, but it was well known that it was her and no one thought anything of it, until the fire.’
    ‘I wonder what she did in the lighthouse all night?’ Ellen muses. ‘It must have been frightfully cold. Didn’t anyone ever ask her what she did?’
    Joe laughs and his father laughs with him, sharing a private joke. ‘Caitlin Macausland wasn’t the sort of woman you asked things,’ says Joe. ‘And if you did, she’d
answer in riddles. There was no getting anything out of her that she didn’t want known.’
    ‘I think she was afraid of Mr Macausland,’ Johnny says darkly, nodding to himself as if that fear of my husband is the answer to everything. ‘Because whenever he was down, she
was never around. She wouldn’t come to the pub any more and she wouldn’t be seen in town either.’
    ‘Those who saw her in the schoolyard said she became nervous and withdrawn when he was home. Nothing like the carefree girl she was when he was away.’ Joe is pleased to have more
gossip to relate.
    ‘I wonder why that was?’ Ellen murmurs.
    ‘Ah, he’s a demanding man, is Mr Macausland,’ Johnny explains. ‘I know that her heart was here in Connemara. She was a country