Father Jerry walked towards the villagers and stopped in front of Mrs Doyle, looking unhappy. He had hoped to persuade Captain Carter to make the village churchyard his final resting place. He felt cheated, as though he’d failed to deliver the good Lord a prize.

‘The family request the attendance of the villagers up at the manor house,’ he announced with more than a hint of self-importance. ‘They are away to Galway, but the housekeeper and the ghillie are expecting us and he says you are all welcome but that you are all to behave now.’

‘What in the name of God does that mean, Father?’ asked Nola, looking very put out. ‘Is it because he was an English policeman before he came here that he thinks we’ll all be stealing the captain’s whiskey or maybe the silver? Does he not know we are all God-fearing folk?’

Nola was about to continue, but Josie dived in with a complaint of her own. ‘Are they sending the cars back for us?’ she asked.

Father Jerry looked embarrassed.

‘No, of course they aren’t,’ said Philomena O’Donnell. ‘We are expected to walk the dusty road there and back again and be grateful for the privilege.’

‘Will you not be going then, Philomena?’ shouted Michael.

‘Of course I will, you eejit,’ she said as she fixed her hat and strode out into the road. ‘I haven’t been in that house since I helped my mammy when she did the washing there, before they began to send it up to the convent laundry. I won’t miss a chance of a free glass. Besides, it wouldn’t be right if we didn’t fully pay our respects, would it.’

She looked surprised as Joe Malone fell into step alongside her. ‘Let me escort you, ma’am,’ he said, and Philomena blushed to the white hairs on her chin as she felt the eyes of Peggy and the women of the village burning into her back.

‘He’s up to something, he is,’ whispered Nola to Rosie.

‘I think you might be right, Nola. He seems mighty curious about the manor and Captain Carter, and look at him, he can’t get there quick enough. What he might be up to, however, is anyone’s guess. Are you coming, Michael?’ Rosie turned to Michael, who was closing the shop door.

There was no need to lock the shop door. Not a soul for miles around harboured a dishonest bone in their body. There was no such thing as crime in Tarabeg. Unless you counted the children who scrumped apples from the trees on the Carter estate and mysteriously removed a cake. Or the adults who occasionally, on a black, cloudy night with no moon or stars to spoil their cover, poached salmon from the Carter river. But as Seamus often said, ‘The Carters are British, it doesn’t count, so ’tis not a crime as such. The good Lord will turn a blind eye, and if he does notice, he will call it retribution for past wrongs by the British. We don’t even need to go to confession for poaching the fish – Father Jerry has said so himself on many an occasion.’